Certara, Inc.
Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 4 Mar 2021

[Operator:]

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Certara Fourth Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there'll be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference may be recorded. I would not like to turn the conference over to your speaker today, David Deuchler, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

[David Deuchler:]

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in today's conference call. On the call from Certara, we have William Feehery, Chief Executive Officer and Andrew Schemick, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, Certara released financial results for the quarter and year ended December 31st, 2020. A copy of the press release along with the supplementary presentation is available on the company's IR website.

[William Feehery:]

Thank you, David. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining Certara's fourth quarter earnings call. Andrew and I will start with prepared remarks and then we will take questions. On December 11, 2020, we successfully completed our IPO and listed on the NASDAQ. We raised $768.5 million in gross IPO proceeds, including $316.3 million in net proceeds for the company. Behalf of Certara, I would like to thank everyone who was involved with the IPO. With the investment community support, we are now better positioned to deliver on our mission to accelerate the drug development process with our biosimulation software and tech enabled services. We're also pleased to note that Certara will be joining the Russell 1000 index effective March 19. In 2020, Certara had another strong year of financial performance, with 17% year-over-year revenue growth, including record revenue in the fourth quarter, which grew 20% over the same quarter in the previous year. We were also very pleased with our growth in profitability. Our 2020 adjusted EBITDA increased by 28% for the full year and by 36% in the fourth quarter.

[Andrew Schemick:]

Thanks, William. Hello, everyone. First, we will go through the fourth quarter results, followed by the full year results and I will finish the prepared remarks with the guidance for the full year of 2021. As William mentioned earlier, the fourth quarter was a record quarter for Certara. Total revenue for the three months ended December 31st, 2020 was $64.6 million, representing year-over-year growth of 20%. Software revenue was $17.5 million, which increased 4% over the prior year period. We saw 12% growth in revenue from subscription software, but Certara migrate certain products from license to subscription. This growth was offset by lower software maintenance and timing of software license revenue recognition. Notwithstanding, the software maintenance and timing, software revenues grew consistent with historical level. Services revenue was $47.1 million, which increased 27% over the prior year period. The growth in services revenue reflects the trend of increased adoption of our end-to-end platform from both our installed base of customers and new logos. I will provide the full year net revenue repeat rate on services later in the discussion. In addition to revenue, we also monitor two key performance indicators to evaluate retention and expansion, new bookings and aggregate renewal rates. Software bookings were $21 million, which decreased 3% from the prior year period due to several large renewals booked early during the third quarter. I'll mention here that bookings can vary from quarter-to-quarter dependent in part on the timing of signing larger renewal contracts.

[William Feehery:]

Thank you, Andrew. In summary, 2020 was a very strong year for Certara in a challenging environment. Our Certara team continues to focus on our commitments to customers and deliver strong growth for our shareholders, despite the COVID-19 pandemic. We believe that our end-to-end platform is well-positioned to benefiting from solid market trends. We expect to capture a larger share of overall biopharmaceutical R&D spend, as we continue to innovate, acquire, and add new solutions to our end-to-end platform. At this point, we will open up the call for questions. Operator, can you please open up the line?

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our first question comes from Vikram Purohit with Morgan Stanley. You may proceed with your question.

[Vikram Purohit:]

Great. Thanks for taking my question. First one from me is on the topic of seasonality. Could you talk a little bit about how buying patterns trend throughout the year, both for the software business and for the services business? And how we should kind of think about any possible lumpiness of revenues on a quarter to quarter basis going forward?

[Andrew Schemick:]

Hi, Vikram.

[William Feehery:]

Thanks. Go ahead, Andrew.

[Andrew Schemick:]

Thanks, William. Okay. So, regarding seasonality, I really look at that at three levels. The bookings, it tends to be less of a seasonal pattern. It's more dependent on client behavior. If you look at 2019, we had 54% of our bookings in the first half, 46% in the second half that was related to one large multiyear booking we had in the second quarter. If you look at 2020, 45% in the first half, 55% in the second half. We had a very strong bookings year and momentum for the second half. The revenues, we're a growing company. We grow quarter-over-quarter. There can be some seasonality in the software, particularly around Q1 and Q4, where we have a heavy renewal season. That seasonality is generally offset by growing tech enabled services business. And the revenues for the previous two years have been split about 49% in the first half, 51% in the second half. EBITDA tends to follow the revenues. Historically, in 2020, we had a lower percentage of EBITDA in the second half, that was entirely driven by the timing of our performance compensation accruals, given the lack of visibility of the full year, the lack of uncertainty with regards to the early stages of COVID. We caught up on those accruals in the fourth quarter and third quarter. If you put those back into the first and second quarter, exactly follows the same seasonality is the revenue trend.

[Vikram Purohit:]

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. And a follow-up if I could. I just wanted to see if you could talk a little bit about how much COVID contributed to 2020 revenues in terms of, again, both software and for the services business? And how much of COVID contribution would you expect going forward throughout 2021 and beyond, understanding it's a bit of a fluid situation, but just any thoughts you'd have there, would be helpful.

[Andrew Schemick:]

Sure. So, we definitely saw an acceleration from COVID, not necessarily overall impact on the financial statements specifically for COVID. Our revenues tend to track the work that's ongoing in the industry. So, if it was a priority for our clients, it was a priority for us. We did see some surge of work in the second quarter at the early stages of COVID, but we don't expect a major impact and expect going forward to kind of follow the trend of investment in R&D in the biopharmaceutical industry. William, anything that?

[William Feehery:]

Yeah. So, I think that the best way to look at this as that COVID for us as an important -- we're very proud of the work we did. But from a financial standpoint, it's more or less of a wash. Teams that were working on other things rolled over to work on COVID and then they moved back as the pharmaceutical industry moves. So, in the second quarter we probably lost a few projects and then we gained a few COVID projects and then a lot of those projects came back later in the year. So, I don't think that it was -- particularly financially a big impact one way or the other really for us in 2019, although certainly did affect the projects we worked on and the mix a little bit there.

[Vikram Purohit:]

Okay. Understood. Thank you.

[Andrew Schemick:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Ryskin with Bank of America. You may proceed with your question.

[Michael Ryskin:]

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking a question. Appreciate it and congrats on quarter and nice 2021 outlook. I want to start with focusing on cross-selling opportunity between the biosimulation software and services. Could you give us an update on sort of how that progressed over the course of 2020, in particularly in the fourth quarter, and sort of your thoughts on how that could accelerate in 2020? Is that something you've seen any meaningful ?

[William Feehery:]

Yeah. Thanks, Michael. Appreciate the question. So, look, we've been accelerating our efforts to do cross-selling. In 2020, we increased our percentage of customers that are buying more than one solution from Certara by roughly -- if you look at our top 300 customers that moved from about two-thirds up to about 72%. So a couple points increase. Obviously, we have more than two solutions in Certara, so there's more opportunities as we go forward. So, I'd say that we think that we are tapping into an important strategy for Certara. It's been certainly a growing opportunity through the year, but we also don't think we've quite reached the end there. So, there's lots -- certainly a lot of customers we have that we believe would benefit from other solutions as their drugs move through the development pipeline. And we've been organizing ourselves and tapping into our internal data systems to track drugs so that we're able to bring the right solution to the right customer at the right time.

[Michael Ryskin:]

Okay. And can I ask a follow-up. I mean, you discussed a little bit sort of the COVID impact on the revenues, but I was more curious in, how would you think about your sales and marketing approach, your Salesforce out there, especially with new customers outside of sort of the renewal parts of the business, what was the impact of COVID in 2020? How should we think about potentially going back to the prior ways of doing business in 2021 in terms of being able to do more visits with potential customers, sort of were there any headwinds that you observed throughout the year, and how were you able to adapt there?

[William Feehery:]

Yeah. Thanks. Good question. And like -- look, like every company around the world, we've had to make adaptations and adjust. In the past we used a number of large conferences as marketing events and marketing tools. And although, a lot of them went to a virtual format. It's really not the same. So we made a much bigger investment in digital marketing and digital meetings. Then we had in the past and we saw a lot of success over that. It's not just us migrating, obviously the customer -- it's not just us migrating, how we market and how we sell, it's also customers are migrating how they learn about solutions and how they buy at the same time. So, I think we're -- we've tapped well into what I think will be a continuing trend in the industry about how some of this happened. We've also increased investment in 2020, and we're continuing to do that as we go into 2021 in our commercial footprint globally. We see opportunities to expand our sales, marketing, business development teams in software in China and in Europe, in particular. And we did that through the particularly -- particularly in the second half of 2020 as, because when COVID hit, it was a little bit of a slowdown in hiring, I think, all in -- in lots of industries. But in the second half, we started to accelerate that and we're continuing to make what we think are good investments in expanding that as we go into this year.

[Michael Ryskin:]

Thanks so much.

[William Feehery:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Windley with Jefferies. You may proceed with your question.

[David Windley:]

Hi. Thanks a lot. Thanks for taking my question. I got a few. On the QSP models that you've talked about being in development and progressed this year. I believe some of the -- at least some of those, maybe all of those are through your consortium model. And so, I was wondering, just kind of an update on the progress of those. Are they now kind of fully vetted, fully commercial ready? And are you able to immediately sell those to clients outside the consortium or is it limited to the consortium here for a while? I just kind of want to understand the cadence of that.

[William Feehery:]

Okay. So, the answer is it varies. There are a number of QSP models.

[David Windley:]

Okay.

[William Feehery:]

The -- and in general, without getting into all the specifics, we certainly provide an advantage to the consortium members in terms of some lead in terms of accessing the technology. But in the long run, we do have the ability to sell them. And we do outside the consortium when they're ready. So, generally, the consortium is put together, we work on it with just those customers, they get early access. And then, when the consortium is gone, a couple of years down the line and then those models become available. So, occasionally some of the consortiums go on for multiple terms. We are finding some interest in renewal in our immuno-oncology consortium right now, for example. And we're putting -- in the early stages of a neurodegenerative diseases consortium is, to give you the idea of some others different stages. And then, some of our QSP modeling is done on our own investment. And we don't do it in consortium depending on that the area. We might do it with one customer, or we might simply do it with our own investment and create products for that.

[David Windley:]

Got it. Okay. And thinking of -- a follow-up to one of the last questions about your kind of land and expand strategy and selling multiple products to clients. I noted in Andy's prepared remarks and emphasis on biosim. Are you seeing uptake predominantly there, or are you also kind of in a pretty balanced fashion, seen regulatory and market access uptake as well?

[William Feehery:]

So we saw particularly in the fourth quarter, a particularly strong uptake in biosimulation. But our growth was pretty broad based. It included market access and regulatory as well. They both do quite well in 2020 and then in the fourth quarter. So, I guess, the answer is, it's strong in both of them.

[David Windley:]

Okay. And then, last question, I'll pass it on is, I noted -- I note that your bookings balance is increasingly shifting toward your tech enabled services. I think that's fairly consistent with what you thought -- may be a little bit more so than the 70/30 mix that we've seen in the recent past. Do you expect that that mix shift to services in 2021 to continue? And how is the labor market for the clinical pharmacologists and pharmaconutritions that you hire to support that service provision?

[William Feehery:]

Great. So, thanks for the question. Maybe Andy, you want to take the first part and then I'll talk about the labor market.

[Andrew Schemick:]

Sure. Happy to. So, we do see a slightly higher growth rate in the services relative to the software, which is causing a mix shift. We expect the -- our mix next year to be consistent with the mix this year, based on our projections. The net effect of that though is that, if you look at the numbers in a little bit more detail, our services are tech enabled services in many cases, they're related to our software in terms of customizations or implementations. They are leveraging our software to provide a service. We also have other technology fees. So, the mix shift -- while we did have a mixed shift this year in booking and also in revenue, once you exclude the non-cash stock-based compensation, we had a modest decline in cost of revenues. So, we had to increase efficiency, if you will. I look at that more on a revenue per headcount basis. So, we're comfortable with our forward guidance with that respect. Is that helpful?

[David Windley:]

Yes, it is. Thank you.

[William Feehery:]

And then, just to comment a little bit on the labor market, look, we hire a fairly extra group of people and we have pretty high standards. So, certainly, it's never an easy situation in the market. However, we -- I point out we have done quite well. We believe there is a lot of room for growth. And in some ways the new post-pandemic, or what we've learned through the pandemic is helping us. The increased ability to work virtually and have confidence in that model, it's sort of expanded the number of places we can recruit from. We're a global company. We find people all over the world, and our ability to do that, it's gotten better over the last year. So, I think, we're never going to feel like we have -- no company ever feels like they've hired everybody they want. It's always -- we're always going to be working on that, but I think, we are feeling confident about our ability to continue to grow this model.

[David Windley:]

Got it. Very good. Thank you.

[William Feehery:]

Thank you. Thank you, David. Appreciate it.

[Andrew Schemick:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And our next question comes from Erin Wright with Credit Suisse. You may proceed with your question.

[Erin Wright:]

Hey, thanks. There's obviously various models in terms of biosimulation. I guess, how are you thinking about the long-term mix dynamics in terms of drug development stage? Or is it primarily, largely all going to be overweight on the clinical side, longer term? Or do you anticipate any sort of shift in strategy there? Thanks.

[William Feehery:]

Yeah. Thanks for the question. Look, the roots of Certara were in -- as you pointed out, were in the clinical phase, that's where we started. And I think the original idea was that's really where most of the dollars are spent in pharmaceutical development. So, it makes sense, and we're certainly not -- certainly not regretting that choice. But we have made -- a part of our strategy to expand an end-to-end solution throughout all of pharmaceutical development. We do have solutions across -- as we say between discovery and market access. But we think there's additional opportunity to kind of fill that out. So, we're certainly going to keep investing in the development and clinical stage part of our business, but maybe the mix will shift a bit over time as we add additional solutions going forward.

[Erin Wright:]

Okay. Great. And on that note, M&A or capital deployment priorities, I know you discussed a little bit about it kind of during the prepared remarks, but anything that in particular that you would be kind of targeting here and at this point, or any holes kind of fill from that portfolio perspective, that'd be great. Thanks.

[William Feehery:]

Yeah. So, as you know that Certara has a fairly long history of a discipline acquisition strategy. We look at acquisitions from both -- from a strategic lens in terms of does this expand our end-to-end solution that gets more relevant to our customers as they move their drug through development and from a financial perspective. And I think, to my knowledge, looking back, we've had a very successful track record of doing that. In the second half of last year, we were effectively out of the M&A market as we focused on our IPO, but our business -- our corporate development team was still very active in monitoring things. And so, we are tracking quite a number of interesting opportunities of technologies that we think could expand our offering. We'd made one acquisition in the fourth quarter. It was a company called AUTHOR!, which is a regulatory and biostatistics firm in Europe. And we'll happily report back when we have something else -- something new to report as we go forward.

[Erin Wright:]

Okay. Great. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Kreger with William Blair. You may proceed with your question.

[John Kreger:]

Hi, thanks very much. Hey, Bill, could you just elaborate a little bit more on the AUTHOR! deal? I think you said it just closed a few days ago. Should we view that as sort of a template of the kinds of things you're looking for, and perhaps if you could give us any input on price, or a revenue contribution.

[William Feehery:]

We -- the AUTHOR! deal was a small deal, so we didn't reveal those numbers. We can say that we are interested in small bolt-ons where we typically find them at very attractive prices, as well as larger more transformative deals. So, this would fit basically in the former category. We think we've got a group of very smart, accomplished people that will help us expand our European regulatory bio statistics business, which is one of our priorities.

[John Kreger:]

Got it. Thank you. And then, Andy, I think of the 20% revenue growth that you reported in the fourth quarter, was that all organic, or did you have any sort of an acquisition benefit in that number?

[Andrew Schemick:]

That was all organic.

[John Kreger:]

Great. Thanks. And then, maybe just a couple of follow-ups on the guidance. I think at the midpoint, you're -- it sounds your guiding tool that 15% top line growth. Should we assume services and software are kind of comparable around 15%, or do you expect services to grow faster?

[Andrew Schemick:]

Yeah. Based on, -- I mean, forecast based on kind of visibility and looking at our prior period trends. So looking back, we've seen, and we've -- I think we've talked about this, the software and looking at the organic growth rate, when I exclude, for example, the runoff contract in the low-teens, low to mid-teens, and then the services in the mid to high-teens.

[John Kreger:]

Okay. So, that's your expectation for 2021 as well?

[Andrew Schemick:]

Yeah.

[John Kreger:]

Great. And then one last one, similar, if you -- would you expect biosimulation to grow a little bit faster than regulatory and market access in 2021, or should we assume those three buckets are similar?

[Andrew Schemick:]

The biosimulation, it has been performing at a higher growth rate. We have a higher level of presold work in that area.

[John Kreger:]

Okay. So, that'll be fast. Great. Thank you.

[William Feehery:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Sergott with Barclays. You may proceed with your question.

[Luke Sergott:]

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. So, it looks like your EBITDA -- the margins take a step down a bit in 2021. Can you just give us a little more color what's going on there and then kind of the pacing throughout the year on that OpEx step up?

[Andrew Schemick:]

Yes. The EBITDA margin for next year, we target mid 30% EBITDA margin range. We factor in the ability to make additional investments, as we see fit -- one of the areas Bill discussed earlier was kind of our approach to sales and marketing, also has investments in R&D that can impact EBITDA margin a bit. We also are seeing an increase this year in some costs as relates to being a public company. So, for example, D&O insurance was a big change. So expecting the cost to kind of mirror that the revenue mix I discussed earlier in terms of seasonality. So, we do have some -- phasing up cost is -- cost as a business grows throughout the year.

[Luke Sergott:]

All right. That's helpful. And then, as you guys build out in China, as the business mix mirror what you guys have here in the West, or is there any discrepancies -- or not discrepancies, but there's differences in demand among the different software and services?

[William Feehery:]

Yeah. Luke, thanks for the question. Well, we think that ultimately it will mirror this. However, the industry in China is in a slightly different stage of development. So, we are seeing, I think, initially more demand on the software side, and that's partly a function of -- we're building -- we still have to build up a significant amount of capability to do the tech services side -- tech services there, but we do believe that those companies are growing and there's a lot of investment going in. There's a lot of western pharmaceutical companies there as well. So, we think that ultimately we're going to see the same needs from those companies, as we see -- from pharmaceutical companies in other parts of the world.

[Luke Sergott:]

Got it. That makes sense. And then, I guess, lastly for me. You guys -- you put a nice stat up there. 72% of your top 300 customers are buying two-plus solutions. Can you give us a sense of the ACV of those customers on those two solutions? Or just somehow -- some direction on how that ACV has grown?

[William Feehery:]

Do you want to take that one Andy, or?

[Andrew Schemick:]

Yeah. I think, the majority of the top 300 are captured in the ACV over a hundred thousand category.

[Luke Sergott:]

Okay.

[Andrew Schemick:]

261 of the 300.

[Luke Sergott:]

Yeah. It helps. Okay.

[Andrew Schemick:]

14% growth in the count.

[Luke Sergott:]

Okay.

[Andrew Schemick:]

See if I can pull that up. Yeah. I think that's the answer. So.

[William Feehery:]

Thank you, Luke.

[Luke Sergott:]

Yeah. Sure. Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. And I'm not showing any further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the call back over to William for any further remarks.

[William Feehery:]

Well, I would like to thank everybody for joining Certara's first earnings call. Really appreciate you all dialing in. And with that, we will close this and say good evening. Thank you.

[Andrew Schemick:]

Thank you.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.