Inotiv, Inc. (NASDAQ:NOTV) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript January 10, 2023
Inotiv, Inc. beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.32, expectations were $-0.37.
Operator: Greetings, and welcome to the Inotiv, Inc.’s Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Devin Sullivan, Managing Director for The Equity Group. Thank you, Devin. You may begin.
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Devin Sullivan: Thank you, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Inotiv’s fiscal 2022 fourth quarter and full year financial results call. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that some of the statements that management will make on this call are considered forward-looking statements, including statements about the company’s future operating and financial results and plans. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or achievements to be materially different from those projected. Any such statements represent management’s expectations as of today’s date. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements and the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Please refer to the company’s SEC filings for further guidance on this matter. Management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in an effort to provide additional information for investors. A definition of these non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in the company’s earnings release, which will be posted on the Investors section of the company’s website at inotivco.com and is also available in the Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. Joining us from the company this afternoon are Bob Leasure, President and Chief Executive Officer; Beth Taylor, Chief Financial Officer; and John Sagartz, the company’s Chief Strategy Officer. Bob will begin with some opening remarks, after which Beth will present a summary of the company’s financial results.
Then, we will open the call for questions from our analysts. It is now my pleasure to turn the call over to Bob Leasure, President and CEO of Inotiv. Bob, please go ahead.
Bob Leasure: All right. Thank you, Devin, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you taking time to join us today and appreciate your patience with respect to the delay in announcing of our results for the fourth quarter and full year. Following a very strong third quarter, total revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 rose fivefold to $150.5 million from $30.1 million in last year’s fourth quarter. For the full year 2022, revenues improved to $547.7 million from $89.6 million last year, with the increase across our DSA and RMS business segments reflecting approximately 31% organic growth plus the contribution from acquisitions. Adjusted EBITDA for fiscal Q4 improved to $18.3 million or 12.1% of total revenues from $4.3 million or 14.4% of total revenues in last year’s fourth quarter.
For the full year, adjusted EBITDA grew from — grew to $90.5 million or 16.5% of total revenues from $9.3 million or 10.4% last year. This was a very solid year of continued growth and was reflective of our ongoing evolution into a comprehensive provider of non-clinical CRO services and research products to the global pharmaceutical and biotech industries. During 2022, we consummated several acquisitions that enhanced both our geographic footprint and portfolio of service offerings. We began the integration and optimization of our acquired operations and created a path to what we believe will be sustainable growth in sales and expansion of margins. We’re pleased with the progress we made in fiscal year 2022 and have entered ’23 with specific plans to continue to improve our overall business model while addressing what we estimate will be a temporary disruption in our NHP business, which I’ll discuss in greater detail shortly.
During the fourth quarter, we did experience unexpectedly higher operating costs related to company-wide recruiting and the validation of new DSA services, as well as certain non-recurring costs related to restructuring charges, legal fees for closures of facilities, and consolidation expenses to move operations from Dublin, Virginia to other facilities; we also began the preparation for moves from Haslett and Boyertown; we had acquisitions integration costs, including expenses from terminated M&A deals, which we will not close, and financing transactions and the discontinuation of a capital project. Let’s move to a brief discussion of our DSA and RMS business segments. Overall, our DSA business had an exceptional year, generating revenue of $165.3 million, an 84.5% increase from 2021.
Organic DSA revenue growth in 2022 was $49.6 million, representing incremental growth of approximately 66%, supported by $26.1 million of incremental revenue from strategic acquisitions. For 2023, we’ve already added new capabilities and capacity in Rockville, Maryland to conduct Good Laboratory Practices, or GLP, studies for in vitro, cytogenetics and bacterial mutation assays as components of the standard battery of genetic toxicology studies required to support first-in-human evaluations of novel therapeutics. We continue developing our suite of genetic toxicology services and look forward to seeing continued growth in Rockville as we also complete the facility buildout and launch our biotherapeutics business. We are completing other projects to build out the capacity and capabilities across our existing enterprises, specifically completing a project in Boulder, Colorado.
This expansion was initiated in early fiscal 2022 and will be coming online during fiscal ’23. We are expanding operations as well in Fort Collins, Colorado, but we’ll be narrowing the plan which was scheduled for 2023. Once completed, these expansions will increase our DSA facility capacity by 30% and our DSA revenue capacity by an estimated $50 million. These expansions will also improve the overall quality and efficiency of our service offerings, while reducing our reliance on third-party outsourcing for certain services. We are reprioritizing some of our capital plans that we believe can generate quick returns and overall reducing our spend in fiscal ’23. Conversely, we will delay our previously-announced expansion activities at our ILS facility in North Carolina, which we acquired in January 2022.
The slowdown of our expansion does not impact our near-term growth prospects and we will evaluate these needs and investments in the future. Our RMS segment contributed $382.4 million of revenue in the year, reflecting strong incremental revenue well above the run rate when we entered the RMS market with our Envigo acquisition in November 2021. Organic revenue growth in 2022 was $91.3 million, representing incremental revenue growth of approximately 24%. This was our first year in the RMS business. We’ve had a chance to gain further knowledge of this business, have taken significant actions to improve the operations and enhance future margins through site optimization plans, enhanced pricing across the product portfolio and other significant operational changes.
We have also made significant progress in our comprehensive site optimization master plan. In June, we announced the closure of two RMS facilities in Virginia. The closure of Cumberland, Virginia facility was completed by the end of fiscal 2022. Cumberland revenue was less than 1% of our total revenue and did not contribute to adjusted EBITDA. The operations at our Dublin facility in Virginia ceased in November of 2022, and the customers were transferred and are now being served from other locations. Since the closings, the Dublin property has been sold and the Cumberland facility is in the process of being sold. The previously-announced facility closures in Haslett, Michigan and Boyertown, Pennsylvania are now in process and should be completed by March of 2022 — or March of 2023.
We recently announced the closure of two facilities in Indianapolis. The activity of these Indianapolis facilities will be relocated to other existing facilities and should be completed by June of 2023. We also introduced the proposed consolidation plans of Gannat, France and Blackthorn, U.K. into existing facilities, which if approved, we hope to complete in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Now, I want to move to give a little bit more detail on our non-human primate business. As stated on our November 16, 2022 release, out of an abundance of caution, we have not initiated any shipments or imports of NHPs from Cambodia, although we do continue to sell and import NHPs from other countries. Cambodia is a critical supplier of NHPs to the U.S. In absence of imports from China, Cambodia represented over 60% of the NHP imports, according to CDC statistics.
We continue to work with external and internal resources to review our current NHP inventory from Cambodia and we’ll begin shipments of these NHPs only after such time that we can reasonably determine the NHPs in our possession are purpose-bred and not wild caught. While we are not currently aware of any outside constraints on importing NHPs from Cambodia, Inotiv will not import from Cambodia until we can complete satisfactory on-site audits of our suppliers. We are in communication with our Cambodian suppliers and we expect that we will be able to be on-site in Cambodia to complete these audits during this quarter. We do understand Cambodian officials have stated that they will be shipping NHPs. Even in a significantly-constrained market, we believe the DSA business will have — our DSA business will have ample access to NHPs to meet our clients’ needs.
Having access to the supply, along with our desire and ability to have a positive impact on this industry, was a critical factor in the decision to purchase Envigo and Orient BioResource. We believe the current situation shows the need to implement changes within our industry, and we look forward to working with others in our industry and with the government to continue to lead changes to this industry. With respect to broader market conditions and commentary, during the fourth quarter 2022, an increased level of quoting activity translated into a higher backlog at year-end. As a reminder, when we report new awards, they are net of cancellations. Despite the growth in backlog, we also continued to experience a high level of cancellations, due primarily to molecules not being ready as expected for projects that were awarded 12 to 18 months ago and the abandoning of projects which were seen as risky.
We have seen some market commentary that the industry is seeing a downturn in the biotech funding and spending. We have experienced a few occasions recently where this has been the case with our clients. We continue to monitor market conditions closely. The operational investments we made in 2022 in areas such as recruiting, internal processes, facilities, technology, personnel have been significant. We have allowed — and it has allowed us to further integrate our acquisitions and begin to achieve synergies. We invested over $36.3 million in internal projects during 2022. We believe these investments will allow us to broaden our service offerings, improve margins, enhance our overall level of customer service and maintain a high level of animal welfare.
Within our RMS business, specifically, the investments will allow us to implement our comprehensive site optimization plan, which currently includes closing nine of the 24 sites we acquired with the RMS business. In addition to the operational investments in 2022, we’ve also had an opportunity to review our cost and pricing. As a result, we have been able to amend customer contracts and pricing. Many of the pricing changes began to go into effect in January of 2023. These will help offset inflationary cost increases, which we experienced in 2022 and during Q1 of fiscal 2023. During the 12 months ended December 31, 2022, we hired approximately 860 people, which is over 35% of our current workforce. This was a significant investment and was needed to support our growth and improvements last year.
We’ve seen our retention rate increase and we’re able to successfully reduce our turnover rate. At present, critical operational leadership positions are all filled. Overall, in 2023, expect employment to stay consistent with our current levels, and we expect a growth — to support our growth in 2023 from efficiency gains. As a result of market conditions and what we have been able to achieve over the last four years, in 2023, we expect to be less focused on acquisitions. As stated earlier, we have also delayed and reduced certain expansion activities we had previously announced related to our DSA business. We believe that this course of action is prudent given the current state of capital markets and our desire to focus on integrating and optimizing the businesses we acquired and have built over the past two years.
We believe our strong organic growth for fiscal 2022 has exceeded the industry average of low double digit growth for Discovery Services and mid to high single digit growth for Safety Assessment, which speaks to our ability to increase market share. As per guidance for 2023, for fiscal year end — year ending September 30, 2023, we are providing guidance of at least $580 million of revenue and at least $75 million of adjusted EBITDA. Due to the recent disruption of our NHP supply chain, the guidance of $580 million of revenue includes a range for Q1 fiscal 2023 revenue from $118 million to $122 million, and approximately $460 million of revenue during the nine-month period of Q2 through Q4 of 2023. The guidance of $75 million of adjusted EBITDA includes an expected negative adjusted EBITDA margin in Q1, and adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 17% during Q2 through Q4.
We will continue to focus on organic growth and market share gains with our expanding service offerings in the DSA business. With the strong backlog growth through 2022, we have good visibility on DSA revenue heading into 2023. We look for efficiency improvements to leverage our fixed cost structure on increasing sales to enhance DSA margin. Our RMS business will benefit from the price increases implemented in January of 2023 and the expected market share gains, while further margin expansion will be driven by our site optimization plans. We also continue to invest in enhancing our animal welfare programs. Our guidance does assume a reduction in the number of NHP sales from last year. Although we’ve experienced a short-term disruption, we are not aware of any importation ban from Cambodia and NHP sales could increase throughout the year from our guidance level if we are able to resume full importation levels.
We hope to get further knowledge and comfort on 2023 importation levels based on additional supply audits that are expected to take place during this quarter. Even if the total volume of NHPs is lower than 2023 — ’22, we expect to benefit from price increases for NHPs, which could range between 65% to over 100% throughout this year in this highly supply-constrained environment. Although we were impacted by the NHP supply issue in Q1, we believe the business is well positioned to achieve above market revenue growth rates and expansion in margins. As stated previously, for 2023, we are focused on optimizing organic revenue growth and improving margins, and less focus on acquisition opportunities. We continue to guide long-term revenue growth of high single to low double digits and long-term EBITDA margins of 18% to 22%.
With that, I’ll turn it over to our Chief Financial Officer, Beth Taylor. Beth, please go ahead with the financial overview.
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Beth Taylor: Thanks, Bob, and good afternoon. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 rose to $150.5 million from $30.1 million in last year’s fourth quarter, driven primarily by significant incremental revenue from our RMS segment and higher revenue in our DSA segment. DSA segment revenues grew 46.8% in the fiscal 2022 fourth quarter to $44.2 million, up from $30.1 million in the fiscal 2021 fourth quarter, and that was driven by $2.1 million of incremental revenue from acquisitions over the same period last year and an incremental increase in revenue from internal growth of $12 million during the quarter. The fiscal 2022 fourth quarter revenue was lower than fiscal 2022 third quarter revenue due to higher benefits in the third quarter from cancellation fees and the fourth quarter revenue being impacted from less canines being available for studies.
However, the canine shortage issue is improving and we expect to see the benefit of this starting in the second quarter of fiscal 2023. Our RMS segment revenue in the fiscal 2022 fourth quarter was $106.3 million. We did not have any revenue for our RMS segment in the last year’s fourth quarter. RMS segment revenue was lower in fiscal 2022 fourth quarter compared to the 2022 third quarter due to shipping less units of NHPs during the quarter. Our total gross profit increased to $42.2 million or 28% of revenue, up from total gross profit of $10.3 million or 34.2% of revenue in last year’s fourth quarter. Gross profit for our DSA segment improved to $13 million or 29.4% of segment revenue from $10.3 million or 34.2% of segment revenue in last year’s fourth quarter.
The percentage decline in gross profit was primarily driven by laboratory capacity investments and cost associated with the recruitment of additional scientists to support new capacities and services. The work currently being conducted includes development of assays, validation of equipment, and establishment of good laboratory practices that will be coming up during the last half of fiscal 2023. RMS segment gross profit in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 was $29.2 million or 27.5% of RMS revenue. RMS gross profit in the fourth quarter included approximately $200,000 of non-cash inventory step-up amortization, which negatively impacted gross profit percentage by approximately 0.8%. We did not have any RMS gross profit in last year’s fourth quarter.
Our operating loss for the fourth quarter was $242.5 million, reflecting an increase in operating expenses to $271 million from $13.7 million in last year’s fourth quarter. As we noted in our press release, higher operating expenses were driven primarily by a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $236 million related to our RMS segment. And as part of our impairment assessment, we determined that the carrying amount of goodwill attributed to our RMS segment was in excess of its fair value, primarily driven by the sustained decrease in our share price as compared to our share price at the time of the Envigo acquisition. The remaining increase in operating expenses reflected restructuring charges and legal fees related to the previously-announced closures of our facilities in Cumberland and Dublin, Virginia, acquisition and integration costs, which included M&A due diligence for opportunities we explore during the quarter, a one-time charge for the write-off of deferred legal and accounting fees for our S-1 registration statement that was withdrawn and a non-cash charge for amortization of inventory step-up.
Adjusted corporate unallocated G&A totaled $14.5 million or 9.6% of revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to $3.2 million or 10.5% of revenue in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2021. The 900 basis point decrease was due to the advantage of scale as revenue has gone up. We continue to maintain a long-term objective for adjusted unallocated corporate G&A to be between 6% to 8% of revenue. Interest expense increased to $8.9 million from $0.5 million in last year’s fourth quarter, reflecting our higher debt balance for borrowings obtained for the acquisitions and an increase in interest rates. Consolidated net loss attributable to common shareholders in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 totaled $244.2 million or a negative $9.54 per share, and included the $236 million non-cash impairment charge for the RMS segment.
This compared to consolidated net income attributable to common shareholders of $9.4 million or $0.59 per basic share and $0.06 per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2021. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $18.3 million or 12.1% of total revenue from $4.3 million or 14.4% of total revenue in Q4 fiscal 2021. Our book-to-bill ratio for our DSA segment in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022 was 1.03x, down from 1.19x in the immediately preceding third quarter of fiscal 2022. For the year, our book-to-bill was 1.33x. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, we experienced another record quarter of post-issued. However, the sequential quarterly decline in the book-to-bill was a result of an increase in project cancellations, as Bob referenced earlier, which was higher than what we saw in Q3 of fiscal 2022.
As Bob noted, the majority of the cancellations reflected the unavailability of molecules for projects that had been booked up to a year-and-a-half in advance and clients abandoning projects which are seen as risky, and more recently a number of projects being put on hold due to lack of funding or pending — or pending funding. DSA backlog improved to $147.2 million at September 30, 2022, up from $143.2 million at June 30, 2022, and that was compared to $81.4 million at September 30, 2021. Net cash used in operations for the 2022 fiscal year was $5.2 million compared to cash provided by operations of $10.7 million last year. The use of cash during the year reflected our increase in net working capital for our NHP business due to the timing between deposits made to our suppliers and when the shipments are received and then when the cash is collected from our customers.
CapEx in the fourth quarter totaled $5 million or 3.3% of revenue, with total 2022 CapEx totaling $36.2 million or 6.6% of revenue. CapEx for the year reflected investments in facility improvements, site expansions, enhancements to laboratory technology and system enhancements to improve the client experience. We expect our fiscal 2023 CapEx to be approximately 3% to 4% of projected revenue, which we believe will be less than $25 million. The CapEx investments will focus on completions of DSA capacity expansions in Boulder and Rockville, and initiation of an expansion project in Fort Collins, completion of RMS deferred maintenance projects, and continued animal welfare enhancement projects. Our balance sheet as of September 30, 2022 included $18.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and $15 million balance on a $15 million revolving credit facility and a $0 balance on a $35 million delayed draw term loan.
In October, we drew down the entirety of the $35 million delayed draw term loan and a portion of the proceeds were used to repay the $15 million balance on the revolving credit facility. Total debt, net of debt issuance cost, as of September 30, 2022 was $353.7 million, including the balance on the revolving credit facility. We were in compliance with our debt covenants as of September 30, 2022. We currently have $15 million of availability on our revolving credit facility. And based on our financial guidance, we anticipate that we will be in compliance with our financial covenants for fiscal 2023. While 2022 did present some challenges, we made significant progress to improve our services, build capacity, integrate and optimize our acquired operations and implement plans to enhance margins.
We remain pleased with our financial performance and the foundation that we have built to continue to grow and capture a significant portion of the opportunities in our market. And with that overview of the financials, I will turn the call back over to Bob.
Bob Leasure: All right. In closing, I’d like to take a moment to thank our 2,200-plus employees who work tirelessly every day to provide unique Inotiv experience for all of our customers. The reason — they are the reason our customers want to grow with us and I truly appreciate all they do. This concludes our prepared remarks. And with that, operator, please open the call for questions.
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