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Charles River Laboratories International, Inc. (CRL)

Q3 2011 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 2, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Charles River Laboratories’ third quarter 2011 earnings conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen-only mode. And, later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to our host, Ms. Susan Hardy, Corporate Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Susan Hardy

Management

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to Charles River Laboratories' third quarter 2011 earnings conference call and webcast. This morning, Jim Foster, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tom Ackerman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer will comment on our third quarter results and review guidance for 2011. Following the presentation we will respond to questions. There is a slide presentation associated with today's remarks which is posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.criver.com. A taped replay of this call will be available beginning at noon today and can be accessed by calling 800-475-6701. The international access number is 320-365-3844. The access code in either case is 219596. The replay will be available through November 16th. You may also access an archived version of the webcast on our Investor Relations website. I’d like to remind you of our Safe Harbor. Any remarks that we may make about future expectations, plans and prospects for the company constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the Safe Harbor Provisions under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by any forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors, including but not limited to those discussed in our annual report on Form 10-K, which was filed on February 23rd, 2011, as well as other filings we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During this call we will be primarily discussing results from continuing operations and non-GAAP financial measures. We believe that these non-GAAP financial measures help investors to gain a meaningful understanding of our core operating results and future prospects, consistent with the manner in which management measures and forecasts the company's performance. The non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be considered superior to or a substitute for results of operations prepared in accordance with GAAP. In accordance with Regulation G, you can find the comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations to those GAAP measures on the Investor Relations section of our website through the financial reconciliations link. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Jim Foster.

Jim Foster

Management

Good morning. I’d like to begin by providing a summary of our third quarter results and commentary on our business prospects. We reported sales of $277.6 million in the third quarter of 2011, an increase of 2.5% from the same period in 2010. Foreign exchange represented a 3.7% benefit. On a constant dollar basis, the RMS business performed well with sales gaining 3.1% year-over-year, and sales for the preclinical services segment declined 7.3% from the same period a year-ago. I’ll speak more about the relative segment performance shortly, but we view these results as evidence of the continuing evolution in large pharmaceutical companies to drug development models that I’ve spoken about before, which increasingly emphasize short-term studies aimed at washing out nonviable molecules earlier and taking a more limited number through the regulated safety assessment process. We believe this thesis is confirmed by the fact that this week, we were awarded a significant expansion of an existing preferred provider agreement with the leading global pharma company. Under the expanded agreement, Charles River is the client’s primary in vivo biological partner, providing non-GLT pharmacology for multiple therapeutic areas, drug metabolism and pharmacokinetics or DMPK services, and GLP safety assessment. Under the original agreement, we were the client’s primary provider for GLP safety assessment and also provide a DMPK services. We were able to demonstrate to this client that we could offer a flexible service model which supports their goal of more efficient and cost effective drug development. We believe this value proposition will resonate with other large bio pharmaceutical clients, particularly as they increasingly choose to outsource as a viable alternative to more costly in-house infrastructure. The operating margin declined 10 basis points from the third quarter of 2010 and 300 basis points sequentially to 16.2%. The sequential RMS margin decline…

Tom Ackerman

Management

Thank you, Jim, and good morning. Before I recap our financial performance, let me remind you that I’ll be speaking primarily to non-GAAP results from continuing operations. A reconciliation of non-GAAP items can be found in our press release and on our website. Our third quarter performance was a balance of the favorable performance in our RMS business, with lower PCS results. The strong RMS sales growth of 7.7% or a 3.1% constant dollar increase, the highest RMS growth rate this year reflects the segment services focus in early in vivo biology in addition to continued strength in other products. The 4.9% decline in PCS sales reflects continued soft demand for GLP safety assessment services. The third quarter operating margin declined 10 basis points year-over-year to 16.2% as it dropped through over the PCS sales decline offset both the benefit from last year’s cost savings actions and the improvement in RMS. Stock repurchases offset this operating performance driving robust EPS growth of 23.9% in the third quarter, the fourth consecutive quarter of year-over-year EPS growth above 20%. On a sequential basis, the anticipated seasonal decline in RMS sales and operating margin was amplified by softer PCS results. The cumulative impact of these factors result in an 300-basis point decline in the consolidated operating margin and a 19% of EPS decline. Because of the high fixed cost nature of our business, a significant portion of the $4 million sequential decline in PCS sales drop through to operating income. To right size our infrastructure to match anticipated future demand, we are implementing a cost savings action in the fourth quarter to reduce our global headcount by approximately 2% predominantly in the PCS segment. While we expect the expanded in vivo biology partnership to enhance utilization at both RMS and PCS facilities, we…

Susan Hardy

Management

That concludes our comments. Operator, would you please take questions now.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from the line of Tycho Peterson with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Tycho Peterson – JPMorgan: Hi, good morning. Maybe first question for Jim on the large strategic partnership you highlighted with pharma. Since you’ve been a little bit later than maybe your peers to embrace the strategic deals, and obviously this doesn’t involve a facility transfer, but can you talk about the margin profile from this type of deal for you? And is any part of this agreement exclusive? And maybe if you can also comment on your bandwidth to take on other similar strategic deals; I know you talked about exploring other opportunities.

Jim Foster

Management

Sure. The work that has been outsourced to us we believe is exclusive. So they’ve selected us also as their principal in vivo partner across a whole host of therapeutic area. This is work that historically was done internally by this large client to sort of sea change for them to outsource this work, it allows them to rationalize their own infrastructure and utilize ours. We feel that we have sufficient capacity both in terms of people and space to accommodate for this work and we suspect we would have people and space to continue to not only crank this one up but take on additional clients, although to some extent depending on the size and the scale of the deal, additional direct labor could be required, but I don’t think – I think we have sufficient senior scientific staff. Now, this is a deal that gives the client enormous flexibility to use our space instead of owning the assets themselves. And as we said in the call, I think it’s a very, very important template for other deals to come. We have – we’ve never had a negative view of these deals. We’ve been skeptical about doing deals, where we had to take on large amounts of capacity from a client, particularly since we have an abundance of capacity in a preclinical space. But certainly long-term large strategic deals with our large clients is exactly what we’re looking for, because strategic relationships are critical. Our anticipated margin is that they will be sort of competitive and acceptable where we see the preclinical margins going. It depends obviously on capacity utilization, how quickly they scale up and how big this actually gets. We have an anticipated size which we’ve tried to sized you in our comments. We actually think there is upside to that both within these specific therapeutic areas, but also other works that we’re doing with them. So the power in this is the collective partnership and they’re working closely together. Tycho Peterson – JPMorgan: Okay. And then my follow-up is just on pricing dynamics in the market. As you mentioned, obviously there is still a bias towards short-term contracts. Has the pricing dynamic remained rational or is it fairly stable? And, I guess, what gives you confidence that it doesn’t drop-off for RMS? I didn’t quite get the dynamic you talked about capacity utilization being relatively low, therefore RMS pricing would hold up. I didn’t quite get that.

Jim Foster

Management

Yes. So in the preclinical business, I mean we feel that pricing has stabilized substantially, except for periodic it’s very aggressive pricing. Actually more of the smaller players, we certainly try not responding kind, and our price flexibility has gone closely linked to volume and we like to keep it that way. So we certainly think we can continue to be sort of cost and price effective, particularly as the – if the volume increases. And we’re certainly seeing a shift to more short-term studies on the regulated work. But as we’ve tried to really carve out clearly in this call, we’re seeing a significant increase in demand by clients who wanted to work earlier on to call down their portfolios, we size this market opportunity at more than a couple of billion dollars, and we pointed out the fact that it is essentially done internally by the drug companies. And so this big deal that we announced is I think a leading indicator of other deals like this to come as the drug industry is sort of sort out what drugs they really want to drive all the way through safety assessment. What was your RMS question? Sorry. Tycho Peterson – JPMorgan: Well, just to your comments on seasonality for RMS. And, I mean, I think you’re implying that it will remain fairly stable. And, I guess, what gives you that confidence?

Jim Foster

Management

I guess, years of history, conversations with clients, their feedback about future purchases – we continue to see obviously some slowness in upper RADS sales, corresponding significant increase in service revenue. Service revenue has very significant operating margins and so we are not seeing any margin drain as a result of that. We also feel that we’ll continue to get price in our core animal business, which should offset any slowdown. So we think there is a high degree of predictability in that business model going forward. Tycho Peterson – JPMorgan: Okay.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ricky Goldwasser with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Ricky Goldwasser – Morgan Stanley: Good morning, thank you. A couple of questions; first of all on your margin expectations for the future. Obviously margins for PCS were quite slow this quarter. Given the industry dynamics and the fact that we are seeing more preferred provider agreements they do come at a lower price tag, should structurally margins in the future stable is more kind of like the low double-digit range?

Tom Ackerman

Management

Ricky, it was a little bit hard to hear parts of your question. You did comment on some of the different pressures that we’re seeing. Did you conclude by saying, is low double digits realistically where we should be? Is that? Ricky Goldwasser – Morgan Stanley: Yes.

Tom Ackerman

Management

Yes. Well, I wouldn’t comment too precisely on that. What I would say is that, while the things that we have talked about with fairly experienced pressures on the margin, notwithstanding a lot of the cost actions that we’ve taken and continue to take. So we did talk about some actions that we were implementing as we speak with headcount, which is predominantly in the PCS would obviously provide some relief to margins. So what I would say is that we’re working hard to improve our margin. Pricing is more stable at this particular point in time, so I don’t see that as a meaningful issue today, unless that were to change and looking at where we had been during 2011, it’s really been the movement in volume and change in mix that’s affected the margin principally. So we’re doing a lot of things to improve it. I don’t want to characterize too much where we think we can get it to at this early point. We will talk more about that in December. So hopefully, you can kind of hold-off a little bit until we get to that point. Ricky Goldwasser – Morgan Stanley: Okay. And then as far as your customer composition, what percent of your book today is biotech plus kind of at the midsized pharma that are more impacted by the financing environment versus large pharma in academic centers?

Jim Foster

Management

It’s been a while since we broke it out that way, Ricky. Obviously, the fast preponderance of our clients is big pharma. And over the last time we did, it was probably 55%-ish, academics is another 22%, so the balance is sort of mid – what we call our mid-tier clients. We continue to feel that mid-tier is principally financed by pharma. And while beleaguered somewhat this quarter by the slowness in money flowing into the segment by the capital markets, we do think that over time the sort of difference between large pharma and biotech is pretty much blurs. It ought to be the same pool of capital dragged in those businesses. So while there seems to be more stability with our larger clients recently, I think long term is likely we’ll see stability across that whole segment. Ricky Goldwasser – Morgan Stanley: Okay. And then –

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Douglas Tsao with Barclays Capital. Please go ahead. Douglas Tsao – Barclays Capital : All right, thanks, good morning. Just given the cost reduction actions that you’re taking in the PCS business and the persistence of softness, I was just curious have you considered additional facility closures or rationalization of the footprint?

Jim Foster

Management

Yes, we’ve certainly considered it. We constantly look at our infrastructure to make sure it’s appropriate in line with demand that we’re seeing globally and given the geographic footprint of our client, we like the size and scope and diversity and geographic dispersion of our footprint right now and also the specialty capabilities that we have in several locales. And so we think this is a very good footprint to service the markets on a forward going basis. So while it’s something that we look at it periodically, we’re happy with the footprint that we have now.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Once again, we ask you to limit your questions to one. Our next question comes from the line of Dave Windley with Jefferies & Company. Please go ahead. Dave Windley – Jefferies & Company: Okay. I wondered Jim, if you could talk about the cycle time on this broader strategic deal that you talked about, how long did the discussions go on? How many discussions subsequent to that are you engaging in with other clients? And then if you could give us a sense of the profile of the late discovery work in vivo pharmacology DMPK in terms of revenue value, what’s the average ticket there, and what does the margins of that business look like relative to more traditional safety testing? That would be great. Thanks.

Jim Foster

Management

This is a very client that we have a strong relationship with. I would say that our relationship has been building and our interfaces have been with increasingly more senior people. Over the last three years I would say that the specific work that we’ve reported on today that was recently signed, that conversation and negotiations has been probably going on in earnest to sort of six to 12 months. It was a competitive process and one that we feel very good about. And we certainly think that their signals just given the size and scale and the financial strength of this company, the signals that other deals should follow. We have several conversations going on right now, albeit earlier. But clients who are opened to discussing this, who are thinking about it, and since this deal was recently signed and we really haven’t had the opportunity to discuss with other clients even though we’re not going to name this specific client, I do think that that will generate additional business and actually speed up the process. So we know there is a lot of work, we know it’s historically been done internally. We watched with our discussions with this client how they got comfortable outsourcing at across multiple therapeutic areas, how we’re going to work together in sharing protocols and enhancing protocols and driving efficiency and the movements from the work done internally at the client’s site to multiple Charles River sites and with the IT interface, it’s going to be et cetera, et cetera. So this is going to be a great one to sort of use as a model. So we think there is considerably more work. The work is shorter term, lower priced, and long-term studies, but it still should be a good margin. We haven’t – we’re not going to give a lot of detail on the margin or the pricing except to say that as with all clients, we were flexible with our pricing given the substantial volume that we have here and we continue to be. And, we’re quite confident that we will be able to drive efficiency through this work stream. We’ve been doing DMPK with this client now for probably a year and a half or two years, and that operation has got increasingly more efficient as we work closer together, and, frankly, as the volumes have increased. And we’re confident that we’ll be able to do the same thing here. So some of the slowness in shortfall we’re seeing in the regulated safety assessment phase, we obviously offset and picked out by this shorter-term earlier work, and there ought to be – even though these studies are shorter in duration, there is probably a lot more of them just in terms of specific space themselves, we’ve got to see a better balance now between early stage and the later stage regulated work. Dave Windley – Jefferies & Company: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of John Kreger – William Blair. Please go ahead. John Kreger – William Blair : Hi, thanks very much. Jim you commented back I think on slide 16 about some lower pricing dynamics within RMS for your preferred client relationships. I don’t recall that coming up before. Can you just talk about that? Is that a new dynamic that you’re seeing? What sort of magnitude discounts are you giving? And what percentage of your RMS business would you say these type of arrangements apply to?

Jim Foster

Management

Yes. So I think we probably have discussed it earlier, but if we haven’t, it’s just simply the notion is what I was referring to earlier. So just to be clear about, the notion that as we have larger longer-term relationships with clients and the volume increases under those contracts, they will invariably get the benefit of better prices from us, and that’s our strategy forever. And we try really only to be price flexible in situations where we have substantially more volume. So I suspect it will come to play in many of these large agreements. We think that the volume is very, very important particularly in the preclinical business as we fill out space, but also in RMS as well. It’s incumbent upon us to hold and hopefully improve margins over time to driving efficiency which we believe that we can with most of these situations particularly as the volume increases. And I think we’ll probably not going to give any greater specificity than that. John Kreger – William Blair : Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Garen Sarafian with Citigroup. Please go ahead. Garen Sarafian – Citigroup: Good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I wonder just to ask for some more details around what you see in the market. You mentioned some softer demand from your smaller end of the client base which you’re actually seeing the softer demand whereas one of your peers recently mentioned that they’re anticipate softer demand due to lack of funding. So if you could just discuss the timing in which when you started seeing the lack in funding of your clients versus the lag to when you actually saw the decline demand. And also on the larger, I believe last quarter you mentioned that you were seeing some softness from your larger pharmaceutical – biopharmaceutical clients, so if you could update us on that as well. Thank you very much.

Jim Foster

Management

I guess on the large pharma clients, we would characterize demand right now as much more favorable. And, obviously, signing this new large contract is quite positive. As we look at our client base, not only would the revenue of that particular deal will generate, but the potential for others as well. We’ve talked from many quarters, there is a lot of work locked up inside of our clients that that we believe will be outsourced, whether it’s classic regulated safety assessment work or some of its early drug efficacy work. So pharma as a general probably seems more stable, although there is variability amongst the players in the large pharma universe. In terms of the smaller players, as I said earlier, we have done pretty well with them. We haven’t seen much volatility, A, because we do work with virtually all of them, and B, so much money has come directly from the big pharmaceutical companies to use them as they are discovery tools. So I don’t know, I would say that we’ve only seen the softness sort of maybe a month before the beginning of the third quarter and through the third quarter, and this has been a relatively recent phenomenon tied to access to funding in the capital markets. It’s probably something that we’ll ameliorate with time, particularly as direct funding continues to be strong by the large drug companies.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Todd Van Fleet with First Analysis. Please go ahead. Todd Van Fleet – First Analysis: Hi, good morning, guys. A two-part question if I could. First, if the current environments persist in PCS for a sustained period of time, that is with respect to the funding for certain clients, the mix between GLP and non-GLP, how long is it do you think – how long is it before you think we could once again see organic revenue growth within the PCS segment? And then, secondly, Jim, I’d be interested in any more qualitative comments you might have surrounding that phenomenon of there being less safety related toxicology work, more non-GLP types of activities. What is it that’s driving the decision-making on the part of your large pharma companies to kind of shift their activities in that way? We understand they’re being quick to kill and that sort of thing and being efficient, but is there – are there any other aspects of the kind of the broader macro environment that are causing – that’s causing large pharma customers in particular to behave that way?

Jim Foster

Management

The pressure is on their – P&Ls are causing the shift. As the drugs are rolling out patent, there are insufficient numbers of drug to fill that gap, I think everybody anticipates. There is obviously concerted pressure on all of these companies to reduce their infrastructure and they’re looking at things that they’ve never done before. But our conversations with all of them are about how we all should do what we do best. And so we’re an in vivo biology company and we have a very large footprint in all of these animal related activities in both regulated and non-regulated tox studies. And the knowledge if they can get the work done as well, I’d like to that. But certainly as well at and as quickly at favorable price points to not have to own the people and the space is becoming very intriguing and energizing to them. And I think we’re going to see this accelerate, A, because I do think this deal that we’ve announced is sort of a seminal deal and is going to get a lot of attention from the other drug companies. And also, they’re all looking at similar pressures on their internal cost structures. And so I think it’s important as we all look at the – what we’ve called toxicology of preclinical services, you have to parse it differently. So there is safety assessment, which are regulated studies and then there were non-regulated studies which entails principally DMPK and in vivo pharmacology and a few other thing. And there is going to be a greater – there was – there is becoming a greater shift in that available work for us. A trivial amount of the non-GLT stuff is currently outsourced and so we believe a lot more of it will come outside. We believe that the value proposition will be similar or perhaps better depending on the volume. And it really allows us to have a much more strategic relationship. So I do think that one needs to look at the preclinical universe differently than we have been historically. We and I think our shareholders in particular have only been talking about the build in regulated studies. And it’s clear that clients are being much more value to the critical earlier on, and while that has an adverse impact on the scale of the safety studies later on has a beneficial impact of the volume of business [inaudible] into process. And our goal will be to stay focused on principally large pharma and large biotech to try to get the lion share of this business as they outsource it. Todd Van Fleet – First Analysis: Thanks. And then the second part regarding the timeframe to return to organic growth?

Jim Foster

Management

That’s a – it’s a certainly more difficult question to answer. Certainly, we should see greater stabilization of balancing in the value proposition than we’ve seen for the last two or three years. We’ve actually had a decline in the revenue base. And I would like to think that the mix is shifting to the point where we ought to see some increases going forward. I would be reluctant particularly since we’re not away from our guidance call in being anymore specific than that. Todd Van Fleet – First Analysis: Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ross Muken with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Ross Muken – Deutsche Bank: Can you just talk quickly about your sort of comfort with your leverage levels just in the context of that? You noted you will pay down a bit in Q4 and you continue to buyback stock just given the end market environment from an uncertainty perspective and given just some of the recent data points we’ve seen in leveraged markets where we’ve seen spreads come out a bit –

Tom Ackerman

Management

Ross, I missed the last part of your question. So I’ll try to answer it as best as I could based on what I heard before that. We’re clearly comfortable with our leverage as it is today. I do think we would be comfortable with a somewhat higher leverage. But in our view we have a split investment grade rating, we are an investment grade rated by Standard & Poor’s and a notch or two below that for Moody’s, and we do like that split rating. So in order for us to keep that, we have to maintain appropriate leverage probably slightly below where we are today, so we’re actually working toward that. And as I mentioned, our capital deployment would be in stock purchases, debt pay down and smaller acquisitions, so I think the balancing between the three of them will be what we do on the M&A front, and that will sort of dictate our flexibility on both debt and share repurchases. But in the near term, as I said, I would anticipate we would continue to buy moderate levels of stock, and we’d probably continue to pay down some debt, and that will be a little bit dependent on whether or not there is any M&A activity in the near term. So hopefully that answers the rest of your question. If not, we can always follow-up later. Ross Muken – Deutsche Bank: No, that’s perfect.

Tom Ackerman

Management

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions). We want to remind you that you try to limit your questions to one. Our next question comes from the line of Robert Jones with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Riddell Walker – Goldman Sachs: Hi, this is Riddell Walker [ph] in for Robert today. Just really quickly on the first part. Just in terms of the $7.5 million in headcount reduction cost, where should we think about that primarily coming from in PCS, is it the COGS or the SG&A portion?

Tom Ackerman

Management

Principally in the cost areas – COGS. Riddell Walker – Goldman Sachs: Okay, perfect. And you kind of touched on this earlier, but just really trying to get a better sense of how should we think about the margin ramp in PCS, understanding you may want to wait to the 14th to delve more deeply into it. But just looking at least qualitatively, just how you think about getting back to that normal range on the margins in that segment. Thanks.

Tom Ackerman

Management

Well, I think some of the factors that are important as I said little bit earlier is pricing. We do think pricing has stabilized, so I don’t see in the nearer term pricing adding instability either in the downside or unfortunately on the upsides. So I think we’ve been in a stable mode for a while. So it’s a little bit above volume. Jim talked about some of the difficulties in the regulated GLP safety assessment work that we have been seeing. And – but on the bright side we have been getting more inquiries and actually have been seeing more work on the non-GLP side referencing our recent partnership and other activity that we’ve actually had with other clients currently and discussions that we’re having with larger clients more prospectively. So we do get that as a little bit of a shift and hopefully we can accelerate that beyond what we’ve seen in GLP safety assessment. While the GLP safety assessment outlook hasn’t been great recently, we do think ultimately there will be more activity on that as companies refocus their energies away from late-stage clinical trials and get more molecules notwithstanding the fact that the paradigm has probably changed from what it was a couple of three years ago. We do think that ultimately that market will get a little bit better in the GLP area, we just don’t see it in the very near term, so we’re looking at more work on some of the partnerships that we talked about. And so if we can continue to push the volume there in conjunction with efficiencies and actions that we’re taking, we – hopefully we can continue to improve the margin, but it’s difficult at this time to, A, set an expectation for 2012 and probably even give you a realistic target of where we think we can be in a couple of years as an example. So hopefully that helps. Riddell Walker – Goldman Sachs: Okay. Thanks for the question.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tim Evans with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead. Tim Evans – Wells Fargo: Hi, thanks. I’d like to get an update on how expected cost savings this year have played out? I think you were expecting something like $40 million in cost savings in 2011 after the 2010 charges in the fourth quarter of last year. It looks like total cost in 2011 are going to be about $10 million lower rather than $40 million, and I imagine the difference there probably comes in the relative segment performance. But I just like to understand that better. And, I guess, the main question is how do we have confidence that will see the benefit of the cost savings announced today in 2012? Thanks.

Tom Ackerman

Management

It’s a good question, but unfortunately it’s also very complicated. I do think we’re making good progress at our cost reductions. We do have some businesses that are growing, so we’re actually spending some money in businesses that are growing as you would expect us to do that I think you might have alluded to that. We also had some increases outside of the cost reductions in terms of merit increases in 2011, some level of incremental bonuses, although they will be lower than we expected at the beginning of the year. So we continue to make cost reductions and I think we’re doing well against our target. It’s being masked a little bit by the erosion in some cases in the PCS volume where we’re cutting cost but at the same time sales is eroding and therefore it appears that we’re not making inroads against cost certainly from a margin perspective. As I said, we did provide merit increases earlier in the year and some level of increase in bonuses. So I think a lot of the cost savings that we’re making are being masked, but I do think that we’re actually making good progress against our stated goals, and we’ll continue to do that.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our last question comes from the line of James Kumpel with BB&T Capital Markets. Please go ahead. James Kumpel – BB&T Capital Markets: Thank you very much. Good morning. Can you characterize as you did in the year-ago your sense of capacity utilization on the toxicology side? And would you characterize PCS operating margins today at trough levels or do you see potentially more deterioration?

Jim Foster

Management

I think we can both answer this. I think capacity utilization is improving slowly. We have some locations where capacity utilization is actually quite good. We have others where it’s not as good as we’d like it to be. Little difficult to tell what the industry is doing, because a lot of our competitors are private. And, of course, the big issue is what are the clients doing in terms of reducing or taking their space out of operation. I think that has the biggest discernible impact. We certainly would like to believe that the merits that we’re seeing now are certainly at a trough. And we think that on a going forward basis, particularly if this early business continues to pickup as we anticipate, we should get some beneficial margin.

Tom Ackerman

Management

Yes, I would essentially echo what Jim said. We did talk a little bit about the fourth quarter in terms of volume in preclinical sequentially. I think at this particular volume level, I would say the margins are pretty much troughed. There could be a little durability depending on mix and things like that, but I would characterize that in a small range of variance as opposed to a wide. So hopefully, we’ll see volume pickup, and we can leverage the margins. But I think based on where we are for volume and unfortunately Q3 was lower than we thought it might be at the beginning of the year, that’s really what’s put pressure on the margins. And 2011 has really been the change in volume and to probably a lesser extent, the change in study mix. James Kumpel – BB&T Capital Markets: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

We have no further questions in queue. Please continue.