IQVIA Q3 2021 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
October 20, 2021

Key Takeaways

  • Record revenue and profit growth: Q3 revenue rose 21.7% to $3.391 billion, beating guidance by $54 million, while adjusted EBITDA grew 20.5% and EPS jumped 33.1% to $2.17.
  • Robust life‐sciences industry momentum: Biotech funding hit a record $35.8 billion through September, 3,000 late‐stage molecules are in Phase II/III, trial starts are up 23% year‐on‐year, and FDA approvals stand at 40 YTD.
  • Technology and real‐world evidence leadership: FDA cited IQVIA publications in draft guidance on RWE, 10 new clients adopted the OCE platform (total 169), and 89 fully decentralized trials worth over $1 billion have been awarded.
  • Expanding backlog in R&D services: RMBS net new bookings reached $2.6 billion in Q3 (LTM net new $10 billion), contracted backlog rose 12.7% YoY to $24.4 billion, underpinning $6.9 billion of revenue over the next 12 months.
  • Upgraded full‐year guidance: Management raised 2021 revenue guidance to $13.775–13.85 billion (21.3%–21.9% growth), adjusted EBITDA to $2.98–3.01 billion, and EPS to $8.85–8.95, reflecting strong operational momentum.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
IQVIA Q3 2021
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the IQVIA Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press the pound key. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Thank you. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Nick Childs, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications.

Operator

Mr. Childs, please begin your conference.

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our third quarter 2021 earnings call. With me today are Ari Bousbib, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Ron Bruehlman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; Eric Sherbet, Executive Vice President and General Counsel; Mike Fedock, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis; and Brian Stengel, Associate Director, Investor Relations. Today, we will be referencing a presentation that will be visible during this call for those of you on our webcast. This presentation will also be available following this call in the Events and Presentation section of our IQVIA Investor Relations website at ir.iqvia.com. Before we begin, I would like to caution listeners that certain information discussed by management during this conference call will include forward-looking statements.

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

The actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by forward-looking statements due to risks and uncertainties associated with the company's business, which are discussed in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. In addition, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call, which should be considered a supplement to and not a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures is included in the press release and conference call presentation. I would now like to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Ari Bousbib.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Thank you, Nick, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining today for our third quarter results. Our strong momentum from earlier in the year has continued despite the resurgence of COVID-19 due to the Delta variant. This has not had an impact on our operations as we have learned to manage through these disruptions. Our outlook for the longer term remains unchanged. The backdrop for the life science industry continues to be very strong. Biotech funding continues to run at record levels according to the National Venture Capital Association, funding total $35.8 billion through September 2021, already exceeding the full year of 2020. The pipeline of late-stage molecules continues to expand and is at an all-time high with almost 3,000 molecules in active phase II or phase III development.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Clinical trial starts are trending well ahead of recent years with year-to-year date starts up 23% over 2020 and 13% over 2019. Finally, new drug approvals by the FDA are keeping pace with the historically high levels of 2020 with 40 new drugs approved year-to-date, which sets the stage for a strong volume of upcoming commercial launches. The bottom line is the dynamics in the industry are strong, and we remain bullish on our outlook for our end markets and for IQVIA in particular. As we think about our longer-term plans, I want to remind you of our upcoming Analyst and Investor Conference on November 16th in New York City.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

At that meeting, we will provide financial guidance for 2022 ahead of our usual timeline, which is normally coinciding with the end-of-year results in early February, and we will share as well our midterm outlook and plans for the next phase of IQVIA's growth. We look forward to seeing everyone and hope you can join us then. With that, let's review the third quarter. Revenue for the third quarter grew 21.7% on a reported basis and 21.1% at constant currency and was $64 million above the midpoint of our guidance range. The beat was driven primarily by higher pass-throughs, which as you know dilutes our margin somewhat, as well as by stronger organic revenue growth. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA grew 20.5%, reflecting our revenue growth as well as productivity measures. The $8 million beat above the midpoint of our guidance range was entirely due to the stronger operational performance.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Third quarter Adjusted Diluted EPS of $2.17 grew 33.1%. That was $0.07 above the midpoint of our guidance, with the beat coming from the adjusted EBITDA drop through, as well as favorability in below-the-line items. Let me now provide an update on the business. Our real-world evidence business continues to take a leading role in informing healthcare. In late September, the FDA released their draft guidance on how electronic health records and medical claims data can support regulatory decision-making. It cited several IQVIA publications. With the growth of rare disease therapies and personalized medicine-driven trials, the number of single-arm clinical trials increases every year. External comparators provide important context for these studies for both regulators and payers. Our clients recognize our leading expertise in this area.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

For example, we had a recent major win to deliver an external comparator in a cardiovascular study for a top 20 pharma client. In another example, we were awarded a 15-year follow-up study to demonstrate the long-term effectiveness and safety of a newly launched gene therapy. Regulatory guidance requires extended follow-up for patients exposed to cell and gene therapies, and IQVIA's innovative real-world capabilities combining direct-to-patient solutions as well as IQVIA's technology platforms to capture secondary data was pivotal in this award. On the technology front, our suite of offerings continue to be adopted in the marketplace. You're familiar with our OCE platform and other commercial technology applications, and we have, of course, continued to expand our footprint here. We had 10 new client wins in the quarter, bringing the total number of OCE wins to date to 169 customers.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

We are also very excited to see increased adoption of our Orchestrated Clinical Trials suite, OCT. This quarter, for example, a leading biotechnology company in Asia selected our Investigator Site Portal module within OCT to power site engagements across all of their trials. We now have 165 customers that have bought the Investigator Site Portal module, representing 155,000 sites and 1,716 active studies that are using our Investigator Site Portal module. Similarly, our award-winning eCOA platform continues to experience strong demand. We have successfully deployed over 150 projects across 35 different therapeutic areas. To date, we have over 70 customers using this platform, including eight of the top 10 pharma clients. The platform has processed over 10 million unique patient responses in 65 countries and across 28 languages. I want to say a few words about a fast-growing part of our industry. You're familiar with decentralized trials or DCT.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

The IQVIA decentralized trial offering combines several tech modules within our OCT suite, including eCOA, eConsent, telemedicine, and connected devices, as well as other service capabilities, including home nurses and phlebotomists, along with our decentralized trial patient concierge and study coordinators, all organized around our decentralized trial platform. Importantly, we've developed innovative clinical patient engagement offerings, including direct-to-patient services, to accelerate recruitment and improve patient diversity and inclusion in clinical trials. When we step back and look at the growing importance of DCT in our own portfolio, we find that up to 30% of our active full-service trials utilize one or more components of our DCT offering. Incidentally, when our competitors speak about their own DCT offerings, this is often what they report as their DCT business.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

When we look at trials that actually fully utilize our DCT capabilities, meaning they are fully run on our decentralized trial platform, we've been awarded 89 trials to date, totaling over $1 billion. These awards are with 34 unique sponsors, of which 10 have multiple decentralized trials ongoing with us. These trials span 12 different therapeutic areas, 32 unique indications, and have recruited over 200,000 patients in 40 countries. Our ability to combine advanced clinical technology with an extensive network of investigators and care professionals differentiates us in this space and makes us the partner of choice for decentralized trials that utilize the full capabilities. Our overall R&DS business continues to build on its strong momentum.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

We had approximately $2.6 billion of net new bookings in the quarter, bringing our LTM net new bookings for the first time to over $10 billion, including pass-throughs. This resulted in a contracted net book-to-bill ratio of 1.39, including pass-throughs, and 1.28 excluding pass-throughs. At September 30, our LTM contracted book-to-bill ratio was 1.38, including pass-throughs, and 1.37 excluding pass-throughs. Our contracted backlog in R&DS, including pass-throughs, grew 12.7% year-over-year to $24.4 billion at September 30, 2021. As a result, our next 12 months revenue from backlog increased to $6.9 billion, up $300 million sequentially versus the second quarter. As we have signaled several times in the past, we've ramped up investment in our lab capabilities. We recently announced the opening of our new 160,000 sq ft innovation laboratory in North Carolina.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

This facility provides customers with access to cutting-edge bioanalytical, vaccine, and genomics capabilities, along with an expansion into exploratory human biomarker discovery services. These new services will enable us to partner closely with sponsors in the development of essential biomarkers to support new molecules moving into clinical development and throughout their lifecycle. This expansion, of course, comes on top of the investment we announced last quarter in our 130,000 sq ft facility in Scotland. I will now turn it over to Ron for more details on our financial performance.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Okay, thanks, Ari. Good morning, everyone. Let's start by reviewing revenue. Third quarter revenue of $3,391,000,000 grew 21.7% on a reported basis and 21.1% at constant currency. Year-to-date revenue was $10,238,000,000, growing at 27% reported and 25% at constant currency. Technology & Analytics Solutions revenue for the third quarter was $1,337,000,000, which was up 10.8% reported and 9.9% at constant currency. Year-to-date, Technology & Analytics Solutions revenue was $4,038,000,000, which was up 17.6% reported and 14.9% at constant currency. In the third quarter, R&D Solutions had revenue of $1,853,000,000, up 32.4% at actual FX rates and 31.9% at constant currency. Excluding the impact of pass-throughs, third quarter R&DS revenue grew 24.7% year-over-year. Our year-to-date revenue in R&D Solutions was $5,612,000,000, up 37.7% reported and 36.2% at constant currency.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Contract Sales and Medical Solutions, or CSMS, revenue of $201 million was up 12.3% reported and 12.8% at constant currency. Year to date, CSMS revenue was $588 million, growing 6.5% reported and 5.1% at constant currency. Let's move down to P&L to adjusted EBITDA, which was $728 million in the third quarter, up 20.5%. Year to date, adjusted EBITDA was $2,194,000,000, growing 33.1% year-over-year. Third quarter GAAP net income was $261 million, and GAAP diluted earnings per share was $1.34. Year to date, we had GAAP net income of $648 million or $3.32 of earnings per diluted share. Adjusted net income was $423 million for the third quarter, and adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 33.1% to $2.17. Year to date, adjusted net income was $1,264,000,000 or $6.48 per share. Turning to the R&D Solutions backlog.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

As Ari Bousbib reviewed, R&D Solutions delivered another outstanding quarter of net new business. Backlog now stands at $24.4 billion. In the last 12 months, net new bookings, including pass-throughs, rose to over $10 billion. Turning to the balance sheet. At September 30th, cash and cash equivalents totaled $1.5 billion, and debt was $12.2 billion. This resulted in net debt of $10.7 billion. Our net leverage ratio at September 30th came in at 3.65 times trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA. Cash flow was again quite strong in the third quarter. Cash flow from operations was $844 million. With CapEx of $162 million, this resulted in free cash flow of $682 million. This third quarter performance brought our free cash flow year to date, that is through the first three quarters, to almost $1.8 billion, which continues the strong improvement trend we've had over the past three years.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

In the quarter, we repurchased $125 million of our shares, which leaves us with $697 million of share repurchase authorization remaining under our latest program. Okay, let's turn to guidance. As you saw, we're raising our full year 2021 revenue guidance by $188 million at the midpoint, this reflecting the third quarter strength and the continued operational momentum in our business. Our new revenue guidance is $13,775,000,000-$13,850,000,000, representing year-over-year growth of 21.3%-21.9%. I'll note that included in this guidance is a $30 million headwind from FX versus our previous guidance. Now, looking at the comparison to the prior year, FX is a tailwind of about 120 basis points to full-year revenue growth. We're also raising our profit guidance. As a result of a stronger revenue outlook, we've increased our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance by $20 million at the midpoint.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Our new full year guidance is $2,980,000,000 to $3,010,000,000 rather, which represents year-over-year growth of 25%-26.3%. Moving down to EPS, we're increasing our adjusted EPS guidance by $0.10 at the midpoint. The new guidance range is now $8.85-$8.95, which represents year-over-year growth of 37.9%-39.4%. Our full year 2021 guidance assumes that September 30th foreign currency rates remain in effect for the balance of the year. Of course, the full-year guidance implies a fourth quarter guidance, which we show here. Before getting to the numbers, I'll say for context, you'll probably recall that last year's fourth quarter was unusual due to a snapback in the general business, as we rebounded from the effects of COVID-19, picked up incremental demand from mega vaccine studies in R&DS and government-related COVID work within TAS.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Fourth quarter revenue is expected to be between $3.537 billion and $3.612 billion, representing growth of 7.2%-9.5%. FX in the quarter is a headwind to growth of about 100 basis points. We expect fourth quarter TAS revenue growth to be mid-single digits, reflecting the expected year-over-year decline in government COVID-related work and the FX drag. I'll note, though, that underlying constant currency organic growth for TAS will be in the high single digits, which is a level that TAS has recently accelerated. R&DS revenue growth will be in the low teens, with services growth in the mid-teens, despite last year's difficult comparison due to the COVID vaccine work. CSMS will be slightly down. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter is expected to be between $786 million and $816 million, up 6.9%-11%. Adjusted diluted EPS is expected to be between $2.37 and $2.47, growing 12.3%-17.1%.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

In summary, we delivered a very strong third quarter with strong results on both the top and bottom line. R&DS backlog improved to $24.4 billion. That's up 12.7% year-over-year. Next 12 months revenue from backlog increased to $6.9 billion, up $300 million sequentially versus the second quarter. We reported another strong quarter of free cash flow, which at $1.8 million through the first three quarters of the year is a market improvement over prior year. Finally, we're once again raising our full year guidance for revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted diluted EPS. With that, let me hand it back over to the operator for questions and answers.

Operator

At this time I would like to remind everyone in order to ask a question press star then one in your telephone keypad. We'll pause just for a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of John Kreger with William Blair.

John Kreger
John Kreger
Analyst at William Blair

Hey, thanks very much. Ari, thanks for all the detail around the OCT and DCT offerings. That was great. Curious, if you could just take that one step further. What do you think the operational implications are for you guys and your clients as you see greater adoption of some of these newer technology tools?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Well, operationally, obviously, you know that one of the single most important challenge we and actually the entire industry has is the ability to deploy people, again, the strong book of business that we've all generated. This is a great development because what DCT does is it kind of increase productivity, reduces labor, and enables us to essentially execute more efficiently. I think operationally, we are just adapting to this. Now, again, the full productivity only comes when the trial is fully decentralized trials, as I explained, because there's a lot of confusion in this space.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

As soon as someone uses a digital platform. They say, well, we've got a DCT award here, but that's not the case. If we do that, as I mentioned, about 20% of our full clinical trials, which is just probably we have a little bit under 1,000 trials that are of full service clinical trials ongoing. It's a larger number that already utilize one or several of our DCT modules, eConsent or eCOA or other connected devices. Our clients are experimenting, quote-unquote, with smaller trials and trying the full DCT platform, which puts together all of the capabilities and the maximum utilization of the digital tools that we have at our disposal. I think hands down, I believe we are leader in this space.

John Kreger
John Kreger
Analyst at William Blair

Sounds good. Thanks. One quick follow-up on staffing. Obviously, there's a lot of talk about a tight labor market. Is that proving to be any sort of a headwind for you guys on EBITDA margins? Have you seen your staff attrition rates change at all as we've moved through this year?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

I mean, there's no question about it. It's not a secret. This is true. Across industry sectors and in our sector in particular, since we have such a strong industry backdrop, there's a lot of competition for talent. We of all of the peers, in the CRO space are a hunting ground for talent. Obviously we are responding, we are actively recruiting and hiring to meet this demand. We recruit thousands of employees every year, so we've got whole talent acquisition capability that's global and that's actively at work. Does it create cost pressure? Yes. It's already included in our guidance. That's certainly a headwind. As you well know by now, hopefully you know that when you look at our overall results, you see that there has been margin expansion despite these cost headwinds.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

In fact, even when you see in this Q3 results that our operating margins are flat to slightly declining, when you actually take out the pass-throughs, you actually see that our operating margins expanded quite nicely. This is despite the cost headwinds that we have. Yes, it is a headwind and we are dealing with it and offsetting with the usual productivity and efficiency programs that I hope we've been demonstrating we're good at. Thank you very much. Next question.

Operator

The next question is from the line of Eric Coldwell with Baird.

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Thanks. Good morning. I have a couple as well. First one, I think the number one inbound this morning is on your M&A spend in the quarter. Obviously a much higher number than we were anticipating with the Myriad deal sizing being known. I'm curious if you could address that in a couple of ways. One, the type of deals, nature of deals, number of deals, but also what impact you expect on a revenue basis, both in the fourth quarter as well as any thoughts on the run rate of the companies that you've recently acquired. Thanks very much. I might have a follow-up as well.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Okay. Let me take the latter part of your question first. In the quarter, the contribution of M&A was minimal. I mean, maybe a little over a point. That's the same basically, for R&DS and for TAS.

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

That's correct.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

In the fourth quarter, Nick, a little bit more than that.

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

Yeah. In the fourth quarter-

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Fourth quarter

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

total-

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Yeah

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

total company, we're a little over 1.5%.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. A point and a half of contribution to our revenue growth. Yeah, we had a big spend this year. It's going to be lumpy. We always say acquisition is binary. It happens or it doesn't happen. I will note that we didn't spend very much last year. I think in the entire year, we spent $177 million. There are quarters where we spent $10 million or $15 million. This quarter, and this year actually, we spent quite a bit more money. As you know, the largest acquisitions we've done is simply the consolidation of our joint venture with Quest in the lab business, and that was a $760 million transaction we did in the second quarter. That represents really a very large portion, almost half of the spend to date. In the quarter, we were very active. We actually closed only a handful of transactions.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

The two largest account for the vast majority, let's say almost 90%, you would say, or something like that, 80%, 90% of the spend. It's two transactions only. One is the Myriad RBM lab, which we had announced during our second quarter earnings, and it actually closed in the third quarter. It's a lab that performs sophisticated biomarker detection and testing. It supports early and late-stage drug development in very specific therapeutic areas, oncology, CNS, and immunology. We also purchased DMD. DMD is a leading provider of analytics and digital marketing solutions to healthcare professionals. It brings advanced tech-enabled analytics and insights for intelligent omnichannel marketing. We consider that acquisition to be a strategic asset. Yes, it costs quite a bit. These two transactions, again, is basically the bulk of the spend.

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Now, where is the-

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

On the acquisitions. You have a second question, right?

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Yeah. Just a clarification on the first one. The last one, I think you said DMD, if I understood correctly?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

No. DMD.

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

DMD. Okay. Got it. Then, is that actually a CSMS segment deal, or is that a-

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Oh

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Tech and Analytics deal?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah, it's a tech and analytics deal.

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Okay. My follow-up is my typical burden on you to talk about COVID contributions in 3Q for revenue and bookings, specifically in R&DS, but also other segments as necessary. If you could update us on the backlog of COVID work in total, in R&DS, and then talk about bookings in 3Q related to total COVID-related activity would be great.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. As we signal, COVID work is obviously it continues a little bit. There is a tail to it, certainly on the TAS segment, it's a significant step down. We had signaled this before. The government-related COVID work is gradually going away, certainly will step down dramatically in the fourth quarter and going forward, we're just going to return. Once you eliminate the noise of all that happened last year, the TAS underlying organic growth rate is in the high single digits. You will remember TAS historically was a mid-single digit grower, in our investor conference in June 2019, we said that TAS would accelerate to high single digits, that's where we've been most of the year.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

We've told you that when we reported prior quarters, that the TAS growth rate included significant COVID-related work, and excluding that, the growth rate was in the high single digits, and it remains so when you take out the noise of the compares, et cetera. On the R&DS, can you give us the numbers?

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Yeah, sure. Look, first, we like to look at the contribution of COVID to the backlog. If you strip out the mega vaccine trials, Eric, from the backlog of R&DS, it's less than 5% of the backlog. If you take out all COVID-related work, it's less than 10% of the R&DS backlog. You were asking about the contribution of COVID to revenue, I think, too, in the quarter. Look, R&DS had very strong growth.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Even accepting the COVID-related work. If you take out the large fast-burning COVID work, you were in the high 20s for R&DS revenue growth, and even if you take out all COVID-related work, you were still strong teens growth. COVID did contribute, of course, and the work will trail down over time, but the underlying business in other therapeutic areas is very strong and ramping up as we go forward in R&DS.

Eric Coldwell
Eric Coldwell
Analyst at Baird

Thanks very much, guys.

Operator

The next question is from the line of Jack Meehan with Nephron Research.

Jack Meehan
Analyst at Nephron Research

Thanks. I wanted to continue on the COVID conversation, but looking at the TAS business, I think you referenced when talking about the fourth quarter guidance, some headwinds versus the prior year. Could you just maybe talk a little bit about how you feel like the longer-term durability of COVID work in the segment? Just your thoughts around that.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. There's no headwinds in the fourth quarter for TAS. The growth rate is slower simply because it's a math question. We're comparing last year's fourth quarter, which included the COVID-19 work and a bunch of noise, with the fourth quarter here, which eliminates that noise. When you eliminate all of that, the underlying organic growth rate for TAS is in high single digits in the fourth quarter. There's no headwinds in the underlying business. We expect that trend and momentum to continue. We will, as you know, generally provide guidance on the year concurrent with the release of our fourth quarter earnings. Last year, because it was such an unusual year, we decided to give guidance for 2021 concurrent with the release of our third-quarter earnings.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

This year, we plan to do it at our November Investor Conference, which is just three weeks away.

Jack Meehan
Analyst at Nephron Research

Great. I don't want to steal any thunder from the Investor Day a few weeks from now, but I was curious if you could talk a little bit about some of the puts and takes for 2022. The funding environment, as you're referencing, is very strong. Are there any takes that you would consider? The one thing that stands out to me is passthroughs. They've obviously been elevated this year. Just any color around how that might phase into next year would be helpful.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. Look, it's always important to put things in context and look at the longer-term trends as you're asking. If you go back to June 2019, we gave a three-year set of targets for revenue, profit, EPS, capital deployment, leverage, et cetera. Now, no one could have predicted then that six months later we would be starting the pandemic, and we would have such disruption across the world for all businesses and including for ours. I think, people like to look at 2019-2021 to try to eliminate COVID. I don't think that's fair because the whole COVID effect is not gone yet, because you still have these disruptions that I just talked about. I think it's important to look at the three-year 2019-2022 timeframe.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

If you go back to the targets we gave, we certainly are running ahead, actually well ahead, of the growth rates we predicted for 2022. We are ahead of that. A little bit of this is because of COVID and the pass-throughs that you just referred to. Even if you strip that out, we're still ahead on every single one of the metrics. I don't know if you were at that conference, but as you're doing now, and as your colleagues were doing, trying to push me for even more precision on what the numbers would be. I said then that I was hoping to exit 2022 at a 10% growth rate for the company. I've said before, earlier this year, that we reached our end of 2022 targets in 2021, and I believe that that momentum will continue into 2022.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

That's all I can say, and I'll have to wait for more precision in three weeks. I certainly, sitting here, feel very confident that we will certainly exceed those numbers that we gave you three years ago and set the stage for further acceleration beyond.

Jack Meehan
Analyst at Nephron Research

Great. Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel.

Shlomo Rosenbaum
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst at Stifel

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Hey, Ari, can you talk about where you are, in general, with the OCE implementations, particularly with Roche and AstraZeneca? Have you gotten to the point where the implementations are not a significant drag on the margins that you have to offset in other areas? Just where are you seeing the business progress in terms of hitting a steady state of revenue or revenue exceeding the cost to implement?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

You bring up a good point. Implementations are very costly. Because we have a large number of wins, I referenced an additional 10 new wins. Every time you open a new award, again, you have to implement. It's not like when you are behind the curve of implementation and you start generating the license revenue, you still have to implement the new ones that you sold and we're happy with it. We're not past that headwind, if you will, in terms of the implementation cost. That's a significant drag. We're not seeing yet. We haven't passed, if you will, that inflection point where you've now essentially plateaued your market penetration and you're essentially sitting tight and collecting license revenue from all these installations. We're not there in aggregate.

Shlomo Rosenbaum
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst at Stifel

Okay. Just maybe this one's for Ron. The free cash flow was incredibly strong. There's more this year, 33% more than you had all of last year, which was, I think, a record quarter. Can you talk about what's going on? There was a significant increase in unearned revenue and some other working capital changes. How should we be thinking about this on a go-forward basis? Obviously very healthy numbers. Is this something that you can keep up, or is it more adjusting and catching up on some of the working capital items?

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Well, Shlomo, we've made a really concerted effort internally here to improve our processes around receivables, which of course is one of our largest classes of assets. We don't have inventory like you would in a manufacturing firm. Receivables are really where we have a lot of our assets other than our deferred software investment. Our efforts have been on several fronts. First off is collecting on time. If you go back a little while, we had a large amount of overdue receivables, and that's just focused to go and collect what's due from us. The next is billing on time. We had a large amount of unbilled receivables, and that comes down to internal processes about billing more quickly, in a more timely fashion, so we get paid in a more timely fashion.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Of course, the third that you mentioned is the deferred revenue, the customer advances that we get. We've again made an effort internally to negotiate contracts with our customers so we get paid more upfront, so we're not out of pocket. This has helped substantially, and I expect all three of those to continue to be a driver of strong cash flow in the future. Of course, having said that, cash flow is lumpy. Quarter-to-quarter, it's difficult to predict. You do get instances where you'll get an unusual amount of advances because some of the work you're doing that will burn off over time and then rebuild up. I would urge you not to focus too much on the quarter-to-quarter. Yes, what you're saying is that fundamentally, we've improved our collections processes and improved our underlying free cash flow generation as a result.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. If I just might, I'll do that. We're very pleased with the performance, but let's be honest, this was a bad point for us, and I think some of you have called that out. For the past three years or so, our cash flow performance was simply very poor. The fact that we are now performing very well, is not an unusual thing. I think not too long ago, in 2018, we generated just barely over $600 million of free cash flow for the entire year. Here we are, three quarters into the year, we've already generated three times that number. Obviously, we are a much bigger company and so on.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Look, our performance was just not good, and we said that, and it was on us, and we worked on it, and we continue to pay attention and have the right metrics and the right incentives, and the team focused on it. As always, when you shine the light on something, it improves. That's what happened here. Where we are now is the normal, not unusual.

Shlomo Rosenbaum
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst at Stifel

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Your next question is from the line of David Windley with Jefferies.

David Windley
David Windley
Analyst at Jefferies

Hi. Thanks. Good morning, folks. Appreciate you taking my question. I wanted to follow up on, I believe, a John Kreger question around DCT. He asked around operational, Ari, I wanted to ask around financial, as it seems like you now have a pretty substantial number of trials where you're running pretty fully on your DCT platform. I'm wondering if you could relate to us how that changes the dollar value of a trial, and does that give you the opportunity to garner more margin in that trial because of the technology-enabled efficiency?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. Look, there's a high degree of interest from clients, okay? Around how to operationalize DCT, it's not like it's going to overwhelm and all of a sudden become 100% overnight. As I said, large pharma in particular is experimenting. A lot of trials are using one component or the other, it's going to take time. This is not next year or the day after that we're going to have to face the issue that you're raising.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

In our experience, customers are struggling with how to make various point solutions fit together. We are actually being very aggressive here. We want to move to DCT. We've said this since the merger occurred five years ago. We want to accelerate and not slow down technology introduction and changing the model. Now, obviously, the question you ask is a question people asked of us many years ago, which is, as you seek to replace labor in a model where pricing is largely based on labor inputs, then aren't you lowering the value of the trial and et cetera? What are the implications of the margin? We don't believe so. As you know, we've had a long-running effort to switch pricing to value and deliverables and outputs. That's number one, and that has made substantial progress.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Our clients are not looking at saving a couple of pennies here or there. They're looking at getting what they need, the answers that they want faster, more efficiently, with less error, and with a higher quality. They are willing to pay a premium for that. They're not going to pay more than what they were paying before, but they're not going to pay less than what they were paying before. The margin implication is correct. Over time, the more we deploy technology, the less we need people, the more there's going to be margin accretion. Again, this is going to take time. There are also new delivery roles which offset some of the reduced CRA visit activity. I think it's too early to comment on the exact margin impact for this overall. We are monitoring.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

We do not anticipate this to disrupt our margin performance. R&D is a very long cycle business. We have, I mentioned, 89 fully decentralized trials ongoing that we won. We're working on, if you look at, as I said, just under maybe 900 or so full-service trials. It's a fraction of that. If you look at the total trials we are involved in, this is over 2,500 clinical trials that we're involved in globally. It will take some time to penetrate. It's a slow-moving business, but it's a good point. We are totally focused on it. We do not anticipate a value deterioration. We do anticipate a margin accretion over the long term.

David Windley
David Windley
Analyst at Jefferies

Great. If I could ask a second follow-up around a question on COVID. It seems like a lot of focus on how much revenue now and how much in backlog now. It seems equally important to me, if not more so, to focus on how that will phase out. I think you've made comments in the past that you see projects booked out through 2022 and maybe even into 2023. Would it be appropriate to call?

David Windley
David Windley
Analyst at Jefferies

The COVID contribution kind of a soft landing, so to speak, that it's not going to drop off, it's just going to slowly taper over time. Is that the right way to think about it?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

On the R&DS business, absolutely. No question. What you said is exactly what I would say. It's a soft landing, 2022, 2023, and it frankly will get lost in the rounding by the time we get to 2023.

David Windley
David Windley
Analyst at Jefferies

Very helpful. Thank you.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Unless, of course, God forbid, there is another variant or another COVID or another. Right now, as we see, based on what we know today, it's a soft landing. We get lost in the rounding by 2023.

Operator

Going to ask question is from line of Dan Leonard with Wells Fargo.

Dan Leonard
Dan Leonard
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Thank you. Good morning. Can you comment on trial site operations? Are there any continued bottlenecks you flag, or is site activity normalizing?

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. Ron?

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Look. The site acceptability numbers remain around 80% or so. Look, we've managed to work around that and operate at close to normal. Not all sites are equal. The larger sites are open, and that hasn't been an issue for us. We've seen site startups and patient recruitment at near pre-pandemic levels. Not quite, but near pre-pandemic levels. The patient visits are still lagging a little bit, just gradually coming back. When we look at our overall operations, we're not totally back to pre-pandemic level yet, and we'll expect a gradual improvement over time back to pre-pandemic level. It really hasn't been a major issue for our operations. As Ari mentioned in his opening remarks, we've learned how to manage through and around the issue.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Yeah. I got the numbers here in detail, but basically they're over between 80% or so across all of those metrics. A little bit higher for site startup, which is more, again, a percentage of 2019 base levels. Okay? Site startup is a little higher, is more 85% or thereabouts globally. The bottom line is these metrics that we see provide confidence that the non-COVID trial pipeline is not only being awarded, as you can see from the strong new bookings, but it's also starting to be delivered. The sites are enrolling, the patients are enrolling, and the patient visits are ongoing. I think there hasn't been any major change from this as a result of the new variants or anything like that.

Dan Leonard
Dan Leonard
Analyst at Wells Fargo

As a follow-up, Ari, can you comment on perceived market share trends in R&DS in the quarter? You've been pretty open about the various strategic actions by your competitors, potentially allowing an opportunity for share gain.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Look, it's hard to look at market share in a given quarter. Okay? It's lumpy. A trial can be awarded the last day of the quarter or the first day of the following. I would always say, look, we were defeated and give you quarterly book-to-bill ratios. Really, we believe we should focus on longer-term book-to-bill ratios, because it's lumpy, and focus also on business from the backlog over the next 12 months. Now, if you look at our competitors, there's been a lot of disruption. Yeah, we've had conversations with customers. Just as you don't win a new customer overnight, you don't throw out a CRO overnight. You're in the middle of trials, right? Some of those mergers will have an impact on market share. I think it's favorable to us. Maybe we'll remain the last CRO standing. I don't know.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

We know from experience what a merger and a large acquisition does to the underlying business. There's a lot of disruption. There is people who lose their jobs, people who don't like the new arrangement, and that's just life. The result of that is some market share. We had that problem after our merger in 2016. Let's be honest about it. We had some market share issues, which we rebounded once we put together the company and integrated. I think the future is very bright for us. We continue to gain new customers. The biotech environment in particular is extremely hot right now. We are gaining new clients in Europe. We're making inbounds with customers we never had before. In Asia as well. The teams are extremely energized, and I feel we are on a winning momentum here.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

There's no doubt that when we look back, we will see that our market share has improved.

Dan Leonard
Dan Leonard
Analyst at Wells Fargo

Appreciate all that context. Thank you.

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

This is going to be our last question of the day.

Operator

Your last question comes from the line of Patrick Donnelly with Citi.

Patrick Donnelly
Patrick Donnelly
Analyst at Citi

Hey, thanks for fitting me in, guys. Ari Bousbib, maybe a follow-up on that last question. You talked a little bit about all the mergers going on in the space. Again, headcount disruption. Following up on one of the earlier questions in terms of labor costs, does that position you guys better in terms of being able to acquire some talent that got rattled around during some of these mergers and being the stable ship there and grab some people, maybe at not quite the inflationary costs you're seeing on the labor side?

Patrick Donnelly
Patrick Donnelly
Analyst at Citi

Then secondarily to that, maybe with a focus on R&DS, how much can you pass some of these price increases on to customers? I know full service contracts and backlog are particularly tough to adjust, but just wondering how much you can pass on in terms of some of the price pressure you're getting there.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Well, on the personnel question, you've got to differentiate between the executive management leadership level and then the actual field force, the CRAs, et cetera. On the first group in general, the first category, yes. There is an opportunity to bring in talent that somehow is dissatisfied with where they are, that will or may occur. It has happened already in a few cases. Again, these are small numbers. On the CRAs and the project leads and so on, that's much more difficult because it's driven by the book of business and by the execution that our competitors are also in the midst of trials, and they need those people as much as we do. There's just an inflation on wages, which is the result of all the factors we talked about before.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

The mergers don't affect, at least immediately, the CRAs and the people in the field. With your other question, had to do with

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

With pricing-

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

With pricing, yeah.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

ability to pass along costs.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

As you noted yourself in your question, it's very hard. We sold projects with certain assumptions, and there are some escalations and some factors built into those contracts. That will be reflected. By and large, the pricing was set based on different assumptions. When you have higher costs, then you have to absorb that. As we move forward, obviously, the pricing is affected. There's no magic here. It's all going to get passed on and there's no secrets. It's going to lag, because of the nature of our business, certainly in the R&DS business.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Right. Of course, on the TAS side of the business, shorter cycle business, a greater ability to pass along cost increases.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Right. There's less labor.

Ron Bruehlman
Ron Bruehlman
EVP and CFO at IQVIA

Less labor.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Correct.

Patrick Donnelly
Patrick Donnelly
Analyst at Citi

Okay. Thank you, guys.

Ari Bousbib
Ari Bousbib
Chairman and CEO at IQVIA

Thank you very much.

Nick Childs
Nick Childs
SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at IQVIA

Thank you everyone for joining us today. We look forward to seeing everyone on our Investor Day in a few weeks. If you have any other follow-up questions, feel free to reach out. We're happy to answer them. Thanks for joining today.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Ari Bousbib
      Ari Bousbib
      Chairman and CEO
    • Nick Childs
      Nick Childs
      SVP of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications
    • Ron Bruehlman
      Ron Bruehlman
      EVP and CFO
Analysts
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