Target company: WCG Clinical, Inc. (NASDAQ:WCGC)

WCG Clinical submitted an initial prospectus of US $100m, and the institutions with pre-IPO shareholdings of more than 5 per cent are as follows:

WCG Clinical, a company that provides ethical review and clinical trial solutions, was founded in 2012 with the support of Arsenal Capital Partners to focus on pain points such as slow patient enrollment, cumbersome administrative procedures and low minority participation in drug clinical trials. Initially providing only ethical review services, the W representative in WCG created the first institutional review committee, Western Insititutional Review Board, more than 50 years ago, which initiated an independent ethical review. In 2012, WIRB integrated with more than two dozen IRB to form the IRB department of WCG. After that, a number of acquisitions resulted in the formation of the company WCG Clinical, which includes two parts of the business of ethical review and clinical trial solutions.

At present, the revenue share of the two business segments is equal, and clinical trial solutions are growing faster, including research planning and optimization, patient recruitment, and scientific and regulatory review services. Its clients cover all parties involved in clinical trials, including not only biomedical companies and CRO, but also clinical trial centers, institutions and researchers.

At present, the implementation of clinical trials is mainly based on the project system, that is, the corresponding team is disbanded after the end of the clinical trial. WCG hopes to integrate into a central team through the WCG Clinical Trial Ecosystem model to provide more continuity and connectivity, so as to achieve 1) improve the accessibility of patients to participate in suitable clinical trials. 2) for clinical centers, institutions and researchers, to improve their awareness among sponsors, to recruit suitable patient groups more effectively, and to conduct clinical trials more effectively; 3) for sponsors (pharmaceutical companies and CRO, etc.), clinical centers can be selected more accurately and patients can be recruited more effectively.

Since its establishment, WCG has served more than 5000 biomedical and CRO companies, of which about 4000 are small and medium-sized biopharmaceutical companies. In the past two years, WCG has supported about 90 per cent of global clinical trials covering a wide range of treatment areas and trial phases, while 87 per cent of new drugs approved by FDA used WCG solutions during the same period, the company said in its prospectus.

The proportion of revenue is as follows, ER represents ethical review, and CTS serves for clinical trials:

Overall, WCG's revenue grew by about 16% a year between 2018 and 2020, from $345.6 million to $463.4 million. The profit margin of Adjusted EBITDA in 2020 (adjusted profit margin before interest and tax, adjusted profit before interest and tax divided by income) was 47 per cent. For Q1 as of March 31, 2021, revenue grew by about 33 per cent year-on-year, from $103.5 million to $137.6 million, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 43 per cent.

Financial performance of Q1 in 2020 and 2021