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Operator
Thank you for standing by. Welcome to Schrodinger's conference call to review the company's first quarter financial results. My name is Kevin, and I'll be your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star 1 on your telephone. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. Please be advised that this call is being recorded at the company's request Now, I would like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Jared Madden, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead.
Schrodinger
Thank you, and hello, everyone. Welcome to today's call, during which we provide an update on the company and review our financial results for the first quarter of 2021. Earlier this morning, we issued a press release summarizing our financial results and progress across the company, which is available on our website at www.schrodinger.com. Here with me on our call today are Rami Fareed, President and Chief Executive Officer, Karen Akinsanya, Executive Vice President, Chief Biomedical Scientist and Head of Discovery R&D, and Joel Lebowitz, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for Q&A. I'd like to remind you that during today's call, management will make statements related to our business that are forward-looking and are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including without limitation statements related to our future financial performance, including our outlook for the year 2021, the potential advantages of our platform, our strategic plans to accelerate the growth of our software business and advance our collaborative and internal drug discovery programs, risks relating to the COVID-19 pandemic, our expectations related to the use of our cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities, as well as our other future operating expenses. These forward-looking statements reflect our current views about our plans, intentions, expectations, strategies, and prospects, which are based on the information currently available to us and on assumptions we have made. Actual results may differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements and are subject to a variety of assumptions, uncertainties, risks, and factors that are beyond our control, including the demand for our software solutions, our ability to further develop our computational platform, our reliance upon our drug discovery collaborators, and other risks detailed under the caption risk factors, and elsewhere in our most recent Securities and Exchange Commission filings and reports. Except as required by law, We undertake no duty or obligation to update any forward-looking statements discussed on this call as a result of new information, future events, changes in expectations, or otherwise. These forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any date subsequent to today. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Rami.
Rami Fareed
Thanks, Sharon, and thank you everyone for joining us today. At Schrodinger, we have developed a computational platform that is transforming the way therapeutics and materials are discovered. The platform is enabling our customers and our internal drug discovery team to discover high-quality molecules for drug development and materials applications faster, at lower cost, and with, we believe, a higher probability of success compared to traditional methods. We license our platform to pharmaceutical, biotech, and materials companies and universities and government labs worldwide. We are also leveraging our platform and a number of drug discovery programs in collaboration with pharmaceutical and biotech companies. And we are advancing an internal drug discovery pipeline, which Karen will review shortly. As we look out at the next decade, we believe that increasing speed of computing, expanding access to high-resolution three-dimensional protein structures, coupled with our platform's ability to predict molecular properties with a high degree of accuracy, will allow us to broadly explore even greater chemical space and ultimately enable us to identify novel, high-quality development candidates for a broad range of targets within as little as one year from program launch. Beyond the progress we are making across our internal drug discovery pipeline, we are continuing to see exciting examples of the power of our platform and the potential for continued scale-up by the industry. In March, our collaborative Morphic Therapeutic reported promising clinical results from one of their integrin programs for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. We also recently expanded our collaboration with AstraZeneca to fully deploy our platform across all their structurally enabled discovery programs. We are making continued investments in the science underlying our platform to maintain our leadership position in physics-based computation and machine learning, with a focus on increasing accuracy of the predictions and expanding the domain of applicability, to wider range of therapeutic targets and industrial applications. We also continue to look for opportunities to make supercomputing even more accessible for our customers. Last month, we established a strategic collaboration with Nvidia to further optimize our platform for one of Nvidia's key enterprise systems designed to enable companies to reach supercomputing power. As you'll hear shortly from Joel, we are in a strong financial position, ending the quarter with cash resources of $649 million. This allows us to continue to invest in our science, invest in growing our software business, advance our internal pipeline, and add new talent to support our strategic initiatives. We're excited by the progress we've made so far this year across all aspects of our business. We are continuing to navigate the challenges of COVID-19 and are planning for a return to several of our offices in the fourth quarter. We appreciate the dedication of all our employees, and we are optimistic about the ability to return to working together in person again. I'll now turn the call over to Karen for an update on our drug discovery programs.
Sharon
Thank you, Rami, and good morning, everyone. We are continuing to make important advances on many fronts across our internal pipeline and portfolio of collaborative programs. We have collaborations with both small biotech and large pharmaceutical companies spanning a broad range of target classes. And in these collaborations, we are leveraging our platform at the same scale we do internally. We believe this level of large-scale deployment enables us to more rapidly identify high-quality development candidates. We expect several collaborative programs to continue to advance in the clinic and new programs to enter the clinic this year. We have also made significant progress in our own internal oncology programs targeting solid tumors and hematological malignancies. Today, I will highlight three of our most advanced programs, MALT1, CDC7, and WE1. Based on the strong data we have generated to date, we plan to move forward with IND-enabling studies for these programs. Subject to completion of the preclinical data packages, we expect to submit up to three IND applications in 2022, with our first submission expected in the first half of next year. Starting with our MALT-1 inhibitor program, today we announced we have selected a development candidate. To give you a sense of how we explored chemical space to identify a novel potent selective MALT-1 inhibitor with favorable drug-like properties, our team triaged over 8 billion compounds, scored approximately 12,000 compounds using our most advanced multi-parameter optimization methods, and synthesized just 78 molecules to identify those suitable for development candidate nomination within 10 months of program initiation. MALT1 has emerged as an interesting target because it is downstream of BTK in the NF-kB signaling pathway. Constant activation of NF-kB is a hallmark of several subtypes of lymphoma. We believe that inhibiting MALT1 could be an effective therapeutic strategy to treat certain relapsed or resistant B-cell lymphomas and chronic lymphocytic leukemia. In December, we presented preclinical data from our MALT1 inhibitor program at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting. We reported potent in vitro inhibition of MALT1 enzymatic activity and in vivo antitumor activity in mouse xenograft models of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. Additionally, in in vivo mouse models, our MALT1 inhibitors demonstrated dose-dependent anti-proliferative effects in combination with ibrutinib and venetoclax, which are approved BTK and BCL2 inhibitors, respectively. We are excited about evaluating the potential of combining our MALT1 development candidate with BTK or BCL2 inhibitors in the clinic. Our GLP-TOCS studies are expected to begin shortly, and we are beginning to make plans for Phase 1 studies in patients with hematological malignancies. We expect to share more details about the clinical study after the Phase 1 protocol is finalized. Now I'll turn to CDC7 and WE1, two programs that target cancer through replication stress and DNA repair mechanisms. CDC7 is a protein kinase that has been shown to be required in DNA replication initiation. CDC7 is thought to be linked to cancer cells' proliferative capacity and ability to bypass normal DNA damage responses. Targeting proteins that play important roles in DNA replication and replication stress is gaining momentum as a new therapeutic approach for cancer. Last month, we presented preclinical data from our CDC7 inhibitor program at the AACR annual meeting. Our compounds demonstrated dose-dependent picomolar potency and were highly selective. They also showed synergy with several approved and investigational cancer therapies that modulate apoptosis, DNA repair mechanisms, and DNA checkpoints. These compounds significantly inhibited tumor growth in mouse models of both acute myeloid leukemia and colorectal cancer. The data we have generated to date suggests that we have an opportunity to develop a best-in-class inhibitor with a very favorable pharmacokinetic profile. Our other DNA damage repair program targets V1, a tyrosine kinase regulator of the G2M cell cycle checkpoint. The therapeutic objective of targeting V1 is to reduce cell viability by inducing G2M phase arrest and apoptosis of cancer cells. Others have shown clinically meaningful tumor regression in uterine serous carcinoma, ovarian, and other solid tumors through V1 inhibition. However, Existing inhibitors have profiles that may make dosing and combination therapy more difficult. The design challenge in our program was to develop highly selective molecules in an effort to minimize off-target effects, limit drug-drug interactions and maximize the potential for combinations. We have identified multiple potent molecules that are highly selective for V1 and show strong pharmacodynamic responses and anti-tumor activity in vivo. Our molecules also have optimized drug-like properties, including no observable inactivation of CYP3A4, a key liver enzyme. We believe this profile limits the potential for accumulation and the need for dose adjustment of combination products. As these programs advance and transition into development, we expect to initiate new programs. We have prioritized several new program opportunities with human genetic support and emerging pharmacology data in oncology and immunology. We expect to launch these programs during the year. In summary, We have multiple programs advancing into GLP toxicology studies to enable IND submissions and the initiation of Phase I clinical studies next year. Activities to support expansion of our pipeline into additional disease areas are well underway. We look forward to updating you on our R&D activities throughout the year. I will now turn the call over to Joel to review our financial results.
Rami
Thank you, Karen, and hello, everyone. This morning, I'm pleased to discuss our financial results for the first quarter of 2021, and I'll also review our outlook for the year. We reported total revenue of $32.1 million for the first quarter, up 23% compared to the first quarter of 2020. Software revenue was $26.3 million, representing 11% growth compared to the first quarter of 2020. The growth in software revenue was driven by increased deployment of our solutions, including FEP Plus and Live Design, as well as growth in new customers. Drug discovery revenue was $5.8 million for the first quarter compared to $2.4 million in the first quarter of 2020. Of note, drug discovery revenue this quarter included recognition of $2.2 million from a collaboration milestone related to the advancement of a preclinical program. We recognized this revenue one quarter earlier than anticipated. First quarter drug discovery revenue also included $2.4 million recognized from our collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb. As a reminder, the BMS agreement, which we signed in November 2020, included a $55 million upfront cash payment, which we expect to recognize over a four-year period as we progress the BMS programs to development candidates. Gross profit was $16.2 million in the first quarter of 2021, up 3% over the first quarter of 2020. Software gross margin was 78% in the first quarter of 2021 compared to 83% for the same period in the prior year, reflecting our investment to support the rollout of large-scale deployments of our platform. Operating expense was $40.1 million compared to $27.4 million in the first quarter of 2020, reflecting our investment in R&D to advance our technology and our pipeline, the addition of staff to drive long-term software sales growth, and expenses required to support a public company infrastructure. Other income was $23.5 million versus a loss of $2.4 million in Q1 2020. During the quarter, we recorded $24.8 million of income from the mark-to-market of our shares in Morphic Therapeutic. As we mark-to-market our shares each quarter, we can experience significant fluctuations in the value of our holdings depending on stock price movements. We recorded a net loss, after adjusting for non-controlling interests, of approximately $29,000 compared to a loss of $13.8 million for the same period in the prior year. We ended the first quarter with cash, equivalents, marketable securities, and restricted cash balances of $649 million, up from $643.2 million at the end of the fourth quarter of 2020. In March, we provided our financial outlook for the full year, and today we are reaffirming that guidance. We expect total annual revenue in 2021 to be in the range of $124 to $142 million, which includes software revenue of $102 to $110 million and discovery revenue of $22 to $32 million. We continue to expect software revenue growth to be higher in the second half of the year, with the majority of second-half growth in the fourth quarter. Drug discovery revenue is expected to be highly variable based on the timing of potential milestones related to collaboration agreements. As we said before, we anticipate that operating expense growth will be higher than the 42% annual growth rate we saw in 2020, primarily driven by our commitment to fund R&D to advance our technology and our internal drug discovery pipeline. We also anticipate that software gross margin will be lower than the 81% reported in 2020, reflecting investment to drive and support large-scale adoption by our customers. We are pleased with the progress we have made so far this year, particularly the advances we have seen across our collaborative programs and internal pipeline. We are also excited about the potential for large-scale utilization of our software in drug discovery and material science applications. And finally, we have the resources to invest in our growth strategy across our business. I'll now turn the call back over to Rami.
Rami Fareed
Thanks, Joel. We are excited about the significant impact our technology is having on our internal and collaborative drug discovery programs. It is exciting to see the power our platform has to advance the discovery of new therapeutics with the potential to improve treatment paradigms across a broad range of disease areas. We are also excited about the potential of our platform to impact sustainability initiatives across multiple industries. We have an exceptional team committed to advancing our vision, and we look forward to providing updates on our progress throughout the year. At this time, we'd be happy to take your questions. Operator?
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press the star, then the one key on your touch-tone telephone. If your question has been answered or you wish to move yourself from the queue, please press the pound key. Our first question comes from Michael Yee with Jefferies.
Michael Yee
Hey, guys. Good morning, and thanks for the update. Maybe two questions for us. First, I guess, on software. I noticed that you maintained the guidance, you know, we're sort of into May now. You gave an update, I think, March 23rd and also in January. Do you get the sense that things are picking up? Do you feel more confident about the range of the guidance or the higher end as it relates to either, you know, people getting back to work, COVID, the adoption, just all of those things? Do you have any sense of how things are going now? Whether better or not, here we are to the midpoint of the year. That's question one on software as it relates to the guidance. And then question two maybe for Karen or the team. You have a candidate now for Malt 1 that's fantastic. Do you feel you'd like to get these things into IND before you consider partnering? Is that kind of a, I don't want to say a line in the sand, but kind of a good place to think about where it's most optimal IND and greater? Maybe just talk to that for Malt 1 or something else. Thank you.
Rami Fareed
Joel, do you want to take Mike's first question?
Rami
Sure. Thanks, Rami. Thanks, Mike. Good morning. So, yeah, of course, we did maintain our guidance for the full year. You know, if you look at the quarter, we came in slightly above what we had guided to back in March at 11% versus high single digits. And, you know, as we look out over the rest of the year, we also reaffirmed the color around the pacing, and it's important to keep in mind. So we believe that the second half will – we see the second half unfolding to be higher growth than the first half and most of that growth in the fourth quarter. And, you know, as we – the way we look at the year is we look at, You know, the customers that we are interacting with, the renewal timing, whether those renewals are on-premise or hosted, so that determines whether revenue is recognized in a particular quarter or over time, whether there are upsizing opportunities within those renewals, and also the prospect for new customers. And, you know, at this time, we feel comfortable with the guidance that we provided for the full year, so we're maintaining it.
Rami Fareed
Karen?
Sharon
Yes, good morning, Mike. So on our MOT1 program and others, as we've discussed in the past, we do plan to move these programs forward ourselves. And at this moment, we are looking towards IND opening studies next year, as we discussed in the call. However, we do stay very cognizant of the landscape. Each of these mechanisms, as you're aware from AACR and ACS, a lot of information coming out, and we stay in contact with potential partners. As you know, each of these mechanisms has the potential to combine with existing marketed agents, and so we expect to see combination trials be a part of the clinical development program And so, you know, we remain interested in the potential to benefit from those combination compounds. But there's a number of ways to accomplish that. And so at this point, we are planning to open those IND studies ourselves and stay in touch with potential partners.
Michael Yee
Great. Thank you, guys. Appreciate that.
Operator
Thanks, Mike. Our next question comes from Michael Raskin with Bank of America.
Mike
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I want to follow up on the last one just real quick on the software pacing through the year. I want to make sure we're thinking about this correctly because I know this was a big point of debate last quarter and as we started the year. Typically, there is a little bit of seasonality where 1Q tends to be a little bit stronger than 2Q as far as software revenues goes. Is that a fair way to think about that? Just because I know that some of the comps last year with COVID could have been a little bit messed up. So, I just want to, you know, confirm that a mild step down 1Q to 2Q software is appropriate. And then I've got a follow-up for Taryn.
Rami
Sure, Mike. Good morning. So you're right. You know, we have seen that kind of seasonality in the past. And, you know, I think the other thing is that we have guided to back half being higher growth than the first half and fourth quarter being the majority of that growth. So I think as you think about the pacing of the year, I think it's important to keep that in mind. Also, if you look at the performance in the first quarter, as I mentioned, it's just slightly above what we had guided to in the first quarter in terms of high single digits. So I think that hopefully that's helpful in thinking about the pacing throughout the year.
Mike
Okay, thanks. And, Taryn, for you, it sounds like you're, you know, you can see and emphasize that beyond the three lead compounds in the internal pipeline, you've got more and more potential candidates ramping up that you're sort of finding some early hits for. I'm just wondering, how should we think about the breadth of that early pipeline? How many assets can you, you know, do you currently have the headcount and the ability to run at the same time How should we think about that going forward?
Sharon
Yeah, thanks, Mike. So as we've described in the past, our capacity to run a discovery program, we can run around 20, 25 of these programs. Those are both in collaboration and a wholly owned pipeline. This year, we've been really ramping up the team that's looking at these earlier stage programs. where we're able to initiate a hit ID and hit to lead. And I would say that right now we have the capacity for around five steady state programs that are wholly owned, and we intend to maintain that steady state over the next couple of years. And as the team grows, that gives us the ability to further expand our internal pipeline. Obviously, as these candidates move forward and into development, clinical development, Our plan is to replace them. So the team are very busy right now working on additional programs that you'll be hearing more about in the future.
Mike
Okay. And one last quick one for Jill, if I could squeeze it in. You had some comments in the prepared remarks on sort of going back to the office post-COVID, returning to normal operations. Should we be assuming any significant impact to the operating expense line? you know, as we go into 4Q from those activities, or is it going to be a more gradual transition?
Rami
Thanks, Mike. Sure. So we are planning to be back in the office in the fourth quarter. And we, of course, had these plans in place, not knowing the exact timing at the beginning of the year, but as we planned out the whole year expenditures. So I think it is more of a gradual, gradual thing. As we get back to the office, I mean, obviously other than being in the office, we're operating at full strength, so there really shouldn't be much change in kind of the way we are supporting our operations. Just the fact that we're able to collaborate together will be kind of a welcome change. The other thing is, you know, more the thing that will drive variability and expense to a greater degree is really our R&D side and timing of, you know, pacing and timing of our programs as they move towards the clinic, hiring throughout the year as we build up our capabilities for early clinic, clinical operations, and also the timing of CRO operations. expenses as we advance our internal programs in that regard. So I think those core operating metrics have more of an impact than perhaps return to the office at the end of the year.
Operator
Great. Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or a comment at this time, please press the star, then the one key on your touch-tone telephone. Our next question comes from Doe Kim with BMO Capital Markets.
Doe Kim
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Just wanted to ask about the expanded AstraZeneca collaboration. Could you provide a little more detail on that? How much of a step up in usage would AstraZeneca be involved in the platform? And what does the expansion mean in terms of economics for Schrodinger?
Rami Fareed
Yeah, so first of all, thanks, Joe, for the question. This was a really highly successful project. pilot program, if you will, and it was really great to see how successful it was and the rollout to the entire company. We're, of course, not revealing the details of the agreement, but I think it speaks very well to the, not just the short-term impact of the expansion, but really the long-term expansion. As you know, we've talked a lot about the relative usage of our software and at pharma companies relative to what we're using, as Karen said, in our collaborations and internal program. And seeing this kind of transition to a much larger scale deployment is a very good indicator of us achieving that, as we've talked about, sort of in some sense, you know, the TAM of the software. So we're really very excited about that transition from a sort of pilot program to a real broad, deployment across their whole set of programs.
Doe Kim
Great. And you've talked previously about how Schrodinger has the ability to use their own software platform in an unlimited fashion. Could you quantify for us how much it would cost an external company to construct the internal program that you have currently just like in terms of dollar figures, the number of licenses Schrodinger theoretically used?
Rami Fareed
Absolutely. That's a good question. So what we've – as Karen said, we're running around 20, 25 programs. And at the moment – and this is going to increase, by the way, with time. I'll explain that in a second. But at the moment, that turns out the usage of this software to support that number of programs is around $30 million to $40 million of software. That doesn't include the compute costs, just the software licenses. Now, a couple of things that's important to keep in mind. One is that's just 20 to 25 structure and labor programs. Of course, pharma companies typically have more than that number of programs, certainly the bigger companies. But the incredible thing is that this keeps increasing at a pretty rapid pace As we've discussed before, the performance of computers, the availability of computers, the availability of structures of proteins, which is a key input to these methods, are increasing exponentially and continue to and have been for a long time and still continue today to increase exponentially. So that's what it is right now. But as we see, we've talked about this before. You know, a year ago or so, we were exploring a single-digit billion number of molecules. Now we're exploring hundreds of billions of molecules. And of course, as the as computer performance goes up, as the number of structure-related programs goes up, that $30 million to $40 million will continue to increase. So that's what the value is right now.
Doe Kim
Great. That's very helpful. And for Karen, you previously said that you expect a number of your collaborations that are in lead optimization to move into GLP talk studies Is that still your expectation over the next few quarters? And the milestones that you expect to achieve, will they be cash payments or just recognition of prior payments?
Sharon
So I'll say that, first of all, we don't have full visibility into everything going on in all of our collaborations. However, we have seen, and I think you've also seen, the progress that's being made in the programs that are described publicly. You've seen progress, for example, with Morphic, and we know that these programs that we're working on with a variety of different partners are meeting their scientific milestones moving forward with regard to the data packages. So we continue to be very confident that these programs are going to move forward through the various stage gates, GLP talks and including a number that are in IMD enabling studies actually moving into the clinic with the data packages supporting that. So I would say that we remain confident about a number of these programs, not just moving into lead-up but to further milestones and gates. I would, though, turn over the question on the financials to Joel, if that's okay.
Rami
Sure. And, Doe, if I misinterpreted your question, please just clarify. But, you know, I think with regard to our discovery revenue, what we have signaled this year is, you know, growth in our, you know, in a full year guidance is growth in our discovery revenue versus prior year. And what we've also said is that as we continue to advance collaboration programs, generally speaking, milestones get larger. That's certainly the case on the BMS side, as we've talked about, the potential to earn up to well over $2 billion in milestones, with two-thirds of it being roughly being pre-commercial. And so we're really excited about investing and advancing those programs towards these very significant step-ups and milestones in the future. And, you know, and I think, you know, we continue to see, as Karen mentioned, advancement in the pipeline in that regard. So we're confident really across that pipeline that over time we're going to continue to see opportunities for significant growth on the discovery side coming out of the collaborations. And we did see a signal in the first quarter where we were able to recognize $2.2 million related to a single milestone, preclinical stage, milestone one quarter earlier than anticipated, which I think is a nice signal in that particular case of the continued advancement of a specific program. But, you know, we're seeing broad advancement as we've talked about, and so we're excited to continue to grow that side of the business.
Doe Kim
Great. Thanks for taking my question.
Operator
Thanks, Phil. Our next question comes from David Leibowitz with Morgan Stanley.
Phil
Thank you very much for taking my question. Could you run us through the purchasing dynamics for a pharmaceutical company? What's the typical cycle for making decisions? Obviously, they tend to make decisions on an annualized basis, but do they ever make incremental decisions throughout the year, or is it really on a one-time basis on an annual each year, and then they tend to make the decision to upgrade at the end of a cycle?
Rami Fareed
Yeah, it's typically that most of our contracts are one-year contracts, so the decisions are made on an annual basis. There's certainly examples of cases where companies have essentially recognized in the middle of the year that they're running out of licenses and we've done contracts in the middle of the year. That does sometimes happen, but typically it's every year. Now, the interesting thing about that is that in In 2020, as you know, there was quite a large increase. I think this was at a time where the validation of the technology was coming from sort of external sources. It was coming from the success of Nimbus and Morphic and our internal programs, and that was catalyzing a broad adoption of the whole platform by quite a number, a very large number of companies. Now, even though the decisions then are made on an annual basis of, you know, the renewals. The decision to scale up in a very significant way can actually take longer than a year because now the validation switches over to sort of internal validation. So what does that mean? You know, now you have to, first of all, you have to deploy the technology in a much larger scale than they're used to. This involves, you know, obviously running the calculations on the cloud. And then you have to go through these design – design, test, make cycles where you're determining whether the technology is really having the kind of impact that we're seeing and that they've seen from other collaborations. And that can sometimes take a little bit longer than a year, and that's how we've talked about sort of the growth in the business. It's not necessarily completely linear. We know where it's headed, right, as we talked about before in response to other questions. But it can take a sort of lumpy course to get there. Does that make sense?
Phil
Yes, it does. On the occasion when a customer does add-on incrementally during the year, would that add-on be a year-long contract, or would it be to, I guess, to fit into the current contract and then conclude at that point? in the fourth quarter, so if that's when the contract's currently in, and so that they're basically incorporated into the current cycle?
Rami Fareed
It really varies. It's a really good question. It varies. Sometimes the contract is started and so that it's coincident with the earlier contract, but actually just as often it's a contract now where there are two renewals, and then later on they're merged. It's really every different possible way of doing it has occurred. Sometimes it's six months, sometimes three months, nine months, sometimes a little bit over a year. I mean, there's quite a bit of variability.
Phil
Thank you very much for taking my questions.
Rami Fareed
Sure.
Operator
Thank you. There are no further questions. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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