Conference Transcript - FTRE 2026-06-04

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. I'm Dave Windley with Jeffrey's Healthcare Equity Research. We cover CROs among other sectors, and we're very pleased to have you here with us. Also, very grateful for Fortria Holdings Management Team to be here with us. Companies, not brand new, but relatively new CEO, Anshul Thakral, who, so this is by definition his first time with us. uh, in that role and Jill McConnell, the company's CFO. So thank you very much, um, for carving time out of your very busy schedules. Um, until you've had a busy, um, you know, what three quarters of a year, I guess, since, since, uh, about that since, since you joined, um, done a really nice job of, uh, stimulating demand and landing some bookings since your start date, um, three quarters in a row of book-to-bill above 1.1, let's just start with describing the demand trends as you see them through the lens of Fortria for us.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

Happy to, David. I can dissect that a little further into the sub-segments of the market. Look, I think the overarching message is I think the demand environment has gotten better. And when we talk, you know, every quarter, over the last couple of quarters, it continues to get better. I'm not quite ready to jump up on the table and start pounding that we're in a high-growth market But certainly the market is not contracting and certainly the demand environment has gotten better We're seeing it in different places in different Paces at which the demand is coming back if you think about the broad customer segments large pharma versus Biotech small to midsize pharma however you want to segment it we are seeing constructive dialogues across the board So RFPs flowing through from large pharma had started up Dialogue with large pharma has been a lot more constructive than it was in 2025 With biotech recovery tends to be a little bit faster So certainly over the past couple of months, we are seeing that RFP flow really starting to pick up If you look at various segments of the market, you know, we are There was a period of time where we were not seeing as much demand as you would anticipate from the US biotech sector, and that demand has picked up, and that's really reassuring, too. So all of these are signs towards a demand environment that is continuing to get better, and I don't want to get into percent growth here, but certainly a demand environment that's continuing to get better, and I'm feeling better about it today than I was, say, in

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Great. In some of my conversations with your peers, I'm hearing FSO, or for the audience that doesn't know the acronyms, full service type business, whereas kind of all the talk for a couple of years has been FSP, maybe overly so. How would you describe within the improvement in demand, how would you characterize the kind of mix across, say, FSP, FSO? And then I'd also

Anshul Thakral, CEO

ask you to talk about your Clint Farm business as well. Sure. FSO, FSP mix, certainly demand here in the last few months, we're seeing more in the FSO space. It's good to see the FSO demand return. Remember, for a period of time when the markets were really constrained, possibly even contracting in 24, 25, the only way someone can move market share in an environment like that is through price, and that's where I think the FSP dialogue really picked up. People saw an opportunity both from the pharma side and the CRO side. That's a lot of what I've talked about in the past happened in 2025. What we're seeing now, what I like about what we're seeing now, is a return to the kinds of demands I'm used to seeing in this industry. Robust demands across various phases of clinical research. Robust demand for FSO services across various therapeutic areas. And you mentioned clinical pharmacology. I think clinical pharmacology, as you know, is a business I'm very proud of at Fortria. demand has started to return even faster in clinical pharmacology we're seeing a lot more both small to mid-sized biotech companies as well as large pharma companies starting to get a bit more constructive in terms of starting phase one studies not just healthy volunteer but space one studies across the board and so we're seeing a faster ramp up with that demand in our clinical pharmacology business and being one of the stronger players in that business

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

we're benefiting from it yeah for sure and and so probably goes without saying in the way that you've described this, but is it right to think that what you're seeing land in bookings, thinking about chronology, the strength that you're seeing in bookings is at least reflected also further back in the sales funnel, if not better?

Anshul Thakral, CEO

If not better. I think what, so for example, you know, Dave, you do a great job of putting these monthly reports together around biotech funding. You know, I started really looking at the trend lines in your report starting back in November, remember, some of the monies that were reported out as great funding events in November, those are showing up in bookings now in Q2, right? So I think what we're seeing in our pipeline versus what we've seen in our last two quarters, the pipeline's slightly stronger because much of this funding demand that picked up from November through March, that hasn't translated into bookings for our industry yet, and it

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

will over the next couple of quarters. I'm hovering on this longer than I probably should, but I'm going to give you an opportunity. Did you pick up on the fact that I read your reports all the time? I'm going to give you an opportunity. So we'll highlight my blind spot. So as we talk about, we collect mostly what you would think of as kind of true financial pure transactions. your team highlighted licensing deals and and bd activity has also been hot which is you know not something that we pick up particularly well if you want to add anything on that too so we like

Anshul Thakral, CEO

licensing and bd activity there's multiple reasons for that i'll give you uh i won't talk about specific clients as you know i won't do that but we've had several instances in the past several months where a small company has been acquired by a large format company where we may not have a partnership and we've now ended up in a de facto partnership position. Because if we're doing really good work across the industry, you don't switch out your CROs. So for that purpose and that purpose, the type of activity that we see in acquisitions in M&A, I see that as a tailwind and I see that as a positive. Now, when we look at demand data, when you see BDNL happening, you will see licensing happening from private companies by larger biotech companies or larger pharma companies. You'll see licensing of assets ex-US being licensed by biotech and pharma companies in the US, and that may not show up in all of the financing numbers, but that is a type of financing activity. If anything, that's a little bit of additional demand on top of if one was to

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

translate just the investing demand that you look at yeah yeah that's great and and for for the we we use a lot of acronyms as all industries do bdnl business development and licensing for you right yes correct um on on translating this now to revenue let's think about revenue your guidance i think is for about a four and a half percent revenue decline that's you know reflective of some of the historical bookings we've kind of preached that there's a lag in this business we have that trending kind of ramping and ending the year closer to a positive number maybe you could put some shape around how the year progresses yeah let me let's talk about that a

Jill McConnell, CFO

little bit that decline as you know dave we've talked about it is largely it's it was three things. It was a reduction in pass-through because of some mix. It was some volume and price issues that we, not issues, but we talked about some FSP contracts where we had to take some price as a result of some of the things that have been happening in the industry. And then there was a little bit because the first half of last year had softer bookings. The largest impact there is pass-through. So I think if you exclude the pass-through impact, and you can see that in some of the disclosures that we provide, the underlying service fee revenue is trending increasingly towards flat, you know, as we go through the course of the year, and all the work we're doing now focusing on book-to-bill and new business is in, you know, to try to position us then to be able to return to growth. So, you know, I don't think you're going to see – there's no hockey stick in the back end of the year, but slowly seeing that underlying service fee revenue come closer to flat and, you know, perhaps slightly positive at the end of the year. I mean, obviously, you know, as we go forward.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

For clarity, service fee trending toward flat, that's a by the end of the year statement, not a for the year statement.

Jill McConnell, CFO

Yes, by the end of the year. Yes, as we presume it could go across the quarters.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Let's transition to margin and cost savings, obviously a topic near and dear to your heart. um you're targeting i think for this year 70 to 80 80 million excuse me of gross cost savings 40 to 50 million net yes um help us kind of shine a light on how you um identify those costs surgically you know with the balance being how do i keep my people that are really important to winning new business while also driving to a margin that we think is more appropriate for a CRO and for your company.

Jill McConnell, CFO

I mean, that is obviously the balance that you have to strike. And so every time we look at cost savings initiatives and as a people-based business, you know, you have to be mindful. So we always are looking at what's the customer impact of any proposed adjustment that we're And we also are staying very connected with our employees. And two things that give us, you know, some confidence that we're striking the right balance is that our NPS scores, net promoter scores with our customers are continuing to improve since the spin, and they continue to improve. And then from an engagement perspective, we've actually seen engagement both in terms of people who participate. We do twice a year surveys, both participation rates, but also engagement scores are higher than benchmarks for, you know, what our survey team tells us is for the industry. So I think that we are managing to strike that. We have to be very careful. But, you know, there are more things besides people. We've been thoughtful about the facility's footprint. We've been trying to rationalize applications. And in the supporting functions, we've leveraged third parties because they will be able to help us accelerate that journey. And also when, you know, when we return to growth, be able to scale without having to add back capacity.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

Dave, can I add one thing here? Think about cost cutting. you know the way I talk about it with our employees because when you go through cost cuts over a couple of years you have to communicate with employees you have to be transparent so people understand what you're doing and why you're doing it so there's sort of three waves to think about it there's a wave when you come out of a spin in any company and that has ever gone through a spin there are costs that are not necessary to operate in that new business environment so that's sort of the first round of things that you go through for us a little bit of perfect storm of coming out of a spin while the market was constrained that that pressure on revenues led to a second round which was to right-size the business for the new revenue base when we do cost-cutting now I'm making it part of our culture and I talk about it with our employees it's not for the sake of cost-cutting it's for the sake of becoming a more efficient and becoming a more effective organization our belief is if we continue to think through how how we are less bureaucratic, how we have less layers, how we have more accountability. All of this stuff, while, yes, it yields the cost savings that we're looking for, it actually yields higher win rates in the marketplace for us. It allows us to actually come across as a more effective, nimble organization that is purely focused on execution. So this is how we've switched the narrative internally, and it works. And believe it or not, we have employees that will self-identify areas in which we can be more effective and more efficient.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

I'd love to revisit a couple of things, Jill, that you mentioned. NPS scores improving. What do you think, I'm sure it's a multitude of factors, but what one or two factors would you highlight that move the needle on NPS the most?

Jill McConnell, CFO

You know, I think, and Anja certainly can weigh in here, but, you know, the absolute focus on quality and execution and discipline and how we communicate with the customers more proactively along the journey, I think that the dialogues and the conversations are much richer now, and the relationships that we're building all across the leadership, you know, across the leadership of the organizations and our company is really important. and our employees understand that they are the face of the customer. We've made that very clear. They are the experience that customer has, and so making sure they understand that in all their interactions, how they show up is really critical.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

Quality, execution, and predictability. That's what sponsors care about when it comes to working with a CRO.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Yeah, I want to emphasize that predictability point. I think that's coming up more and more, and it's probably something that my audience is not maybe used to focusing on. So the other point that you made, Jill, was kind of a reminder, facilities footprint, rationalizing applications, those are part of a list of things that you were attacking post-spin and perhaps haven't gotten the airtime, which maybe means they're in better shape. But are you still on that journey? Is most of that journey done? Maybe a quick revisit of that?

Jill McConnell, CFO

I mean, you're never not on the journey, right, in terms of because the technology and automation is just moving every moment. But what I think sets us apart is because we had to do a complete reset at the spin, we were able to be very intentional with how we built out the enterprise applications and all that functionality so that we could be thinking about the future. So, you know, in some respects, we believe we were able to leapfrog. You're not trying to pull forward, you know, systems and things you've had in place. You're able to build knowing what the future here is. So, and I think leveraging the third parties as well in the supporting functions helps us accelerate that journey because they're, you know, they're bringing cutting edge things to us as well.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Very good. Okay, so I've beaten that topic up enough. I'll move on. So, Anshul, in conversations you and I have had, we've talked about client concentration And you made the right and interesting kind of, you know, reminder point to me that basically every CRO has one or a few very large, outsized, important clients. In Fortria's case, to the outside at least, it looks like you do have one that is substantially larger than two and beyond. What are the keys to managing that? I'll let you answer that. Go ahead, please.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

I think, yeah, as we've talked about, Dave, you know, every CRO, and frankly, I think every services company and every services industry, you always have a couple of anchor clients that provide a big base. The thing that people have to remember, client concentration, to some extent, can have, you know, negative consequences, but I'm sure this is where we're going and things you have to work on. But some of the positive consequences are it allows you to build capabilities. It allows you to build scale in therapeutic areas and things of that nature that can be leveraged across the board. In Fortria's case, I think not having growth over the last couple of years exacerbates the numbers and what you see in terms of the client concentration. If you look at the last couple of quarters of revenue, our client concentration with that one large client is coming down, not because we're not growing in that client, it's because we're growing in general, and that allows for diversification of the portfolio. That's really where I'm focused. But in terms of managing this client, I mean, any time you have a client of size, in fact, I think all clients are important. I spend my time with wherever I can be most impactful. And if I can be most impactful at our largest client, then I'm spending the vast majority of my time there. Right now, we've got a 14-year history. We've got thousands of people that work on this. It's an incredibly robust and strong partnership that we're actually very proud of. And over the next couple of quarters, I think you'll see that client concentration number come down, Not because we're not growing with one of our flagship clients, but because we're continuing to grow outside and we're continuing to diversify that base.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

And is that revenue stream a benefit or detriment to your margin improvement goals?

Anshul Thakral, CEO

So I think the interesting part is when you talk about that, you have to talk about a variable margin versus a fixed margin. Whenever you have a client at large scale, scale equals price. equals competition, right? So the larger the scale, you're going to have lower pricing. That's just basic economics 101. At the same time, scale also allows you to build things that you may not otherwise be able to build. That scale allows you to build, you know, cell and gene therapy capabilities in countries like China and Japan that you may not have otherwise built. So looking at just a margin on an incremental basis isn't the right way to think about it. We think about the importance, but at the end of the day, yeah, you know volume and pricing do go hand in hand and

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Maybe more specifically can you speak to as you think about this mid-teens margin goal? Can it help you to get there?

Anshul Thakral, CEO

Yes, it can as we as we continue to grow look I think the most important piece for Fortria right now Isn't just is it on the cost containment? We've done that continuing to keep that culture and make that a continuous journey as jill talked about that's important but the most important goal is growth as we grow within our largest clients we don't it's not just that one within our largest clients but also as we expand our aperture to clients that we don't currently work with especially in biopharma and biotech across both sectors across geographies that's how we get to growth right now we have a cost basis that as Joe has pointed out several times, that can absorb the next couple percentage of growth coming our way. As that growth comes our way and we can absorb that growth without having to hire back, that's where you're going to start seeing the margin accretion come from.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

So we mentioned, I'm going to move to sales. We mentioned the strong track record, improving track record in the last three quarters since you joined. how have you realigned the sales force or changed incentives to or change the focus to not only target the business you want to target but actually win a

Anshul Thakral, CEO

decent amount of it yeah so I think look first was defining what do we mean by sales sales is not sales reps alone you know sales reps are a small portion of an overall selling process ensuring that we recognize that a commercial team and operational team, a customer-facing finance team, and a customer-facing legal team, all four are required to be able to change your commercial model. First and foremost, we got the company focused in areas that matter the most to us, where we see growth coming, making sure we have selling models across those four functions that are fit for purpose, not a one-size-fits-all. We did not take our attention off of selling into big pharma. We doubled down on that attention, but in a different model and then focused in selling to mid-size small biotech companies but in a different model different way of working different way of thinking the biggest the biggest feedback I've gotten from customers over the past couple of months has been we're a lot easier to work with that's not just a sales thing or a sales incentive thing that goes across how all of those functions to work with and then we're bringing a lot more technical expertise to the table. One of the ways in which we can bring technical expertise to the table is realizing when there's a very low odds of winning something because we're not the right CRO to run that study, pull ourselves out of it so we can refocus in efforts in where we are fully confident that we are the right CRO to run that. So that's the kind of feedback I'm getting, but that selling approach hasn't just been about sales reps or incentives or focus. It's about getting the organization and all elements that our customer facing, rowing in the same direction, and understanding customer phenotypes and how you row differently for customer A versus customer B. Is it right to think then that

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

operational people, the right types of operational people, have sales incentives somehow in their

Anshul Thakral, CEO

comp? Well, I will tell you all of our leaders, right, all of our top several hundred folks, All of our leaders, our bonus pools, et cetera, are measured on both revenue and EBITDA, but also we have net bookings as part of our executive compensation for all of our leaders. We don't give sales targets to folks in operations, but you can't achieve your targets if we're not doing well in delivering the existing work and we're not doing well in attracting new work. And our incentives are set up as such appropriately across all of our functions.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

While we're in sales and business development, one of the – we talked earlier about FSO improving, which is encouraging. FSP work is something that I think you and honestly since the spin, the message I think has been we want to be relatively selective about what we go after in FSP. This recent renewal that Jill mentioned earlier where you said you had an FSP contract renewal with some price concessions, can you put some color around that? Like why was the decision that you should, in that case, keep that business as opposed to being more selective?

Anshul Thakral, CEO

Look, I think at the end of the day, this was a client that we have worked for a long time with, and we have a lot of colleagues dedicated to that client. Our belief was not only would it be disruptive to our organization, and frankly, it would be disruptive to their mission in bringing medicines to market. And in this particular case, it was a strategic client where we've done decades of work, and we have longstanding relationships and an ability to grow in other service lines. It made sense for a variety of reasons for us to take the price concessions we needed to retain the client. Now, at the same time, in this particular case, we were offered more volume for lower price concessions as some of our competitors that you've interviewed in this room, I think, offered, and we chose not to do that. We chose to retain the business we have instead of grow the business we have in this particular But sometimes when you look at these things, you have to figure out what the right answer And the right answer, yes, involves the economics of the deal, but also involves employees and also involves the science that is being pushed forward. And in this particular case, Jill and I sat together and weighed that decision and decided it was the right thing for us to do.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Okay, I want to make sure I understand that point. So you had the opportunity. If you go lower on price, you get more volume, and you passed on that.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

We ended up being the highest priced of the CROs that they kept.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Okay. And then I think there was some allusion to opportunities to chase is maybe not the right word, but to pursue maybe adjacent business, be that in Clint Farm or other areas. Is that the right way to think about that? Maybe put some color on that.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

That's the right way to think about it. Look, this is a very large pharmaceutical company. They work with various CROs across a variety of services. And if we have an opportunity to grow other service lines over the course of the next few years, we want to be in the best position to do so. I mean, I would do that across all of our customers, but you're happening to talk about this particular one.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Certainly. So let's move to AI and wrap in that area.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

It's always good to do that in the last three or four minutes.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Yeah, it's a small topic. It's kind of an aside. I'm going to ask you this way. What are clients saying, doing, requiring in AI as you're engaging around projects?

Anshul Thakral, CEO

A lot more on the saying than the doing currently. So I can't think of a client conversation where AI isn't a topic that gets discussed. I think if you asked me a year ago, that wasn't the case, But now I was having dinner with a client last night, CEO of a company where we're working on a program for the next couple of months here to start something pretty big with them. In a particular case like this, the AI was a conversation topic. But the conversation topic was around the lines of, hey, I'm getting asked a lot of questions from my board. We don't have great answers around this. What do you think and how can we work together on ensuring that we don't get left behind a couple years from now if there's efficiency gains to be had in our current programs? I had a meeting earlier in the week on Monday with a large pharma company where the conversation was different, which was, hey, we're investing tens of millions of dollars in getting our own agentic solutions off the ground. How can you guys integrate into it? Can we do a bit of a show and tell and figure out how to develop the best of both breeds? There hasn't been a conversation today that is of the flavor of, well, we can't work with you because somebody else has got a better solution in AI. There has not been a conversation of, here's a perfect solution and we have it. How do we implement it? Those are the two flavors of conversations, Dave, that we've been having across the industry. And they do tend to matter, big pharma versus small pharma. And the smaller the pharma, the less likely they have the ability to invest and move forward. Probably also more caution. The larger the pharma, the more likelihood that they are co-investing right now. But the conversations in those cases tend to be, how do we collaborate? How do we jointly develop? And what do we build together?

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

I think there's the areas where I've spent probably wasted a lot of brain cells is trying to ferret out the risk aversion side of the industry in this, really, and maybe the better word to use is validation. So perhaps that example where you said the client, hey, we're investing a bunch in RAI. How can you integrate into that? I'm wondering if you get to some degree in the weeds, like where are they in that journey? And what's realistic relative to when they really will operationalize these kind of things in a meaningful way?

Anshul Thakral, CEO

So I will say something that may be unpopular because I'm here and I'm going to spend a lot of time with our current and hopefully future investors. The conversations I have with our investors don't quite look like the conversations I have with our customers. There's a three or four year lag in these conversations.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

I appreciate you putting a number on it.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

The conversations I'm having with our investors are all about what can we do in 2026? What are you doing? How do you think about AI changing the industry in 2026? The conversations I have with our customers are, okay, this is going to take three or four years before we can actually start changing workflow that matters. What are incremental proof points that we can get in 27 and 28? What are some of the co-development testing that we can do? By the way, how are you thinking about it from an ACRO perspective? How are you tackling this from an FDA perspective? The conversations are so nuanced and so complex. It's a multi-year journey before there's actual meaningful impact where a client says, hey, I am now ready to let you change Workflow X to be an AI-enabled workflow. That concept of I am a client telling you, CRO, you can change Workflow X to be AI-enabled, that hasn't even entered the realm of possibility yet. That's several years away. So that's the hard part, especially when I'm here, Dave. The conversations with our investors and with our clients are lagging by several years.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Yeah, very good. So it probably goes without saying, but if I were to ask, then, are AI demands manifesting in price and scope negotiations after what you just said? I've got to believe the answer is no, but I'll let you say it.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

If you cannot credibly stand up and say you have a plan, a strategy, and you have an ability to meet the client where they need you to be in 2030, then you will be competitively disadvantaged. That does not mean that today's RFPs are showing up with AI as a pricing tactic.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

Got it. I see it flashing at me, but given this topic, I'll let you just, in a minute, how does Fortria Intelligent Technology fit into your picture? Sure. The biggest thing for us is

Anshul Thakral, CEO

the thing I'm pushing in the company is AI cannot be the thing we talk about over here on the left to the right. We have our Accelerate platform is the core of how we do work, how data gets processed, how our clients as well as our teams can centralize the data, look at it in a data lake in a centralized manner and be able to do the various activities across all our workflows. What fit is, is instead of AI being a quote unquote thing, we're building an intelligence layer on top of the current systems we use. We want to be able to embed the intelligence layers into our current systems, into our current processes with the hope and goal at different degrees, all of the information and how we access the information, we're able to access it through an intelligence layer. If you're accessing that information to be able to do medical writing, you're probably going to be able to do that faster. The intelligence layer is going to be more robust. If you're accessing it to do site selection, right now that intelligence layer is under development. In a year, it'll be better. and a year after that, it'll be even better and then you'll get to a point where you're doing site selection through an intelligence layer. But the whole idea of FIT is not to talk about AI as a separate thing. Make it an embedded layer so that the user accesses the data through a layer of intelligence and make it embedded in the workflow. That takes time.

David Windley, Analyst — Jefferies

All right, very good. Thank you for that. I'm a minute and a half beyond, so we'll yield to the next. Thank you for your attendance to Jeffrey's Global Healthcare Conference and enjoy the rest of the last day.

Anshul Thakral, CEO

All right, Dave. Thank you very much.