Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Laboratory Corporation of America Holdings’ Third Quarter 2015 conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will follow at that time. If anyone should require assistance, please press star then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to your host, Paul Surdez, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning and welcome to LabCorp’ third quarter 2015 conference call. As detailed in today’s press release, there will be a replay of this conference call available via telephone and internet. With me today are Dave King, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Glenn Eisenberg, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer; James Boyle, CEO of LabCorp Diagnostics, and Deborah Keller, CEO of Covance Drug Development. In addition to our press release, we also filed a Form 8-K this morning that includes additional financial information. Both are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at www.LabCorp.com and include a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today’s call to GAAP. Finally, we are making forward-looking statements during today’s call. These forward-looking statements include, among others, statements about our expected financial results, the implementation of our business strategy, and the ongoing benefits from acquisitions. These statements are based upon current expectations and are subject to change based upon various factors that could affect our financial results. Some of these factors are set forth and detailed in our 2014 10-K and subsequent filings with the SEC. We have no obligation to provide any updates to these forward-looking statements even if our expectations change. Now I’ll turn the call over to Dave King.

Thank you, Paul, and good morning. LabCorp had another impressive quarter in which we delivered excellent revenue growth, double-digit earnings growth, and solid operating and free cash flow. Both LabCorp Diagnostics and Covance Drug Development turned in strong performances, and Glenn will update you on these results in a few moments I would like to spend my time today updating you on our progress towards the strategic and financial objectives we set out for our combined companies following our transformative acquisition of Covance. In January, we announced our Wave 1 priorities for our combined companies: use of data to improve trial recruitment, leadership in companion diagnostics, and innovation in the use of real-world evidence. We set a goal of $150 million in incremental revenue by the end of 2018 for use of data, $100 million for companion diagnostics, and $50 million for real world evidence. Now, eight months after closing, I would like to tell you where we stand with these initiatives. First, we continue to feature the utility of our patient database as a competitive differentiator. We have been awarded four major pieces of business by adding LabCorp data to Covance proposals, and these wins have contributed nearly $100 million in new orders to our backlog. In tracking this figure, we include only awards in which the sponsor specifically identified LabCorp’ data as influencing the selection of its CRO partner. We continue to receive multiple requests for our patient data from large and emerging pharma customers seeking insights into clinical and commercial questions across multiple therapeutic areas. Sponsor awareness of our unique capability is increasing and we are well on our way to achieving $150 million in incremental revenue by 2018. Second, we continue to advance our industry leadership in the development and commercialization of companion diagnostics. Last month,…

Thank you, Dave. I’m going to start my comments with a review of our consolidated third quarter results, followed by a discussion of our LabCorp Diagnostics and Covance Drug Development segments, and then conclude with an update on our 2015 guidance. Revenue for the quarter was $2.3 billion, an increase of 46% over last year. The acquisition of Covance contributed $647 million during the quarter, driving 42% year-over-year revenue growth. The other 5% was driven by solid organic volume growth across both core and esoteric testing, as well as benefits from BeaconLBS, price mix, and tuck-in acquisitions that were partially offset by currency. Gross profit for the quarter $763 million or 33.6% of revenue compared to $571 million or 36.8% last year. The increase in gross profit was due primarily to the acquisition of Covance as well as organic volume, price mix and productivity partially offset by personnel costs. Personnel costs were up due to annual merit increases and normal headcount additions in support of our top line growth. The decline in gross margin was primarily due to the mix impact of Covance. Excluding Covance, gross margin would have been 36.7%, a decrease of 10 basis points versus last year. SG&A for the quarter was $383 million or 16.9% of revenue compared to $306 million or 19.7% last year. Excluding special charges of $5 million related to the acquisition of Covance, SG&A in the quarter was $377 million or 16.6% of revenue, a 270 basis point reduction versus last year’s adjusted SG&A. The increase in SG&A was primarily due to Covance and personnel costs partially offset by Project LaunchPad savings. The favorable reduction in SG&A as a percentage of revenue benefited from Covance’s lower SG&A rate and the reduction in our bad debt rate. Excluding Covance and special charges, SG&A…

[Operator instructions] Our first question comes from Bill Bonello with Craig Hallum. Your line is open.

Good morning guys. On the lab side of the business, just want to probe a bit more about the movements that we saw in volume and price growth. Can you perhaps give us some sense of how much those growth rates were affected? You talked about some new business wins that were going to annualize during the quarter and maybe how much that impacted the volume growth, and if it had a corresponding impact on the price, and then maybe just any thoughts about where you would think of volume and price maybe shaking out as we look forward from here.

Hey Bill, this is Jay Boyle. How are you?

Great.

I want to touch on the volume, and Glenn will take the price. As you noted, in some of our prior calls we have indicated that we expected to see a little bit of a downward trend on our year-over-year organic growth beat, and that is exactly what’s happened as we’ve annualized the two contracts that you mentioned. However, we are seeing sequential volume growth quarter to quarter, and we’re very pleased with the 2.3% organic volume, the 2.9% overall. So that’s consistent with what we thought would happen, and again, we’re pleased with the result. Glenn, you want to talk about the price?

Sure. Good morning, Bill. Overall, needless to say, we feel we had a good quarter from both of our businesses, but in the diagnostics business in particular, the strong growth in organic revenue and volume that Jay commented, as well as obviously our price per requisitions improving nicely as well through the combination of the acquisitions, the tuck-in acquisitions that we’ve done at higher price points, as well as favorable test mix overall. But we continue to leverage well in the business, and you see that reflected in the improvement in our operating margins.

So would it be safe to say that on the volume side, most of the sequential change in the growth rate is attributable to those business wins annualizing?

Yes.

Okay, and what about on the price side? Would the same thing be true there, the increase attributable to that annualizing, or were other things driving that?

Bill, it’s Dave. No, the price impact of the annualization was not material to the overall price. There were, as we mentioned, three components to the price growth, which was largely driven by mix and then the acquisitions that we completed that were at an average revenue per requisition that was above the overall segment average.

Perfect. Thank you very much.

Our next question comes from Michael Cherny with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Good morning, guys. Congrats on a nice quarter.

Thank you, good morning.

So first just on the Covance Drug Development side, really nice sequential improvement. You talked about, from what I can see at least, improvements in all three key segments. Is there any unifying factor that drove the improvements, or maybe if you can give a little more color within early development versus clinical and central lab, kind of what you saw as the key components particularly in areas like central lab, where I know you had some issues earlier in the year with more kit mix and stuff that was out of your control versus actual health of the business.

Good morning, this is Deborah Keller. So yes, you’re right - all three of our service lines had constant dollar sequential growth this quarter, and I would say it was led by central lab, which as you said was roughly flat in the first half of the year. They had a substantial increase in their kit volume which is driving a much strong growth rate in Q3. Early development also is strong, and they had those nice incremental drop-through as well. So in our central lab, back to that, we had record level kits both in and out, and we had an increase in our testing volume as well. As far as clinical, we had good sequential increased growth rate and strong orders for the quarter.

Great, thanks Deb. Then Dave, just one question for you. Since the last call, there’s been a lot of moving pieces in terms of the true value, I think, of the lab. Obviously you had the PAMA decision that occurred a few weeks back. You’ve had a lot of noise around your private upstart competitor and what the actual value proposition they provide is. Maybe can you use this opportunity now, given especially following these results, to kind of reestablish what makes LabCorp differentiated versus the rest of the market in terms of delivering service to the end customer?

Sure, good morning, Michael. You know, first of all, I’ll just come back to something we’ve been saying for a long time, which is there is no healthcare system without laboratory medicine. We are about 3% of the overall spend. We drive 70 to 80% of the healthcare decisions. For those who have ever been to the doctor and not felt well, or have taken a child to the doctor who is not feeling well, the first question is, what do the labs say? So we feel very confident that even in a time of enormous change, the lab is always going to be absolutely central to healthcare and to the delivery of healthcare, and to patient care. Running a laboratory business well requires size, scale, scientific and medical capability and credibility, and true innovation. LabCorp has all of those things. We have an enormous infrastructure. We have enormous IT capabilities. We have a dedicated and highly motivated workforce that the number one thing they think about every day is serving the patient. We have clinicians and scientists who have been at this company for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. We have invented laboratory tests that now are standard of care in the market, and I challenge anybody else to stand up to those capabilities. Then on top of it, we are the most efficient, lowest cost, highest quality provider, and add in at the back end, Michael, that we have consistently led in innovation, whether it’s 70% of the companion diagnostics, whether it’s always having the newest test, whether it’s BeaconLBS. We have consistently been the market leaders in innovation and we will continue to be the market leaders in innovation. So this is a great business. We’ve been wise stewards of capital for our shareholders, and we look forward to great, great opportunity in the diagnostics business in years to come.

Thanks Dave.

Our next question comes from Lisa Gill with JP Morgan. Your line is open.

Great, thanks very much. Good morning everyone. I just wanted to follow up with just a couple quick questions around the Covance side. Either Dave or Deborah, can you maybe talk about two things: one, Dave, you’re talking about these incremental opportunities that you talked about on the revenue synergy side, but how do we think about the trajectory going into next year? I know it might be a little early to give specific guidance, but is it reasonable to think that this is kind of a mid-single digit grow, or how do I think about this business over the next 12 months?

Morning Lisa, it’s Dave. You know, I think it is early to give guidance for next year, although I applaud you for trying. I think what I would say is if you look at the historical growth rates in this business in constant currency, it’s mid to high single digits, and the central lab has years of very strong growth and years of less strong growth. We said earlier this year when central lab got off to a slow start, that we expected it to rebound in the second half, and here we are with a very strong rebound at central lab. Early development, the incremental margin on the business is terrific, and we’re being very careful about capacity and pricing in that business. I was really pleased to see the sequential improvement in clinical revenues. Again, we’re not giving guidance, but the historical growth rate has been mid to high single digits, and that should be a good frame of reference at least to think about how the business ought to be able to perform in the out years.

That’s helpful. And then Dave, you talked about each of the three components of the revenue synergies that you had laid out when you did the transaction. You talked about patient data and winning, but how about on each of the others? Is there anything, or revenue numbers you can put around that today for companion diagnostics or diagnostic information? You said you had $15 billion of tests, et cetera, but is there any way to give us a frame as to where you are on those two components?

Well, I think in my preliminary comments, I mentioned that we feel like we’ve made very good progress, and obviously that will be incorporated in the guidance as we give it, and it will be incorporated into the overall top line growth. So I would think about those things as being--they have the potential to be incremental contributors, and the question is obviously translating them from orders into revenue, and that will be part of what we incorporate into the guidance for next year and the years ahead.

Okay, very helpful, and congratulations on a nice quarter.

Thank you, Lisa.

Our next question comes from Jack Meehan with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. I just wanted to start with PAMA, and just curious whether you had some initial thoughts from the proposed rule that came out a few weeks ago, and then as you go through the comment period today, just where are the areas that you see as opportunity to work with CMS.

Good morning, Jack, it’s Dave. So this is going to take a couple minutes, but I want to give you a comprehensive answer about PAMA. So let’s step back to why PAMA was enacted. There was an OIG report that suggested that Medicare pricing was not market competitive with commercial pricing, and Congress enacted a statute specifically around the idea of let’s fine out--let’s base Medicare on a market-based price, and let’s find out whether Medicare is market-based and if it’s not, let’s adjust it. So that was the purpose of the statute, and it was clear in the legislative history, it was clear from the floor colloquy between Senator Burr and Hatch, it was clear in the letter that they believe that hospitals were an important part of the market to consider. Now when PAMA came out, obviously hospitals were not included, and that was extremely disappointing. I would point out in the first place, there was a statutory misconstruction in the regulation because what Congress said was if over 50% of the hospital lab revenue came from the clinical lab fee schedule, that it should be included. What CMS put out was if over 50% of the Medicare revenue came from the CLFS, it should be included. Well, as I’ve already pointed out in response to an earlier question and as everybody knows, lab is about 3% of the total Medicare spend, so it is structurally impossible for lab to be more than 50% of the total Medicare revenue. The CMS also lumped the lab in with the entire hospital system in doing the calculation, which again negated any possibility that the hospitals could be included. They did that not by using the tax side [indiscernible] and the NPI, so from our perspective, CMS’ proposed regulation did not…

Yes, thanks Dave. That was very well said. Maybe just one follow-up for Glenn on the lab business, give you a little break. The pricing growth that came through, I know some of that was related to the genomic and esoteric volumes coming through. I was surprised some of that better growth didn’t fall through on the gross margin line, so could you--and I know you talked about it being 10 BPs higher year-over-year. Just any other granularity around that would be great.

Sure, Jack. Overall, as you said, the gross margin excluding the impact of Covance would have been down around 10 basis points. Included in that, you heard earlier the pilot program that we have at Beacon, which Dave commented while it’s a contributor to the revenue that we wouldn’t have had a year ago, in its pilot stage is not contributing to profitability, so that had a, call it a headwind on gross margin, so were it not for that, our gross margin was favorable. Again, most of the pricing, if you will, we’ve talked about was from the benefit of the acquisition mix up, as well as just overall, call it test mix. But overall, we feel we’ve leveraged well. We’ve leveraged the diagnostic segment in excess of 30% on the incremental revenues and saw 60 basis point improvement in our operating margin, so overall we’re getting the benefit of that additional volume as well as our continued productivity improvement and initiative through LaunchPad.

That makes sense. Thanks guys.

Our next question comes from Robert Willoughby with Bank of America. Your line is open. Robert, if you line is on mute, could you please un-mute it?

Yes, I’m sorry. Dave, can you give us anything you can on the food safety business? You obviously did a deal there, but how are you sizing that market, the growth opportunity to margin profile, and where could that business be three to five years down the line for you? And maybe also just the synergy with the base business, if anecdotally you could point us to areas where you have a real advantage growing that business?

Sure, good morning, Bob. So when we made the acquisition, we identified nutritional chemistry and food safety as a growth opportunity because it is a significantly growing market and it’s a global market. Obviously with the increase in food importation, with the increase also in the number of detected concerns about food safety, we saw this as a nice opportunity for growth. So when we looked at the business, the market size is substantial. Obviously it’s not the size of the total lab industry, but the market size is substantial - it’s in the billions of dollars of global opportunity. We look at the margin profile as being attractive, and we look at the opportunity around what LabCorp and Covance bring together as there are two aspects of the food safety business. One is the chemistry side, and the other is the microbiology side. Covance has always had great expertise on the chemistry side; LabCorp obviously from our core lab testing brings a significant amount of expertise on the microbiological capabilities and also on the infrastructure, so it’s very important to be close to the customers because the food is sitting, waiting to be shipped. So the combination of infrastructure, microbiology and chemistry really positions us, we think, to take a market leadership position. On the nutritional side, the analysis of ingredients and purity, again all of the controversy around organic food, genetically modified food, what is safe food - this is another nice opportunity for us to grow the business, and again it’s a global opportunity. We actually have a food safety lab in Singapore as well as our large lab in Madison, and we’re very, very excited about adding International Food Network and the National Food Laboratory to these capabilities.

Can you size your opportunity maybe three to five years out, and what kind of spend you need to get there? Is it an expensive build?

We have aspirations. I’m not prepared to talk about them specifically, but we have aspirations that this business will be in the nine figures in revenue - hopefully the mid-nine figures, but these are just aspirational ideas for our company. There will be some which we’ll do through acquisitions, as we demonstrated we’re ready to do with the Safe Foods transaction, and there will be some that we’ll do by organic growth. I don’t think it’s something where we think about there will be an enormous amount of investment to get there.

Interesting, thank you.

Thank you. As a reminder, in the interest of time we ask that you please limit yourself to one question and return to the queue for any additional questions. Our next question comes from Isaac Ro with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Thanks guys. Let me try one question with two parts. On the capex side, you guys tracked a little better than your guidance. Could you talk a little bit about handicapping the potential for capex to kind of run rate from here? Is there a little bit more potential for that number to come down? And then secondly, any updated thoughts on potential for, or how you’re thinking about cash returns, specifically the potential for a dividend? Thank you.

Hey Isaac, this is Glenn Eisenberg. On the capex side, as you know, we’re not a very capital intensive company overall, and we continue to manage fairly tightly. We did bring down our guidance for the year based upon the current trend of capital spending that we have, and obviously the level of spending is a function of just projects and opportunities that we see, including our LaunchPad initiative where we are going through some structural investments. But overall, we’ve been tracking around, call it $70 million per quarter, and you might see that go up a little bit in the fourth quarter but still tracking at, call it around our depreciation level. As far as the cash returns, as you know, historically we’ve been a strong supporter of bringing excess cash back to shareholders in the form of share repurchases as opposed to dividends, and obviously given the acquisition of Covance and our higher leverage, we’re focused now on using some of that cash flow to pay down debt. But as the board convenes effectively every quarter, we do talk about our capital allocation, our return of capital back to shareholders. Dividends is part of the discussion, as is share repurchases, and we’ll continue to have those discussions and let you know each quarter what we do with our capital.

Got it. Thanks a bunch.

Our next question comes from Nicholas Jansen with Raymond James. Your line is open.

Hey guys, nice job. I just wanted to get a little bit more detail on the volume in the quarter. You’ve seen from the hospital companies, your largest competitor, talk a little bit about some level of market softness, maybe in the first half of the quarter. I just wanted to kind of get your views on the overall market trend and maybe why you’re continuing to capture market share relative to your peer group. Thank you.

It’s Dave. I’ll start and then if Jay has anything to add, I know we’ll welcome that. You know, I think Jay gave a very precise explanation of why you saw the organic volume decline year-over-year. We had specifically called that out and identified it. We had nice sequential volume growth, and I attribute it to we have a great leadership team, we have a great team of people on the ground, and they are executing well. We’re seeing nice growth in the core business, we’re seeing nice growth in the esoteric business. We’re bringing new tests to market, so the only commentary we can give is I think the numbers speak for themselves. The numbers show that we’re performing very well and that volume continues to grow.

Great.

Our next question comes from Amanda Murphy with William Blair. Your line is open.

Hi, good morning guys. I just had a quick follow-up question to what Lisa asked earlier. So again, recognizing you’re not giving guidance at this point, can you just put your comments in context around that high single digit, mid to high single digit growth framework for Covance in context with the Sanofi situation, because I think that a 2 to 3% headwind for you guys next year. So do you still think you can do that mid to high single digit growth on the back of that Sanofi contract situation?

Amanda, it’s Dave. You know, again, we’re not guiding, and so when we come out with the guidance, we will have all the puts and takes incorporated. Again, what we said is that the historic growth rate is mid to high single digits, and Sanofi will be incorporated into whatever guidance we give. There will be other puts and takes in the businesses as well, so I don’t think we should single out any one thing and try to extrapolate what that’s going to mean to the overall guidance. We’ll give the guidance in February when we give the guidance, and we look forward to being--to over time seeing Covance achieve the growth rates that the industry historically has turned in.

Amanda, maybe I’ll just add one thing, just relative to this year - and again, won’t comment or we can annualize for next year. But if you just wanted to isolate on Sanofi, you’ll obviously be able to get into our implied guidance in the fourth quarter for Covance overall, which is continued good year-over-year growth in the business. That will be impacted by Sanofi as that contract expired at the end of October, as you know having around, call it a $12 million impact in the fourth quarter, so that will impact the growth rate, if you will, by 1.8%. But obviously, we’ve got a lot of other business that’s coming in to replace that, but our guidance, if you will, for the rest of this year is inclusive with not having that contract for the last two months of the year.

Got it, very helpful. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Ricky Goldwasser from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning. This is Zach Sopcak for Ricky. I wanted to go back to test mix for a second and just ask, you used to have a goal - I think it was 45% esoteric testing. Can you give an update on where you are relative to that, and if the better mix was driven by any tests in particular, like BRCA or something else that’s longer term sustainable?

Zach, this is Glenn. I’ll give you the other ones. Clearly growing esoteric is one of the main strategies of the company with the new tests that we’re developing, and it continues to grow and we’re seeing favorable test mix from that area. It hasn’t quite gotten to, call it the 40% of the company. It’s still kind of an aspirational goal, but it’s moving in the right direction.

This is Dave. I would say the major drivers of growth in the esoteric category were continued strong performance in new swab, BRCA, non-invasive prenatal testing. We actually even in the quarter already started to get orders for the companion diagnostics that we mentioned in the prepared remarks, so there was nice progress across the board.

Got it, thanks. And then can I ask you guys on the bad debt improvement? Can you give any color how much of it was driven by Project LaunchPad versus just overall more coverage from the ACA?

This is Glenn. We continue to focus a lot from our LaunchPad initiative into cycle management and in particular one of the key aspects is the bad debt. We continue to see the rate coming down. We came in on the diagnostic side probably around 30 basis points year-over-year, so even though our, call it our volume, our revenue is going up, our bad debt expense is going down, so the savings on the rate is even greater because you’re still getting obviously new business. But overall, it’s mostly a function of, again, just the continued hard work of all our people identifying where the issues are and tackling it, and we expect to see that rate continue to improve.

Yes, it’s Dave. I don’t think the ACA had a material impact this year. I think most of the ACA benefit in terms of enrolment has annualized, so as Glenn said, I think it’s LaunchPad, it’s sustained and focused effort by our revenue cycle management team, and it’s just really good, diligent, hard work on the ground to collect the monies that are owed to us.

Great, thank you.

Our next question comes from Bill Quirk with Piper Jaffray. Your line is open.

Great. Thanks, and good morning everyone. I guess a two-part question. The first is just an update on BeaconLBS - when might we see that move out of the pilot program in Florida? I guess not necessarily assuming it’s going to go national right away, but just kind of curious what the latest thoughts are there. And then secondly, on the $30 million in cost synergies that you guys have dialed in over the past two quarters, it strikes me that the $100 million target by 2017 is a little conservative, so I’d love to hear some color on that as well. Thank you.

Bill, it’s Dave. I can answer the first part of the question quickly, and that is on BeaconLBS, we continue to have discussions about expanding to additional markets and with additional customers. We feel great that the BeaconLBS is proving out exactly as it was designed to, and I compliment the BeaconLBS team on, again, great effort, great execution, great accomplishments, and we’ll look forward to updating you as we enter new markets and agree to new business opportunities with new partners.

Bill, this is Glenn. On the Covance cost synergy side, our target still is the $100 million over the three years. It’s going to be weighted a little differently as we go--

One hundred and fifty.

This is the Covance--

Oh, I’m sorry - Covance. I thought he was talking about LaunchPad. My apologies.

On the $100 million over the three years, it’s going to be a little bit lumpy. We obviously have gotten a lot of benefits early on by taking out the redundant public company costs, leveraging the purchasing power of our two businesses, but it will take some time further to get through the lab consolidation, so that’s why it’s a little bit more back-ended as we have to continue to finish through all the trials that are being done in those facilities. So we’re off to a very strong start. We expect it to continue to improve year-over-year, but we’re looking still at the, call it $100 million over the three years. I’d be remiss, because Dave’s sitting next to me, that we always strive to exceed the targets that we’ve established, but we’ll do that after we first achieve the targets that we’ve established.

Understood. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Whit Mayo from Robert Baird. Your line is open.

Hey, thanks. Wanted just to go back to the capex question just for a second. Your original range at the beginning of the year was about 325 to 350, and you dialed it down to 250 to 275 over a couple of quarters. I guess I’m just curious what the biggest difference is between then and now. I understand and can appreciate that some projects can get pushed out and delayed, but just trying to get a sense of what we should see going forward, and whether or not any of these perhaps delayed projects pick up into next year.

Whit, this is Glenn. Needless to say, when we put together our plan and our guidance in the early part of the year, it’s with going through a business planning process with the businesses identifying where they feel there are capital investment opportunities in addition to just the normal maintenance and so forth. So we start off with that premise, but as the year unfolds, we continue to look at each of the investments and we look at it relative to others - some new ones will come in, some other ones may get deferred based on timing. But the level of spend that we have, we feel is in line with our averages. We’re actually spending less this year than in prior years if you looked at it on a pro forma basis, which is positive, and we’ve always said we would trend a little bit to that because both companies in fact have made some sizeable investments in systems, facilities and so forth. But we’re comfortable with the spend, as you can see by our implied guidance. We expect a higher spend in the fourth quarter than we did over the last couple. Hopefully we’ll be below that, but we continue to evaluate each project as a standalone investment and we make the decision whether or not we’ll go forward. But we see a lot of good opportunities to invest that capital.

Whit, it’s Dave. I would just add parenthetically, we are not under-spending or starving the businesses of capital to reduce the number. We’re being very thoughtful about how we invest the capital, but it’s not that we’re pushing projects out that are going to come back next year. It’s that we’re looking at every single project rigorously and saying, do we need to spend the capital dollars here or are there better places to deploy it?

Yeah, no I was--I mean, the free cash flow is just getting to be a pretty big number, so just trying to make sure people appreciate that. I guess my last question is I think you’ve got maybe a $250 million senior note due this year, and just curious if those were gone now and do you plan to be in the market to refinance those, or just take them outright altogether? Just thoughts on that would be great.

Sure, Whit. This is Glenn. We have $250 million of bonds that are due in December of this year, and our current intention is to use cash on hand to pay down the debt.

Great, thanks a lot.

Our next question comes from AJ Rice with UBS. Your line is open.

Hi everybody. Just two quick questions. I appreciate the commentary around PAMA and the frustration with the hospitals not being included. I’m just curious - if you take the proposal as is, CMS has put in there an impact analysis of about a 4.5% cut in 2017. Do you have any reaction to that impact as the average cut to the industry would experience, and then is there any commentary on the 2016 proposed rule which has also come out, any opportunities or challenges that creates?

AJ, it’s Dave. It’s hard to size the 4.5% assessment that CMS gave, obviously because we’re not privy to the data that they used to analyze it; however, it does reinforce something we have been saying all along, which is we don’t see a draconian negative outcome here for the industry. So it does reinforce our sense that this is not the doomsday scenario that many people had painted. In terms of the rest of the proposed 2016 rule, we are looking at it carefully. Obviously there are some proposed changes around drugs and abuse testing, there are some proposed changes around next-gen sequencing, there are some proposed changes around panels. None of them appear to be material to us at this early stage, but we will continue to analyze them and obviously file comments as appropriate.

Okay, thanks a lot.

Our next question comes from Gary Lieberman with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Good morning, thanks for taking the question. Maybe if you talk about commercial pricing a little bit, where you are in your contract negotiations, and then is there any potential for any fallout from the PAMA decision sort of working its way through commercial reimbursement?

Gary, it’s Dave. I’ll let Jay comment on the commercial negotiations. I don’t see the PAMA rule having an impact on commercial pricing, with the exception of one very small area, which is there are some Medicare Advantage plans that are tied to the Medicare fee schedule. As I say, it’s a very, very small part of the business. Other than that, our negotiations with commercial payors are based on value, they are based on individual CPT codes. They are not--obviously the Medicare fee schedule is always a frame of reference, but they are not based on that fee schedule. So I always say, when the Medicare fee schedule goes up, that doesn’t get us an increase with the commercial payors, and when the Medicare fee schedule goes down, that doesn’t get us a decrease.

Gary, the only thing I would add on the commercial pricing is obviously we feel very good about our managed care relationships and our current contract initiatives. There are no major contracts that are coming up through the end of this year. We have great relationships with our managed care partners and we feel great about the opportunity to continue to provide them with the level of service that we have.

Great. Maybe if I could ask a follow-up, Dave, you’ve talked a lot in the past about how the value proposition is so strong for LabCorp. We’re seeing at least some movement towards accountable care models and some bundled payment models. Are you seeing any benefit from that, or do you think we’re on the cusp of starting to see some benefit from that?

I think it’s very early days on the accountable care and the bundles. Obviously, I think right now, from my understanding, most of the bundles are just putting all the payments together and then distributing them out pretty much consistent with the status quo for the bundle. I think over time, this is a great opportunity for us. Again, as the highest quality and most efficient provider, and as the bundles start to include more services without more dollars behind them, reference back to my observation about the commercial pricing for hospital laboratory services earlier. People are going to look for the highest quality, highest value service, and we’re going to be in a position to provide that. So I think we’re going to continue to see volume shifting and share moving in our direction as a result of that change in the marketplace.

Great, thanks a lot.

Excuse me, Operator. It’s right at 10 o’clock. We have four questions in the queue, so we’ll do the lightning round here; but let’s please try not to ask questions that have previously been answered. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Donald Hooker with KeyBanc. Your line is open.

Great, good morning. So real quick, I guess maybe the pre-clinical sort of toxicology business. I know it’s small, but there’s a lot of leverage there, I think, over time, so can you talk a little bit about some of the trends in pricing and how much capacity you have there over the next couple years? How long can you grow that business before you need to add capacity?

Okay, thanks. This is Deb. Globally, we’re at about 70s as far as capacity. Utilization in the U.S. is slightly higher and Europe is a little bit lower. Obviously we’re glad to see our capacity filling. It’s a much improved situation versus a few years ago. We do run a global business and that’s been to our advantage, because it allows us to move studies around to maximize our capacity globally, and that way we can leverage it. We do monitor our capacity obviously daily. As far as pricing, we’ve seen some low single digit price increases generally speaking. It’s different for different types of studies and in different parts of the world, and again it’s much better than the price decline we’d seen a few years ago. With our global capacity, we do have some flexibility about capacity additions.

Our next question comes from Dave Francis of RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open.

Hey, good morning and congrats on the quarter. Real quick, bigger picture for either Dave or Deb, given some of the political and median noise around drug pricing and marketing that some of your customers are experiencing right now on the drug development side of the business, are you seeing any change in their behavior or your type of discussions with them relative to some of the things that they are dealing with there real time? Thanks.

Yes, this is Deb. I’ll start out and then I’ll turn it over to Dave. You know, as far as from an early development standpoint, our orders continue to be strong from all segments - emerging, midsize and large pharma, so at least thus far we’ve not seen it impacting.

And I’d just quickly add, the drug development business is about innovation, and innovation is going to continue to be the answer to improved delivery of healthcare. So we don’t see any reason why the current controversy should affect the desire over the long term for innovative drugs to market and for Covance being an absolutely essential part of bringing innovative new medicines to patients.

Great, thank you.

Our next question comes from Brian Tanquilut with Jefferies. Your line is open. Brian, if your line is on mute, can you please un-mute it? He may have pressed the star, one key in error. We’ll move on to the next question. Our next question comes from Mark Massar with Canaccord Genuity. Your line is open.

Hey guys, thanks. So your large competitor commented that they saw utilization dip. Wanted to ask if you agree with that assessment, if it was anything beyond the customary July-August seasonality from the summer; and secondly, Dave, can you comment on your update--or, can you update your commentary on launching a direct-to-consumer business by the end of this year?

Yes, first of all, we don’t comment on other people’s comments, so we commented on our results and, as we said, we had a very strong quarter from a volume perspective and we’re very pleased with the outcome there. In terms of the direct-to-consumer business, we have always said that when we launch our direct-to-consumer business, it’s going to be responsible, it’s going to be compliant, it’s going to focus on the LabCorp quality and service with the medical and clinical support that we have always provided in our business-to-business, if you will, side of the business with physicians and hospitals, and other customers. So we think the direct-to-consumer opportunity is important, it’s a market that is growing, and consumers are more and more engaged in healthcare. But as we always do, it’s going to be done in a clinically, medically and regulatory compliant fashion, and we are excited about the opportunity.

Thank you.

Thank you, that concludes the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Dave King, CEO for closing remarks.

We thank you for joining us this morning, and wish you a great day.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today’s conference. You may all disconnect, and everyone have a great day.