Medidata grows operating income, revenues in Q1

Operating income at Medidata grew in the first quarter, underpinned by record bookings by contract research organisations (CRO) and rising revenues from Asia Pacific.

The results mark a successful beginning to Medidata’s first full financial year as a public company. Net revenues grew year-on-year from $33.6m (€27.3m) to $37.6m, driving a 29 per cent increase in operating income, which totalled $2.9m.

Medidata attributed the growth in revenues to its application services division, which posted a 26 per cent increase in sales and continues to represent a more significant proportion of the company’s business.

The eClinical firm also benefited from record bookings from CROs. Medidata believes this is driven by its ASPire to Win partner programme, which includes PPD, Quintiles, Icon and PRA. It added that 40 per cent of new customers in the first quarter were the result of the initiative.

Growth also came from the Asia Pacific region which contributed more than 12 per cent to total revenues. Medidata gained three customers from Asia Pacific in the quarter and expanded deals with seven existing clients.

On a global scale, 20 per cent of existing customers increased usage or renewed contracts in the first quarter. This includes two customers moving from study-by-study deals to multi-year, multi-study agreements and nine new entities of existing parent companies signing contracts.

Total remaining backlog for 2010 was $103m at the end of the quarter. Medidata expects realisation of this to help it achieve full year revenues between $160m and $164m.

Expanded offering

In the first quarter Medidata launched iMedidata to streamline and simplify the process of enrolling sites into electronic data capture. Medidata believes iMedidata will improve a process which it believes is “often cumbersome, resource-consuming and error-prone”.

The company has also worked with Aris Global to enable data sharing between Medidata Rave and ARISg. The agreement forms part of the Medidata Technology Partner Program which aims to advance interoperability and data sharing between clinical trial technologies.