Certara reports 10% revenue growth in Q3, but cautious customer spending leads to narrowed guidance and delayed bookings

OPERATOR - (00:00:36)

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Satara third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during this session, you need to press Star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, David Daikler, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

David Daikler - Investor Relations - (00:01:15)

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you all for participating in today's conference call. On a call from Sertara, we have William Feary, Chief Executive Officer and John Gallagher, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today Sertara released financial results for the quarter ended September 30, 2025. A copy of the press release is available on the Company's website. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward looking statements and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward looking statements. Please refer to slide 2 in the accompanying materials for additional information which you can find on the Company's investor relations website. In the remarks or responses to questions, management may mention some non GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these non GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in the recent earnings press release available on the Company's website. Please refer to the reconciliation tables in the company materials for additional information. This conference call contains time sensitive information, is accurate only as the live broadcast today, Nov. 6, 2025. Certaria disclaims any obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial projections or forward looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. And with that, I'll turn the call over to William.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:02:25)

Thank you David and good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining Certara's third quarter earnings call. John and I will begin with prepared remarks and then we will take your questions. During the third quarter, our team continued to execute against our 2025 goals while also positioning Sertara for long term success by investing in our R and D and commercial teams. Third quarter revenue of $104.6 million was in line with our expectations, representing 10% reported year over year growth. We outperformed internal profitability expectations, delivering adjusted EBITDA of $35.2 million representing a margin of 34%. Our team remains focused on investing for growth with R and D up 24% versus the same period a year ago and increasing to 10% of revenue from 9% in the prior year period. On the other hand, third quarter bookings of $96.6 million came in below our expectations, representing growth of 1% among our Tier 1 services customers. We observed cautious spending behavior with some customers pushing deal timelines later into the fourth quarter and into 2026. Taking this into account, we are narrowing our revenue guidance to 415 to $420 million, which we believe reflects the most likely range of outcomes for the year based on our performance to date. We have raised our adjusted EBITDA margin guidance to the high end of our previous guidance range and raised our adjusted EPS guidance to reflect a continuation of outperformance against our profitability targets and the impact of share repurchase activity. We continue to see pockets of outperformance throughout our portfolio including our Simcyp and PK/PD software and our QSP services. However, some of our customers are still dealing with factors that impact decision making timelines and R and D allocation decisions. As large pharma customers adjust focus with their RD programs and now onshoring initiatives that are impacting personnel and resource allocations, we have seen a slowdown in deal completion timelines, particularly in regulatory services and biosim services. This slowdown has persisted into the beginning of the fourth quarter, conflicting with historical seasonality trends. We are closely monitoring consumer spending patterns as we begin to plan for 2026 at a high level. We continue to see several positive leading indicators for the biosimulation market and for Sertara among large pharma customers. The use of model informed drug development is growing throughout all stages of development. Customers are adopting biosimulation solutions for use in dosing, efficacy and toxicity analysis and using the technology earlier as we expand our software capabilities into discovery and pre clinical among our smaller customers. The adoption of biostimulation is accelerating through the use of our technology enabled services. As drug developers look to optimize their speed and efficiency, they're often attracted to areas of our business such as qsp which can help streamline decision making and trial design in both the pre clinical and clinical stages. Since our IPO we have seen a significant increase in both the number of customers using our products and services as well as the wallet share of Certara within larger organizations. Most of all, we are encouraged by our evolving relationships with key stakeholders and users at customers. Earlier this year we hosted our second annual Certainty Conference bringing together hundreds of our users to to discuss the future of model informed drug development. In early October we held the same conference in Barcelona with our European user base and the experience was very productive for all parties. At both events I had the opportunity to discuss Atara's products with customers where they provided feedback on our software, suggested new features and functionality and learned about our new products and long term vision for the Certara platform. There is tremendous value that can be gained from by making more informed decisions earlier in the drug development lifecycle, which is why we are moving into discovery and preclinical. We closed the Chemaxon acquisition a year ago in early October of 2024 which gave Certara an established product suite in Discovery with synergistic capabilities relative to CIMSIP. In the first 12 months under Certara ownership, Chemoxon has continued to grow and is on track to reach corporate average margins by the end of the year. Elsewhere, our services group has grown preclinical work in QSP, especially since the FDA's guidance promoting the use of new approach methodologies. QSP has grown ahead of the rest of the biosimulation business on a year to date basis and is becoming an increasingly important part of our business. Now turning to our financial performance in Software, bookings of $40.8 million represented growth of 17%. We saw solid bookings performance in tiers one and three, which were in line with expectation, while tier two was below expectations which we attribute more to timing than anything. Software revenue of $43.8 million grew 22% on a reported basis and 6% organically, led by strong growth from CIMSIP. In addition to $5.6 million of contribution from Chemaxon in services, bookings of $55.8 million declined 9% on a reported basis, driven by slowness in the Tier one customer base. We have continued to observe cautious decision making among large pharma customers into the fourth quarter. Services revenue of $60.8 million grew 3% on a reported basis and on an organic bas growth in QSP services. The innovation front, 2025 has been our most active product development year since our ipo. We've embedded artificial intelligence into both our development processes and our products, accelerating the pace of new model creation. Following our Vyasa acquisition, we launched several major products this quarter. Pinnacle 21 Enterprise, a cloud based upgrade improving regulatory data compliance and submission speed Phoenix Cloud, which transitions our customers from on premise to Certara cloud deployment and provides significant upgrades to product functionality and Certara IQ, our new software for QSP modeling designed to expand the use of bio simulation across discovery and clinical phases. Early Customer feedback on these releases has been excellent and we're confident they strengthen our long term software growth engine. Last year we announced the strategic review of our regulatory services business. To date, we have made significant progress in our evaluation, including dialogue with external parties and significant internal analysis of best practices. As we evaluate our business, we recognize that regulatory writing performance has been inconsistent. Simultaneously, we value the regulatory writing business ability to generate cash, which we have used to invest in growth and support recent share repurchases. At this point in time, we are in the final stages of our process and intend to share a definitive outcome before the end of 2025 to close. We remain focused on delivering our 2025 plan and entering 2026 well prepared to capitalize on the opportunities ahead. Although we are seeing some variability in Tier one services, we are encouraged by the widespread momentum of biostimulation adoption in drug development. I'll now hand things over to John Gallagher to discuss our financial results in more detail.

John Gallagher - Chief Financial Officer - (00:10:44)

Thank you, William hello everyone. Total revenue for the three months ended September 30, 2025 was $104.6 million, representing year over year growth of 10% on a reported basis and on a constant currency basis. Total bookings in the third quarter were $96.6 million, which increased 1% from the prior year period on a reported basis. Trailing 12 month bookings were $471.4 million, increasing 12% on a reported basis. Excluding Chemaxon. Total company organic bookings declined 4% compared with the third quarter last year. Software revenue was $43.8 million in the third quarter which increased 22% over the prior year period on a reported basis and 21% on a constant currency basis. Organic growth was 6% in the quarter, driven by strong growth from Simcyp. Chemaxon contributed $5.6 million to our reported revenue which was in line with our expectations. Ratable and subscription Revenue accounted for 65% of third quarter software revenues or 71% excluding Chemaxon, slightly down from 72% in the prior year period. Software bookings were $40.8 million in the third quarter which increased 17% from the prior year period. Third quarter bookings included $4.2 million of Chemaxon bookings. Organic software bookings grew 5% versus the prior year, trailing 12 month software bookings were $187.9 million up 23% year over year and the software net retention rate was 104 in the quarter consistent with our full year plan. Looking at our software bookings performance by tier we saw strong performance in Tiers one and three driven by the continued adoption of our software. In Tier one we saw some timing related slowness due to renewals which we expect to normalize in the fourth quarter. Now turning to services revenue which was $60.8 million in the third quarter, up 3% versus the prior year period on a reported basis and on a constant currency basis. We saw strong performance from our QSP and simsip services businesses in the quarter which was partially offset by softness in the regulatory services. Technology driven services bookings in the third quarter were $55.8 million which declined 9% from the prior year period. TTM services bookings were $283.5 million, up 6% as compared to the prior year. During the quarter we saw softer Performance from Tier 1 customers in biosimulation services driven by spending hesitancy. Among our largest customers in regulatory bookings declined in the double digits while biosim services were down low single digits. Total cost of revenue for the third quarter of 2025 was $39.7 million, an increase from $37.2 million in the third quarter of 2024, primarily due to higher software amortization and consulting expenses offset by lower employee related costs. Total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were 61.9 million, an increase from $55 million in the third quarter of 2024 primarily due to higher employee related costs in sales and marketing and R and D. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter of 2025 was $35.2 million, an increase from $33.1 million in the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter with 34% wrapping up the income statement Net income for the third quarter of 2025 was 1.5 million dollars compared to a net loss of 1.4 million dollars in the third quarter of 2024. Reported adjusted net income for the third quarter of 2025 with 22.2 million dollars compared to 20.3 million dollars for the third quarter of 2024. Diluted earnings per share for the third quarter of 2025 was one cent. Share in the third quarter of 2024. Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the third quarter Of 2025 was 14 cents compared to 13 cents per share in the third quarter of last year. Moving to the balance sheet, we finished the quarter with $172.7 million in cash and cash equivalents as of September 30, 2025. We had $293.1 million of outstanding borrowings on our term loan and full availability under our revolving credit facility. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, we executed a reprice of our outstanding term loan, which is expected to save $700,000 annually in interest expense beginning in 2026. Earlier this year, our board authorized a $100 million share repurchase program. We have repurchased approximately $41 million of stock during 2025. With year to date results and our outlook for the fourth quarter, we are providing the following guidance for 2025. We are narrowing the revenue range to $415 million to $420 million, representing 8 to 9% growth compared with 2024. We expect Tamaxon to contribute software revenue of 23 to $25 million. We expect an adjusted EBITDA margin around 32%, which is the high end of our previous guidance range, reflecting outperformance versus our internal profitability expectations. To date, we expect adjusted EPS in the range of 45 to 47 cents per share, fully diluted shares in the range of 160 to 162 million, and a tax rate in the range of 25 to 30%. I will now turn the call back over to our CEO, William Feary for closing remarks.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:17:20)

Thank you, John. To summarize our message today, our team is working diligently to execute our growth and profitability goals despite a mixed operating environment. We are excited to bring several new products to market and look forward to providing further updates on our progress early next year. Operator, can you please open the line for questions?

OPERATOR - (00:17:44)

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session as a reminder to ask a question, you need to press Star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while I compile the Q and A roster. Our first question comes from Michael Czernay from Lee Rink Partners. Please go ahead.

Dan Clark - (00:18:09)

Great, thank you. This is Dan Clark on for Mike. Just wanted to ask a little bit. On the Tier one services revenue or. Bookings dynamic in the quarter. I guess one when did you start to see a slowdown in decision making, timing and of the potential deals that got pushed. Appreciate the color on some of them. Hopefully closing in 4Q with the remainder in 2026. How are you kind of thinking that. Split at this point? Thank you.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:18:42)

Yeah. As it relates to the bookings. So it was our Tier one services customers where we saw delays and what we're seeing is Hesitancy, so a slowness in decision making and a lot of times we would talk about that as impacting timing and trickling into the next quarter. But what we just said in the prepared remarks though is that, you know, through the month of October we continue to see some deceleration in tier 1 services Bookings related to these larger customers of ours. And as a result of that, we're expecting it to continue in Q4.

OPERATOR - (00:19:29)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from David Windley from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

David Windley - Equity Analyst at Jefferies - (00:19:39)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Hopefully you can hear me. I'm in the car. I was hoping you could comment or disentangle the gross profit outperformance between mix and perhaps efficiency. Productivity.

John Gallagher - Chief Financial Officer - (00:20:01)

Yeah. Thank you, David. Yeah, I mean, so on the gross margin line then, you know, we've certainly seen some productivity, especially compared to last year. You might recall we did some reductions last year on the services side that hits cost of sales. We're still comping to that in the third quarter of this year. And therefore some of that productivity is a key component of why the gross profit is accelerating. The other piece of it of course is the fact that we're achieving more mix on a software basis. So when we're looking the software business has of course a higher gross profit than services. So not only are we getting productivity on the cost of sales side when we look at services, but the mix shift towards software is also a tailwind to the gross profit.

David Windley - Equity Analyst at Jefferies - (00:21:02)

So thank you for that. I was going to make my next question my second question about your areas of innovation, but it does end up being somewhat related. So I think you talked about Certara IQ as your is your more AI enabled QSP and Phoenix cloud launches. It sounds like those have been well received. The comment in the prepared about QSP being your fastest growing area, maybe you could also drill into that because I think today most of QSP is service driven, but you're launching this what I think sounds like a more more technology or software driven qsp. And how do you expect that to evolve and does that growth in QSP mix kind of reverse the software mix until the technology, the software picks up a little bit more? I'm just curious how the QSP feathers into that since you highlighted its growth. Thanks. Yeah, thanks David.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:22:08)

This is, this is Bill. We are executing the strategy that we set out to do when we acquired Applied Biomass, about whatever that was about two years ago, which was to take QSP and to bring a software platform to it. And that is CERTARA iq, which we launched, as you pointed out. So, you know, there's a huge demand for qsp. Some of it has to do with the recognition that this type of modeling has been quite useful now that the FDA has made its announcement on NAMs and on reducing the number of non human primates. And some of it has to do with the growth in biotech or in large molecules where QSP has been particularly, particularly valuable. We're attempting, and I think we will very much succeed with this product to create a standard product that QSP modelers use not just within pharma companies, but also as they go forward and submit their models for approvals to regulators. There's a big need in the market for this and there's a big opportunity to make QSP a lot more widespread by improving the efficiency of modeling, which we can do with AI and providing a platform where our consultants are much more efficient, providing the same platform so that our pharma customers are using the same platform internally. It can also drive that kind of same efficiency and we can get work going back and forth. And then finally, this is an opportunity for us to create foundational models, in particular therapeutic or drug modalities that we can sell over and over again using this software platform. So there's multiple ways that this will benefit the company financially as we go forward. There's nothing like it really on the QSP market. You know, there's obviously modeling tools out there, but we believe this is a significant advance. It's been well received. We only launched it a couple of weeks ago. So, you know, it's a bit early to talk about the. You know, the. Financial success, obviously, but we expect as we go into 2026, this will be a success for the company.

David Windley - Equity Analyst at Jefferies - (00:24:54)

Thank you. Thanks for that. Just said.

OPERATOR - (00:24:55)

All right, go ahead. That's fine. Go ahead. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Matt Hewitt from Craig Hollam Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Matt Hewitt - Equity Analyst at Craig Hollam Capital Group - (00:25:11)

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions and I apologize. I'm having to hop between a couple different calls. But first up, I recognize that there's some challenges or hesitancy. Your Tier one customers. I'm just curious if you've heard or seen any change since. We got a little bit of clarity on the most favored nation pricing and what that could mean, some clarity on the tariffs and what that impact could be. I mean, we've heard from a few other companies that post some of those initial most favored nation type contracts or changes that pharma was kind of re engaging Is that similar to what you're seeing or any color along those lines? Yeah. Thanks.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:25:53)

This is Bill. We have also heard other companies talking about that and heard some discussion among customers. So I would say that we're, you know, we're cautiously optimistic. You know, that that's a pretty recent development, so we need to, you know, see that kind of get out in the, in the marketplace. But I think any sign of kind of the macro stability for the tier one customers and what's going on with pricing, I think would be ultimately good for us and will flow into hopefully a better environment as we go into 2026.

Matt Hewitt - Equity Analyst at Craig Hollam Capital Group - (00:26:36)

Got it. And then maybe just as a follow up, and I realize it's still very early and we haven't even closed out this year yet. But as you're talking to your customers not only about the remainder of fiscal 25, but as they're starting to think about their budgets for fiscal 26, are you getting any sense for where those budgets may be going? Any sense for how modeling and simulation kind of fits into those budgetary plans for 26? Recognizing. Yes, it's early days, but having gone through this now for a while, I sense you guys might have a feel for. Okay, if we're, if we're hearing this at this stage, that bodes well for the final budgets when they're announced, you know, later this year, early next year. Thank you.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:27:21)

Yeah, I mean, we obviously only have kind of anecdotes. You're asking a question about the overall industry. I'd say what I can say is I think some of our new products have been very well received. People have talked about making sure that there will be budget for them as they go into 2026. And, you know, we're, we're getting some sense that the pullback and you know, the pullback in services is not across the entire industry. We see it in tier ones. We're actually doing quite well with tier threes with biotechs right now. You know, the tier one seems to be kind of a hesitancy based on the overall macroeconomic environment. And, you know, I think every time we hear kind of positive signs of stability, it's, you know, things get a little bit more bright for us. So we're not, you know, what I've heard, and we're expecting kind of, you know, what I want to call it, a stabilizing environment, I guess is the way I'll put it. As we go into 2026 as opposed to, you know, as opposed to kind of where we've seen Part of this year where it's been getting a little bit tougher.

Matt Hewitt - Equity Analyst at Craig Hollam Capital Group - (00:28:37)

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you very much.

OPERATOR - (00:28:41)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Sargot from Barclays. Please go ahead, Luke. You may be on mute one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Brennan Smith from TD Cowan. Please go ahead.

Brennan Smith - Equity Analyst at TD Cowan - (00:29:14)

Great. Thanks, guys, for taking the questions. Actually, just wanted to follow up on some of the earlier questions related to the software business a little bit more. And this is frankly something we're just asked by investors a fair amount, but I guess, you know, we're obviously seeing pharma and some of those tier one customers invest a lot more internally in some of their own A plus capabilities. And I guess, do you kind of feel that net. Net headwinds, tailwinds, maybe awash where you guys come out, just trying to understand, like to what extent as they build out those capabilities, they turn to you all to help make sure that those internal processes are ramping as they should? Or is it kind of an or rather than an and within their budgets, just based on your conversations. Thanks, guys.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:29:56)

Yeah, thanks for the question. What we've seen happen with AI has been tremendous. Starting more than a year ago, tremendous excitement and willingness to try things in pharma, but somewhat of a hesitancy to commit to enterprise sales until they understood the full implications of putting AI in terms of data security and how the products will be used. Sort of the. Let's call it, the quality controls that you need to put in around AI and some of these uses. So we saw a lot of. In the beginning, they were really great marketing opportunities, but slow to sell. And as we've gotten through 2025, we've seen somewhat of a pickup in actual sales of the pure AI products. All of our products that we've recently launched, well, let's say Phoenix and Sertara IQ have embedded AI in them, and that's been quite well received. And I think we're seeing a bit more willingness to move faster to put these things in as you deploy them across the enterprise. You're asking a somewhat different question also around is pharma considering building our core products using AI internally versus buying them from us? The core modeling technologies we have are really quite specialized, and so. That doesn't. Tend to be a real option. And you can see that with our software, which is still growing quite nicely and we expect will continue to be strong as we go into 2026.

Brennan Smith - Equity Analyst at TD Cowan - (00:31:55)

Got it. Thanks, guys.

OPERATOR - (00:31:58)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joe Verwink from Baird. Please Go ahead.

Joe Verwink - Equity Analyst at Baird - (00:32:07)

Hi. Great, thanks for taking my questions. Just to go back a couple questions ago, you mentioned the prospect of stabilized environments for 2026. What do you think stabilize means for Sertara growth potential at this point? And I just ask, as the last three years have obviously seen a lot of macro turbulence. Organic growth has averaged 3 to 4% over that stretch of time, is stabilized, supportive of mid to high single digit growth and robust gets you back to the double dig or any way directionally. Just appreciating kind of what the company has been through over recent history. Yeah.

John Gallagher - Chief Financial Officer - (00:32:52)

Hi Joe. So as it relates to us calling it stabilized then really what we're saying is we see continued performance on the software side which has been playing out according to plan this year. So you know, year to date software looking to bend 7% on a TPM basis and then you know, we're seeing or 6% year to date, 7% TPM and then 6% organic software this year. And then we're adding the product that Bill was talking about of course too. So those are the positives. The headwind to all that is what we're seeing in services right now. And we saw it, you can see it in the Q3 results, but you can also see it, we saw it in October and that's why we were indicating that as we look toward the end of the year this year, we're not really expecting to see the same level of seasonality that we've seen over prior years. And so that's going to provide a bit lower of a jumping off point as it relates to services. So services is likely to be in the low single digits as we approach next year as a result of that. So software going well, playing out according to plan. We've got new products, but services is the spot that we're keeping our eye on as we finish 26.

Joe Verwink - Equity Analyst at Baird - (00:34:25)

Okay, that's helpful. Color. Thank you. Just to go back to David's question on Grossmart Gen, as I look at the mix of softw sales this year, a lot of the incremental growth has come from higher license sales as opposed to subscriptions. Does that, and that might be Comaxon related, but in case it's not, is that a beneficial margin mix to year to date results or how to think of that versus a higher proportion of, I guess, rentable subscription revenue.

John Gallagher - Chief Financial Officer - (00:34:59)

Yeah, you've got that straight, Joe. So bringing in Chemaxon. Chemaxon is predominantly a license based at least right now. So whenever we're recognizing revenue there, we're getting all of it at Once. And so that combined with Phoenix Achievement on revenue this year is what's helping the gross margin, if you will, from that perspective, while at the same time is reducing the proportion of ratable that we have. And that's why I like to cite it not just what the ratable portion of software is, but even excluding Chemaxon as a better comp to the prior year.

Joe Verwink - Equity Analyst at Baird - (00:35:42)

Okay, great. Thank you very much.

OPERATOR - (00:35:46)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Kyle Cruz from ubs. Please go ahead.

Kyle Cruz - Equity Analyst at UBS - (00:35:52)

Hey, thank you for taking our questions. You mentioned that customers were adopting model informed drug development for use in toxicity and dosing analysis. CBER earlier in October here announced that you could use potentially pharmacokinetic analysis to replace some animal testing for first in human dosing. Can you elaborate a bit more on that point that you made earlier in the call?

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:36:12)

Thank you. Yeah. One of the significant uses around QSP has been in these two areas. So first in human dosing has been particular area of interest in pharma for modeling. It doesn't sound like the biggest problem, but when you really think about it, the initial dose that gets tried in a phase one trial really defines the range that will be used, you know, for all trials. Later. Many of the, you know, if the, if the doses that are tried are outside the effective or the safe range, they're kind of wasted. And so that's been recognized by a lot of companies in the pharmaceutical industry. And it's been, you know, also good to see that, you know, the regulators are paying attention and are encouraging it as well. So that's been one of the reasons for the uptake in modeling services like QSP that we've seen.

Kyle Cruz - Equity Analyst at UBS - (00:37:28)

Great, thank you for that. Can you speak briefly on your exposure to biologics or small molecule drugs at this point with your software offerings? Thank you.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:37:39)

We have exposure to both. We are fair. We always said, and I believe this has not changed that. Our exposure is pretty similar to what the pharmaceutical industry as a whole is working on at any given point. So. You know, the questions that get asked in modeling between small molecules and bias and large molecules are often somewhat different. You know, for example, small molecules, there can be more formulation questions and absorption questions. In large molecules, there are often more questions around things like dosing and immunological responses and things like that. However, we have products targeted for both. We have quite healthy and active businesses for both technologies and even other technologies that maybe don't even quite fit this kind of definition. You know, for example, we've got products, you know, focused on radio ligands and peptides, things like that. So, you know, I think we're pretty well covered in terms of our exposure and our investment in the technology to kind of serve both of these.

Kyle Cruz - Equity Analyst at UBS - (00:39:04)

Great, thank you.

OPERATOR - (00:39:07)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Max Smock from William Blair. Please go ahead.

Max Smock - Equity Analyst at William Blair - (00:39:15)

Hey guys, good afternoon. Thanks for taking our questions here. John, maybe just wanted to follow up on some of your earlier commentary around services bookings, particularly in Q4. I think you mentioned you haven't seen much improvement or didn't see much improvement in October. Just kind of looking back historically, you know, typically see a 30, 40% sequential increase in bookings in Q4. You just kind of frame out, given the volatility, volatility quarter to quarter here, how you're thinking about kind of the range of the outcomes on the services bookings in Q4 just to give us some more color around what organic growth. Of that segment can look like in 2026. Yeah.

John Gallagher - Chief Financial Officer - (00:39:49)

Hi, Max. So we do still expect from Q3 into Q4 a sequential increase, but not to the same magnitude that we've seen historically. Historically, you've seen a book to bill in Q4 that's 1.3 to 1.4 and we don't anticipate that being the case given what we've seen through October.

Max Smock - Equity Analyst at William Blair - (00:40:12)

Yeah, thank you for that. That's helpful. Maybe just one on the margin side, a really nice performance in the quarter. And I know in the past you talked about maybe pulling back on some of your investments if the macro environment got a little bit more challenging. Just want to make sure that that wasn't a factor that contributed to the beat on margins in the third quarter here. And then as we're thinking out in 2026, you can just talk about how you're kind of prioritizing the opportunity that you have to here to continue to advance or invest in your pipeline versus prioritizing margin expansion. And just your initial thoughts on how we should be thinking about margins moving forward.

John Gallagher - Chief Financial Officer - (00:40:48)

Yeah. So definitely not pulling back on the investments. And you can see that reflected in the 24% growth in R and D year on year. So we're continuing to make those investments. Good discipline across the rest of the P and L. We talked a little bit about gross profit, but if you exclude chemaxon from the expense lines, you'd see that they're, you know, in line or lower than growing at the rate of sale. So I'd say yes, making the investments. Absolutely. You can most notably see that reflected in the R and D line, as you would expect and there is more investment to come as we look at next year. But we've been pleased with our ability to navigate both making those investments in software development while also preserving our margin.

Max Smock - Equity Analyst at William Blair - (00:41:39)

Got it. Thanks again for taking our questions.

OPERATOR - (00:41:44)

Thank you. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question comes from John park from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

John Park - Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley - (00:42:01)

Hey guys, thank you for getting my question. I was wondering, I know you guys Talked about Tier 1 and some of the macros that they're facing. I was wondering if you could Talk. To Tier 2 and Tier 3, acknowledging. That they make up a smaller portion of the revenue, but is it any different in terms of some of the macro headwinds that Tier 1s are facing? Thank you.

John Gallagher - Chief Financial Officer - (00:42:23)

Yeah, that's a bright spot for us, actually. So Tier three, both Tier two and Tier three services have had good growth throughout the year. And in fact in Q3, we saw double digit growth in bios and services, tier 3. So this has been a partial offset to the headwinds that we've been describing in Tier 1 has been the positive growth and momentum that we have in Tier two and most notably in Tier three.

John Park - Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley - (00:42:56)

Great. Just as a follow up, I know. You guys work with the fda. I was wondering if there was any type of waterfall implications with the government shutdown for FDA or any of the. Agencies you guys work with.

William Feary - Chief Executive Officer - (00:43:13)

Yeah, thanks for the question. You know, it's a. I guess the. Question revolves around how long it lasts. I think most people in the pharmaceutical industry believe, you know, this will resolve itself at some point. And that point will be, you know, will be less time than, you know, causes serious issues. You know, it goes on for a really long time and we have, you know, big slowdown in drug approvals or something, that's one thing. But I don't think that that's really what people believe. You know, there's, you know, there's a little bit of slowdown in terms of any kind of contracting with the government, but we don't expect that will have a significant effect on the year.

John Park - Equity Analyst at Morgan Stanley - (00:44:06)

Great.

OPERATOR - (00:44:07)

Thank you. Thank you. I am showing no further questions at this time. Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.