The company’s service revenues were $323.8m, which represents growth of 8%, compared to Q4 of 2013, and for the year ending December 31, 2014, the company’s service revenues were about $1.3bn, which represents growth of 52%, as compared to 2013.
The company said the increase in service revenue is due largely to an increase in opening backlog, the type of services provided on its active studies and the growth in new business awards as a result of higher demand for services.
Backlog also increased about 10% over the past year. CEO Colin Shannon said in a conference call on Thursday that the integration of RPS, which PRA acquired last year, ran smoothly over the year and helped PRA to reach out to large pharma, where revenues increased 43% over last year. RPS had a number of significant client renewals in 2014, Shannon added.
In terms of geographies, PRA saw a slight 7% increase in studies in North America to 60% of revenues. The shift was driven by the acquisitions of RPS and CRI Lifetree, which have a higher concentration of revenue in North America.
“We remain focused on areas that will differentiate our services to our clients by continuing to strengthen our therapeutic expertise and enhance our medical informatics, as well as developing new capabilities that will allow us to provide broad and flexible services to our clients,” Shannon said.
For 2015, Linda Baddour, CFO of PRA Health Sciences, said the company expects to achieve service revenues between $1.35bn and $1.4bn, which would be 8-12% growth.
And in terms of PRA’s JV with Wuxi in China, Shannon said that only recently have they begun integrating RPS clients into the JV and they’re still looking at it to become profitable in Q4 of this year.
Analysts seemed upbeat on the first earnings report as well. Citi Research’s Garen Sarafian said in a note to investors: “Integration of the acquired RPS business met all targets during the year, with overall company growth across all segments demonstrating broad strength. Although pricing remains competitive, commentary that clients are willing to accept certain increases is encouraging.”