Q4 2023 Inotiv Inc Earnings Call

Participants

Robert Leasure Jr.; CEO, President & Director; Inotiv, Inc.

Beth A. Taylor; SVP of Finance & CFO; Inotiv, Inc.

Bob Yedid

Timothy Daley; Analyst; Wells Fargo & Company

Frank Takkinen; Analyst; Lake Street Capital Markets, LLC

Matthew Hewitt; Analyst; Craig-Hallum Capital Group LLC

David Windley; Analyst; Jefferies LLC

Presentation

Operator

Greetings and welcome to Inotiv's fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. (Operator Instructions)
As a reminder, this conference is being recorded.it is now my pleasure to introduce Bob Yedid, Investor Relations. You may begin.

Bob Yedid

Great. Thank you very much, Doug, and thank you, everyone, for joining today's call with Inotiv's management team.
Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that some of the statements that management will make on this call are considered forward-looking statements, including statements about the company's future operating and financial results and plans. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or achievements to be materially different from those projected.
Any such statements represent management's expectations as of today's date. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, and the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Please refer to the company's SEC filings for further guidance on this matter.
Management will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures in an effort to provide additional information for investors. Definition of these non-GAAP measures and reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP measures are included in the company's earnings release, which has been posted to the Investors section of the company's website, www.inotivco.com and is also available in the Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission today. If you haven't obtained a copy of today's press release, you may do so by going to the Investors section of company's website.
Joining us from the company this afternoon are Bob Leasure, President and CEO; Beth Taylor, Chief Financial Officer; and John Sagartz, the company's Chief Strategy Officer. Bob will begin with some opening remarks, after which Beth will present a summary of the company's financial results, and then we'll open the call for questions.
With those prepared remarks, it's my pleasure to turn the call over to Bob Leasure, CEO. Bob, please go ahead.

Robert Leasure Jr.

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon, everyone. As we head into the end of the year and holiday season on behalf of the Inotiv team, want to wish everyone a warm welcome to our Q4 earnings call. I can confidently say 2023 has been a year of operational success and transformation. It's a team collectively expanded our full service preclinical CRO service capabilities, offering a growing customer base level solutions for custom capabilities.
In addition, we also executed on a plan to integrate and optimize our research models, facilities, which provide stronger foundation for future operational efficiencies and performance of that business.
Since 2018, we believe that the best course of action for generating strong long-term shareholder returns was to transform and build our business with aspirations to become a competitive leader and is in the industry as a global preclinical CRO.
Now less than six years through both acquisitions and adding new services organically, we've expanded our Discovery and Safety Assessment or DSA capabilities as well as the RMS business, growing the top line from $24 million to $572 million with annual revenues, which is where it stands today, producing a compound annual growth rate of nearly 70% in this time period.
Today, I miss market challenges across the CRO and biotech industries. We continue advancing our businesses, integrating our acquisitions and rightsizing our operational footprint, all while expanding its global service offerings. We understood that achieving our goals would not happen overnight, and we've been able to maintain focus on our long-term vision.
We've made significant investments in our business, continue to build on the comprehensive suite of products and services. We can offer to our customers across the drug development continuum from early discovery through bringing a new medicine and products to market. We understand market conditions and external factors are constantly changing and we feel we've been able to pivot as market conditions require.
We continue to be guided by eight pillars building market share and cash flow, including rightsizing our infrastructure, reducing dependency on third-party providers for external services in order to become a full service provider, making strategic capital investments, growing our sales and market share, building our brand and brand awareness, fostering workplace satisfaction and a positive work environment obtaining and maximizing supply chain synergies and investing to be a leader in animal welfare.
On this last point, since our expansion into the research model business we have prioritized improvements in animal care and welfare by enlarging our veterinary team and consolidating facilities, which allows us to make significant infrastructure improvements in the remaining facilities.
Ultimately, we believe these efforts will allow us to increase our margins and remain competitive with regards to new business development while continuing our key strategic objective of enhancing animal welfare.
Through our journey in 2023. We were also very proud to announce that Inotiv was the recipient of inner gauges Top Workplaces USA award, and we have been very focused on recruiting and retaining people this year.
Additionally, in terms of awards, we were recently recognized a name to Deloitte's 2023 technology, Fast 500 list, recognizing the fastest growing companies between 2019 and 2022.
Before we dive into our operational review, let's quickly get to the highlights of our financial results, which Beth will go into more detail shortly. We ended fiscal 2023 with revenues of $572.4 million of 4.5% versus 2022.
With an increase in DSA revenues and margin dollars included revenue for our DSA business grew $6 million or 13.6% in Q4 2023 over 2022 and 12% overall in fiscal 2023 versus 2022. Operating income for DSA improved $7.4 million in Q4 2023 versus Q4 2022.
We have begun to see Research Models and Services expenses go down as our side document creation initiatives get completed, the DSA business gross book-to-bill for the year was 1.11 and 0.91 for Q4 and net book-to-bill was 0.92 for the year and 0.65 for Q4.
The lower net book-to-bill in the latest quarter was primarily due to high cancellations in Q4. We saw increased conversion rates from 30% in Q4 of 22% to 33% in Q4 2023. In the fourth quarter, the number of NHP's. We imported increased versus the other quarters this year, and we have had our first shipments from one of our newly qualified farms.
The fourth quarter was -- the first quarter in fiscal 2023 that we imported approximately the same number of NHP's as we sold. The average selling price of the NHP in Q4 increased approximately 5%, which is the lowest quarterly increase we have seen in the last three quarters. Cash balance this quarter also improved, and we finished the year with $35.5 million in cash and nothing drawn on our revolver of $15 million.
This is a meaningful improvement compared to $18.5 million of cash and $15 million drawn on the revolver at September 30, 2022. We are now well into the Q1 fiscal year [2024] -- fourth quarter. Over the last four months, we have seen positive trends for requests for quotes and awards so far for Q1 of fiscal 2024 plus a reduction in cancellations this quarter compared to Q4 of 2023.
Some of the increases in quotes and awards year over year are related to the new services we have introduced and some rebound in our Discovery and Translational Science business. We are pleased with our process of selling some of the assets we have identified for sale. We continue to validate new facilities and equipment and businesses, we've recently expanded or built we would like to see growth in our DSA backlog, but are careful with our current DSA backlog and increasing conversion rates.
So we would expect DSA sales in Q1 2024 show growth over Q1 of 2023. For example, at September 30, 2022, we had a backlog of $147 million compared to $132 million backlog at September 30, 2023. In Q1 of fiscal 2023, we converted 28% of our backlog into sales. In Q1 fiscal 2024, which we expect to convert our conversion rate to be in the low to mid 30s.
As earlier noted earlier, we pivoted our strategy in 2023 to reduce focus on M&A activity and increased focus on execution. We recognized there was uncertainty surrounding the third party sales of NHP's, so we focus on aggressively improving margins from our small research models, diet and Discovery and Safety Assessment businesses while at the same time working to maintain our industry business margins during 2023.
Our focus in 2023 helped us to reach structure and integrate many of our acquisitions and start-up initiatives to enhance margins and decrease expenses going into 2024, which also reduces our dependency on any fee margins from third party sales for 2024. The majority of entities arm test site optimization plans have been completed.
In total our plans included the closure of 11 sites along with investments in existing sites, and we have successfully concluded 10 site closures to date. We have brought on additional capacity as multiple Discovery and Safety Assessment sites, adding complementary service offerings, and we believe these investments will expand our range of services, generate higher revenue growth, increase margins and improve our ability to recruit and retain downtown talent.
These include definition of our new facility build-out in Rockville, Maryland, and we have now also completed much of the validation process for assays and equipment. We completed site improvements and expansion projects in Boulder, Colorado for our discovery operations and further integration and operation improvements to that business.
The expansion activities at Fort Collins, Colorado were completed by the end of October 2023, and the expanded site is completing the validation of the facility and equipment and plants to be operational early in second quarter of fiscal 2024, we expanded our project management, safety, pharmacology, operations, reporting capabilities and histopathology capacity and teams.
We have also initiated the expansion of our internal carving stage capability. We have aggressively moved to reduce the number of software platforms while upgrading our hardware and software. We continue to improve, recruit and build and develop our team through today, we have sold two of the six closed locations we owned with four left to sell. We also closed on the sale of our Israeli businesses and now own our previously leased feed mail facility in Wisconsin.
As a result, we are much better than we were 12 months ago. We still have much more to build upon in 2024.
Moving forward projects, which we have announced for 2024 include continuing site infrastructure and animal welfare improvements, continuing to evaluate and improve our RMS transportation system and network based on our new site footprint, which should allow us to further reduce expenses and improve the client experience, further expand our NHP supply base and customer base, completing final site consolidations and expansion plans in UK.
Validation and growth of our new services and added capacity per year from services focused on expanding our customer base are continuing to improve and provide exceptional client experience. And lastly, as we validate new sources, we plan to further reduce outsourcing cost and increase the speed of discovery and development processes for us customers.
In 2023, DSA sales grew 12% over 2022, driven by new services and growth in Safety Assessment business, primarily related to price increases and partially offset by a decrease in our discovery service revenue in 2023 versus 2022. With the investments we have made in the DSA business, we believe we will have the physical capacity to ultimately expand our sales by an additional 40% from the $185 million in revenue recognized in 2023.
We think growing DSA sales, another 10% to 12% in 2024 is achievable. This would represent DSA sales of at least $200 million. That should also drive operating leverage and enable us to improve upon the DSA margins we saw in 2023.
Overall, we are pleased with the annual progress from $165 million in revenues in 2022 to $185 million in DSA revenues 2023. As I mentioned earlier, for the past few months, we have seen an increase in discovery quotes and awards and are optimistic we may see partial of the decrease in discovery sales going into fiscal 2024 and actually see growth in these services.
Our DSA margins in Q4 were significant and demonstrate the leverage we have in our business model as revenues grow. Q4 also shows the DSA business can currently achieve a run rate of approximately $200 million in sales with significantly improved margins.
While the DSA business is still developing and growing, we think we are directionally headed in a positive direction in fiscal 2024, we will continue to expand our DSA sales team, dedicating resources to expanding our market share.
With recent expansion and services that we have added, we are now expanding our customer base by increasing our sales efforts in the chemical and crop protection markets recently, adding medical device sales person, increasing our discovery and translational services sales team and continue building our drug development and Safety Assessment sales teams.
In our RMS segment, we grew modestly in 2023 amidst industry challenges with NHP imports and the focus from our site optimization efforts, which were mainly centered around our small research model facilities, our Diet business and the related transportation systems. As outlined in prior discussions, we believe we will ultimately achieve approximately $20 million of expense reduction, mainly coming from the RMS business.
We realized roughly $5 million of that target this year, and we expect the remainder to be achieved during 2024 moving into fiscal 2024, we believe we will be much more operationally efficient, and we'll be able to increase our focus on growing our RMS business we don't currently have any updates from US fish and wildlife related future imports of Cambodian NHP's.
We remain focused on expanding and validating our supplier network for the import of purpose spread NHP, we continue to have sufficient NHP supply to meet our internal DSA requirements. For 2023, the volume and NHPs we sold to third parties was down 37% from fiscal 2022, specifically Q4 of 2023 as down, the volume was down 60% from Q4 of 2022.
We expect Q1 volumes in fiscal 2024 to be less than Q1 fiscal 2023, even with increased pricing in 2023. And the fact that we acquired some of our HP. businesses during the fiscal '22. Overall, NHP sales dollars for 2023 were approximately 5% lower and 2022.
For 2024, we will again seek to maintain overall sales and margins as we did in 2023. But due to the uncertainties in the NHP market, initially, our guidance projects reduced an NHP sales and margins for 2024.
And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to Beth to review Inotiv's financial results in detail, as well as provide the outlook for 2024.

Beth A. Taylor

Thank you, Bob. For our fiscal year ended September 30, 2023, revenues totaled $572.4 million, 4.5% increase from the $547.7 million recorded during fiscal year 2022. RMS revenue for 2023 increased 1.3% to $387.3 million from $382.4 million in 2022.
In RMS, we continue to operate in an extremely dynamic pricing environment for larger research models, in particular, in NHP. DSA revenue increased 12% to $185.1 million in fiscal year 2023 as compared to $165.3 million in fiscal year 2022.
The increase in DSA revenue was primarily driven by additional fiscal year 2023 revenue generated from integrated laboratory system that was acquired in January 2022, plus new services related to genetic toxicology and favorable pricing in general toxicology services.
These increases in DSA service revenues were partially offset by decreases in our discovery services, primarily related to the decline in overall biotech funding in the market. For the 2023 fourth quarter, total revenue decreased 6.5% to $140.7 million from the $150.5 million recorded during the prior year period.
DSA revenues increased by 13.6% to $50.2 million when compared to the prior year period of $44.2 million. As previously mentioned, the higher revenues experienced in our DSA segment were primarily driven by new services related to genetic toxicology and favorable pricing in general toxicology services, which were partially offset by declines in discovery services, which were impacted by lower biotech funding.
RMS revenue for the fiscal fourth quarter was down 14.9% to $90.5 million year over year, mainly due to a reduced volume of NHP's sales, somewhat offset by favorable pricing over several products, particularly NHP.
Consolidated net loss attributable to common shareholders in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 totaled $9.7 million or $0.38 loss per diluted share. This compared to consolidated net loss attributable to common shareholders of $244.2 million or a $9.54 percent loss per diluted share in the fourth quarter of 2022.
For the quarter, adjusted EBITDA improved to $23.7 million or 16.8% of total revenues from $18.3 million or 12.1% of total revenues in last year's fourth quarter. Operating income for the fourth quarter was $2.5 million compared to a loss of $242.5 million from last year's fourth quarter, which included $236 million of goodwill impairment costs.
Additionally, the current quarter had lower G&A amortization and other operating expenses compared to Q4 2022. The decrease in G&A and other operating expenses was driven primarily by decreased acquisition integration and restructuring expenses and a decrease in other third party expenses.
Non-gaap operating income for our DSA segment in the fourth quarter increased to $12.6 million or 25.1% of segment revenues and $5 million or 11.4% of segment revenue in last year's fourth quarter. DSA non-GAAP operating income in Q4 2023 was favorably impacted by the increase in DSA revenue over our relatively fixed cost operating structure, recognition of cancellation fees and reduced outsourcing costs.
We have seen an increase in awards for Discovery Services in Q4 and continuing into the current quarter. As our new services start to come online, we expect to generate further demand from both new and current customers alike. Ultimately, with the broader range of services and the capacity that we have added, we believe we will be able to boost our DSA margins from the mid 30% range in 2024 with long-term targets going consistently into the upper 30% range.
The net book-to-bill ratio for DSA in the fourth quarter was 0.65 and the net book-to-bill ratio for the year was 0.92. Lower net book-to-bill in the quarter was primarily due to high cancellations in Q4. DSA backlog was 132.1 million at September 30th, 2023 compared to $147.2 million at September 30, 2022, additionally, our conversion rate, which is our ability to convert our backlog to sales has continued to improve over Q4 2022.
Non-gaap operating income for RMS segment in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023 was $24 million or 26.5% of total revenues compared to $28.2 million or 26.6% of revenues in last year's period. The decrease in RMS revenue noted above was offset by a decrease in cost of products and services, which is driven by a decrease in NHP volumes and decreased costs as a result of site optimization. Furthermore, there was a decrease in RMS amortization expense.
Interest expense in Q4 2023 increased to $11.3 million, up from $8.9 million in last year's fourth quarter. Reflecting our higher debt balance for borrowings obtained for capital investments and the higher interest rates.
Net cash provided by operations for the fourth quarter was $18.8 million compared to cash provided by operations of $0.2 million in the same period last year. Net cash provided by operations for fiscal year 2023 was $27.9 million compared to cash used in operations of $5.2 million for fiscal 2022.
The increase in cash provided by operations was primarily driven by improved net working capital compared to the same period last year. Capital expenditures in the fourth quarter were $6.2 million or 4.4% of total revenue and reflected investments in completing our DSA capacity expansion in Rockville, Maryland and Fort Collins, Colorado enhancements in laboratory technology and improvements in animal welfare.
Our fiscal year 2023 capital expenditures totaled $27.5 million or 4.8% of total revenue. Our balance sheet as of September 30, 2023, included $35.5 million in cash and cash equivalents as compared to $22.2 million at June 30, 2023. Total debt net of issuance costs as of September 30, 2023, was $377.7 million compared to $375.6 million at June 30, 2023.
The balance sheet also includes assets held for sale of $1.4 million as of September 30, 2023. Fiscal 2024 revenues are expected to be in the range of $580 million to $590 million we expect gains in DSA sales and flat to decreasing RMS sales based on the possible reduction in NHP samples.
Adjusted EBITDA guidance is expected to be in the range of $75 million to $80 million. The increase in adjusted EBITDA over fiscal 2023 is expected to be driven by increased margins from the DSA segment and cost reductions we initiated in fiscal 2023 and the projected reduction in feature NHP margins.
We expect to continue to remain in compliance with our financial covenants for the fiscal year, we expect capital expenditures to be approximately 4.5% of revenue in fiscal 2024 as compared to an annual average of 10.3% over the last five years as we expanded sites and grew service capacity.
We are pleased with our financial performance this quarter and with the progress that was made to complete the capacity expansions for the DSA segment in order to increase revenue and improve margins. And the significant progress made on the site optimization plans for the RMS segment in order to achieve cost savings.
With the DSA expansions and RMS site consolidation effort mostly behind us and the additional talent that we have added to our sales team, we remain optimistic as we work to grow and capture a significant portion of the opportunities in our markets.
And with that financial overview, we will turn the call over to our operator for questions.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions)
Tim Daley, Wells Fargo.

Timothy Daley

Hey, thanks. So I think it's just a good place to start off. I know I'm going to bunch inbounds on that. So is on the guidance for RMS in '24. I know you guys are thinking initially and NHP volume will be down, but can you just help us understand the price volume dynamic there? So roughly flat, slightly down revenues. Is that down 20% on volumes offset mostly of price order of magnitude would be really helpful here. #

Robert Leasure Jr.

Hey Tim. A couple of things; one, I think are we indicated we thought our Q1 volumes would be down versus Q1 of last year, overall year over year. And I'm not sure that we will see a decrease in volumes over the 12-month period. I think what we could see and what we're expecting to see is a reduction in price.
So the the guidance that we're providing is probably more based on a price reduction than it is in a volume reduction as we saw pretty good price increases last year. I think the pricing fee increases has slowed down. And I think that we will begin to see additional imports coming into the market next year. As I indicated, we had a new supplier. We have a couple of new suppliers coming on board.
I think we will have some increase in volumes, but I also think others will have increased volumes, which could start to see decreasing in price and margins. So I think that's where we're what we are anticipating. It's probably not happened yet, but that's kind of what we're looking for in Q2 when our fiscal Q2, the to the rest of the year. So it is not a predictable market. It's not a real sophisticated market, but it's our best guess at this moment, and we want to be cautious going into that into the year.

Timothy Daley

I appreciate that. And then my second question here is on Discovery specifically just drilling into that. So a bit more common positive tone on the discovery outlook than kind of lows. And the general kind of feel we're getting out of the industry. So I know you guys have taken some idiosyncratic steps to help yourselves in discovery, but could you just help us frame how much was discovery down this year overall and maybe kind of what did that get worse or better in terms of earlier declines in the fourth quarter? Just any additional help here would be really helpful and thanks again, everybody. Appreciate your time.

Robert Leasure Jr.

Certainly. So for the year, our discovery sales were down about 10% from the prior year. Were we anticipated to see some growth. It was actually down. So we were probably down nine or $10 million in sales and discovery from where we expected a year ago, or they might have at one of the misses we had for last year in addition to that to some of our legal fees that we've talked about previously.
So we've kind of looked at this closely and because we also build up some capacity and the worst quarter, I think was the quarter ended June 30, which would be our third quarter where it was down further than we saw. We didn't we didn't know some of that could have been related to Silicon Valley Bank because we have over 10% of our customer base is which we went back and evaluated at the time that that the collapse occurred. They were over 10% of that discovery basis doing business with Silicon Valley Bank.
And we think that did impact the quarter ended June 30th. We saw that begin to rebound in July of this year. And again, the question is, let's say, some of that rebound because of the Silicon Valley Bank, it was getting solved and people have gotten access to the cash and has to then be maintained to the last four or five months. We've been able to see that our quoting and our awards have been up and accessories.
Now, of course, we're going over a comp last year. That's a little bit lower, but they've been they've been up double digits from where they were a year ago. More than making up the 10% decline. So I mean that's going through this week and M&As or through last week, I should say the latest data I have available. So it's good to see and I hope we can see that trend continue on.
So we've put some effort. We put some effort towards that. I think it's starting to pay off and maybe the market's beginning to recover, but we'll wait and see what happens over the next European next quarter. But so far, it's been a positive 10 months, 12 months and it increases in excess of the decrease we saw last year.

Timothy Daley

Great, thank you. Appreciate it.

Operator

Frank Takkinen, Lake Street Capital Markets.

Frank Takkinen

Perfect. Maybe I'll start with one on the book-to-bill. I heard the comment around higher cancellations in line with the trend that's been occurring over the last couple of quarters. Can you maybe bring us a little bit deeper into where some of those cancellations reside, if it's a specific customer profile and then talk a little bit more about the backlog.
If you've looked into that in depth, understand if there's any heightened cancellation risk within that backlog and the expectations for cancellations as we look at fiscal year 2024?

Robert Leasure Jr.

Yeah, Frank, that the we did have a couple of large jobs that canceled and but our fiscal Q4, which drove those cancellations up to now significant on $10 million, $15 million and our backlog back into those numbers with what we provided at close to $15 million is pretty significant and some of those are pretty big, also generated some cancellation charges, which benefited our quarter.
So that was a big quarter. We actually have changed some of our internal processes, how we how we can take them up contractors to date. I would say this quarter it's down significantly. We're not enough. We're down over half of that and therefore, it could be closer to 25% of that rate that we're seeing.
It's a significant drop off, not saying that that will be the way the quarter ends, but we're looking at we're not aware of anything, but we have we have cancellations, but we're not aware of anything significant like we had last quarter. And right now, we're not seeing the high cancellations, but I will say we are at times having people call and delaying.
So something that was going to start in December, they went to stop start and move the start date into February or February out to June. And some of those things it can cause some pressure on our on our quarters, but we're not seeing cancellations near like we saw, I would say, for the last four or five quarters.
So that's encouraging. We also don't have the backlog going out two years like we did a year ago. We may now be looking at backlogs that go out 6 months to 12 months, not 12 months to 24 months. So some of that has a little bit to do with it. And as I say, they don't cancel, but they may delay. So we'll see where that goes. But right now that this quarter is looking fairly positive for book-to-bill compared to compared to prior quarters.

Frank Takkinen

Okay, that's helpful. And then maybe just for my second I wanted to circle back to the NHP dynamic. I heard the comments around a new supplier coming onboard and the expectations for more in 2024. Can you help level set us just on where we are from a quantity basis. So I was a little surprised to hear that and prices may be coming down. In theory, we would still be in a very supply-constrained environment, but maybe some of the suppliers are bringing on more volume than anticipated.
So I don't know if there's anything quantifiable you can provide just how significant some of these new suppliers can be and what kind of supply we could see in 2024 versus previous years?

Robert Leasure Jr.

This is again, just our opinion. I don't have anything quantifiable I can tell you on that world market, there are additional farms that are that are increasing and have been for the last several years, increasing their breeding and availability of NHP's. So I think the population of the world market may be increasing. And if you look over the last year, it's been a year since assets.
The Cambodian was shut of imports are taken out of the US market, but they're still going everywhere else in the world for their still available on the world market. They're just not available to the U.S. and many people are still importing or using Cambodia. We just aren't, we are not at this time. So we're just looking at and saying, okay, we think that we have some people have found supply.
It's had a year to adjust. They found ways around it. And we're expecting that some of them, the pricing went up last year may not be able to may not stay at that level. So we'll see how that how that evolves in Q2 and Q2, -- our fiscal Q2 and Q3. But yes, we have additional suppliers we feel like our volume and good because I said it earlier, we may be able to achieve the same volume we did last year.
But I'm just not sure that the margins will stay the same on the world market. I will also say that I think some of the pricing we'll begin to come down as it is that capacity is out there. And then there's still the unknown what will happen with China and then the unknown, what could eventually happen with Cambodia. So those things being out there, we felt at this point and it does affect capacity comes on the market.
It would put additional price pressure with those issues being out there over the next 12 months are kind of the opposite trends that we saw 12 months ago, and we thought this time we should we should be fairly cautious. We don't have anything for sure, we don't have anything that we can definitely point to from a quantitative standpoint. But at this point, you know what we want to be cautious about what we're saying, how that market could turn out.

Frank Takkinen

Got it. Okay. That's good color. Thanks for taking the questions. I'll stop there.

Robert Leasure Jr.

Thanks, Frank.

Operator

Matt Hewitt with Craig-Hallum.

Matthew Hewitt

Good afternoon, and guys congratulations on kind of pushing through here over the past year. I know it was not an easy environment, but maybe the first question regarding gross margin and EBITDA margin, how should we be thinking about the progression over the course of this year?
It sounds like Q1 is going to be off to a strong start and then maybe we start to see some pricing pressure weighing on those margins as the year progresses? Or can volumes help offset that so that you could maybe even see flat to up a little bit as the year progresses on those two lines. Thanks.

Robert Leasure Jr.

First start with Q1. I think Q1 typically has been our slowest quarter of the year last year. I think we're coming off a base of Q1 was only 122, at that time, we it was down because we stopped selling NHP. And then this year I think there's a few on the less than last year. That being said, I think we'll exceed the 122 because some of the industry pricing still staying strong this quarter. And I think we'll see, again continued reduction of expenses in RMS business.
And I think we'll continue to see hopefully some improved margins from our DSA business on sales growth in the DSA business, but typically is our slowest or lowest quarter. So, I'm not looking for anything really great out of Q1, but it should exceed last year, which put a lot of pressure on us for the rest of the year and put a lot of pressure on our trailing 12 to eliminate that.
As far as the rest of the year. Again, a lot of that will depend on where the NHP margins I'll come out and what do other people do in terms of imports, but I don't see it changing a whole lot from last year. I think you still -- eventually we're still going to be back in that commitment, $20 million plus EBITDA range. I think we still have to look backwards now $23 million and if we have a choice remains so now over the last eight quarters, if you take out the Q1.
And I think I don't know that we'll see that in Q1. But I think if you looked at the average client beyond that, I think we will continue to be fairly strong and strong for us. And I do hope we'll see some of the margins improve from the other businesses. But as you know, the NHP is less predictable at this time.

Matthew Hewitt

Got it. Maybe one additional question regarding bringing the transportation in-house. How complex of a process is that and how will how much will that help margins once you get that fully integrated? Thank you.

Robert Leasure Jr.

That was the release we made I think last week and this is something that we think is important to service and there will also be another way to currently pay an expense. It is important to services. Our drivers are the face of our of our business. Many times they interact with our customers to deliver the product, they get feedback and we would like to drive to drive a closer relationship between our drivers, our customer service center salespeople and I and our customers and to enhance the service and the feedback. So we know what we can do to do better and to become closer to that experience.
Second of all, I do think that there's some duplication of costs between the two companies and the supplier we were using was doing a nice job for us, anything negative to say about, but I think there are some duplication of costs that we could eliminate over there as we do this transition.
And I'm very pleased that they're willing to help us and work with us to transition this service back to us in house, but things such as insurance and audit, professional fees and some of the I call it some of the things that there are some duplicate costs will probably come out. So ultimately, I could say this and for $2 million to $3 million more as we get that implemented.
I'm very, very pleased with their ability to work with us we went to all of their sites on Friday and they have 11 -- we have a direct 11 distribution facilities, where our people went to all 11. We interviewed the people. We interviewed the drivers. They have a lot of very good people within 48 hours. We had a majority of their team has already have already applied for jobs with us and we were moving forward and quickly and hope to be able to transition all those people with over the next two weeks.
So very pleased working with how this is working out and with their cooperation. And I think we'd like to make this as seamless as possible as you go through this process. And really, again, what appreciate people being cared for understanding. This is the direction we want to go and willing to work with us to make sure that that's going to happen seamlessly and take care of all the people and suppliers along the way.

Matthew Hewitt

Got it. All right. Thank you.

Operator

Dave Windley, Jefferies.
Mr. Windley, your line cutting in and out. We can't hear you.

David Windley

Little better?

Operator

A little.

David Windley

(technical difficulty)

Robert Leasure Jr.

I'm sorry. You're asking something about 2023.

David Windley

Yes, I apologize.

Robert Leasure Jr.

Are you asking what the average price was increased over 2023? I'm sorry, I was trying to --

Operator

We're losing you. Mr. Windley.

Robert Leasure Jr.

David, was the question. What is the average price increase we saw in 2023? Can't hearing.
Doug, can you hear him?

Operator

No, I can't hear him either.

Let's, Doug, maybe we can just recall for questions. See if there's any other questions on the line and maybe David could remap, and dial back in.
(Operator Instructions)

Operator

I think we should just I think we should just wrap up then turn it over to Bob later.

Robert Leasure Jr.

We believe we've laid a critical groundwork for success going into 2024 as we continue to effectively execute across our planned initiatives. We hope to see a continued increase in awards for Discovery Services and reduction in cancellations for the new year as well as closing on contracts related to the final asset sales. As part of our optimization plan in NHP, we will continue our efforts to qualify new energy sources and seek to reduce cost in the small animal and plant businesses. We will also continue our efforts to expand our quotes and awards and VSAT business where we've added capacity for validate the new facilities and equipment and seek efficiencies across SG&A.
We have improved our operating model significantly and ability to leverage our current scale and a broad range of products and services and completing a squeeze as competing as a leading midsized preclinical CRO. We currently operate 24 sites across the US and Europe, serving over 3,000 customers. We support these efforts with over 2000 professionals worldwide, including industry-recognized experts across a wide range of scientific disciplines and is our aspiration to grow our reputation and become a leading CRO provider of choice as the majority of our capital investment program has largely been completed.
We believe we are well positioned to achieve this through increased sales volume driven by greater cross-selling to our existing customers. In addition to our enhanced commercial teams, capturing new customer relationships. Thank you once again for your support as additive enters this new stage of growth possibilities Have a good afternoon, and we look forward to speaking with everyone on our next call. Thank you.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may disconnect your lines at this time and have a wonderful day.