Munro Global Growth Small & Mid Cap Fund on IQVIA Holdings Inc.
Thesis
IQVIA combines global clinical-trial execution with proprietary prescription, claims and real-world patient data that competitors cannot easily replicate. Better patient and trial-site selection can accelerate trials, win contracts and generate additional proprietary data. Biopharma research spending is recovering, while complex biologics and obesity drugs provide new trial activity; record net bookings and a $34.2 billion backlog support revenue visibility. The fund believes hundreds of deployed AI agents strengthen rather than erode IQVIA’s moat and sees roughly 19 times forward earnings as attractive for a business with steadily compounding earnings.
“We see this as a relatively attractive multiple for a business combining a multi-year backlog, an AI-enhanced data moat and steadily compounding earnings.”
Key risks
- A renewed slowdown in biopharmaceutical research spending following the difficult post-pandemic period
- Clinical-trial complexity and the high failure rate of drug development
- Artificial intelligence potentially eroding rather than reinforcing IQVIA’s data-led advantage
- Customer pressure to choose cheaper clinical research providers