CRO

Covance starting to rebound, but clinical trial business still being hit by COVID-19

Covance made headlines last week when its parent company LabCorp announced it was set to transform the CRO into a digital trial-based firm.

This week, however, the grim reality of COVID-19 and the impact on revenue are making the headlines for the company.

Overall, revenue for the third quarter was up 5.7% on last year’s third quarter for the CRO, hitting $1.24 billion. Much of this growth was organic and down to COVID-19 testing via Covance’s central labs biz. Taking this out, however, organic revenue was flat.

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The drug development side of Covance “continues to recover,” according to LabCorp, but trial work is still struggling. “The pandemic continues to cause delays in clinical trial progression and reductions in investigator site access, as well as interruptions to the supply chain impacting the laboratory-specific parts of its business,” the company said in its financial report.

Net orders and net book-to-bill during the trailing 12 months were $6.13 billion and 1.31, respectively. Backlog at the end of the quarter was $12.46 billion compared to $11.79 billion last quarter, and it expects around $4.2 billion of its backlog to convert into revenue in the next year.