Science 37 Holdings, Inc.

and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Science 37 3rd Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference 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'll need to press star 1-1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Steve Halper, Managing Director at LifeSci Advisors. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Catherine, and thank you all for participating in today's call. Joining me are David Coleman, Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Zaronek, Chief Financial Officer. Yesterday, Science 37 released financial results for the quarter ended September 30th, 2022. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward-looking statements within the meeting of federal security laws, which are made pursuant to the SACAR provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based upon our current estimates of various assumptions that involve material risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to materially differ from those anticipated or implied by these forward-looking statements. We encourage you to review our filings made with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of these risk factors, including in the risk factors section of the company's most recently filed periodic reports on form 10K and form 10Q and subsequent files. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward statements, which we speak only as of today, and the company disclaims any obligations to update such statements for new information. We believe that certain non gap metrics are useful and evaluating our operational performance. We use these non-GAAP measures to evaluate our ongoing operations and for internal planning and forecasting purposes. Information about non-GAAP financial measures referenced, including a reconciliation of those measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, can be found in our SEC filings and earnings materials available on the investor relations portion of our website at investors.science37.com. I would now like to turn the call over to David Coleman. David?

Thanks, Steve. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Our third quarter top line results reflected some of the challenges we discussed during our second quarter call. In the quarter, we continued to experience delays in decision-making, representing a 40% increase in the sales cycle from this time a year ago. We attribute this to the biopharmaceutical cost pressure in the macroeconomic environment, in addition to the size, strategic value, and complexity of the studies we are solutioning. Seeing these shifts, particularly regarding the need for more in-depth solutioning, we announced a commercial leadership change in September with the appointment of Michael Shipton to the role of Chief Commercial Officer. Michael brings more than 25 years of commercial leadership experience in clinical research and technology, including his most recent role as Senior Vice President of Customer Solutions and Strategy at Cineos Health, which he left at the beginning of this year. You've surely noted that third quarter bookings were well below our expectation. Offering an early indicator for fourth quarter, we see some positive momentum with approximately $20 million of gross bookings quarter to date. It's also important to note that nearly all of those bookings come from repeat customers, including one program that's greater than $10 million in contract value. Third quarter revenues grew 14% year-over-year However, revenues were down quarter over quarter and below expectations as a result of the recent light bookings and timing on two important projects that Mike will address in a moment. We remain highly confident and focused on our strategic plan that we laid out for our team and our shareholders, and it continues to yield a strong sales pipeline, technology that is powerful and differentiated, and quality that keeps our customers coming back for more. Our financial goal remains to reach profitability and cash flow breakeven in the fourth quarter of 2024 with cash we have on hand. Given the headwinds, as disclosed in our 10 filing from yesterday, we have implemented a cost reduction program, which we expect will result in about $21 million of gross cash savings on an annual basis This cost reduction program incorporates the difficult decision to reduce our staff by approximately 16%. While we eliminate excess capacity and significantly reduce our spend in G&A, we are making additional investments in commercial resourcing and maintaining strong investments in both our technology and operations functions. With these investments, we plan to re-accelerate top-line growth, continue to ensure our market differentiation, and deliver with high quality on behalf of our customers. With that, I will now turn the call over to Mike Saranac, our Chief Financial Officer, to provide additional detail regarding our financial performance.