IQV - IQVIA Holdings, Inc.

[Voodooking]

IQVIA Holdings Inc., formerly Quintiles IMS Holdings, Inc., provides integrated information and technology-enabled healthcare services. The Company operates through segments, including Commercial Solutions; Research & Development Solutions, and Integrated Engagement Services. The Commercial Solutions segment offerings include national information offerings, sub-national information offerings, technology solutions, and workflow analytics and consulting services. The Research & Development Solutions segment provides biopharmaceutical development services. It offers project management and clinical monitoring, clinical trial support services, Q2 solutions, and strategic planning and design. The Integrated Engagement Services segment offerings include healthcare provider engagement services, patient engagement services, and scientific strategy and medical affairs services. The Company has its operations in the Americas, Europe and Africa, and the Asia-Pacific.

 

I follow about 150 well known (and lesser known) institutional investors and hedge funds, and tend to take an interest in their 13F filings with the SEC every quarter. I guess you could say I like to "fish where the fish are..."!

 

Usually I can extrapolate the most popular new purchases from this group and I'm normally able to understand why so many of them have bought in to that stock at that time. Perhaps it is Merger Arb, Spinoffs etc. However, I am completely at a loss as to why so many of them (18 at last count), have initiated new positions in IQVIA Holdings?

 

I can see from their IR page (https://ir.iqvia.com/investors/press-releases/default.aspx) that they have recently launched at least one "Secondary Public Offering and Repurchase of Common Stock".

 

This is not really my area of expertise, does this simply mean they are going through a stock buyback? What else could be going on here? Is this really so attractive that these guys are all desperate to get in on the action? If anyone is able to shed any light on the situation for me, it would be greatly appreciated.

 

Many thanks

[DeepSouth]

IQV is monetizing the previous PE owners through buybacks and secondary issuance. This is a strong company that checks a lot of the boxed for most large L/S funds. They are the #1 global CRO with significant competitive advantages. CROs are benefiting from dual tailwinds of increasing pharma R&D spend along with increasing pharma outsourcing. Not too surprising to see why they'd show up on a bunch of 13-Fs.

[DCP]

13-F websites also commonly list stocks as "new" holdings (implying that they were purchased) when there is a corporate name change. The software behind the 13-F site doesn't know that IQV was formerly QuintilesIMS; it just sees a new/different name. IQV is definitely an interesting company but I'm pretty sure that's what happened with all the 13-F sites.

[Voodooking]

Thanks. That did cross my mind and I wondered whether it was something as simple as that. Just didn't want to miss out if it was a juicy Special Situation that I hadn't picked up on.

[peterHK]

Anyone have thoughts on this as an investment?

 

Seems to me it's a stable business, and in particular the tech business is a nice growth high margin business with incredible competitive advantages. The income statement hides true profitability because of intangible amortization, and given expanding margins and revenue growth in the high MSD range, seems like a decent bet. Plays nicely into tougher drug pricing environment (need to outsource more R&D as its potentially more cost effective), increased use of data in everything from specialty pharma to genomics etc.

 

If management is to be believed, then this could be a 10-15%+ EPS growth story for a decade or more, in which case it's a decently cheap compounder.

 

Hang ups are valuation, which I don't think is too expensive on an EV/EBITDA basis but it's not cheap either; and the privacy/data risk. We saw today what happened if some of the data is wrong, imagine what would happen if personal information was hacked....

[Spekulatius]

I recall the business to be quite volatile at times when Quintilles was public. Pharma is not outsourcing core R&D, they are outsourcing clinical studies etc. when one a big program fails to succeed, this goes from full steam to zero in a hurry, which creates revenue and earnings misses.