Medidata: Big Pharma drove sales but CRO partnerships rising
For the full year 2014, the company which combines electronic data capture (EDC) with a clinical data management system (CDMS) clocked in sales of $335m (€295m), up 21% on the previous year, and while net profit was down, customer number are up 22%, with 486 on the books.
“We saw the strongest growth within our large and mid-sized biopharma customers,” Medidata’s CFO Cory Douglas told investors (transcript here). However, the company is also seeing an increasing interest from contract research organisations (CROs) with 11 additional partners joining the programme.
“Our relationship with our CROs continues to become more strategic and meaningful,” said CEO Tarek Sherif. “The number of new customers that came through CRO partners increased 93% year-over-year and total bookings doubled.”
2015 Growth
Already this year, the company has reported a large platform deal with a top 30 life sciences company which has the potential to be its second largest contract with a significant scale and a multi-year ramp.
“These deals are key to sustaining MDSO's revenue growth pace,” Jefferies analyst David Windley said in a note. “Management described the win as a significant competitive displacement. In year three and beyond, it could rival Medidata’s largest client in revenue size - so probably more than $20m.”
Medidata management was also positive about the market opportunities from customers looking to speed up drug development.
“If you think about AbbVie and Gilead combined they are selling $1.5 billion of drug a month - that’s on the order of $50m a day - and if you can cut off a month or a week or two months of the time that you can get a drug out to market you have added tremendous value to your business,” Sherif said.
“I think we are going to have a great opportunity and we are starting to see some of the monetization.”
