What is Certara? $CERT
Certara, Inc. engages in the provision of software and technology enables services for drug developers. It offers cell and gene therapy, clinical pharmacology, complex biologics, decision analytics and modeling, drug development and regulatory strategy, and model-based analysis services. The company was founded on June 27, 2017, and is headquartered in Princeton, NJ.
Biosimulation is the computational simulation of biological processes, which greatly accelerates drug development while saving costs. Certara provides virtual trials to test for toxicology, drug-drug interactions, and efficacy among populations hard to reach by traditional clinical trials.
Here are some of the most interesting tools they provide:
Trial Simulator™:which helps pharmaceutical companies with building a better clinical trial plan. Biosimulation: Leading mechanistic biosimulation platform used to predict how drugs work, without human or animal studies.
The Cardiac Safety Simulator: Enable early assessment of cardiac liability
Pirana Modeling Workbench: It delivers faster, more efficient modeling and simulation by connecting multiple tools for optimizing a pharmacometrics workflow.
Pirana provides an automated folder structure for the storage of analytical results, adding order and traceability to complex analyses.
Competitors:
Certara does have competitors in this unique field. A good comparison for CERT would be SDGR, also in the biosimulation market. Biosimulation is the computational simulation of biological processes, which greatly accelerates drug development while saving costs. Certara provides virtual trials to test for toxicology, drug-drug interactions, and efficacy among populations hard to reach by traditional clinical trials. On the other hand, SDGR focuses on the drug discovery process by simulating physics-based molecular interactions.
Their CEO:
William F.Feehery joined Certara in June 2019 as CEO. Dr. Feehery joins Certara from DuPont, where he has served since 2013 as president of DuPont Industrial Biosciences, a $2.2 billion global biotechnology business which experienced significant growth and profitability under his leadership. In that role, he had full P&L responsibility for 3,000 people, including 500 R&D staff, 20 manufacturing plants, and worldwide marketing and sales across multiple markets. He joined DuPont in 2002 and has prior experience in venture capital and as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group.
Dr. Feehery also serves as a board member for West Pharmaceutical Services (NYSE: WST), a manufacturer of packing components and delivery systems for pharmaceutical, biotech, and medical device companies.
Dr. Feehery holds both a PhD in chemical engineering and an MBA from MIT. He was a Churchill Scholar at Cambridge University and received his BSE in chemical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. His doctorate, awarded while he was the recipient of a National Science Foundation Fellowship, involved developing software and mathematical methods for modeling complex systems.
Financials:
Cetrara sales revenue is increasing year to year but its net income is still negative. This means that Certara is still not a profitable company.
2020 revenue for 2020 was 245 million that's 35 million more than 2019.
Their 2020 net income is -49 million compared to 2019 -8.9 million. That's 40 million more loss than 2019, which is concerning. Perhaps that's why Certara went public, to coverup their losses from 2019.
Conclusion:
Certara went public at the right time. Right now the entire world takes pharmaceutical companies more seriously and are willing to invest big into big pharma. Certara also has over twenty locations worldwide. What I like about Certara is that they don't create pharmaceuticals, but they create software that helps create pharmaceuticals. And if you know anything about software companies, then you'd know that they have high-profit margins. I would like to see how Certara performs on their next earnings, if they do well then we can expect them to grow in the future making them a solid investment. If they didn't do well on their next earnings then I would wait and see why they're not performing well.
Certara has also released a powerpoint presentation summarizing their entire business. Link Below