Adam Schechter: Sure. Thanks for the question. So I’ll start with drug development and performance. What you saw for the fourth quarter was early development grew 5% on a constant currency basis. And I always give the CAGR as well from 2019 because that’s before all the COVID-related work, it was about 6% CAGR from fourth quarter of 2019. If you look at the clinical business. We saw about 2.5% growth in the quarter on a constant currency basis. If you compare that to the fourth quarter CAGR of 2019, it was about 5% but both of those were offset by a 9% decline in the central laboratory business versus prior year. That’s, again, constant currency. But if you look at the business for the central laboratory on a CAGR basis in 2019, it actually grew about 5%.
So it sums you that, that business remains healthy. It’s just as you recall, in the fourth quarter of 2021, we were doing a huge amount of — for boosters for vaccines because that was right when the Omicron variant hit. So that’s why you see such a tough year-over-year comparison for the central laboratory business. As I look at RFPs across the segments, meaning I look at them in total, the RFPs remain very strong and very consistent. So we haven’t seen a change. As I look through last year on cancellation rates, I haven’t seen a change. The cancellation rates remain low. They’re up a little bit from 1 quarter down a little bit in the next quarter but relatively flat and remain very low. And then to me, the most important thing is the book-to-bill.
And as you see, the book-to-bill was very strong. It was a 1.27. And if you were to look at each of the individual segments for the quarter, although we don’t typically give individual segment book-to-bill, you would see that they are all above the 1.2. So we feel good about each of the segments about the book-to-bill as we move forward. In terms of — I’m sorry, go ahead, I’ll answer the second question after you follow-up.
Erin Wright: Oh, no, go ahead. Go ahead.
Adam Schechter: Okay. And then in terms of — if you look at the ED business, we think it’s a good business. It’s a global business. We’re looking to bring our innovative diagnostic test globally and we think that they’ll be able to help us do that with their global laboratory footprint. So we remain committed to that business and we think it’s a good business.
Erin Wright: And I guess, just my follow-up, as you prepare for the spin, how we should be thinking about the priorities around capital deployment, the M&A pipeline as well as buybacks and how we should be thinking about that?
Adam Schechter: Yes. So we’re — after the spin which we are on track for the middle of this year, we will continue to provide a dividend. We expect to get dividends approved moving forward for Labcorp. And then we would continue to look to do these hospitals and local laboratory deals, of which our pipeline is very full. And there’s a significant number of those that we’re looking at evaluating it, we will win some of those this year. And then we believe our shares are still significantly undervalued. So we have now $1.5 billion of authorization for share repurchases and we’ll use those as appropriate.
Operator: Our next question will come from Tim Daley of Wells Fargo.
