What is the drug development outsourcing trend?
As evidenced by today’s announcement, large pharmaceutical companies are increasingly outsourcing drug development to large, global CROs. It is estimated that the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries spend approximately $70 billion on drug development (the “D” of “R&D”) each year with approximately 27%, or $18 billion projects outsourced to companies like Covance. Industry experts believe that the CRO industry could easily double over the next five years. What’s special about Covance? Covance is the largest public CRO and is the only CRO with market-leading assets in both early and late-stage drug development services. Covance provided its shareholders a return of more than 300 percent in the past five years. Covance has delivered consistent earnings, with seven consecutive years of EPS growth of at least 20%.
