Catalent, Inc. (NYSE:CTLT) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jacob Johnson: Got it. That’s helpful. Thanks, Alessandro. And then, I guess, for the follow-up. Maybe on the kind of these newer modality cell therapy and plasmids, this is an area of underutilization, the earlier-stage assets, and clearly, a drag on your margin. But in this way you are kind of thinking about the strategic review and cost initiatives, using this as a proxy for kind of near-term profitability versus the long-term strategy. How much are you willing to accept the near-term drag on profitability from these assets, while maybe kind of looking to the long-term growth opportunity from those end markets and I am just kind of curious if you still view those as key to your strategy?

Alessandro Maselli: Yeah. Look, first of all, you always need to start from the clinical promise and the successes that you see in the clinical trials for some of these therapies and I have to say that the last few months have been exciting in these areas, right? So these are areas which we believe will continue to drive a lot of growth into the industry, also areas that have an incredible promise of having a significant impact on patients and meeting unmet needs. So, surely, strategically, these are areas where we need to stay in and we need to stay in with the purpose of being a significant player with a significant market share. All being said, we need to be realistic around what is the curve of growth of these areas, which we don’t expect to be linear.

This is going to be more looking like an exponential curve in our opinion, with a little bit lower start, partly due to funding, partly due to the industry figuring out the manufacturing processes, which are positioning these therapies also for financial sustainability and when all of these will come together, this is going to be a great growth engine for the industry and for sure for Catalent. In the meantime, we need to understand the growth profile and we need to adjust the cost structure, making sure that we can mitigate those short-term margin impacts as we go forward. But, overall, I believe that we need to avoid to jeopardize the long-term opportunity here.

Jacob Johnson: Make sense. Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator: Thank you. With our next question comes from Jack Meehan from Nephron Research. Jack, your line is now open.

Jack Meehan: Hello. First question is on GLP-1. I was wondering if you could elaborate more for investors, just frame out the opportunity you see here, and within your guidance, if these ramp as expected, can you share what percentage of sales will they represent just from a concentration perspective?

Alessandro Maselli: Well, look, first of all, the reason why I am speaking about the GLP-1 category and not necessarily specific product is because, as you know, as a company policy, an agreement with customers, we never really speak specifics of customers or products. I would tell you that overall, in fiscal 2024, we are going to start to see the fruits of the growth in this area. But even more so, we are going to see that in the — in fiscal 2025 I believe and I do believe that the second half of fiscal 2024 and surely to fiscal 2025 are going to start to gain inflection point for this category as more assets will come to fruition to accelerate manufacturing and increase volumes and output. So we are very excited, we are very committed to our customers and we have a lot of confidence that this will be a significant contributor to the future growth story of Catalent.

Jack Meehan: Great. And I wanted to also ask about Patara. How did that perform within PCH in the quarter? Maybe for, John, I was wondering if you could comment on just as you do the strategic review, how you feel about kind of the long-term contribution from this business or whether it’s something you would consider potentially divesting?

Alessandro Maselli: So, look, I will take a little bit of the question. I will let John to close it out. As we said, the Consumer Health market, as highlighted, that some of our peers is going through a little bit of a correction both from an inventory level standpoint to preserve cash and the consumer discretionary spend, which is probably orientating towards a more less expensive dosage forms. That being said, from a commercial standpoint, we have disclosed at the time of the acquisition in the portfolio of customers of these assets, there were not a significant presence of the big consumer of companies with the biggest brands. And we are pretty pleased with the progress that our commercial team has done in building the relationship and penetrating these different segment of the market, which was not present at the time of the acquisition.

Of course, nothing efforts overnight in our industry, so it will take some time, but we believe we are close to sign some additional work in business with some of these blue-chip companies, which will drive additional growth in this area. Now that being said, as we — as John mentioned, we are exploring all the potential strategic options under the table to make sure that we streamline the portfolio of the company and we accelerate the shareholder value creation, and as such, all options are on the table.

John Greisch: Just to add to Alessandro’s comment albeit some of it may be repetitive. I think he and I are going to work with the committee, and just to be clear on the objectives of the committee again, to drive actions, to improve operations, perform a strategic review of the company, as well as the individual businesses, portfolio assessment, as Alessandro just said, do we have all the pieces that we want, as well as allocating capital among the portfolio individual businesses, all with the objective of driving long-term shareholder value. I think it would be premature to comment on any specific business at this point in time. Clearly, I understand your question, but give us some time to go through those activities and initiatives. And as I said earlier, we will report back on the findings that Alessandro and I recommend to the committee and ultimately to the Board, but commenting on specific actions today, I think, would just be premature.

Jack Meehan: Understood. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. With our next question comes from Sean Dodge from RBC Capital Markets. Sean, your line is now open.

Sean Dodge: Yeah. Thanks and good morning. So maybe going back to the guidance one more time. The significant growth you are expecting from the gene therapy customer, how dependent is that on the EMBARK data that will come out later this year? How big of a swing factor does that have the potential to be for you all if that readout, good versus bad and how are you handicapping that for the purposes of the guidance?

Matti Masanovich: Any upside, none of that is included. So if it does get expanded — label doesn’t expanded. It’s not included in the forecast.

Alessandro Maselli: Yeah. Look, that being said…