Bob Leasure
Analyst · Colliers Securities
Thank you, Devin. Good afternoon, everyone. And thank you for joining us today. Sorry, we’re a little delayed this month. Fiscal 2021 was really a transformational year for Inotiv, reflecting our success. We expanded the existing operations and services, starting up new operations and services, acquiring strategic assets, raising capital, building really a very strong foundation for our future. And I’m very proud of the team and the results this quarter and this year. By broadening our suite of solutions and adding new talent to our team and achieving greater scale, we created an organization that more comprehensively supports our clients’ discovery and development objectives. Inotiv’s expanded platform also presents us with significant opportunities to cross sell solutions, drive revenue growth, and deliver improved operating margins. Inotiv rapidly transformed this past year, but one constant that has played a key role in our success is our client service oriented culture. I commend our growing team for the dedication to our customers, looking to constantly improve and for making the appropriate short-term decisions to ensure that we thrive over the long run. To recap some of this year’s notable milestones, I’ll start with the expansion of our existing operations and services. At West Lafayette, Indiana facility, we expanded vivarium capacity. In February, we received accreditation by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International. In St. Louis, we exercised our option to purchase the previously leased facility and have completed the first phase expansion of approximately 15,000 square feet, adding office, archives, and laboratory capacity. The St. Louis expansion gives us critical new technology and state-of-the-art laboratory capabilities to support our clients’ needs in DMPK, cell, molecular biology, pharmacology, toxicology, and histopathology, helping extend our reach into earlier stages of drug discovery. We opened the newly constructed scientific laboratories in November of this year. At our Fort Collins, Colorado facility, we invested more than $1 million over the last year to make improvements to expand capacity and broaden our services. It’s allowed us to more than double this business since it was acquired in November of 2019. In Evansville, Indiana, we recently initiated design planning for another expansion. We expect the design, build and validation process to take approximately 24 months. In Boulder, Colorado, we acquired three companies, have now increased leased space by an additional 19,000 square feet adjacent to our existing sites to support the additional strong demand queries we are receiving for discovery services. In Gaithersburg, Maryland, we invested in equipment and infrastructure to reduce bottlenecks and leased additional space. As a result, this business saw significant growth in the past 12 months has more than doubled, almost tripled its sales capacity, since its acquisition in 2019. Among our internal startups this past fiscal year, we initiated the development of new in-house enterprise-wide technology solutions for data and study management, as an additional investment to help enhance the client experience. We also recruited notable industry experts to Inotiv, to help accelerate the startup of new services, further reducing our outsourcing cost and enhancing our ability to deliver services as a fully integrated service provider. Examples include Dr. Adam Aulbach, who is spearheading our new veterinary clinical pathology offering, Dr. Kenneth Swart, who is leading the development of our analytical capabilities to support biologics, biomarkers, cell-based analysis and therapeutics. Dr. Nicolette Jackson is building out our medical device, histology and pathology solutions. Dr. Gopala Krishna is overseeing our entry into the genetic toxicology space. Ty Speece who is leading our Cardiovascular Safety Pharmacology business, and a team of experts to lead the development and growth and send data reporting or standard for the exchange of nonclinical data. These internal initiatives started to contribute to our underlying organic growth in the fourth quarter. In fiscal 2021, we also significantly changed the complexion of Inotiv through strategic acquisitions, starting with the purchase of Boulder, Colorado based, HistoTox Labs, and Bolder BioPATH in April and May. HistoTox brought us strong expertise in tissue staining and quantitative image analysis, while Bolder BioPATH added depth to our existing pharmacology and pathology enterprise, allowing us to further extend our market reach in early stage drug discovery. These acquisitions now comprise our Boulder, Colorado operations, and together delivered strong fourth quarter performances for Inotiv, contributing approximately $7.1 million of combined revenue, corresponding to an annualized revenue run-rate of approximately $28.4 million. Both companies’ corporate cultures have proven to be highly compatible with ours and each business has been integrating into Inotiv’s fold, performing ahead of our expectations. We’re starting to see these tangible cross-selling benefits from these acquisitions as well. For example, we had the opportunity to integrate bio analysis and pharmacokinetics, previously provided by legacy Inotiv sites to the non-clinical service offerings provided by legacy Bolder BioPATH. We expect to reap similar benefits from our acquisition of Colorado-based Plato BioPharma, which we completed after the quarter ended, which brings us complementary in vivo pharmacology platform that we are weaving into our Boulder discovery operations. In July, we acquired genetic toxicology assets from MilliporeSigma’s BioReliance portfolio, bolstering our efforts to develop in-house genetic toxicology capabilities. And we purchased first-class laboratory equipment and instrumentation, stock, consumables, bench work from a Tennessee-based lab services provider that seized operations, advancing our efforts to build in-house biotherapeutic solutions. We recently signed a lease on our facility in Rockville, Maryland, and have initiated recruiting efforts to build the scientific and laboratory staff necessary to support this effort. In August, we acquired Missouri-based Gateway Pharmacology, which enhances our expertise in cardiovascular and renal pharmacology. Gateway Pharmacology dovetails well with our expanded St. Louis facilities, strategically positioning us for additional synergies. Finally, in September, we announced an agreement to purchase Envigo, a leading global provider of research models and services. The Envigo transaction closed after quarter-end, so do not contribute to our fourth quarter financial results. That said, we are very pleased about how well the two organizations are coming together. From a financial perspective, we expect the Envigo acquisition to be accretive to Inotiv’s EBITDA margins and earnings in the quarters to come. In Envigo, we have secured access to high quality research models for the pre-clinical services offered by Inotiv and needed by our clients. This acquisition was once again a result of listening to and addressing our customers’ concerns. Reflecting Envigo’s deep animal husbandry expertise and services, 17 of its top-20 clients have been repeat customers for more than a decade. These incredibly durable customer relationships have supported 99% plus revenue retention rates at Envigo and will benefit our combined organization in the years to come. Moreover, we have identified excellent cross selling opportunities with Envigo’s global base of more than 2,550 clients. Clearly, Envigo brings us additional scale and expands our footprint in attractive new geographies such as the European market. Finally, and importantly, we benefit from an injection of additional talent. Our strong fourth quarter fiscal 2021 financial results reflect the successful execution of our strategic growth plan with revenue nearly doubling year-over-year to $30.1 million, driven by approximately 47% internal growth and 53% external growth. Our adjusted EBITDA increased to $4.3 million from $156,000 during the same time period, demonstrating the underlying leverage in our business as we scale. As I noted earlier, in the fourth quarter and throughout fiscal 2021, we continue to make significant investments in our business through acquisitions, internal expansion and embedded operational startups. Simultaneously, across our organization, we have continued to make broad expansion investments in G&A, including our people, infrastructure, systems and services. While our operating margins were temporarily depressed in the fourth quarter, due to this growth oriented investments, we expect enhanced future growth and margins over the long run. We’re pulling several levers to improve longer term profitability, including making scalable investments continuing to reduce outsourcing by bringing key capabilities in house, driving cross-selling initiatives, taking advantage of purchasing opportunities, lowering client acquisition costs as a percent of revenue, leveraging existing direct fixed costs and reducing corporate overhead as a percentage of revenue. In the fourth quarter, adjusted unallocated corporate G&A was approximately $3.2 million or 10.5% of revenue compared to 21.7% of revenue for the same period last year. And we expect to see this figure decline further as we continue to grow. Including Envigo, we are targeting long-term organic revenue growth in the high to single, double digits and EBITDA margins in the range of 18% to 22%. In the near term, we are optimistic for continued strong revenue growth based on our robust backlog, as well as anticipated contributions from recent acquisitions, internal expansions and new services. We were pleased that after achieving strong revenue growth, we were able to report a book-to-bill ratio in the fourth quarter of 1.77 times for our services business. We ended the quarter with a backlog of $81.4 million, up 31% compared to $62 million on June 30, 2021, up 86% from $43.8 million on September 30, 2020, indicating the current strength of our business. Fiscal 2021 has been a busy year, and we’ve accomplished quite a bit, a compact timeframe. But I believe the best is yet to come for our clients, employees, and shareholders. With that, I will turn the call over to Beth Taylor, Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our fiscal 2021 fourth quarter and full year financial results in more detail. Beth, please go ahead.