CRL - Charles River Laboratories International Inc. (CRL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript
2024-02-14 13:19:02 ET
Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (CRL)
Q4 2023 Results Conference Call
February 14, 2024 08:30 AM ET
Company Participants
Todd Spencer - Vice President of Investor Relations
James Foster - President and Chief Executive Officer
Flavia Pease - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Conference Call Participants
Derek De Bruin - Bank of America
Patrick Donnelly - Citigroup
Elizabeth Anderson - Evercore ISI
David Windley - Jefferies LLC
Justin Bowers - Deutsche Bank
Jacob Johnson - Stephens Inc
Maxwell Smock - William Blair & Company
Daniel Leonard - UBS Investment Bank
Presentation
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Charles River Laboratories’ Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. This call is being recorded.
At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]
I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Todd Spencer, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Todd Spencer
Good morning and welcome to Charles River Laboratories fourth quarter and full-year 2023 earnings and 2024guidance conference call and webcast. This morning, I’m joined by Jim Foster, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Flavia Pease, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. They will comment on our results for the fourth quarter of 2023, as well as our financial guidance for 2024. Following the presentation, they will respond to questions.
There is a slide presentation associated with today’s remarks, which is posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.criver.com. A webcast replay of this call will be available beginning approximately two hours after the call today and can also be accessed on our Investor Relations website. The replay will be available through the next quarter’s conference call.
I would like to remind you of our Safe Harbor. All remarks that we make about future expectations, plans, and prospects for the company, constitute forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated.
During this call, we will primarily discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe help investors gain a meaningful understanding of our core operating results and guidance. The non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be considered superior to or a substitute for results of operations prepared in accordance with GAAP. In accordance with Regulation G, you can find the comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations on the Investor Relations section of our website.
I will now turn the call over to Jim Foster.
James Foster
Good morning. The stability and resilience of Charles River’s business model were very clear in 2023. Although demand trends moderated in the broader life sciences sector, we delivered organic revenue growth at 6.5% and earnings per share of $10.67, both of which were in the upper half of the original guidance ranges that we provided last February.
We accomplished this despite the pipeline, reprioritization activities and more conscious spending by many of our biopharmaceutical clients, and also by successfully mitigating the impact of the NHP supplied disruption in the United States.
We are anticipating that constrained client spending will persist into 2024, but that demand will stabilize during the year. At the top end of our financial guidance range, we expect that demand trends will begin to modestly improve later this year. These trends are expected to result in organic revenue that is flat to 3% growth in 2024.
Since providing a high level outlook at our Investor Day in September, we have further de-risked our 2024 financial plan and believe our current outlook is appropriately balanced as cancellations remained elevated and backlog continued to moderately decline in our safety assessment business during the fourth quarter of last year.
Our belief that the macroeconomic environment will stabilize this year is supported by early external indicators that improvement will come, including several successful biotech IPOs in January, providing early signs that the capital markets should reopen and biotech funding will improve....
Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (CRL) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript