Icon has bought health research and commercialization company Mapi for integration into its existing commercialization team, a deal that bumped Icon’s whole-year revenue guidance to $1.77 billion on the upper end.
The addition of more than 700 Mapi employees, the majority of which works in real-world evidence and its analytics, will double Icon’s late-phase team. The combined team will continue to provide services in real-world evidence, health economics and market access, language services and strategic regulatory services.
The Irish CRO will also have access to Mapi Research Trust, a non-profit that collects patient-centered outcome information. It brands itself as the largest library of clinical outcomes assessments (COAs), with a research library with more than 29,000 COAs and distributes over 250 patient-reported outcomes questionnaires on behalf of researchers.
Founded in 1974, Mapi has a strong presence around the world, but particularly in Europe, with locations in the U.K., Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Poland. That complements Icon’s needs, since it doesn’t have quite the footprint there that it does in the U.S., said Icon CEO Steven Cutler, during a July 27 conference call.
The news came as Icon reported what Cutler described as a record second quarter, with net business wins of $563 million, plus a 5% year-over-year net revenue increase to $431 million. Revenues outside of its top clients grew by 17% as businesses from them reduced to less than 20% in the quarter for the first time since 2012, said Cutler during the call. Management sees that as pleasing news, as it continues to grow and diversify its customer base.
Driven primarily by the Mapi deal, whose financial terms were not disclosed, Icon has adjusted its whole-year projection. It bumped up its earnings guidance from $5.06 ~ $5.26 to $5.18 ~ $5.38, and its revenue guidance from a range of $1.70 billion ~ $1.75 billion to $1.74 billion ~ $1.77 billion.
Moving forward, Icon will not likely be tapping into new territories, but instead will focus on strengthening its existing offerings, as Cutler said during the conference call: “We're going to continue with the Mapi-type deals, that is something that we're going to focus on, key segments, where we would like to be stronger.”