Good morning. I'm Todd Spencer, Corporate Vice President of Investor Relations. On behalf of all of us, I would like to welcome you to Charles River Laboratories' 2023 virtual meeting with management. We are pleased to have members of our senior management team here with you today, led by our CEO, Jim Foster. There will be one question and answer session during the event, after all of the presentations have concluded. Today's slide presentation is posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.criver.com. An archived version of the webcast will also be available on the same site. I'd like to remind you of our safe harbor and the use of forward-looking statements, and also that we will be speaking primarily to non-GAAP financial measures covered under Regulation G.
You can find this additional information on these disclosures in the slide presentation and on the Investor Relations section of our website. Now, I am very pleased to introduce Jim Foster, Chairman, President, and CEO.
Thank you, Todd. I'd like to welcome you all to our 2023 virtual meeting with management. We're delighted to be here and delighted to have you with us today. Before I begin my comments, I'd like to introduce you to the rest of the team that will be presenting today. First is Flavia Pease, who joined us last year from a major pharma company. Second is Birgit Girshick, who's our Executive Vice President and COO. Thirdly, we have Shannon Parisotto, who's Executive Vice President of Global Discovery and Safety Assessment. Next is Kerstin Dolph, who's the Senior Vice President of Global Biologics, which includes our CDMO businesses. Greg Marshall, who's the Vice President and General Manager of our Microbial business, and Colin Dunn, who's the Senior Vice President, Global Research Models and Services.
So the focus of the meeting today will be several things: an update on the growth, growth drivers of the business, our strategic imperatives, as well as the current state of the marketplace competition. We're gonna talk about the resilience of our business and how we're gonna continue to enhance our capabilities with higher growth and markets like cell and gene therapies. And we're gonna talk about the impact of our partnership strategies to garner new technologies, which particularly will go into our discovery businesses. Gonna give you an update on our financial targets through 2026. We believe we are well positioned to deliver 6%-8% organic revenue growth from 2023 to 2026. Talk about ESG and our commitment to corporate citizenship, advancing responsible science, and the 4Rs.
We're also gonna talk about technology, and particularly the digitization of our businesses, to transform the client experience, and enhance the connectivity with our clients. So we think that we are the scientific partner of choice, certainly in the non-clinical arena. We've been working with clients from early discovery all the way through safe manufacture of life-saving drugs. We have high-quality research models and associated services. We have a flexible and efficient outsource model for non-clinical development, and we have comprehensive solutions to support biopharmaceutical manufacturers in the critical testing process and the production of advanced therapies, so a very broad portfolio of products and services. So we're working at a global scale here. We have over 21,000 employees. We have 2,600 folks that have either PhDs, master's degrees, MDs, veterinary degrees, so professional staff.
We recruit a lot of these people directly from pharma and biotech, and secondarily from august academic institutions. We have over 2,000 biopharma clients and more than about 70% of our revenue from the biopharma industry. We have 150 locations in more than 20 countries. It's a broad portfolio, and proximity to clients is something, all things being equal, that's important to our clients. They like to be proximate to where we can do the work, particularly if it's in the same language and time zone, and currency. It also allows them to visit our sites more readily. We like to have the number one share position in our businesses, and we have that in research models, safety assessments, and microbial, and we have a close to number one share position in several of our other businesses.
We worked on more than 80% of the drugs that were approved over the past five years, and probably a similar number of drugs that weren't approved. So the beautiful thing about our business model is the criticality of where we sit in the drug development paradigm, and also the importance of telling our clients as quickly as possible that they're working on a drug that's likely not to progress, and conversely, they should be working on a drug that looks extremely promising. We've had 15% CAGR in our revenue and 18% non-GAAP EPS CAGR for the past five years. Obviously, we're very pleased and proud of those statistics. So our 2022 revenue is about $4 billion. About 70% of our revenue comes from North America. I think it's likely to stay largely like that.
So much of our work is done in North America because the vast majority of biotech companies are in North America, so it's likely to stay relatively constant. Europe's a little less than 30%, and we only have 5% in Asia Pacific. The investment thesis for CRL is as follows: we, we—the principal distinguishing feature of the company is our broad portfolio, which we have added to significantly since we took the company private at the end of 1999. Done about 65 acquisitions, and we have, we built out the whole drug development sort of process, except for actually recruiting and managing human clinical trials. We believe that we've developed very flexible and efficient outsourcing solutions. We listen to the client, we listen to what they want, how they wanna work with us, and we try to give them that.
An extremely large, diversified client base from the largest pharmaceutical companies to sort of start-up biotech companies, a lot of virtual companies with a half a dozen people. All of their work is outsourced. We obviously have mid-size biotech and very large biotech companies, and also a large footprint in government and academic clients pretty much throughout the world. We really think that the nature of our portfolio has driven and will continue to drive increased outsourcing. The pharmaceutical industry really needs us to reduce the cost structure to speed up getting drugs to market. We actually think our science is better than theirs in a lot of the aspects in which we work. Of course, biotech companies, the vast... almost all of them have no internal capacity to do any of the things that we do.
We're gonna continue to buy companies that make us a better company, that provide a broader portfolio. We have probably some subtle gaps in our portfolio or areas where we want more volume and capacity. We also have some geographic moves to make. We have some businesses that are in the U.S. we'd like to have in Europe, and vice versa. We also have about almost two dozen strategic partnerships with very cutting-edge technologies where we will be there. We provide a small amount of equity or debt financing. We will be the conduit with the clients. We will be the principal partner. We have a right of first refusal on almost all of those deals, and a predetermined formula on several of them. We will buy some of these companies.
They're small, but they have IP. Nobody else has technology like them, and they're very high growth. You know, our portfolio is Research Models and Services, and those are the fundamental foundational tools that allow our clients to discover life-saving molecules and also to do the safety assessment work on all of them. We have this large preclinical and discovery portfolio, and, you know, our goal is to get... help our clients get the drugs into the clinic as quickly as possible or kill the drugs if they don't look promising.
We think the scale at which we're operating, both on an international basis and both the fact that we do specialty and general tox, will help us move these products through the bipseline and also hopefully take time out of the process so they can get these drugs into the clinic more quickly. On the manufacturing side, we're looking to ensure the quality and the safety of the manufacturing activities before these drugs are put into patients, either in the clinic or with regard to drugs that have already been approved, before those drugs go into commercial sale. The breakdown between the three segments is we have a little less than 20% in our research model and services business, which obviously was our initial and core business activity.
It's all we did for the first sort of 50 years of our life, and the last 25-ish, we've done all this M&A, and we built this broader portfolio. The 2022 growth rate in Research Models and Services was about 9%, net operating margins were a little higher than 25%. Discovery and Safety Assessment is more than 60% of our revenue, so the majority of our revenue, we grew 17.5%. Last year, we had a terrific growth year, and the operating margins are similar to RMS, a little more than, again, a little more than 25% in 2022. And the manufacturing business grew only 5.3%, and I say only because this part of our business historically has grown at either high single digits or low double.
Our CDMO business, which had a really, a challenging first year with growth rates much lower than we had anticipated, was a headwind, so we only had 5.3% growth. Our operating margins were close to 30% at 28.8%. Historically, the margins in that segment have been in the mid-30s. We do think that over time, we will, we'll be able to get back there, particularly as the CDMO business has greater scale and moves into more commercial production of drugs, as opposed to just making drugs for the clinic. Taking a look at the segments now, taking a look at RMS, we're by far the number one player in this field. We have about a 40% market share.
One out of every two small research models comes from us, and we have about 150 different research model strains. That's a broad portfolio. Pretty much any—almost any sort of science that you're engaged in, whether it's cardiovascular medicine or brain medicine or oncology, diabetes, we have specialty animal models that were bred or genetically altered to simulate a disease state in humans. We're producing and selling research models in the U.S. and in Europe and in China. Our global footprint keeps us very close to clients, so we don't want these animals traveling long distances to get to the clients. The shorter distance, pretty much the better shape they'll be in. We also...
Clients often buy on a just-in-time basis, so they want the animals to come in and get on study as soon as possible. The fact that our animal models are of consistent quality, day in, day out, week in and week out, both with regard to genetics, bacteriological profile, virological profile, you want to be sure that an immunocompromised mouse from Charles River is the same all the time, or an inbred mouse is the same all the time. We also have a large growing services business, which is growing rapidly, by the way. It has very good—most of it has very good operating margins.
We're really excited about our CRADL business, where we are providing facilities, mostly animal facilities, for our clients, large and small, where they can come in and do their basic R&D on the animals in our facilities. That's going to be a high-growth business for us. We also have a genetically engineered models services business, where we are either knocking in or knocking out genes, again, so the animals will express certain disease states. And we have a digital capability now, which allows more efficient order taking. It allows greater connectivity between the clients and the CRL folks, and where we're taking time out of the process, and it's a much less manual process, so the propensity to make mistakes is dramatically reduced. So we're very pleased with our research model business. It had a bunch of slow years.
It's been picking up nicely. We're pleased with the growth rate. I've been describing it for the last few years as kind of the renaissance of the research model business, and we've had several things that have been growing at the U.S. and Europe. Research model business has been growing nicely. We've got good pricing, pretty much across the board. We also have a very high-growth Chinese business. We've built several facilities. In addition to our original Beijing facility, we have facilities now in the western part, the central part, and the southern part of China. Again, proximity to clients, particularly in a country that large, particularly when some of the small cities have 10 million people, you want to be very close to the clients. We're excited with that. We're competing principally with Chinese competitors.
They're well-financed, principally by the Chinese government, but they don't have a lot of history, and they're really not up to speed on the scientific background and some of the necessities to keep these animals pristine. We do a much better job. We're finding that we don't really have any international competitors that have moved to China, so that's fabulous. Just going back to the service businesses, with this CRADL business, where we did an acquisition last year of our, sort of our principal competitor in some locations that we weren't in, and the aggregation of our legacy business and the company that we bought gives us about 30 locations and more than 400,000 sq ft of space. It's a significant business.
I do think, and hope, and believe that in addition to just providing animal facilities, where we take care, take care of the animals and hopefully provide them, that over time, we will either be in the room performing some of the study or be in the room and perform all of the study with the principal investigator from the client. Obviously, that provides greater margins. That provides the ability for us to have a much more significant role in the process. I do think that if the development of a drug goes well and we do a good job, it's likely the client will use us for our discovery services, safety services, and hopefully, if and as the drug progresses, for our biologics and microbial services as well.
So we do think the CRADL business, in addition to being a great business on its own, high growth, high margin in all of the relevant Biohubs, if you look at it on a see-through basis, it's a business that will drive significant revenue and margin across our historical portfolio. We're very excited about our digital footprint across all of our businesses. But in RMS, so much has been done manually, as I said earlier, slows things down, the potential to make unnecessary mistakes. And so we love a digital connection with our clients. If you look at the DSA segment, our largest segment, as I said a little while ago, 61% of our revenue.
If you look at the very earliest part of this funnel, a very early discovery, we have the ability to discover preclinical candidates for our clients. So clients large and small, who are unable to develop those drugs, find those drugs themselves, and or find the target at all, will come to us. It's usually a multi-year, multimillion-dollar activity. We've found about 100 of these drug candidates for our clients since 1999, so we're very excited about that. We have about a 30% share in our safety assessment business, with the next, our next largest competitor, has about a 12% share. We used to be much smaller than that competitor. We've said that we think we can get our market share up to 50 or 60, maybe even 70%.
So if you take the middle number there, 60%, we should be able to double our share over a period of time. We're quite excited about that. We're much larger than the competition. We have many more sites. We have much deeper science. We have much greater capabilities. And so, companies that really wanna get their drug to market and wanna have the smallest potential for failure, or wants to take advantage of our capability to move the drug through the regulatory process, will use us. We are not too large, we are not too expensive, we are not too slow. We're none of those things. The other thing that's quite interesting is that the safety assessment activity is 5-10 times less expensive than the clinical activity. So there should always be enough money to fund the preclinical development, number one.
Number 2, drugs are not gonna get into the clinic unless the INDs are filing, are filed, then we can do the preclinical work. And, you know, it's very important to them that, that they move through this process as quickly as possible. You know, our discovery business is a business that we went into about 10 years ago. We want to engage with the clients as early as possible. We have in vivo and in vitro capabilities. We have a chemistry business. We, we have the business I just described, where we're finding the targets. We have a big footprint in oncology and CNS, central nervous system, diseases. And we have broad capabilities across small and large molecules, antibodies, and cell and gene therapy. So we, again, we like to engage with the clients as early as possible.
Safety assessment, we are by far the global leader. We do general toxicology, which is just what it sounds like. It's required by law. It's necessary to get your IND file. We also have a similar amount in what we call specialty tox. That's things like immunotoxicology, looking at the impact of the drug on the immune system, or genetic toxicology, looking at the impact of the drug on your genome. We do really complex things like bone toxicology and ocular toxicology and inhalation toxicology, where we're actually delivering the drug nasally so the animals and ultimately humans will actually breathe in the drug. It's a broad portfolio. We're also doing... We have the world's largest group of veterinary pathologists, about 150 of them. I think there's only 500 in the world.
We're doing pharmacokinetics, pharmacology, and just all of the processes to get a drug into the clinic. We're very pleased with our portfolio and also our geographic footprint. DSA has grown nicely. We've been able to acquire a bunch of companies over the last 20 years, so we have this broad, broad footprint. You know, only 30%, best case, of the discovery work is outsourced. We think that'll get to at least 50%. In safety assessment, about 60% is outsourced, and we think, as I said earlier, that can get to 70% or 80%. We're enthused about the growth potential. You also have to understand that there are new companies being created every year. There are about almost 700 new biotech companies last year.
There's no guarantee that we'll work with all of them, but we do work with many of the venture firms in healthcare, I'd say most of them, and some of them were limited partners. You know, I think the companies that want high-quality work will come to us, and we have an opportunity to work with a significant number of those new companies. Since there's a little bit of churn in this business model, companies go bankrupt 'cause they're poorly run, or they don't have great drugs, or they get acquired, or they get merged. There are new companies to replenish the available companies to work with all the time. We're not only just getting more work with the companies that we currently work with, but we're getting, hopefully, work with brand, brand new companies as well.
So we, you know, our strategy is very much that the discovery clients will use us for safety. We have more than half of the discovery clients now using us for safety, but we definitely think it can be much more. If the drug progresses and the client is happy with our discovery work, there's no reason why they shouldn't or won't use us for safety. The digital transformation for these businesses, and particularly the safety business, is by far the most dramatic that we have.
The ability here to get online, find a slot, book a study, get a price, initiate a study, and get your data without ever talking to somebody, unless you have an equivocal result, unless you have a question about something you didn't like or you do like about the study, that just speeds up the process, and the connectivity with clients is dramatically enhanced. The ability for them to get their data on a real-time basis, pretty much daily, is really powerful, and it is as good or better, I would argue, better than what they can do, particularly for big pharma companies inside. Third segment is our manufacturing segment. We've got three parts to that. The Microbial Solutions business, which we bought almost 30 years ago.
That was the only FDA-approved alternative to using research models when we bought it. It's still very much the only FDA-approved alternative to using research models. It's a very robust and necessary technology required by law for production samples of injectable drugs and medical devices to ensure and make sure that they didn't get contaminated in the manufacturing process. So it's been a nice, high growth, very high margin business. We've been the market leader from a technology point of view, where we have terrific IP and multiple iterations of new technology and a business that we think has terrific growth and really legs with new technology. Our biologics testing business is probably over 20 years old, and that is just what it sounds like.
We're testing large molecules, also to make sure that those drugs are safe before they go into patients. They're derived from human proteins, and you wanna make sure that there are no viruses in there that could get, you know, get the patient sick. Our CDMO business, which is, I think, two and a half years old now-ish. We are manufacturing viral vectors and plasmid DNAs, but we're also manufacturing gene-modified cell therapy drugs. We're actually making the drug. It's going directly from our shop into patients. This is a new business for us, one that we're quite excited about, but it's, you know, it's new science. It had a tough year, last year, 2022.
Is having and will have a better year in 2023 and going forward as our scale increases, as we have more regulatory and client audits, and they're pleased with the audits and as we get just more, more, principally more experience. We're quite excited about this. Our Microbial Solutions business is a razor and razor blade business. It's about selling these devices that have disposable aspects to them, and about 70% of the kit, as it will, is disposable. Of our CDMO revenue, about 65% of our cell and gene therapy CDMO revenue is from gene-modified cell therapy production.
It's slow-going, principally because the FDA is concerned about the safety profile of these drugs, but they look like they have dramatic capability, not just to treat some really tough diseases, but to cure them. So, we're excited to be in the midst of this and decided to have a cell and gene therapy business that's part of a broader portfolio that gives us a competitive edge when we can do the safety, when we can do the biologics, and when we can do the microbial on these drugs as well. And so this all sort of came about by the growth and development of our biologics business and clients saying to us, "You know, you're testing these drugs before they go into the clinic. Could you manufacture the drugs for us? Because we don't know who else to go to.
We don't know anybody else. We don't really wanna stop and negotiate new prices for this. Plus, it'll slow, it'll slow us down." So, in our microbial business, we don't have competitors that have our comprehensive, rapid platform. And we've only converted about 10% of our historical manual capabilities to this handheld device that we have, principally handheld. We have larger devices that have these disposable cartridges, and as we convert more of them, that uses less of the crude that we get from the horseshoe crabs and also has much higher price per test. You know, in the cell and gene therapy world, there's about 3,300 drugs in development. About two-thirds of those, we have an opportunity to work on.
They'll be in the preclinical domain, and so that provides a big runway for us. And as I said earlier, there's lots of concern by the regulators on the safety profile. It's likely that cell and gene therapy will go through a second and probably a third generation of technology. We've seen you see that with most technologies. We saw that with monoclonal antibodies. We saw that with immunotherapies... and we will see it with this. We're okay with that. We're right in the midst of all of this, and so whatever the technology is, we will utilize that technology to work with our clients to help them move drugs, hopefully into the end-use market as quickly as possible.
So, we're optimistic about our ability to continue to do a better job and have a bigger reputation with cell and gene therapy. And we have some clients that we have one client that is commercial. We have several clients that we're in the process of talking to about going commercial. When they do, there'll be a fair amount of publicity and releases about this, and I think it will very much help us garner new clients because they'll see that we have several that are in a commercial domain. So the client base is really a stable one. You know, we work pretty much with everyone.
We work with all the major drug companies, many of whom only work with us, several of whom primarily work with us, and some work with us a little bit less than we would like. There's a very small number of pharma companies that still do what we think is more of their work internally than they should. We think this puts them at a competitive disadvantage with their competitors who are outsourcing the work, having it done more quickly at a lower price point, and as I said earlier, we think with better science. Most of our top 25 clients are large public biopharmaceutical companies, so that would include most of big pharma and most of big biotech.
We only, we only have about 5% of our revenue that's clients that have less than two years of cash, and even those clients, we're not really concerned about. If you have less than two years of cash, and if you have a life-saving drug for unmet medical needs, even if you're poorly capitalized, since the big pharma companies license in 50%-70% of their drugs, one of the big pharma companies or big biotech companies will find you and either fund you the, your drug development, buy the company, buy the drug, buy the U.S. rights, buy the European rights, whatever. So we think that only companies that don't have promising drugs and/or are poorly managed won't make it. And we think there's an opportunity for us to just increasingly have a big share of our, of our clients' wallet.
As I said earlier, if you can—as you can see from the chart on the right, those are the number of new biotech companies added annually, and last year was slightly less than 700. As I said earlier, we have more than 2,000 biopharma clients. The largest client is less than 3% of our revenue, so we don't have undue client concentration, and the top 25 clients is, you know, only about 30% of our revenue. That's a nice chunk, but so much of our work is dispersed among many, many clients, and I think that holds us in good stead. We are working. The aggregate of the markets that we're in is about $25 billion.
It's a big marketplace, growing nicely, and, you know, we were a $4 billion company last year, so we have a long runway if we just stay in our lane of being able to grow dramatically, and in many cases, we're the market leader, just staying in our lane and growing nicely. So big market. We, you know, we have good competitors, but we don't have any competitors that are as broad-gauged, as we are. So, you know, what's the state of the market? Well, you know, the, there, so far in 2023, 35 drugs have been approved in the U.S. That's tracking to slightly surpass 2022. I don't want to overstate that. You know, it's still very hard to get a drug to market. It's, it's 12 years. It's $2.5 billion.
One out of every 20,000 potential drugs gets to us. Sorry, one out of every 10,000 gets to market, so it's a long road. So, you know, we're happy to see whatever it is, 45, 50+ drugs be approved in the U.S. I think we can help the drug companies get the same number of drugs to market faster, which would generate billions of dollars of more revenue. Our real goal would be to help them get more drugs to market faster. I don't think that's trivial, but we're working on it. And there's a lot of conversation about biotech funding. You know, we think way too much conversation about this. So on an annualized basis, we're gonna see $50 billion-ish go into biotech companies from the capital markets.
That's a big number, and it's very similar to the 2018 and 2019. The issue is that 2020 and 2021 were extraordinary, and so you have a lot of comparison to those two years, and I don't think that's a fair comparison, and I think this obsession and mania about biotech funding is somewhat overblown. I don't think any of us know when the capital market's gonna open up again, but you know, we're beginning to see some early signs of some IPOs, and you know, I do think this will pick up nicely. So, you know, nobody knows that. We, you know, we'll see.
I do think our clients will continue to invest heavily in R&D, and we're gonna continue to rely on our relationships with them, and I think we're gonna continue to invest heavily in both large and small molecules. And, you know, I think our clients, notwithstanding the Drug Pricing Reform Act which disadvantages small molecules a little bit. I think if you talk to most heads of R&D in the drug industry, they want to work on whatever drug, large or small, that attaches to the target. So this is kind of the financial punchline for this session today. These are three-year targets. We think one year is too short. We think five years is perhaps too long.
Three years, we really feel that we can get our arms around and do have, do have our arms around. We're thinking about 6%-8% consolidated growth, 6%-8% in RMS, 6%-8% in DSA, and around 10% in manufacturing, where we anticipate mid to high 20% range in operating margins for both RMS and DSA. In manufacturing, they have the margins above 30%, where they were for an awfully long time, and as the CDMO business improves, it'll be less dilutive and hopefully, in time, when we have enough capacity, can be accretive. We're looking at 150 basis points of cumulative improvement in our operating margin from 2023. We're excited about these growth rates.
We believe that they're doable, and we're off and working on these. You know, as I said earlier, it's all about the portfolio for us. We just did produce small laboratory animals for most of our drug development life. We don't own any drugs, so it's important for us to participate pretty much in all drug modalities, so that clients, whatever modality they're working on, feels that they can come to Charles River, that we're knowledgeable about the modality, that we can both help teach them some things, but also take their drug and move it through the process quickly. So we're gonna continue to enhance and improve our ability, and we're gonna do this two ways, as we have for several decades now. One is through M&A.
We'll be looking at discovery, lab sciences, hopefully something additional in cell and gene therapy, but we want the assets that we bought over the last 2.5 years to really be singing, to be performing really well. We have some scale issues, where we want larger scale in some of our businesses. We want geographic growth in some of our businesses, and we also have a few things that we're looking at in RMS. I would say that with one exception, we don't have any really large deals. I'd say most of them are modest to mid-size.
Given our balance sheet and how low our leverage is and how much debt is in place, and attractive interest rates and borrowing ability and the amount of cash-- operating cash flow we generate, we're quite confident that we can afford the businesses that we're looking at. We start conversations with these companies really early in their lifecycle, and we find that most of the sellers are private equity companies, and so the businesses are always for sale. We're off working on those. We have several conversations going on right now, and hopefully, those will move the needle.
The other thing that we have going on, as I mentioned early in my remarks, is we have about 20, what we call technology deals, which are cutting-edge IP-related technologies, pretty much across the portfolio, but I'd say the preponderance is in discovery. These are technologies that nobody else has, that will distinguish us from the competition, that will enhance the current portfolio, and will help the clients find the targets better, find a lead compound better, move the drugs more through more quickly or purposely not move them through. We'll use a whole host of technologies. As I said earlier, we have a right of first refusal on almost every one of these deals. We have a predetermined takeout formula on several of them. We bought a few of the companies already.
We passed on a few of them already, and we're evaluating a bunch of them real-time right now. So we have the ability to really be the marketing and sales partner for these companies, and we'll know for real whether they're supporting the clients well, what the clients say, how responsive they are, and what the quality of the science is. So we're really quite confident we will be able to take time out of the drug development process. We've talked about a year, help them to get the drugs to market faster, and maybe with some of these technologies, help them get more drugs to market faster. But we're focusing on the former right now, just to get the same number into the market.
If you can help them get a $5 billion drug into the market a year faster, that's, you know, $5 million of revenue that they wouldn't have had. Cell and gene therapy continues to be a significant growth opportunity, I think, for everybody participating in that field. As I said earlier, the FDA and, and other regulatory agencies are concerned about the safety profile only because the technology is new. You're messing around with people's cells and genes, so you don't know what the long-term effect is 5 or 10 years from now of somehow altering your genome. But I think this will change, and as I said earlier, with the second and third, maybe third generation, these drugs will be more refined. I think the outcome will be, will be, better known.
People are saying that there will be 10-20 approvals a year by 2025. We think that 15% of the bipselines will be in cell and gene. It's a lot. We think two-thirds of the programs in the preclinical phase, two-thirds of the drugs that are in cell and gene are available for companies like us to work on. That's a large footprint for us. It'll generate a lot of work, even if the drugs don't pan out as well as people think, because we're gonna be at the center of the universe to determine that for them. The funding's been really terrific for cell and gene therapy companies, so, you know, we're not, we're not really worried about that.
Lots of focus in the preclinical arena, well-funded, and we anticipate many new drugs will be approved annually, starting by 2025. I think I covered a lot of this already, but this is our focus on discipline, M&A, so I should spend a moment on being disciplined. We try not to fall in love with the companies that we acquire, even though we like them a lot. We don't push our valuations more than is appropriate, and we're looking for returns above our weighted average cost of capital within three to five years. We're looking for businesses that are growing at least at 10%. We're looking at businesses that are accretive to our operating margin. We're looking for businesses that are right down the lane in terms of our technology and our understanding of it.
We've had a really good run, we bought 25 companies since 2012, so that's 10 years. We invested about $4.5 billion. I would say that most of those businesses were integrated well and performed really well, so that is always our top priority for how we utilize our cash. It's building a business by strategic M&A. The partnerships, as I said, there's about 20. We, we've invested $100 million to date. I think the returns will be terrific. You know, we bought a company in antibody discovery. We bought a company in high-throughput screening. We're looking at businesses with that have 3D modeling, antibody manufacturing, digital pathology, on and on.
Very, very interesting technologies and, you know, we're quite excited about adding some of these to our portfolio. Just to go back to the venture capitalists, we have three groups. We have a bunch who we're limited partners, where we've made investments. They're not required to give us the work, but they will urge their portfolio companies to work with us or at least meet with us, and we'll have to bring that work over the finish line. We do work with a lot of them. Then we have a bunch of companies, venture firms that don't need our money, don't want our money. They have a lot of LPs, but they recognize that we can really be very helpful, and they're working with us on a strategic basis.
I'd say it's probably a similar number that work with us when we're LPs. And then the third group, which is maybe the most interesting of all, then they don't work with us strategically, which we don't love. They work with us sort of from study to study, quarter to quarter, which of course, is their prerogative. They don't want our money, but they do a lot of work with us. So that's, that's a manifestation of the fact that the VCs that really understand the quality of our work will use us. So we have a really big footprint. About 10% of our revenue comes from portfolio companies of the VCs. The VCs are particularly well-financed right now, and I think that will continue.
And so we have an opportunity with those, some portion of those, nearly 700 new companies, to get, to garner a bunch of that work and hopefully stay with a bunch of those companies through the life cycle of the development of the drugs. We have some interesting... This is just a few of the technology deals that we have. So Valo is an AI drug company that's goal is to develop a drug entirely without using animals or people. So they're using artificial intelligence. So information from thousands of drugs that have been developed and were successful or tried to be developed and failed. And they figure that that iterative process will help them.
We have a deal with them, where we're working together to help find a lead compound, quicker than they can find now. Any of us can find for the clients now, as quickly as possible, and that's a really exciting opportunity for us to find a lead compound early before the drugs get into preclinical and before the drugs get into animal models. So excited about that. Deciphex is digital pathology. So as I said earlier, we have 150 veterinary pathologists, the most in the world.
Most of the pathology is, you take sections of organs in your body, or in this case, an animal's body that has been given a new drug, and you're looking at that under a microscope, and you're looking for, I don't know, the presence of lesions or some problem that looks like it was generated by the drug itself or not. And what's interesting is about 80% of what you're looking at are normal, and only 20% really need further investigation. And so the ability to do that digitally, which will automatically rule out the 80% that are normal, and the ability to have peer review, so we do the work for pharmaceutical company X, they can look at the same slide digitally. Also, the digital images are as good or sometimes better than the... We're looking at the glass.
So we're excited about that one. We have an investment in that one. Then another one that we have, this operation is actually in one of our facilities, and this is next-generation sequencing for the large molecules that they're working on, which is likely to supplant older technology that we're using. And so this more rapid approach, we think is gonna be extremely beneficial. So, it's possible that we'll have larger interest in some of these companies, and I could put several more out there. As I said, we're working with 20 companies right now. Really, really exciting science.
So, you know, we're really looking to have more technology that will enhance our speed, that takes advantage of our digital platform, but also the essence of our science that exceeds our clients' capabilities and our competitions, and gives us something to continually distinguish ourselves. There are so many entry points for clients to work with us, and so many of these things are hooks. So, you know, we're looking to continue to improve our margins, in large part, several things, through price, through speed, through taking some of the white space out of the process, through best practices across our portfolio. Digital, for sure, is gonna enhance our margins, and volume in places like cell and gene therapy is really, really important.
I think lots of companies look at us as the gold standard for moving their drug from discovery through the clinic and want to use us, which, of course, is one of the reasons why our backlog had elongated so much. We're gonna continue. I think our digital work, even though the first few years has been much more setting the framework, will be an always, always for us, and I think our ability to eventually do more things with AI and machine learning and have greater connectivity with our clients across this sort of technology will be really, really beneficial and important. It's almost impossible to scale up our company without digital. We have too many clients. They're too needy. I mean, they want to talk about deep science, and they're very...
particularly the small ones, are very concerned, appropriately so, about how their drug is doing. So they want to communicate with us all the time. They wanna check in all the time. They want, they want to see their data, and our digital platform allows them to do that. So there really isn't a necessity to talk to us all the time, only if they wanna go deeper, only if they want to—if they see something that they didn't anticipate. So I think that's great. I think it's critical that so much of what we do for them is data-driven. Yes, there's a lot of interpretation of that data, and that's what those 2,600 scientists are doing.
But the interpretation goes both ways, and sometimes the client anticipated that they would see something, a certain—that they would see certain things in the animal models at a certain point in time, and they either do or they don't. The ability to interface with them and answer those questions, oftentimes digitally, is really, really important for us. We're spending a lot of time... You know, I'm obviously biased, but I think we have a fabulous culture. We have lots—we have thousands of employees that have been with the company more than 10 years, and thousands that have been with us more than 20 years, and I think that's because it's a very familial, team-oriented, supportive culture, where we support each other. I think we pull together when times are tough, and we just fix things.
I think there's enormous opportunities for career growth and development across 150 sites. And I think we don't ascribe any limitations to our people until we see them, so career opportunities are really quite, quite amazing. We're very interested in having a diverse, workforce. Not to check a box or not because it's a, sounds like a good thing to say, but because we want our workforce to be reflective of society as a whole. We want disparate backgrounds. We want people to learn from each other and support one another, and we want people to be comfortable, in whatever their background is. We want them to, to be comfortable being themselves and sharing that with others, and I think we've done a really good job, furthering that.
We're also looking at alternatives for animal models. When you use the animals, we wanna use them on the most refined basis. We wanna use them when they give you the best results that are translatable. We wanna use fewer animals, but more sophisticated animals. If you're using outbred animals that cost $20, and you use fewer animals, but they cost $200 or $1,000 a piece, and you can get a better answer for the client, you actually can improve your revenue and your profitability, use fewer animals, and have actually better scientific models. I think that's really, really important. I think that for toxicology, animal models will always be the principal tool to discern that the drug is safe.
I think some aspects of discovery, non-animal technologies, in vitro technologies, whether you're looking at talking about organs on a dish or some computer model or AI or machine learning, will be beneficial, will speed up the process. We don't find that those technologies are a threat. We find that they can be adjunctive. These can be businesses that we're likely to own. So we're gonna make several investments in these businesses, so we have several shots on goal. And if we can help get more drugs into safety or more drugs get to the market by using an in vitro technology early to do the screen, that's a really important aspect that we can bring to the drug development process. So, we're looking to do that. We're also looking to continue to be great corporate citizens.
In other words, support charities in the locales that we live and work. We wanna be responsible and important members of the local communities. So, we're very enthused with our portfolio and our business. We're very enthused with our competitive posture. We will continue to strengthen the portfolio organically through more M&A, and absolutely through these technology deals, and we'll do that also on a geographic basis. We're gonna enhance our speed and drive efficiency through digitization and other aspects, so that drugs get to market quickly and less expensively, because it's just simply taking too long.
We want our clients to have access to these great solutions that we have that are less manual, that allow greater connectivity from between Charles River and the client, but also greater connectivity between Charles River and our employees, and between our employees and the clients themselves. And we're gonna continue to enhance and improve our culture so that people wanna stay here. We already start with a mission that's better than most companies in the world. You come to Charles River, you work on life-saving drugs, and you work on most of them, but you also can build an extraordinary career, and you also can work with extraordinary people. So we're excited about enhancing our culture. So thanks so much for listening, and I'd like to turn the podium over to Flavia Pease, who's our CFO.
Thank you, Jim, and good morning. I'm Flavia Pease, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Charles River. We're excited you're able to join us today, and we look forward to sharing more about our strategic imperatives and growth drivers, as well as updating you on our financial targets through 2026. Let me start by reminding you of our robust second quarter performance and our guidance for the year. We delivered double-digit revenue growth and raised the bottom end of organic revenue and EPS targets in August. To recap, we're forecasting organic revenue growth between 5.5%-7.5%, margin to be flat to slightly down versus last year, EPS of $10.30-$10.90, and free cash flow of $330 million-$380 million.
Our success in being the scientific partner of choice to accelerate biomedical research and therapeutic innovation has translated in strong historical results, with revenue CAGR of 15% between 2018 and 2022, and EPS growing faster than revenue with a CAGR of 18%, driven by margin expansion. Our strong track record of margin expansion was hindered last year by headwinds in our CDMO business. Capital investments to support capacity and growth also put pressure on free cash flow generation in 2022. Jim shared with you our updated long-term financial targets, and I'll provide a little bit more color. Starting with revenue, where we're forecasting a CAGR in the 6%-8% range for the 2023 to 2026 horizon. Growth is moderating from the extraordinary COVID years as we see demand normalizing to pre-pandemic levels.
2024 organic revenue growth is forecasted to be slightly below our long-term targets as we see current demand environment continue into next year. We expect growth to rebound thereafter into a high single-digit range. We reduced our long-term outlook for the manufacturing segment to reflect lower vaccine testing and the current demand environment in biologics testing, as well as slower post-acquisition ramp for the CDMO business. As I mentioned, OI margin expansion has been pressured more recently, in 2022 by headwinds in CDMO, and this year by the demand environment in certain businesses and the ramp-up of new sites. We believe that our businesses are poised for margin expansion and are forecasting 150 basis points cumulatively through 2026.
All segments are expected to contribute to margin expansion and to further benefit from efficiencies from our digital investments over the last couple of years. Let me provide you a little bit more detail on the margin expansion drivers by segment. Starting with manufacturing, which we expect will be the largest contributor for margin improvement, driven by leverage in the biologics testing business as growth rebounds, and by economies of scale from volume growth in our CDMO business. In RMS, we'll benefit from efficiencies as we increase the utilization of recently opened CRADL sites, as well as new locations in China become fully productive. We'll also intend to review the profitability of some lower margin Insourcing Solutions contracts, which will contribute to margin improvement.
You will hear from Birgit and Shannon in a little bit about Apollo and other digital initiatives, which, together with leverage of staff and infrastructure, will contribute to margin expansion in DSA. We expect EPS to continue growing ahead of sales, with a target of greater than 10% CAGR for the 2023 to 2026 horizon, driven by margin expansion and below-the-line items. After eclipsing the increase in interest rates and the impact of stock-based compensation on our effective tax rate, we expect interest expense and the tax rate will be less of headwinds than they were in the 2021 to 2023 period. We are forecasting a mid-20s tax rate based on current global tax legislation outlook, and we are also forecasting unallocated corporate costs to remain around 5% of revenue. We have a robust track record of generating strong cash flows.
Significant increase in demand, as well as adding capacity more organically than through M&A, put some pressure on free cash flow generation last year and in 2023. Capital requirements are expected to moderate in the 2024-2026 horizon as demand normalizes and we leverage the investments we made in capacity and infrastructure over the last couple of years. We expect CapEx to average between 7% and 8% of revenue between 2024 and 2026, and are committed to continuing to align capital investments with current and future demand expectations. While we always need to add capacity a little bit ahead of demand, we have been disciplined in ensuring that we don't do it too soon.
Now, switching gears to our capital structure, where we are operating from a position of strength, with $1.5 billion in fixed-rate bonds, with an average rate of 4% and an outsized credit facility, with still $1.8 billion or 60% of borrowing capacity available, providing sufficient flexibility to support our strategic needs, including M&A. Last year, we also entered into an interest rate swap for $500 million of our revolver, which increased our fixed-to-floating ratio to 75%-25%. In the near term, we intend to continue to focus on debt repayment, which is beneficial in the current interest rate environment and allows us to retain dry powder for strategic M&A over the long run.
Speaking of debt repayment, while we have levered up over the years as we executed on M&A transactions that have been instrumental in building our portfolio of differentiated products and services, we have also paid down debt quickly and deleveraged. Our gross levered ratio has historically been below 3.5 times, and more recently, we are operating below 3 times. While we frequently evaluate all different uses of capital, we intend to focus on debt repayment in the short term, but continue to believe that strategic M&A is our top long-term priority for capital deployment. The successful execution of our strategy, combined with disciplined capital deployment, has delivered strong returns, with a return on invested capital of 12% in 2022, up 120 basis points in the last five years.
We remain focused in investing in healthy businesses that augment our portfolio and deliver strong returns, with ROIC to exceed our cost of capital in a 3- to 5-year horizon. In conclusion, the goal of our capital deployment strategy is to continue to generate shareholder value and enhance returns. Thank you, and I'll now pass it to Birgit, who will provide an update on ESG and our digital transformation.
Thanks, Flavia. My name is Birgit Girshick, and I'm the Chief Operating Officer. I will be talking about our ESG program and digital transformation today. We're very enthusiastic about our ESG program. We have formalized it over the last few years, established metrics, and have reported out our performance. We're particularly proud of our approach to corporate citizenship. We have established four pillars in our corporate citizenship program that are the cornerstone. The first one is accelerate life-saving treatments. If you think about it, that's the mission of Charles River. We are making therapies accessible and a reality for patients that need it most. We also have committed ourselves to take time out of the drug development timeline. The second pillar is lead with integrity, that this pillar has a positive impact on our patients, but also on the communities we work in and the animals in our care....
The third pillar is inspire our people, our employees. They are the greatest asset. What we are doing for them is establishing exceptional employee experience, modernizing our employee experience, helping them learn, helping them grow. I want every employee to have a career as long as mine and many of the other speakers here today. The last pillar is protecting our planet. We run our business responsibly, but we want to do so with minimal to no impact on the environment. We actually want to run our business and have a positive impact on the environment. I will touch on each of the pillars a little bit more now. Accelerate life-saving treatments. Today, you will hear from all our businesses, from our business leaders. They will talk about their portfolios of products and services.
They will talk about their, the science, the expertise we have, how we collaborate with our clients. They will talk about the technologies they have implemented and will be implementing, including digital technologies. They will talk about taking time out of the drug development timeline. It still takes over 10 years on average to develop a drug and a whopping $2.5 billion. We know this is too long and too costly. We, as an industry, know we can do it faster. Just think about the COVID vaccine, where we developed, as an industry, drugs, vaccines, therapeutics in under a year. Now is the time to make this scalable and make that a reality for all other drugs. We believe that Charles River needs to take a lead in this effort because of the impact we have.
We have worked for many years now on over 80% of the drugs developed and approved by the FDA. Leading with integrity or commitment to leadership. Let me start with diversity, actually. 57% women in Charles River executive management now. That is great to see, and if you look around today and you look at the speakers, we embody that. We also have leadership and integrity in other areas, such as cybersecurity. We just recently achieved ISO 27001 certification, which is an international standard for information management systems. This shows that we are protecting the data, not only ours, but of our clients and the integrity we have in our systems. We ensuring respect for the fundamental rights of humans across our value chain. We published a formal human rights statement aligned with UN principles.
Last but not least, we had continued to advance Humane Care initiatives and animal welfare programs. This includes also the reduction of animals used in drug development in general. This year, we have established an office within Charles River for responsible animal usage. This is headed up by a full-time senior executive, and we also have established a board committee who is overseeing the efforts of finding ways to reducing the number of animals used in drug research. Charles River has long been a leader in, you know, investing and embracing the Three Rs, which you know, is replace, reduce, and refine. This is a framework that was established over 70 years ago to give, you know, the industry a way of working and performing animal research.
We are committed to lead the industry, accelerating the efforts, finding technologies, changing practices, and working with regulatory bodies to validate the new technologies and bring them to life. Charles River has reframed the Three Rs. We added a fourth R called responsibility. The reason we did that is because we believe that we are well positioned to lead progressive change in the industry. We're the leading CRO, and we're working with all our clients, suppliers, and with regulatory agencies. Let me give you a few examples of how we brought our Four R program to life. The first one is Trillium. Greg Marshall, in our microbial business, will talk about that we launched a new product called Trillium. This is a new product. It's animal-free, it's recombinant, and it is made for detection of endotoxin. It does not require the use of horseshoe crabs.
Jim already talked about some of our partnerships that we're investing in. Most of them are in vitro technologies that will help us reduce the number of animals used. Let me give you a couple examples. We have here bit.bio, iPSC-derived human cells, and we have Cypre, which is a 3D tumor modeling platform. Also, very much of interest is PathoQuest, a partnership that gives us access to next-generation sequencing for viral safety testing. Historically, viral safety testing often was done in animals. We also have internal investments and developments ongoing. One that is really exciting, and I think will have great value for Charles River and the industry, is virtual control groups, where we use data and statistics as an alternative to use of animals in control groups in toxicity studies.
This will help us not only to reduce animal usage, but lower cost, free capacity, and increase statistical power. As you can see, these things are not just the right thing to do, but also a great source for cost savings and revenue growth. Inspiring our people. You know, as I said, our people are our greatest asset. Charles River is has multiple initiatives to help our employees to grow, to learn, to have an impact, and to have a great employee experience. I could talk all day about it, but let me just point out three examples. The first one, which I think is just absolutely impactful, is our employee resource groups. We now have 10 of them, and we have over 3,000 employees participating in those research groups.
These employees are collaborating, they're meeting with other employees, they're learning, they're getting development, and they're, the-- they feel welcome. They feel safe because they can do that with employees with common interests and common backgrounds. I'm personally really excited that we are now under 1% gap in pay by gender and race and ethnicity, which really shows our equitable pay practices. Lastly, I wanna point out our improvements in employee safety, where we have achieved a over 10% reduction in total recordable, recordable incident rates. This is so important because we wanna make sure that our employees go home the same way they came to work, or maybe even in better health and better shape. We now have over 20,000 employees, and we're working over 150 sites in 20 countries.
This is a big footprint, but we believe we can operate this footprint responsibly. Actually, while we're doing business, we can have no impact to the environment or maybe actually, at some point, improve the environment. We have committed ourselves to achieving 100% renewable energy by end of 2030. We're doing that by utilizing virtual power agreements in North America through solar and in Europe through wind. Happy to say that as of now, we're at approximately 90% renewable electricity. This is really great to see. We also committed ourselves to decrease the Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, and we have done so between 2018 and 2022 by 24%. Something that is really motivational for our employees is our capital fund.
So we have a capital fund that we award to employees, to sites that have ideas and initiatives to reduce greenhouse, greenhouse gas emissions. In 2022, we awarded $3.7 million. Let me talk a little about ESG reporting because it's important. Charles River publishes an extensive biannual corporate citizenship report and an annual ESG table. We do that against three global frameworks: GRI, SASB, and TCFD, which is new in 2023. On the right, you see a table with our raters and rankers, our current performance, our previous performance, and an explanation of the performance. So, as you can see, our scores are pretty good. We're seeing quite good improvement, and we are happy that our e-acceleration of disclosure and advanced transparency have led to that. So really great to see.
Our next corporate citizenship report will be published in 2024, and in the meantime, if you wanna see recent reports or metrics, visit our website. Now, let me talk a little bit about digital transformation. Really dear to my heart, and we have made great achievements in this. So we are now a digital-enabled trusted partner, where we bring together, through digital technologies, our expertise, our, our portfolio, but we're also creating insights to help our clients to make decisions faster. And what that does is, if they have a program that isn't going to make it, they can fail faster or have programs that are more efficient and hopefully succeed. We have built incredible capabilities over the last few years. We established an agile operating model, which makes us very, very effective in introducing new technologies. We have invested in talent and capabilities.
We have great talent now, including analytical capabilities. We have a whole group of data scientists, and they have the technologies they need to create insights. We modernized a lot of our technology assets, still ongoing, but we're doing this in a prioritized manner. So our investment portfolio is large and varied, but basically in three different areas. The first one is Apollo, which is a cloud-based digital platform for our clients. We have introduced this now for our safety assessment business, our biologics business. The other businesses are coming behind that. I have a video to show you after my presentation. I think you will like it. We're also investing in AI organically and through technology partnerships. We're utilizing data and the insights we're getting from that for operating efficiencies. So Apollo, what is it?
As I said, it's a platform to work with our clients. Our clients have 24/7 access. It's basically a self-service tool if they'd so like to. It's cloud-based, it's cyber secure. It gives clients access at all times to their milestones, their data, but also generates insights. You will see on that video, it's quite impressive. Apollo, together with some other digital technologies, coupled with advancement in science, we believe has the potential to reshape drug development. So we're really excited about that, and you will see. AI. Everybody talks about AI, so I have to, too. So as Jim said, we have partnerships with companies. He mentioned Valo Health. Valo Health is very exciting.
We brought out together a platform called Logica, which is really a transformative AI-enabled platform to make drug discovery and preclinical development easier, more efficient, more economical. It produces preclinical assets with key performance characteristics optimized for client preferences. So it's a big deal, and we have working now with multiple clients, and I think this will be a great success story. We also using AI and machine learning, data insights, bioinformatics, any kind of tools, internally to look at our data and see what we can gain from our data and insights that we then can provide to our clients. And we're using AI operationally to make better decisions for efficiencies, such as room scheduling and other things.
In summary, our digital transformation, our data integration, we believe will unlock the next horizon of growth for Charles River. We're doing that going from manual and paper-based to digital-enabled, from slow and siloed technology implementation to agile, flexible, and maybe most important, from unintegrated data to data insights. So more to come, very exciting, and we believe it will have a tremendous positive impact on Charles River and the industry. Before I go to the video, I wanna summarize with some words from Jim because he said it so eloquently. "We can be the difference by accelerating the delivery of life-saving treatments, protecting our environment, valuing our employees, and operating with integrity." Thank you very much.
In the last few years, we have seen the miracle of science take center stage. We have seen the possibilities that innovative science and accelerated development can bring. Removing barriers, simplifying processes, and prioritizing access to information can be transformative. Yet current approaches to drug development are challenging and cumbersome. Delays to accessing real-time data and insights is not only time-consuming, but costly. Enter Charles River Apollo, offering a whole new world of possibility, where speed and accessibility take center stage. Apollo is a cloud-based, secure digital platform that empowers you to draw insights faster with study-related information at your fingertips. Apollo champions your project by working intuitively across entire programs, aligning resources, surfacing immediate decisions, and providing a level of access to data and expertise that has never been seen before. The core of Apollo is visibility.
Visibility to real-time study data, to the status of current testing, to important documentation, all live and available at a click. You can even track progress against milestones and get details on delays or findings. Our iterative and customer-centric approach means that Apollo is continuously enhanced with new features, data, and improvements that are designed based on your feedback, with our sole goal to continuously deliver more value to you. With the benefits that Apollo can bring, we have the opportunity to impact millions of lives and allow our patients, friends, and families to dream of a healthier future.
Thank you, Birgit, for the video. Good morning. My name is Shannon Parisotto, and I'm the Corporate Executive Vice President for Global Discovery and Safety Assessment. Today, I will provide an overview of our discovery and safety assessment business, including future growth, demand trends, the growing complexity of science, a reimagined R&D partner, and sustainable practices within our business. As the trend of increasingly complex studies and the addition of new modalities continues, we are positioned to guide our clients on their drug development journey. The breadth of our portfolio and service offerings, and our deep bench of scientific and regulatory expertise, position us to handle this complexity as a partner to our clients. We will continue to advance our market leadership with new opportunities in technology partnerships, lab sciences, new modalities, and digital transformations, such as Apollo....
We will dive deeper into our NHP supply, animal welfare, and what we call the Four R's, which is our commitment to responsible use of animals in the drug development process. We are the largest global partner for outsourced drug discovery, non-clinical development, and regulated safety testing services. Our global scale assures clients that we are able to work with them wherever they are in the world, and includes world-class regulatory expertise. Among our more than 13,000 DSA employees, we employ about 1,800 scientists with advanced degrees who support our clients with deep scientific expertise in a wide variety of experiences. Our approximately 30 DSA sites house 1,800 study rooms globally to help support more than 2,000 biopharma clients around the world. We are proud that our scientists have supported and generated more than 400 patents for our clients for new technologies and drugs.
Activity across the DSA segment produced $2.45 billion in revenue in fiscal year 2022. Our non-clinical focus in the drug development process spans across therapeutic areas, including key areas like oncology and CNS. Our depth of service offerings begin in discovery, continue through early-stage development, and support late-stage development. Our capabilities support drug discovery, including target discovery, hit finding, medicinal chemistry, and pharmacology for about 10,000-15,000 compounds. About 250 of those compounds make their way to safety assessment, where our toxicology, specialty toxicology, pharmacology, and pathology services support our clients with IND submissions and through in vivo studies running parallel to clinical trials. Charles River has the depth of experience to take our clients through each non-clinical phase. Discovery has a $6-$7 billion market size and increasing opportunities for growth from increased outsourcing.
With outsourcing penetration of just 30% for the drug discovery market, there is a clear opportunity for growth. We have a unique offering that provides clients a single source for services across the discovery spectrum, including the integration of chemistry, in vitro, and in vivo capabilities. We have expertise in medicinal chemistry and structural biology, comprehensive tumor and high-throughput screening libraries, pharmacology models for all major disease areas, and a depth of expertise centered around major therapeutic areas, including oncology and CNS. We will continue to strategically expand these capabilities through M&A, strategic partnerships, and internal investments in our portfolio. Our approach to technology partnerships provides us with access to innovative technologies and positions us for growth. Over the past few years, we have acquired several of these partners, such as Distributed Bio, that brought large molecule discovery and exclusive antibody libraries.
Our Deciphex partnership offers leading access to preclinical digital pathology, which allows for flexibility and faster throughput, and the acquisition of SAMDI Tech brought in high-throughput screening via mass spec. We are committed to this strategy and to bringing our clients cutting-edge science to accelerate the portfolio for advanced modalities, adopt new next-generation bioanalytics, and digitally transform our core portfolio to drive efficiencies, competitive differentiation, and ultimately to reach our patients sooner. The outsourced market for safety assessment is $7 billion-$8 billion, with outsourcing penetration of 60%. Charles River is the global leader in both regulated and non-regulated safety assessment services, including efficacy studies, general and specialty tox, and analytical services. We have built the scientific depth, broad capabilities, and global scale necessary to fully support our clients' non-clinical development efforts. This level of expertise makes us the ideal partner for our clients' increasingly complex needs.
This increased complexity in study design and development requirements will continue to drive increased outsourcing. From early discovery through clinical support, we have built the capabilities and scientific expertise to pull compounds from the very beginning through the regulated studies. This includes our growing lab sciences bioanalytical capabilities. We have deep expertise with large and small molecule, as well as new and emerging modalities. Clients recognize that integrated lab services will accelerate their timelines and drive cost efficiencies. The outsourced preclinical bioanalysis market is estimated at more than $2 billion. We expect market growth in the high single to low double digits. Services for biologics and advanced modalities can drive robust growth, and additional growth opportunities extend into the clinical sector. As I said earlier, increasing complexity and cost of technology drives both outsourcing and the preference to stay with the one lab from discovery through filings.
Our DSA demand environment remains healthy, but as we have shared, growth trends are normalizing from the unprecedented levels of growth from 2021 and 2022. As of the second quarter of 2023, gross book-to-bill remains greater than 1, reflecting a continuation of healthy new business awards. The net book-to-bill has been below 1 due to increased cancellations, particularly in the second quarter, which has resulted in backlog declines for 3 consecutive quarters. High cancellations in the second quarter were driven by budgets and bipseline reprioritization, and was split across global, biopharma, and small biotechs. Approximately two-thirds of Q2 cancellations were related to funding and bipseline rationalization, while just 2% of these cancellations were reported as due to competitor timelines or price. 80% of these cancellations were for work that was awarded in 2021 or 2022.
In addition, we have seen recent signs of stabilizing trends based on external factors, such as the macroeconomic environment. Our current target for the DSA segment is 6%-8% revenue growth from 2023 to 2026. As I shared, we expect the DSA growth rate to normalize to pre-pandemic levels following this current normalization period. We expect volume growth to directionally equate to biopharma R&D growth over the long term. The preclinical development activity is an important indicator of DSA growth. In addition to DSA to R&D growth, we expect a modest benefit from outsourcing penetration and market share gains. Incremental growth drivers include enhanced capabilities for bioanalysis and new drug modalities. We also expect base pricing increases to normalize towards pre-pandemic levels as cost inflation abates. There is also a moderating trend for NHP price increases.
Speaking of NHPs, we have mitigated the impact of NHP supply constraints, including the suspension of Cambodian imports into the United States. Our global scale is a competitive advantage that has allowed us to conduct more studies outside of the U.S. Going forward, we will conduct less NHP work in the U.S., and our infrastructure supports this. NHP-related revenue has benefited the DSA growth rate due to two things: a robust increase in biologics-related development work and escalating NHP prices that have risen at a rate faster than base pricing. The sales CAGR from 2020 to estimated 2023, excluding NHP pricing impacts, has been approximately 9%. So we are seeing broad-based growth across our portfolio. Charles River is firmly committed to the Four Rs, which stands for replacement, reduction, refinement, and responsibility, as Birgit noted.
We have expansive efforts dedicated to the highest quality supply of NHPs and documentation. This includes training programs with our global suppliers and multiple recent supplier audits and site visits, including in Cambodia and other countries of origin. We have continuous improvement programs in place focused on AAALAC standards, CITES compliance requirements, Charles River's own specifications, and animal welfare expectations, and more frequent audits and additional audit procedures focused on record-keeping standards that exceed those required by regulators. We continue to act in accordance with applicable laws, rules, and regulations. We also satisfy the material requirements, documentation, and related processes and procedures required by CITES to import NHPs for our important drug development work. We have always, and will continue to champion animal welfare and the 4Rs to promote more sustainable practices in the future.
This includes the evaluation of alternative research models, review of in vitro alternatives to screening for liabilities, efficacy, and metabolism, and the promotion of virtual control groups, more efficient study designs, and other methodologies to modify animal use. Next, I want to touch on our digital technology efforts. We continue to build a best-in-class outsourcing experience through digitalization of data, data analytics, and self-service options, including real-time access to data. Our digital strategy includes continuous upgrades to IT security and foundational information, and data management tools to support global digital strategy and data analytics. We will continue to enhance the tools available to support operational excellence of Charles River and our clients. In March of this year, we launched our Apollo platform at the Society of Toxicology's annual meeting. Through Apollo, clients now have access to most in-life study data with more features currently in development.
We will continue the digitization and harmonization of processes, systems, and data that is needed to better leverage data across Charles River and connect with our clients. We are a data-driven company. Digital transformation is what will allow us to grow faster, and with operational efficiencies, is key to our goal to further reduce our clients' drug development timelines. As I conclude this overview of the DSA segment, I want to reiterate three things. As the technology of increasingly complex studies and addition of new modalities continue, we are positioned to partner with our clients on their drug development journey. The breadth of our portfolio and service offerings and our deep bench of scientific expertise position us to handle this complexity. Second, our reimagined approach to R&D will continue to advance our market leadership. This includes technology partnerships, lab sciences breadth of services, and our continued digital transformation.
Lastly, we are committed to sustainable practices, specifically with our NHP supply and our deep commitment to the 4Rs in animal welfare. Thank you. I will now hand it over to Kerstin Dolph.
Thank you, Shannon. I'm Kerstin Dolph, and I'm the Senior Vice President for Global Biologics. Before I'm going into my presentation, I wanted to highlight some focus areas for today's discussion. The increase in drug development bipseline candidates for biologics and cell and gene therapy, combined with the increase in commercial approval for cell and gene therapies, represents a significant growth opportunity for us. Within biologics testing, we're providing lot release testing, which is required for every commercial batch that is being manufactured. It's a more resilient revenue stream, and there's a high degree of stickiness with our clients. We're one of the few providers who can cover all different aspects of lot release testing, so that's an example where our comprehensive portfolio comes together very nicely. Since the acquisition of the CDMO businesses, we spent a lot of time and effort on regulatory compliance.
I'm pleased to share that we were able to clear several regulatory inspections at our Memphis, Tennessee, site and are now ready to scale and grow together with our clients. The combination of CDMO with testing represents great synergies for us. We launched multiple competitive manufacturing platforms as a result of the in-house testing powerhouse, and testing timelines, in general, represent often a bottleneck in the industry. So our ability to be able to dedicate capacity within our testing locations to our internal CDMOs represents a huge competitive advantage. Biologics Solutions is comprised of both biologics testing as well as CDMO. Biologics testing can be categorized into three different areas: product and genetic characterization services, which are done to generate identity, purity, and potency data.
We're ensuring the safety of our clients' biological products, as well as that any active viruses or agents have been sufficiently inactivated or removed throughout the manufacturing process. Bioactivity and potency testing is done to ensure the efficacy of clients' drug products, and that information is often a requirement for regulatory submission. And then within manufacturing, we're producing cell therapies, viral vectors, as well as plasmid DNA. We have over 50 years' experience in biologics testing and are a proven provider within the industry. We're ensuring the safety of clients' drug products, and that obviously includes anything that has been manufactured at our internal CDMO sites. If a client receives an unexpected test result, that usually triggers an investigation and can put an entire manufacturing lot on hold. That's obviously a very severe event for any company, and it can also create large shortages in the market.
If you go today to the FDA website, you will find about 180 drugs that are currently listed with a drug shortage, and some of them are due to unexpected test results. So if you are in that situation, you really want to work with a testing provider who understands the severity and the urgency and who supports you all the way through it. It can get very costly quite quickly. The combined market for biologics testing, as well as CDMO, stretches from early phase through clinical, late phase, all the way through commercialization. The total addressable market that is matching our current portfolio is between $5 billion-$6 billion, and we see continued robust growth opportunities.
From a testing perspective, we had always solid coverage across all the different phases, but the acquisition of the cell and gene therapy CDMOs allowed us to close a significant gap in our portfolio around manufacturing. New modalities are at an inflection point, and the more traditional biologics are experiencing some maturing and some slowdown in growth rates. You can see here a 6% CAGR for the more traditional biologics over the past four years, which is clearly outpaced by the newer modalities, with gene-modified cell therapy in the lead at 28%. The combined oncology and rare disease share of therapeutic areas within the cell and gene therapy bipseline is significant. Oncology in particular is very synergistic with our discovery and safety assessment business, and that's the exciting part, where we're truly providing that end-to-end support for our clients that is unmet in the industry.
As clients achieve commercialization, we're here to support them with testing as well as manufacturing at a larger scale. I already mentioned that we're a leading provider within biologics testing, and that we're supporting our clients with a whole host of services. If you look at the little graph at the bottom right, you can see that cell and gene therapy represents right now 40% of the total industry bipseline for biologics. If you bring that back to our biologics testing portfolio, that percent is a little over 20%. That's where the massive growth opportunity lies. About 80% of the current bipseline candidates are in phase 1 or even earlier phases. So as they are moving through the drug development bipseline towards commercialization, we will be able to add additional revenue streams to our portfolio, like lot release testing that I described earlier.
Our client mix is solid. We have about 60% of our clients, either biotech companies or global pharma, and about 40% are CDMOs or non-pharma entities. That also outlines how attractive our portfolio is, since a lot of the other large CDMO players in the field are utilizing us for our testing services. We're setting the biologics growth target through 2026 at high single-digit. I think you all learned by now that we have a big focus on cell and gene therapy and how to best support and serve that market. All the capabilities that I outlined during my introduction also apply to cell and gene therapy. From a testing perspective, there's just some unique requirements that I wanted to point out.
The first one is around custom work, especially method development within the analytical and potency space, and then the second one is around fast turnaround times. Anything that is associated with cell and gene therapy requires rapid turnaround times, and we're always reviewing our instruments and technology platforms to ensure we're serving the clients in the best possible way. The market is moving very fast, so this is an ongoing assessment, and here again comes the synergies with the CDMOs into play since they put us right at the forefront. We always know the latest industry trends or requirements and can tweak our testing portfolio accordingly. Our global biologics testing footprint is centered around North America and Europe. We spent the last few years focusing on expansion to support the increased testing needs of our clients. Pennsylvania, in particular, more than doubled over that time frame.
We're serving about 1,000 clients in 45 countries, and I just wanted to comment also quickly on APAC. Due to the regulatory requirements, we are able to effectively serve this market from Europe as well as North America. The acquisition of the cell and gene therapy CDMO established us as a proven provider for development and manufacturing services for biological therapeutics. We have over 20 years of experience in GMP manufacturing, and our core expertise lies with gene-modified cell therapy, but we're also effectively able to serve the gene therapy as well as cell therapy business. That's exactly why we set the strategy the way we did. We have all the different pieces, and they fit synergistically together. Our revenue breakout is 65% cell...
cell therapy, 20% viral vector, 10% plasmid DNA, and 5% other, and we're setting the revenue growth target for CDMO at 20% through 2026. Our UK and North America footprint for CDMO stretches over 5 different CDMO locations. We decided over a year ago to establish dedicated centers of excellence. Process development and manufacturing services are performed at our Hanover, Maryland, location and our Memphis, Tennessee, location. That's also where we made the latest investment. At the end of last year, we announced the addition of 9 suites for a total of 25 world-class commercial-grade suites at our Memphis, Tennessee, location, which provides additional opportunity for growth as our clients moving more towards commercial scale. We're manufacturing viral vectors at our Rockville, Maryland, location, and we're producing plasmid DNA in the UK at Keele and Alderley Park.
All of this is powered by our highly engaged workforce. We have about 800 employees within CDMO. I know this slide looks a little bit complicated, but please bear with me. There's just a couple of key takeaways I would like you to make. You're looking here at an example of a gene-modified cell therapy workflow. Everything starts with cell supply, the cell collection, and the leukapheresis, and the different steps along the cell therapy manufacturing process are all covered in-house at our Memphis, Tennessee, location. Throughout this process, we're introducing viral vectors from Rockville, Maryland, and plasmid DNA from the UK, from our Keele and Alderley Park location. And then you can see here clearly highlighted that there is testing required at different time points along this, this path.
So we were able to effectively establish the entire cell and gene therapy manufacturing supply chain in-house, and that's something that I'm very proud of and the team is as well because it's a very strong industry, a very strong portfolio within the industry. Our development and manufacturing services are underpinned by strong project management and quality assurance. We are the first North American CDMO to receive EMA approval for a commercial allogeneic cell therapy drug at our Memphis, Tennessee, location, and I already mentioned that we were able to clear several additional regulatory inspections. I'm very proud of our team's achievement around regulatory compliance and the level we are operating under. The future of the biologics business is bright, despite some near-term headwinds following the COVID peak and, clients' budget tightening and bipseline reprioritization.
Long-term growth drivers indicate that the biologics bipseline will likely grow at a similar rate as 2017 through 2019. Following the IRA, there will be an enhanced—we believe there will be an enhanced focus on biologics development over small molecules, and we also continue to believe in the rapid growth for cell and gene therapy, which we think will reach 50% of the total biologics bipseline within 10 years. For the total manufacturing segment, the growth rate that includes now Microbial Solutions, is set at 10% through 2026. Jim mentioned that earlier in his presentation, and I know Flavia already pointed out to you that this represents a reduction from what was shared in May 2021. There are two major drivers for this.
The first one is less requirement around COVID vaccine testing, and the second one is that, we had a little bit of a slower start with our CDMO businesses following the acquisition versus what we had originally anticipated. We have a continued focus on operational excellence, harmonization, and regulatory compliance, and we will continue to invest in commercial readiness alongside our clients at an appropriate time point. We expect that we will have another two to three commercial clients within the next two years. We will ensure that our portfolio is not just keeping pace with the current therapeutic modalities in the market, but that we're also going to be able to accommodate any new and rapidly growing new modalities like RNA and ADCs. Portfolio enhancements are always on the forefront. Jim mentioned this morning the PathoQuest partnership, which allowed us to add next-gen sequencing to our portfolio.
Next-gen sequencing is a replacement technology for in vivo testing, which ties right into our 4Rs, and it's also an advancement of in vitro detection of viral contaminants and biologics, and that's very important for CDMO. The second example I wanted to share with you is around RightSource. We're the first provider in the industry who is able to establish laboratories at our client locations at a scale that is right for them. We launched in Q2 our first RightSource with our partner, Wheeler Bio, in Oklahoma City, and Wheeler is another GMP manufacturing entity. Speed, accelerated client decision, and operational efficiencies go hand in hand with our digital transformation. Birgit talked a lot about Apollo, and I'm, I'm excited that we're launching this month our Biologics Apollo platform, which will enable our clients to have real-time access to sample tracking as well as test results.
And then lastly, our greatest asset and our biggest competitive advantage are our people. We have a highly engaged workforce. We have a significant focus on retention, appreciation, and development, and we're making sure that our people feel empowered to make fast decisions. I hope you understand after today's presentation that there's a shift in the market towards newer modalities, and that we're ready from a portfolio perspective, and we can support in any way, and we're excited for the future. And with this, I would like to hand over to Greg Marshall.
Thank you, Kerstin. Hello, and good afternoon. My name is Greg Marshall, and I am the Corporate Vice President and General Manager of the Microbial Solutions business. I'm excited to be here today to share more information about this business. Some of the key themes that I will be highlighting will revolve around innovation, sustainability, and digitally enabled growth. The Microbial Solutions division is part of the Manufacturing Support segment of Charles River. We play a critical role in protecting patient safety through the quality control of manufactured pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and consumer care products, among others. We are the premier global provider of manufacturing QC testing products and services for sterile and non-sterile applications. The QC laboratory plays a critical role in pharmaceutical production, from the product development phase to in-process monitoring to finished product testing.
These labs not only monitor and control the quality of incoming active pharmaceutical ingredients and other supplies, but they are also instrumental in the final product release. Our portfolio consists of microbial QC products and services for bacterial endotoxin testing, microbial detection, and microbial identification. Over the years, we have grown through acquisition, internal product development, and strategic partnerships. Our portfolio is focused on making sure pharmaceuticals and consumer care products are released safely to the market. Our three industry-leading brands are Endosafe, Accugenix, and Celsis. I'll now go into more detail on what differentiates our brands in the marketplace. Our Endosafe products provide precise endotoxin detection. Testing for bacterial endotoxins at critical steps of the manufacturing process is required by regulators to prevent pyrogenic outbreaks in patients from contaminated therapies. A simple 15-minute assay can significantly reduce the risk of human error, as well as retest rate.
Our proprietary microfluidic cartridge technology has been one of our most successful products. The Celsis product portfolio provides rapid contamination detection. Traditional growth-based test methods for contamination detection require lengthy incubation periods for bioburden and sterility testing. Days of manufacturing are at risk while awaiting test results. This can be reduced to hours by implementing rapid microbial methods offered through our Celsis product line. Our Accugenix business provides microbial identification and strain typing services. Microbial identification in the production suite is critical at every step of the manufacturing process due to the risk of bacterial and fungal contamination, which poses a threat to patient safety. Accugenix has the most robust industrial-based microbial library and tested over 600,000 samples in 2022. Microbial Solutions customers are the industrial quality control or QC microbiology groups within our customers' manufacturing facilities.
This chart displays all the areas where testing is performed within our customers' manufacturing operation. QC is an essential operation for our customers, as their products must be safe and effective. Our customers are segmented into two groups: sterile aseptic manufacturing and non-sterile manufacturing. Pharmaceutical, biotech, compounding pharmacy, medical device, dialysis, and radiopharmacy are industries that manufacture sterile aseptic products, such as implanted devices and injectables that come in contact with the human bloodstream. With the non-sterile manufacturing group, our customers span the nutraceuticals, home, and personal care industries. Our purposefully designed portfolio of QC microbiology products and services provide accurate and relevant and reliable data to fuel confident go, no-go decisions on product quality and contamination control. Charles River is an FDA-licensed manufacturer of LAL, a diagnostic reagent derived from horseshoe crabs and used to screen for the presence of bacterial endotoxins.
Endotoxin testing is performed in raw and in-process materials and is required by the FDA for final release of products within the sterile manufacturing industry. This testing protects against adverse reactions like fever and septic shock that can result from the presence of endotoxins. As the market-leading provider of the LAL test, we offer LAL in two different capacities. There are traditional reagents that utilize a tube or plate reader to obtain results in approximately 1 hour, and our cartridge technology, where all the necessary reagents are condensed into a single, disposable, FDA-licensed cartridge. We conduct more than half of the endotoxin tests in the industry. The cartridge utilizes 95% less LAL than traditional testing methods and provides customers with quantitative endotoxin results in as little as 15 minutes. We have 3 different systems that are used in conjunction with these cartridges.
Only about 11% of the testing volume has been converted to rapid testing methods, so there is still a long runway for future growth. In addition, this past summer, as Birgit mentioned, we introduced Endosafe Trillium, our sustainable animal-free recombinant cascade reagent for endotoxin testing. We are dedicated to balancing the industry's need for safe endotoxin testing with preserving a sustainable horseshoe crab population. The launch of Trillium is a meaningful step as we lead the way towards a more sustainable future. Onto our Celsis brand. Traditional bioburden testing can take 5-7 days, and traditional sterility testing can take upwards of 21 days to achieve results, impacting operational efficiency by not being able to release product on a timely basis, or worse, releasing product at risk.
The Celsis rapid microbial detection technology uses ATP bioluminescence, which allows clients to determine the presence or absence of microorganisms in various products. For non-sterile industries, results can be achieved in 24-48 hours, and for sterile applications, in 6 days. Celsis technology helps our customers quickly and accurately determine whether a product is contaminated, allowing clients to confirm the quality of their product and quickly release to market. Our Accugenix microbial identification and strain typing services offer unparalleled accuracy in identifying microbes with the most relevant industrial reference libraries of bacteria, fungi, and yeast. Specializing in bacterial and fungal identification and strain typing of environmental isolates, we use the latest DNA sequence-based and MALDI-TOF technologies to provide accurate and reliable microbial identification services to thousands of facilities worldwide. Accugenix has the most relevant and extensive industrial library of microorganisms.
Our 10 labs are strategically located around the globe to best support rapid turnaround times. We also pride ourselves in accuracy and high throughput capability. Additionally, we offer tracking and trending tools that allow our clients to better manage their data reporting and decision making. If a client prefers their identification in-house instead of outsourcing to one of our labs, we offer the Accugenix system, which allows them to process their own samples. This system allows our customers to gain secure, direct access to our global proprietary microbial libraries. In terms of our growth, we expect to grow at a high single-digit rate over the next several years and at a faster-than-market rate. A few examples of how we will achieve this are growing our Endosafe cartridge business as customers are evolving to fully automated central labs with multi-cartridge systems.
Automation is a key customer driver as our clients look to build efficiency into their operations. As customers look for more sustainable solutions, we are very excited to offer our Trillium recombinant portfolio. Top pharma customers are also looking to adopt rapid methods and choosing Celsis for rapid sterility, enabling them to release products to market faster and build efficiency into their operations. In addition, Accugenix is the premier outsource lab for the biopharma industry, and we are expanding our reach into other markets. Our quick turnaround times, digital solutions, accuracy, and turnkey alternatives are key drivers of our continued growth. In terms of how we will support this growth, we continue to expand our portfolio through innovation and a build-by-partner philosophy. We are listening to the market needs for new products and strategically providing solutions to meet our customers' needs.
To support this, we have heavily invested in a global R&D organization, adding critical skill sets to help us bring innovative products to market. We are also maximizing our extensive global footprint by introducing local support services. To facilitate our growth, we have ongoing expansion projects in many of our global sites, including doubling the footprint of our Dublin facility, which includes our logistics hub for Europe and Asia. Additionally, we are driving digital solutions, both internally and for our customers, that will continue to bring the portfolio together through digitally enabled data software solutions while improving the overall customer experience. The business has a promising future, with healthy runways for growth in all of our brands and in all regions. I'd like to share more detail about Trillium. Even though the product was launched in July, we are seeing early success.
We took a very deliberate approach to the development and launch of our recombinant product. We let science drive our decision making and launch timing. Patient safety is paramount. We generated significant data through customer beta and internal testing to substantiate the robustness of our offering. This is why we are confident in our Trillium product. Our formulation is different from the vendors who sell RFC. We have three proteins, which means a much more robust assay. RFC users will need to invest in new equipment, unlike with Trillium, where customers can use their existing fleet of instruments. As customers begin to adopt recombinants into their testing portfolio, we are prepared to support them through validation and implementation. Microbial Solutions has always been the leader in providing exceptional customer support, and this will continue to be a critical part of our success.
To briefly recap what I've discussed today, we are confident in the robustness of our portfolio and the bipseline of new products we are building to meet the evolving needs of our customers. We continue to drive growth through global expansion and providing leading-edge customer support and solutions. We will continue to lead in driving sustainable solutions, such as Trillium, to our clients. Lastly, we will continue to support our customers' automation and bring the portfolio together through digitally enabled data analytic software solutions. Thank you for your time today, and Colin Dunn will now speak to you about our RMS business.
Thank you, Greg, and good morning, everyone. I'm Colin Dunn, Senior Vice President for Research Models and Services Business, and it's my pleasure today to update you on this business segment. We're going to cover really three major topics. First of all, where we're getting our our growth from, and secondly, some of the most meaningful growth drivers around China and with our CRADL services. And also that after 75 years in this business, we're delighted that we have a new horizon with e-commerce and the personalization of how we are able to interact with our clients. In this business, we are the global leader, and this is thanks to the fantastic range of species and strains that we offer, and that we do offer, and distribute those strains that are most commonly used by researchers on a global basis.
All of this is underpinned by our bio security and expertise in defining the health status of the animals and their genetic status, key elements which assure the researchers that their research is going to be highly managed. We are able to sustain our whole effort by having excellence in animal welfare, and underpinning this as well is our commitment to the 4Rs. Our footprint is truly global across regions, and we are also the premier provider of the services in genetically engineered models and services, in our diagnostics, and also in our management of clients' facilities, whether that be in our Insourcing Solutions business or offer of our turnkey vivarium space in CRADL.
Researchers are using these services and the research models right from the earliest stages of their research in fundamental biology, into applied areas in drug discovery, all the way through to GLP safety assessment studies. The Cell Solutions business is very similar in this regard, in that the products in that business can be used as research use only, all the way through to GMP-ready materials in manufacturing. I'm really delighted that more recently, we have launched a product called CliniPrime, which supports researchers at early stages of their clinical trials with an accelerated off-the-shelf package. Our Cell Solutions business supports researchers, whether they're using their for their investigations, whether that be autologous approaches or allogeneic approaches, and also if we are taking material from patients who are undergoing therapy using one of the current marketed therapeutics.
Our growth target is 68% in the medium term. This is strongly supported by the rate at which our CRADL business is growing, our activity in the Biohubs, which spans several businesses, and then our China expansion continues apace. We're ramping up facilities that we have opened recently, and we're really delighted with the progress that is making. As well, in China, we're expanding our research, our services that we offer. Our e-commerce platform has gone live, and I'm really proud of the degree of digitalization of the client experience that we have achieved. We have a growing focus on cell therapy as well that really spans our portfolio. We've been in the CRADL business since 2015, starting in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and we learned a lot through being flexible with our clients.
This business avoids the clients have to invest their dollars in tough to manage facilities by offering turnkey facilities which they can use at very short notice. We support the clients by doing their the basics of animal care. We also can conduct the research protocols, and we can even design the research protocols if required. We now have more than 30 locations, and these span 5 states in the U.S., the U.K., and China, and we now have over 400,000 sq ft of very sophisticated space. We continue to expand, and we anticipate opening more than 10 facilities in the coming years, and we also have a significant focus in China. We think that these facilities support the entire ecosystem in these Biohubs, and we feel that we are really at the center of this.
We have a unique pathway to enable clients to move from this very early relationship as a start-up, to look for Charles River to support them in drug discovery and then in safety assessment studies later and even into CDMO. The growth in the Biohubs has really come because we have got a very agile commercial structure. We have learned a lot about the Biohubs, and we have very deep knowledge about how they operate, about the relationships between the academic labs in these very prestigious centers and the spin-out biotechs that emerge. We know that the researchers have very high need in particular areas, and this is because we have a persona-centric client experience.
As well, our portfolio continues to expand around the Biohubs, so we're developing more space for GEMS to support, particularly around Massachusetts and in California. As we expand our humanized model offering, we're very confident that we can support the clients as they develop in cell and gene therapy. In China, our growth continues at double digit, and that's been like that for the past decade. This business is very successful, and we now have a footprint most recently opened in Western China, opened about a year ago in the south of China at Chengdu, and also more recently in Wuhan, in central China. Although near term, we think that the impact of capital markets in 2023 will see some slowness in biotech and consequently with CROs.
Over the term of the strategic plan, we do expect the China growth, thanks to the ramping up and utilization of the full capacity in China for research model production, expansion in the other services, that our growth in China will eclipse the growth that we're seeing generally in RMS. Our presence in the Tier 1 Biohubs and the Tier 1 cities is very critical, so we now have significant footprint in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. We certainly see continuing opportunities with the synergies between the research model business, the biotechs, the CRADLs, and our GEMS capacity. We also see significant opportunity with our digital optimization in China, and we see researchers there with a very big thirst for being able to interact with us through e-commerce platforms. Speaking of which, we've been building a digital experience in RMS for many years.
We began by digitizing our research model product inventory. We have been able to support clients in the services business by providing their digital data back to them on a 24-hour basis, continuously, whenever they've been using our services. We see a future where the research model inventory and ability to order online supports clients by having a more efficient workflow with how they wish to do business with us when it comes to the services. We continue to develop our e-commerce platform, and we recently launched the ability for clients in North America to do business with us using an online platform.
Currently, more than 10% of the orders in the research model business are reaching us through this e-commerce platform, and half of these orders are being turned around in less than one second so that the client receives their order confirmation. We see an expansion of this platform in the very near future in North America, and we're rolling out in Europe as well. All of this effort is underpinned by robust data in the ERP system and a highly resilient infrastructure in terms of the IT platforms. Cell therapy is, cell therapy spans the entire RMS portfolio. If we think about the humanized models that we offer, which support CAR T, for example, our presence across so many Biohubs in North America, China, and some in Europe as well.
When we think about our CRADL expansion is also supported by the GEMS business, where we see an increasing number of synergies, and then the Cell Solutions business as well is providing a very broad portfolio, all the way through to early stage clinical trials. We know that the researchers in this area need highly bespoke models in order to support their investigations, understand and confirm the mechanisms of actions of these advanced modalities, and we're confident we can support them every step of the way. We're advancing all of our strategic imperatives, in particular, our business in a range of client segments, our business in the Biohubs and across all the regions. All of this is underpinned by the quality of our animal welfare, and we are very committed to sustainability and our 4Rs.
Thank you for listening, and we move now to the Q&A that will begin momentarily.
... Thank you everyone for those great presentations. We will now start our Q&A session. As a reminder for the analysts that are on Zoom for Q&A, please just raise your hand if you'd like to get into the Q&A queue. I will kind of act as the operator, so when I announce your name for the Q&A, please, if you'd like to be on video, please also turn on your video. So our first question will be from Derik DeBruin at Bank of America. Hey, Derik.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for a good presentation. So can I talk about what's embedded in your DSA guide on pricing assumptions in that 6%-8%? Basically, are you still going to be able to continue to take pricing across the portfolio, or are you expecting some compression in some of the segments? Just sort of curious on what you're there. And then I'd also like to sort of flip that on to the RMS side, too, in terms of what's your expectation of 6%-8% in terms of pricing and any pushback there. Thanks.
So we get priced pretty much across the board, Derik, as I think you know. We've had pricing increases pretty much every year in research models. There's definitely pricing embedded in there. There's definitely pricing embedded in the safety assessment business, and several others. We will make any adjustments on our pricing assumptions as we get closer to next year, obviously. I mean, there's some anticipated changes, I think, in the economy. But, you know, we've had really nice price increases probably for the last five or six years. I don't think our assumption is that the price increases will continue to increase, sorry about the bad English, but as they have been.
I don't think we're going to have a sequential increase, but it should be a material part of our revenue, as well as mix, obviously, as well as some volume and share gain across several of the businesses. I wouldn't say that every business will have price increases, and, you know, without getting too specific, you can probably discern those on your own. You know, some of the businesses where we're not having the sort of growth rates that we, that we-
Mm-hmm
... would like to have at the moment, just because of funding issues, or the overall competitive scenario where some of our competitors are tougher on price. But I would say the vast majority of our portfolio will have price increases.
Got it. And if I can do one follow-up.
Sure.
On the 2024 commentary about growing below the trend, can you be a little bit more specific? Is it all segments, DSA? Just a little bit more color would be helpful. Thanks, and I'll get back in the queue.
I wouldn't want to break that down too specifically. I guess the best thing is to say that, obviously, that the current economy is such that growth rates are a little slower than we would like. You know, we're seeing it in discovery, for instance. We're seeing it in biologics, for sure. And we don't think that's going to change overnight. So, you know, as we move in, as we move into 2024, we're trying to be... I wouldn't even use the word conservative. I'd say we're trying to be realistic that things aren't going to change overnight.
We are quite confident that in the back two years of our guidance, that several of the businesses will accelerate, probably with better pricing and probably with greater opportunity, as is more funding from the capital markets and other places. For instance, there's more spending in discovery and biologics and some other areas. We feel good about that. We think it would have been sort of overreaching and overstating the situation by just assuming that, you know, in January 1, 2024, things would suddenly change.
Got it. Thank you.
Sure.
Thanks, Derik. Our next question will be from Eric Coldwell at Baird. Hi, Eric.
Hey, thanks. Good morning, everyone. I have a few around the NHPs and the DSA segment. So first off, thanks for contributing the revenue impact of DSA NHP pricing over the last three years. I think that math comes out to something like $170-$200 million. Would you be willing—you've given a lot of incremental data today, would you be willing to share how many NHPs you use on average in a given year, or perhaps the cumulative amount over that period? And then, as a follow-up, could you talk more specifically about what the average pricing input of an NHP in your contracts is today, and perhaps put that in perspective to where the industry might be today? And I have a couple of follow-ups. Thanks.
I think we're going to be reluctant to get into specific numbers of NHPs, so we'll stay away from that. You know, I think that the price escalation has been pretty well publicized. You know, I think we would assume that there'd be some moderation of that escalation going forward, both in terms of numbers of animals available generally throughout the world. And also, I think we've done a very good job negotiating good pricing as we go forward in three different milieus, right? Owning parts and pieces of suppliers, having JVs with other suppliers, and having long-term contracts. So I think we will have greater control over the price, which obviously is a good thing for us when we're providing the animals to ourselves.
But, I think we wanna stay away from the specifics of that.
Jim, let me do one more follow-up-
Sure
If I can, and I'll come back later. In the past, Charles River has, at times, shared what your total input costs are within the average DSA contract, and when I say input costs, I'm thinking things like animals, animal diet, equipment, vaccines, things that, you know, have to be consumed, hard product. Would you be willing to update us on where that metric might be today, and how it's changed over the last couple of years?
Shannon would love to update you on that.
Hi, Eric. Yeah, I believe what we've disclosed before is still in trend with us. So up to about 20% of a study price can be, you know, account for the items that you described before. It is very dependent on the design of the study, the complexity, the duration of it, but that would be towards the high end.
Okay. So if I'm just wanna make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So let's say you do $2.5 billion of revenue, and it's 20%. Does that therefore imply that your total input costs across all of DSA are about $0.5 billion a year?
That would be at the high end.
At the high end?
Mm-hmm.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Eric.
Great. Our next question will be from Elizabeth Anderson at Evercore ISI.
Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the question. It was very helpful to hear a little bit more about the digitization efforts across that business, and to think about how this should spread across and all. Was there anything you could give a little bit more detail as we think about that longer-term margin target that you've just laid out? You know, how do we think about the chunks that are contributing to that within... You know, and maybe if you don't wanna exactly quantify them, like, just sort of maybe rank them in order as we think about what's driving that margin expansion. Thank you.
Yeah, happy to take that, Elizabeth. So if you look at our digital transformation, as we outlined, we are focusing on really three different key items. The first one is being able to compete better, revenue growth. The second one is cost savings, being more efficient, being more scalable, taking time out of the drug development, and the third one is looking at data insights, so really scientifically supporting our clients, which could be revenue generating directly or making us able to compete better. We are currently about two years in. A lot of the work we have done was very fundamental, and as we go over the next few years, you will see more and more of an impact.
Cost saving is definitely part of that, and the targets we provided include that. But I would probably say that if you look at the real impact, the primary impact of the digital transformation, you will see that in being able to compete better, taking time off the drug development, really maybe sustaining and accelerating our revenue growth.
Got it. That's super helpful. And just as a slight follow-up, is part of that also just a you know mix in terms of moving more into certain you know higher margin areas, which was like highlighted, but obviously some of the new innovation that's coming across in a different area? I don't know how you think about that potentially as a driver as well. Thanks.
Yeah, definitely, and it's, it's a really good question. So our digital efforts are going hand in hand with bringing in a lot of the in vitro technologies and new technologies, which in, for the most part, are higher margin for us and certainly if you think about providing insights through data, there's a development cost, but then the actual revenue that we're generating from that should be quite high on profitability.
Great. Thanks so much.
Great. Thanks, Elizabeth. Our next question will be from Patrick Donnelly at Citi.
Hey, guys, great. Appreciate you taking the questions. Jim, certainly understand you not wanting to talk about the 2024 segment level, but you know, just on that year, you know, it sounds like the growth obviously is gonna be below that 6%-8%. Can you just talk about the moving pieces around the margins as well? I know you guys said the cumulative 150 is not gonna be linear. My assumption is that that means 2024 will be below that 50 basis points average. Maybe if you could just talk through the margin cadence and the levers you guys have in the near term to maybe offset some of that slower growth and how we think about 2024 on the margin front would be helpful.
Sure. Hey, Patrick, good morning. We, as you pointed out, are forecasting the continuation of the demand environment into 2024 and then an acceleration thereafter into the high single digits, as I mentioned. While the margin expansion is not gonna be linear, the 150 basis points, you know, not 50 per year, we do expect to make progress in each and every year. We have already adjusted and right-sized our infrastructure and staffing this year in some of the businesses that have seen some of that demand normalization, and so that will provide us a good starting point, jump-off point for 2024.
... And then, as Birgit said, we see the impact of some of the digital efficiencies also starting to materialize more profoundly in the businesses. So I'm not going to go into too many details into 2024. You know, we're not providing guidance here for the year. But while we see that the main environment, as Jim said, not, you know, bouncing off from where we see today too dramatically, we are optimistic on the top line and the margin expansion as we start to think about 2024.
So we're assuming that the benefits from digital increase dramatically, sort of each year. So benefit next year, greater benefit the following year, and so it goes. We're also assuming some strengthening of the capital markets, sooner than later. The lack of investment in discovery at the moment is not something that can be continued for too long. I mean, that's going to have a adverse effect on availability of drugs to both work on a preclinical and clinical basis, you know, two or three or five years from now. So, you know, we typically see sort of a balanced spending between our clients. The spending, by the way, in discovery and non-clinical safety are relatively trivial compared to the cost in the clinic.
You know, it's 20%-25% preclinical and 70%-75% in the clinic. Plus, you ain't getting a drug into the clinic until—unless you do the preclinical work, and you're not getting into preclinical without that. Our assumption is that there's movement back earlier, more drugs in the drug development, sort of bipseline and process in 2025 and 2026. You know, given, given our connectivity to our clients and input from our clients and our share, we feel very good about that, that build, particularly over the past, over those two years. We've told you all for a long time that we—it's very tough to predict anything on any sort of linear basis, and that's not the nature of our business.
I do think we call a particular year well, and I, and I think in this case, you know, we went back and forth about how long would the guidance be, and we thought three years. Well, you know, we have a five-year strat plan. We still think five years is too amorphous for the shareholder base, and there's too much changeability in the world. A year is kind of dishwater, and so three years feels like a good time frame and one that we can get our arms around.
No, that's helpful. Then maybe just a quick follow-up for you, Jim, just on the DSA business. You know, coming out of 2Q, obviously, the cancellation trends were a big focus. You know, it seemed like you were suggesting maybe some levels of stabilization. I know, I know you didn't want to call a bottom, during 2Q. Just any updates what you're seeing, and then expectations there, what you're building in when you think about the 2024 setup, on that front, and again, the visibility into the normalization there would be helpful. Thanks so much.
So without giving you intra-quarter updates, which we're not doing today, cancellations and slippage have always been a fact, and they've always been a certain percentage of the revenue, and they have elongated as the backlog has elongated. And that's the direct result of the fact that clients were really insistent upon getting a slot and often without a drug associated with that slot. So, you know, they book something 18 months out, and then when it gets to be 16 months from the time they book it, they're like: "We don't really have any work." So they, you know, they give the slot up. Yeah, we charge them a penalty, but that's not the same as getting the revenue.
As the backlog is shortening, you know, it's about 13 months now, and we think it's going to get down to 9-ish, which it had been pre-COVID. That feels like a really good time frame, good supply-demand quotient. You know, we can see 2 or 3 quarters out. The client, 9 months is still fairly far out, but that's very different than 18 months. So the clients, hopefully will have a study, or two, associated, with that booking, and we'll have a better handle on price and so will they. And I think, you know, we've called it sort of the normalization, assuming anything's normal in our business model, but sort of the normalization of the supply-demand quotient. So we think that the percentage of cancellations as a percentage of revenue will decline.
I mean, that's based, that's built into our assumptions here, will decline as the backlog shortens.
Great. Thank you. Our next question will be from Tejas Savant at Morgan Stanley. Hello, Tejas.
Thanks, Don. Jim, a couple of follow-ups on DSA for me as well. I think Derik asked this earlier, but would you be willing to sort of contextualize, you know, that segment growth rate cut from 10%-7%? How much of that was just NHP pricing normalization? I know that was also a 250-300 bips impact on the last three-year CAGR. And then, as a sort of related follow-up, you've talked about sort of the cross-selling synergies between the D part and the SA part. You said about north of 50% of your clients are already doing that today.
So just contextualize that metric for us in terms of where it was three years ago, and where do you think it can go, you know, by the end of the forecast period in 2026?
... So cross-selling is a great opportunity for us, and the breadth of our portfolio is the primary distinguishing characteristic of Charles River versus the competition. And it's a huge competitive advantage. So if we—let's start really early. If we have clients in one of our CRADL facilities doing pure R&D, and they have a promising molecule, we have the opportunity, and I would hope the advantage of moving them into our discovery portfolio, and then if the drug continues to look promising, move them into toxicology, and then at some point, testing both microbial and biologics. So cross-selling, we believe, will continuously be a larger portion of how we generate revenue, almost regardless of where the client enters the portfolio.
You know, some clients only know us for safety, some clients only know us for microbial, some clients know us across the whole portfolio. I think that's a huge opportunity. I, I... We've been saying that about 50% of our discovery clients are moving into safety. There's no reason why that can't be dramatically more. In terms of the first part of your question, you know, I think our assumptions about however we phrased it, a slightly slower or lower revenue growth rate in 2024 versus 2025 and 2026, you know, I think it's a combination of a multiplicity of things. First, as I said earlier, we're not assuming that there's gonna be a switch that's turned on, and the demand suddenly changes.
I think clients are cautious about spending, even if they're well-financed, because there's uncertainty about when that will improve. Our discovery business, albeit a relatively small part of DSA, is not having a fun year, and we're assuming that will improve. But you know, I don't think it's gonna be—I don't think it's gonna be dramatic. Probably, pricing is not, just kind of across the board, is not quite as strong as this year. And certainly, NHP pricing should moderate, and I think there are some positive aspects of that, as I said earlier. So we're trying to be realistic. I think, I think we have been. It's very unusual, I think, as you all know, to give any kind of color for the next year this early. You know, it's September.
We're not giving you guidance, but we're giving you pretty good color on 2024. I think that should be a positive for you all, and it also gives you a pretty clear understanding of what our assumptions are for 2025 and 2026, 'cause we feel quite good about our ability, not only to deliver our guidance this year but to deliver those numbers that we just put up for the next three.
Got it. A quick clean up really on the operating margin targets. You called out within RMS, you know, just reviewing profitability of certain Insourcing Solutions contracts. How big of a dynamic could that be in the context of RMS? And then on Manufacturing Support, I think you called out sort of 30% operating margin or better than 30%, but the segment is down sort of closer to the mid-30s in that, you know, 2016 through 2021 timeframe. So is that just a function of, you know, the biologic safety testing, recovery, and CDMO sort of starting to fill up, or are there any other factors to think about as we think, you know, low 30s versus mid-30s? Thank you.
Sure, I'll take that. Starting with the RMS, and I welcome Colin, too, to add anything after. Tejas, I think the primary drivers of the margin in RMS will be the other two points that I mentioned around both in our CRADL facilities as well as the sites in China that are gonna become fully productive and operational as we have been opening them over the last several months. But we certainly also are looking into some of the insourcing contracts, and that's gonna be another addition to the margin there, but not the predominant. When it comes to manufacturing, you're absolutely right. In past years, we were in sort of the mid-30s. We have last year had, you know, close to 30, 28.8% margin in manufacturing solutions.
We started a little slower this year. In the first quarter, I talked about some one-time items. Without them, we would have been at a mid-20s%. In Q2, the margin was, you know, 23-ish%. So I think we're inching back our way, and you're correct also. The impact of the current demand environment in biologics testing, as well as a slower ramp in the CDMO and some of the investments that we have talked about in terms of audit readiness and getting the facilities really in great shape as we created these centers of excellence, put some pressure on the manufacturing solutions margin. Colin, I don't know if you want to add anything about insourcing.
I don't think really there's much else to add other than as Flavia, you have said, that the margin gain through exiting some of those less constructive contracts is small in relation to what we're achieving through CRADL and ramp up in China and additional penetration with, say, the GEMS business.
Perfect. Thank you.
Got it. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.
Sure.
Thank you. Our next question will be from David Windley at Jefferies.
Hi, um-
Hi, Dave
At some risk, I'm gonna let you into my construction zone hotel room here. I apologize if the background noise really ramps up. I wanted to ask a question. This is kind of at its core an M&A priorities question, but focusing on DSA, you commented about how—there it goes—you commented about how discovery is kind of 50% pull through to SA. It is relatively small in DSA. You've talked about a few acquisitions that have gone well in discovery. I guess I'm wondering if it is a high priority to get your discovery business to a better balance with SA in DSA, or if not, what are your top M&A priorities? Thank you.
Good question, Dave. As you know, we really like to initiate with our clients as early as possible, and we love when they're looking for the target or trying to find what's druggable against the target or characterize the drug or improve it. Oftentimes just to do sort of early pharmacology on the drug. You know, we built a reasonably sized, scaled discovery business. You know, it's the aggregation of probably a dozen acquisitions, maybe slightly more. With one exception, they were pretty small. Unfortunately, maybe with one exception, most things out there are pretty small, but of pretty, pretty complex technology. You know, these technology deals that we do, of which we have 20, I'm gonna guess that the majority of those are discovery-oriented. Those are-- that's IP.
They can be very small businesses, but they're growing at 50% or 100%. They typically have good margins, and they typically distinguish us from the competition, and it's often a hook to get a client engaged and say, "Wow, I can't believe you can do that. It's not something we could do internally, and we're not sure who else could do that externally." So, while we wish the discovery business was doing better, that's more a function of demand and spending ability, as opposed to the quality of the assets or how we put them together. So yes, we would be looking there, and, you know, we'll probably have one or two of those technology deals teed up annually. Doesn't mean that we'll buy them all.
It just means that we will have had a year or two to work with those companies, and we often have or almost always have a right of first refusal. So we're gonna look closely before we pass and allow our competitors or whomever to do that. As cell and gene therapy strengthens, and we believe it will, you know, we have these centers of excellence, both on the viral vector side, the plasmid DNA side, and the manufacturing of cell therapies. As they strengthen and grow and the margins improve, we would be interested in looking for more assets there. And it could be just geographic. It could be something that we're doing in the U.S. that we'd love to do in Europe because the clients want it that way and because the cells often have a short shelf life, travel well, or whatever.
Conversely, something that we do in Europe that we may want to do in the States. That would be sort of the obvious. There's also a few subtle service offerings in cell and gene therapy that we either don't do at all or we'd like to do on a broader scale. We have some lab service-ish opportunities that we'd like to expand. We do a lot of what we call laboratory sciences work associated with our preclinical work, and we'd like to do more associated with clinical trial samples. I think lastly, we actually have some interesting things in RMS that I would say are all about translatability, all about really proving that what you're seeing early on is translatable to humans.
And there's a couple of companies that we have been engaged in conversations, actually, for a long period of time. By the way, Dave, I think as you know, with maybe one exception, which... One or two exceptions, which would be that a couple of these even small companies are public, the rest are all private equity-owned. So, at some point, they're all available. We don't know yet whether the multiples will improve, and by that, I mean, obviously, come down over some of the acquisitions that we made over the last two or three years, but we well, but we hope so. And we've often been able to get control over the timeframe when these assets will be sold.
In other words, either speed them up because we're ready to do the deal and maybe the PE firm is missing, or slow them down because we're not ready to do the deal, and we don't feel that we have the bandwidth. The last thing I would say is, our leverage is quite low. It's 2.2 turns. If we don't buy anything this year, it's gonna get 2-ish, maybe slightly below. Our balance sheet is really strong.
Thanks.
We've got a lot of fixed debt, and so we feel that from a financial point of view, we're in really good shape to buy pretty much all the deals that we're looking at, as I said, except for one exception, which, which we're not looking at seriously. They're all sort of modest to smallish-sized deals as opposed to something really big.
Excellent. We'll break in the noise here, so good timing. I'll skip to my last one, which is around NHPs, and a couple different things there. I know that I appreciate, first of all, the kind of the ESG angle and the commentary about audits and things like that. As I'm sure you know, your organization is well aware, the kind of the white papers and news reports and things of, you know, some smuggling activity in Southeast Asia around non-human primates, not exclusively Cambodia, go back quite a ways. You know, they're pretty voluminous and go back quite a ways. I guess the two-part question here is, and I've probably tried to ask this before, and I understand you may, you may beg off, but-
... Can you put a finer point on the added intensity of your activities to assure and confirm yourselves that the people that you're dealing with are, you know, are on the up and up, and that their animals are not wild-caught? And then secondly, on the other side of things, can you put a finer point on the conversations that you have had with CITES authorities in the countries where you are operating, where you have mitigated your, you know, your U.S., import problem, to assure that you have freedom to operate on a continuous basis going forward in those countries? Thank you.
So Dave, while there's obviously a lot of noise around this whole topic, we can say with great assurance that we have never knowingly participated in bringing in wild-caught animals from any source, never, never knowingly, and don't believe that we have. And all of the sort of legal activity that's going on, you know, we believe that any concerns raised regarding our conduct or alleged conduct is without merit. Now, you know, I think, I think we've been pretty clear about that. We did have a couple of year hiatus in terms of our ability to go and audit sites because of COVID, but we're back at it. And so we'll, we'll stay back at it. And more importantly than that, we will... We are and we will buy some pieces of our suppliers.
And for sure, we will have, well, we'll own most if not all of those businesses, but we'll have our own folks on the ground, on the sites, overseeing veterinary oversight and husbandry, and ensuring that the animals are as promised. We'll have some other relationships that may be closer to joint ventures, but we're closely aligned with a supplier, and won't do those deals unless we are allowed to have our own folks on-site and providing great assurances before any animals leave anywhere, that they are as we need them to be. And then the last thing is long-term contracts, and we would want the same ability.
So I think, I think being on the ground, given that we have great expertise in non-human primate veterinary medicine and husbandry associated with that, and, you know, this, this company was started from a veterinary base and, and in large measure has continued that. So we care very much about the animal welfare, quality of the animals, how they're treated, and how they're utilized in biomedical research, and which ones are utilized. And so we're just as disappointed, horrified, upset, whatever word you want to use, adjectives you want to use, at the sort of allegations about people doing, doing inappropriate things to, to bring these monkeys into the country, but not something that we, we have ever participated in.
Great. Thanks, Dave. Our next question will be from Max Smock at William Blair. Hey, Max.
Hey, good morning. Thanks for hosting, and thanks for taking our questions. Just a quick one for me to start. I wanted to confirm I'm understanding the footnote that you had in one of your NHP slides, where you used NHP pricing at 2020 levels as a baseline for some analysis around 2020 through 2023 DSA revenue growth, excluding that NHP pricing impact. And in that footnote, you call it out that using the NHP pricing at 2020 levels will create a roughly 275 basis point headwind to the 2023 through 2026 DSA reported growth CAGR. So just to clarify, in your updated guide, are you assuming that NHP pricing moves back to 2020 levels, and then based on that assumption, NHP pricing will be a roughly 3% headwind, moving forward?
Or am I misinterpreting what was actually included in that footnote?
Yeah, just to clarify, Max, the 250-275 basis points that you're alluding to is the adjustment on that historical period. So had it not been for the price, the growth rate would have been closer to 9%. So it's not at all an indication or implication onto the forward outlook. It's what we experienced in the historical 2020 to 2023 period, that's what it is alluded to.
Okay. Got it. Helpful. Thank you for that. Sticking with safety assessment, one on cancellations here. I know you mentioned that roughly 80% of the cancellations that you saw in the second quarter were for work booked in 2020 or 2021, I believe. Can you just give us some detail around how far in advance these cancellations are actually coming? I guess put another way, are you seeing customers cancel things that are, like, lined up for the next couple of months, next couple of quarters, or is it more things that are booked way out into the future? If those cancellations are coming closer to actual start dates, what sort of ability do you have to quickly backfill those slots in order to prevent a near-term drop-off in revenue?
Wanna take that?
Yeah. Thanks. I can take that question. So, as we said, you know, looking at it in Q2, we saw 80% of our cancellations actually were for awarded studies from 2021 and 2022. So those are studies, like we said, that have booked well in advance of when they actually intend to start. With regards to the timing that we receive notification for cancellations, our customers are really good at partnering with us and keeping us up to speed, so it isn't a last-minute cancellation that we see to a high degree. They're giving us a couple of months' notice with regards to that, and so our ability to go ahead and backfill that work and stuff allows for, you know, greater access for some of our clients who need to start very quickly. So-
... Okay, great. Thanks again for taking our questions.
Great. Thanks. Thanks, Max. Our next question will be from Charles Rhee at TD Cowen. Hey, Charles.
Hey, yeah, thanks for taking the questions and for all the details today. One of the first, a follow-up question from earlier around sort of your digitization efforts. You know, when, you know, we're hearing also as regards to sort of AI tools for discovering that biopharma. A lot of biopharma manufacturers are starting to invest a lot in this area as well, you know, enhance their own internal development capabilities. You know, as you are, you know, putting more resources into this area, does that, you know, kind of create a situation where you are in a competitive environment with your manufacturer partners, or would you say it's more complementary?
So we certainly don't think we're in a competitive environment, and I think AI has multiple definitions right now, depending on who you ask. And we have one large relationship right now in the AI world and one smaller one, and for sure, we'll have multiple kind of shots on goal. I think the assumption by everybody is that artificial intelligence should help us and others design better preclinical trials with better outcomes, and should speed up the process, and should allow us to advise the clients to pursue drugs that look promising, based upon hundreds of thousands that have gone before them, and vice versa.
So we think that that's still a great opportunity, and that will be linked somehow, even though, even though we probably won't do the clinical work, 'cause we don't at the current time, probably clinical trials will be better designed as well. So allegedly and theoretically, the whole drug development process can be sped up, which we're all looking forward to. We're thinking that it will be adjunctive to the work that we do now. We're thinking that we will participate, and by that I mean, buy companies who are licensed technologies to allow us to participate. We're thinking that it will allow the clients help us, help us help the clients get to a lead compound earlier in the process than perhaps they are now. So, and no, we don't see that competitive at all.
I mean, our clients, I think, are looking for us to do anything we can to help them enhance the process. Most of the big drug companies, and by that I include biotech companies, have their own sort of internal, probably proprietary, in vitro technology that could be AI or could be something else. So, we're going to stay close to the whole field of animal alternatives, as it were. We have a committee of the board that's been set up to look at this. We have a bunch of experts providing us input. We'll do a bunch of technology deals in this space.
I don't think that there's gonna be a transformation overnight, where this technology is either supplanting or even being adjunctive to others, but it, for sure, will have a role and impact, on what we do, and probably will help, reduce and refine the numbers of animals used, in addition to speeding up the process.
Great. Thank you. Maybe to follow up on the NHP questions. You know, what do you see any sort of risk of regulatory agencies in Canada or the EU potentially enacting similar policies to Fish and Wildlife here in banning imports of Cambodian NHP to their respective regions?
No more monkey, no more NHP questions. We're cutting it off here. I'm just kidding. Anything's possible. I would say that based upon our current relationships, permitting, conversations, audits, and just the nature of the relationships that we've developed, it seems like other countries are pleased to have us doing the work in those countries, proud of the fact that they are participating in drug development. They are conscious of what's, at least the allegations that have gone on in the U.S. I'm not saying they're not, but they're comfortable with the work that we're doing, they're comfortable working with us, and they've been quite supportive. So, I don't know why, or if, or how that would change.
We, you know, we do everything by the book, and we will cooperate and coordinate with those folks to ensure that we continue to take the high road in every facet of what we're doing, in terms of having conversations with these other municipalities. And so it feels like they're in our corner, and it feels like they understand the criticality of using NHPs for drug development, and they don't wanna either be in the way, and conversely, I think they'd like to help facilitate the process.
Great. Thank you.
Sure.
Appreciate the comments.
Sure.
Thanks. Our next question will be from Jack Wallace at Guggenheim. Hello, Jack.
Hello. Thanks for taking my questions. Just wanted to follow up on Charles' question and talk about AI a little bit more. And if I'm just taking a step back here, and you-- there's technology that's in development currently out there, and certainly going to get better over time, that has the promise of, you know, being able to eliminate the need for animal models. You know, and it does seem, you know, that is a threat at some point, and may-- You said you've got a number of shots on goal with investments or ROFRs and whatnot, but if I'm thinking about, you know, from the standpoint from a large global, with a balance sheet and-...
You know, that's maybe larger than yours, and you, you know, can justify a spend that would be well in excess of what you've laid out and the targets you look for, for your M&A targets. You know, why, why would I, as a large global, not, you know, spend whatever it took to get a competitive advantage, to be able to bring, to identify new drug candidates and bring them faster? Why would I let the rest of the, the industry be able to use that technology if I can get my hands on it first? Thanks.
Interesting question. I mean, it's a very significant leap of faith or just the way you phrased the question, to say that or to assume that at some point, there's no animal models utilized in drug development. I just think that's not gonna happen, particularly in toxicology. So using a whole animal model to understand how a drug is working in the human body, based upon all of our conversations with pretty much CEOs and heads of R&D and VCs starting up drug companies, and we ask this constantly, pretty much the people are in concert that animal models will be used in large measure, and that won't be supplanted. It is possible, though, that animal models will continue to be more sophisticated.
So you'll use less with higher ASPs that will shorten the time to get an answer. That's a win-win for everybody. So you use less animals, you get your drug to market faster. For CRL, that's likely to have greater revenue and profitability metrics, and we would feel good about participating in that. Look, the FDA and related regulatory agencies are all about safety. And so to take a leap of faith and say, "We want you to swallow this drug or be injected with this drug that was developed by a computer simulation, or AI, or some 3D model," anything's possible. I think it's highly unlikely, and I think if it ever happens on a wholesale basis, it's a long time off.
I do think, as I said a moment ago, we'll see it earlier, and we'll see it more around discovery and more about, about getting to a lead compound. Will some big drug company buy one of these technologies to have a competitive advantage? You know, that's, that's sort of an imponderable. You know, we suspect, which is why we're gonna have multiple shots on goal, this is sort of no one way to go about this. And, you know, we're assuming there'll be new technologies all the time that will probably supplant the whatever is new that will be supplanted in a year or two. I think it's gonna be an evolving situation. So, we'd like to stay close to multiple technologies.
We'd like to have access to multiple technologies because some may be used in a more robust fashion, you know, than others. We have-- you know, we've never seen the drug companies, on a wholesale basis, buy up anything so that the competition couldn't get, at least in the milieu that we work. It's possible. I think a lot of them have their own internal, either in vitro screens or AI capabilities that they probably think are better than anybody else's, developed internally, 'cause a lot of the big drug companies tend to think that way. That, by the way, that may be true. I would, as a sort of a bottom line answer to your question, I'd say they certainly will never share their own technology with anybody else.
Whether they'll go out and buy them up, you know, well, that's kind of an imponderable.
Got it. Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate the, the depth of the, the answer there. You got one on China. It sounds like that's a, it's a nice reacceleration, story there. But as you know, we've, we've got, as a country, some, difficult relations, with, with China. You know, there's concerns around, you know, technology transfer. There's also, you know, China has liked to put their thumb on the scale and, support some of their homegrown, industry, relative to Western, you know, companies. You know, and it sounds like a little of that's being done, it sounds like you're still competing and winning anyway. Is there a worry that the geopolitical, landscape might become more difficult and your business in China might, become negatively impacted because of that?
I suppose anything's possible, and I think it's unlikely for a whole host of reasons, one of which is multiples, and two are some of the things you just said. It's unlikely that we'll scale up what we do in China with other businesses. Our principal activity in China is our research model business. It's about—I think we're about 10 years in now. We were smart enough, I guess, to buy—to not buy... It was a Chinese company that we bought, even though it was called Vital River, which is a knockoff of Charles River, and even though they used our animal models with our permission to breed up their breed stock, and they actually modeled one of their facilities after ours.
But it was a Chinese company, and we didn't buy it all at the beginning, and we bought in several tranches since then. I think we're up to 90-something%. But I think it's still the perception of the government to the extent that they actually pay any attention to what we do and, and, and the research model business. I think the perception is still that it's a local company, number one. Number two, I think they feel quite strongly that the quality of what we do there is probably better than local startup, still Chinese-owned competitors. And we really have no large international competitors who are local in China. So if they were to somehow abuse us or disadvantage us, I think it would hurt drug development in China. So, we have a great management team there.
I would say the government has been cooperative. We have a, you know, high growth, nice margin business. We've expanded our geography there. That's held us in good stead because you want to be proximate to the clients. It's a giant country, and some of these small cities have 8 or 10 million people, and you don't want to transport the animals, you know, hundreds or 1,000, 1,000 miles. All I can say is it's gone really well. You know, we can't predict the sort of tension between the U.S. and China. It looks like China has some issues right now, and maybe the tension will subside, and maybe we'll work more closely. If not, we feel that we're in a good place.
Excellent. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thanks. Our next question is from Casey Woodring at J.P. Morgan.
Great. Thanks, guys, for taking my question. Just to follow up on China, maybe from the competitive standpoint, Jim, you mentioned China was becoming less favorable to U.S. and Western clients. Can you just elaborate on that? Have you begun to see that shift from clients away from Chinese competitors to Charles River already? Or is that something that you think will occur over the next several years within this new outlook? And then maybe, can you just size how much of the market right now is currently outsourced to China and the trends you've seen from a competitive standpoint leading up to today? You know, has that region taken share on pricing or capacity over the last several years? And if so, what gives you confidence that that would reverse moving forward?
So, a lot of our comments on what our current clients or prospective clients or folks in the industry are doing with China is a little bit anecdotal, but we do talk to lots of them all the time. So what we've heard is the following. One is, lots of them have gone to China for chemistry. Lower cost, pretty fast, good quality. Even a bunch of those people that have gone to China with that knowledge, some have grown concerned about IP, and just the complexity of working there, language, currency, time frame, and whether they can really trust the folks. So that's a little funky right now, and that may change. There is some capacity in toxicology in China. We don't have any...
We actually built a facility in 2006 at the behest of all of our clients, and then the economy blew up in 2008, and we built a facility, but nobody came, so we sold it. But there's one domestic competitor, and there's several, when I say several, probably four or five Chinese companies that I think probably do okay work. I don't think they have the sophistication that we do, particularly with specialty work. I'm sure the work is cheaper. So what we have heard is that some clients that are buying principally on price, as opposed to necessarily science or quality, will use these Chinese alternatives. I don't think that's a lot of clients, and while we may compete with them periodically, that's not our principal competitive situation.
So, you know, I think some of the work will go there. I still think that Chinese toxicology companies are set up in China primarily for drugs developed in China and primarily for the Chinese market ultimately. So they're probably just trying to fill capacity and generate some revenue to cover their overhead by selling elsewhere. I don't think that's a long-term situation, particularly if the tension between the U.S. and China were to increase. Capacity is reasonably tight but pretty good right now in the U.S. and Europe. We're able to accommodate our clients. We're pretty fast. Our prices, I'm sure, aren't as cheap as China, but our science is infinitely better. And so, you know, we have really large footprints with our clients.
Got it. Maybe just one follow-up around the IRA. In safety assessment, can you maybe walk through the growth rates assumes, and the new outlook between small molecule, which you noted was 65% of SA revenue, and large molecule, and other, I guess? You know, like you noted in the presentation, the IRA will likely drive R&D away from small molecule and towards, towards large molecules. Just curious if the growth rates assumed are consistent with what you've seen historically in those modalities or if the IRA is impacting those. Just on the cancellation dynamic and DSA as a whole, can you give us a breakdown on the percentage of cancellations in discovery versus SA, maybe between large molecule and small molecule? Any color there would be great. Thank you.
So on the IRA, I think the immediate assumption, by the way, you know, five minutes after that was written, everybody sort of weighed in and said it's gonna hurt small molecule. I think that's possible, but I also think it's an overreaction. So as I think I said earlier, if you talk. I often say to clients, so. And these are usually senior people with our clients, "So are you focusing on large molecule or small?" And they'll say, "Yes." And I'll say, "Well, why are you answering me that way?" And they say, "Well, we don't really care. We really don't care. We're going to focus on whatever's druggable." In other words, whatever small, whatever, whether it's small or large, whatever will attach to the target and not miss the target. And so I think that's that will always be the case.
If they can, I suppose, now I'm speculating. I suppose if they can have a large molecule that attaches to the target, and they're concerned about this, and they're concerned principally about their ability to either sell the molecules later or sell the whole company, and they think they'll be worth less, they're likely to do more. But, you know, if you look at the approvals, they're pretty much 50/50 between small and large. And, and when I say approvals, I'm only talking about the FDA. So we, we tend to look at the FDA more than, than others. It's, it's probably not very different in any other, parts of the world. And there's a lot of new modalities that are large molecule. There's a lot of work in large molecules.
Some of them are incredibly effective, and they're cures for some horrible diseases, so it's possible and plausible that large molecule will be more significant. I will ask her, but I don't think that Shannon's going to break down between discovery or safety cancellations. You know, we never break it down except to say that we track the percentage. It's been relatively consistent. The numbers of projects that have been canceled, particularly in safety, for a while increased, but the denominator increased, so that the percentage didn't increase. I would say that as the timeframe elongated, the percentage increased, and we think that's going to subside. Would you agree with that?
I would agree with that. Like, and just to reecho, the 80% in Q2 of the cancellations and stuff was for work that was ordered to us in 2021 and 2022. So as our backlogs adjusted and stuff, I think we'll continue to see that as a percentage decrease.
Great. Thank you.
Thanks. Our next question is from Tim Daley at Wells Fargo. Hi, Tim.
Hey. Great, thanks for the time here. So, you know, on manufacturing, specifically on CDMO, you know, manufacturing overall, I think you guys called out headwinds to growth versus prior commentary. You know, two main points, vaccine testing and then slower start to the cell and gene therapy CDMO business. So I think in the past, you talked about a, you know, 5-year CAGR in CDMO, 25-ish%. Today, the 2026 CAGR was around 20% for that business. So just wanted to isolate the slower-than-expected start comments. Should we interpret that, that the moderation of the growth, you know, slightly, albeit but still from kind of 25 to 20, is more of a 2024 headwinds, but the mid to long-term growth ambitions are unchanged?
And then, you know, in that same vein, you know, the margin accretion, so the 50 basis points annual margin accretion, obviously nonlinear. That was clarified. But called out price digitization, as well as volume in cell and gene therapy CDMO. Is that kind of... You know, Tejas's question earlier, mid-30s from kind of 30-ish% in the operating margin expansion, is that reliance on commercial programs, just to clarify? So, you know, 2024 maybe weighing on the long-term CAGR for cell and gene therapy, and then the margin reliance on large commercial programs.
So I'll let Flavia take the margin question in a moment. But on the CDMO business, several things are afoot. One is that the integration and growth of that business in fiscal 2022 was way more difficult than we had anticipated, and that's on us. You know, we bought a bunch of businesses at the same time. They're very complex. It's new science for us. It's new regulations for us. And as you've heard us say, we had to pretty much redo a lot of the management teams and the facilities. And those aren't excuses, that's just facts. So we were disappointed in the growth rate, but we learned a lot. The businesses are much better managed, the facilities are better, the client base is growing, sales force is better.
We've had multiple audits by clients and regulatory agencies, and we feel really good about it. I would say that right now, we think that 25% growth rate is probably on the high side. Will it get there someday? Hopefully, but the cell and gene therapy opportunity is growing a little bit slower than people had anticipated just because of the safety profile associated with those drugs and the FDA being a little more hesitant to approve them. You know, there's only 20 approved out of 3,500. There's been some fits and starts. We believe there'll be a second, as I said earlier, or perhaps a third generation. I think we'll be right in the middle of that.
So the growth rates should still be accretive to Charles River's growth rate of CDMO, A, as it improves, and B, it's growing faster than the company as a whole. But I don't think it's gonna get to 25%, anytime soon, but, actually, both the top line and the bottom line should be accretive, even though the bottom line has a long way to go. And maybe you can unpack some of that for him.
Sure. On the margin, a couple of things. Going above the 30%, there will be an impact of CDMO improving there, but also in biologics testing, as I said, between the normalization of the current demand environment in biologics testing. For CDMO specifically, the margin improvement, while obviously, if we have additional commercial clients that have their products approved, that would be a tailwind as the process is more repeatable and more scalable. It is not dependent upon that. We just expect that the volume in the facility will increase as we continue to add more clients, more products, and more growth there, whether it is preclinical. We can't really count on products making it through the clinic and being approved.
As I think Jim said, we have one now that we're manufacturing that is commercial, and we are in discussions with other clients that are telling us they're getting close, but the margin expansion is mostly just the increase in capacity utilization in the site, not necessarily from commercial products.
... Okay, well, that's really helpful. And pivoting to RMS, so, you know, you guys called out Cradle as a growth driver. You know, 30 locations today, looking to add 10 new sites over the next five years. So just first off, can you kind of help us understand, a lot of commentary on China, are the bulk of those 10 new sites expected to be in China? Any geographical dispersion around those, those incremental or current footprints? And then as well, you know, what's the annual revenues you expect to come out of a fully ramped Cradle location? Granted, there's probably differences in markets-
Yes.
But just some rough math for us, I think would be really helpful.
So Colin, Colin, you want to unpack Cradle for them, and you can, you can probably stay away from the second part of his question.
Yes. Okay. We really envisage most of those new CRADL sites being in the West. I think most will actually be in North America. We're enthusiastic about some additional sites in Europe. Certainly, we're very open to adding additional sites, working with some key partners in China. At the moment in China, I think I'd go slower in CRADL than I would in the more developed Biohubs in the West. I think that we don't volunteer what the revenue number is around CRADL and a subsection of that business. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Sure.
Great, and I think we have one last question left in the queue, and that is from John Sourbeer at UBS. Hi, John.
Hey, thanks for taking my question here at the end. So I actually have two questions, but maybe starting first on the CDMO. Just appreciate the color on the 25 suites in Memphis. You know, how do you think about your capacity needs within the CDMO and, you know, the opportunities to fill it in? Would you be willing to give, you know, what your total CDMO revenue capacity is today?
So we'll let our CDMO expert answer the first part of the question and not the second. Kerstin.
So, the CDMO business is not much different than all our other businesses within Charles River. I don't consider us having overcapacity. We have appropriate capacity for growth together with our clients, and I think the fact that we have multiple clients moving towards commercial scale, that's absolutely appropriate. When it comes to next expansions or what that's gonna look like, we have multiple opportunities, and we're brainstorming on that all the time. We're definitely waiting for an appropriate time point because our strategy is to do that together with our clients, so we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. And so, it's a collaborative decision, I would say, and it's definitely in joint discussions with our clients. And if the next expansion is gonna take place in Memphis, we have options there.
If it's gonna be at a different location within North America, it could be adjacent to a testing site, it could be in Europe. Jim talked earlier about the importance of having cell therapy footprint in Europe. I think we will determine that at the appropriate time.
Thanks. And Jim, I know you said no more questions on NHPs, but I did have one here. You know, if the issues in the U.S. were resolved, and I know you've talked about moving away from the U.S., but is there any desire for biotechs to do studies in the U.S., and could that be an opportunity for additional share gains or revenue capture there? And also, if China were to export, any thoughts on how that could impact NHP pricing?
We have, you know, we have multiple sources of supply from multiple countries, and we're pleased with availability and numbers of NHPs. We still do a significant amount of NHP work in the United States at several facilities and from multiple sources, so that's unlikely to change. If we could bring Cambodian NHPs into the US, would we use them? Perhaps. We wouldn't, we wouldn't... All we've said is we're not gonna wholesale shift what we're doing in other countries to go back to the US just because it's opened up. If it's part of our international supply situation, we will do that. Look, some clients have a, you know, a strong preference for proximity.
I still think that on an approximate basis, they're getting their work done close, and if not, they're getting the work done at a really high-quality place that's not too far away from where they were doing it. So, you know, we're using our footprint really well. We're using our supply sources really well. We're using our expansion really well. I think it's a huge competitive advantage, the size of our infrastructure. I think we demonstrated that right now, the way we've been able to pivot and be able to accommodate a bunch of these animals. I'm personally skeptical that China's opening up anytime soon. I think some of my colleagues aren't skeptical, so maybe it happens. I think pricing ultimately has to do with, like, the sheer number of NHPs that are available and the demand.
So, you know, it's gonna be a supply-demand situation. There have been some bad actors that I think have inappropriately, and most of them are in the States, raised the prices, and so we may see less of the bad actors and see a more rational price point.
Thanks for taking the questions.
Sure.
Great. Well, that concludes the Q&A. I think Jim has a few closing remarks.
Yeah, so my closing remarks are as follows: I hope you've enjoyed hearing from our senior management team that's running these businesses, and it's a terrific team. And I hope you feel that way. I hope you're pleased with our portfolio that we built, and I can assure you that organically and through M&A and through some of these technology deals, we will continue to build out and expand that portfolio for sure. I think we have a strong competitive position that we can continue to increase. In addition to quality, obviously, we're gonna be all about speed to market for our clients and efficiency and using our digital footprint.
Of course, we're all about the quality of our people, the scientific capability of our people, and the teamwork that we express, and the connectivity with our clients, and the fact that we actually feel that we're working on our drugs as well. We're really pleased with the three-year numbers that we've given you. We feel that we can achieve those. We're also pleased with our guidance for the balance of this year. Thank you all for listening.
Great. Thanks for joining us, everyone.