The US financial rating agency made the comments in analysis of the US contract research organisation (CRO) prompted by its decision to launch a $1.975bn refinancing effort to reduce interest rates on its debts and pay dividends to investors.
Standard and Poor’s (S&P) assigned the loan a BB rating – meaning it is not particularly vulnerable to changing economic conditions near term – and said that Quintiles’ status as the biggest CRO positions the firm for growth longer term.
“We believe that Quintiles can sustain this level of organic growth over the intermediate term based on our expectation for increased outsourcing by larger pharmaceutical companies, modest increases in R&D budgets as pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies seek to refill product pipelines.
The rating agency suggested that Quintiles will win business from smaller companies that “often lack the infrastructure to perform certain clinical development services internally” as well as larger pharmas keen to form closer collaborations.
“We expect Quintiles to benefit from an ongoing trend among large pharmaceutical companies toward forming strategic partnerships with a smaller number of large, global CROs. Over time, we expect that this will shift some market share from the smaller CROs to the largest global players like Quintiles.”
Central Lab
In other news, Quintiles central laboratory operation in Atlanta, Georgia has been accredited by the College of American Pathologists (CAP) for the quality of its biospecimen storage activites.
The CAP Biorepository Accreditation Program is a three-year, peer-based program developed in 2011 to strengthen the quality of patient care by ensuring consistent, verifiable quality of biospecimens and biorepositories.
This award comes on the heels of Quintiles’ central laboratory in Mumbai, India, receiving accreditation from CAP’s 15189 accreditation program for medical laboratory quality and competence established by the ISO.