Iqvia Earnings: Solid Results Highlight Resilience of CRO Business; Positive Long-Term Outlook

Narrow-moat Iqvia delivered solid year-end results amid a challenging macroeconomic environment, highlighted by revenue of nearly $15.4 billion, representing growth of nearly 3% from the prior year. The technology and analytics solutions, or TAS, business delivered revenue of $6.1 billion, up about 5% from 2023, as it rebounded from macroeconomic challenges that had hurt its customers earlier this year. We appreciate that Iqvia's research and development solutions, or R&DS, backlog at year-end was $31.1 billion, which is up 5.5% year over year, and the third-quarter book-to-bill ratio was a healthy 1.20. We maintain our fair value estimate of $268 per share. We view shares as undervalued, currently trading in 4-star territory at a 22% discount to our fair value estimate.