Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Medpace's third quarter 2022 earnings 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. As a reminder, this call may be recorded. I would now like to introduce your host for today's conference call, Lauren Morris, Medpace's Director of Investor Relations. You may begin. Good morning, and thank you for joining Medpace's third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Also on the call today is our CEO, August Troendle, our President, Jesse Geiger, and our CFO, Kevin Brady. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our remarks and responses to your questions during this teleconference may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent assumptions with known and unknown risks and uncertainties as well as other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. These factors, including the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on our business, are discussed in our Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. Please note that we assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements even if estimates change. Accordingly, you should not rely on any of today's forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date after today. During this call, we will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not superior to or a replacement for the comparable GAAP measures, but we believe these measures help investors gain a more complete understanding of results. A reconciliation of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the earnings press release and earnings call presentation slides provided in connection with today's call. The slides are available in the investor relations section of our website at investor dot Medpace dot com. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to August Troendle. Good morning. RFP metrics were reasonably strong, though down slightly on a sequential basis in Q3. Initial award notifications, which I described in our second quarter call as weak, recovered strongly and were at a healthy level in the third quarter. This was a surprising outcome given the continued financial challenges faced by a large fraction of our clients. Headwinds to revenue from delayed funding, reprioritization, and even bankruptcy were higher in the quarter, but not yet broad-based. The business environment is challenging, and we remain concerned that a prolonged period of depressed funding flows will eventually lead to a rapid escalation in project delays. Our initial 2023 guidance reflects this caution, and we anticipate slowing growth next year. Jesse and Kevin will now review our financial results for Q3. Thank you, August, and good morning, everyone. Revenue for the third quarter of 2022 was $383.7 million, which represents a year-over-year increase of 29.8%. Net new business awards entering backlog in the third quarter increased 15.4% from the prior year to $470.9 million, resulting in a 1.23 net book-to-bill. Ending backlog as of September 30 was approximately $2.2 billion, an increase of 20.9% from the prior year. We project that approximately $1.17 billion of backlog will convert to revenue in the next twelve months. Backlog conversion in the third quarter was 17.7% of beginning backlog, and we continue to make progress in hiring, adding 11% to headcount from the end of 2021 and 13.7% from the prior year. With that, I'll turn the call over to Kevin to review our financial performance in more detail, as well as our guidance expectations for the balance of 2022 and initial guidance for 2023. Kevin? Thank you, Jesse, and good morning to everyone listening in. As Jesse mentioned, revenue was $383.7 million in the third quarter of 2022. This represented year-over-year increase of 29.8% on a reported basis and 31.9% on a constant currency basis. Revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2022 was $1.066 billion, an increase 27.8% on a reported basis and 29.3% on a constant currency basis from the comparable prior year period. EBITDA of $89.3 million increased 48.5% compared to $60.1 million in the third quarter of 2021. On a constant currency basis, third quarter EBITDA increased 41.5% compared to the prior year. Year-to-date EBITDA was $227.7 million, an increase 40.9% on a reported basis, and 35.7% on a constant currency basis from the comparable prior year period. EBITDA margin for the third quarter was 23.3% compared to 20.3% in the prior year period. Year-to-date EBITDA margin was 21.4% compared to 19.4% in the prior year period. The increased EBITDA margin was driven by revenue growth, net foreign exchange benefits behind the strong US dollar, and slower headcount growth compared to 2021. In the third quarter of 2022, net income of $66 million increased 35.9% compared to net income of $48.6 million in the prior year period. Net income growth over the prior year was primarily driven by higher EBITDA, offset by interest expense and a higher effective tax rate. Net income per diluted share for the quarter was $2.05 compared to $1.29 in the prior year period. Regarding customer concentration, our top five and top ten customers represent roughly 17% and 25% respectively of our year-to-date revenue. In the third quarter, we generated $108.5 million in cash flow from operating activities, and our net days sales outstanding was -40.5 days. We did not repurchase any shares during the third quarter. In October, our board of directors authorized the company to repurchase up to $500 million of the company's common stock. During the quarter, we paid $110 million against the credit facility, and our net debt position at the end of the quarter was $108.7 million, which was composed of debt of $139.7 million and cash of $31 million. Our net leverage ratio is approximately 0.4x last twelve months EBITDA. Moving now to our updated guidance for 2022. Full year 2022 total revenue is now expected in the range of $1.44 billion-$1.46 billion, representing growth of 26.1%-27.8% over 2021 total revenue of $1.142 billion. Our 2022 EBITDA is now expected in the range of $302 million-$310 million, representing growth of 35.4%-39% compared to EBITDA of $223.1 million in 2021. Guidance is based on foreign exchange rates as of September 30. This guidance assumes a full year 2022 effective tax rate of 16%-17% and 33.7 million diluted weighted average shares outstanding for 2022. There are no additional share repurchases in our guidance. We forecast 2022 net income in the range of $232 million-$236 million, which includes $3.3 million of interest expense on our outstanding debt. Earnings per diluted share is now expected to be in the range of $6.88-$7. As Jesse mentioned, we are providing initial 2023 guidance for revenue and EBITDA. For the full year 2023, we expect revenue in the range of $1.68 billion-$1.74 billion and EBITDA to be in the range of $325 million-$350 million. We plan to provide additional detailed full year 2023 guidance on our fourth quarter earnings call in February. With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator, so we can take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star one one on your phone keypad. Again, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question or comment comes from the line of Dave Windley from Jefferies. Your line is open. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. August, you mentioned in your remarks, some of the financial headwinds, and even I think you mentioned even some bankruptcies, but those weren't that broad. I guess that mention seems, I guess, new or maybe somewhat intensified. It would seem sequentially like a little bit of a headwind. I'm looking at some of the metrics like your revenue burn rate actually accelerating by quite a bit, and those things seem to be at odds. Maybe you could help us to understand, like, what helped the backlog burn rate to accelerate in the quarter and how the margin jumped so much sequentially. Was there any pull forward of revenue in the third quarter? No. Yeah. Hi, Dave. No, I don't think there's any pull forward, but projects did progress. You know, I'm thinking you got two things going on. We're a little bit concerned about new project starts, but we haven't really seen broad-based delays there. Ongoing projects are going very well, and you know, that's what's driving conversion is the ongoing projects. You know, I think that we made good progress on them. You know, the pass-throughs were even higher than the, you know, service fees, you know, growth. Projects are progressing very nicely and to a better extent than we expected. The amount of What we estimated for delays and slowdowns and cancellations were less than what we expected, so I think we had a very good conversion. Dave, the other thing to consider. I'm sorry, go ahead. On margin. Sorry, Dave. The other thing to consider on margin, you know, in addition to revenue is just the FX impact that we saw in the quarter. You know, the dollar, as you know, significantly strengthened again in the third quarter. For us, it was about a $6.5 million impact when you also factor in the FX gain from the revaluation of our balance sheet. That last part that you mentioned is the other income in- That's right. component? Yes, that's right. Yeah. That kind of, it kind of addresses the margin question. I guess on that, August, you've talked about how, you know, contracts are solidified sometimes, you know, some amount of time, probably less in your case than others, perhaps in terms of the lead time before your study start. Then you have multiple years of kind of living with those contracts and certain price escalators baked into those contracts that may not be able to be renegotiated. I guess if anything, one would, you know, one would expect that those would be headwinds to your margin. FX maybe, you know, is overwhelming that, but it. Have you been able to negotiate labor inflation up some to protect yourself there? We haven't really addressed labor inflation on existing contracts to any extent. You know, obviously we do annually and sometimes even small tweaks in between in terms of pricing on new projects, but they're not reflected in our current work. Things that we're bidding in the last nine months are not really burning. It pretty much reflects awards that were in place a few years back. There's no real way to address inflation other than the contractual terms, which generally have a set fixed amount of increase each year. Okay. I'll leave it at that. I'll maybe come back later, let other people ask questions. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question or comment, let's see, comes from the line of Sandy Draper from Guggenheim Partners. Draper, your line is open. Thanks very much. Maybe a little bit of a follow-up to Dave's question, but thinking about your 2023 guidance, which was admittedly pretty strong. I was surprised, August, you commented that feel like it baked in some conservatism. I know you're not going to give complete granularity, but when I think about, you know, the inputs that are gonna drive the revenue growth, you've got what your bookings and implied book-to-bill shakeout to be, what the backlog burn is, and some of that is trials, but also mix of service revenue, et cetera. I'm just trying to think about, you know, maybe cancellations. In your guidance, can you give us sort of some thoughts about are you expecting bookings levels or book-to-bill at these types of levels implied, or is it deceleration? Generally for 2023, do you have an expectation of the backlog burn sort of stabilizing at this level? 'Cause it sounds like it picked up. Or is it, can it continue to stay up? I'm just trying to triangulate what's built into the guidance. 'Cause, again, I was a little bit surprised when you positioned it, saying on the conservative side, 'cause that's pretty darn healthy guidance. Thanks. Yeah. I think we expect book-to-bill to be in a similar kind of range that they have been this year. We actually think they'd be stronger if we didn't expect to slow down. You know, there's a lot of factors that go into that, so I don't know. We did look at the entire pipeline and what things we have, you know, for decision and what decisions have been made, you know, kind of our initial awards and how they're gonna flow through and model that. We then said, well, you know, we do still expect, you know, we're kind of looking for Jamie Dimon's financial hurricane. You know what I mean? We keep expecting that there's going to be a pretty broad-based slowdown in starts and you know and also see some cancellations, you know, uptick in cancellations that are meaningful. You know, given the funding environment and given the you know feedback we've gotten from clients and you know what we're seeing. We've been able to work around it largely to date. We do expect that to yet hit us you know at some point. If it doesn't, there's upside in our guidance. If it does, you know, hopefully we're not below where we've you know come out on our guidance. You know, you can't it you know there's nothing we can do about a very broad-based you know substantial cancellations situation. We don't anticipate that, but I do think we've put enough conservatism into the guidance that the slowdown we're kind of expecting will allow us to achieve within our guidance range. Great. That's really helpful. Thanks. My next question, I'll yield the floor. Probably for Kevin or maybe Jesse. When I look at the EBITDA guidance for next year, obviously growing slower than revenue. Just thinking through the margin, is some of that mostly coming through the gross margin side and thinking maybe it's the mix of service revenue to pass-throughs and maybe higher pass-throughs, or is that sort of inflation? Just trying to think what is pushing on the expenses is more as a gross margin line that's driven by general inflation or service revenue mix, or is it more in the SG&A line? Thanks. Yes. Sandy, just to answer your question, there's a couple of things that are going on. One is the FX gain that you see in miscellaneous income, you know, that's just driven by the revaluation of the balance sheet. To the extent that rates stay consistent, we don't expect to see a positive or negative influence from that in 2023. There's $7.8 million year to date in foreign currency gains right now. The other component is, you know, just in terms of building in some level of a continued inflation or retention efforts in hiring, it's to make sure that we can support, you know, the anticipated growth in 2023. Great. That's really helpful. Thanks, Kevin, and I'll yield the floor. Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of, just a second, Mr. Max Smock from William Blair. Mr. Smock, your line is open. Hi. Thanks for taking our questions. I just wanted to ask a quick one here on revenue by customer here. Based on the deck, it seems like mid-size and large pharma were both really strong in the quarter. I think each increased by 1% based on year-to-date revenue. And small biopharma, it seems like obviously very impressive, but as a percent of revenue year to date dropped off a couple of%. Just wanted to see if you had any detail you could provide around whether or not there were any notable wins in the mid to large pharma space that we should be aware of. You know, any cause for concern on the drop off in small biopharma as a percent of revenue beyond what you've already talked about in terms of some of the near-term headwinds from the slowdown in funding that we've seen over the last couple of quarters here? Yeah, Max, nothing really to point out there, other than when you know we do have activity in the mid and large, it tends to be a little bit lumpier than you know how revenue is spread across the population of small biotech customers. You know, nothing really that I'd point out there in terms of you know any therapeutic concentration or specific customer concentration that really drove activity in the quarter. All right. Got it. Thank you. Then wanted to go back to the 2023 guide again and appreciate the conservatism that you've built in there. In terms of funding and whether or not we see it pick back up here near term, if we do actually see it pick back up here near term, do you think there could actually be some upside to 2023 guide, or given the lag between bookings and revenue, would this actually be more of an impact for 2024? Assuming funding does kind of pick back up in the next couple of quarters, is it fair to think about revenue growth reaccelerating back into that 20% range in 2024 and beyond? Sorry for lumping a few in here, but relatedly, on the other hand, if we don't see funding pick back up, would you think about 2024, you know, maybe dropping off further from the projected year-over-year growth that you're guiding to in 2023? Yeah, sure, Max. The longer the slowdown in biotech funding, I think the greater the headwind for us. I do think it is cumulative. 2024 would be impacted by very prolonged depression of revenues. If things snap back, yeah, there's upside to the 2023. We've kind of baked in some disruption both in terms of starting of programs delays as well as some kind of cancellation expectations to get to where we are in the guidance. Again, not a disastrous kind of scenario that could be below. You know, we have tried to be more conservative than usual in terms of anticipating that slowdown. There certainly is upside if you know, funding rebounded or we don't have the slowdown that we expected. We would you know, look at you know, the last few years and you know, yeah, 20%+ revenue growth should be you know, quite possible if you know, if things don't deteriorate or you know, funding snaps back. Does that answer your question? Yeah. No, that's very helpful. Thank you. I'll leave it there. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question or comment comes from the line of John Sourbeer from UBS. Mr. Sourbeer, your line is open. Hi. Thanks for taking my questions and congrats on the quarter and the impressive guidance. Just I was wondering, is there any additional color you can provide on that recovery on the initial award notifications that you saw in 3Q versus 2Q? You know, do you think that recovery is sustainable as we head into 2023? Yes. Think it's sustainable. You know, we didn't really understand why it dropped. We thought it was the beginning of a broad-based slowdown, and we have not seen that yet. It did come back and the numbers were consistent with prior quarters, you know, substantially up from Q2. So we haven't seen any more. You know, it was a false signal, I guess we could say. At least to date, we still anticipate there to be some slowing, but we just haven't seen a great deal of it to date. You know, there's anecdotal, and we have had additional projects that have been delayed. As I'd mentioned, even, you know, bankruptcy, which is pretty uncommon in an ongoing, you know, meaningful project. We haven't seen it very broad-based to affect our growth to a large extent. Again, I just have to leave it at that. So far, things look pretty good. Got it. Then just on the cash burn and the increase, you know, Q-over-Q and year-over-year in 3Q, just any additional color there, and then just thoughts, you know, given some of the hiring over the last year on just what that trajectory looks like in 2023. You said the cash burn? Yeah. In the context of, you know, I mean, we're generating. I guess the cash conversion maybe being a little bit lower. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, the cash conversion, you know, it is pretty volatile for us. We had another good quarter of free cash flow generation, really just driven by earnings and positive working capital. We had a little bit of a blip in the first quarter, if you recall, but things have recovered nicely since then. Got it. And then- Yeah, John, I was just gonna comment on the hiring and the headcount growth. You know, we did pause a little bit or slow things down a little bit in the third quarter. Just given the uncertainty in the environment, we are ramping that back up and do expect you know, healthy hiring expectations in 2023. It does continue to be a challenging environment. We're really focused on hiring. We're focused on retention because the labor market still is a tough one. Got it. Just last one on me, I think that maybe Dave touched on it on existing contracts. Just on pricing for new contracts, any thoughts there on, you know, are you know, seeing any pressure or just repricing for some of that wage increasing? I think it's kind of as we always as each year we do evaluate our rates and in the current environment it is a little bit larger bump than the last several years. No, haven't seen much pushback. I think it's you know obviously it's a competitive environment and you know everyone is looking, particularly you know our clients in this current environment where their funding is down. They're looking for you know saving dollars. You know we have that conversation about how you know the inflationary environment is gonna determine our rates. As long as we're competitive, we've just not seen you know unusual pushback at all, no. Got it. Thanks for taking the questions. Sure. Thank you. Again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question or comment at this time, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. Our next question or comment comes from the line of Eric Coldwell from Robert W. Baird. Mr. Coldwell, your line is open. Thank you. Good morning. There was a question earlier on the business mix in the quarter, and jumping off of that, do you possibly intend to or consider increasing your business development focus on larger clients in this environment? Do you maybe get a bit more aggressive on larger biotech or a little more open to working with big pharma just to provide some additional avenues for growth and bookings, if you are worried about the smaller client trajectory? Yeah, Eric, this is August. That's just not really our focus and not where the model really matches well. You know, it's not such a bad situation that we think we have to kinda jump out into a you know, a new adjacency. You know, it really is largely a different market there. We do pay a lot more focus on the funding of the client, and so we might move up in terms of size of the biotech client to some extent. You know, there may be some movement there, but I don't think we're really you know, moving to mid-size or large pharma companies you know, with any kind of focus. You know, those opportunities occasionally come to us, but we don't go out soliciting in that group. Okay, good. Bankruptcies. I'm curious, could you share how many total active clients you have this year and how many bankruptcies across that, whatever that number, that cohort is? How many bankruptcies in total did you experience in Q3 or year to date? Yeah, no. I don't even know that, you know, that's a number 'cause, you know, like, how much work you're doing is what matters. We had one client that had a meaningful amount of work ongoing and was ahead. We actually had some loss because of it, you know, $ a few million and, you know, lost opportunity in a bankruptcy that was a, you know, meaningful sized project. That doesn't come up very often. You know what I mean? Usually it's very late on, and we have very little revenue left or, you know, something or very early on and, you know, there's just not much impact. It was more than usual in terms of just the dollar value, but I don't have a good metric on, you know, total number of clients over time that, you know, have declared bankruptcy. Of course, again, you'd have to, you know, look at the impact of that, you know, how big a, you know, what the backlog was with them, you know, when it happened and how much, you know, unpaid revenue did we have and, you know, all the rest of it. I just don't have that. Okay. I know you don't specifically quantify cancellation rates most of the time, but could you, and I apologize if I missed this, did you give a cancellation rate or quantify whether it was at above, below normal, this period? I did not, but our cancellation rate was actually in a very good range. Now what we do, you know, talked about in terms of cancellation. I should step back a second and say we've talked variably, we have a formal cancellation rate, although we don't give it, so, you know, generally, but we talk about it being in the kinda 3%-5% range. And that's a backlog, you know, so that's an actual ongoing, you know, backlog that's 3%-5%. You know, sometimes we talk about total cancellation of projects, you know, and we expand that to mean, you know, anything that's been awarded to us, even though it hasn't started, you know, and things just, you know. At times of a slowdown, sometimes that's what happens is you get clients initially delay the start up. They say, "Wait a minute, we're still waiting to close on funding, and so, you know, we're holding off. We're not putting in a backlog. We're not starting." Eventually they, you know, can't start it, and they cancel it. You know, sometimes we talk about that. In the broader scheme, we have not seen a very broad-based blip in cancellations. Our formal cancellation rate was well within that range of 3%-5%, you know, for backlog projects. From those kind of metrics, things look pretty good on the quarter. I mean, they actually look, you know, better. You know, our you know, kind of metrics in Q3 were, you know, better than, you know, Q2. Can- It's hard to see where things are going. Can I, when you say the metrics, that sounds like a broad-based comment. When you say metrics look better, would that translate also to win rate, and pipeline? I'm curious if you can give an update on where you stand with those. Yeah, win rate was, you know. (crosstalk)Right. Win rate ticked up. You know, our RFPs, as I mentioned, were slightly down, but, you know, win rate came back. I think we mentioned last quarter it was down a little bit, but not, you know, a lot. Award notifications were strong. You know, across the, it looks very like a very strong environment, but we've got a lot of clients that are also in financial distress, and we've had more sort of, you know, impairments in things than usual, you know, over the last quarter or two. It's. I don't know. It's, you know, we keep waiting for the real impact to hit, and I haven't seen it, and I don't know if it'll hit. The longer, you know, funding deficiency, you know, proceeds for our clients, I think the greater the risk. You know. The last slowdown, it was pretty rapid, and we saw a substantial broad-based slowing of starts, and we saw cancellations. You know, we did a lot to try to invest in business development and broadening the view we get of clients and be able to adapt, hopefully, rapidly to a slowdown among a subset of our clients. I think, you know, so far, we've done that outstandingly. You know, how much you can do that, you know. There's a limit to it, and eventually, you know, we get hit. I do think it depends on the, you know, the downdraft in funding. It was substantial. We've seen it in our clients. So far, we've been able to avoid that affecting our bookings and, you know, progression of overall number of projects, although there is a subset of our clients that are impaired, and, you know, so those have been delayed, and we've been able to pivot to others. How long that can go on, I just don't know. Got it. Okay. Thank you very much for the answers. Thank you. Our next question or comment is a follow-up from Mr. Dave Windley from Jefferies. Mr. Windley, your line is open. Thank you. August, you introduced this initial project awards metric last quarter, and we're all probably trying to understand how to think about it within the context of your sales pipeline progression to, you know, RFPs, to initial project awards, to, you know, to bookings. I'm gonna guess that initial project awards moving to bookings is not lockstep. They're not, you know, it's not everything moves at two months or three months or four months or whatever. If we have a full quarter's worth of initial project awards that were down 45% year-over-year from what you described last quarter, and you apply that negative 45% to 3Q of last year's bookings, 4Q of last year's bookings, 1Q of this year, you know, it suggests a well below 1.0 book-to-bill. You know, everything you're saying today suggests that you're gonna, you know, you're gonna sidestep that. You're gonna be able to, you know, do the old on a really bad book-to-bill, or am I misinterpreting? Maybe I'm just giving you the opportunity to help us understand better. How that initial project award flow proceeds to bookings and backlog and how, you know, how you're able to smooth that over without having to book-to-bill that would, you know, that would really make an 18% growth rate next year look pretty challenging. Yeah. Well, I mean, I see where you're trying to go and say, you know, you have this glitch in the pipeline and that has to show up late in the pipeline. You know what I mean? Later down the, you know, down the flow. I guess there's just a lot of factors that, you know, it isn't just, you know, liquid flowing through a pipe. If things fall out of there, the duration in which are certainly affected by the environment, the duration in which they take before they get to backlog is influenced. Our win rate is a big, you know, factor in, you know, changing that. You know what I mean? You know, you can have a much lower flow and the win rate comes up, you know, and can completely eliminate the, you know, deficiency down the line. I guess I don't know. There are a lot of moving parts. We had a decreased amount of. You have to put it in the context of several quarters of very strong initial award notifications. We had a very low quarter. I don't know why. They've snapped back. We have an overall changing win rate and duration of waits on projects and, you know, some projects fall out. You know what I mean? Just because they're award notifications doesn't mean they ever make it to backlog. That's part of the, you know, broader context of cancellations but are not in our, you know, cancellation, you know, metric. If you have a reduced number of projects in initial award notifications, but you have somewhat lower attrition of those heading toward RFP, the same number may make it into RFP, and especially if you've got a changing win rate. There are lots of ways to work around a low initial awards in a quarter. I don't know if they're ever visible. You know, if they'd be seen, it would be a couple quarters down the line on average. You know, that's what I said, you know, I think last quarter. Right. That's on average, and that average doesn't mean anything, and other factors can, you know, change it to be nothing. Got it. Dave, the other driver of revenue, right, is just what your burn rate is. The combination of your burn rate, not just book to bill, but your burn rates. That's something to be considered as well. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate the follow-up. Thanks, Dave. Thank you. I'm showing no additional questions or comments in the queue at this time. I'd like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks. Yep. Thank you for joining us on today's call and for your interest in Medpace. We look forward to speaking with you again on our fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference. This concludes the program. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.