John Chiminski
Chair & Chief Executive Officer at Catalent
Thanks Paul. And welcome to the call. Catalent began fiscal 2022 with a strong start. Our first quarter financial results were driven by both our ongoing work in support of global efforts to address the pandemic, as well as our other critical work with our customers in delivering products that help people live better healthier lives. In addition, we simultaneously continued to execute on our long-term growth strategy through organic investments and strategic acquisitions. Before I detail our specific achievements during the quarter, let me highlight our first quarter results.
Our net revenue for the first quarter was just over $1 billion, increasing 21% as reported or 20% in constant currency compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2021. When excluding acquisitions and divestitures, organic growth was 23% measured in constant currency. Our adjusted EBITDA of $252 million for the first quarter increased 44% on both an as reported and constant currency basis, compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2021. When excluding acquisitions and divestitures, organic growth was 52% measured in constant currency.
Our adjusted net income for the first quarter was $128 million or $0.71 per diluted share, up from $0.43 per diluted share in the corresponding prior year period. The Biologics segment, driven by continued high demand from COVID-19 projects was again the top contributor to Catalent's financial performance. The segment experienced organic net revenue growth of 44% with segment EBITDA growing 56% from the first quarter of last year. Our Softgel and Oral Technologies segment resumed net revenue growth following the pandemic related headwinds it experienced over the last year. Increased year-over-year demand for both prescription and consumer health products drove a 9% increase in net revenue within the segment during the first quarter of fiscal 2022 compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2021, which is highly encouraging.
With net revenue up over the last year yet still down compared to the first quarter of 2020, this segment is still experiencing effects from the pandemic. However, we're seeing signs that these issues are transitory and we're looking forward to continued improvement over time. Moving on now to our Oral and Specialty Delivery segment where we also saw a return to organic net revenue growth after facing headwinds in fiscal 2021. As with Softgel and Oral Technologies, there are improving market dynamics across our Oral and Specialty Delivery segment, most notably this quarter in our early phase development offerings.
Finally, our Clinical Supply Services segment posted modest net revenue growth this quarter compared to the first quarter of fiscal 2021 with profitability negatively impacted by the cost of opening our new full service facilities in San Diego, California and Shiga, Japan. Both investments are poised to meet growing customer demand and are expected to be long-term growth drivers for this segment. On our last earnings call, we announced our agreement to acquire Bettera, a leading developer and manufacturer of consumer preferred gummies, soft chews and lozenges for nutraceutical functional and botanical extract products for $1 billion.
Following the completion of a successful debt raise including additional term loans whose proceeds we used in part upon the acquisition we closed the Bettera acquisition on October 1 making Catalent one of the leading independent suppliers in a high growth, capacity constrained portion of the nutraceutical and nutritional supplement market. This acquisition enables Catalent and specifically our Softgel and Oral Technologies segment to expand our existing substantial consumer health platform by adding the fast growing consumer preferred dose format for nutritional supplements. This expansion also meets the evolving needs of our consumer health customers who have consistently asked Catalent for new additions to our product library including gummies and other engaging formats for their nutritional supplement and nutraceutical product concepts.
As highlighted on our last call, acquiring Bettera enables us to increase our expectations for the long-term organic revenue growth rate in our Softgel and Oral Technologies segment from 3% to 5% to 6% to 8%. This raise [Phonetic] is driven by the strength of our current advanced offerings and product libraries and is enhanced by the 20% plus growth contribution we expect from Bettera over the next several years. This attractive growth rate for Bettera is accompanied by core EBITDA margins accretive to the segment.
Combined, these factors lead us to expect the acquisition to be accretive to adjusted net income per share in the first year after close and significantly accretive thereafter. Our work streams integrating Bettera and supporting and accelerating its existing growth plans and the transition of approximately 500 experienced employees are now in full-flight. As we integrate these new capabilities and its robust library of ready-to-market products, we're further solidifying Catalent's place as a partner of choice for consumer health companies across the globe.
As we've already experienced significant customer interest in engaging in these new capabilities, we are considering accelerating our organic investment plans for these new and exciting offerings. Next, I'll provide updates on a few organic investments in our Biologics segment that have progressed since our last call. First, with respect to our biotherapeutics offerings, we previously detailed many of our upgrades at our growing campus in Bloomington, Indiana. These upgrades have served as the key growth driver for Catalent and it played a critical role in the global effort to bring the pandemic to an end, allowing us to quickly scale high-speed filling lines on behalf of our COVID-19 vaccine customers.
Just recently, we completed the addition of a new high-speed syringe filling line at the site, a project that we first announced in January 2019. This slide is an additional source of growth for our Biologics segment and like all of our existing syringe filling lines can be leveraged for a wide range of biologics products including COVID-19 vaccines. Given the strong demand for bio-therapeutic manufacturing, we will continue to invest in additional drug product and drug substance capacity at our Bloomington campus.
Similarly, we continue to make organic investments at our 300,000 square foot facility in Anagni, Italy, which we originally purchased in January of 2020. When we acquired this site, it already benefited from years of steady investments that now support our biologics capabilities as well as other assets capabilities for all dose forms including high capacity blister packaging and bottle cartoning solutions. Since the acquisition, we've made significant investments in Anagni to meet growing customer demand for biologics capacity.
In 2020, we took action to meet the needs of multiple vaccine innovators including several enhancements to existing capacity to improve productivity and output. In February of this year, we began the rapid build out of an additional high speed vial filling line, which has been qualified and will soon begin manufacturing. In addition to drug product investments, we announced a $100 million expansion project at our Anagni facility over the summer. The expansion will allow us to add biologics drug substance manufacturing capability at the site, establishing our first drug substance capacity outside of the US to support the growing European market demand for biologics manufacture and supply.
Ultimately, the expansion will house multiple single-use bioreactors totaling 16,000 liters of total flexible manufacturing capacity with the initial 4,000 liters expected to be completed in late fiscal 2023. The growth in investment at our Anagni site demonstrate how the COVID-19 pandemic has not only accelerated our strategic plans, but has also accelerated the return on investments we've made, enabling us to put additional cash to work to drive continued long-term growth. We also recently announced additional investments in our gene therapy campus in Harmans, Maryland near the BWI Airport. Early this calendar year, we completed construction in one building and campus, which now contains 10 multi-room commercial-scale manufacturing suites.
Given the high demand for manufacturing of the growing number of gene therapy compounds in other products addressing new modes of treatment in the industry's development pipeline we're increasing the number of manufacturing suites, planned for the adjacent building from the five suites we initially announced to add three more commercial scale advanced biologics manufacturing suites. This latest expansion will also include the construction of new storage capabilities for just-in-time inventory space, ultra-low temperature freezers to support a larger set of compounds and an expansion of overall infrastructure.
When completed at the end of calendar 2022, the campus will house a total 18 CGMP manufacturing suites each designed to accommodate multiple bioreactors of 2000-liter scale and enable the execution of commercial manufacturing from cell bank to purified drug substance. Given the growing scope of investments made to support the campus, the total size of this project to be spent over a multi-year period starting last year is now expected to be $360 million, up from the $130 million initially projected. This increase in investment was already factored into our initial fiscal 2022 capex plans discussed on our last earnings call.
Finally, through the acquisition of RheinCell in August, we expanded our cell therapy offerings to include proprietary iPSC GMP cell lines and technology to boost our current development and manufacturing capabilities to bring iPSC based cell therapy to scale. We are receiving a good number of customer inquiries for this exciting new offering and integration is tracking to our expectations. I'd now like to turn the call over to Tom, who will review our financial results for the first quarter and our fiscal 2022 guidance which we're raising to reflect the closing of the Bettera acquisition, as well as our increased organic growth forecast for the remainder of the year.