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.
spk01: Hello and welcome to today's Catalan Incorporated Second Quarter Financial Year 2021 Earnings Call. My name is Bailey and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to pass the conference over to Paul Serdes, Vice President of Investor Relations. Paul, please go ahead.
spk04: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today to review Catalan's second quarter fiscal 2022 financial results. Joining me on the call today are John Cheminski, Chair and Chief Executive Officer, Alessandro Maselli, President and Chief Operating Officer, and Tom Castellana, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Please see our agenda for today's call on slide two of our supplemental presentation, which is available on our investor relations website at investor.catalan.com. During our call today, management will make forward-looking statements and refer to non-GAAP financial measures. It is possible that actual results could differ from management's expectations. We refer you to slide three for more detail on forward-looking statements. Slides 4 and 5 discuss Catalan's use of non-GAAP financial measures, and our just-issued earnings release provides reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP measures. Please also refer to Catalan's Form 10-Q that was filed with the SEC today for additional information on the risks and uncertainties that may bear on our operating results, performance, and financial condition, including those related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, I would like to turn the call over to John Chmielewski whose remarks will cover slide six of seven of the presentation.
spk03: John Chmielewski Thanks, Paul, and welcome everyone to the call. Catalan's strong start to fiscal 2022 continued in the second quarter. Our financial results were driven by continuing strong growth in our biologics business with additional support from our other business segments as we work with our customers to deliver thousands of different products that help people live better, healthier lives. The recent addition to our offerings of consumer-preferred gummy dosage forms for nutritional supplements through the acquisition of Batera added another growth engine on top of our robust organic performance. The strong second quarter, along with continued momentum in the business, has led us to again increase our fiscal 2022 guidance which Tom will review later in the call. Our net revenue for the second quarter was just over $1.2 billion, increasing 34% as reported or 35% in constant currency compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021. When excluding acquisitions and divesters, organic growth was 32% measured in constant currency. Our adjusted EBITDA of $310 million for the second quarter increased 39%, both on an as-reported and constant currency basis, compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021. When excluding acquisitions into best years, organic growth was also 39% measured in constant currency. Our adjusted net income for the second quarter was $163 million, or 90 cents per diluted share, up from 63 cents per diluted share in the corresponding prior year period. The biologic segment, driven by continued high utilization of our drug product assets, was again the top contributor to Catalan's financial performance. The segment experienced organic net revenue growth of 59%, driving an EBITDA increase of more than $60 million over the second quarter of last year. Our legacy offerings in our soft-gel and oral technology segment continued to experience the recovery from pandemic-related headwinds that we had anticipated, and the segment results were further enhanced by the acquisition of Batera. Organic growth was very strong, as year-over-year demand for both prescription and consumer health products recovered nicely over the same period last fiscal year, a quarter that included pandemic lockdowns. Though net revenue is now higher than compared to the pre-pandemic second quarter of fiscal 2020, there are still a few headwinds and challenges driven by the ongoing pandemic with pockets of demand still not at historic levels. However, We're pleased that our base business, strong growth and product development, and robust prescription drug pipeline are more than overcoming some of the headwinds that still exist. In addition to our positive organic performance, we received a strong boost from the first quarterly contribution from Batera, which added more than 20 percentage points of net revenue growth to the segment. The Batera acquisition was an important factor in leading us to raise this segment's long-term net revenue growth rate to 6% to 8% and improving its margin profile. The acquisition is off to a better than expected start, and we're seeing high interest in gummy formats from our consumer health customers. Our oral and specialty delivery segment also saw continued organic net revenue growth after facing headwinds in fiscal 2021. As with soft-gel and oral technology segment, there are improving market dynamics across our oral and specialty delivery segment. These dynamics are most notable this quarter in our early phase development offerings and rising demand for orally delivered Zytus commercial products. Finally, our clinical supply services segment posted high single-digit net revenue and EBITDA growth compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021. As highlighted last quarter, we opened new CSS facilities in San Diego, California and Shiga, Japan in the first half of this fiscal year and expect them to be long-term growth drivers for the segment. On our last several calls, I've detailed our capital expenditure projects across the company, most notably in support of our biotherapeutics and cell and gene therapy offerings. I'm very proud of our team's ability to navigate the challenges presented by the pandemic, including those presented by the global increase in cases related to the Omicron variant to keep these critical growth projects on track. With no change to the timeline or scope of these projects, we thought it would be helpful to give you an update on the progress of our OneBio service offering, which we first announced in June of 2019. OneBio combines our drug substance and cell line development with our drug product and clinical supply services to help reduce development timelines, risk, and complexity for our customers to get their therapies to patients, all uniquely with one CDMO partner. Since we introduced this initiative, we've signed more than 20 development programs, creating an additional feeder channel for our commercial pipeline. Since originally launching as an early stage offering specifically for preclinical for phase one programs, we've now expanded the offerings to support late stage programs based on customers' needs. We now have several phase two and phase three programs in progress or signed. We also recently completed the first one bio customer CGMP batch using our new small scale filling line that we acquired in Bloomington in September of 2020. We continue to see interest from existing and potential customers who are looking for a single proven partner to help them reduce development timelines, risk, and complexity in getting their therapies into the clinic and to patients faster. And this is, of course, not limited to our biotherapeutics customers. We have a longstanding history of optimizing the successful development of small molecules as well. and recently launched a new service in our oral and specialty delivery segment called Express Pharmaceutics that is designed to accelerate the development of oral drugs through Phase I clinical trials. Our team will integrate formulation development and provide on-demand clinical manufacturing, regulatory support, and clinical testing guided by real-time clinical data to reduce the time, potentially by half, to complete first-in-human clinical trials. I'd now like to make a few comments regarding our CEO transition plan announced last month. Catalan is in a strong position given its growth history and trajectory, its increased profitability, and its proven success with strategic execution, including the transformation of the company over the last few years as we've grown our biologic segment and further diversified our portfolio. Catalan's offerings are not only balanced, they closely match the industry's R&D pipeline. After my 12 years at the helm, it makes sense to refresh Catalan's leadership, particularly when the board agrees that we have a top industry leader in Alessandro to advance Catalan seamlessly. I'm very proud of and impressed with our board for overseeing such a thoughtful and thorough succession planning process. Alessandro is uniquely positioned to lead a complex CDMO like Catalan. He started off at the site level over a decade ago, worked his way up to larger sites, then ran multiple sites, rose up to become our Senior VP of Operations, and eventually became an integral part of our leadership team in his role as our President and COO. Over the last three years, Alessandro has been running Catalan to a significant degree, having ownership for all of our business units, go-to-market strategies, and technical operations. He has worked hand-in-hand with me on developing and executing our strategy and has been pivotal in all our decisions regarding acquisitions and post-acquisitions integrations. With that said, I'd now like to turn the call over to Alessandro, who will walk you through our recently announced long-term financial targets. Alessandro?
spk04: Thank you, John, and I'm very honored to be given the opportunity to meet Catherine. You and I have worked closely together for a decade, and side by side over the last three years. I look forward to continuing to partner with you through the transition over the next several months, and then again in your new role as Executive Chair, where you will be delivering important value to the company in areas critical to our success. I'm confident that we have everything we need to continue to win as we embark on this transition we continue to expand our global network invest in growth driving capabilities attracting new talent and accelerate our progress in operational excellence these will all be critical drivers for catalan to deliver our long-term car targets As you know, in January 2020, we provided investors for the first time with our fiscal 2024 targets. Our 2024 net revenue target of $4.5 billion represented more than a 50% increase from our LTM revenue at the time. We have already achieved this net revenue target in the last 12 months, and our fiscal 2022 guidance, as updated today, is already $300 million higher at the midpoint than our prior 2024 guidance. In addition, back in 2020, we also projected our adjusted EBITDA margin to extend several hundred basis points to 28% in fiscal 2024. given by increased EBITDA margin in the faster-growing biologic software. We are right on track to meet that target, including an estimated 100 basis point increase in fiscal 2022 over last year. Our business week has changed significantly since January 2020, when our biologic segment accounted for just a quarter of our net revenue. Now it already tops 50%. This transformation of our business in the last few years is a result of our strategic investments in assets supporting newer therapeutic modalities in high demand, including viral vectors, plasma DNA, iPSCs, other gene and cell therapy manufacturing technologies, messenger RNA, monoclonal antibodies, and therapeutic proteins. Given this progress last month at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, We are now moving past our fiscal 24 targets, and we introduce instead targets for fiscal 26, which are illustrated in slide 8. As you can see, each of our segments has an acceptable long-term organic growth rate target, including our largest segment, biologics, which has the fastest rate at 10% to 15%. Our second biggest segment, soft-gel and oral technology, is now up to 6% to 8% with improved margins following the acquisition of Betera. And our oral and specialty delivery and clinical supply service segments are also slated to grow in the middle to high single digits at attractive margin profiles. Key drivers to our underlying growth across the company are, first, the dynamic and growing spend for R&D in both large and small molecules. And second, increased utilization of our premium assets, manufacturing approved products. When we look at our various segment growth rates, we are very comfortable with our overall long-term consolidated organic revenue growth of 8 to 10%. Based on a combination of our long-term organic growth rate and anticipated M&A activity, we are projecting more than $7.5 billion in revenue in fiscal 26, or roughly a 12% CAGR from our fiscal 22 guidance as updated today. We believe margins will continue to improve over the next several years with an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 30% in fiscal 26. It is important to note that our long-term strategy plan does not assume that the pandemic-related demand for vaccines will continue in the other years. In other words, for these other years, our overall revenue is forecasted to continue to grow, even as we expect our revenue from COVID-19-related programs to significantly decline, both in terms of absolute dollars and as a percentage of overall revenues. We believe our accelerated progress toward a formal fiscal 24 target, which was threatened by our highly successful work on COVID-19 and response products exemplifies our capability to deliver for all our stakeholders. And we look forward to now delivering on our fiscal 36 targets. Before turning the call over to Tom, I want to briefly address our draft of facility and related 483 letter from FDA. We take all regulatory observations very seriously and work speedily to address all of them. While some remediation efforts are relatively quick, others, like in Brussels, will take more time and resources. We are a patient-first company. And we therefore want to start manufacturing operations while meeting the highest regulatory standards as soon as possible. So we have assembled a team of internal and external experts to deliver on these expectations. We are proud of our focus on operational excellence and quality. And now that leads us to deliver more than 70 billion doses of medicine for nearly 7,000 products on behalf of more than 1,000 clients across more than 50 facilities each year. The broad diversity of our product offerings and resilience of our businesses create a key strategic advantage over our competitors. I would like to turn the call over to Tom who will review our financial results for the second quarter and our updated fiscal 2022 guidance. Thanks, Alessandro. I'll begin this morning with a discussion on segment performance, where commentary around segment growth will be in constant currency. I will start on slide nine with the biologic segment. To highlight the company's transformation over the last two years, you'll see that the company represented 52% of our net revenue in Q2 of the fiscal year compared to 44% in Q2 of fiscal 2021 and 31% in Q2 of 2020. Biologics net revenue in Q2 of $638 million increased 60% compared to the second quarter of 2021, with cell therapy acquisitions adding one percentage point of growth. This robust net revenue growth was driven organically by broad-based demand across the segment, most notably for COVID-19-related programs. The segment EBITDA margin of 30.9% was up 60 basis points sequentially over the first quarter of this fiscal year, but was down year-over-year from the record level of 33.5% recorded in the second quarter of fiscal 2021, which is primarily attributable to mix Most notably, an increase in component sourcing, as well as costs associated with our continued investments in cell therapy business. As we discussed in the past, component sourcing is where we source materials, components, and other supplies for our customers, and it comes with two opposing dynamics. Increased revenue, but with margins well below the company average. In Q2 of last year, as we readied the additional capacity we were building, we were not yet manufacturing at large scale and therefore had a much lower contribution from component sourcing versus today's levels. Looking to the back half of the year, as we discussed last quarter, we expect the biologic segment revenue growth rate to decelerate in the second half of fiscal 2022 as we begin to compare against the higher levels of COVID-19-related production that started back in the back half of fiscal 2021. Also in the back half of the year, we expect the EBITDA margin for biologics to be impacted by costs associated with corrective and preventative actions we are taking in response to the regulatory observations out of our Russell site. These remediation efforts will include a voluntary temporary shutdown as we replace equipment and revalidate the facility have been factored into our updated fiscal 2022 guidance, which I will review in a few moments. Please turn to slide 10, which presents the results from our SoftGel and Neural Technologies segment. SoftGel and Neural Technologies net revenue of $329 million increased 36% compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021, with segment EBITDA increasing 73% over the same period last fiscal year. The October 1st acquisition of the Terra contributed 22 percentage points to net revenue growth and 30 percentage points to EBITDA growth in the segment during the quarter. The organic net revenue increase was driven by growth in both prescription products and consumer health products, particularly in cough, cold, and over-the-counter pain relief products. Segment EBITDA increased 507 basis points from the second quarter a year ago, with organic volume growth and the addition of the margin accretive deterra business, each contributing to the margin expansion. Slide 11 shows the results of the oral and specialty delivery segment. After factoring out the net impact from divestiture of our local field business and the acquisition of a quarter's spray drying assets, organic net revenue grew 5% and segment EBITDA was up 24% over the second quarter of last year. The top line growth is primarily driven by elevated demand for early phase development programs. You may recall that a year ago, we called out lower demand for early phase development programs as a result of pandemic-related lockdowns. So this bounce back is another strong indicator of a return to pre-pandemic activity levels. Organic net revenue growth was driven by demand for early phase development programs and orally delivered Zytus commercial products. EBITDA margin improvement was driven by organic net revenue growth, as well as favorable comparison to our second quarter of fiscal 2021 when we booked charges related to a customer's September 2020 voluntary recall of a respiratory product. As shown on slide 12, our clinical supply services segment posted net revenue of $99 million, representing 7% growth over the second quarter of fiscal 2021, and segment even by growth of 9% over the same period. These increases were driven by growth in our manufacturing and packaging and storage and distribution offerings in North America. As of December 31st, 2021, backlog for the segment was $529 million compared to $515 million at the end of last quarter and up 18% from December 31, 2020. Segment recorded net new business wins of $114 million during the second quarter, compared to $118 million in the second quarter of the prior year. The segment's trailing 12-month book-to-bill ratio is 1.2 times. Moving to our consolidated adjusted EBITDA on slide 13. Our second quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 39% to $310 million, or 25.4% of net revenue. compared to 24.5% of net revenue in the second quarter of fiscal 2021. On a constant currency basis, our second quarter adjusted EBITDA also increased 39% compared to the second quarter of fiscal 2021. As shown on slide 14, First quarter adjusted net income was $163 million, or $0.90 per diluted share, compared to adjusted net income of $114 million, or $0.63 per diluted share, in the second quarter a year ago. Slide 15 shows our debt-related ratios and our capital allocation priorities. Capitalist net leverage ratio as of December 31, 2021, was 2.8 times, below our long-term target of 3.0 times. This compares to a pro forma calculation of 3.0 times at September 30th, which reflects both the Patera acquisition we completed on October 1st and the debt we issued on September 29th in connection with the acquisition. And we reported 2.6 times at December 31st, 2020. From here, we will naturally de-leather, absent any further M&A activity, as our adjusted EBITDA continues to grow, providing us with significant flexibility to continue to pursue organic and inorganic growth opportunities. Our combined balance of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities as of December 31st was $960 million. compared to approximately $1 billion, also on a pro forma basis for the Matera acquisition we reported as of September 30th, 2021. Moving on to capital expenditures, we continue to expect CapEx to be approximately 15 to 16% of our fiscal 2022 net revenue expectations, driven primarily by growth investments in our biologic segment. Now we turn to our financial outlook for fiscal 22, as outlined on slide 16. Following a strong second quarter and solid outlook for the remainder of the fiscal year, we are raising both the low and high ends of our financial guidance ranges. We are also tightening the range since there are just five months remaining in the fiscal year. We now expect full fiscal year net revenue in the range of $4.74 to $4.86 billion, representing growth of 19% to 22%. versus our previous estimate, $4.62 to $4.82 million. We project that net revenue growth from M&A will continue to be two to three percentage points, principally driven by the acquisition of the Terra. We continue to project organic net revenue growth in each of our segments for the fiscal year to be within or above the long-term growth range we have previously disclosed for each segment. For full-year adjusted EBITDA, we expect a range of $1.25 to $1.30 billion, representing growth of 23% to 27% over fiscal 2021, compared to our previous estimate of $1.225 to $1.295 billion. Note that the continued strengthening of the U.S. dollar against both the euro and the British pound is expected to negatively impact our adjusted EBITDA by approximately $10 million in the second half of the fiscal year, the effect of which has been absorbed into our new guidance. We expect full year adjusted net income of $650 to $700 million, representing growth of 18% to 28% over the last fiscal year, compared to our previous estimate of $630 to $695 million. We continue to expect our fully diluted share count on a weighted average basis for fiscal 2022 to be in the range of 181 to 183 million shares. This projection counts our formerly outstanding Series A convertible preferred shares as if all were converted to common shares in accordance with their terms. Finally, we also continue to expect our consolidated effective tax rate to be between 23% and 25% for fiscal 2022. Operator, this concludes our prepared remarks, and we would now like to open the call for questions.
spk01: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by 2. Again, to ask a question, that is star followed by 1. OK, we have our first question. Our first question comes from David Winely from Jefferies. David, please go ahead.
spk10: Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to, I was hoping to ask two. My first one is around biologics revenue. Tom, you called out that COVID-19 programs were a big driver there. In a conversation we had in December, you talked about COVID, management considers COVID to be in the base, and then the base you expect to be able to grow 10 to 15 percent over the long term. Could you talk a little bit about, could you give us a little more color about how much COVID contributed to the quarter, anything you can tell us there, and how you believe that will kind of pace out over coming years that will allow you to continue to grow that segment 10% to 15%.
spk04: Yeah. So, David, we're going to fall short of giving any specificity, further specificity around what the contribution was for COVID-related revenue. I'll go back to comments we made at the start of the fiscal year with not only this being part of our base, but that it was a revenue contribution that was expected to be higher than the contribution that we saw in fiscal 21. I'll remind everyone saw about $550 million on a net basis COVID-related revenue in the prior year and did say that in fiscal 22 we expect that revenue to be higher than those levels. We have said that we do expect COVID revenue to continue to contribute into our fiscal 23 year. In fact, we have public disclosures that have been made around relationships with several key customers that extend through the fiscal 23 timeframe. In terms of what the revenue profile of COVID looks like after 2024, sorry, after 2023, we haven't talked about that specifically, but we did clarify on today's call, Dave, that It's expected to be a significantly lower contributor in the outer years of our long-term targets, especially with regards to fiscal 26. I will say that the pipeline of drug product programs that we have built through the role that we played in the pandemic is certainly giving us the confidence to continue to see this be part of the base, as well as the additional capacity that we continue to invest in and bring online across several key facilities here within the network, primarily within Bloomington and with our anonymity facilities in Europe. Anything else to add? No, look, you know, covering the second part of your question a little bit more in detail. You know, across all the offerings in biologics, we still have a number of assets which are not used for COVID response, which are in high demand and will continue to be expanded in capacity over the next three years. It is, you know, in drug substance, in gene therapies, cell therapies, and drug products specifically with regards to pre-field syringes. So we feel comfortable that we have enough assets which will come online with very good demand profile, which will continue to help growing the business at projected rates.
spk10: Thank you. My follow-up question, maybe a good segue, Alessandro, you touched on the 483. I guess kind of two aspects of this question as well. One being the timeframe that you expect this facility to be impacted as you remediate the issues. I believe from other contexts we're to believe that maybe that's a six or seven month timeframe, if you could confirm that. And then more broadly, this facility is one that has had 483s at every FDA inspection since 2013. This particular 483 highlights some issues that were, you know, appear to be kind of neglected for several years. If you could add some context to the investments in quality and the priorities around quality in this facility, I'd appreciate it. Thank you.
spk04: Yeah, sure. So, look, we're not providing here any specific update about the timeline to these. I can only share that we have deployed a significant amount of resources, internal and external experts, as in my comments. to these, I can confirm that we're only going to restart this facility where we are satisfied in meeting the highest standards of quality and compliance. The investment is ongoing. It did require some engineering changes to the ice filtration system, which are ongoing. But I will fall short from providing the specifics about this one. With regards to your second question around the 40 degrees, in this specific facility, we take all these observations very, very seriously. Some of them are more related to the procedures or some practices that can be corrected with ongoing production. Some others, like in this case, right from the point where you need to stop production for a period of time to implement some changes, especially when it comes to, you know, facilities that have been running for a while. So I believe that, you know, the response of the company has always been very, very thorough in collaboration with all the regulatory agencies. For each of those we've been in contact, we have responded and we have brought those observations to a conclusion with the satisfaction of regulators. Excellent. Thank you. I appreciate the answers.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from Teja Savant from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hey, guys. Good morning. Just to follow up on Dave's line of questioning there, Tom, it sounds like the financial impact from the shutdown is fairly manageable, but have you seen any issues in terms of your ability to participate in new RFPs or your win rates? And then can you just walk us through your ability to absorb the impact by moving customer projects to elsewhere in the network from Brussels?
spk04: So with the first part of the question, look, you know, we, of course, plan, work very, very hard and strive not to have these situations. And we expect from us surely the highest level of excellence. However, we all need to appreciate that our customers specifically have way more data points than just one 483. They experience and observe the performance of Catalan and our values, first and foremost, the patient first, in action every day with our work and our deliveries. So I believe that our customers have way more information and data points to make data evaluation. And as such, we have not experienced any slowdown in our commercial activity on any impact there. And in fact, I can confirm that the demand and the request for cattle and services is as high as ever been. And in terms of your question, Tejas, related to the financial impact, this goes back to one of the core strengths of the company, which is the diversification of the portfolio. We operate over 50 sites across the globe, manufacturing over 7,000 products across 1,000 different customers. So the size of Catalan's battleship, if you will, gives us the ability to absorb these types of normal course challenges that come up from time to time and you operate in a highly regulated space. So to answer your question, we have been able to absorb this. We said from the start that this was not a material financial contributor or impact for the company. And I think that's seen by the robust guidance we've put forth here for the remainder of the fiscal year.
spk05: Got it. And one quick follow-up there, Tom. You mentioned remediation costs in your prepared remarks. Would you be able to sort of quantify that for us in terms of what the EBITDA impact looked like here in terms of the revised Fiscal 22 guidance?
spk04: Yeah, that's a level of granularity, Tejas, that we don't disclose. You know, we don't talk about contributions from individual plants across the network. We did want to just highlight the fact that we will see some additional costs here as a result of the remediation efforts that will have an adverse impact in the margin profile of the business in the second half of the year, primarily in the third quarter. However, as I said, that's all already contemplated in the robust guidance that we've put forth.
spk05: Got it. Appreciate the cover. Thanks, guys.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from Jacob Johnson from Stevens. Jacob, please go ahead.
spk09: Hey, good morning. Maybe a question on the drug product side. Obviously, there's been a good amount of benefit from COVID there. I think as Tom mentioned, you have contracts that run into next calendar year. But if and when those dedicated lines free up, potentially for other customers, are you already in discussions with what's called non-COVID customers about that capacity?
spk04: Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Look, you know, I wouldn't call them... not necessarily non-COVID customers. I would call them a non-COVID product. They might be with the same COVID customers. And in fact, I do believe that's the most likely scenario where those partnerships, which again, have been serving a way that create partnership and collaboration across the spectrum of the pipeline and not necessarily on these specific products. I believe that we're going to continue to give customers priority to access these lines. I'm going to continue to underline and underscore that these types of assets, specifically fill and finish lines under IDOLATOR, are in very high demand. you know there is not enough capacity stored in the world to support the current volumes and the future pipeline more importantly to previous ranges so there is demand there is a line of customers who wanted to access and i i don't believe we will continue to give the priority to our partners which which we have developed such a strategic relationship through the quality pandemic responses so i hope this addresses your your question
spk09: That's super helpful. Thanks for that, Alessandra. Maybe just one follow-up. In your updated investor presentation, you have this slide on where the biopharm industry could go in the next five years. I think you highlight some things like gene editing, oncolytic viruses, red blood cell therapeutics. Are those capabilities you can serve today, or are those areas that maybe we should consider for inorganic growth at Catalan?
spk04: You know, it's both. You know, we have already, you know, as I shared a few weeks ago, maybe this went a little bit under the radar, but we have secured a number of facilities from the operating arm of one of our clients in the Baltimore facility, which we're not necessarily using for the current platforms. And we have dedicated these facilities to the development of some of the platforms that you are referring to, namely oncolytic pyrosis, which again is one of the therapeutic modalities for some significant patient populations, which we see as attractive in the future. The other one that we are really working hard on is the Platinum DNA. We continue to see huge interest and demand from customers. The reality is that this is, at the moment, a capacity constrained environment, and the new platforms that have been validated through the pandemic, primarily Messenger RMA, make large use of those products. You know, some of that are we do have the infrastructure. They are not material. It will be closer at this point in time in the overall, you know, mass of the company. But I do believe they will become at some point material, and I expect that in years to come we're going to talk more about the contribution of PlatinumDNA and some of these platforms you're referring to.
spk09: Super helpful. Thanks for taking the questions, Alessandro, and congrats on the new role.
spk03: Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Sergo from Barclays. Luke, please go ahead.
spk07: Thanks for the question. I just kind of want to dig into the margin for 22. You guys have a ton of moving parts here to get to that 100 basis points expansion. That's including a Patera. You have FX headwind. You have the mixed dynamics. Can you just kind of walk us through what those puts and takes are and bucket those out?
spk04: yeah so first i would say the fx headwinds are not having a an impact on the margin profile of business you know we're seeing um strengthening dollar impact both the top and the bottom line at similar levels here so no impact related to that um we are assuming as you as you mentioned uh over 100 basis points of margin uh expansion at the midpoint of the range uh we're certainly seeing uh the peter contribution help pull up the margin profile within the SOT business. We mentioned that the business that has even got margins that are operating closer to that of biologics than that of the SOT business where it is today. But also the recovery efforts that we're seeing in terms of moving closer to pre-pandemic levels within SOT and OSD, and the corresponding increase in utilization levels we're seeing in those facilities as a result of those volume upticks are contributing to the margin expansion profile that we're seeing in that business. Biologics is the only segment where we saw some margin pressure, and that's really primarily attributable to the mix issue and the component sourcing dynamic, which I talked about in detail through my prepared remarks that I would expect that the margin profile of biologics continues to be, you know, a modest drag for us in the second half of the year, especially now with the inclusion of the remediation-related costs associated with the 43 out of the Russells facility. And the CSS business, I would say, you know, is a margin, you know, a Cleveland business. We continue to see the down levels that are growing faster than the top line in that business, and I would expect that dynamic to contribute in the second half of the fiscal year as well. So, you know, it really comes down to the inclusion of the Terra and the recovery within SOT and OSD that are going to help drive the margin profile higher here for us and offset some of the headwinds we're seeing within biologics.
spk07: Great, thanks. And then secondly, you talked about some pockets of demand being less in historic levels. Can you talk about where particularly you're seeing those and then just the overall order book as you guys see it stacking up and how that's really kind of meeting or exceeding your expectations?
spk04: Look, Alessandro here. So, I mean, some of the areas would be obvious to you. All the areas of biomanufacturing clearly is in high demand. Just let me remind you that in that area we serve both commercial products but also the R&D pipeline. In all the new modalities, the pipeline is not only increasing, as we show in our presentation, but it's also maturing, meaning that more and more assets are moving to the later stage. And when it comes to CDMO services specifically, there is more opportunity for us to generate revenue in the later stage of the pipeline as opposed to the early stage of the pipeline. So that for sure is creating some interesting dynamics to us. I would tell you the clinical service business has been an interesting one because, yes, there were a couple of dynamics during the pandemic where some studies were paused or slowed down because of the inability to recruit patients and patients going to clinics. But on the other hand, you had the large studies for vaccine, which affected for us the effect. And now this is a little bit going backward, but the studies are picking up steam again. So we are seeing very very good commercial wins in that area which are a good property for for the future revenues uh um to to invest in their businesses um there is still a little bit of uh lingering effect, I would say, of the pandemic around the consumer health business. I mean, this is primarily with the Q2 commentary, although I have to tell you that in the last few weeks, we've seen some good movement there with some historical products, large products, and brands that we serve in consumer health, which are going back to historical demand. And in fact, in some cases, regaining a little bit of stock will create a temporary effect of increased demand. So with the regards of our pharmaceutical services in feeding more the small molecules, look, we are very, very mindful and purposefully serving the small molecules, not making the volume play, but the technology play, looking after those diseases and met needs, which are still being targeted by small molecules. And that is an area that not only today is giving us, especially for our early stage assets, a good demand, but we see that trend continuing into the next years. Great. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you, Luke. The next question comes from Sean Dodge of RBC Capital Markets. Sean, please go ahead.
spk14: Thanks, good morning. On Batera, that was an area you all previously talked about as being a likely capacity at some point. John mentioned that the strong client interest in Gummi is kind of right out of the chute here. Any updated thoughts you can share around when you might begin investing and expanding across Viterra's footprint?
spk03: Yeah, thanks for the question. First of all, we couldn't be more excited about our acquisition of Viterra. It's really come out of the gate incredibly strong. As you know, we have relationships with all the large consumer health companies, and I honestly would tell you the phone is a little bit ringing off the hook. They have really some great technology, great case profile, great overall slate of products that they're developing, and you plug that now into Catalan, and we have the ability to really turbocharge that overall effort, specifically on the capacity expansion piece. I will tell you that we came out of the gate with a business plan on Viterra, already planning to spend significant capex there to expand capacity. The current demand supply imbalance says for us to quickly expand capacity, literally if we could double our footprint right now with regards to our manufacturing capacity, we could sell it all. So we have some very aggressive plans in terms of cap expansions with our new Batera team. We're hiring a significant amount of individuals. We're taking the Catalan playbook of operations and processes, already expanding, you know, where we can from an operational standpoint in terms of you know increasing the 24 by 7 operations where we can in certain facilities uh we have uh catholics uh expansions already deployed and i can share with you at our board meeting that we had just last week we had a specific section around batera and how we were going to significantly multiply the even of that business over the next few years. So we're very excited about the space, the strong interest in demand, and really how Catalink internal charts the effort, given our strong position in franchises that we have in the consumer health area.
spk14: Great, thanks. And then on... Maybe on capacity utilization more broadly, you'd said before there are a number of facilities that were operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet commitments. Is this still the case? Is that happening across a lot of your footprint? Is this more prevalent in any one particular segment? And then in those situations, how does that affect margins? I guess you'd have fixed costs you're leveraging, but I'd imagine you have to do things like offer shift premiums, so your variable costs are probably higher, too.
spk04: Yeah, look, it's a little bit, you know, variable across the neck. What I can tell you, surely you can expect our truck robot assets primarily viable to run at very high capacity utilization rates, you know, surely at 24-7 rates. I believe that, you know, it's a moving pattern because, as we shared, we have significant capacity coming online during this calendar year. So as you think about it, that capacity will continue to come online, and the capacity utilization, the one that you calculate, has some real deep when this capacity comes online. So I would tell you that in drug substance, you know, that we have fairly high utilization, but there is still ability for us to continue to sell more. We had a very recently coming online traditional training in our medicine facility, and we are doubling down in our biomanufacturing footprint in Baltimore, which now will go from 10 to 18 suites, which are going to be very flexible and very helpful to continue to serve biomanufacturing in the space. Clearly, there are some early moves that we do routinely in some areas which we see attractive in the mid to long term, like cell therapies, like plasma DNA, like oncolytic viruses, lentiviruses, you know, the other areas in inhalation. where you know we decide that because it makes sense to to enter into this space in these platforms organically as opposed to pay a night premium on an acquisition and those can for a period of time can be a little bit delusional but we are okay with that because in the overall scheme of things the capital deployment is still way more efficient than just uh uh trade-on acquisition without multiple so um i i you know totally you know, this is the best way I can describe you across the board, the dynamic of capacity division and how they impact the machine.
spk14: All right.
spk04: That's helpful. Thanks again.
spk01: Thank you, Sean. The next question comes from John Krieger of William Blair. John, please go ahead.
spk00: Great. Thanks very much. I had a couple of questions about the longer-term growth goals that you guys – referred to again in the presentation. Tom, maybe for you, what are the planned CapEx spending levels that we should assume kind of correspond to the longer-term revenue growth goals that you guys have provided?
spk04: Yeah, good question, John. So we've talked about an elevated level of CapEx. Obviously, in fiscal 22, we'll be spending about 15% to 16% of sales, as you mentioned in the prepared remarks. That's closely aligned to what we spent in the prior year as well. To remind folks, I would say the more normal levels of capital spent for us is somewhere in the 8% to 10% of sales. basis annually. I don't know that we get back to that level in the fiscal 23 year, but I would expect us to start to gravitate more closely to that. So I think we remain elevated above the 8 to 10 levels within the next one to two years, but probably not quite at the 15% to 16% level. So, you know, we're not assuming in our plan that 15% to 16% of sales, John, is the normal level of capex spend that we will be spending annually. However, it will likely stay above the 8% to 10% for the next several years.
spk03: Yeah, and, John, let me just add a little bit of color here. First of all, I would say that, you know, Catalan has done an excellent job staying ahead of capacity that's needed in the industry. So we've been very astute at understanding where we can get a really quick and excellent payback on capacity investments, and certainly what we've been doing in biologics, which is across biotherapeutics, which is a drug product, drug substance, but also in our gene and cell therapy business. Again, we see terrific ability to be number one in those spaces, specifically for cell and gene therapy from a CDMO standpoint, as well as to have the capacity to that our customers need, which, by the way, is what kind of, you know, really made us the go-to player, if you will, during COVID with regards to vaccines and therapies because we had much coveted capacity that our customers wanted and needed, specifically the high technology of under-isolator drug product filling assets that Catalent was putting in line and was able to secure even through the pandemic. The next thing that I'll tell you is that although, as Tom says, we would expect an 8% to 10% more normal run rate for the business, the cycle of the business as follows. We find a great adjacency from an inorganic standpoint or an area where maybe geographically we want to improve our position. And then when we buy that asset, get our hands on that asset, we then deploy significant capex against it to drive it organically, as I was just mentioning that we'll be doing with Patera. assuming that we don't have any significant M&A, I would expect us to get to that 8% to 10% and continue to drive significant organic growth through our CapEx platform, I would say, which is the businesses that we've acquired or put in place. But if we do continue to get into some other adjacencies or new assets, let's say, in Europe specifically for drug product and drug substance, you'd expect us to then quickly follow on with some additional capex. So it really depends on the M&A profile of the assets that we get that'll determine how quickly we kind of get to that, you know, I would say normal spend level of 8% to 10%. But hopefully that provides you a little bit of a color. And, John, having followed us for a long time, you probably see that that, you know, that play out in the financials.
spk00: Yes. Thanks, John. That's helpful. And maybe just one last thing to clarify along the same lines. I think in the past you've told us you weren't really interested in investing in large capacity biologic drug substance production. Is that still your thinking?
spk03: Look, we've always stated that our strategy is really in that sub-5,000 liter category for drug substance. You know, 70% of the molecules that are in the pipeline, if they go commercial, are going to require 5,000 liters or less of drug substance. capacity. So we really feel that we've carved out a really nice area here, and we'll continue to invest in the sub-5,000 single-use. I will tell you that we'd like to have more assets in Europe for drug substance, drug product. We announced that we're going to be doing $100 million expansion in drug substance in our 90 facility in Italy. So we'll continue to go after that. But we really feel that you know, our place in the drug substance area is really in that sub-5,000 liter. There's a tremendous amount of biotechs in the small and medium size that are going after, you know, I would say, indications that have smaller populations. And then we combine that with that one bio-offering that I talked about in our prepared comments, and now we can take them basically from our cell line expression technology, drug substance, all the way through drug product and clinical supply. So I think we've really carved out a great area here where Kettle's building a terrific brand reputation.
spk04: Yeah, and the other thing that was out there, John, is look – Our job is to try to figure out not only where there is demand, but where over time the balance of supply versus demand is going. And we do believe that, you know, in the sub-5,000 liters, there is more opportunity that the supply versus demand profile will stay healthy for a longer time for CDMOs.
spk00: Sounds good. Thanks, Raj.
spk03: Thanks, John.
spk01: Thanks, John. The next question comes from Derek DeBruin from Bank of America. Derek, please go ahead. Hi, good morning.
spk02: Hey, so yeah, a couple of questions. So first of all, just to close the loop on the 43, is the plant shut down or are there still lines operating? Just to get a sense of the impact.
spk04: So, the intervention that is mostly requiring the opposing production, as we said, is on the air filtration system. that does require a very comprehensive approach around the filling operation of the site, including a site like that one. There are many other activities when it comes to commercial operations and other packaging activities and unfilling activities. So there is still quite an intense level of activities, including the remediation activities. So it's not like completely closed. It's just that, you know, in order to have a renovation and to the extent of doing that, that requires a feeding operation to be closed for a period of time.
spk02: Thank you. And can you talk a little bit about your cell and gene therapy expansion in that market? I mean, where is the industry in capacity today, number of projects? We get a lot of questions from investors I'm trying to dig into this a little bit more, and it's not there. It doesn't seem to be there. And I think any sort of general comments on profitability versus some of the other biologics, could you just sort of talk a little bit broader about where you are in that market, where you are in the expansion, where the overall market is?
spk03: Yeah, so first of all, we remain extremely enthusiastic about the cell and gene therapy space. Not just from an overall enthusiastic about its ability to literally solve diseases or cure cancers, but the fact that there is significant demand out there. And when you take a look at gene therapy and pipeline expansion, you can see that it's going to grow about 3.5%. times over the next five years going from about 850 programs to about 2900 from our data and then if you take a look at cell therapy which again is an area that we've gotten into much earlier than we normally do i would say in a in an innovation technology investment cycle um that's growing it has more assets today at about 1500 pipeline programs we see that growing also at about three times to 4,700. Both of these areas lend themselves extremely well to CDMOs. If you take a look at gene therapy, a lot of the assets are coming from small mid-sized companies that really do not have the firepower to deploy $150, $200 million or even more putting in place the manufacturing assets necessary for the gene therapy. That assumes that their asset is successful, and if their asset is successful, they will cure patients and then have much lower demand and ultimately idling those acids. So from a gene therapy standpoint, right now our estimate is about 70% of that whole category is outsourced, and we only see that increasing over time. We've made significant investments into this area. When we acquired Paragon, we had two commercial manufacturing suites. invested, which is basically Catalan's modus operandi, which is we invested to take that up to 10 suites And since then, we now have 10 suites up and running. We announced another five suites and have now appended onto that an additional three for a total of 18 suites that we'll have from a commercial manufacturer once they're all up and running. And again, very robust pipelines there. On a cell therapy standpoint, I'm as enthusiastic, if not even more enthusiastic, about the cell therapy space. I think over the next 10 years, this could move from, you know, a third or second line of treatment to a first line of treatment, especially if we have some successes in the autologous area. And Catalan has put together quite a significant campus in Gosselies, Belgium. We initially started off with a master cell acquisition that had an asset in Gosselies. and also in Houston. And in the Gotsaliz area, we've made multiple acquisitions, whether they be business or asset-related, plus significant capex that's going to be putting in place a facility that will be able to be used for both autologous allogeneic so I would say we remain very bullish both on the gene and cell therapy area I will proper that that catalog will be the number one CDMO by far if we're not already from a gene and cell therapy standpoint and we're going to continue to invest in that area
spk04: Yeah, and one point I'm going to add is a little bit clarifying the profiles of customers, right? So while in the early stage services that we provide, we tend to have in the mix much more biotech customers, which as John clarified, don't have internal capacity and rely on CDMOs to progress, you know, assets through the clinics. And the support we provide goes well beyond just manufacturing clinical material with analytical services and everything that is required by the CMC. But when it comes to more late-stage assets, we have a very good mix also of large clients which are interested in our capacity, which are less dependent, so to speak, of external funding. because they have already commercial products out there. So we feel good about the overall dynamics, but we also feel good about the mix of the customers that we serve.
spk02: Thank you very much.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from John Saldir from UBS. John, please go ahead.
spk13: Thanks for taking my question. I guess I have a question here on the guidance and given the strong top line performance in the quarter. Can you talk about any conservatism you have baked in the second half of the fiscal year on the base biologics or vaccines and anything else to highlight there outside of the Belgium facility on any changes of assumptions in the second half?
spk04: No, I would just say that we were very prescriptive in our prepared remarks, John, related to a more normalized growth rate expected for our biologics business in the second half of the year. If we think about the timing over the last six quarters or so in terms of when COVID vaccine production really started to run up, Close to peak volumes. It was in the second half of our fiscal 21. The third quarter was when we brought online one of the dedicated bio lines. in the prior year. So the fact that we saw very high levels of COVID-related contributions in Q3 and Q4 in fiscal 21, you know, we're now expected to see more normalized growth within the biologic segment in Q3 and Q4 in fiscal 22 in comparison to those prior year quarters. You know, we did highlight the Brussels remediation efforts, I would say, That's more of an impact given the cost related to remediation on the margin than it is on the top line. And I think that's pretty much the story here as you think about it. We did also note the comparative sourcing dynamic we saw in the first and second quarter of this year when compared to prior years. And given we had very high levels of COVID volumes in the second half of last year, You know, the comparative sourcing shouldn't be a material contributor to the top line from a growth standpoint in Q3 and Q4, given, again, that that was already part of the story in the second half of the prior year. So that's really what I can provide here in terms of, you know, the dynamics we're seeing within biologics as we enter the second half of the fiscal year and seeing growth return to that more normalized level that we would expect.
spk13: Thanks. I guess it's maybe to follow up on Derek's question on the cell and gene therapy. I think you recently provided some color that 21, these are growing around 25% year over year. Any directional guidance or color you can give us on how these look for 2022 on growth rates?
spk04: Yeah, so I don't know that we talked about the growth rate of that business in particular. We may be talking about the overall market dynamics being very robust there from a telemedicine therapy perspective on the heels of John's comments here. But, John, we don't provide growth rate specificity down to the – the individual sub-segment lines, like cell and gene therapy or drug substance or drug product. You know, I will say this is a business that has been growing nicely, will continue to grow, but we've certainly not disclosed anything in terms of what that growth rate looks like on a percentage or absolute dollar basis.
spk13: Thanks for taking the questions.
spk04: Thanks.
spk01: Thank you, John. The next question comes from Evan Stover from Baird. Evan, please go ahead.
spk08: Thank you. A couple of quick ones from me. On Batera, it looks like the implied EBITDA margin there was about 25% in the quarter. Is that a fair near to intermediate term kind of approximation for that business? I know You had discussed biologics like EBITDA margins, which I think of as being 30% plus. So I'm just wondering if some of the investments maybe shape that margin curve a little bit out into the future on that business.
spk04: Yeah, so I have a good question. Your back of the envelope math is correct. I will say, you know, longer term, we view the margins of this business as being closer to biologics, as I mentioned. You know, this was the first quarter in which we operated the asset that deal closed for us on October 1st. There were several, I would say, integration-related costs that we needed to deploy into the business. This was a business that was not operated at the levels of a public company, a lot of back office related, I would say, investments we needed to make here to align it to Catalan. But as we sit here and think about the business and the potential that we see here, not only do we see very robust levels of growth in the 20 plus percent range, But there's improvements that we can make, given our expertise in terms of running manufacturing facilities, to these assets that will help drive further margin expansion down the road here. So I would say that the mid-20s range that we saw here, give or take a couple hundred basis points in either direction, is probably the near-term view there. But like we said, we do have line of sight to this business, contributing even without margins, very close to that of the biologic segment. Look, I would just stress what Tom said around the opportunity from an operational excellence standpoint. That basic is running 24-7, which we are very rapidly implementing, given the high demand very high demand that we're experiencing and the only way to respond the short term is to increase the utilization rates of the asset that's one element of it but we do see also incredible opportunities from an operational excellence standpoint applying the catalan playbook to these assets so more to come on this on this point
spk08: Thank you. That's great, Kyler. On free cash flow, always dangerous to look at a quarter or even a half of a year, but you were negative for the first half of the year. Is there any change to your guidance for just broadly speaking some positive free cash flow in fiscal 22? Has that changed at all with Brussels and maybe some other items that you'd like to address?
spk04: Yeah, no. I would say we were expecting to be close to these levels through the first half of the year. I mean, we see a step up in our contributions in the back half. We do expect, if you look at us historically, seeing the bulk of our free cash flow generation coming from our third and fourth fiscal quarter. I will say maybe we were perhaps a little bit behind here, and it's It's mainly related to just inventory as you look at working capital. Inventory is an area that we've, you know, I would say intentionally have used to make sure, you know, we hedge against some of the supply chain related challenges that we see across the industry. I would have hoped that we would have started to see some of those challenges, you know, alleviate here in the second quarter. We haven't. We've been able to be a little bit, I would say, more cautious around inventory, but we haven't made the improvements that we expect to see in the fiscal year yet. I will say as we enter the back half of the year, this is going to be something we continue to look at here. I will not expect inventory to continue to be something that increases trust. It's just going to come down to how quickly can we get through some of the inventory we have and have the comfort that we can run at lower levels of safety stock around some of our key materials. So that's really the big dynamic of the free cash flow, Evan, as you look at this. I will say, you know, we continue to drive the business with what we believe will be a positive free cash flow year, which will be a nice improvement from what we saw in fiscal 21. But we're not out of the woods just yet around these inventory-related challenges, and it continues to be a little bit of a free cash flow headwind. But I wouldn't expect any material change as a result of the Brussels remediation 483 to have a meaningful impact on free cash flow.
spk08: Thanks, Tom. That's it for me.
spk01: Thank you, Evan. The next question comes from Jack Meehan from Nephron Research. Jack, please go ahead.
spk11: Thank you and good morning. Had a few questions back on COVID. Can you talk about the diversity of your sales now between the vaccines and the therapeutics? As we've seen some prioritization of some vaccines over others, was just curious to hear what proportion of your COVID sales are now coming from your largest customer?
spk04: So look, I believe that we got to make sure that we factor into the picture of the vaccines, the global demand and not only the Western world. you know some of your comments around preferred vaccine are surely applicable to the western world but there is still a significant number of countries which are probably relying more on the less obvious vaccine given the the ability to supply enough quantities so i will tell you we we haven't seen a significant softening of demand across the board on any of the vaccines that we serve. With regard to therapeutics, we have a number of them. We continue to serve them. And those are the ones that more, you know, depending on the variant of interest and the different mutations will continue to be updated as the times go by. We do expect that on the therapeutic front, there will continue to be ongoing demand to try to protect the ongoing population, which will just not get vaccinated.
spk11: Great. And one more on the vaccine side. I think earlier this year, you called out 2 billion doses kind of as a target for 2022. Can you talk about what trends you're seeing in terms of dose per vial? Has that started to come down at all?
spk04: Yeah, no, look, it's going to come down. That is not up about it. The settings for the vaccine are going more towards physicians and GPs. And again, I need to caveat my response with the Western world, meaning you know the the counties which have had the higher vaccination rates during the pandemic should be now have a different settings for administration of vaccines and we are already doing several projects to either go to uh to lower count per vial but also to previous ranges which will be by definition uh single single dose presentations so the book is going uh you know directly in that direction I just want to add one quick point of clarification here, Jack, and you probably know this, but the 2022 dose number that we talked about at J.P. Morgan is the calendar year 2022 estimate, and it really was not meant for modeling purposes here. It was to speak to the role that Catalan has played and continues to play in the pandemic, but again, not for financial modeling purposes.
spk03: Maybe a last comment, and I think maybe a last comment. We've made this before. It's important to note that Catalin is not paid on a dose level. We're paid on a fill, whether it's pre-filled syringe, whether it's a vial, whether it's 14 doses, five doses per vial, we're paid for that vial. So in some sense, when you move down to you know, fewer doses per vial, you know, the economics for us can be flat to improving depending on where it's going. So it's just something I continue to mention.
spk04: Operator, I think we have our last question coming up.
spk01: Thank you. Our last question comes from Paul Knight from KeyBank. Paul, please go ahead.
spk12: Thank you very much, and congrats on all the questions. I know the fill and finish is one of your more significant businesses. Can you talk, you know, where you feel you are in that position in the market today? Was it growing faster than other parts of the biologics business?
spk03: I would just tell you that, you know, drug product remains in extremely high demand. uh across across the board certainly the the pandemic and the use of those assets for vaccines has has really increased their utilization in a significant way i think catalan was really uh you know very forward-thinking when we put in place our investment plans for for product assets and then uh even during the pandemic we were able to get our hands on and secure some additional drug product overall assets. The pipeline outside of vaccines remains very robust, again, for drug product, and you're going to see a lot more demand specifically in the pre-filled syringe area, especially with some high-profile blockbuster drugs that are going into these prefilled syringe format. So it's really an area that's seeing robust growth. I think Catalan has positioned ourselves very well. Our early acquisition of Cook's Pharmaca and a follow-on investment that we've made there have been absolutely fantastic, making it one of the most strategic North American assets for the COVID vaccine solution, but also for future drug product and then also are acquiring the asset from BMS via non-need facility, which we're continuing on with follow-on investments there is significant. So, you know, I would see Catalan continuing to make both organic investments from a CapEx standpoint as well as identify additional inorganic assets that we can use to serve this very, very robust pipeline.
spk01: Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. I would now like to turn the call back over to John Cheminski for closing remarks.
spk03: Thanks, operator, and thanks, everyone, for your questions and for taking the time to join our call. I'd like to close by highlighting a few key points. The trajectory of Catalan is strong. It's shown by our ability to competently provide robust projected growth targets for fiscal 2026. We're able to do this because of the strategy we have in place, the skilled team of dedicated employees to execute this strategy, and the patient-first culture that is foundational to our long-term success. We're also encouraged by the many drivers of growth for the CDMO industry, allowing Catalan to expand into new therapeutic areas and modalities and to enable new opportunities for partnership. Our response to the pandemic has revealed the importance of a culture that is purpose-built to tackle hard problems and will continue to be flexible in how we meet the needs of our customers. Catalan is well positioned to work on and find solutions to the largest, most complex challenges in the industry as illustrated by our ability to quickly stand up production efforts to produce billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses. We're extremely proud of our focus on operational excellence and quality and how that has led us to deliver more than 70 billion doses of medicines for more than 7,000 products for nearly 1,000 clients each year. The broad diversity of our products and resilience of our businesses have allowed Catalan to endure widespread issues like the pandemic and challenges more specific to our industry. Indeed, Catalan has consistently found ways to improve its performance and thrive in a variety of conditions. We have the right people, leadership, processes, technologies, and capacity to help our customers. And we're proud to see how our work helps improve the lives of millions of patients around the world. Thank you.
spk01: That concludes the Catalan Incorporated Second Quarter Fiscal Year 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.
Disclaimer