DLH Holdings Corp.

Q3 2022 Earnings Conference Call

8/3/2022

speaker
Operator
Good day and welcome to the DLH Holdings CAHRT Fiscal 2022 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touchstone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Chris Biddy, Investor Relations Advisor. Please go ahead.
speaker
Chris Biddy
Thank you and good morning, everyone. On the call with me today is Zach Parker, President and CEO, and Katherine Johnville, CFO. The company's earnings release and PowerPoint presentation are available on our website under the investor page. I would now like to provide a brief safe harbor statement, which is also shown on slide two of the presentation. This call may include forward-looking statements that relate to the company's outlook for fiscal 2022 and beyond. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause action results and events to differ materially from these statements. Please refer to the risk factors contained in the company's annual report on Form 10K and in our other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward-looking statements. On today's call, we will be referencing both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. The reconciliation of our non-GAAP results to our reported GAAP results is included in our earnings release and in the investor presentation on DLH's website. President and CEO Zach Parker will speak next, followed by CFO Katherine Johnville, after which we'll open it up for questions. And with that, I'd now like to turn the call over to Zach. Please go ahead, Zach.
speaker
Zach Parker
Thank you, Chris, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our fiscal 2022 third quarter conference call. I am pleased to report yet another solid quarter, particularly as we wind down our two major COVID-19 pandemic response programs, one with the FEMA Alaska countermeasures and the NIH infectious disease clinical trials for therapeutics. Both of these programs demonstrated DLH's ability to surge and provide a rapid response to national threats, leveraging our emergency preparedness and global clinical research network capabilities. Beginning with slide three, I'll first provide a high-level overview of the quarter, starting with the top-line results. Revenue rose nearly 8% year over year to $66.4 million, reflecting strong demand across many of our programs and services. We are very pleased with the recent award activity and a large number of ongoing opportunities within the company, particularly as we end, approach the end of 2022 and we'll soon be launching into FY23. I'll discuss the outlook more in a moment. We posted operating income of $7.1 million, or .7% of sales, up 44% year over year, and recorded EBITDA of $9.0 million versus $7.0 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2021. Earnings per share rose nearly 50% to $0.34 per share, and we paid down an additional $9 million of debt during the quarter, ending the period with a $28.5 million debt outstanding. Our backlog entering Q4 was a solid $510 million, setting the stage for continued strong performance going forward. Turning to slide four, I want to show some examples of how DLH brings innovation and value to its clients across the board. I could not be any prouder of the contributions that DLH employees are making to the missions, the very critical missions of our customers. First and foremost, one of our projects was recently named a Federal Health IT Innovation Award winner, highlighting our work with the Defense Medical Logistics Standard Support and Logical Program. Here we successfully integrated several defense health supply chain management systems for the Defense Health Agency. This was a great achievement that illustrates the ability of our subject matter experts to innovate through novel applications of emerging and proven technologies. Also, the DOD Essence Biosurveillance Program positively identified the initial cases of monkeypox, showing our partnership's advanced research and experience in detecting health and biological threats that impact and put at risk the force readiness of our military. At the same time, within the Veteran Affairs Program, our CMOP contract recently broke all-time daily production records in meeting the medical needs of our nation's veterans. We are very, very proud and continue to be very proud of the high performance work that our team continues to provide for our veterans for almost a quarter of a century. In addition, DLH was awarded a small but strategic contract to conduct on-site clinical monitoring for the outpatient treatment with anti-coronavirus immunoglobulin study at eight research sites outside of the United States, leveraging an NIAID, or infectious disease, funded global clinical trials network. It is incredible work that puts us right in the action with regard to further reducing the evolving threats posed by HIV. And lastly, as previously announced, our InfiniByte Cloud solution received full FedRAMP authorization earlier this year. This bolsters our secure data analytics, cloud migration, and -a-service value propositions that are applicable to current and selected future clients. These are just a few examples that illustrate the differentiating of our talented experts and the tools that we apply in serving the interests of our government, the military, and our service members across the nation. Slide five provides an overview of the many avenues supporting the future expansion, which we believe position us for many years of continued growth and solid performance. As I mentioned at the top, some of our turnkey programs have reached near completion stage, including much of the COVID-19 work in support of multiple agencies. There is always the potential for DLHs to leverage this experience and the unique capabilities acquired during this time period across other infectious disease research, including future potential health threats. Overall, our focus areas continue to align with the federal government's spending priorities, and some recent awards offer the opportunity to accelerate top-line growth. Besides our recompetes, we've announced several new contracts that position us for additional $10 billion in future growth in the coming years that include multiple award contracts that are IDIQ in nature, with a ceiling of $10 billion to provide health-related research and development and R&D support to the U.S. Department of Defense, and particularly the Defense Health Agency and the Medical Research and Development Command. This leverages our expertise in areas such as medical simulation and infectious disease research. We're also selected as part of another multiple award IDIQ contract with a $320 million ceiling for all five awardees, and that is to provide support for the National Cancer Institute with clinical support and study management, positioning us to help in the ongoing fight against cancer. This has, of course, been a strategic objective for us to expand our business presence within HHS and the National Institute of Health. While the maximum value of both of these awards is substantial, our potential would be based on actual task orders that must be competed over time. Nevertheless, we have begun to build a strong pursuit team with added senior credentials and are thrilled to be part of such critical research where our presence and impact will be felt for years to come. At the same time, we want to recompete on work that we've held since 1986 with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences for exacting high standard statistical analysis and toxicology research. DLH will continue to provide software programming, biostatistics, and data visualization for the National Toxicology Program and the Division of Intramural Research. We are very pleased to have been chosen once again for this important work, as well as providing epidemiological and public health support for the National Institute of Diabetes, Digestive, and Kidney Diseases to support expansion again of our chronic disease research. As we approach the end of the government's fiscal year, agency budget adjustments typically provide further opportunity for growth. And that growth can be with contracts that often are decided at a more rapid pace to finalize various procurement initiatives. Subsequent to September 30th, the outlook for our services also remains bright, reflecting generally positive demands and the trends for those demands for fiscal 23 and beyond. As we said in the past, our innovative healthcare research and technology-based applications have strong bipartisan support on the Hill. While it is too early to say how the budget for fiscal 23 will play out, we're optimistic given that our budget is in place, the budget for fiscal 23 is in place, and we are confident that the budget will be able to serve and the ongoing need for diagnostic analytics-based approach to helping solve the nation's many health challenges. I do suspect that certainly a continuing resolution seems to be imminent, but we believe that the budget stability and our priorities will pave the way for added growth. At the same time, we have a strong pipeline of possible corporate development, M&A opportunities that could also further improve our market position and offer new pathways for our strategic expansion. And as Catherine will share, our balance sheet remains strong and largely delevered. We have every reason to think that the future will follow a long-standing formula of strategic growth and solid performance through a platform of high-value added services, which have rewarded our shareholders as well as our clients with steady returns and continued excellence in performance. I believe that the best is yet to come for DLH, and we're excited to lead this charge. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Catherine Joplin. Catherine?
speaker
Catherine Joplin
Thank you, Zach, and good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report another quarter of solid results. Turning to slide seven, we posted revenue of $66.4 million for the three months ended June 30, 2022, versus $61.6 million in the prior year's fiscal third quarter. The 8% increase year over year reflects expansion across many of our existing programs. We believe that our recent awards and our evolving capabilities will continue to support growth in fiscal 2023 and beyond. Moving to slide eight, income from operations was $7.1 million in the quarter versus $4.9 million in the prior year period. And as a percent of revenue, the company reported an operating margin of .7% in fiscal 2022 versus 8% in fiscal 21. Income from operations improved due to higher revenue, improved program mix, and effective management of fringe benefit costs. Interest expense was $0.5 million in the fiscal third quarter of 2022 versus $0.9 million in the prior year period, reflecting lower debt outstanding. DLH recorded a provision for taxes of $1.7 million and $1.2 million during the third quarters of fiscal 2022 and fiscal 2021, respectively. We reported net income in the third quarter of approximately $4.9 million or $0.34 per diluted share versus $2.9 million or $0.21 a share last year. As a percent of revenue, net income was .3% for the third quarter of fiscal 2022 versus .7% for the prior year period. Turning to slide nine, EBITDA for the three months ended June 30, 2022 was approximately $9 million versus $7 million in the prior year period or .5% and .3% of revenue, respectively. The improvement in EBITDA is derived from the same factors as for operating income, of course. Higher revenue with improved program mix and effective management of benefits costs. A reconciliation of gap net income to EBITDA is provided in our earnings statement and at the back of this presentation. Slide 10 gives an updated snapshot of our debt position at the end of Q3. As of June 30, we had approximately $28.5 million of debt outstanding under our credit facilities versus $46.8 million at the end of fiscal 2022. Sorry, fiscal 2021. And our leverage ratio remains under 1.7 times EBITDA. During the quarter, the company paid off all remaining debt from the 2019 social and scientific systems acquisition. The $70 million five-year term loan from that acquisition was retired in 35 months. We continue to use our substantial cash generation to pay down debt and deliver the balance sheet, leaving us in a strong position with plenty of financial flexibility for future transactions. We anticipate being under $25 million of debt by the end of our fiscal year. This concludes my discussion of the financial statements. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to our operator to open for questions.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star, then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. But anytime your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then 2. At this time, we will pass momentarily to Asamullah Roshar. The first question comes from Joe Humes with Noble Capital. Please go ahead.
speaker
Joe Humes
Good morning, Zach and Catherine. Congratulations on the quarter.
speaker
Catherine Joplin
Good morning, Joe. Good to hear from
speaker
Joe Humes
you. Thank you very much. I wanted to first kind of walk through. In the presentation, you do have a business reconciliation with the FEMA results. I just want to make sure, if we can go through this a little bit, that we are thinking about this the right way. In the quarter, FEMA actually had about a $5 billion negative effect on revenue. It looks like here, this reconciliation, that the ongoing business actually did roughly $71.6 million of revenue, which would be a 16% increase over the year ago quarter. Am I thinking properly on that, or is there some other one-time items that would not make that an accurate calculation?
speaker
Zach Parker
Thank you, Joe. Your arithmetic is correct. It is an adjustment, but it does net out at about 16%, Catherine. Anything to add? On
speaker
Catherine Joplin
the sustaining, that's correct. On the
speaker
Zach Parker
sustaining, that's correct.
speaker
Joe Humes
So you're underselling what you guys actually did in the quarter. I mean, that's just fantastic increase from the first quarter on the sustaining business, you did about a 7% increase. The second quarter, 12%, and now we're talking a 16%. We're just showing significant growth on the sustaining business.
speaker
Zach Parker
Well, we appreciate it. As you well know, that's kind of our history, our norm. But we're starting to see the fruits of a lot of the strategic efforts that we've built. I can tell you that it's a team sport, and our operators and our folks in the trenches, on the BD side, are all really starting to come together. And we also benefit from enjoying a great portfolio of customers and clients that have had the ability, like we mentioned earlier, to retain their budget stability, to be able to have dealt with the challenges of the COVID-19 all hands on deck. And we're starting to see some of that recovery being reflected as well. So thank you very much. We appreciate that.
speaker
Catherine Joplin
However, Columbo, let me not, one hand gives and the other takes away. All that is absolutely the case, and we do enjoy the benefits of strongly supported markets and increasing demand and building increasing traction for our services as we continue to expand the array of services we offer. There is, as you know, some degree of seasonality to our business. And so while it's the case, yes, that we had a very strong return in Q3, some of that was a function of the seasonality, particularly on the Head Start program. And then, as Zach mentioned, the wrap up of that large COVID therapeutics trial program. So think of us on a sustaining basis as running, you know, in the high 60s, low 70s, and we're going to bounce around a little bit quarter to quarter, depending on some of those particular seasonal effects. But on a sustaining basis, you're quite right. We are reaching new levels and upward and to the right.
speaker
Joe Humes
The CFO always has to put a break on the good news.
speaker
spk00
That's why it's a tag team.
speaker
Joe Humes
So you mentioned, you know, the FedRAMP authorization for the InfiniBite Cloud. Zach, maybe give us a little more color detail, you know, of what that could mean. You know, what's the potential market out there, you know, for that product? And, you know, when do you think you start to see the fruits of that being harvested?
speaker
Zach Parker
Great question, Joe. Well, we're starting to see a lot more attention coming from the agencies, particularly the federal agencies that we serve, that are requiring that contractors have FedRAMP level secure systems if you're going to move forward in handling large, sensitive data. Not only in the healthcare arena, where it's very, very sensitive health records being managed, but also from just cyber risk and general cyber risks across the industry. So we think that by having the SEP FedRAMP certification, it'll certainly get us a differentiating capability where there'll be less competition because of those that do not need it. We're also taking a look to see if we can help position this platform to be the solution for some of the smaller businesses that do not have the ability to invest and develop this capability, yet they still want to maintain either existing work or be able to pursue work in a cost-effective way in a cloud environment for big data analytics. So we think we're going to start to build a pipeline specific to the FedRAMP certification requirements for those agencies that treat cybersecurity and security against these kind of systems as a priority in the way they evaluate.
speaker
Joe Humes
Thanks for that. And on the IDIQs, I know it's all dependent upon the specific task orders and then competing to win those task orders. Any feel for when those task orders might start coming out or any type of ramp on that? Is this something that you think you see a lot here in the next couple of quarters or is it more over a longer period of time?
speaker
Catherine Joplin
Well, there's quite a long duration on, certainly on the large omnibus task order IDIQ. That's a 10-year duration. However, the typical formula for new IDIQs is first dispositioning the work that's transitioning off the expiring predecessor IDIQ. So the omnibus IDIQ is omnibus four following omnibus three. And so the natural first things in the queue tend to be transitioning of existing work. But there are emerging needs and then of course there are opportunities that those customers have in mind. So we don't expect them to have immediate turn to converting to new work, but we are. That's what we're in the midst of doing is identifying the market opportunities there, both from a competitive exercise through the recompete of existing work and the expansions of scope underneath those IDIQs. The second one with the epidemiological part of NIH, we expect to have a closer in ramp on the authorization of work. But it'll follow that same pattern of transitioning existing work coming off of all the programs that were aggregated within the scope of that IDIQ. But on the other hand, we are already hearing from that customer about additional scopes and additional work that they expect us to put out for competition. And of course that pool of competitors is only five companies. So we're quite excited about the close in opportunities from that IDIQ.
speaker
Joe Humes
Okay, great. And just we'll once again talk about the VA contracts. I think they're through the fall of this year. Any update on those contracts?
speaker
Zach Parker
Yes, Joe, we know that as we stated before, the VA will set their acquisition strategy, get their team in place to do the procurements. They've provided some indications that they have started to address how that's going to come out. But given the history of what we have seen historically, we're pretty optimistic that we'll be probably looking at a year's worth of extension so that they can get a set of RFPs out on the street, get proposals submitted, get evaluations done, and to move towards a final award decision. And historically that generally has been easily a 12-month cycle, and we'll see how it goes in the future. So we're pretty optimistic that we'll see something beyond this fall given that we're getting ready to approach a new fiscal year.
speaker
Joe Humes
And on those, you know, the previous one, they had talked about a small, I think, veteran-owned business. Any more or any indication of whether they're just going to open it up to everybody, or do you think any indication that they would be looking once again to award it to a veteran-owned business first?
speaker
Zach Parker
Well, there's always, you know, a preference for small businesses. Of course, they've solicited both of these contracts in that environment and reached the conclusions thus far that it was not in the best interest of the government to be able to have this exacting standard high-mission critical kind of work done by the small business community. Now, having said that, acquisition strategies can evolve. We have seen indications that they're continuing to look at other approaches. We stand at the ready to and believe that we're well-positioned to continue to provide it in an unrestricted and a prime arena. But should that not be the case, you know, we'll consider alternative approaches as well. So we're pretty optimistic that, you know, we'll be in this game and hopefully still as a prime and unrestricted environment. But, you know, you can't tell until these procurement cycles actually unfold.
speaker
Joe Humes
Right. Yeah. Well, hopefully the fact that you're handling record levels of orders. Exactly. And you've done such a great job on this. The past plays in your favor on that.
speaker
Zach Parker
Yeah, there's a lot of dynamics. Go ahead.
speaker
Joe Humes
Go ahead, Zach. I'm sorry.
speaker
Zach Parker
Well, I was just going to say, yeah, there's a lot of dynamics there. And we've continued, even though we've had these short bridges of less than a year, you know, we've decided and continue to now invest in next-generation approaches to executing on the CMOP mission. I think the customer sees that. I think obviously the productivity records and the production records that we have seen are indicative of our shared commitment to quality and performance and continuing our tradition of being one of the top one or two performers as rated by J.D. Power. So we're excited about what we think the future holds and will continue to further invest in being a great provider to take care of our veterans.
speaker
Joe Humes
Thanks for that, Zach. And then one last one for me. You know, on the debt pay down, obviously you guys just continue to knock the cover off the ball there. And, you know, things continue to long the same path that I would expect you guys just about be debt free by the end of next fiscal year. But this seems to be the time when we see, you know, an acquisition announcement from the company.
speaker
spk00
So
speaker
Joe Humes
just wondering, you know, how's the M&A pipeline looking today? You know, what's the kind of multiples you're seeing out there? Are you more comfortable with the multiples? Have they come down some here given the change in the economy? And, you know, any additional insight you might be giving us on, you know, potential M&A activity?
speaker
Catherine Joplin
I definitely appreciate that question. And as we expected and I think as we signaled on our call a couple quarters ago, it was quiet, certainly in the first part of the calendar year, as I think everybody sort of recovered, all the investment banks recovered from their breakout 2021. So quiet in the first quarter of the calendar, but as expected, volume has begun to really pick up nicely and there is a very nice and robust pipeline of opportunities that we are aggressively pursuing and evaluating. So I'm encouraged to see things, things wake up again and to see us get an opportunity to get at bat on some really things that would really extend our offerings and continue to build us into a stronger company, more relevant in the marketplace with additional technology capabilities as we've talked about. So in terms of multiples, they might be softening just a little bit, easing up a little bit as compared to 2021, not dramatically so in a way that I feel like we're going to get the bargains that we got back in the 15, 16 timeframe. It's not, it's not going to, I think we're a ways away from that, but we are improving slightly on the margins as people, as you said, think about the overall economic indicators and acknowledge those a little bit in their multiple expectations. But it's still a highly competitive and pretty frothy market from my perspective.
speaker
Joe Humes
Okay, great. I'll get back and cue Letona to ask a couple of questions. Look forward to the M&A activity and great job guys once again. Thank you.
speaker
Catherine Joplin
Thank you, Joe. Appreciate you joining us.
speaker
Operator
As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star, then want to be joined into the queue. Our next question comes from Brian Kindlinger with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.
speaker
Brian Kindlinger
Hi, good morning guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
speaker
Catherine Joplin
Hey, Brian. How
speaker
Zach Parker
are you doing, Brian?
speaker
Brian Kindlinger
Good. Good. Thanks. You talked about a few new programs. Can you first comment on your ability to hire professionals to meet new project requirements and then in this inflationary period maybe compare compensation for either new hires that were comparable to a year ago?
speaker
Zach Parker
Yeah, no, great question. As you probably know and have heard me talk about before, I think that one of the more unique challenges that we're facing over the last year and in the near term future is the threat of the great resignation and the ability to find and retain top talent. We, under the leadership of our relatively newly hired Chief Human Resource Officer, Malik Farabi, we've really focused heavily on the ability to retain a workforce as well as to be able to attract workforce given the threats that we're seeing out there. And we've started to have some good traction. We've put in some new measures, implemented some new measures over the last quarter or two. We're starting to see some of that pay off. We are actually doing, I think, better than most of the industry from my engagements with the rest of my GovCon folks. But we've still got a lot of work ahead. It's a different environment today to be able to attract and retain top talent. And there's a bit of scarcity of resources in that regard because a lot of the newer generations are looking more at the gig work environment and we've got to find ways to attract them into our places. So it is a threat. It's one that I'm really pleased to say that with our new leadership and approaches across our operating units, we're holding our own and feeling that I think we've weathered some of those storms. You know, some of that also was exacerbated by COVID-19, particularly in programs such as some of ours where you have to go into facilities and have to come to work in an environment that had different degrees of risk and many regulatory requirements in our space. Right. A number of our agencies required that you had to get vaccinated and certainly less than 100% of our workforce was amenable to that. We kind of reflect the national demographics. So we're going to continue to apply force on target for this threat. It is front and center for us and I'm pleased to say that early results are positive.
speaker
Brian Kindlinger
16% organic growth is solid. I'm curious as a follow-up though, has the challenges in hiring and retaining curtailed in any way revenue, meaning you couldn't fill certain positions so maybe certain revenue is not ramping as you expected? And then also what is your voluntary attrition rate?
speaker
Zach Parker
Well, we don't publish a rolling voluntary attrition, but I can tell you that the industry norms, we're kind of a hybrid organization. The industry standards used to be about 17% in our professional workforce for government contracting. In our industry, if you work with organizations such as professional services, council and NDIA, you'll find that it's been almost double that over the last year and a half to two years. And I've heard some of our tier one companies having turnover in their professional workforce exceeding 40%. I can't tell you that we're not that high. We've actually uniquely done very, very well and still in the professionals arena below 20%. And in the production manufacturing kind of environments, et cetera, there are different metrics and we're beating industry standards there too. But we have certainly suffered some blows in the last year, year and a year and a half or so due to the combination of COVID and the great resignation. There have been gaps in our ability to deliver revenue. But that too is a key and high priority of what we're doing in our human capital management. All of our managers have just come out of one of our sessions on making sure that we're applying, you know, some novel methods, leveraging, meeting some of the key candidates and more social media means than the historical means of recruiting and really jumping on that so that we can deliver the revenue, deliver the expertise that our clients demand and need, as well as have the resources available to meet the And I hope that to your point that our ability to fill these positions will generate additional revenue as well.
speaker
Catherine Joplin
And I know I would just add to that, Brian, that the competition for talent has for us, even pre-pandemic, always been fierce as we've been working to navigate up and to compete with those household name companies you think about. And then if you think about the disciplines that our team comes from, these are public health professionals, scientific research professionals. So those people are now more so than ever in high demand. And so really what differentiates us, I think, is number one, we're absolutely focused on, at the same time that we're fiercely competing for talent, we're focused on moving the needle on our contribution of the amount of the work that is delivered by direct labor of our team versus building subcontractors into our efforts. So that's an important metric for the company and we're making good progress against that, notwithstanding the competition for talent. And that happens when you build capabilities, when you get opportunities to do work that people are committed to and they really want to take that entrepreneurial lead on really servicing those clients. So I think we have the benefit of being able to be on the move building momentum and people see that and get excited about it. It doesn't mean that we can take our eye off the ball in terms of making the employment environment competitive and attractive for the resources that we're competing for.
speaker
Brian Kindlinger
Great. I'm curious, we've had a short period of time where we've had budgets in place before maybe what's coming, a continuing resolution. But can you talk about, from a high level at least, the bookings trends over the last nine months compared to the previous nine months and how do you think that will be impacted by a continuing resolution?
speaker
Zach Parker
Great question. I do think CR seems to be the default in the last decade for us. And while there is some paralysis on the Hill that exacerbates that problem a little bit for us, particularly in the federal government space, we are starting to see some movement. As you indicated, some of the bookings that we've been able to identify recently, I can tell you that we're now having probably more proposal development activity than we've seen in a while for some things that are, for us at least, pretty strategic that have taken a couple years on the come. So we're pretty optimistic that in the areas that we're focused on, it's not across the board in our industry, but certainly in the areas that we're focused on, we're starting to see some new programs as well as some recurring programs with some evolution start to come before. So the leading indicators are the pipeline of those opportunities will be pretty healthy to impact 23 and FY24 pretty well.
speaker
Brian Kindlinger
Great. I guess lastly, as I look at your business spoke between the VA, Health and Human Services and DOD, as you look at your pipeline of opportunities, is there one that sticks out of where you see the biggest growth opportunity or is it pretty evenly split across the board? Thank you.
speaker
Zach Parker
That's a great question. You probably heard us, Catherine and I, say either on the trail or earlier in the quarter that we are expanding our aperture for our strategic growth strategy. And in saying that, HHS, DOD and VA are going to continue to be coveted customers, but we have a range of expansion we believe we can do within those agencies. And just as importantly, our focus organically and even acquisitively is expanding now to leverage the competencies that we've built with the execution of our last five-year strategy. So we now have strong digital transformation skills. That covers not only cyber, but secure data analytics and a pretty intensive robust systems engineering and integration capability that includes modeling and simulation. We can take those now to two places within those agencies, but more importantly, we can take those into other civil and DOD agencies that are not as heavily focused on health. And we think that those will continue to be areas that we can leverage. Certainly differentiators such as our global clinical research network, our FedRAMP platform as a service solution and things of that nature are going to be key components of taking the investments that we've internally invested in to build those capabilities. While at the same time bolstering some of our technology enabled approaches to those customers. So yes, those will still be very good agencies for us. We still see a range of opportunities to expand within NIH, within the HHS domain. We put out there before that we think cancer is a good growth area for us and the DCEG win we think is one of a few that will get us there. The behavioral health arena that we've talked about is also still one that is ripe for growth, we believe, especially given everything that's been happening as a result of symptoms from COVID-19, from depression, suicide prevention, substance abuse, as well as on the battlefield with the expansion of TBI and PTSD and other behavioral health scenarios. So we're going to continue to invest in those areas as well as see where we can take our pieces of the C4ISR capabilities that came with our workforce in Fort Detrick under the IBA acquisition. So we're pretty excited about the diversification now of our portfolio now that we've got a strong foundation to build upon and so we can start to add depth and capabilities as well as breadth in our target markets.
speaker
Brian Kindlinger
Great. Thanks so much, guys.
speaker
Zach Parker
You bet. Thank you.
speaker
Catherine Joplin
Thank you, Brian. Good to hear from you.
speaker
Operator
At this time there appears to be no further callers in queue. So I'll turn it back to Mr. Parker for any closing remarks.
speaker
Zach Parker
Well, thank you very much and I would just like to thank you all for your attention and your continued interest in DLH and our quarter three results. We look forward to chatting with you again next at our fourth quarter report out and subsequently our annual report to the shareholders. So thank you very much. Have a blessed day. Bye for now.
speaker
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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