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Clinical Research Organizations or CROs have become a critical partner for biotech and pharma companies large and small. CROs help these companies during phases I to IV of the drug development process and the suite of services they offer often extend well beyond just patient recruitment for drug studies. Medpace Holding (MEDP) is a CRO that focuses on small and mid-size biotechs and is one of the smaller CROs compared to companies like ICON (ICLR), IQIVIA (IQV) and Charles River Laboratories (CRL) that work with the big pharmaceutical companies and are several times larger than Medpace (MEDP).
Biotech stocks have been in a world of pain long before the tech bubble burst late last year and the big drop in stock prices combined with a more challenging funding environment this year has dampened investor enthusiasm for companies like Medpace Holdings with the stock down nearly 25% this year. Despite this challenging environment, the company managed to grow revenue 24% last year and the pace of growth accelerated in Q1 2022 with revenue increasing 27.3% to $331 million. The company’s backlog of business is probably helping the company at the moment and growth is expected to taper next year.
The company isn’t exactly cheap trading at 20 times forward EBITDA, but with double digit top line growth, strong net margin of over 16% and a pristine balance sheet, I can see why the CEO is seeing the drop this year as a buying opportunity. This is exactly the kind of company I hope to discover when reviewing insider transactions and I’ll add Medpace to my watchlist should a general decline in the market present a buying opportunity.
The other interesting insider purchase was by the Chief Supply Chain Officer of Keurig Dr. Pepper (KDP). He is buying under an established 10b5-1 plan and this is already his third purchase this month. The Chief Legal Officer and Chief Strategy Officer were also buyers earlier this year.
Welcome to edition 629 of Insider Weekends. Insider buying declined significantly last week with insiders purchasing $13.33 million of stock compared to $52.71 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand increased significantly to $1.1 billion compared to $222.44 million in the week prior.