Earnings call transcript: IQVIA Q2 2025 beats expectations, stock surges

IQVIA Holdings Inc. (IQV) reported better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter of 2025, with earnings per share (EPS) of $2.81, surpassing the forecast of $2.77. Revenue also exceeded expectations, coming in at $4.017 billion versus the anticipated $3.96 billion. Following the announcement, IQVIA’s stock rose by 15.44%, trading at $183.50 in pre-market activity, reflecting strong investor confidence. With a market capitalization of $31.5 billion and a "GOOD" Financial Health Score according to InvestingPro, IQVIA continues to demonstrate solid fundamentals.

Key Takeaways

• EPS of $2.81 beat the forecast of $2.77, a 1.44% surprise.
• Revenue of $4.017 billion exceeded expectations and grew 5.3% year-over-year.
• Stock surged 15.44% in pre-market trading, buoyed by strong earnings results.
• Full-year revenue guidance set between $16.1 billion and $16.3 billion.
• Development of over 50 AI agents planned for Q3 deployment.

Company Performance

IQVIA demonstrated robust performance in the second quarter, with significant growth in both revenue and earnings per share compared to the previous year. The company’s focus on AI and innovation, alongside strategic collaborations, has bolstered its competitive position in the life sciences sector. Despite ongoing market uncertainties, IQVIA’s ability to secure a record backlog and improve win rates indicates resilience and strategic agility.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $4.017 billion, up 5.3% year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $910 million.
• Adjusted Diluted EPS: $2.81, up 6.4% year-over-year.
• Full Year Revenue Guidance: $16.1-$16.3 billion.
• Full Year Adjusted EBITDA Guidance: $3.75-$3.825 billion.

Earnings vs. Forecast

IQVIA’s Q2 2025 EPS of $2.81 surpassed the forecasted $2.77, marking a 1.44% positive surprise. Revenue also topped expectations, coming in at $4.017 billion against a forecast of $3.96 billion, resulting in a 1.52% revenue surprise. This performance continues a trend of exceeding market expectations, which has been a consistent theme in recent quarters.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings announcement, IQVIA’s stock experienced a significant uptick, rising 15.44% to $183.50 in pre-market trading. This surge reflects investor optimism regarding the company’s financial health and strategic direction. The stock’s movement is notable as it approaches its 52-week high of $252.88, indicating strong market confidence. InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is currently undervalued, with analysts maintaining a Strong Buy consensus (1.67 rating) and projecting further upside potential. For deeper insights into IQVIA’s valuation and 7 additional exclusive ProTips, visit InvestingPro.

Outlook & Guidance

IQVIA has set its full-year revenue guidance between $16.1 billion and $16.3 billion, reflecting growth expectations of 4.5% to 5.8%. The company plans to deploy over 50 AI agents in the third quarter, expanding its capabilities across commercial, real-world, and R&D segments. This strategic focus on AI is expected to drive efficiency and innovation, positioning IQVIA for continued growth.

Executive Commentary

CEO Ari Booski emphasized the importance of AI in the company’s strategy, stating, "AI, especially agentification of our processes, is extremely important." He also highlighted the deployment of over 50 AI agents in Q3, covering 15 use cases, as a key initiative. Booski noted, "Success in the marketplace is a function of generating as many opportunities as possible," underscoring the company’s proactive approach to market challenges.

Risks and Challenges

• Continued uncertainty in the biopharma industry may affect client decision-making timelines.
• Pricing pressures across market segments could impact margins.
• Macroeconomic factors and regulatory changes pose potential risks.
• Competition in the AI space may intensify, requiring ongoing innovation.
• Supply chain disruptions could affect operational efficiency and costs.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts focused on IQVIA’s AI development progress and its impact on future growth. Questions also addressed gross margin compression and cancellation trends, which are returning to historical norms. The company’s proactive approach to market uncertainty was a key discussion point, with executives expressing confidence in their strategic initiatives.

Full transcript - IQVIA Holdings Inc (IQV) Q2 2025:

Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the IQVIA Second Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question and answer session. As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Mr. Joseph, please begin your conference.

Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury, IQVIA: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our second quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. With me today are Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Eric Sherber, Executive Vice President and General Counsel Mike Fidock, Senior Vice President, Financial Planning and Analysis and Gustavo Faroni, Senior Director of Investor Relations. Today, we will be referencing a presentation that will be visible during this call for those of you on our webcast.

This presentation will also be available following us on the Events and Presentations section of our IQVIA Investor Relations website at ir.iqvia.com. Before we begin, I would like to caution listeners that certain information discussed by management during this conference call will include forward looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those stated or implied by forward looking statements, risks and uncertainties associated with the company’s business, which are discussed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 10 ks and subsequent SEC filings. In addition, we will discuss certain non GAAP financial measures on this call, which should be considered as a supplement to, and not a substitute for, financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation of these non GAAP measures to the comparable GAAP measures is included in the press release and conference call presentation.

I would now like to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Ari Punstein.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Thank you, Gary, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our second quarter results. IQVIA delivered another strong quarter. Revenue exceeded the high end of our guidance range as we reported over $4,000,000,000 in quarterly revenue for the first time in our history. Adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA EPS came in towards the high end of our guidance range.

As expected, Taz continued to perform well in the second quarter, supported by clients’ commercial roadmap strategies and new drug launches. TAZ reported revenue growth above our expectations at 8.9%, led by double digit growth in real world evidence. On the clinical side, our net bookings in the quarter were approximately $2,500,000,000 translating to a net book to bill of 1.12. Our booking performance improved in the quarter even as the overall market environment remains essentially unsettled and there is still uncertainty persisting regarding future administration policies affecting the biopharmaceutical industry. Of course, this continues to cause some delays in decision making on new programs, but the R and D team has reacted to this new environment by intensifying our see more, win more go to market strategy aimed at expanding market gains.

This strategy is helping the business navigate this period and in fact, the R and D team is seeing good traction from these efforts. Our qualified pipeline was up high single digits sequentially and year over year, driven mostly by the EVP segment. Importantly, we saw a meaningful uptick in RFP flow. Second quarter RFP flow grew low teens year over year and high single digit sequentially with growth in all customer segments. Our win rate improved significantly, most notably in the EVP segment.

As a result, our backlog reached a new record of over $32,000,000,000 at the end of the quarter, growing over 5% compared to the prior year. Now let’s look at the results of the quarter. We delivered strong revenue and profit results. Total revenue for the second quarter came in above the high end of our guidance range, representing year over year growth of 5.3 on a reported basis and 6.3% if you exclude the COVID related work from both periods. At constant currency, revenue grew 3.64.6% excluding COVID.

Second quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 2.6%. Second quarter adjusted diluted EPS of $2.81 increased 6.4% year over year. Now let’s review a few highlights of business activities. As you know, AI is a big deal for us. We are all in, in this transformation.

And as we’ve discussed before, a lot of work here is done with NVIDIA support. IQVIA is developing AI agents that simplify operations across life sciences. In fact, NVIDIA showcased these agents in June at their flagship conference in Europe, where our trial platform was highlighted as a leading example of smart AI agentification. This collaboration develops custom built AI agents using NVIDIA technology designed to streamline processes, enhance workflows, and accelerate insights across the life sciences ecosystem. Use cases for this agentic offerings include target identification, clinical data review, literature review, market assessment and HCP engagements.

This momentum has not gone unnoticed, reflecting the strength of our AI strategy and execution. Everest Group recently named IQVIA a front runner generative AI leader for the life sciences industry in its recent report, AI Ideas to Action, Operationalizing Generative AI in Life Sciences. IQVIA was the only CRO to receive the highest ranking of front runner in this report, which measures the value impact of end to end generative AI capabilities for 15 carefully selected broad based AI companies, CROs and life sciences specialists and niche firms. Let me now give you some color on TAP’s business activity. A top 10 pharma client selected IQVIA to advance their market access strategy for a breakthrough type one diabetes therapy entering Europe.

By leveraging AI driven insights and pricing expertise, IQVIA will help shape this value proposition, pricing and contracting approach to support successful adoption. The European biotech client selected IQVIA to support the global launch of the novel oncology therapy. IQVIA is delivering a GenAI powered assistant and HCP persona insights. This solution will enable simulation of HCP behavior and precise targeting showcasing IQVIA’s unique blend of data, AI enabled technology as well as our expertise in product launch and the specific oncology therapeutic area. The top 10 pharma clients awarded IQVIA a strategic engagement to support the launch of a novel oncology therapy in The U.

S, delivering insights and technology infrastructure to ensure commercial success. The top 10 pharma clients selected IQVIA to lead a global real world safety and effectiveness study for a new dermatology treatment, spanning eight countries and 3,000 patients, which will support product adoption and long term evidence generation. The European biotech company awarded IQVIA a global observational study to assess the real world safety and effectiveness of rare disease therapy in kidney disorders. The win highlights IQVIA’s rare disease expertise, strong client partnership and use of AI enabled tools to optimize study design and delivery. Moving now to R and D.

We continue to win a significant portion of oncology related trials. Our leadership in oncology research is exemplified by our recently announced strategic collaboration with Sarah Cannon Research Institute, one of the nation’s leading oncology research hospital network. This strategic collaboration aims to transform oncology trials globally. By the 19 at UBS Global Scale and Connected Intelligence with SCRI, community oncology expertise, we are aiming to accelerate trial activation, boost recruitment and streamline data capture of electronic health records, ultimately removing operational barriers and speeding the delivery of breakthrough therapies to patients. A few examples of significant wins the R and D team have in the oncology space.

In biotech, clients selected IQVIA to lead the complex global Phase III colorectal cancer program. IQVIA was selected due to our oncology therapeutic expertise, proven track record, knowledge of the regulatory landscape and our analytics capabilities. Rapidly scaling biotech selected IQVIA to lead two Phase III global pancreatic oncology trials, continuing a high performing partnership with this client. A large pharma client selected IQVIA to lead a global Phase III MDS oncology trial, continuing our successful collaboration with these clients on this asset. Obesity is another therapeutic area where our performance has been particularly strong.

The biotech client selected IQVIA to lead two global Phase III obesity trials, leveraging our vast footprint and deep expertise in chronic weight management. The top 10 pharma clients selected IQVIA laboratories to support expansion of their next generation GLP-one development program, building on an existing partnership to investigate the drug’s efficacy in treating obesity and type two diabetes. I also want to highlight our growing strength in cell and gene therapy trials. IQVIA was selected to manage a significant gene editing program for Wilson disease spanning both observational and interventional studies. The project deploys AI enabled solutions that drive speed and precision in rare disease research.

Finally, we were honored to be recently recognized for our innovation in facilitating decentralized trials. Was named winner of the Best Mobile Apps for Patient Engagement at the twenty twenty five MedTech Breakthrough Awards. IQVIA’s app empowers patients and caregivers to participate in decentralized trials from anywhere while ensuring strong privacy and security. The app has multilingual support and is available across many geographic regions, increasing patient access, engagements and retention. And now to Ron, more details on our financial performance.

Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IQVIA: Thanks, Ari, and good morning, everyone. Let’s start by reviewing revenue. Second quarter revenue of $4,017,000,000 was up 5.3% on a reported basis and 3.6% constant currency. Now excluding COVID related work from this year and last, revenue grew 6.3% at actual currency and 4.6% constant currency. Technology and analytics solutions revenue for the second quarter was $1,628,000,000.

That’s up 8.9% on a reported basis to 6.8% constant currency. R and D Solutions second quarter revenue was $2,201,000,000 up 2.5% reported and 1.3% constant currency. Excluding the step down in COVID related revenues, RMBS revenue growth was 4.2% at actual currency and 3% at constant currency. Lastly, contract sales and medical solutions second quarter revenue was $188,000,000, and that was up 9.3% reported and 6.4% constant currency. For the first half, total company revenue was $7,846,000,000, up 3.9% reported and 3.5% at constant currency.

And excluding COVID related work, revenue grew 4.8% at actual currency and approximately 4.5% at constant currency. Technology and analytics, solutions revenue for the first half was $3,174,000,000 up 7.7% more than 7.2% in constant currency. R and D Solutions first half revenue of $4,303,000,000 was up 1.4% reported and 1.2% in constant currency. And excluding COVID related work from both periods, revenue and RMBS grew 3.1% in actual currency and approximately 3% in constant currency for the half. Lastly, our CFMS in the first half had revenue of $369,000,000 up 2.2% reported and 1.9% of constant currency.

K. Moving down to p and l. Adjusted EBITDA was $910,000,000 for the second quarter. Well, first half adjusted EBITDA was $1,793,000,000. Second quarter GAAP net income was $266,000,000 and GAAP diluted earnings per share was $1.54 For the first half, GAAP net income was $515,000,000 or $2.94 of earnings per diluted share.

Adjusted net income was $486,000,000 for the second quarter and adjusted diluted earnings per share was $2.81 up 6.4%. For the first half, adjusted net income was $965,000,000 or $5.5 per diluted share, that being up 6.2% year over year. RMBS backlog at June 30 was $32,100,000,000 an increase of 5.1% year over year. Next twelve month revenue from backlog was $8,100,000,000 growing 4.8% year over year. Let’s review balance sheet metrics now.

As of June 30, cash and cash equivalents totaled $2,039,000,000 and gross debt was $15,490,000,000 and that resulted in net debt of $13,451,000,000 Our net leverage ratio ended the quarter at 3.61 times trailing twelve month adjusted EBITDA. Second quarter cash flow from operations was $443,000,000 and capital expenditures were $151,000,000 resulting in free cash flow of $292,000,000 Now you saw in the quarter that we repurchased $6.00 $7,000,000 of our shares, which brought our first half share repurchase activity to above $1,000,000,000 This leaves us with approximately $2,000,000,000 repurchase authorization remaining under our current program. Also in the quarter, we issued $2,000,000,000 of senior notes maturing in 02/1932. Now let’s turn to the guidance. We’re narrowing our guidance ranges for revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted diluted earnings per share as follows.

We expect revenue to be between $16,100,000,000 and $16,300,000,000 representing year over year growth of 4.5% to 5.8%, or just over 5% at the midpoint. This guidance includes year over year FX tailwind of approximately 100 basis points. We continue to assume about $100,000,000 step down in COVID related work and approximately 150 basis points of contribution from M and A activity for the full year. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $3,750,000,000 and $3,825,000,000 We expect adjusted diluted EPS to be between $11.75 and $12.05. That’s up 5.6 to 8.3% versus prior year or about 7% at the midpoint.

Okay. For the third quarter, we expect revenue to be between $4,025,000,000 and $4,100,000,000. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $935,000,000 and $955,000,000, and adjusted diluted EPS is expected to be between $2.92 and $3.02 Both this quarterly guidance and our full year guidance assume that foreign currency rates as of yesterday, July 21, continue for the balance of the year. To summarize, in q two, we delivered strong revenue and profit results towards or above the high end of our expectation. The TAS business unit, in particular, reported revenue above target in R despite the effect of continued uncertainty on the industry.

The team here has responded well, improving win rates and expanding share, which together contributed to stronger bookings and a record backlog in the quarter. Forward booking metrics for our R and and Ds offerings remain positive, including a significant uptick that we saw in RFP flow. We saw strong demand in the quarter for our senior notes issuance. And finally, we ramped up our share repurchase ad activity in the quarter, which brought our first half repurchases to above $1,000,000,000. And with that, let me hand it back to the operator, Tina, for q and a.

Conference Operator: At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Luke Sergott with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Sam, Analyst, Barclays: This is Sam on for Luke. Thanks for taking our questions here. Just first one on TADS. That’s continued to kind of defy the overall environment of, you know, MSN peers, tariff peers. And that seems to be hitting RMBS a little bit along with your peers on the clinical research side.

Being that at least a portion of it is short cycle, how does Taz continue to earn through this environment? Is the real world evidence strength and other areas of strength within Taz offsetting any weakness in any of the other subsegments? And how does the current environment differ from a year or two ago where CAS was seeing headwinds and

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: the R

Sam, Analyst, Barclays: and D side of the business was kinda humming along? So seems that the diversification story is shining through here.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. Good morning, Luke, and thanks for your question. I’m not sure. I guess you’re more of a general overall environment and what happened in each of the segments. Again, I can only say that in Tires, we delivered better than expected revenue growth in the quarter, above the high end of our expectation range, just under 9%, 7% of constant currency.

We we’ve been on a strong recovery in sales since really the first quarter of last year. Expected that. It’s a little bit better than expected. Again, we’ve said this many times, our clients continue launching new drugs despite the uncertainty or short term uncertainty over the environment. Molecules that were approved need to be launched and you can only delay so much.

And so at some point in time, we knew this was going to happen and this happening. Clients are continuing to execute in the regular way. They have commercial road maps and those require services. We really saw an improvement in the general environment, when things slowed down and there was sort of a lot of things put on hold and Taz growth deteriorated to low single digits 2023 and as part of 2024, we saw decision timelines expand considerably. And they’ve now gone back to normal, actually even better than that.

And, you know, it’s sort of business as usual. In terms of the segments, yes, real world was the strongest, double digit. Remember, real world is about onethree of the TAS business. And the rest of the business, data, consulting and tech, depending on the segment, was between low and mid single digits, I see here for the segments. But you’re correct, the driver main driver of superior growth was the real world business and the rest was again flat to mid single.

We feel good by the way about leading indicators and continued strength in 2025. The opportunities created in the quarter grew, think, very strongly, both in volume and dollars. The hit rate, the win rates in TAS improved a couple of points year over year. As I mentioned before, the average time to close improved further. I think it’s 15% or so shorter than prior year.

So we continue to be confident in fundamentals of the business and the and the and the recovery. And then, you know, you asked about our yes. You said humming along. I didn’t call when the team did follow-up humming along. I think there was very high level of activity and intensification of our go to market activities, which enabled us to book on a net basis $2,500,000,000 in the current environment versus the $2,100,000,000 we booked in the first quarter.

And we generated a lot of opportunities and forward demand indicators as we shared in our introductory remarks are very strong. Thank you.

Sam, Analyst, Barclays: Absolutely.

Conference Operator: Our next question is from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel. Ari,

Shlomo Rosenbaum, Analyst, Stifel: I want to focus a little bit more on the R and DS and what we were talking about. It sounds like from what you’re saying is the environment did not really improve, but you’re gaining more ground in that. And if you could double click a little bit, is it is it really the client confidence is is is really the same? Or is there anything that’s improving? I’m just asking also because not just did, you know, Medpace also reported with some better numbers.

And usually, if you have a few, you know, competitors there that are moving the same direction, it seems to indicate some kind of improvement because not everybody is always doing better You know, they gotta be taking share from somebody. Maybe you could just double click a little bit in terms of the change sequentially of of what you saw on the ground.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. And just to put things aside here, you know, the competitor you mentioned, you called the competitor, but I just want to say, we never meet in any big defenses with this competitor. So we’re not planning to say it’s sort of a different business as the numbers show. But moving to your question on RDS, we the environment, I said, remains unsettled in terms of the administration policies and the level of uncertainty that’s out there. But whereas in prior periods, we saw clients sort of on hold.

We noted that clients essentially, not necessarily returning to business as usual, but are getting on with their programs. You know, if you have a a a in front of you a phase three program that’s very important for the company and that is going to last four years, you know, it’s important you be in market ASAP if you have good data and good results and good promise for the program. And you can’t really afford to wait another six months. So at some point in time, you got to get on with life. So to that degree, I would say the environment possibly has improved slightly and we see some of those green shoots in the demand metrics.

It has remained the same with respect to the administration policies and the uncertainty around exactly what may or may not happen. And that time window is relatively short, limited, and narrowing. And therefore, I guess, the client base is moving on to a degree. And to that, in that sense, the environment is improving. And then separately, we’ve had to use your expression, which I think is a good one, we lean on or lean in to the market a little bit more forcefully than usual because this see more, win more, that is we’re expanding our net, we are responding to more RFPs, generating more flow of opportunities And we are going in to win.

And our win rate has increased. And I think all of that is essentially what’s led to the good results we’ve had this quarter better than what we would have expected. And by the way, this is across segments, large, mid and EVP. But I would note that the EVP segment was particularly strong.

Shlomo Rosenbaum, Analyst, Stifel: Thank you.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Elizabeth Anderson with Evercore ISI. Please go ahead.

Elizabeth Anderson, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the question. I was wondering two things. One, if you could comment on sort of the cadence in the back half of the year. Obviously, you gave the revenue assumptions for the third quarter.

Is there anything to think about in terms of timing aspects? I know you guys have taken previously started talking about the restarting of a trial that had previously gotten delayed, just so we can think about the cadence of that into 2026? And then secondly, anything to talk call out on the gross margin side? It looks like maybe it would have some just mix impact from TAS, but just anything to think about there in terms of the cadence for the back half of the year? Thank you so much.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. So on the cadence, I mean, first of all, generally, and that’s it. There is a certain level of seasonality to our business, which you’re familiar with. First quarter being the sort of weakest, a lot of our business in Europe essentially stops from July 15 to September 15. But and the fourth quarter is is much stronger.

That’s true in R and D and S and it’s true in past. So that’s the first general element, and that’s always true year in, year out. With respect to R and D and the specifics of your question regarding that large delay trial that we said before was going to resume in the latter part of twenty twenty five and that’s still on. And in fact, we’re having, you know, initiation discussions with the clients, and that is still on as as forecasted. And and and that obviously will be responsible for some of the larger than usual uptick in the fourth quarter of this year.

So that’s for the RDS. You have other questions. Taz, again, know, tougher compared second half versus last year. Last year, you remember we generated, I think, 9%, if I recall, over 9% in the fourth quarter. So obviously, the comparison there is a bit more difficult when we get to the back half of the year in CAS.

But again, we’re trying to be still early in the year, and we don’t want to move the needle too much at this point. And let’s see what happens. Everything looks good for now on Taz and R and D, yes, as you suggest, the cadence is looks for a gradual improvement of the growth rate and especially in the fourth quarter because of that resumption of that large trial as well as, of course, compares versus last year and generally stronger business activity than we would have expected otherwise. You did ask about gross margin. I think you may have hit the wrong one.

Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. Yeah. Look. You you did see some compression in our gross margin in the quarter, and about a third of that is due to the FX tailwind. As you know, FX tends to move our revenue line without moving our EBITDA line very much.

And about two thirds of it was due to product mix. We had the higher revenue growth in real world and TADS, which tends to be a lower margin portion of that business. And r and d s, we had increased pass through revenues and also an increased proportion of FSP revenues. So those were the drivers of what you saw. Now, of course, on the s g and a side, we had strong cost control and offset quite a bit of that, gross margin compression.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Right. Right. That’s that’s that’s exactly right. It’s a mix. Basically, the the the the short answer is the pressure on gross margin is mix driven for two thirds and FX driven for one third.

And then, of course, below the line, we below the SG and A level, we offset by our strong cost reductions and so on. We offset about onethree of that margin compression.

Elizabeth Anderson, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Makes sense. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Michael Cherny with Leerink Partners. Please go ahead.

Shlomo Rosenbaum, Analyst, Stifel: Great. Thank you. This is Dan Clark on for Mike. Just had a question as you’ve been getting involved in more opportunities. One, are you seeing more CROs on average in an RFP?

And are there any changes in pricing worth calling out? Thank you.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: When you say more CROs, you mean more people invited to the table, to the party?

Shlomo Rosenbaum, Analyst, Stifel: Yes. Exactly.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yes. I mean, look, it again, once again, it depends, on the clients and on the segments. With respect to the large segments, over the course of last year, virtually every large pharma company essentially reinvited the top five or six CROs, that is the three largest ones and the three smaller ones, and we bid their preferred partnerships. And as we mentioned, we were very happy that we won and expanded all of those relationships further. I would say the three largest ones essentially are the main providers and the small ones are invited essentially to keep pricing in line from the point of view of the large pharma customers.

And with respect to the other segments, it’s relationships, it’s go to market. And generally, the VP segments, you may have two or three bids. And we don’t see much of a difference versus what was the case before. Now some of the competitors are forcing a little bit of a price reductions. And I would say that, look, our strategy to see more and win more means that we are at the table every time.

And we whereas in the past, the competitor may have reduced pricing and we might have walked away because we would not have wanted to align at that price level. You know, now we we we don’t more often than not, we will not walk away and grab business. We will always prefer to have an additional point of top line growth. And then we’ll work later on our costs and margins and accept some short to medium term margin pressure in order to ensure that we continue to build our backlog. So yes, your question about pricing, is there pricing pressure?

Yes, because of all the reasons I mentioned. Plus the market environment, as I said, continues to be tighter. And therefore, you have multiple at the table for a relatively smaller pie, and that inevitably leads to pricing pressures. So but in that environment, we are the largest player. We have the global scale player and we intend to win.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Garro with Stephens Incorporated. Please go ahead.

Jeff Garro, Analyst, Stephens Incorporated: Yeah. Good morning and thanks for taking the question. I was hoping we could dig in a little further on AI. Any updates you have on development progress of additional AI solutions and expanding use cases? And I know it’s early, but curious what you’re seeing in terms of demand from customers.

And then lastly, any further comments about how you guys are using AI internally to drive efficiencies in the business? Thanks.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Thank you. Well, yes, look, AI, especially agentification of our processes is extremely important. We keep hiring resources, building up teams and scaling up our efforts. We are progressing as planned to deploy highly specialized industry focused AI agents, both on the clinical side and on the commercial side. So far, we’ve developed over 20 agents into production that cover three use cases in each of commercial real world and R and Ds.

We’re seeing positive results. We’re experiencing significant client interest. Some are already being used. For example, we have one multi agent system for literature review with expanded capacity to it has expanded the capacity to review by 10x. Another agent allows us to reduce delivery time by two thirds from twelve weeks to four weeks with some significant cost reductions in our patient journeys for our clients.

We are currently developing over 50 agents to be deployed in the third quarter to production and covering 15 use cases. What this means for look, there’s enormous amount of interest from clients. Obviously, every large organization wants to be on this AI train. And initially, especially large pharma wants to develop their own solutions. Over time, it’s becoming apparent that, you know, speed here is extremely important because it all depends on your ability to train your AI models.

And, you know, we’ve got the the good, so to speak. We’ve got the the materials, the data, the expertise, which is why we’re collaborating with NVIDIA on trading these AI agents and trying to move as fast as we can. It’s hard to see the impact in the short term, but it will make a difference in terms of our ability to execute a much larger backlog faster on the R and D S and our ability to execute commercial strategies for our clients on the commercial side a lot faster, real world studies a lot faster. So speed, efficiency over the long term, obviously, we expect internally that those efficiencies will enable us to resume margin expansion and go back to and continue to mitigate those pricing pressures we are seeing in the short.

Michael Ryskin, Analyst, BOFA: Your

Conference Operator: next question comes from the line of Michael Ryskin with BOFA. Please go ahead.

Michael Ryskin, Analyst, BOFA: Thanks for taking the question guys. Ari, I want to come back to the win rates you called out in EBP, touched on that a couple of times. Just wondering if you could expand on sort of what steps you’ve taken internally with the organization to achieve those higher win rates and whether you think that’s sustainable going forward. Is that a sort of a sustainable change? Or is that something more effective of the dynamic and the near term market environment?

Thanks.

Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury, IQVIA: Well, look,

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: success in the marketplace is a function, a, of generating as many opportunities as possible, but we have the opportunity to bid. And as I said, that’s part of the first part of our strategy, which is see more. So we’re much more aggressive in going to market, in responding to RFPs, in generating the RFPs. The RFP flow grew low teens year over year and high single digits sequentially. And again, the growth was across all customer segments.

I might say EVP was up very, very strong, very strong. Know, the RFP flow was up low teens year over year. Large pharma was low to mid single digits, and EVP was was much higher than that. Now it’s great to generate the flow that you have to win. And there, our directive is to win more and to win as much as we can.

Now back to the earlier question that sometimes requires us to align to a lower price than we would have been willing to tolerate in the past. But we’ve sort of adjusted and fine tuned that strategy and now are actually winning a lot more than we were before. Now you are asking is this sustainable? The answer is I don’t see why not the flow of opportunity is there. If we look at the qualified pipeline, which is an earlier indicator, an earlier leading indicator versus RFP flow, the qualified pipeline is up year over year and sequentially high single digits.

And again, in EBT, it’s there in the double digits growth year over year. So we don’t we see that the demand we are able to participate in is increasing. Our win rate depends on our strategy, on our capabilities. We believe strongly that we are uniquely positioned, and we will continue to push to win. So the win rate is up significantly.

I don’t think we disclosed those numbers. I have them in front of me and they are very, very good.

Sam, Analyst, Barclays: Right. Thanks.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Dan Leonard with UBS. Please go ahead.

Shlomo Rosenbaum, Analyst, Stifel: Thank you. I was hoping to talk a bit more about the margin. The two thirds of gross margin compression you attributed to mix, how do we think about that going forward, especially in the context of that flat to 30 basis point margin expansion framework that you’ve previously discussed?

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yes. I mean, look, this is the mix is what it is. Real world is growing faster, and that’s lower margins. We have more FSP to execute in the short term, and that’s also lower margins on the RDS side. So I think in the short term, I would say that is going to continue.

And by short term, I mean, in the next couple of quarters. Having said that, I might mention that this handler moved towards FSP. I’ve said this before and I will repeat it. I do not believe is strong. In fact, and it fluctuates by the way, but in fact in this quarter, the proportion of net bookings that FSP is in the very, very low single digits.

And I mean very, very low. Everything else was FSP. Full service. Sorry, everything else was full service, right, FFO. So I think overall, we saw FSP as a proportion of backlog tick up one or two points from a historic 14%, 15% to more 16%, 17%.

But we see it coming down back to the same level. So I think RDS, yeah, in the short term, some mix unfavorable mix, but I think, you know, after that, we should be back to a more favorable mix.

Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IQVIA: But all that’s reflected for the next couple of quarters in the guidance? Yes.

Michael Ryskin, Analyst, BOFA: That’s right. And you just also have to remember about the FX dynamic we have. We have that tailwind, and that’s compressing margins as well.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Right. Thank you. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jalinda Singh with Truist Securities. Please go ahead.

Jalinda Singh, Analyst, Truist Securities: Thank you and thanks for taking my questions. So I want to go back to SaaS business. Thanks for the color by business lines. I actually wanted to double click on business and consulting piece. It seems trends there still remain below historical trends.

What are your expectations there in terms of business returning to high single double digit growth? What are some of the key leading indicators you’re watching for that business start bouncing back?

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. Look, the pipeline is there. We track pipeline versus prior years and pipeline coverage. And I think we are confident that certainly in the future we’ll return to to high single digits as it was in the past. The the mix of projects is different.

We spoke about AI before and, you know, that’s part of the equation as well. So as we are transitioning the different offerings, we think that that’s part of of the of that transition. But, yeah, we we we are expecting that to happen just basically based on our on our pipeline reviews. Thank you.

Jalinda Singh, Analyst, Truist Securities: But you’re not expect you’re not expecting to return this year. Right? It’s more like most likely next year or beyond. Just want to clarify that.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. Probably end of the year next year. Yes.

Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IQVIA: Okay. Thank you.

Conference Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Anne Hines with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury, IQVIA0: Good morning. Thank you. You referenced some of your clients have some short term uncertainty. What do you think they need the most clarity on to accelerate projects? Is it MFN pricing?

Is it clarity on maybe tariffs? And I know it’s still early for 2026, but when I look at consensus estimates for R and D, revenue is up 4%. Do you think the current, like, bookings environment supports that type of growth, or do we need an acceleration to support that?

Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IQVIA: And and you you saw the next twelve month revenue in backlog that we’ve reported out of our EDF. So you can and now that doesn’t cover you all the way to 20.6, but it but but the numbers give you some indication there. And our pipeline and RFP flow has been strong. So we’re not gonna be giving 2026 guidance at this point, but you can kind of piece it together from all of that.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. And, you have the question on the client’s concern and the policies. Well, yeah, I mean, it’s all of the above. Know, it’s the the changes in the agencies and policies, FDA and so on, this seems to be sort of stabilizing and there is some very good appointments and and and we feel good about that. You know, the product MSN pricing, we’re just waiting, you know, and there’s been discussions and and thoughts.

But let me just say it’s it I don’t wanna comment more, but it’s we are saying it’s extremely complicated.

Elizabeth Anderson, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Yeah.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: And then tariffs, you saw a lot of, you know, non US large pharma company announced massive investments, and I think this will help.

Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury, IQVIA0: Thank you.

Michael Ryskin, Analyst, BOFA: Your next

Conference Operator: question comes from the line of Jack Meehan with Nephron Research. Please go ahead.

Jeff Garro, Analyst, Stephens Incorporated: Thank you. Good morning, everyone. I was wondering if you could just share latest thoughts on what you’re seeing related to cancellation trends. Have you seen that continue to moderate at all? And, just thoughts on kind of a path to normalization there?

Thanks.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: Yes. I mean, look, we mentioned in the first quarter that cancellations were in the normal historical range. And I’d say the second quarter, same thing, same trend. And overall first half, really nothing unusual, no mega cancellation. And the average basically is the same as was historically before we had the disruptions that we had last year.

Thank you.

Conference Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Max Schmuck with William Blair. Please go ahead. Max, your line is open.

Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury, IQVIA1: Hi. Sorry about that. It’s it’s Christine Raines on for Max Smock. So hoping you can give some quantification about the delays you are seeing on new clinical, projects? I know that you gave the 10% figure last quarter, so curious if delays for new programs got better or worse in the second quarter.

Thank you.

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: You’re talking about which delays?

Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IQVIA: You’re talking about RFP, to decision making timeline?

Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury, IQVIA1: Yeah. Correct.

Ron Brumman, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, IQVIA: Yeah. I mean, that remains, longer. Yeah. It’s not you

Ari Booski, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IQVIA: know, again, the environment is more or less similar in terms of client of the uncertainty and positive decision making. I mentioned that, you know, in many cases, some of these are programs are being launched because clients just can’t wait. So, you know, some of what had been delayed, the decisions were made to launch. But if you look at the totality of the decision time lines, they remain more elongated than usual. So really, I think our better performance in bookings and sales and generating opportunities is only partially related to a slight improvement in the environment.

Because if you look at, for example, EVP funding, it wasn’t particularly special since the beginning of the year has been relatively tamed. It’s just that we’ve been a lot more proactive and we’ve been extremely, extremely successful in the marketplace in terms of our win rates versus history and in generating both the opportunities and in winning those opportunities. So I wouldn’t necessarily derive an implication and assume that all of a sudden, the market has returned to normal.

Michael Ryskin, Analyst, BOFA: There are

Conference Operator: no further questions at this time. Mr. Joseph, I turn the call back over to you.

Kerry Joseph, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury, IQVIA: Thanks, operator. Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us today, and we look forward to speaking with you again on our third quarter twenty twenty five earnings call. The team will be available for the rest of the day to take any follow-up questions you might have. Have a good day.

Conference Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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