West Pharmaceutical Services Q3 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Participants

Corporate Executives

• Quintin Lai, Vice President, Strategy and Investor Relations
• Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board
• Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer

Analysts

• Paul Knight, KeyBanc
• Larry Solow, CJS Securities
• Derik De Bruin, Bank of America Co.
• Dave Windley, Jefferies Financial Group Inc.
• Jacob Johnson, Stephens

Presentation

[Operator]

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the 2022 West Pharmaceutical Services Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Quintin Lai, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

[Quintin Lai, Vice President, Strategy and Investor Relations at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to West's Third Quarter 2022 Conference Call. [Operator Instrutions]. I'd now turn the call over to our CEO, Eric Green.

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Thank you, Quintin, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. We'll start on Slide five. I I'll begin by covering three main topics: first, examining the drivers of lower-than-expected Q3 results; second, examining the impact to Q4; and third, providing color on our current view of market demand and projecting a preliminary sales outlook for 2023. Let's begin with Q3. As expected, we had a few drivers in the quarter that materialized. We had headwinds from FX. We had declining sales in contract manufacturing, and we had a decline in COVID-19-related sales of about $20 million from last year.

If we exclude the headwinds from COVID, proprietary organic sales grew over 11%; however, this performance was below our expectations for the quarter. When we provided guidance on the Q2 earnings call, we projected that we would be able to shift resources, formerly dedicated to pandemic-related production to other HVP products that are experiencing increased demand. Specifically, we plan to successfully address this transition by accelerating customer orders for NovaPure plungers and fulfilling customer HVP orders originally requested for this year but pushed to 2023 because of longer lead times. These two factors were the underlying drivers to our guidance of strong double-digit base organic net sales in Q3 and Q4. Instead, as the quarter progressed, we underestimated the complexity of the transition and were impacted with a series of setbacks related to capacity constraints and mix shift productivity. Much of our vaccine stoppers were going to fewer customers with fewer SKUs.

This enabled high productivity and throughput with our HVP network. When transitioning to NovaPure plungers, we now are addressing demand coming from numerous customers, addressing drugs across numerous diseases and more SKUs. The end result is lower throughput through our existing HVP manufacturing sites. And compounding this situation further, as the quarter progressed, we had a reduction in capacity in our HVP operating network through a combination of equipment downtime and project delays related to installation of HVP processing equipment. We estimate that the total negative impact to Q3 was $30 million. While we see these issues as temporary and expect full resolution in 2023, they will continue to impact us in Q4.

As we look at the capacity constraints, we project that additional HVP processing capacity will come online early next year based on the timeline to install and validate the newer technology. Since we are already running at full capacity, we also are unable to address the additional demand coming from long lead time items in Q4. Altogether, while we still expect our base business ex COVID to grow more than 10% in Q4, we will not be able to offset the expected $80 million reduction in COVID-19 sales. While I'm disappointed that we're lowering our forecast for the rest of 2022, I want to stress that these issues are all supply-related and not demand related. Moving to Slide six. Our robust order book of committed orders, excluding the declining COVID-19-related demand grew 20% year-over-year.

Our customers have reiterated that they're looking to us to deliver the critical components and devices to address the growing injectable drug demand. And we are -- we have several customers that have notified us of potential upside demand, especially for NovaPure plungers beyond our current order book based on future drug launches. As we look at 2023, we are confident and expect most of the capacity issues will be resolved early in the year. Taking a reasonable view on capacity expansion and customer delivery timing, our preliminary look at 2023 includes the following projections. First, we now assume that COVID-19 sales will decline to a full year 2023 sales of approximately $90 million or a 75% decline from 2022. This is based on current customer forecasts, which we believe assumes a continuation of current trends and COVID booster demand.

We expect non-COVID-19 overall base business to grow in the double digits and in excess of our financial construct of 7% to 9%. Base proprietary products are expected to grow in the low teens led by biologics, and we expect CM sales to rebound to growth next year. Our participation rate in recently approved new molecular entities in the U.S. and Europe remain strong. Our components by West or our partner, Daikyo, are expecting almost all the biologics and biosimilars approved so far in 2022 and majority of small molecules approved. Adding it all together, our prelimited view is that we will have positive organic sales growth in 2023, despite an anticipated decline of approximately $280 million of COVID-19 sales. We will provide more detailed guidance on our Q4 call in February of next year. Now shifting to Slide seven and some highlights from the quarter. I want to first thank our team members who continue to focus on our purpose to deliver superior value to customers through our high-quality products and solutions to make a meaningful difference to patients' lives.

An example of this dedication and resiliency was evident in the recent response to the hurricanes that devastated Puerto Rico and Florida. Despite the personal impacts to our team members, they ensure their plants continued to produce and ship product with minimal impact. Just another great testimony to the strength of our One West team. We continue to make good strides with the opportunity to improve at-home management of diseases. I'm pleased to share that earlier this month, our customer, scPharmaceuticals, received FDA approval for FUROSCIX delivered via on-body infuser, utilizing West, SmartDose on-body drug delivery technology. This brings us to four FDA-approved drugs using our SmartDose technology. Our strategic collaboration with Corning is moving along.

We anticipate that in Q1 2023, West Ready Pack system with Valor Glass vials, a ready-to-use sterile packaging system for use with NovaPure stoppers will be available to customers. Lastly, our West experts are pleased to be back in person at recently held PDA conference and upcoming CPHI worldwide showcasing our leadership with new scientific insights and technical developments across our portfolio of high-quality drug delivery and devices. Moving to Slide eight, with the capital spending investments initiated in 2020 for the larger capacity expansion, we continue to drive forward to complete the installation of our 2021 expansions and initiate the next tranche of investment earlier this year. You can see from the pictures how impressive the ongoing expansions are across our sites. While they do not happen overnight, we are making good progress and expect all these investments will result in several billion units of increased capacity for our HVP components. Now I'll turn our call over to Bernard.

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Thank you, Eric, and good morning. So let's review the numbers in more detail. We'll first look at Q3 2022 revenues and profits where we saw mid-single-digit organic sales growth, led by performance in our Biologics and Generics market units. I will take you through the profit drivers in the quarter as well as some balance sheet takeaways. And finally, we will provide an update to our 2022 guidance. First up, Q3. Our financial results are summarized on Slide nine and the reconciliation of non-U.S. GAAP measures are described on Slides 18 to 21. We recorded net sales of $686.9 million, representing organic sales growth of 4.3%. Looking at Slide 10. Proprietary Products sales grew organically by 5.5% in the quarter.

High-value products, which made up approximately 72% of proprietary product sales in the quarter, grew mid-single digits and had growth across our biologics and generic market units in Q3. Looking at the performance of market units, the biologics market unit delivered mid-single-digit growth. We continue to work with many biotech and biopharma customers who are using West and Daikyo high-value products. The generics market unit also experienced mid-single-digit growth, led by sales of Westar components. Our Pharma market unit saw low single-digit growth with sales led by high-value products, including NovaPure and Westar components. Contract Manufacturing declined 1.2% for the third quarter due to a reduction in sales of components for diagnostic devices. We reported $268 million in gross profit, $20.2 million or 7% below Q3 of last year. Our gross profit margin of 39% was a 180 basis point decline from the same period last year.

We saw a 2% increase in adjusted operating profit with $186.4 million recorded this quarter compared to $182.8 million in the same period last year. And our adjusted profit margin of 27.1% was a 120 basis point increase from the same period last year. Finally, adjusted diluted EPS declined $0.03 for Q3, excluding stock-based compensation tax benefit EPS increased by approximately $0.05 and foreign currency negatively impacted our EPS by approximately $0.16 in the quarter. So let's review the drivers in both the revenue and profit performance. On Slide 11, we show the contributions to sales decline in the quarter. Volume and mix decreased by approximately $1 million in the quarter, net of approximately $20 million decrease in COVID sales. Sales price increases contributed $31.1 million or 4.4 percentage points in the quarter. Foreign currency generated approximately $49.8 million headwind on our revenue in the quarter. Looking at margin performance.

Slide 12 shows our consolidated gross profit margin of 39% for Q3 2022 down from 40.8% in Q3 2021. Proprietary Products third quarter gross profit margin of 43.6% was 270 basis points lower than the margin achieved in the third quarter of 2021. The decline in Proprietary Products gross profit margin was caused by a few key factors: delays in equipment expansion projects, which led to production bottlenecks in certain -- in meeting certain customer demand. Customer demand mix shift led to a greater-than-anticipated impact due to the delays mentioned above as well as continued inflationary pressures on our planned costs, including raw materials, labor, overheads and transportation. Partially offsetting these headwinds on our margin were sales price increases of 180 basis points of benefit associated with onetime fees from COVID supply agreements.

Contract Manufacturing third quarter gross profit margin of 17.3% was 120 basis points above the margin achieved in the third quarter of 2021. The increase in margin is largely attributed to price increases in the period and production efficiencies. Now let's look at our balance sheet and review how we've done in terms of generating more cash for the business. On Slide 13, we have listed some key cash flow metrics. Operating cash flow was $493.2 million for the nine months ended September 2022, an increase of $70 million compared to the same period last year, a 16.5% increase. Our operating cash flow in the 9-month period benefited from our working capital performance. Our third quarter 2022 year-to-date capital spending was $189.7 million, $12.8 million higher than the same period last year.

Working capital of approximately $1.27 billion at September 30, 2022, increased by $129 million from December 31, 2021, primarily due to increase in inventory and reductions in our accounts payable. Our cash balance at September 30 of $729 million was $33.6 million lower than our December 2021 balance. The decrease in cash is primarily due to our share repurchase program, a $43.7 million scheduled payment of debt principal and interest in the third quarter and higher capex, offset by our operating cash flow in the period. Turning to guidance. Slide 14 provides a high-level summary. We are updating our full year 2022 net sales guidance and expect net sales to be in a range of $2.83 billion to $2.84 billion compared to our prior guidance range of $2.95 billion to $2.975 billion. There is an estimated fourth quarter headwind, $60 million based on current foreign exchange rates.

We expect organic sales growth to be approximately 7% compared to prior guidance of approximately 11%. We expect our full year 2022 adjusted diluted EPS guidance to be in a range of $8.15 to $8.20 compared to a prior range of $9 to $9.15. This revised guidance includes our $0.16 EPS positive impact of tax benefits from stock-based compensation during the nine-month period. Also, we are updating our capex guidance to $300 million to $320 million compared to our prior estimate of $380 million for the year.

There are some key elements I want to bring your attention to as you review our guidance. Estimated FX headwind on EPS in the fourth quarter was an approximately $0.17 headwind. We expect full year COVID-19-related sales to be approximately $85 million lower than 2021 sales, unchanged from our prior guidance. And our guidance excludes future tax benefits from stock-based compensation. I would now like to turn the call back over to Eric.

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Thank you, Bernard. To summarize Slide 15. Looking ahead, with a sharpened focus, we continue to ensure our growth strategy is bringing value to our customers. Our committed order book remains robust. We continue to capture the benefits of the globalization of our operating network and delivering products in this complex environment, and we're continuing to drive forward the capital investments across our operations to meet current and anticipated future growth. Gigi, we're ready to take questions. Thank you.

Questions and Answers

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Paul Knight from KeyBanc.

[Paul Knight, Analyst at KeyBanc]

Hi Eric, on the capex, it's now $300 million to $320 million versus $380 million prior. Is that a signal that you see lower demand? Is it a difficulty getting equipment? What's behind that lower capex guidance?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes, Paul, the lower capex guidance is really two things. One is delivery of equipment has been delayed in a couple of instances and also longer duration of capital build-out projects. So we're seeing that as the impact, not demand. We still need the capital in place. It's really getting caught up to the demand we have in our hands today.

[Paul Knight, Analyst at KeyBanc]

And then you mentioned that the transition from COVID and a few customers to many customers on the plunger side. Are there also some -- we've also seen some huge prescriptions out of recent approvals, are those also surprising you in terms of some of these large prescription trends that are being seen in the market.

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes, Paul, that's one of the drivers of the healthy order committed order book. And that is particularly in the Biologics area, we're seeing outsized growth than we anticipated working with our customers.

[Paul Knight, Analyst at KeyBanc]

And last on the plunger side, where will that product be made?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Well, we have really five key high-value product plants. The two that have probably the most constraints right now are here in the United States, Kingston and Jersey Shore, and we're currently working to have that resolved as we speak.

[Paul Knight, Analyst at KeyBanc]

Okay, thanks.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Larry Solow from CJS Securities.

[Larry Solow, Analyst at CJS Securities]

Good morning guys, thanks for taking the question. I guess first question, Eric, is just I know you normally, I guess, to give some a little preliminary outlook this time of the year, but just to sort of kind of gauge your confidence level, obviously, a little bit of a surprise in terms of looks like customer inventory management is skewing your numbers a little bit. So -- and obviously, some of the capacity issues. Just curious like your confidence level today to give pretty good guidance for next year, some nice clarity there on the revenue side. Is it just you felt like you had to put that out today? Or what kind of gives you that extra confidence sort of in a -- looks like a little bit of a challenging short-term period?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes, Larry, thank you for the question. So no, there's two things to give you insights on. One is when you think about inventory management, the only part of our business where there's fluctuation, I would say, is around the COVID-19 vaccines. That has been quite volatile in the last several months. And I would argue the transition to lower volume has been a little bit faster than we anticipated. But when it comes to demand for our other products, particularly the base, think about our high-value products, we're not seeing that inventory management, in fact, just meeting with customers more recently, they are very keen for us to give the installed equipment that is currently being worked on and validated, and up and running to really alleviate some of the bottlenecks that we have today.

So we don't see that large -- any major movement. We did however for clarity did say in the script that as we went through 2022, our lead times were extended because of the demand we had on COVID at the time. And therefore we had orders that we were committing to customers we had before we had orders that we were committed to customers in early 2023, but that wasn't driven by any inventory management. That was driven by our visibility to make the order in a timely fashion. Now on the second part on the giving guidance or giving visibility of sales, I think it's important to give context with what we just described about installation of capacity and the current demand to give visibility of what we're seeing that's going into 2023 with a high degree of confidence.

[Larry Solow, Analyst at CJS Securities]

Got it. Okay. I appreciate that color. And then it sounds like there's no real change, it sounds like in terms of customer demand, then you guys are continuing obviously to build out capacity, it doesn't feel like it just feels like it's a completely a supply issue. Is that fair to say, with no ambiguity?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes, Larry, that's fair to say. So as we transition from very long runs of NovaPure stoppers to shorter runs of NovaPure plungers as an example, the equipment that we had intended to be ready to go halfway through this year, which is -- that's the delay that we've been discussing that has caused that mix shift lack of productivity. And so once that's up and running, we will be in a good position to fulfill those orders in a timely fashion.

[Larry Solow, Analyst at CJS Securities]

Okay. Great. And just last question, perhaps for Bernard, and I know you guys are not ready to early on giving full guidance. But in terms of just high-level margin outlook, what needs to kind of go right or wrong? What could happen, could you keep margins flat in a -- with overall revenue growing although your COVID probably were higher margin coming down. Is that -- from a very high level, is that do you think feasible?

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes. Just on the margin, we'll provide more color on the margins and earnings on our usual timing, on our Q4 call here in February. But there are a number of things that we are monitoring really closely, just like everybody else at the moment. We're looking to figure out how FX is going to settle in for early 2023, and it's really -- it's too early to make a call on that given the volatility that we're seeing today. And then secondly, we're looking at monitoring the inflationary costs right across the spectrum for materials, energy, labor. And again, it's early to make a call on many of those. And then thirdly, we're in the process of preparing our price increases for next year, especially in light of that second topic around the inflationary costs, that's evolving.

And so then the fourth point, we'll examine again, how fast we can get that extra capacity online to generate those demand has -- currently demand at HVP sales. So if we can do it sooner. And our guidance, there's upside there to our sales and associated profits with that. The growth in our base HVP business and HVP margins that will come with that, we are looking to offset that decline around C19. But again, we have to manage through a lot of these issues at the moment. So -- but the big positive for us if the demand is there and we're seeing increasing demand around high-value products particularly plungers as Eric just mentioned. So as soon as we are on that call, we will give you more updates.

[Larry Solow, Analyst at CJS Securities]

Fair enough, I appreciate those points, thanks guys.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Derik De Bruin from Bank of America.

[Derik De Bruin, Analyst at Bank of America]

Hi good morning. So a, just like to clarify, clarify the comment. I mean you're talking about you've seen positive organic revenue growth next year. I mean, is that -- are we talking 1%? Are we talking to sort of back to the 7% to 9% range. And along those lines, your -- to get to positive, that sort of implies that your overall HVP next year proprietary products next year have to grow well in excess of that 7% to 9% range. I mean are those -- can you just sort of provide a little bit more color in terms of how we should think about it? I mean, there's a big range to sort of think about?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Let's me start, and Bernard, if you want to add. So you're right, the non-COVID related base business some proprietary is going to have very strong double digits. And it's be led by biologics but we're also seeing a strength in both generics and pharma, but the key drivers can be the biologics and the portfolio that will support that is mostly around our HVP higher end of the portfolio in NovaPure and FluroTec and particularly around plungers. Bernard, do you want to give more color?

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes. As Eric said, we would expect to see on our base business, double-digit growth, and within that base, that's going to be north of our construct that we put out there. So we're looking at that base business to be able to offset the C-19 and decline that we potentially could see here. And then again, looking at the timing of capacity, there could be some upside there also for us.

[Derik De Bruin, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. And back to the margin question. I mean, it's -- I mean if we sort of look at the -- I guess it's a question of what's the worst-case scenario that you're sort of looking at for next year? I mean is there a situation where you can't get the capacity online, further push out? I guess there's some fear that the fourth quarter number that you put up, if you sort of annualize that going into next year, it's pretty ugly in terms of an EPS perspective. I mean is that a worst-case scenario? I just sort of help us sort of understand what the parameters are around the risk to you not being able to bring capacity online? And going back to sort of like the margin profile, sort of thinking about how this all goes through?

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes. On getting that capacity online, that's actually in progress. And as we mentioned in the comment at the start, we would expect to see that early 2023. So we are reasonably confident around having that uplift.

[Derik De Bruin, Analyst at Bank of America]

Got it. And just to sort of reiterate rhetoric point, you're not seeing any inventory-related issues, but can you give us sort of like any indication of what some of the drugs you're like scaling up for -- are you involved in obesity drugs that are coming up and coming online. Just to sort of give us a sense of where some of the demand is coming from?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes. I'll give you a couple of areas. We don't give specific customers or drug molecules, particularly on the elastomers unless our customers will articulate that publicly. But they do tend to be -- first of all, we're seeing, as I indicated a little bit earlier, success is some very drug launches, particularly in biologics that were over the last few years, and that's quite positive. We are obviously in discussions around the obesity drug launches that are being looked at in the marketplaces, diabetes, obviously, those are the key large volume areas that -- West is part of those conversations. But going any further into specific drug molecule or a specific customer that would be -- we just simply don't go down that path.

[Derik De Bruin, Analyst at Bank of America]

Thank you, I'll get back to you soon. Thanks.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Dave Windley from Jefferies.

[Dave Windley, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Hi good morning, thanks for taking my questions. Bernard, you mentioned in your prepared remarks, I think I kind of missed it, but 180 basis points in reference to COVID supply agreement, and we had in our notes that there was some carryover take-or-pay related revenue or payment that you were expecting had it in 2Q expected some again in 3Q. Was that the same thing? And could you elaborate, quantify that for us, please?

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes, it was the same. It was relating to the same customer. It had to get split over two quarters. So that's what we relate to, and then there were some other smaller bits that were not really material, but it was primarily related to one customer.

[Dave Windley, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

And the 180 basis points, I missed the detail that was a benefit to gross margin. What was the 180?

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes, it was to gross margin.

[Dave Windley, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Yes. Okay. In thinking about your fourth quarter guidance and kind of dovetailing on both Derik and I think Larry's questions on margin, it looks like the fourth quarter gross margin proprietary product is probably down in the mid-30s, maybe lower. And so I wondered if you could help us to understand, is that just basically unutilized or underutilized capacity because so much COVID is coming out and before you're really able to ramp high value for these other products, it sounds like plungers mostly? Or what other factors should we be thinking about relative to fourth quarter margin? And how much that does or does not set the baseline for thinking about 2023?

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes. So in the fourth quarter, as a carryover from the issues that we experienced in Q3 with the delays and after getting equipment in place and then the impact that's having on our throughput and then also has been able to work through this mix shift change at the same time. When we layer in the capacity in early 2023, that will resolve a lot of that problem. So it's really down to having that increased capacity and throughput. So we don't believe it will reoccur.

[Dave Windley, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

So pardon the follow-up. So I know you probably don't want to get into too much operational minutia, but adding capacity doesn't sound like something that levers margin. That sounds like something that adds more cost. Seems like you would you want more volume on the same capacity you could help us to understand kind of how that flows and how that works?

[Bernard J. Birkett, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial and Operations Officer at West Pharmaceutical Services]

It's not -- it's actually going to enable us to clear more products through or end of lines to the capacity will actually help our HVP sales and help distribute fixed-costs and improve our absorption. So it's not that we're going to layer in more cost and it's going to be detrimental. It actually gives us the ability to sell more high-value products and get it through our plants actually quicker. So we can realize those revenues faster.

[Dave Windley, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

And zooming out a little bit on high value, I think, slow to absorb it in the market, but your COVID product mix, you'd consistently highlighted that FluroTec and NovaPure were popular in that market or to those customers. It sounds like NovaPure is -- you're still calling out NovaPure and NovaPure plungers -- I'd ask if we should be thinking that those plungers are purely NovaPure or if it's more of a mix. But the general question here is, how should we think about the mix within the high-value products as you move out of a COVID-heavy period and into this period whereas you described, the customers and the SKUs are much broader?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes. So when you look at the portfolio, it's going to be mostly -- you are right. So when you look at COVID-19, mostly it was NovaPure and FluroTec stoppers and high margin associated to that. And but think about the plungers demand that we currently have. It is a mix but mostly it is NovaPure. And that is when you think about the investments we're making right now, it is around that NovaPure corridor. And so some are laminated, some not laminated, but it's a NovaPure platform that we're working with.

[Dave Windley, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Okay. And then a final question for me. You mentioned the Valor -- the packaged Valor go-to-market product or system is available in January, which strikes me as pretty early, pretty quick. So good news there. But I guess I wanted to ask, what does availability mean? What does that start some kind of early-stage development sampling and testing? Or what does that availability really mean?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes. That's early stage. We think about one of the benefits -- we have with our Ready Pack portfolio is that it has been known to be a great accelerator of seed in the market, particularly smaller pharma and smile biotechs. They are looking for an off-the-shelf solution and provide technical data to support it. So this is feeding the pipeline, large and small customers and is really around early drug development phase. Just want to use us as an example as we launched NovaPure in 2016 time frame, our avenue was through the Ready Pack, same channel, same approach, seat in the market. And today, you can sense from this call, we spent a lot of time talking about NovaPure becoming a new standard of biologics. That's the intent with the collaboration between Corning and West and I'm very pleased with both technical teams are really -- continuously driving that differentiation of what this means in the market for our customers and ultimately the patient. So it's early stages, will keep you updated, but I'm excited about the launch in the first part of the year.

[Dave Windley, Analyst at Jefferies Financial Group]

Got it. Thank you.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Jacob Johnson from Stephens.

[Jacob Johnson, Analyst at Stephens]

Hey thanks, good morning. Maybe a follow-up on Derik's question around kind of 2023 revenue growth. obviously, a little bit of a change this morning in your 2022 kind of revenue dollar expectations versus where you were three months ago, but that seems to be due to some kind of one-off issues. Is there any change to kind of your 2023 expectations today versus where you were a couple of months ago because we're talking about '23, you will have a little bit of an easier comp given kind of the revenue decline in the 4Q. So I'm just kind of curious how much of that strong growth next year is something that's easy comp versus kind of strong demand. I don't know if that's possible to answer, but I'll try asking.

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

No, thanks, Jacob. So I think there's a couple of levers to look at. One is this puts COVID the side saying that I think in the last call, we talked about roughly around 50% reduction in 2023 over 2022. Right now, what we're saying it's about a 75% reduction. So that equates to that $280 million we discussed. On the growth, the airline growth of the business, we're relatively the same as what we were looking at about mid-last year, but maybe a little bit stronger than the biologics than we anticipated. So net-net, about the same, I would say. If we are able to get capacity online sooner, I can assure you that we're laser-focused on really those two sites right now to get this equipment validated with our customers so we can produce product. But we're just conservatively saying right now, we're looking at a benefit of early 2023.

But if we can get on in the next to do so because we do have demand, and we have customers asking us to produce as much as you can in the short term. I think one last thing about the last change, I would say, is a small piece, but the CM return to growth. We didn't really talk as much about that in the last quarter, but we're seeing that starting to come back to that mid-single-digit type corridor, if not a little bit better for next year. So that's where we stand with the changes from three months ago.

[Jacob Johnson, Analyst at Stephens]

Okay. Super helpful, Eric. And then just I know COVID is going to be a smaller piece of revenue next year, but on kind of the transition that single-dose vials or prefilled syringes. I think Pfizer highlighted some of this in an announcement last week. Just curious your latest thoughts on the shift towards single-dose vials in terms of kind of timing and the mix of COVID doses that could be single dose maybe as we look into next year or what's contemplated in your guidance?

[Eric M. Green, President and Chief Executive Officer, Chair of Board at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Yes, just a quick comment. I mean, if you talk about a lot of variability, that's one area where there is a lot of variability and COVID in the last six months. So yes, there is a -- if you think about there's a transition, trying to get lower doses per vial and a single dose use obviously, prefilled syringe. That shift is still occurring and it's anticipated.

[Jacob Johnson, Analyst at Stephens]

Okay got it. Thanks for taking the question.

[Operator]

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Quintin Lai for closing remarks.

[Quintin Lai, Vice President, Strategy and Investor Relations at West Pharmaceutical Services]

Thank you, Gigi. Thank you for joining us on today's conference call. An online archive of the broadcast will be available for 30 days on our website at westpharma.com in the Investors section. That concludes todays call. Have a nice day.

[Operator]

[Operator Closing Remarks]