Healthcare
Diagnostics & Research
$9.69B
22K
Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. provides drug discovery, non-clinical development, and safety testing services in the United States, Europe, Canada, the Asia Pacific, and internationally. It operates through three segments: Research Models and Services (RMS), Discovery and Safety Assessment (DSA), and Manufacturing Solutions (Manufacturing). The RMS segment produces and sells rodents, and purpose-bred rats and mice for use by researchers. This segment also provides a range of services to assist its clients in supporting the use of research models in research and screening pre-clinical drug candidates, including research models, genetically engineered models and services, insourcing solutions, and research animal diagnostic services. The DSA segment offers early and in vivo discovery services for the identification and validation of novel targets, chemical compounds, and antibodies through delivery of preclinical drug and therapeutic candidates ready for safety assessment; and safety assessment services, such as toxicology, pathology, safety pharmacology, bioanalysis, drug metabolism, and pharmacokinetics services. The Manufacturing segment provides in vitro methods for conventional and rapid quality control testing of sterile and non-sterile pharmaceuticals and consumer products. This segment also offers specialized testing of biologics that are outsourced by pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. It also provides contract vivarium operation services to biopharmaceutical clients. The company was founded in 1947 and is headquartered in Wilmington, Massachusetts.
Key insights and themes extracted from this filing
Total revenue decreased by 1.9% YoY to $4.05 billion, primarily driven by a softer Discovery and Safety Assessment (DSA) segment. This was partially offset by growth in Manufacturing and the acquisition of Noveprim in the Research Models and Services (RMS) segment.
Operating income decreased by 63.2% YoY to $227.3 million, with operating margin declining to 5.6%. This decline was attributed to lower revenue, a goodwill impairment charge, restructuring activities, and an inventory charge related to non-human primate supply chain investigations.
Net income available to Charles River common shareholders decreased significantly to $10.3 million, compared to $474.6 million in the prior year. This was primarily due to the decrease in operating income.
The company completed the acquisition of an additional 41% equity interest of Noveprim Group, a leading supplier of non-human primates (NHPs) located in Mauritius, resulting in a 90% controlling interest.
The company is taking decisive action to manage the Company through the current demand environment, including appropriately right-sizing our infrastructure, optimizing operations, and driving efficiency with a goal to protect operating margin.
The company divested its Avian Vaccine Services business, as it determined the business was no longer a strategic fit.
The company expects restructuring actions to result in approximately $225 million of cost savings on an annualized basis, of which approximately $100 million impacted fiscal 2024.
Company is focused on achieving operational efficiency through streamlining global business services, driving enhanced procurement savings, and leveraging digital platform.
The company is focused on commercial enhancements to promote a client-centric focus and gain additional market share. Our goal is to enhance the client experience and reinforce our role as a flexible and responsive partner to our clients.
Several of our product and service offerings, including our non-human primate supply, are dependent on a limited source of supply that, when interrupted, adversely affects our business.
Our business is subject to risks relating to operating internationally, including changes in foreign currency exchange rates.
Any failure by us to comply with applicable regulations and related guidance could harm our reputation and operating results, and compliance with new regulations and guidance may result in additional costs.
The industries in which we operate are highly competitive. We compete for business with other non-clinical drug development partners and blood product and therapeutic services companies, other CDMOs, as well as internal discovery and development departments within our larger clients, who may have greater resources than ours.
New technologies may be developed, validated and increasingly used in biomedical research, which could reduce demand for some of our products and services.
We may not be able to successfully develop and market new services and products.
Restructuring initiatives to manage costs and generate efficiency by reducing staffing levels to align with the level of demand, as well as evaluating our global footprint to optimize, consolidate, and simplify operations.
We are also engaging in global footprint optimization efforts to maximize capacity and enhance our capabilities. We have taken a client-centric approach to these actions with a goal of serving our clients more efficiently and seamlessly in order to capture synergies and savings that extend beyond the facility costs.
In addition, Charles River's culture of continuous improvement strives to implement initiatives to drive greater operating efficiencies. In the current demand environment, we are focused on achieving this goal through streamlining global business services, driving enhanced procurement savings, and leveraging our digital platform.
The evolving biopharmaceutical R&D business model along with our focus on data and digitalization will make our essential products and services even more relevant to our clients, and allow them to leverage our integrated offerings and expertise to drive their research, non-clinical development and manufacturing efficiency and cost effectiveness.
We are committed in our efforts to reduce the timeline to develop, safe and innovative new treatments for patients who desperately need them.
To progress this forward, we strive to understand the true challenges that can slow drug research and development and re-imagine the way we work and collaborate to create digitally native solutions that improve efficiency, accelerate processes and enable automated, data driven outcomes.
On August 2, 2024, the Company's Board of Directors approved a stock repurchase authorization of $1.0 billion. This authorization fully replaces a prior stock repurchase authorization of $1.3 billion that had $129.1 million remaining when it was terminated.
Capital expenditures declined for the fiscal year 2024 compared to 2023, primarily as a result of disciplined spend management in light of the global economic and demand environment.
We are committed to initiatives to generate more revenue, contain costs, and protect shareholder value through enhanced commercial initiatives, restructuring and efficiency actions to drive cost savings, as well as a balanced approach to capital deployment
One of our core values is a commitment to animal welfare. Research animals are an important resource that further our knowledge of living systems and contribute to the discovery and development of life-saving drugs.
We are committed to creating a healthy and safe workplace for our employees and visitors to our facilities. This commitment is outlined in our Global Policy on Safety & Sustainability where we define the company's approach to embedding safety and sustainably into our company's purpose.
In 2024 we have continued our safety-first culture journey by requiring all operational people leaders to include a health and safety goal as part of their annual performance, conducted 23 additional site program assessments and provided quarterly updates to business leadership on injury data analysis, trends to track performance against goals, and opportunities to invest in impactful safety improvements.
In fiscal year 2024, biopharmaceutical clients intensified their actions around restructuring initiatives and reprioritized their drug development programs, leading to constrained budgetary spending.
In addition, while biotechnology companies benefited from a more favorable funding environment in fiscal year 2024, recovery for this client base has occurred at a more gradual pace than anticipated due in part to uncertainty around future funding levels and the broader interest rate environment.
Heightened stakeholder focus on ESG matters related to our business requires the continuous monitoring of various and evolving laws, regulations, standards and expectations and the associated reporting requirements.