Q4 2024 Certara Inc Earnings Call
Speaker Change: Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Sitara 4th Quarter 2024 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 will need to press star 1-1 on your telephone.
Speaker Change: You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, David Deuchler of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
William Feehery: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for participating in today's conference call. On the call from Sartar, we have William Feehery, Chief Executive Officer, and John Gallagher, Chief Financial Officer.
Speaker Change: Earlier today, Sertar released financial results for the full year ended December 31, 2024. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website.
Speaker Change: Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that includes forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements.
Speaker Change: Please refer to slide 2 in the accompanying materials for additional information, which you can find on the company's investor relations website.
Speaker Change: In their remarks or responses to questions, management may mention some non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in the recent earnings press release available on the company's website. Please refer to the reconciliation tables and the accompanying materials for additional information.
Speaker Change: This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, February 26, 2025. Sertara disclaims any obligation except as required by law to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. And with that, I will turn the call over to William.
William Feehery: Thank you, David. Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Sertar's fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings call. John and I will begin with prepared remarks, and then we will take your questions.
Speaker Change: We were pleased to finish the year with strong commercial execution across both software and services.
Speaker Change: as we deliver financial results consistent with the expectations we outlined in November.
Speaker Change: We finished 2024 with revenue of $385.1 million, representing 9% reported growth versus 2023.
Speaker Change: SOTAR's fourth quarter bookings of $144.5 million represented 22% growth versus the prior year driven by software bookings growth of 38% and services bookings growth of 12%.
Speaker Change: During the fourth quarter, we saw Healthy Software and Biosimulation Services' bookings performance.
from our Tier 1 and Tier 3 customers.
Speaker Change: as drug developers around the world continue to use biosimulation to optimize their development processes.
Speaker Change: Additionally, our regulatory services business had a good quarter, delivering solid bookings, which represented a return to growth.
Speaker Change: We are encouraged by our strong finish to the year and are now squarely focused on executing our 2025 goals.
Speaker Change: At Sertara, we are enabling model-informed drug development, or MIDD, in the global biopharmaceutical industry.
Speaker Change: Biosimulation is a critical component of MIDD that uses computer-aided mathematical simulation of biological processes and systems to understand the action of a drug in a human body or in a population of humans.
Speaker Change: M.I.D.D. and bio-simulation can increase the probability of success in bringing a new drug to market.
while also decreasing development costs.
Speaker Change: We accomplished this through our software platform, which includes four key pillars. Our SimCity PVPK software, Phoenix PK PD software,
Speaker Change: PINNACLE21, which is a data standardization tool, and ChemAxon, our most recent acquisition, which brings chemical property insights to the discovery phase of drug development.
Speaker Change: In 2024, our customers continue to exhibit cautious spending behavior as they grapple with funding constraints, Medicare drug price negotiations, and geopolitical uncertainty.
Speaker Change: Our software business continued to grow through the challenging environment, while demand for our services was less predictable, particularly in our regulatory services.
Speaker Change: Decision-making timelines were and continue to be elongated due to internal discussions at customers.
Speaker Change: During the fourth quarter, our team executed well despite in-market uncertainties driving software and services bookings that were slightly ahead of our expectations.
Speaker Change: While we are pleased with our performance, we did not see any change in customer sentiment that suggests to us that our end markets are materially different heading into 2025. As such, our guidance ranges assume that 2025 will be a similar year to 2024 for clinical R&D spending.
Speaker Change: Now, I'd like to take some time to discuss our progress over the past year and our vision for Sertar in 2025.
Speaker Change: Throughout 2024, we took steps to enhance Sertar's strategic position as a preferred partner to the global biopharmaceutical industry.
Speaker Change: In software, we made investments in our R&D infrastructure with three goals in mind.
Speaker Change: to expand the integration of generative artificial intelligence into existing products.
Speaker Change: to accelerate the development of new products and product updates and to begin the process of integrating Sitara software into a unified platform.
Speaker Change: Another focus area was our commercial team, where we added senior level talent, such as key account managers, as we seek to strengthen strategic relationships among our top customers.
Speaker Change: One successful example from this investment was the launch of our co-author regulatory writing product.
Speaker Change: We began marketing CoAuthor during the second quarter of 2024 and received positive initial feedback from early users. Our regulatory services team also uses CoAuthor to increase efficiency in their regulatory writing projects.
Speaker Change: We attribute the successful launch to our product development team and a calibrated sales and marketing effort.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: Beyond internal investments, we focused on successfully integrating Phermetics and Applied Biomass, or ABM, into the organization, and we completed the acquisition of Chemexon in October of 2024.
Speaker Change: During their first year under the Sitara umbrella, ABM's team seamlessly integrated with the Sitara QSP team, leading to a successful 2024, which included a project that was published in Nature Cancer.
Speaker Change: Prometics brought complimentary software products that were quickly combined with our Pinnacle 21 offering, receiving positive user feedback and bringing additional efficiencies to our customers.
Speaker Change: And more recently, ChemAxon has allowed us to enter the discovery bias simulation market at scale.
Speaker Change: ChemAxon brings a highly synergistic suite of software products which can be leveraged alongside existing Sitara software to bring cutting-edge insights to drug discovery, candidate selection, and lead optimization.
Speaker Change: We began to see the impact of these investments throughout the year as we expanded our customer base to over 2,400 life sciences companies as of December 31st.
Speaker Change: Among these customers, we had 431 customers with an annual contract value of more than $100,000, representing 11% growth over 2023.
Speaker Change: We also had 67 customers with an annual contract value of more than $1 million, which grew versus 63 customers in 2023.
Speaker Change: Our growth strategy is working. Despite a turbulent market backdrop, biopharma companies around the world are expanding their use of biosimulation, which can be attributed to the investments and strategic initiatives at Sertara.
Speaker Change: Looking ahead to 2025, there is even more that can be done to best position Sitara for future growth.
Speaker Change: This year we plan to make further investments in software to accelerate our product development initiatives.
Speaker Change: Our main priority will be the development of software products for the discovery and lead optimization phases.
leveraging ChemAxon's existing capabilities alongside SOTARA technologies and artificial intelligence.
Speaker Change: Drug discovery represents a large addressable market for MIDD, whereas Sertar's products have historically been focused on the clinical stages.
Speaker Change: We believe that with our technology, we can develop products that will bring predictive analysis and insights into the discovery phase that will be unique and differentiated with the potential to significantly impact the success rate and associated cost of drug development.
Speaker Change: In addition to Discovery, we will continue to invest in the cutting-edge areas of biosimulation software, including new models and features, QSP, and ADME property prediction.
Speaker Change: Outside of new product development, we will continue to focus on building an integrated software platform by elevating new products to the Sitara cloud.
Speaker Change: We are confident in our ability to execute our R&D and commercial goals because of our tremendous team.
Speaker Change: In 2024, we continue to prioritize hiring leading software developers, scientific subject matter experts, and senior commercial talent. We ended the year with over 1,500 employees, including more than 400 with advanced degrees.
Speaker Change: An example of our team's expertise was the recent inclusion of several esteemed colleagues in Stanford Elsevier's Top 2% Scientists Ranking List.
Speaker Change: Twelve members of our team were named to the list in 2024, which includes the top and most cited researchers globally.
Speaker Change: Sartar's researchers contributed to over 100 publications during the past year, showcasing the impact of biosimulation strategies and execution of drug development, and outlining the different application of technologies to streamline drug submission and approval processes.
Speaker Change: I am proud of the accomplishments of our team, and I'm looking forward to the continued success in 2025.
Speaker Change: Before wrapping up, I wanted to provide a brief update on the strategic review of our regulatory writing business.
Speaker Change: Our internal review process has progressed nicely, and we are continuing to evaluate potential outcomes and their impact on our go-forward strategy.
Speaker Change: We have not made any decisions and thus will not be making any further comments regarding the review on this call.
Speaker Change: We expect to reach a decision in the near term and will plan to share additional details as soon as we have them.
Speaker Change: In summary, we had solid commercial execution across software and services, driving successful performance in the fourth quarter.
Speaker Change: Progress Sertar has made over the past year was very important as we leveraged organic investment and strategic transactions to enhance our competitive positioning.
Speaker Change: While our end markets remain subdued on a historical basis, the adoption of biosimulation remains strong.
Speaker Change: which has been exemplified by the performance of our software business and the increasing number of customers using our technology at scale.
Speaker Change: In 2025, we will continue to invest in software to expand the breadth of our offering.
Speaker Change: I am excited to continue to advance biosimulation forward, unlocking greater commercial opportunities and leaving us well-positioned for growth in 2025 and beyond.
Speaker Change: With that, I will hand things over to John to discuss our financial results in more detail.
John: Thank you, William. Hello, everyone. Before I walk through our financial results and 2025 guidance, I wanted to highlight slide 12 of our accompanying presentation, which provides color on our organic revenue performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year.
John: Total revenue for the three months ended December 31st, 2024 was $100.4 million, representing year-over-year growth of 14% on a reported basis and on a constant currency basis.
John: For the full year of 2024, total revenue was $385.1 million, representing year-over-year growth of 9% on a reported basis and 8% on a constant currency basis.
Thank you very much.
John: Total bookings in the fourth quarter were $144.5 million, which increased 22% from the prior year period on a reported basis.
John: Trailing 12-month bookings were $445.3 million, increasing 11% on a reported basis.
John: Software revenue was $42.3 million in the fourth quarter, which increased 26% over the prior year period on a reported basis and on a constant currency basis.
John: Organic growth in the quarter was driven by biosimulation software and Pinnacle 21. Additionally, Camaxon contributed $6.6 million to our reported revenue, which came in ahead of our expectations.
John: Ratable and subscription revenue accounted for 63% of fourth quarter software revenues, down from 68% in the prior year period.
John: The decrease in subscription mix was driven by ChemAxon, which has a higher mix of term-licensed software.
John: For the full year, software revenue was $155.7 million, which grew 18% on a recorded basis and on a constant currency basis.
John: Ratible and subscription revenue accounted for 65% of full year software revenues, up from 62% in 2023.
John: Software bookings were $59.7 million in the fourth quarter, which increased 38% from the prior year period.
Fourth quarter bookings include $11 million of Camaxon bookings.
Trailing 12-month software bookings were $169.7 million, up 24% year-over-year.
John: The software net retention rate was 106% in the quarter and 108% on the year, which is consistent with our long-term growth profile.
John: Looking at our software bookings performance by tier, we saw very strong performance in both tier one and tier three customers in the fourth quarter and throughout the full year, driven by continued adoption of our software.
John: Now, turning to services revenue, which was $58.1 million in the fourth quarter, up 7% versus the prior year period on a reported basis and on a constant currency basis.
John: Our services business has continued to recover following a period of cautious spending among our customers.
John: For the full year, services revenue was $229.5 million, which grew 3% on a reported basis and on a constant currency basis.
Thank you very much.
John: Services revenue in 2024 includes regulatory writing revenue of $54.7 million, which compares to $60.5 million in 2023.
John: Technology-driven services bookings in the fourth quarter were $84.8 million, which increased 12% from the prior year period.
John: Trailing 12-month services bookings were $275.6 million, up 4% as compared to the prior year. In the quarter, we saw double-digit growth in biosimulation services bookings.
with growth across all three of our biopharma customer tiers.
John: Biosimulation services bookings were strongest in Tier 3, growing in the low 20s.
For the full year, Biosimulation Services bookings grew 13%.
John: Regulatory writing bookings returned to growth in the fourth quarter up mid single digits versus the prior year period, driven by solid bookings in Tier 1 that were moderately offset by declines in Tier 2 and 3.
John: For the full year, regulatory bookings declined in the double digits.
John: Total cost of revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $38.3 million, an increase from $34.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, primarily due to higher employee-related costs and an increase in capitalized software amortization.
John: Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2024 were $56.1 million, a decrease from $62.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2023, primarily due to a $12.8 million decrease in the change in the fair value of a contingent consideration versus the prior year period.
John: which was offset by higher sales and marketing expense and intangible asset amortization.
John: In 2024, we made investments in research and development to accelerate and expand software development efforts.
John: where we have seen good initial success. As Bill discussed, we plan to continue investing in R&D in 2025 to drive new product development and further integrate our software. We expect growth in G&A and sales and marketing to moderate in 2025.
John: Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $33.5 million, an increase from $29.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.
John: Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter was 33% in line with our expectations.
John: As I discussed last quarter, we reprioritized some of our investments in sales and marketing to better align with our end markets.
John: Alongside cost actions taken earlier in 2024, we delivered adjusted EBITDA of $122.0 million for the full year, representing a margin of 32%.
John: Wrapping up the income statement, net income for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $6.6 million compared to a net loss of $12.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.
John: Reported adjusted net income in the fourth quarter of 2024 was $24.7 million compared to $14.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2023.
John: Diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $0.04 compared to a loss of $0.08 per share in the fourth quarter of 2023.
John: Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $0.15 compared to $0.09 for the fourth quarter of last year.
John: Moving to the balance sheet, we finished the quarter with $179.2 million in cash and cash equivalents.
John: As of December 31, 2024, we had $295.4 million of outstanding borrowings on our term loan and full availability under our revolving credit facility.
Thank you.
John: Now, I would like to walk you through our guidance methodology for full year 2025.
Speaker Change: As Bill discussed previously, our guidance assumes that end markets in 2025 will be similar to what we observed in 2024.
Speaker Change: We are monitoring several developments in our markets which have factored into our 2025 guidance.
Speaker Change: As we have discussed previously, throughout 2024, some of our Tier 3 customers were slower to deploy capital than we anticipated, which widened the gap between when a customer received funding and when our commercial team was able to close a deal.
Speaker Change: Among our Tier 1 customers, we saw varying levels of spending activity based on each company's relative exposure to the IRA and impending patent cliffs, which has resulted in modest impact for both our software and services businesses.
Speaker Change: Our guidance assumes these trends will continue through the end of this year.
Speaker Change: Factoring in these assumptions, we expect total revenue in the range of $415 to $425 million, representing growth of 8 to 10 percent compared with 2024.
Speaker Change: We expect ChemAxon to contribute revenue of $23 to $25 million.
We expect adjusted EBITDA margins between 30 to 32 percent.
Speaker Change: Similar to our guidance last year, we anticipate a higher EBITDA margin at the lower end of our revenue guidance.
Speaker Change: and a lower EBITDA margin at the higher end of our revenue guidance. This will be driven by discretionary investments in research and development, which will be managed based on our commercial performance as the year progresses.
Speaker Change: We expect adjusted EPS in the range of 42 to 46 cents per share.
Speaker Change: fully diluted shares in the range of 162 to 164 million, and a tax rate in the range of 25 to 30 percent.
Speaker Change: I will now turn the call back over to our CEO, William Feehery, for closing remarks.
Thank you, John.
Speaker Change: To summarize our message today, we were pleased with the many exciting developments at Sertara in the fourth quarter and remain focused on executing our growth and profitability goals in 2025. There's a lot to be excited about at Sertara as we advance biosimulation with our innovative technologies.
Operator, can you please open the line for questions?
Speaker Change: Certainly. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster.
Speaker Change: Our first question will be coming from Jeff Garrow of Stevens Incorporated. Your line is open.
Jeff Garrow: Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe start off on the 2025 revenue guidance and, you know, it's the kind of typical question of what gets you to the low end or the high end of the range, and maybe further just help us understand the kind of balanced end market view, you know, up against a pretty strong Q4 bookings result on several fronts.
Thanks.
Jeff Garrow: Yeah, hi, Jeff. It's John. I'd start with the last part first. I mean, we were
Jeff Garrow: the performance to execution by the team. So as you know, we've been building the commercial team through the year and we were happy to see the execution in Q4 in the face of what remains pretty challenging end markets.
Jeff Garrow: So coming back to your question on what brings you, what would bring us to the high end or the low end, that also comes back to the end markets, too. I think when we look at our Tier 1 customers, then
Jeff Garrow: We continue to see spending patterns that are impacted by layoffs at those firms, portfolio prioritization, as well as
Jeff Garrow: for us to bring in new bookings. So that's the dynamic that we've seen with tier ones.
In 2024, you saw that.
Jeff Garrow: in the results in Q4, despite the execution. And we expect that dynamic to continue in 2025. And then when you look at tier threes.
Jeff Garrow: Similarly, it's, you know, we did see some progress last year on the funding environment for biotechs.
Jeff Garrow: But we are finding that the pull-through or the decision-making, once the biotechs are funded,
has taken longer than what we've seen in the past.
Jeff Garrow: you know, when you take all that together, then I think if, you know, if we see some improvement in those end markets, that would obviously push us for the higher end of the range. And if we saw some deterioration from where we were in 2024, then we'd be at the lower end.
Speaker Change: Understood that that helps and maybe just to hit on the
Speaker Change: EBITDA side of the, kind of the profitability side. Maybe you could give us a little more commentary on what...
Speaker Change: incremental R&D investments you're looking to make in 2025 and also help us further understand the investments in Comaxon, whether that's, you know, related to building out the product more or just scalability or, you know, really a purely technology integration with your existing assets in the discovery space. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks Jeff. So yeah, we're calling for the margin to be between 30 to 32% as you know, as you had said and observed.
That does represent some additional investment.
Speaker Change: to continue the strong momentum we've seen with the software portfolio.
Speaker Change: and as well as the investment in AI. And so what you're seeing in the margin is us continuing to make that investment and making it in 2025. The other piece of it I'd say too, but it's, you know, it is a modest component is
Speaker Change: We brought on Camaxon. We were thrilled to bring on the Camaxon business starting in Q4.
Speaker Change: And we're going to be working on integration of Camaxon throughout the year. And we expect exiting the year having Camaxon at our margins. But obviously, you know, this is just the beginning in Q4 and now into Q1 of 25.
Understood. Thanks for taking the questions.
And one moment for our next question.
Speaker Change: Our next question will be coming from Michael Shurney of Lee Rink Partners. Your line is open, Michael.
Hi, good afternoon.
Thanks for taking the question.
maybe if I can just
Speaker Change: talk a little bit about the trajectory in the quarter and the outlook.
Speaker Change: I fully understand the dynamics you put in place relative to the tough market. I think we all see it, the very different data points, but the bookings came through strong in the quarter.
Speaker Change: Can you give a little bit more color, Bill, about what you're seeing from a wallet share perspective? You highlighted some of the large deals, but as you think through both performance in the quarter and what's underlying guidance, how much of that do you think is you being able to garner a bigger piece of your customer's wallet?
Speaker Change: Yeah, thanks for the question. I think there's an element of that in there. We have invested over the last couple of years in several new products and a whole lot of
Speaker Change: of updates to products which have resulted in I think very positive
Speaker Change: feedback from customers in terms of, you know, the bookings and, you know, additional...
Additional sales that we got from them.
Speaker Change: And I think that's one of the reasons why, you know, we're emphasizing as we go in it.
Speaker Change: 2025, you know, continue to invest particularly in the software suite.
Speaker Change: There's tremendous opportunity for us in front of us around what we're doing in AI.
Speaker Change: our core products like SimCip and InfiniQL 21, which the investments we're making there are kind of taking us into new parts of pharma where maybe there were
Speaker Change: a few models available or and, you know, we're all kind of opening them up as as addressable to to the company right now.
Speaker Change: Like John said, I think, you know, chunk of fourth quarter was good execution by the team, but it wasn't just in the fourth quarter. I mean, some of this had to do with, I think, some careful investment in.
Speaker Change: in the products themselves that have led to taking a little bit more share like you were talking about.
Speaker Change: Thanks, Bill. And then I guess another kind of big picture question, but an important one. As you think through the incoming new administration, obviously we're all waiting to see where the confirmations lie, but what do you see, at least based on public commentary, people's backgrounds as the opportunities and risks relative to the new administration coming in?
Speaker Change: Yeah, I was figuring we would get questions like that since everybody's getting them.
Speaker Change: You know, I think right now we are watching carefully. There are some.
Speaker Change: you know, potential opportunities as well as some potential risks and what's being discussed. But I think to be fair, you'd have to say that it's all pretty new and we're just kind of watching to see how things settle out before we make any, you know, pronouncements or plans around that.
And one moment for our next question.
Speaker Change: Our next question will be coming from Max Smock of William Blair. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Hi, it's Christine Rains on for Max. Thanks for taking our questions.
Speaker Change: So we noticed the tick down in your software net retention rate to the lowest we've seen in a little while.
Speaker Change: I'm hoping you can speak to the drivers behind this and if there's been any change in your win rate. I'm just wondering if the downtick is a reflection of choppy large pharma demand.
Speaker Change: and more broadly, if you can comment on the overall growth and leading demand indicator strength delta between large pharma and small biotech in 4Q and expectation for both cohorts in 2025.
Speaker Change: Thanks for your question. The net retention rate for 4Q was 106. The full year was 108.
Speaker Change: It was lower in Q4 than on a full year basis. We do, to your point, we do attribute that to tier one customer spending patterns. So when I was describing before on the guidance.
Speaker Change: and sort of the upper end or the lower end of the guidance. And those customer spending patterns, the slower decision-making, portfolio reprioritization, headcount reductions, to some extent have impacted renewals.
Speaker Change: in our Phoenix product and then to a lesser extent in Pinnacle. So there is a dynamic there. Alternatively, on the tier threes, then we've seen strong performance.
Speaker Change: on both software and BIOSIM services specifically on the Tier 3 customers.
Speaker Change: Great, thank you. That was really helpful commentary. I'm digging a little bit more into 2025 and organic growth expectations.
Speaker Change: So at the midpoint, if I think about $24 million in total from CAMACSA in contribution this year, about three-fourths of which is inorganic. That implies $18 million in inorganic revenue this year. The midpoint of your guide then implies about 4.5% organic growth in 2025 versus around 2% in 2024. First, just wondering if this is the right way to think about organic growth this year.
Speaker Change: and you mentioned that you're expecting the environment to be the same this year versus last year so
Speaker Change: How we should think about drivers behind the delta of around 2% in organic growth this year versus the mid-20s. We're calling for about 4 to 5%. Thanks.
Speaker Change: Yeah, so I think to cut through it, the organic growth based on our guidance, so we said the guide was eight to ten percent reported growth, the organic underlying that would be four to six percent.
Speaker Change: Okay, great. Thanks. That's really helpful. And then, so given those 4 to 6 percent, how do you think about the step-up there and the drivers behind the step-up in organic growth rate versus 2024, given the expectation for kind of a relatively stable demand environment?
Speaker Change: I think one of the key drivers there is underlying our assumption within services where we had a decline in regulatory in 2024, which we've laid out and embedded within our guide is a reg business that's flat to low single digits.
Speaker Change: Great, thank you. That's all for us. Thanks for the help. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: And one moment for our next question. Our next question will be coming from David Windley of Jeffries. Your line is open.
David Windley: Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to follow on.
that connects on questions. John, would it be possible to...
David Windley: quantify the the margin differential or alternatively kind of how much margin in the guidance, how much margin drag from the Camaxon inorganic ad? How should we think about that?
John: Yeah, so, Dave, the way to think about that is we step down off of 2024 by about 100 basis points. Approximately half of that is related to Camaxon and the other half is related to incremental investments.
David Windley: Okay, and then maybe more broadly on Camaxon, what's the competitive landscape?
David Windley: for Camaxon to the, you know, the capabilities that it has in that discovery space. And how is that perhaps different from your competitive position in PBPK and PKPD? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, David. You know, the discovery space is...
David Windley: is pretty fragmented. So, you know, Chem-Oxon has a suite of tools that
David Windley: cover both the design, make, test, analyze cycle, and they also have a suite of chemical predictors.
David Windley: and then they have some other tools that get into things like searching large databases for chemicals.
David Windley: So those are embedded across the industry, and I guess they all have, you know, they all have individual competitors, but there's not like a one, there's not like a second ChemAxon out there, really.
Speaker Change: Okay, and then if I broaden out a little bit, I think if we go back to even
say pinnacle 21
Speaker Change: One of, I think, the underpinnings of the kind of acquisition cases for these acquisitions is, how can you build a portfolio that has some?
Speaker Change: Some kind of synergistic benefit in terms of helping the client, you know, to to buy across your portfolio and of course your investment in cloud, but also in the case of pinnacle 21 and maybe for medics.
approachable, you know, better enable those kinds of capabilities.
Speaker Change: Is it possible to kind of see that evolving? Do you see those benefits showing up as you're interacting with clients and kind of, you know, essentially helping to pioneer their more intensive use of...
of Model Informed.
drug development.
Yeah, that's a great question. So,
You know, we've...
Speaker Change: Been working on biosimulation, as you know, for a while, and we're known in this space, but we're known in
Speaker Change: You know smaller, we've been known for a long time in smaller groups within pharma
So I think the
Speaker Change: plans and the news and the and the reality of creating an integrated platform where you can apply this across multiple stages of drug development starting in discovery has drawn a lot of attention now, you know, we have
Speaker Change: still investment to make as we go forward to pull all of these tools together. But, you know, we, as you pointed out, we've we've made a pretty good start with Sitara Cloud. And, you know, I think that's helping our
Speaker Change: our discussions at more senior levels of pharma. And I think that's good. I mean, that's basically the plan is we intend to continue. So we've got great tools, but we want to take it from.
Speaker Change: great tools to a great platform where you've integrated a whole process across
across.
Speaker Change: the development of a molecule from start to finish. And I think as we accomplish that, we'll add a lot more value and we'll capture a lot more value. Right. And maybe a last question for me that leverages that answer is
Speaker Change: I think at this time last year, we were talking about investments in SG&A and R&D, maybe talked about evolving to a cloud approach at that time. The first half was pressured more than the second half.
Speaker Change: I think some investors probably thought that the kind of pressure on margin was weathered in the second half of 2004 might be...
Speaker Change: a reasonable step off point to think about your, you know, your go forward margin and kind of additional investment and additional margin pressure in 25 might come as some surprise. How should we think about as you're evolving toward platform and adding capabilities and things like that, what is the duration?
Speaker Change: of the, you know, what I might call excess investment before you think you get there.
Thank you.
Speaker Change: So, I think the way we think about this is that Sitara is a...
Speaker Change: is a quite profitable company and we've demonstrated we can run at a high profit margin.
Speaker Change: But there's a significant opportunity for growth here and there's, you know, a good opportunity to put some of those profits back into into growing the software. And if we do that, I think we can our plan is to take the growth rate of the company up over the next few years.
Speaker Change: So it's, you know, it's hard to answer your question with like a, you know, decimal points of precision because some products are
Speaker Change: You know, we've got a pipeline of products coming. We have several, you know, new things coming out this year. We have some that are, you know, kind of slated as we go into into 2026.
Speaker Change: And then, you know, after we, after 2026, we'll probably sit back and look around and see, you know, hey, how'd that go? And, you know, did that lead us to other things we want to do or not? Right? So, I guess what I'm telling you is I've got a plan that runs out about two years right now.
Speaker Change: That's not a situation where I'm just going to pour money in for two years and hope to get it out. I mean, that's a pipeline of products starting basically now. There will be a regular cadence coming out of upgrades and new features.
Speaker Change: AI enabled features, things like that in our existing products. So, you know, we're gonna, you know, we're expecting to see.
see revenues from them, you know, as we go along.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Speaker Change: As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone in one moment for our next question.
Constantine Devaday: Our next question will come from Constantine Devaday of Citizen Securities. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Thanks. Just, John, one more kind of modeling follow-up. Is there anything from a quarterly cadence standpoint that you'd call out in terms of
Speaker Change: headwinds or tailwinds that we should be mindful of in 2025. I guess first I'm thinking of
Speaker Change: come back on just if that, you know, steps down from the pretty strong fourth quarter into the first quarter, the way software typically does. And I guess, you know, obviously the ramp of margin for that asset throughout the year, but is there anything else that, you know, you think you'd like to highlight just in terms of quarterly progression?
Speaker Change: I think, I mean you've seen us historically be more second-half weighted when you think about first-half, second-halves and
Speaker Change: I would expect that continues to be the case this year as we see.
Speaker Change: the typical seasonality that does play out for us in the fourth quarter. So in addition to what you said, Constantine, I'd just remember to think about the first half, second half balance too.
Great. And then.
Speaker Change: Just on the regulatory services uptick, and I apologize if I missed that, but can you just maybe expand a little bit on the rebound there? And I know you're kind of limited in what you can address with the process that's going on, but does that sort of uptick, I know it's only one quarter, but maybe change how you're thinking about moving forward with that?
Well, I'll start with the performance piece.
Speaker Change: So we were pleased to see that the regulatory business returned to growth in both bookings and in revenue in the fourth quarter. And obviously, a lot of that performance, as we said in the prepared remarks, too, was coming from the Tier 1 customers.
Speaker Change: and then partially offset by some softness in Tier 2 and Tier 3. So, I think what that tells us is, you know, we still have good support from our large Tier 1 customers there. We saw the business...
Speaker Change: return to growth. And obviously those bookings, being a services business, those bookings are going to...
Speaker Change: have an impact on on revenue as we move into 25. So we were we were happy with
And one moment for our next question.
and David Deuchler. Thank you. Thank you.
Speaker Change: Our next question will be coming from Andrew Moss of Bank of America. Your line is open, Andrew.
Andrew Moss: Great. Thanks for taking my question. So, William, you've noted high expectations for co-author in the year ahead and the potential to expand the offering. Can you provide any color on, you know, the co-author traction and how large the opportunity might be to expand the current AI offering?
That's a good question. So we have multiple...
Andrew Moss: You know, paying customers, which is, which I think we view that product as being very much on track after just, you know, a couple of months on the market, we have a pretty good pipeline as well. So, I think we're finding.
Andrew Moss: that from a competitive standpoint, you know, we have a, we put together a solid product and seems to be meeting the needs. The product itself will expand over time, you know, we're
Andrew Moss: There's a whole lot of regulatory documents out there. The first version addresses a piece of it, and obviously, you know, like all software, you know, you keep new versions coming along, which we're going to do this year as we add new features and do.
The document types particular to it. So, um,
Andrew Moss: You know, I think what we're looking at here is, you know, you can reduce the amount of time to create a new document by a lot, you know, maybe north of 60% in terms of at least a first draft.
Bye!
Andrew Moss: You can't really take all the humans out of a loop, obviously. People still have to read it and edit it. But that takes a lot of the upfront cost out of getting a regulatory document in place.
Andrew Moss: The product itself does more than just writing, you know, it's handling
Andrew Moss: things like the data, the tables, the connectivity to other databases as well. So it's more than just kind of applying
Andrew Moss: you know, copilot or chat GPT to regulatory writing. As far as how far I can go, I don't, you know, it's, it's,
Andrew Moss: you know, revenue generator. Where it goes in the long run, it's always a little hard to tell because AI is moving so quickly and this product is moving so quickly, so it's got a lot of opportunities as we take it forward, you know, after even where it is right now.
Great, that's all for me. Thank you.
And one moment for our next question.
Speaker Change: Our next question will be coming from Kyle Cruz of UBS. Your line is open, Kyle.
Kyle Cruz: Thank you for taking the questions. I think you earlier said that you're expecting a low single-digit to flat decline in regulatory services revenues this year.
Kyle Cruz: Could you maybe help us with the segment guidance? I believe that that piece of information almost implies around a high single digit growth rate for organic for software business, for the software business, and maybe you could just provide more color on the organic growth guidance for each business line.
Kyle Cruz: But to come back to your question on sort of the component parts here,
Kyle Cruz: So we said the reported was 8 to 10% growth. I had mentioned earlier that the organic total company was 4 to 6%.
Kyle Cruz: When you split that by software and services, then you could see services would be low single digits, so think of it as two to four percent,
software, including Camaxon, would be 16% to 19% growth.
Kyle Cruz: But the organic, and to your point, Kyle, the organic software growth would be in a range of six to eight percent. So that is aligned with what you were saying earlier.
Kyle Cruz: Great, thank you. And then maybe could you provide some color on your efforts to expand the SimCip software outside of the core consortium to other customers?
Yeah, we have multiple routes for delivering SEMSIP.
Kyle Cruz: We have, obviously, we have our core consortium, which has been around and is going very, very strongly.
Kyle Cruz: We also sell the software directly outside the consortium to a number of customers that's been growing. And we have a group that uses SimCity.
Kyle Cruz: basically we'll just do projects for people, for customers that might be.
Kyle Cruz: too small or not have the internal capabilities to do it, which has also been, you know, a significant, a significant grower over the last couple of years. So, you know, I kind of think it was one, one tool, you know, we're
We've got multiple.
Kyle Cruz: customer segments and we've thought about different ways to deliver it. Now, in addition, we're starting to interface SimChip in with our QSP software.
Kyle Cruz: And that's, I think, as we go forward, that's going to lead to additional opportunities to expand the core base we've got there.
Kyle Cruz: You know, when we started, this was primarily a consulting type business, but we've been investing heavily in the underlying modeling software with the idea that, you know, we've got a core advantage because we've already got a lot of the
Kyle Cruz: with the underlying parts built from SimCip. And so that's started to come out and there'll be additional investments in that as we go forward this year.
Great, thank you. And one moment for our next question.
Speaker Change: And our last question will be coming from Vikram Purahid of Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.
Speaker Change: Hi, thank you for taking our question. This is Parth on for Vikram.
Speaker Change: You guys touched on investments you're making in AI and software. Could you provide us your current view on BD and which profile of assets could be interesting to fold in to the company at this point?
Speaker Change: Yeah, so we, you know, obviously we have the balance sheet to continue M&A and we're constantly looking at, you know, opportunities there. We've been clear that we said we look, you know, toward software. We are busy given the number of acquisitions we've done recently, but we have the capacity to be able to do additional tuck-ins.
Should we want to do that?
Thank you.
Speaker Change: And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.