Hi, everybody. Thanks so much for joining. I'm Elizabeth Anderson, Healthcare Technology and Distribution Analyst here at Evercore. Very pleased to be joined by Bob Leasure, CEO of Inotiv, to talk about the business here. So maybe to start off with, there's probably a lot of people here who might not know Inotiv that well. Can you give us, like, a 30,000-foot view of the company to start off with, and then we'll dig into the details?
Sure. Thank you, Elizabeth. We are probably about a five- or six-year-old business. Started in this journey about 2018. We started with a $20 million business, and since then, we've done 14 acquisitions, started up eight businesses, and grew from $20 million to closer to $550-$600 million. So it's been a very quick journey over the last five or six years to grow in a very what I think is a pretty complicated business in terms of all the services you need to go from discovery to an IND. And we're now working to be a one-stop shop from discovery through the IND process to first in human, and the drug discovery business, and be able to do all that in-house.
Now putting all those companies together and now becoming one company with one culture that can deliver a superior experience for the client is what we're trying to do. Through that, in the last couple of years, we did acquire what was at one point 35 facilities in seven countries. And in the last couple of years, part of the integration process was right-sizing these businesses, so and right-sizing our business. So in doing that, in the last 18 months, we focused on closing 11 of the 35 facilities, which now we're done with 10 of those 11. Last one will be completed in February, March of 2024. And also right-sizing the facilities that we bought so we could move things around.
Scale is important in this industry, to have the right size facilities to leverage what is a fixed cost regulatory structure. So we've made a lot of progress in the last year of being able to develop the right economic model for ourselves.
That sounds like most of the heavy lifting at this point is sort of in the rear view mirror, and now you're sort of at a place to sort of come out of that? Or you-
I hope, I hope that the heavy lifting is in the rear view mirror.
Nice.
Yes, it has been. I'm very pleased. We were able to really do all those things that came in very much on target, on schedule, within budget. I think in putting the team together over the last five years who could actually accomplish that was, I was pretty proud of what they were able to do.
Yep. No, that makes sense. Maybe starting off with the perennial hot topic of the world, our favorite NHPs. Can you talk about what you see as sort of the current view of NHP supply and demand dynamics? I think, you know, as we were talking beforehand, you were talking about sort of the diversity of supply, et cetera, and how that has changed, and you're obviously more immune to that than others. So I'd love to hear your sort of current perspectives on the supply and demand dynamics there.
Well, let's go back. We got into the NHP business two years ago with the acquisition of Envigo-
... and then subsequently, OBRC. I felt that was really important for us to control that supply base, because if we didn't have that supply base, I felt not having control of that NHP supply base, we would not be in the safety assessment business.
'Cause I thought that was so critical. I still think it is very critical today, and I'm very glad that we have these businesses. When we bought the businesses, we mainly had a couple suppliers in a couple different countries, and we had mainly a couple major customers. One of the key things that we wanted to do was diversify our supply base-
... diversify our countries, and diversify our customer base. In the last 12 months, we've done a very good job of doing that, accelerated, and the Cambodian situation accelerated that because 70% of what we were bringing into the U.S. was from Cambodia. We've now adjusted fairly well. We have qualified other suppliers. It takes a while to qualify a supplier-
Yeah
... from a, audit standpoint of health, safety, understanding the breeding, the facilities. But we've been able, over the course of the last 12 months, add new suppliers to our supply base. We've been able to add new customers to our customer base, and I think we've done a nice job of getting through what was gonna be a challenging situation. So I think as far as the world market, you have to remember, the world market is still okay. There's plenty of... The only country that's not importing Cambodians is the U.S.
So it's just a matter of eventually that supply chain shifting around. I, you know, I would not be surprised to see more NHPs come into the US next year-
... than we did in 2023.
I also think that we need to be agile enough to be ready for potentially Cambodia open again and/or China.
I think having been able to get to the different suppliers in Cambodia and in China and in Mauritius and in Vietnam and throughout the world, we've been able to create more opportunities and alternatives for ourselves if those events were to happen in the future. But in the meantime, I think we've found a way to reduce our dependency somewhat on Cambodia.
Got it. And how do we think about the potential impact on your business if, one, sort of Cambodia does reopen, or two, if China reopens at some point?
Well, I think that, we have relationships and all, and contracts with suppliers in all those places.
And if that is the opportunity to import from those facilities, then we will.... There's a limit to what we can bring into the country. There's a limit because of the quarantine and the space-
Yep.
and be able to at the border. But you know, I think that right now we've got a good supply coming in for the next couple quarters, and but if those things change, we're much better prepared to change with it now.
Got it. And what do you kind of see as the impact of that on, from like, a pricing dynamic? It's sort of hard to say probably in abstract, right? Is that the... But, like, we think about sort of China coming on board. We've heard sort of Chinese prices coming down a bit. Like, would that, how do we think about that potential impact?
I think on the world market, prices maybe have come down a little bit.
Yep.
I think again, we buy on the world market, and we sell in Europe, and we sell in the US. I think on the world market, we could see pricing start to come down some. What was the second part of your question, is China? Would China impact that?
It probably could, and the pricing and the margins could come down, and I think that's something that, you know, if that happens, then that's fine for our business also.
Got it. And how do we think about sort of the impact of NHPs on your revenues, currently, both from sort of like a, I don't know, like, a percentage of revenue basis and sort of a growth contribution basis?
Well, historically, I think in... If you look at our slide deck, I think we say large animals-
Yep
... which are mainly rabbits and NHPs for us-
were about 40% of our sales.
Yep.
I think that was the case in 2022, and probably the same case in 2023, even though we had a lot less volume, and the margins were from that RMS business in the 30s, I believe, high 20s, low 30s. So it's a significant part of our business. However, you know, what we did last year to really to probably reduce that reliance is that on our ... When we took, we've talked about taking those 11 facilities down, we took $20 million of cost out of what was really the small animal diet business, which is about $150 million.
So that $20 million of cost will come out, and that, those will enhance those margins. On the DSA business, I think we gave guidance. We were $160 million last year. I think we said we'd be $180 million range-
... this year's guidance, and we saw about 12%-13% growth. I think we'll see 12%-13% growth next year, and we're seeing over 50% contribution margin to the bottom line on the growth. So, you know, the way I looked at it, if we could take that $20 million of cost out, we're taking another $5 million-$10 million of cost out of the SG&A. We're taking the margins up on the DSA business, but through increasing sales, if we could pick up another $20 million there-
... we're really reducing our dependency on the NHP business. If the NHP business continues to maintain the strength that it has in the margins, that's great, but let's not... We really reduced our dependency on that.
Got it. No, that, that certainly makes sense. Maybe just sort of thinking through the animal demand situation maybe, and you could take sort of small and large animals separately. How do we think about the current macro environment? 'Cause I know one of the concerns is, hey, like, pharma funding seems a little bit weaker, like biotech seems it's better this year, but, you know, has been, you know, a little bit weaker than it's been in past years. You know, how do we think about that impact versus the sort of growth rates that you were just talking about?
How would biotech and—
Well, the, you know, obviously, double-digit revenue growth in those segments-
... is pretty impressive. So we're sort of thinking about, like, the spend and sort of fewer animals and things like that. Like, it sounds like you're getting some share gains or something else-
Yes, it-
- sort of driving that outsized market growth despite what's the macro weakness.
Yeah, I think in the NHP market, there are probably less NHPs in general used in the U.S. last year-
Yep
... than in prior years. And that's helped offset some of the reduction in the supply coming in the U.S. As far as the small animals, I think we see the service business and contract breeding-
... or not the contract, business increasing-
... the commodity small animal maybe decreasing.
Okay.
As far as the discovery business goes, and the biotech, I think if you're asking, what area did the biotech funding impact mostly? It was probably the discovery business for us.
Hmm, okay.
You know, I think in my third quarter call, I said that I thought discovery sales year-over-year would be down for us.
But I also indicated that in the midsummer, we started to see a reversal of that trend.
Now, we're a very small player in a very big market, so are we picking up market share?
Yeah.
And maybe some of that. We also, during the last 18 months, I think we saw some people shrink and some people go out of business.
Yeah.
Also, last March was when we hired our first discovery salesperson.
And we're developing-
Yep
... a discovery sales team now. So some of those things could all go in towards helping us seeing a recovery in the discovery sales market today. But, overall, I think that we still have the ability to see some quarter-over-quarter growth.
Got it. And you highlighted sort of continued good service growth. What's really driving that service growth versus some of the other sectors that you were just highlighting?
Our service growth?
Yeah.
I think when we originally acquired these companies, we were acquiring customers.
We were able to take those customers, the additional services that we had, and vice versa-
Yeah
... the services, the customers we had in these new services. Over time, if they've gotten to work with us, they use more services.
If we can provide a really good experience in a scientific, science-to-science sale, then we have a pretty good recurring customer base-
... that's coming with increasing amount of work. And, that model's worked well for us. Again, it's a multi-billion-dollar industry, and we've got a service business that's doing $180 million.
Right.
If we were multiple billions of dollars, we, we may be impacted, but we are mainly for our services, mainly the biotech. We're not doing a whole lot with large pharma. The other thing that's helped is we've added these new services, and some of the new services we're adding are just coming online over the last 12 months. As they get validated and we can grow that capacity, then we've been able to fill that capacity.
Some of that new service growth, it just sort of takes people a while to say, "Okay, you did a project already for somebody else. I'm not the guinea pig." Like, that's kind of how it works in terms of like building that up.
Sometimes.
Yeah.
You know, a little momentum helps in the marketplace.
Yeah.
When you first come in with a new service, you know, you don't have a big backlog, so you can offer speed.
where some people may have longer lead times.
Yeah.
But over time, you need to validate more assays and get their confidence and deliver.
Yeah.
You know, they'll give you one shot, but it has to be a great experience. So we need to make sure we continue to focus on the customer experience.
That makes sense. And that also, so you would say the market share gains that you're seeing in the industry are a combination of some of those new service rollout and maybe discovery, just sort of increasing focus on the sales efforts there.
Being able to control our destiny. Now we don't. You know, before we could take on these programs, but we had to outsource. We've reduced our outsourcing-
Okay
... which we can control our destiny and control the client experience a little bit better.
Yeah.
That's also helped us quite a bit.
Yeah.
But in, I've been pleased with our ability, ability to grow, and in spite of, you know, what is a, what is a down market. I think our, our book-to-bill, people ask me about that all the time. You know, yes, we see cancellations like everybody else.
Sure.
We see a book-to-bill, I think we are trailing at just a little under 1 or 1 to 1 or something like that. But what we have seen is, we're booking things out 2 years.
What I think all of us saw in the industry, you book something out two years, that customer doesn't know whether his molecules can be ready to go in two years. Now all of that's gonna unwind, and we're gonna come back to, you know... At one point, we were converting 35% of our backlog.
We then went back to, you know, at one point we were only converting 25% of our backlog. Now we're gonna go back to converting probably up to 30%-35%. So is, does a bigger backlog mean translate into more sales the following quarter? No, that conversion rate is, is really pretty important.
Yep. No, that, that makes sense. Speaking of sort of current demand trends, can you talk about sort of how you sort of think about the current demand environment in biotech in terms of sort of like RFP and bookings? Do you sort of, do we think about that as kind of like continuing to be stable in the broader environment or sort of, you know, any changes in terms of?
Bookings?
Yeah.
I think after a while, by what I just outlined, we're going to see that the cancellations are going to decrease 'cause we've not booked things out as far in advance.
Yeah.
I think that trend is probably already started, as I said before.
Yeah.
I believe that our quoting and sales activity has remained fairly strong.
But I don't think people are going to go out and be booking things out two years ahead of time.
Right.
They're going to continue to hold the POs now a little closer and not release it until they need to. So, I think that we may not, you know, I don't think we will see that backlog go up, but I think we will see the conversion rate go up. But I think we're seeing fairly strong activity. But again, I'm a $200 million player in a multi-billion dollar market.
Sure. If we think about the, you talked about some of the new services rollout. If we think about some of those new services, Genetic Toxicology, Biotherapeutics, NTP, that kind of thing, is that—what percentage of, like, your bookings is that now?
For the new services?
Yeah. Roughly.
Well, it changes quite a bit quarter by-
Sure
... quarter by quarter.
Yeah.
You know, it really wasn't that big in the prior 12 months because we were already doing those services, but we were outsourcing them.
Mm. Okay.
So we were already winning some of those quotes, but we couldn't do them internally.
Now, I think we're starting to see, we're starting to see, this quarter we'll start to see that increase a little bit more aggressively and a little quicker.
Okay, that makes sense. And then I think you also mentioned, just given your relative size in the long, large industry, how do you differentiate versus some of the larger competitors out there?
We have to focus really on the client service and the science-to-science sale-
Okay
... the sale to the scientist. A very high touch. The thing that we can compete on the best is what originally started us out in 2018 when I went to the conferences, and the perception was that larger companies would focus on large pharma.
They really wanted somebody who would focus on returning a phone call quickly and providing a high level of service.
for the biotech companies.
Yep.
That's really what we need to continue to focus on. That's what was driven us in 2018. That's really what drives a lot of our recruiting.
And that's what drives a lot of our, our customers.
That makes sense. And then maybe sort of NHPs aside, but sort of how has pricing trended this year? Now, we talk, you know, we've talked about, you know, periods of inflation and, and sort of coming down, but then just broader, you know, continued cost trends in terms of reagents and people, and things like that. How receptive have sort of sponsors been on the pricing side, and how do you think about that contribution in terms of the revenue growth this year?
I believe that. Well, you know, I guess it depends on which part. The pricing of the NHP has obviously increased-
Right, yeah
... significantly this year.
Yeah.
That industry increased the pricing of the studies.
Now, if you're asking, is it, was there pricing pressure due to supply and demand? Yes, probably more. Some people would... You know, the market's very aware of where the pricing is.
Okay.
We could at times, we may get a call from a customer saying, "Could you meet another price?
One of the other things, though, that worked well for us this year, we scaled our facilities so we could be... We had a lot more leverage in our model.
We've been able to compete if we need to on price.
Okay.
We've also been able to maintain and improve our margins at the same time.
When you talk about that facility scaling ability, like, what does that mean in practice?
Well, it means if we bought a company, theoretically it was doing $5 million or $6 million in sales, and it's a regulated business, they got a GLP infrastructure for quality.
And that business maybe was meeting the needs of the owner, the lifestyle of that owner.
And it had grown as far as it could. But if you could take that same fixed cost structure and have double or triple the size-
... and the equipment and the vivarium rooms or whatever, then you can leverage that fixed cost structure much greater.
So my belief, and it's just my own belief, is that a $5-$10 million business could make a 10% margin, but if you could get that same business to 30%-40%, we could make a 30%-40% margin.
Wow, okay.
And so that is why scale is so important in what we're doing, and looking at the size of our facilities, and shutting down those that can't get there, and building up those that can. And it's... I think that's standard across all of our business.
That makes sense. In terms of the capacity that you have now, how long does that sort of get you in terms of runway going forward?
With the RMS business, we obviously just closed more than half the facilities.
But I don't think we gave up a lot of capacity because the expansions that we put in place in the remaining facilities we have-
... and the efficiency we've been able to gain, and some of the services. In the DSA business, we invested in several of our facilities, and I think that, in 2022, we did, that business was $160. This year we gave guidance towards $180. The 12% or 15% growth would easily take us over $200.
Yep.
But I think we have... I think we could grow, probably the capacity to somewhere well over 250-300 now. So we have-
Okay
... We have the infrastructure in place. We may need some people-
Sure
... or some equipment, but we now have the infrastructure in place to grow that another 40%-50%. We've not had that before.
Nice. Okay, so that puts you in a good path, and then presumably, too, there's some margin uplift as those facilities, you get broader utilization, yeah.
Those incremental dollars that go to the bottom line are much greater than margins that we experience today.
Yep. No, that, that makes sense. And then when you were talking before about taking the $20 million of cost out of the small animals business, that's just exactly what you were just describing, the closing subscale facilities and sort of doing that. There's no... That, those are all-
Of the facilities we closed, the 11 we closed, 10 were small animal breeding facilities.
Okay. So that's-
We were able to close those and move that work into other existing facilities.
That's what we were trying to maintain the sales base and take that. That also gave us the ability to redo the transportation system-
... and the transportation cost.
Yeah.
And so those now we're working on it and, and continuing to enhance our transportation and delivery. And, so that also provides us an opportunity.
That makes sense. Okay, so if we take the way you're sort of just talking about, and then, your long-term EBITDA margins, I believe you said were sort of 18%-22% at your Investor Day. And I guess the consensus, at least on the consensus numbers, is sort of around 10% for this year. Presumably, a bunch of those costs or benefits start to flow through next year. But can you help us kind of put together what you just said and sort of the financial building blocks as we go from, say, like, 10% this year to that 18%-20%?
Yeah. Okay. Really good question, so I will do this off the top of my head.
Yeah.
If-
Well, we won't hold you to the-
Okay
... the 10th decimal.
If you were to go back and look at our last seven quarters-
Yep
... we have one quarter that was negative. It was the quarter we chose not to sell the NHPs. It's the quarter that we're in today.
Yeah.
It was 12 months ago, last week, or two weeks ago, when that started. That quarter was a negative quarter.
If you take out that negative quarter, our last 7 quarters, we've averaged $23 million of EBITDA a quarter.
Okay, so that would say, you know, that is already under, pretty close to being on a $90 million pace.
Yep. Okay.
All right? You take, you take $20 million of business out of that-
... and then we were doing $560 million of sales-
... on that pace. You take $20 million of cost out-
Yep
... and then you grow the DSA business by $40 million-
... with a 50% margin, off that-
Okay
... that's another $20 million.
Twenty.
So you-
Plus the 20 from the closure, so that's 40.
Right.
Yeah.
So that brings you up to $130 million.
Yep.
Okay? Then you assume that during that period, you're probably, now you're up to 600 doing $130, but you're gonna have to give wage increases and take care of some other things during the time, give back-
Okay.
You give back $10 million.
Okay.
That brings you back to $120 million-
Yep
-on the $600 million.
Yep.
Okay? So, I've had this question before, because I think in the last call I said, going forward, we may be closer to averaging 20 a quarter. I know we've been at 23.
And so you got all these costs coming out, and, and, and, I think, my answer was and has been, well, I think right now, well, since we are unsure of where the market's going to be for NHPs next year, let's just assume that we're gonna be really cautious, and until we understand where that market comes out.
Got it.
But it, you know, the important thing is that the market understands that, you know, I don't feel like I'm at risk of missing covenants and not at risk of running out of cash.
Yeah. No, we will... Yeah, we'll get that. So it sounds like that $20 million of cost savings is, you know, done, you're through it, like, that's irrespective of the demand environment, and then the DSA growth, we'll see what happens with the, with the price.
Yeah, I think the $20 million, that will be complete. There's one more piece to be complete by March next year, but-
But-
... yeah, we'll see, we'll start to see some of that.
Okay. So maybe just for people who are not as familiar with sort of the leverage or covenant situation, could you sort of just level set people with where we are now on those points? I know you're probably sick of talking about it, but, you know-
No, our secured, I think our senior secured debt is $270 million, off the top of my head, you may know better than I. And it was 4.25, was... And we've only a couple covenants, 4.25, it dropped to 3.75 at-
... September 30th.
I think it'll be 3.75 for the next year. We have not given our fourth quarter release.
That will be done on the 11th.
Yep.
So, I think the guidance, but we did give guidance, and our guidance, we indicated we did not think that we would have a problem with our covenants.
Okay, that, that makes sense. And then that should—we should think of that as, like, roughly the go-forward leverage rate, or you think that that should... I mean, or you're kind of gonna naturally de-lever as that EBITDA number grows, and that's kind of the better way to think about it?
Oh, I think as the EBITDA grows, we, we will look less levered.
Less, less levered.
... less levered.
Okay. So it's not-
I think that our covenant is based on debt net of cash.
You know, also, as our cash increases, then that would look less levered also.
Got it. Nope, that makes sense, too. As you pointed out, you've made a number of acquisitions in the last, you know, couple of years. How do we think about your growth going forward? Do you feel like you kind of have the base you need, and you're tired of, like, dealing with all this craziness? You kind of more of a focus on organic growth, are there certain areas where you're like, "No, we need this capability, and that's kind of easier to obtain inorganically"? How do we think about that mix of growth going forward?
Well, obviously, transactions and growth through acquisitions is in our DNA.
Yep.
We're very-
Yep
... aggressive in doing that. I think last year was a very healthy year for us to make sure, one, that we took advantage of some of the integration opportunities that we had.
And two, how do we create one culture and one company and a great client experience, so we don't look like we're 14 companies selling individually?
Right, yep.
You know, we had, you know, it's mentioned a couple times. Last year we had 220 software programs across these companies.
Wow!
You know, the goal was to get down to 120. How do we get everybody on the same platforms and communicating? So we had a lot we could do.
Yep.
We also think we went from that, you know, that $60 million business to a $600 million business pretty quickly, and getting the right people on the bus and the right people off the bus-
Yep
... was pretty important.
Yep.
It's a much different business. So I think it was a really valuable year. Now that we have done that, and not that we're done, but, you know, we're-
In a better spot.
... in a much, much better spot, with great momentum in getting to the end, and I can see, you know, I can see that we have a good team that's implementing. We have an awful lot of opportunities to look at accretive deals if we choose to do so.
Okay.
Because we have a strong customer base, we have a good supply base. There's a lot that we can bring to an opportunity if we chose to do so. Now, our balance sheet and our stock may not look like that's the time-
... for that right now, but you know, hopefully, you know, these pendulums will swing, and with that, you know, we may have opportunities again. If so, you know, but we'll, we will take what the market gives us, and if it doesn't wanna give us that, then we won't.
Got it. And if we think about that, is that really just, like, capacity expansion and scale in the verticals that you're in now, or is that kind of new and different areas than where you are presently? Some of both.
I think we would, we'll look at everything, but I think right now, what I like focusing, being better at who we are today.
Okay.
I think that is what our customer wants, and I think we need to, we need to continue to be very customer-driven and drive the business-build the business that our customer wants. And with that will help drive our success. That also helps, as I said before, drive our recruiting. But that could... You know, we'll continue to look at-we continue to be aware of what's going on in the market, and we'll continue to keep our eyes open and see where the opportunities take us.
Got it. You mentioned with your, "on the bus, off the bus" comment about sort of having the right team in place. Do you feel like you have the right team now going forward, or there's still some sort of strategic hires that you need to make on that front?
... No, I think today, I really like the team. It takes a while for everybody to understand their position and how to work together.
We're now a ways into that. We've had some changes through the course of the year, but we get stronger every day. As I said several times in other calls, we're a heck of a lot better than we were six months ago.
Yeah
but not near as good as we're gonna be six months from now.
Got it. No, that makes sense. And I think one of the other interesting thing is, despite all this sort of the, some of the shutdowns, despite all the market noise, and then you kind of continued to kind of invest in the core business over this whole time, too, which should also kind of put you in a better spot as we come out of it as well, right?
I think we wanna come out of this with wind in our sails and be ready to, and be ready to go. We had, I've said this before, we had a big decision to make a year ago. You know, a lot of people say, "You can't be spending all this money on expansions and shutdowns, 'cause you don't know what's gonna be at the NHPs. You need to just save your money." And it's, "No, no, we need to, we need to continue to integrate aggressively-
... and get to those next level of margins that we need to get to. And we can manage our way through the, through the cash just, just fine." And I think now, you know, in retrospect, I'm really glad that we did that. That wasn't an easy decision, but because, you know, there were a lot of... There was some push by saying, "You know, we need to just conserve cash.
Sure.
I think we've improved our liquidity position and, you know, as I said before, over the course of the year, so I think that we've managed our way through that very well. We've got through these changes. But many of these businesses we bought, and the public companies I've looked at in the past that, or that I've had to take over, as I've done turnarounds for 30 years, one of the things that accelerates their death spiral is when they start making short-term decisions.
Or if they make decisions to make a quarter.
I've always found that the people internally, as soon as you start making those decisions, those short-term decisions, and you make decisions on a short-term quarter, you don't hire the right talent, or you don't do something, or you don't explain it, why you're doing the decision you're making to the people, that then you start losing people.
Yeah.
I think we have to start making sure that we're making the right long-term decisions. I'm a five-year-old business, I don't get to make short-term decisions if you really want to build a business.
Yeah.
I think we made some very good long-term decisions that I think will pay dividends for us, significantly in the next couple of years.
Got it. And then just maybe turning to calendar 2024, how do we think about sort of the major headwinds and tailwinds, or if you'd prefer to answer it in terms of your next fiscal year, either way?
Major headwinds and tailwinds?
Yeah.
I think the unknowns is, again, what's gonna happen with the NHP business-
Yeah
... which we'll have to maintain our agility, and we're much better positioned today to address that than before.
I think that, and we have to be ready for any of the above, any of the above. I don't feel like we have to make the capital investments that we did before. We're still gonna be aggressive. A lot of our investments this year will be in animal welfare and in quality and efficiency-
... not as much in brick-and-mortar. I think those are, those are important infrastructure moves to make for us. You know, I like, I kind of, it may sound odd in the mix where it is, but I like the momentum that we have at the moment.
I think we've got good focus internally. I think people are very proud of what they've come through last year. I'm really looking forward to the next year. But I do think, you know, yeah, we're gonna get... We could get some surprises thrown at us, from several fronts. You know, we always do from our recruiting, to lose key people would be an issue, and responding to the NHP market.
Yep. No, that, that certainly makes sense. Maybe one last one from me. If we think about, like, what the- what's most misunderstood about Inotiv at this point by investors?
Well, just-
Or if there are several things, feel free to highlight-
No, I, I think the investors that, their concerns were valid, very valid, a year ago through the year. They were... I believe that the feedback I get, they're worried about our, our debt, they're worried about, our, our covenants-
... they're worried about our cash and our, our ability to manage multiple projects all at once.
And while, you know, the so-called biotech funding is down, they see risk in all those things.
Yeah
... and risk, and risk is concerning. I think some of the things that we've referred to in our risk section related to the NHPs or the DOJ. I think some of those things concern people, and they see those things as risk. You know, I think these things are all part of building a business, and buying some assets that had some issues and some negative momentum possibly with them. I think the key is those are also opportunities that we've got to fix and address-
Yep
... and change the culture. And I think that how rapidly this management team is capable of making those changes and pivoting, and making those decisions to get through that may be underestimated. And over the next two years, maybe that'll become more clear.
Yep. No, that makes sense. Well, thank you, Bob. This has been a pleasure. Thanks for the time today.
Thank you, Elizabeth.
Yeah, look forward to catching up again soon.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
Thank you. And then the real challenge, getting off the stage ... without tripping on the 19 things that are down here.
Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. Yeah. No, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Somebody, uh-
Yeah
... probably said more than an attorney will probably say, "You know, you can't say what you said.
Nice.
Yeah. That's-
But maybe, yeah, maybe I'll see you-