This is an SEC Fair Fund, not a class action settlement — the Commission is redistributing the $15,000,000 civil penalty it collected from Elanco Animal Health over the company's disclosures about its revenue growth. If you bought or acquired Elanco common stock (ELAN) between May 9, 2019 and May 6, 2020, you can file a claim through September 14, 2026, but you will need brokerage records for every transaction you report.
Current Status
Claims are open. The Claims Bar Date is September 14, 2026: a Claim Form sent by U.S. Mail must be postmarked on or before that date, and an online or emailed Claim Form must be received by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on that date. There is no court approval step still to come — the Commission approved the Plan of Distribution on May 1, 2026, and the Fund Administrator is now collecting claims against it. No payment date has been announced. What the Plan does set is a determination schedule: deficiency notices within 60 days of the bar date and final eligibility determinations within 150 days, with payments following after that.What Changed Recently?
The claim window opened this summer, roughly two years after the enforcement action that produced the money. The sequence matters for understanding where this stands: the Commission issued its order against Elanco on November 12, 2024, appointed Epiq Class Action & Claims Solutions as Fund Administrator on March 2, 2026, and approved the Plan of Distribution on May 1, 2026. Claim Forms and the Plan Notice then went out to known Preliminary Claimants, and the September 14, 2026 Claims Bar Date is the first hard deadline the process has had.The underlying matter is In the Matter of Elanco Animal Health Inc., Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-22309. In the November 2024 order, the Commission found that Elanco violated Sections 17(a)(2) and (3) of the Securities Act and Section 13(a) of the Exchange Act along with Rules 12b-20, 13a-1, 13a-11, 13a-13 and 13a-15(a). It ordered Elanco to pay a $15,000,000 civil money penalty and created this Fair Fund under Section 308(a) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act so the penalty could be paid out to harmed investors rather than to the Treasury. The Fair Fund consists of the $15,000,000 collected from Elanco.
The conduct the Commission described concerns how Elanco reported its revenue growth. According to the order, from the first quarter of 2019 through the first quarter of 2020 Elanco used discounts, rebates and extended payment terms to get its distributors to buy product beyond the demand then coming from end users, which let the company meet internal quarterly revenue and core revenue growth targets. The Commission found that Elanco's public statements attributed the resulting revenue growth to end-user demand without disclosing its reliance on those quarter-end incentives, or the risk that the practice could depress future revenue. When Elanco stopped the incentivized sales, it announced on May 7, 2020 an expected $160 million revenue decline for the first two quarters of that year, and the share price fell by more than 13 percent.
Elanco consented to the order without admitting or denying the Commission's findings. No court has found the company liable, and the order resolved the matter on a cease-and-desist basis rather than through litigation.
Who Qualifies?
The Fair Fund is for individuals and entities, or their lawful successors, who purchased or otherwise acquired Elanco Animal Health Inc. common stock registered with the Commission and traded under the symbol ELAN during the Relevant Period of May 9, 2019 through May 6, 2020, inclusive. The relevant CUSIP is 28414H103.Buying inside that window is necessary but not sufficient. Two further conditions apply, and both are decided by the Fund Administrator rather than by you: your approved transactions must calculate to a Recognized Loss under the Plan of Allocation attached to the Plan as Exhibit A, and your resulting Distribution Payment must equal or exceed $20.00. The Plan Notice is blunt about this — receiving the notice does not make you a Preliminary Claimant, and filing does not assure that you will share in the fund.
A defined set of Excluded Parties cannot participate at all: Elanco itself; present and former officers and directors, together with their assigns, creditors, heirs, distributees, spouses, parents, dependent children and controlled entities; employees or former employees of Elanco or its affiliates terminated for cause or who resigned in connection with the conduct described in the order; anyone who has been criminally charged as of the Claims Bar Date in connection with that conduct or a related Commission action; any firm, trust, corporation, officer or other entity in which Elanco has or had a controlling interest; the Fund Administrator and those assisting it; and anyone who purchased another person's right to recover from the fund for value. Acquiring that right by gift, inheritance or devise does not trigger the exclusion.
How Much Can You Get?
No estimate has been published, and there is a structural reason for that rather than an oversight. The fund is a fixed $15,000,000, but each claimant's share depends on their own Recognized Loss as calculated under the Plan of Allocation and on how many valid claims come in, so the Fund Administrator cannot price an individual payment until every claim has been processed.One number is fixed, and it is the one worth checking against your own trading before you spend time on the paperwork: a Distribution Payment must equal or exceed $20.00 to be paid at all. A claim that calculates below that floor is not paid a reduced amount — it is not paid.
Because a Fair Fund is a redistributed civil penalty rather than a negotiated settlement, the deductions that shrink a class action fund do not appear here in the same form. There is no class counsel fee application and no service award, and the Plan Notice does not disclose what the administration of the fund costs or how that cost is borne. Treat the $15,000,000 as the ceiling on what is available to claimants, not as a figure that is divided evenly.
What Proof Is Required?
Documentation is required for every transaction you list, and this is the requirement most likely to sink an otherwise good claim. Every transaction reported in Part III of the Claim Form must be supported by records that come from a third party, not from you.Acceptable documentation includes trade confirmation slips from brokerage firms and monthly brokerage statements that detail a month's activity, along with contract notes, account activity pages from a broker's computer printouts, or account activity pages from a broker's monthly statements — in each case including the front page. Whatever you send has to show the account owner's name, the broker through whom the security was traded, the trade date, the number of shares purchased, acquired or sold, and the price paid, excluding commissions, taxes and fees. A letter from your broker works only if it is on the broker's letterhead and carries all of that information.
What does not work: your own records, and stock certificates. The Plan Notice states directly that these do not constitute acceptable documentation. The Fund Administrator also will not pre-approve documentation sight unseen. The Claim Form additionally asks for the brokerage account number, which appears on the statements themselves. If you no longer have the records, they generally come from your broker, your tax advisor, or the party you bought from or sold through.
What Is the Deadline?
September 14, 2026 is the Claims Bar Date, and how you file changes what the deadline means.A Claim Form sent by U.S. Mail must be postmarked on or before September 14, 2026. A Claim Form submitted through the online claims portal or sent by email must be received by 11:59 p.m. Pacific time on September 14, 2026 — for these routes the postmark is irrelevant and only arrival counts. Online and emailed submissions must carry all the required supporting documentation for each transaction listed in Part III, so a form sent without the brokerage records is not a completed filing.
There is no opt-out deadline and no objection deadline, because a Fair Fund has neither mechanism. Missing the bar date has one consequence and it is absolute: the Plan Notice states that a claimant who fails to meet it will be barred from receiving a payment from the Elanco Animal Health Fair Fund.
How Do You Take Action?
File through the official Fair Fund website, Elanco Animal Health Fair Fund, which hosts the online claims portal, a downloadable Proof of Claim and Release Form, the Plan Notice, and the Plan of Distribution itself. Claim Forms may also be mailed to the Fund Administrator or emailed; the site's contact page carries the current filing details for both routes. The Plan and the Plan Notice are also posted on the Commission's own distributions page for this matter.The document you sign is titled a Proof of Claim and Release Form, so read the release language on the form and the terms of the Plan before submitting — the Plan controls, and this page is a summary of it rather than a substitute.
If you are a broker, bank or other nominee who held ELAN shares for someone else during the Relevant Period, the Plan Notice imposes a deadline on you as well. Within fourteen days of receiving the Plan Notice you must either mail a copy of the notice and Claim Form to every such beneficial owner by first-class mail, or give the Fund Administrator a list of those owners' names and addresses. The Fair Fund website keeps a dedicated Nominees page for that submission.
What Happens Next?
After the bar date the process runs on the Plan's schedule rather than on a court calendar. Within 60 days of September 14, 2026, the Fund Administrator will send a Claim Status Notice to every claimant whose Claim Form is deficient in whole or in part, stating the reason and explaining how to cure it, request reconsideration, or dispute the determination.Within 150 days of the bar date, the Fund Administrator will complete all claim determinations and send a Determination Notice to everyone who filed on time, stating the eligibility decision and, for eligible claimants, the calculated Recognized Loss. That notice is the Fund Administrator's final ruling on eligibility. A claimant who disputes the loss calculation has 30 days from the date of the Determination Notice to say so in writing, and the Fund Administrator then has 30 days to respond with its final ruling on the calculation.
No distribution date has been announced. Fair Fund payments generally follow Commission approval of the Fund Administrator's final payment file after determinations are complete, and the Plan Notice does not publish a target for that step.
Sources and Verification
This page is based on the official Fair Fund website and the Plan Notice of the Elanco Animal Health Fair Fund issued in In the Matter of Elanco Animal Health Inc., Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-22309, together with the Commission's November 12, 2024 order and its public distributions page for this matter.- Official Fair Fund website — Elanco Animal Health Fair Fund (claims portal, FAQs, documents, nominee filing)
- Plan Notice of Elanco Animal Health Fair Fund, Administrative Proceeding File No. 3-22309 (embedded below)
- SEC — Distributions to Harmed Investors: Elanco (the Plan of Distribution and related releases)
- Order Instituting Cease-and-Desist Proceedings, Securities Act Release No. 11326 (November 12, 2024); Plan of Distribution approved by Exchange Act Release No. 105354 (May 1, 2026)
For related coverage, see OCA's other SEC Fair Fund page on the Stoner Cats NFT Fair Fund, the roundup of open securities class action settlements, the full list of open class action settlements, or the explainer on how settlement funds get divided.
Questions
Is a Fair Fund the same thing as a class action settlement?
No, and the differences change what you have to do. A Fair Fund is money the SEC collected as a civil penalty from a company and is redistributing to harmed investors under Section 308(a) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. There is no plaintiffs' class, no class counsel, no opt-out right, no objection process and no court fairness hearing. The Commission itself approved the Plan of Distribution on May 1, 2026, and a Commission-appointed Fund Administrator, not a court, decides who is eligible and how much each claimant is paid. What is the same is the practical part: you must file a claim with supporting documentation by the deadline or you get nothing.
Why does the Relevant Period end on May 6, 2020?
May 6, 2020 is the last trading day before the disclosure that ended the alleged misstatements. On May 7, 2020, Elanco announced an expected $160 million decline in revenue for the first and second quarters of 2020, and its share price fell by more than 13 percent. Periods in securities matters typically close on the day the market learns the corrected information, because a purchase made after that point was not made at a price the alleged nondisclosure was still inflating.
I bought ELAN during the Relevant Period. Does that alone guarantee a payment?
No. Buying during the period is the entry requirement, not the whole test. Your approved transactions must also calculate to a Recognized Loss under the Plan of Allocation attached to the Plan as Exhibit A, and your resulting Distribution Payment must equal or exceed $20.00. A claimant whose trading nets out to no Recognized Loss, or whose calculated payment comes to less than $20.00, is not paid. The Fund Administrator runs that calculation, and the Plan Notice states plainly that filing a Claim Form does not assure that you will share in the proceeds.
My shares were held in my broker's name. What do I do, and what does my broker have to do?
Beneficial owners file for themselves, using documentation obtained from the broker. The Plan Notice also puts an affirmative duty on brokers and other nominees who held the stock for someone else during the Relevant Period: within fourteen days of receiving the Plan Notice, the nominee must either mail a copy of the Plan Notice and Claim Form to all such beneficial owners by first-class mail, or provide the Fund Administrator with a list of those owners' names and addresses. The settlement website has a dedicated Nominees page for that filing.
What happens if my Claim Form is incomplete or gets rejected?
The Plan builds in a cure step. Within 60 days of the Claims Bar Date, the Fund Administrator sends a Claim Status Notice to every claimant whose Claim Form is deficient, stating the reason and explaining how to fix it, request reconsideration, or dispute the determination. Within 150 days of the Claims Bar Date, the Fund Administrator completes all determinations and sends a Determination Notice stating the eligibility decision and the calculated Recognized Loss. A claimant who disagrees with the loss calculation has 30 days from the date of the Determination Notice to dispute it in writing, and the Fund Administrator then has 30 days to respond with a final ruling.
Who is excluded from the Elanco Fair Fund?
The Plan defines a set of Excluded Parties. It covers Elanco itself; present and former officers and directors and their assigns, creditors, heirs, distributees, spouses, parents, dependent children and controlled entities; employees or former employees of Elanco or its affiliates terminated for cause or who resigned in connection with the conduct described in the Order; anyone who as of the Claims Bar Date has been criminally charged in connection with that conduct or a related Commission action; any firm, trust, corporation, officer or other entity in which Elanco has or had a controlling interest; the Fund Administrator and those assisting it; and anyone who bought another person's right to recover from the Fair Fund for value. Someone who received such a right by gift, inheritance or devise is not excluded on that basis.
