Certara - Q2 2024

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Certara second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, David Deuchler, Head of Investor Relations. Go ahead.

David Deuchler (Head of Investor Relations)

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you all for participating in today's conference call. On the call from Certara, we have William Feehery, Chief Executive Officer, John Gallagher, Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, Certara released financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2024. A copy of the press release is available on the company's website. Before we begin, I would like to remind you that management will make statements during this call that include forward-looking statements, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements. Please refer to slide 2 in the accompanying materials for additional information, which you can find on the company's investor relations website. In their remarks or responses to questions, management may mention some non-GAAP financial measures.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

Reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available on the recent earnings press release available on the company's website. Please refer to the reconciliation tables in the accompanying materials for additional information. This conference call contains time-sensitive information and is accurate only as of the live broadcast today, August 6, 2024. Certara disclaims any obligation, except as required by law, to update or revise any financial projections or forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events, or otherwise. With that, I'll turn the call over to William.

William Feehery (CEO)

Thank you, David, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining Certara's second quarter earnings call. John and I will begin with prepared remarks, and then we will take your questions. Certara's second quarter performance reflects continued strength in software amid a more challenging environment in services. We have found that the pace of recovery in the market demand has been relatively mixed. There are positive signs among some biotechs, especially those in the clinical stage, but we see continued caution in the spending patterns of some Tier 1 clients. This has affected our business segments in different ways. Our software business is growing with new products, new seats, and new clients as customers see the potential for our products to reduce costs and improve development outcomes.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

However, our services business is more dependent upon the overall progress of projects in the global development pipeline, where there has been reduced spending across the industry and which has impacted our near-term commercial opportunities. That said, our conversations with customers indicate high interest in biosimulation over the long term and specifically in Certara's software and services. Second quarter total revenue grew 3% to $93.3 million, which was slightly below our internal expectations. Underlying this was 13% growth in our software segment and -3% growth in our services. During the quarter, Certara made efforts to optimize the allocation of resources across the business, including cost reduction actions, to better position ourselves for the balance of 2024 and beyond.

As we look to the future, we were encouraged to see our total bookings in the second quarter were $98.9 million, which grew 15% year-over-year. Throughout the quarter, the pace of commercial activity in our services business progressed towards the lower end of our expectations, with Tier 3 customers outperforming and Tier 1 customers underperforming. We have not yet seen an inflection point at the market level in services demand, but we have seen some green shoots in the Tier 3 customer base and are encouraged by that customer group heading into the second half of the year. We believe that our Tier 1 customers have continued to evaluate spending priorities and pipeline development initiatives throughout the first half of the year. This has resulted in slower spending and elongated decision-making, impacting our services businesses.

We are encouraged by our 14% growth in services bookings for the second quarter. As we continued our continued strength in software, reemerging strength in biotech customers, and the normal seasonality of our business, we've continued to have confidence in our full-year outlook, which we are reiterating today. The environment we have seen year to date falls within the range of outcomes we anticipated when we initiated 2024 guidance earlier this year. As we assess the remainder of the year, we believe disciplined commercial strategy, new product releases, and a stable end market keeps the revenue guidance range achievable with the upper end of the guidance range possible with an improving end market outlook. But we are tracking to the lower half of the guidance range of the revenue guidance range, given what we've seen during Q2 with our Tier 1 services customers.

We will continue to focus on commercial execution as we progress through the second half of the year. Next, let's touch on some recent highlights at Certara. In the rapidly changing biopharma landscape, we're engaging with key players across the sector. During our inaugural client summit, called Certainty, we brought together biosimulation experts to discuss our offerings in an interactive environment. Over 250 clients joined various tracks tailored to specific applications, networking, and engaging with the Certara team. This May event included hands-on workshops for Simcyp, Phoenix, and Pinnacle 21, plus a preview of the CoAuthor AI regulatory writing software. The summit proved to be an excellent platform for solidifying customer relationships and promoting model-informed drug development. We have also continued to focus on investments that support the long-term adoption of biosimulation.

Last month, we announced an agreement to acquire ChemAxon, a leading provider of cheminformatics software used in the discovery phase of drug development. This acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter, subject to customary closing conditions. Used by 18 of the top 20 pharma companies, ChemAxon's tools span the design, make, test, and analyze framework, which is used to make lead optimization and pipeline development prioritization decisions. By integrating these tools with Certara's biosimulation products and artificial intelligence technology, we can enhance the use of model-informed drug development in the discovery and lead optimization phases. ChemAxon is expected to generate 2024 software revenues of over $20 million, with a team of over 200 employees, including more than 75 software developers.

Their 2024 Adjusted EBITDA margin is below Certara's corporate average, but we have a roadmap to achieve margins approaching Certara's corporate average Adjusted EBITDA margin by the end of 2025. In the second quarter, we continued to make progress in developing new software products and product features and integrating AI across our portfolio. In early June, we released the 23rd version of Simcyp, which included new features such as advanced biomarker modeling to predict drug-drug interaction risks and expanded biopharmaceuticals capabilities. Additionally, the new version of Simcyp aligns with recent FDA guidelines, covering pH-dependent drug-drug interactions and therapeutic proteins that should help ensure smoother regulatory processes. We also announced the highly anticipated full commercial launch of our CoAuthor regulatory writing software at DIA 2024.

CoAuthor leverages generative AI to accelerate the drafting of regulatory submissions and has demonstrated improved efficiency to first draft by greater than 30%. CoAuthor is another example of how Certara is using AI technology acquired in the Vyasa transaction to develop impactful products that can ultimately drive further market penetration. Early customer feedback has been very positive, and we expect the product will generate notable commercial interest as the year progresses. Wrapping up, we are working diligently to improve growth and profitability of the businesses in the second half of the year. There have been several exciting developments related to our software products this year, and we announced a strategic acquisition that will help accelerate industry adoption of model-informed drug development, particularly in the discovery phase, with strong synergistic growth opportunities.

We continue to attract new customers and add new products and features that impact drug development timelines and efficiencies. As I look forward to the rest of the year and beyond, I am confident in the investments we are making in our business and that they will translate to long-term growth. With that, I will now hand things over to John to discuss our financial results in more detail.

John Gallagher (CFO)

Thank you, William. Hello, everyone. Total revenue for the three months ended June 30, 2024, was $93.3 million, representing year-over-year growth of 3% on a reported basis and 3% on a constant currency basis. Software revenue was $38.2 million in the second quarter, which increased 13% over the prior year period on a reported basis and on a constant currency basis. The growth in the quarter was driven by biosimulation software and Pinnacle 21. Ratable and subscription revenue accounted for 65% of second quarter software revenues, up from 57% in the prior year period. Software bookings were $41.8 million in the second quarter, which increased 17% from the prior year period. Trailing twelve-month software bookings were $145.5 million, up 11% year-over-year.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

The software net retention rate was 108%, which is consistent with our long-term growth profile. Looking at our software bookings performance by tier, we saw very strong performance in both Tier One and Tier Three customer segments, driven by continued adoption of our software. Now, turning to services revenue, which was $55.1 million in the second quarter, down 3% versus the prior year period, and on both a reported basis and a constant currency basis. Our services business continues to recover following a period of cautious spending among our customers. We were pleased to see improving performance in the Tier 3 customer base, which we anticipate will continue, while Tier 1 customers underperformed our internal expectations on cautious spending, as Bill mentioned earlier.

Technology-driven services bookings in the second quarter were $57.1 million, which increased 14% from the prior year period. TTM services bookings were $262.9 million, down 2% as compared to the prior year. Total cost of revenue for the second quarter of 2024 was $39.8 million, an increase from $36.2 million in the second quarter of 2023, primarily due to a $2.8 million increase in employee-related expenses, a $500,000 increase in stock-based compensation, and $0.8 million increase in software amortization. Total operating expenses for the second quarter of 2024 were $62.5 million, an increase from $41.2 million in the second quarter of 2023.

Drivers of increased operating expenses included higher employee-related expenses due to recent acquisitions and planned investments in sales and marketing and research and development, along with higher stock-based compensation and transaction expenses related to the debt refinancing. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2024 was $26.3 million, a decrease from $32.4 million in the second quarter of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 28.2%. We expect sequential improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin in the third quarter due to the realigned resources and cost reductions mentioned earlier, and so we remain confident in our full-year adjusted EBITDA margin guidance of 31%-33%. As Bill said in his remarks, after evaluating investments and cost allocation in the first half of the year, we have realigned resources to be more consistent with where we see the largest growth opportunities.

Our focus remains on investing for growth, particularly in software and AI, while ensuring underperforming areas of the business are appropriately structured. Wrapping up the income statement, net loss for the second quarter of 2024 was $12.6 million, compared to net income of $4.7 million in the second quarter of 2023. Reported adjusted net income for the second quarter of 2024 was $11.4 million, compared to $18.4 million for the second quarter of 2023. Diluted loss per share for the second quarter of 2024 was $0.08, compared to earnings per share of $0.03 in the second quarter of 2023. Adjusted diluted earnings per share for the second quarter of 2024 was $0.07, compared to $0.12 for the second quarter of last year.

Moving to the balance sheet, we finished the quarter with $224.6 million in cash and cash equivalents. As of June 30, 2024, we had $296.7 million of outstanding borrowings on our term loan and full availability under our revolving credit facility. During the quarter, we took action to refinance our revolving credit facility and term loan in an effort to reduce our interest expense and push out maturities 5-7 years, respectively. These actions taken are expected to be accretive to fiscal 2025 EPS by $0.01 and by $0.02 from fiscal 2026 through 2031.

We are reiterating our guidance for the full year 2024, excluding any impact from ChemAxon, as follows: We expect total revenue in the range of $385 million-$400 million, representing growth of 9%-13% compared with 2023. Through the first half of 2024, we are tracking toward the lower half of the revenue range. We expect to grow Adjusted EBITDA on a dollar figure basis in 2024 and expect an Adjusted EBITDA margin in the range of 31%-33%. Upon the closing of the ChemAxon transaction, we do expect to maintain our Adjusted EBITDA margin guidance of 31%-33%.

We expect adjusted EPS in the range of $0.41-$0.46 per share, fully diluted shares in the range of 160-162 million, and a tax rate in the range of 25%-30%. I will now turn the call back over to our CEO, William Feehery, for closing remarks.

William Feehery (CEO)

Thank you, John. To summarize our message today, we were pleased with the many exciting developments at Certara in the second quarter, and we remain focused on executing our growth and profitability goals in 2024. There's a lot to be excited about at Certara as we advance biosimulation with our innovative technology. Operator, can you please open the line for questions?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by for our first question. Our first question comes from Jeff Garro from Stephens. Your line is now open.

Jeff Garro (Managing Director)

Yeah, good afternoon. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe start on the guidance and, you know, appreciate the direction there that you're tracking towards the lower half of the range on revenue. But maybe you could give some more comments on what gives you confidence that you won't slip below the bottom end of that range?

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah. Hi, hi, Jeff. This is John. I can take that one. So, yeah, so as you pointed out, you know, and, and we said in the remarks, we're, we're tracking towards the lower half of the guidance range given the current environment, and that's primarily due to the performance that we've seen, in Q2 on the Tier One services customers. So they, they are tracking below what our expectations were. But that being said, we do expect software to continue to do well. As we mentioned, we're seeing good signs in Tier Three customers, both in software and in services. And then if you take those together with typical seasonality that we've seen, including last year, so last year was a tough end market environment, and we saw typical seasonality in Q4, then, that's what gives us the confidence on, on maintaining the range.

Jeff Garro (Managing Director)

Excellent. That helps. And then maybe to hit the profitability side a little bit. I was hoping you could speak a little bit more to the cost reductions. Maybe help us by calling out which line items will see more of an impact, and then, you know, how we should think about the run rate of those actions on an annualized basis versus the impact we'll see in Q3. And then more strategically, why any cost reductions taken in recent weeks or months won't impact the long-term growth opportunity for the company? Thanks.

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah, right. So, what we—you know, as we said, we were reallocating resources based on where we're seeing the biggest growth opportunity. So, we're focusing the investment dollars on software and integrating AI, and then we're taking some cost actions as it related to areas that were underutilized or underperforming parts of the business. As far as, you know, how you see that showing up, so that's, that's what gives us confidence in the guide on the EBITDA margin, because those actions have already been taken and are showing up in the P&L now. So, those will continue to flow through, not only in Q3, but also in Q4.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

The way to think about it is, you know, you should, you should think about it as a, about a 500 basis point benefit or impact on percent revenue costs, and you'd see about 300 of that come in, on the cost of sales line and about 200 coming OpEx.

Jeff Garro (Managing Director)

And then maybe Bill can take the last part around why the cost actions won't impact the growth opportunity from here.

William Feehery (CEO)

Oh, yeah. Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate it. So I think we've just adjusted based on what we've seen as the current situation in the market. We haven't cut our investments in new products or in the long-term vision and health of Certara. We've maintained our investments, as John said, in AI. Just, you know, we trimmed a little bit here and there based on what we saw in the market in just market demand in the short run that I think were prudent to do. Some of it was just we just decided not to hire positions that we intended to hire. And you know, we're committed to to getting to our EBITDA margin guidance, and that's one of the actions we took to get there.

Jeff Garro (Managing Director)

Great. Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from David Windley from Jefferies. Your line is now open.

David Windley (Managing Director)

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to pick up on where Jeff left off. I guess, on the magnitude, 500 basis points is pretty substantial, and I guess if I, if I zoomed out, you know, you entered this year with your bookings trajectory having been, you know, a little bit challenging and making the decision to, you know, actually spend a little bit more and invest in some growth, I think, targeted at R&D and sales and marketing. I see, you know, in your, in your deck, on your 2024 business update slide, you do talk about reduced spending in sales and marketing.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

I guess I wanted to understand a little bit the bigger picture about, you know, Bill, Bill, appreciate your comments on current environment, but what, maybe what's changed in the six months since the decision to kind of double down on some investments as you entered 2024?

William Feehery (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, David. I'll start, and then John can chime in with some of the numbers here. But I think what we saw as we went into 2024 is there's a tremendous opportunity for us to continue to invest in software, and particularly in the AI investments that we started to make when we bought Vyasa into last year. We've continued to do them, and they're starting to pay off. We've launched a product recently, which you know is just getting out there, but it's you know been very well received by customers. So we see those investments as worth continuing and paying off.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

What we saw during you know the first half of the year was you know we we've had some, I think in the beginning part of the year, we had, you know, some softness in tier threes. They've picked up, as we went through the year. There's still a little bit of, you know, of softness in tier ones as we go through. So, that's particularly in the services side, and so, you know, it's easier to adjust. It's relatively easy for us to adjust our cost position in services relative to the longer-term investments in software. And so, you know, we took some necessary actions there. So John, you know, if you wanna chime in on that?

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Bill. So hi, hi, David. I think, you know, what we did there is we were slowing some headcount growth, so that's a piece of it. And we were really targeting, as Bill was just saying, we're targeting the underutilized areas of the business to take some costs out where it wasn't efficient. And so at the time that we did the guide on the fourth quarter call, we said that, you know, we had put together investments and we had expected the plan to play out in a certain way. And, you know, some of the plan isn't playing out in the way that we expected at the time that we did that guide. And we said if that was the case, we would need to take actions to maintain the EBITDA, and we've done that.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

And we've done that as you would expect us to, basically, because of what we saw happening with Tier 1 services customers.

David Windley (Managing Director)

Okay. And if I could follow up on that, good segue there. In thinking about services, my intuition is that services with your big customers would maybe lean a little bit more toward regulatory and market access, and smaller customers would lean a little bit more toward biosim services. Is that right? Such that, like, the services weakness that you're seeing in Tier 1 is in a different area than the weakness you maybe had seen in small, and that's improving now in small, or is it, or is it really in the same area, all in kind of biosim?

John Gallagher (CFO)

It's, it's really, it's both. So, it's, you know, the services weakness that we're seeing is, it's both in regulatory and it's in biosim services.

David Windley (Managing Director)

Okay, great. Thanks. I'll follow up offline. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Michael Cherny from Leerink Partners. Your line is now open.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

Great, thank you. This is Dan Clark on for Mike. First from us, how are you guys thinking about pricing on the services side, just with these elongated, you know, customer conversations on the, on the Tier 1 side? Like, how do you kind of balance your discipline in, in pricing or price increases and, and getting deals done?

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah, I'd say that the price increases are more modest, given the, you know, given the environment that we're in and the cautious spend and the slower decision-making. We are still increasing price, but, we're increasing more, more modestly.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

Thanks. And then just a quick modeling question. The customer summit you guys held in 2Q, how should we think about the expense and the sales and marketing line, just so we can kind of model the rest of the year there? Thank you.

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah. So as we were just saying, you know, the first half and the 2Q sales and marketing expenses is increasing based on the investment that we made, and to some degree, because of the M&A transactions that we brought in. We've, We have taken actions, as we were just discussing, that are going to slow headcount growth and would slow the headcount growth that we have on that line item also.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mike Ryskin from Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Speaker 11

Hi, this is Wolf on for Mike. Thanks for taking the question, guys. I kind of want to pick back up on the guidance theme, but perhaps just take a step back to end markets overall. I think we all kind of saw mid-biotech funding take a sequential step down in 2Q and thought that CRO or larger pharma spend with CROs and the like seemed fairly stable. Obviously, you're kind of pointing to an opposite different dynamic from that. So I'm just wondering if you can talk to how the tenor of your conversations with those two customers evolved over the course of the quarter.

William Feehery (CEO)

Yeah, thanks for your question. I think what we saw was there was a pickup in the small biotech funding in the first quarter, and then I think we saw—we believe that we saw that start to flow through in the second quarter. So there's some lag between what happens in funding and obviously when it reaches us. But you know, the pickup was welcome because we had seen weakness in that segment for you know, really quite some quarters now. So it was good to see, you know, see them come back. I think on the larger customers, it's you know, we saw just more caution around spending.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

It's certainly true in past years, we've seen pickups in the second half and in, particularly as you go into the very end of the year as customers, you know, want to spend their budget. So we're, you know, we're sort of cautiously watching what happens to that market. And, you know, obviously, we've factored that into the guidance that we gave.

Speaker 11

Got it. Thank you. And then just one more kind of strategic one. Could you talk to the rationale behind the ChemAxon deal? Just interested in your kind of intent in expanding more into the preclinical space and what opportunities that you see there.

William Feehery (CEO)

Yeah, thanks for the question. So, you know, ChemAxon is an important acquisition for us. I think a lot of people have asked me, you know, for a while, you know, what are some areas that we're interested in expanding in? And we've always talked about, you know, preclinical and the discovery space as being areas that are ripe for biosimulation to make a bigger impact. You know, so most of the biosimulation help that we provide our clients in Certara has been sort of preclinical and then especially in the clinical phase, and we do really well there. But it's important to be able to help our clients make informed decisions on which drugs to take forward and which leads to optimize.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

We see, you know, we see an opportunity there to make a bigger impact on the overall success of drug development. ChemAxon has quite a number of tools that we believe that we can integrate into a wider suite of biosimulation tools going forward to enable that.

Speaker 11

Wonderful. Thank you for the answers, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Luke Sergott from Barclays. Your line is now open.

Speaker 10

This is Suleman for Luke. Thanks for the questions. Piggybacking off of Wolf's question on biotechs and biotech funding, what's the expectation for the rest of the year? I know you're suspecting that you're seeing sort of the 1Q pickup flowing through this quarter, but you know, what's kind of embedded in the guide for the rest of the year on, you know, how those biotechs are going to perform?

William Feehery (CEO)

Yeah, thanks for the question. John, do you want to take that one?

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah. Yeah, I got it, Bill. The, you know, the way to think through the, the customer tiering on the biotechs for the remainder of the year is, we are not planning an uplift on Tier 3s. We, you know, we were pleased to see, you know, a bit of an uptick in Q2, but, we have the guide really contemplates a continuation of just sort of stability on the, in Tier 3 customer base. But that being said, you know, I mentioned earlier, we do anticipate typical seasonality. So turning to Tier 1 customers, the guide does contemplate a pickup in Tier 1 customer activity in Q4, which is what we've seen, you know, historically, and importantly, we saw last year during a time also that had a difficult end-market environment.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

You know, that's the only piece of seasonality or uptick that we really have planned into the guidance.

Speaker 10

Gotcha. That's really helpful. And then a follow-up on just software bookings. You mentioned maybe some strength was driven by expansion of biosimulation to new customers. Is this mostly driven by new offerings? And I'm kind of curious if CoAuthor was a significant portion of bookings due to the new unveil or is this more of a side effect of the commercial reorg? And could you just give us an update on the progress there and how it's trending versus your expectations on synergies? Thanks.

William Feehery (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks. Maybe I'll start with that one, John. So, you know, we saw nice growth in our core software products, and particularly Simcyp and Pinnacle 21. So, that was good to see. CoAuthor was just, you know, sort of fully launched at the end of June, so it's a bit too early for that to be a significant impact on our bookings. But we did, you know, have a pretty big launch, and we've received quite a bit of interest for that product, so let's watch as we go forward, but it didn't play a significant effect to the numbers that we reported for the quarter. And, you know, I'd say across the board, we saw, you know, a lot of interest in AI.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

There's, you know, been basically a steady stream of feature launches and product extensions in our Simcyp family, which contributed- which has, you know, contributed a lot to, to the growth. So those are the kind of the-- I would say it's kind of in the core software areas that we saw the, the, the best growth.

Speaker 10

Awesome. Appreciate it.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joe Vruwink from Baird. Your line is now open.

Joe Vruwink (Senior Research Analyst)

Great. Hi, everyone. If the smaller customers are buying biosimulation software and starting to become more visible in the services pipeline, is there any history for you to say that your large customers tend to follow the small customers within a matter of some quarters? Or is this the current regulatory environment the large customers are dealing with so different that it kind of muddies any historical comparisons you might make?

William Feehery (CEO)

Yeah. Thanks, Joe. It's a good question. I think we see them as the markets operating a little bit differently. We think that, you know, what we've seen with the large customers have gone through a period of a number of them rethinking their large portfolios of drugs, you know, which ones they're going to continue to take forward and which ones they're not. Obviously, that's not really the question for the smaller ones who are, you know, trying to get funded for one drug or one platform. So I'm not sure that we tend to see a what do you want to call it, a causal link, like you're talking about.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

Now, obviously, you know, biotechs often go through M&A with larger customers at some point, so, you know, maybe somewhere down the line, that'll be an effect, but it's not really in our thinking for the rest of the year.

Joe Vruwink (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. And then just a tougher backdrop, specifically for regulatory services. Any risk that carries over to your regulatory-focused software offerings? Or you mentioned at the start of the call, just large customers, very focused on cost reductions and efficiencies. Is a tougher environment you're seeing on the services side actually beneficial in bringing up things like Pinnacle, or maybe it creates an even more favorable launch environment for something like CoAuthor?

William Feehery (CEO)

Well, CoAuthor is a pretty interesting tool. We've, you know, in our internal testing, we've seen pretty substantial reductions in the amount of hours it takes to create regulatory documents. And so I think in any type of environment that, you know, you know, significant cost savings like that are a good pitch, and so that's why we're getting, I think, we're being well received there. I think it helps that we have a regulatory business, and so we've used that experience to inform the creation of that product. So it's kind of, think of it as, you know, we had this product almost designed by the users of the software. And so that's given us a pretty good sense on how to design something that's truly useful in that market.

Dan Clark (VP of Equity Research)

I would say, you know, we still see continued spending across the board by customers on software, most of whom look at the software as, you know, once you're in there, they tend to look at it as continued investment in their infrastructure. So as long as they're gonna continue to do R&D, they're gonna need most of our software. And so, you know, the discussions are around, you know, how much renewal and what are we doing with new features and new extensions and things like that. So I think that's one reason why we've seen that as a stronger market right now, whereas the services have tended to be more project-based.

As people adjust their portfolios and they stop some drugs and start others, you know, there's some disruption to the flow of projects that come through to us, and so that's been a factor this year.

Joe Vruwink (Senior Research Analyst)

Okay, I'll leave it there. Thank you very much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question comes from Max Smock from William Blair. Your line is now open.

Max Smock (Research Analyst)

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking our questions. Wanted to ask you a question along the same lines as Wolf's question earlier. So on the services side, given we've seen clinical CROs hold up pretty well, is it fair to assume that at least a chunk of these programs from large pharma are moving forward, but they're elected to do so maybe without your consulting services? Or do you really think it's more a function of the fact that you're missing out on bidding and working on these clinical programs that are actually being paused and reevaluated, and therefore, maybe there's a potential for you all to still recognize revenue from these programs in the back half of the year or 2025 as they potentially move forward?

William Feehery (CEO)

Yeah, we do believe that, and in addition, we'd point to the fact that we did see an uptick in services bookings in the second quarter. So, you know, I would say, you know, too early to call a huge recovery in the market, but, but, we are seeing improvement, as, you know, in the overall environment as we move forward to the second half of the year. I don't know, John, if you wanna comment on that.

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, we anticipate having—When we did the guide, we said it would be a first half, second half story, on, particularly on services. And, we're seeing that, you know, in the way that this year is playing out, we'd anticipate to have, you know, 48%-49% first half, 51%-52% second half. And so we typically do see services pick up in the latter part of the year and namely in Q4. And so that's the typical seasonality that we've been referring to and that we saw last year. So we do think that that'll be a component of how this year plays out also.

Max Smock (Research Analyst)

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you. And then maybe sticking on the services booking side, I guess it sounds like based on your comment there, they were relatively in line with your expectations, but any comment around, you know, what you're looking for in the quarter, and then how services bookings in particular stacked up? I know when we talked last quarter, you kind of pointed us to 2021 and 2022 from a seasonality perspective. It looks like the average step down in those years was about 10% sequentially, and they were down about 20% sequentially here in the second quarter of this year. So any comment around just how services bookings kind of stacked up to your expectations here in the second quarter?

John Gallagher (CFO)

Yeah. So they, I mean, the services bookings did come in lighter than we had expected, given the Tier 1 performance of what we had seen. But that being said, you know, services bookings did grow 14% year-on-year, and as we look forward to the second half, then, you know, as I mentioned, I think probably the key component in the second half is the seasonality that we've seen and we saw last year, importantly. So we're not anticipating anything outsized in that seasonality compared to what we saw last year.

Max Smock (Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks for taking our questions.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question comes from Steve Dechert from KeyBanc. Your line is now open.

Steve Dechert (Assistant VP)

Hey, guys. Just wondering if you think the launch of Certara Cloud had an impact on your second quarter bookings? Thanks.

John Gallagher (CFO)

It's still early days, Steve, for Certara Cloud to have a material impact on the bookings. So, the answer to that, although, you know, as we said, our software bookings and our software revenue continues to be strong. We don't see any reason for that to change, and Certara Cloud is a key component of our strategy going forward, and we think that, you know, that's gonna enable, you know, not just that product, but you know, all of the products in our portfolio. But for Q2, that wouldn't have been a meaningful part of our bookings.