The call in brief

Read the Q3 2025 earnings summary ↗

Charles River reported third quarter 2025 revenue of $1 billion (down 1.6% organically), which modestly exceeded the August outlook and allowed the company to narrow guidance with EPS now at the upper end at $10.10-$10.30. Management detailed strategic review outcomes including planned divestitures of ~7% of revenue, a new $1 billion repurchase authorization, and ~$70 million of incremental cost savings. Demand signals strengthened with rising proposals, declining cancellations, and improving monthly book-to-bill supported by a recovering biotech funding environment, though management remained cautious about projecting 2026 DSA growth.

What went well
  • Charles River reported third quarter 2025 revenue of $1 billion, which slightly outperformed the outlook provided in August and led to modest overall outperformance.
  • Non-GAAP earnings per share and revenue modestly exceeded the August outlook, prompting the company to narrow guidance with EPS now expected at the upper end of the prior range at $10.10-$10.30.
  • The company announced strategic review outcomes including a new $1 billion stock repurchase authorization and planned divestitures of underperforming or non-core businesses representing approximately 7% of estimated 2025 revenue, expected to add at least $0.30 of annualized EPS accretion.
  • Management identified approximately $70 million of incremental net annual cost savings on top of $225 million of cumulative annualized savings, for about $100 million of incremental savings in 2026.
  • Free cash flow for the quarter was $178.2 million and the full-year free cash flow outlook was raised to $470 million-$500 million from $430 million-$470 million, while net leverage improved to 2.1 times.
  • DSA proposal activity improved during the quarter, biotech funding showed increasing signs of improvement (October was the second-highest biotech funding month in history), and monthly book-to-bill improved over the prior three to four months.
What went wrong
  • Revenue declined 0.5% year-over-year reported and 1.6% on an organic basis, with declines in both the DSA and manufacturing segments.
  • Revenue for small and mid-sized biotech clients declined, reflecting tighter budgets driven by the softer biotech funding environment in late 2024 and early 2025.
  • DSA net book-to-bill remained in the low 0.8 range for a second consecutive quarter, with a persistent gross and net bookings issue among mid-tier biotech clients.
  • The non-GAAP tax rate rose 700 basis points year-over-year to 28.3%, reflecting the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and global minimum tax provisions.
  • Free cash flow of $178.2 million decreased from a record $213.1 million in the same period last year, driven primarily by lower earnings.

Management Commentary

Read the Q3 2025 summary ↗
Todd Spencer
VP of Investor Relations, Charles River Laboratories

Good morning, and welcome to Charles River Laboratories third quarter 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. This morning, I am joined by Jim Foster, Chair, President, and Chief Executive Officer, and Mike Knell, Senior Vice President, Interim Chief Financial Officer, and Chief Accounting Officer. They will comment on our third quarter results for 2025. Following the presentation, they will respond to questions. There is a slide presentation associated with today's remarks, which will be posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at ir.criver.com. A webcast replay of this call will be available beginning approximately two hours after the call today and can also be accessed on our Investor Relations website. The replay will be available through next quarter's conference call. I'd like to remind you of our safe harbor.

All remarks that we make about future expectations, plans, and prospects for the company constitute forward-looking statements under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated. During the call, we will primarily discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which we believe help investors gain a meaningful understanding of our core operating results and guidance. The non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be considered superior to or a substitute for the results of operations prepared in accordance with GAAP. In accordance with Regulation G, you can find the comparable GAAP measures and reconciliations on the Investor Relations section of our website. I will now turn the call over to Jim Foster.

Jim Foster
Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories

Thank you, Todd, and good morning. Before I comment on our third quarter results, I'd like to discuss our strategic review. As you know from today's press release, we provided an update on our comprehensive strategic review. The board strongly supports the company's strategic direction and believes we should continue to focus on strengthening our leading scientific portfolio within our core markets, divesting underperforming or non-core assets, maximizing our financial performance, and maintaining a disciplined approach to capital deployment. I would like to thank our board for the progress that it has made on such a thorough and collaborative review process, which has and will continue to evaluate a wide range of value creation options to help ensure the best strategic path forward for the company. As we move forward to support our strategy, we will focus on several strategic actions to help drive long-term shareholder value creation.

The first action is continuing to strengthen our portfolio by investing in core growth initiatives, including through M&A, partnerships, and internal development efforts. We have built a scientifically differentiated portfolio, which enables us to take advantage of the unique opportunities that are present across the evolving biopharmaceutical landscape. Our focus on science and innovative solutions designed to enhance the efficiency and speed to market of our clients' lifesaving therapeutic programs has positioned us extremely well to continue to adapt and lead the industry through advances in drug development, such as NAMs or new approach methodologies. We have identified areas of future growth, all of which are well within our core competencies, including opportunities across our three business segments. Specifically, we will evaluate opportunities to enhance our scientific capabilities in the areas of bioanalysis, in vitro services, and NAMs, as well as to continue to evaluate our geographic presence.

The second action, to refine our portfolio, addresses our ongoing efforts to streamline operations and maximize our financial performance. As part of our portfolio review over the past several months, we have evaluated the strategic fit and fundamental performance of our global businesses and infrastructure, and as appropriate, we'll take actions to drive long-term value creation. These actions are expected to result in the sale of certain underperforming or non-core businesses, which will enable us to focus on more profitable growth opportunities. In aggregate, these businesses represent approximately 7% of our estimated 2025 revenue. Once completed, the proposed divestitures are expected to result in non-GAAP earnings accretion of at least $0.30 per share on an annualized basis. This does not include any benefit from the reinvestment of the transaction proceeds or impact to net interest expense. We will strive to complete any potential divestitures by the middle of 2026.

We will also continue to focus on new initiatives to drive greater efficiency in our business and maximize our financial performance. As you know, we have taken extensive action with a goal to protect our operating margin and reinvigorate earnings growth. Over the past few years, we have already implemented restructuring initiatives that are expected to result in approximately $225 million in cumulative annualized cost savings in 2026, which represents a reduction of more than 5% of our cost structure. In addition to these actions, we are also implementing initiatives designed to drive process improvement and greater operating efficiencies, including through procurement synergies and implementation of a global business services model. These additional initiatives are expected to generate incremental net cost savings of approximately $70 million annually, which will be fully realized in 2026.

We also expect to continue to transform our relationships with our clients through best-in-class technology platforms and access to critical data, becoming an even more efficient partner for them. Finally, we remain committed to deploying capital in a disciplined and value-enhancing manner. We will continue to regularly review the optimal balance between strategic acquisitions, stock repurchases, debt repayment, and other uses of capital. As part of our capital allocation strategy, the Board of Directors approved a new $1 billion stock repurchase authorization. This replaces the previous stock repurchase authorization, for which we had repurchased $450.7 million in common stock since August 2024. We will regularly and carefully evaluate the prudent level of stock repurchases going forward and will take into consideration valuation, future growth prospects, expected returns, and earnings accretion from repurchases, as well as our leverage and other uses of cash.

With these actions clearly outlined, we are intently focused on executing this plan to enhance the company's long-term value by building upon the core strengths of our unique portfolio, advancing scientific innovation, and driving greater efficiency in both our operations and our clients' R&D and manufacturing efforts. Moving on to our quarterly results and demand trends, we are continuing to see clear signs that client demand has stabilized. Many of our global biopharmaceutical clients appear to have progressed through their restructuring efforts, and the biotech funding environment showed increasing signs of improvement throughout the third quarter. These are positive signals that the industry may be on a path towards recovery, and the improvement we saw in DSA proposal activity during the third quarter strongly supports this view. At the same time, there is still some uncertainty in our end markets.

Therefore, we will continue to remain cautious at this time and focused on strong execution to drive further wallet share gains with our clients. The business trends in the third quarter were consistent with those that we described in August. With RMS performance benefiting from the favorable timing of NHP shipments in the quarter, DSA revenue declining sequentially as the first quarter booking strengths that contributed to meaningful outperformance in the first half of the year returned to recent historical levels, and manufacturing revenue declining primarily due to the completion of work for a commercial CDMO client. Collectively, trends were slightly better than we had expected, which led to modest outperformance in the third quarter. Before I provide more details on these trends, let me provide highlights of our third quarter performance and updated outlook for the year.

We reported revenue of $1 billion in the third quarter of 2025, a 0.5% decrease year-over-year. On an organic basis, revenue declined 1.6%, as declines in both the DSA and manufacturing segments were partially offset by an increase in the RMS segment. Third quarter revenue slightly outperformed the outlook provided in August. By client segment, revenue for small and mid-sized biotech clients declined, reflecting tighter budgets likely driven by the softer biotech funding environment as we exited 2024 and in the first half of this year. Revenue for global biopharmaceutical clients remained below last year's level, but that was primarily due to the loss of a large commercial client in the CDMO business, whose work at our Memphis site wound down in the second quarter.

Revenue increased for global biopharmaceutical clients in both the RMS and DSA segments, demonstrating that preclinical demand from this client base had bottomed and is beginning to improve, consistent with the upward trajectory in the DSA booking activity at the beginning of this year. Revenue for global academic and government clients increased slightly in the quarter. We have not experienced any meaningful impact from NIH budget uncertainty or the government shutdown to date. The operating margin was 19.7% in the quarter, a decrease of 20 basis points year-over-year, also driven by the DSA and manufacturing segment. This anticipated margin decline primarily reflected lower sales volume in the DSA segment and lower commercial CDMO revenue in the manufacturing segment. For the full year, we continue to expect the operating margin will be flat to a 30 basis point decline, unchanged from our prior outlook.

Earnings per share were $2.43 in the third quarter, a 6.2% decline from the third quarter of last year, but modestly above our prior outlook. The tax rate was the most significant year-over-year headwind, as we had anticipated, totaling $0.24 per share in the quarter due to the enactment of new tax legislation. Mike Knell will provide additional details on the non-operating item shortly. With one quarter remaining, we are narrowing our revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share guidance ranges for the year. We now expect 2025 organic revenue will be in a range of 1.5%-2.5% decrease or the middle of our prior range. We also expect our non-GAAP earnings per share will be at the top end of our prior range at $10.10-$10.30, reflecting a $0.10 increase from the midpoint of our prior guidance range.

I will now provide details on the third quarter segment performance, beginning with the DSA segment. Revenue for the DSA segment was $600.7 million in the third quarter, a 3.1% year-over-year decrease on an organic basis, driven by lower revenue for both discovery and safety assessment services. As was the case during the first half of the year, lower sales volume was partially offset by a modest benefit from favorable study mix. We can also report that spot pricing remained stable overall. Although the DSA backlog declined to $1.80 billion at the end of the third quarter from $1.93 billion at the end of June, DSA demand KPIs were stable in the third quarter.

The DSA demand environment remained quite stable from the trends that I described one quarter ago, including a third quarter net book-to-bill ratio of 0.82 times, which was identical to the level reported in the second quarter. The cancellation rate improved in the third quarter and continued to normalize toward historical levels. Net bookings decreased slightly on a sequential basis to $494 million in the third quarter, reflecting lighter booking activity for small and mid-sized biotech clients during the summer months. However, booking activity from biotech clients has improved since the summer, leaving us cautiously optimistic that biotech demand will accelerate over the coming quarters, assuming clients continue to have access to more robust funding for their IND-enabling programs. Booking trends for global biopharmaceutical clients remained healthy in the third quarter and were stable on both a sequential and year-over-year basis.

Mike Knell
Senior VP, Interim CFO, and Chief Accounting Officer, Charles River Laboratories

Thank you, Jim, and good morning. I'm pleased to join today's call as Interim Chief Financial Officer. Throughout my eight years at Charles River, I have gained a great understanding of our global business and have tremendous confidence in our team's ability to execute on the company's strategic and financial priorities. I want to thank Jim and the board for their support. Before I begin, may I remind you that I will be speaking primarily to non-GAAP results, which exclude amortization and other acquisition-related adjustments, costs related primarily to restructuring initiatives, gains or losses from certain venture capital and other strategic investments, and certain other items.

Many of my comments will also refer to organic revenue growth, which excludes the impact of acquisitions, divestitures, and foreign currency translations. We are pleased with our third-quarter performance, which included revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share that modestly exceeded the outlook we provided in August. As a result of the third-quarter outperformance, we are narrowing our revenue and non-GAAP earnings per share guidance. We now expect full-year reported revenue will decline 0.5%-1.5%, and organic revenue will decline 1.5%-2.5%, or at the middle of our prior ranges. Non-GAAP earnings per share are now expected to be in a range of $10.10-$10.30, or at the upper end of the prior range. The $0.10 guidance improvement at midpoint was largely driven by the third-quarter operational outperformance. By segment, our updated revenue outlook for 2025 can be found on slide 29.

We have narrowed the organic revenue outlook for the DSA segment to a decline of 2.5-3.5% to reflect better-than-expected performance to date. You may recall that we started the year with an initial DSA outlook of a mid to high single-digit organic revenue decline. We have slightly tempered the manufacturing segment's revenue outlook to flat to a slightly negative organic decline, and the RMS outlook is essentially unchanged. The outlook for the operating margin is also unchanged at flat to a 30 basis point decline. Unallocated corporate costs totaled $58.9 million in the third quarter, or 5.9% of revenue compared to 6.6% of revenue in the same period last year. The decrease was primarily due to the lower health and fringe-related costs. For the full year, we continue to expect unallocated corporate costs will be approximately 5.5% of total revenue, unchanged from the prior outlook.

I will now provide an update on the non-operating items. Total adjusted net interest expense was $24 million in the third quarter, which represented both a sequential and year-over-year decline. The reductions were primarily the result of shifting debt to lower interest rate geographies. For the full year, we expect total net interest expense will be in a range of $100 million-$105 million, consistent with the prior outlook. At the end of the third quarter, we had outstanding debt of $2.2 billion, with approximately 70% at a fixed interest rate compared to $2.3 billion at the end of the second quarter. In addition to lowering our interest expense, continued debt repayment resulted in gross and net leverage ratios of 2.1 times at the end of the third quarter. The non-GAAP tax rate in the third quarter was 28.3%, representing an increase of 700 basis points year-over-year.

As expected, the increase primarily reflected the impact of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, or OB-3, as well as the impact of the enactment of certain global minimum tax provisions. For the full year, we continue to expect our non-GAAP tax rate will be in the range of 23.5%-24.5%, which is unchanged from our prior outlook. Free cash flow for the third quarter was $178.2 million compared to a record $213.1 million achieved in the same period last year. The year-over-year decrease was primarily driven by lower earnings. However, free cash flow improved sequentially by $8.9 million as a result of continued improvement in working capital. CapEx was $35.6 million, or approximately 3.5% of revenue in the third quarter, compared to $38.7 million last year, reflecting our focus on disciplined capital spending.

For the full year, we expect free cash flow to be in a range of $470 million-$500 million, an increase from our prior outlook of $430 million-$470 million due to the robust third-quarter cash generation. CapEx will be approximately $200 million, a decrease from our prior outlook, and at approximately 5% of 2025 revenue, it will be well below our peak capital spending in recent years. The improved free cash flow outlook reflects our tightly managed capital spending and disciplined working capital management. As Jim mentioned, the board refreshed our stock repurchase authorization in October to a new $1 billion, all of which is available for future repurchase activity. We will continue to evaluate the optimal balance between strategic acquisitions, stock repurchases, debt repayment, and other uses of capital as part of our capital allocation strategy.

With our strong free cash flow generation, we will regularly evaluate making additional stock repurchases under this authorization. As part of the strategic review, we will continue to work diligently to maximize our financial performance, including through disciplined capital deployment and by actively managing our cost structure. A summary of our 2025 financial guidance can be found on slide 35. With one quarter remaining, our fourth-quarter outlook is effectively embedded in our full-year guidance. For the fourth quarter, we expect reported revenue to be in a range of flat to a low single-digit decline, and organic revenue will decline at a low to mid-single-digit rate year-over-year. Looking at the sequential progression from the third quarter, RMS revenue will be lower due to the acceleration of NHP shipments into the third quarter, as well as normal fourth-quarter seasonality.

DSA revenue is expected to be stable to modestly below the third-quarter level, and manufacturing revenue is expected to improve due to the year-end ordering patterns in the microbial solutions business. Non-GAAP earnings per share are expected to be flat to 10% below the third-quarter level of $2.43, reflecting margin pressure in the DSA segment due in part to higher staffing and NHP sourcing costs, and in the RMS segment due to timing of NHP shipments and normal seasonal trends. In conclusion, we are pleased with our third-quarter performance, which modestly exceeded our expectations and with the actions that we will undertake as part of the board's strategic review. The initiatives we are taking to strengthen our portfolio, maximize our financial performance, and maintain a disciplined capital allocation strategy will further strengthen our market position and lead to long-term shareholder value creation. Thank you.

Todd Spencer
VP of Investor Relations, Charles River Laboratories

That concludes our comments.

We will now take your questions.

Analyst Q&A

Patrick Donelly — Analyst, Citi
Hey, guys. Thank you for taking the questions. Jim, maybe one just on the overall backdrop here, back-to-back quarters in that low 0.8 range on book to bill. Can you talk about what you're seeing from customers? Is the biotech market loosening up a little bit? I know you guys leaned in a little bit on hiring last quarter.
What's the right way to think about just the demand trends going forward here and what you're seeing from customers?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah, sure. We're seeing proposals up. Pretty much with large pharma clients and our biotech clients as well. We're seeing cancellation levels decline, which is definitely a good thing. We're seeing net bookings up for the pharmaceutical folks and biotech folks. Still not. We had kind of a slow summer for our biotech clients in particular, but things have strengthened post-summer, and we had actually an improvement in monthly book to bill for the last sort of three to four months, which we're really pleased to see. I think, as everybody knows, but if not, just let me state the fact that biotech funding is way up in Q3. And biotech funding for October was the second highest month in the history of all of biotech.
One of the things that we've been watching, obviously, very closely is that because lack of funding for the last, I'd say, 18 months has definitely constrained expenditures by our biotech clients. I think we're going to have to see the continued opening up of the capital markets and access to capital for those folks to feel confident that they'll stay open. That's a really positive sign for us. We're seeing definitely an improvement in the demand from those folks. We'll just have to continue to watch it and see what the situation is there. I would say that things have bottomed out. The pharmaceutical companies have finished reducing their portfolios. Biotech has a lot of work going on. I guess one last thing that's actually quite relevant.
We've been talking a lot about we've been doing a lot of post-IND work, which is sort of the more expensive specialty work, which is great. Great margins and nice growth rate. We want both. We have begun to see more general tox studies, more early work, more IND filings. I think we're seeing two things in the marketplace as biotech funding begins to strengthen. You're seeing more work going on with the clinical CROs, but also we're seeing this early pre-IND work for us. I think as the capital markets continue to open up or stay open, maybe I should say, we should see more spending by biotech because pharma is quite strong.
Patrick Donelly — Analyst, Citi
Okay. That's helpful. I guess, given that commentary, given the bookings that we've seen in DSA the last couple of quarters, is there a path to DSA growing in 2026?
What does that mean maybe for the margins? Obviously, you guys had the cost outs, which is nice to see. What is the DSA setup given the bookings and given, again, to your point, maybe a little bit of improving trends in the last couple of months as we head into 2026? Thank you, guys.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. Yeah, sure. We definitely want to see the conclusion of the year, as we always do, and we want to see the beginning of next year. We also want to finish our 2026 budget, but also, more importantly, we want our clients to finalize their 2026 budgets. A lot of the pharma companies do not do that until sort of mid or sometimes the end of the first quarter. Assuming that happens as predicted, we would want to see continuing improvement in book to bill over.
A sustained period of time, which we are hopeful that we will see. There are other things to take into consideration. In addition to that, I should say, not instead of, which is, what does the backlog look like? How fast do we move through the backlog? Also, what's the nature of the studies that we get? In other words, are they long or short-term studies? If they're short-term studies and they start relatively quickly, that certainly could generate incremental sales. We'll obviously watch the bookings very closely, and we will report to you folks whether things continue to improve.
Patrick Donelly — Analyst, Citi
Understood. Thanks, Jim.
Sure. Our next question comes from Dave Windley with Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Dave Windley — Managing Director, Jefferies
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question, Jim. I wanted to drill in on a couple of topics there. You mentioned the long-term studies and wanting a balance of both.
Inferring you want to see more short-term. Are you seeing that? What is the difference, in, say, what's flowing through revenue versus what you're seeing coming in short-term versus long-term in the bookings or backlog? Thanks.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. We're beginning to see more short-term work or pre-IND work, which is an important part of what we do and always do. We like a balance of short and long-term, and you typically don't get the long-term work until you have the short-term work. I think, as I said a moment ago, that's clearly a commentary on comfort level of our clients to spend more earlier because access to capital has improved over the last, what is it, over the last four months. The backlogs now are sort of nine months-ish.
You'll remember, Dave, that we were sort of nine months, six to nine months, I would say, for many, many years. That's a nice backlog number because it allows you to slot studies in when stuff slips. It also allows you to get the bookings and to get the revenue relatively quickly because the studies are shorter. I think that's only good news and a positive indication of incremental spending, particularly by the biotech folks. Given all the things that we just said, we should see that playing, hopefully, through enhanced bookings and revenue as well.
Dave Windley — Managing Director, Jefferies
Got it. Relatedly to your point about slotting studies, one of your peers, I believe, talked about RFP flow, bookings, and then study start timing, where the first two were okay, but it was the study start timing that was problematic. Are you seeing anything like that?
Is that something maybe you've already seen and it's flowed through, or you haven't seen yet? I'm just wondering if the study start timing and your ability to kind of move slots in your own calendar would be impacted by clients' willingness to move study starts.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. We have read and heard that some of our competitors are in that situation. I would say that we're able to start studies relatively quickly and in concert with the timeframes that are important to our clients. As I said, we have a nice backlog, but a shorter backlog with studies that are starting more rapidly, particularly since we have availability. That lines up really well for us, I mean, all three of those factors. We're very much focused on being as flexible and accommodating to our clients as possible and getting the work started on a timeframe that.
They're interested in.
Dave Windley — Managing Director, Jefferies
Okay. If I could just slide in one more, which is, would you be willing, on the divestiture, the strategic review, the 7% that you quantify, seems like the CDMO is probably part of that, but not all of that. Would you be willing to provide some color on what those targeted divestitures are? Thanks.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. We're going to stay away from the specificity of that, except for the fact that it's around 7% of our revenue and should generate $0.30 accretion on an annualized basis. It's important to the divestiture process, but I think we may not be specific about those assets.
Dave Windley — Managing Director, Jefferies
Okay. Thank you.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Sorry.
Elizabeth Anderson — Analyst, Evercore ISI
Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the question. I appreciate the updated commentary, Jim, on the NAMs.
Can you talk about whether you're starting to see any change in behavior among any of your client groups regarding NAMs? Are there certain people who are thinking about it, no one's thinking about it, etc.? And then, two, for the incremental $70 million in cost savings, could you maybe double-click on that slightly more and just sort of help us think about the pacing of that and sort of any other details you can provide as to where those savings are coming from? Thank you.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Sure. I'll add Mike to the cost savings question in a minute. On NAMs, the pronouncements by the FDA and others is a recognition or a focus on the fact that, if possible, and when the technology is available and works, that other technologies could be used or should be used in lieu of, or at least in addition to, research models.
I think that that's a philosophy that everybody embraces, including us, that if there are legitimate alternatives, that's great. The scientific reality is that most of these technologies are relatively nascent and somewhat crude and provide some valuable, somewhat anecdotal information relatively early in the drug development process, particularly around the discovery phase. By the way, that will be really beneficial for the companies to focus on a lead compound, to hopefully get those lead compounds into the clinic faster, and as a result of that, to get them into the market faster. It should also allow them to spend less time working on drugs that aren't promising. Except for a very small sliver, monoclonal antibodies as a sort of poster child, we don't see them having much impact on safety. We're hearing very little from our clients, except until the alternatives are scientifically.
Robust, they're going to keep doing things the way they have always done them. There's some internal investment by our clients in NAMs, particularly in the discovery phase. We're thrilled with the scientific advisory board we put together, run by the former number two person at the FDA. We have a host of NAMs technologies in our portfolio and some others that we're looking at from an M&A point of view, which should allow us to be in a leadership position with our clients and the FDA because they're going to have to validate this stuff. As you've heard us say before, I think that ultimately we'll probably be filing, or our clients will be filing, data, both NAMs data and animal data, simultaneously. I think that's how it's going to move.
Mike, why don't you take the cost savings question?
Mike Knell — Senior VP, Interim CFO, and Chief Accounting Officer, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. Sure. Hi, Elizabeth. We've previously disclosed we've identified $225 million of annualized cost savings. In this morning's press release, we talked about an additional $70 million. When you think about where they're coming from, really think about maybe five different categories. The first one, network planning or facility consolidation, site closings. That's been going on for some time. The second one is really around workforce right-sizing. Not only in the business to right-size for the demand, but also in our G&A pretty extensively throughout the company. The third one is in procurement savings. We took a pretty extensive review of our procurement spend this year, and we've got some significant savings from that. The fourth one is really around GBS. We talked about this.
It's really about being more scalable, more flexible, operating more efficiently, and that program is just starting now. The last one is really some internal efficiencies and automation. We've done a lot of digital investments over the years, and we're expecting to see some benefits around just internally how we operate. With the carryover from some of the initiatives we've implemented this year and the additional 70 next year, you should think about about $100 million of incremental savings in 2026. Now, those all won't fall and drop to the bottom line next year. We're going to use those as a lever to offset a lot of the inflationary and cost pressures that we have and really other headwinds and protect the operating income given the demand we're in right now.
Elizabeth Anderson — Analyst, Evercore ISI
Thank you.
Eric Caldwell — Analyst, Baird
Thanks very much. Quite a few of mine have already been covered. I wanted to, just on those last comments about the $100 million of incremental savings in 2026, but not all of it falling to the bottom line. Can you possibly give us a sense on how much you would expect to fall to the bottom line? If I missed that, I apologize.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. I do not think we have a—as we are in the middle of our planning process right now, Eric, and it is hard to tell how much will fall through. I know we are focused on generating and reinvigorating earnings growth next year. And we have been really judicial and prudent in focusing on these cost savings, with the intent of expanding earnings next year. It is a little too early to tell just how much will fall through to the bottom.
Eric Caldwell — Analyst, Baird
Jim, I'm going to circle back on a question that's going to bug you and probably isn't fair, but I think one of the biggest things the street's struggling with this morning is the outlook for DSA growth next year. I fully realize that bookings over the next two quarters are incredibly important on many fronts. As you sit here now in November, a couple of months from the start of the new year, if you were in our seat on the buy side, on the sell side, Wall Street looking in, where would you be framing DSA to start the year? I mean, we're coming off of four of the last five quarters, I think, have had book to bills in the 0.8 zip code. It feels like this could be a down year in 2026, but I know things can change literally overnight in DSA.
How would you help us frame the thought process for 2026?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. I mean, we want to be careful not to get too deep into 2026, but I certainly understand the nature of the question. I think the fact is that we outlined and that I talked about in the first couple of questions are, I think, the most relevant things. The big drug companies seem to be pretty much done with their work. We're seeing greater access to capital for the last, certainly, four months or so by biotech. We've seen improvement in book to bill over the last three or four months. Proposals are way up. Cancellations are down. We're seeing net bookings improve for our global clients, where we have significant market shares. Really, everything.
That's sort of caused a decline in our DSA business over the last 18 months or so has been 100% related to access to the capital markets by the biotech clients. We are guardedly optimistic that if those factors remain positive and/or improve, that obviously will be extremely beneficial for us going into next year. We need to see that some benefit continue for the fourth quarter and as we move into the first quarter. We just have to stop short of predicting what the actual numbers will be for 2026. I just think it's just too early.
Eric Caldwell — Analyst, Baird
Just a quick other one outside of the scope of what people are asking today. There was some news and updates around the Biosecure Act back in October. I'm curious if you have any updated thoughts on what that might lead to.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. We haven't really seen any impact.
Interestingly, we hear virtually nothing about the Biosecure Act and others from our clients. It is either an essential part of what they're doing every day, and they just deal with it, or they do not think it's significant. We are not hearing anything additionally from them. We really do not have any updates on that.
Eric Caldwell — Analyst, Baird
Sounds good. Thanks, Jim. I appreciate it.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Sure.
Our next question comes from Justin Bowers with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Justin Bowers — Analyst, Deutsche Bank
Hi. Good morning, everyone. Jim, it sounds like proposals were pretty healthy in 3Q, pie singles, year-over-year and sequentially as well. Was that consistent across globals or biotechs, or was it weighted one way or the other? Can you also give us an indication of the slope of how DSA bookings progressed during the quarter and if that slope continued or how the slope continued into October?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. Sure.
Proposals for mid-tier were up over the prior year and the previous quarter. We were really pleased to see that after kind of a slow summer. For globals, they were up over the prior year and not up over the prior quarter. As I said earlier, cancellations were down for all of our client base. That's an extreme positive. Gross bookings for globals were kind of flat, but net bookings were up. We still have a gross and net bookings issue with the mid-tiers, which we hope will ameliorate as access to capital continues to free up for them. Obviously, really pleased to see a significant increase in proposals.
Justin Bowers — Analyst, Deutsche Bank
Got it. A quick one on the timing of the asset divestitures. Do you have LOIs for any of those assets?
Do you plan on treating that as discontinued ops going forward, or are you going to keep it in continuing ops?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
We are actively working to divest certain assets. We hope that—I think we said in the call—we hope that will be done by the middle of the year. We are not in an LOI stage yet, but obviously we will move forward with due speed and some sense of urgency to make that happen. Mike, why do you not take the accounting question?
Mike Knell — Senior VP, Interim CFO, and Chief Accounting Officer, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. The accounting rules have pretty specific criteria when to go into discontinued operations, and one of those being a materiality concept. Just based on the nature of the businesses, their impact to our operations and financial results, they just do not qualify for disco ops. They will continue to be in our continuing operations until some time as if they are divested.
Justin Bowers — Analyst, Deutsche Bank
Thank you.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Our next question comes from Casey Woodring with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Casey Woodring — VP of Equity Research, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Great. Thanks. On DSA margins in 4Q, you mentioned higher third-party NHP sourcing costs. Can you just elaborate on that and if that's expected to be a drag on DSA margins next year? My follow-up here quickly is just you've talked a lot about how book to bill has improved each month. Is there any way to quantify what book to bill was in September and how much that's stepped up in October? I think one of the questions is if you can kind of continue this trend of sequential month-over-month bookings growth, if you can exit the year at over one book to bill in 4Q. Any color on that would be helpful. Thank you.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
We'll leave that to you, Mike. Yeah.
Mike Knell — Senior VP, Interim CFO, and Chief Accounting Officer, Charles River Laboratories
In the beginning of the year, remember in DSA, we had expected a mid to high single decline rate, and we’re meaningfully improved over that outlook by the end of the year. When we are exceeding the expectations, we have to source from third-party NHPs that come with a higher cost since we had to procure additional models to meet that additional expected demand. As far as 2026, no. I mean, as long as we plan and we’re consistent with the demand levels, it shouldn’t be a continuing drag on the business. Just on that month-over-month book to bill, any sort of color on where September kind of shook out and maybe where October landed too? Thank you.
Todd Spencer — VP of Investor Relations, Charles River Laboratories
Casey, this is Todd. We’re not going to provide any specificity into the months.
We really don't like to call it the months because we like to look at the trends overall. I think just as Jim mentioned earlier, what we're really looking for and what we saw over the past kind of three or four months is that that trend continued to improve. Obviously, we'll be closely monitoring to see given the strength of some of the proposal activity and biotech funding that we are cautiously optimistic that that will continue.
Casey Woodring — VP of Equity Research, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Understood. Thank you.
Our next question comes from Michael Ryskin with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Michael Ryskin — Managing Director, Bank of America
Great. Thanks for taking the question. First of all, I want to ask on the strategic review update, a lot of different bits here. I guess in a way, is this a final update, or are there more discussions in progress?
Is there an opportunity for further updates six months from now, a year from now? Kind of the point that you've announced several incremental cost-savings initiatives. Do you feel like you've sort of finished your analysis and there's nothing more to get, or should we kind of view this as still being open-ended?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. Maybe a review of your assets is never complete, but certainly, we've gone through a deep portfolio review, sort of our strategic direction, and how we intend to allocate capital. I would say that that part has been completed at least for now, and we're moving on to the implementation phase, which is trying to divest certain assets. I think we do a really good job with the strategic planning and capital allocation committee of our board, reviewing our portfolio sort of on a continual basis.
Looking at assets that are not generating the returns that we would like, making sure that we are investing capital appropriately, both in M&A and occasionally buying back our stock and continuing to take down our debt. That is why I say maybe it is never complete, but certainly an intense process, which has been going on for the last three or four months. I would say that the first phase of that is complete. We are really pleased with the sort of focus and initiatives that we are taking, both to invigorate the top line and the bottom line and to get some of the assets in our portfolio that are definitely headwinds out so we can spend more time on things that have higher growth potential and greater opportunity to be accretive to the bottom line. I think it was a very thoughtful and thorough and robust process.
Michael Ryskin — Managing Director, Bank of America
Okay. That is helpful.
A lot's been asked on DSA and next year and things like that. I want to ask it sort of from a more qualitative perspective. Do you feel like visibility into customer demand, sponsor demand? Do you feel like conversations with customers are becoming more stable? I know it's been a very uncertain time over the last 6, 12, 18 months. I just kind of want to talk about the planning process and how much forward visibility you have and how comfortable you feel with plans. Is that settling down at all a little bit, even though we talked about the actual bookings and things like that?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. I think that things are definitely more stable with sort of both client segments. The big drug companies have been reducing their infrastructures. We reported over the last quarter or two that we have.
Very large multi-year contracts with most of the big pharma companies, and we've been sort of working through re-ups of those. There is definitely stability there and sort of visibility and predictability. We have a lot of biotech clients who obviously have no internal capacity to do any of the things that we do. They're very innovative, and they've got a bunch of drugs in development that have paused. Some they're trying to push into a clinic with the money that they have, and some they're going back and getting the INDs filed. Yeah, I think there is increasing stability and visibility. We liked the backlog at nine months. When it got to 14, 15, 18 months, it actually was too long. By the time clients got to the point where they should be starting studies, they actually oftentimes didn't have them.
Nine months gives you a significant backlog to fill the gap when things stall, which happens all the time. It also gives you much greater predictability of your business model. We are encouraged by the access to capital. We are encouraged by the third quarter. We are encouraged by what we are hearing from our clients. We are encouraged by book to bill improving sequentially over the last four months. We need to have all of that continue through the back half of the fourth quarter and the beginning of the first quarter, and all of our clients to put their operating plans to bed for 2026 before we feel that we will have our arms around what the growth rate ought to be for the next fiscal year.
Michael Ryskin — Managing Director, Bank of America
Thanks so much.
Anne Hines — Analyst, Mizuho Securities
Great, thanks. Just in DSA, I know you don't want to give 2026 guidance, but if the biotech IPO really heats up market in Q4, how long does that usually end up, and how long does that take to show up in your backlog and revenue? My second thing would be about capacity. I know you've been reducing capacity in the segment. Could you remind us how much you have reduced capacity to date and what capacity utilization you're running at, and maybe where you would like that to go just to see growth again? Thanks.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. We used to give exact percentages of capacity utilization. It used to be sort of optimal utilization. It used to be in the low 80%, which surprised everybody. If you're 95% full, it's actually inefficient to turn over new runs. That's sort of where we like it.
We stopped giving those numbers. Capacity utilization is below that. That is not maximum efficiency. By the same token, it's good to have incremental capacity when and as the demand heats up. There was a question earlier about how quickly we can start studies, and having incremental capacity allows us the ability to do that. We try to stay ahead of the demand curve historically by building incremental space and now by holding onto it. We've been building some incremental space in our laboratory sciences aspect of our safety assessment business, which is important. If we don't have the space when the clients have to work, that's obviously a problem. It takes, I don't know, 18 to 24 months to build some new space and a longer period of time to validate it.
I would say capacity for us is in a good place as we finish the fiscal year and move into the next one. Hopefully, as demand increases, we should be able to accommodate that. Just remind me, the first part of your question had something to do with backlog in the fourth quarter.
Anne Hines — Analyst, Mizuho Securities
No, if the funding environment really heats up, say in Q4, how long does that take to travel? Yeah.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
There's a lag. Always tough to predict. I would say that while they're sort of waiting for the capital markets to open up and they've got some work backed up, they tend to be kind of judicious and thoughtful about how they spend their money because they want to make sure that access to capital will remain. It's typically not overnight. It usually takes a couple of quarters anyway.
I think once they have the confidence that the capital markets are open for some period of time for private companies that want to do IPOs or relatively recent IPO biotech companies that were counting on secondaries that are worrying about access to capital. I mean, that definitely changes the flow for demand. These are the discovery engines for the big drug companies, and this is where a lot of the innovation is coming from. As we continue to say, they have no internal capacity to do the work that we do. It obviously will be a positive. It's a little bit tough to discern how quickly they begin to spend, except to tell you what they've done historically, which is to be a little bit careful.
This could be different because I do think there's a fair amount of pent-up demand and a desire to get INDs filed, which is something that these companies focus on intently every year. We know that there's a bunch of drugs that sort of stalled before they got the INDs filed. Hopefully, we'll see that pick up.
Anne Hines — Analyst, Mizuho Securities
Thank you.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Sure.
Max Smock — Analyst, William Blair
Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. I know we're over here, so I'll keep it to one. I just wanted to ask a higher level one, Jim, on your comment about still seeing some uncertainty out there from clients. It sounds like on the biotech side, another month or two of good funding will take care of that uncertainty.
On the large pharma side, what do you think they're really waiting to see before accelerating spend? It feels like the MFN and tariff headwinds that we've discussed seem to be resolved or at least kind of moving in the process of being resolved. Does further progress there eliminate the remaining uncertainty, or are there any other factors out there that we should consider as having an impact on pharma spend here over the next couple of quarters? Thanks.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. We feel very good about pharma spend given that bookings, proposal volumes, etc. Given these long-term contracts that we have and given the fact that a lot of the reductions in their cost structure in anticipation of a patent cliff has happened. Obviously, the drug companies have plenty of money, so ability to spend is never a problem with them. They spend in their. For.
To support their own R&D shops, but they also access molecules from the biotech community, either licensing them or buying entire companies. I think they're in a good place generally and increasingly for us should be stable to growing part of our client demand. We have significantly higher shares than the competition in pharma, but biotech has, I'd say, for the last decade or decade and a half, been the principal driver of our growth, just given how many companies there are, how many new companies are created every year, how innovative they are, and how much they need our capability. We are intently focused on biotech and being accessible to them and flexible with them and guiding them through the regulatory process to get the drugs into the clinic and ultimately into the market. We're.
Very pleased to see the capital markets begin to open up. We've been looking forward to this for a while, but they need to really open and stay open for a while for things to substantially invigorate.
Max Smock — Analyst, William Blair
Jim, if I could just ask a quick follow-up there. On your point about replenishing their pipelines with licensing and M&A, there has been a nice uptick in both so far year to date. Just wondering to what extent M&A either helps or hurts how you think about that recovery. In particular, licensing from China, what impact that would have relative to maybe some of the licensing deals that have been more U.S.-centric? Does that limit your opportunity to benefit from large pharma replenishing their pipelines, or is it more of a net neutral?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
No, I think that that's kind of an always, always the buying and accessing molecules from China.
I wouldn't say it's brand new, but it's relatively new and increasing somewhat because there's a fair amount of innovation coming out of China. I mean, I think that's fine. The extent to which the big drug companies need to further develop molecules that they access either from China or somewhere in the U.S. or Europe, we're certainly thrilled to have that work. Since we have, with very few exceptions, principal market shares with all of the big drug companies, it's likely that we'll get work if further work needs to be done on those molecules. It depends on what stage they're at. For a lot of the, obviously, U.S. and European small biotech companies, we're already doing work for them. It's unlikely that a pharma acquirer would change horses midstream. We're likely to keep that work and get the incremental work as well.
Max Smock — Analyst, William Blair
Thanks again for taking our questions.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Sure.
Luke Sergott — Director of Healthcare Equity Research, Barclays
Great. Thanks for squeezing me in here. I just wanted to talk about the increased staffing on the DSA. And from a timing perspective of how you guys continue to add the service piece to match the oncoming volumes, is that still in line with what you had done in the past, let's say three to six months, as you continue to look out there?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. I mean, the supplemental hiring is essential. We need to do it to accommodate demand. We need to backfill some positions because we have some turnover, like all companies. We're adding headcount to our laboratory sciences part of safety assessment, which has been growing nicely and is a major focus for our clients. So we're adding capacity where we're seeing growth.
I just want to remind you that what we're seeing in our DSA business, particularly the safety assessment business, is we have a level of demand that's meaningfully above what we initially thought for this year in some of our operating plan, and we have provided guidance to that. Having the people in place is obviously essential to being able to do the work. We're happy to have some incremental capacity. We were getting to the point where it was tight on having sufficient staff to do the work in a timeframe that our clients want. Obviously, everything with us is about both the quality of our execution and the speed of our execution because all of our clients are in a rush to get their drugs into the clinic and ultimately into the market. We feel that as we move through the.
Back half or the rest of the fourth quarter and as we move into next year, that. These incremental jobs will be essential to being able to accommodate the work in 2026.
Luke Sergott — Director of Healthcare Equity Research, Barclays
Great. From a follow-up, just as you guys think about the investments going forward, I understand there's a lot of moving pieces with the Besseter and cost outs, etc., but you also talked about some strategic review, adding new technologies or capabilities. Elizabeth talked a little bit about the NAMs. Just talk about appetite here from an inorganic sense on bolt-on versus on more strategic, and then kind of where you would be willing to take the balance sheet or your leverage levels, given that you're continuing to take those down right now, but if you need to do something more strategic.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah.
We've always felt that strategic acquisitions was the best use of our capital and still believe that. There are some areas that we pointed out in our prepared remarks that we have a lot of focus by our clients, and we need to continue to look and invest to invigorate our pipelines. We're going to stay in our core. We're looking at things like bioanalysis, which is part of our laboratory sciences capability. We're looking at some geographic expansions in some of our businesses that maybe something's in Europe that we don't have in the States, vice versa. We're looking at a host of in vitro technologies that sort of fall squarely under the NAMs nomenclature. There are several things that we're looking at that will be important to our growth, to our margins, to our competitive strength. Our leverage is in the low twos.
We're certainly comfortable levering up to the mid or even the high twos. Because almost always, we've been able to reduce our leverage substantially within 12 months. And so our free cash flows are really quite substantial. Debt is coming down. Interest related to that debt is coming down as well. So balance sheet is in good shape. We're certainly comfortable in the mid-twos or even the high twos once we get it down. We're pretty much committed to keep it under three turns, though.
Luke Sergott — Director of Healthcare Equity Research, Barclays
Great. Thank you.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Sure.
Rob Cottrell — Analyst, Cleveland Research
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. I guess I'm just encouraged to hear you say that spot pricing is stable for the second straight quarter. Is the selective discounting that you all were discussing last year still a headwind year-over-year into the fourth quarter?
At what point do you expect pricing to flip from a headwind to a tailwind? Thank you.
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
Yeah. I'm not sure it's a headwind. I mean, we're trying to do it very strategically. To the extent to which it minimally allows us to protect share, that's obviously important. Maximally, it allows us to take share, which obviously helps our growth rate and could help our margins as well from just covering that level of volume. I think we're using it really well. If a new client calls and wants to get a price on something, we'll give them pretty healthy prices. A lot of the big clients that we have long-term contracts with, prices are pre-negotiated, and so we know what that is going to be. Pricing, absolutely, if you look historically and as we look to the future. As demand ticks up and space gets tighter.
Pricing will be available and easier for all of us. Certainly, I can just speak for us, certainly there'll be no need to reduce prices to compete in the marketplace. We feel that we're using it thoughtfully and strategically and beneficially. While our shares are pretty good versus the competition, there are still pieces of business that we're desirous of getting. If that's what's required initially to get the business, then we'll play that card.
Rob Cottrell — Analyst, Cleveland Research
Thanks, Jim. Along those lines, any change in win rate during the quarter?
Jim Foster — Chair, President, and CEO, Charles River Laboratories
I don't know if we have to disclose that. No. I mean, we haven't disclosed that. I would just kind of echo Jim's comments that we continue to look at price selectively. At a minimum, we try to—the goal is to maintain share, if not win share.
Rob Cottrell — Analyst, Cleveland Research
Got it. Thank you.
Todd Spencer — VP of Investor Relations, Charles River Laboratories
Great. Thank you, Angela. Thank you, everyone, for joining us on the conference call this morning. This concludes the call.
Source: CHARLES RIVER LABORATORIES INTERNATIONAL, INC. earnings call transcript (2025-11-05). Management commentary and analyst Q&A are reproduced as delivered; speaker roles as stated on the call.

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