Fortrea Holdings Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Fortrea Holdings (NASDAQ:FTRE) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

Fortrea Holdings reported third-quarter 2026 revenue of $691.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of $58 million, reflecting a year-over-year increase of 14.4%.

The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance, indicating confidence in its continued execution of the Return to Growth strategy focused on revenue growth and margin expansion.

Fortrea Holdings completed the acquisition of the Early Phase Services business from Worldwide Clinical Trials, enhancing its clinical pharmacology capacity and bioanalytical capabilities and contributing to its long-term growth strategy.

Operational excellence is being strengthened through the implementation of Fortrea Intelligent Technology (FIT) and AI initiatives aimed at improving efficiency and consistency in clinical trials.

The company reported a book-to-bill ratio of 1.12 for the quarter and highlighted ongoing progress in its commercial and operational strategies, including expanding its presence in China and improving its service delivery.

Net income for the third quarter was $0.6 million, compared to a net loss in the previous year, and adjusted net income was $27.9 million, showing substantial improvement.

Fortrea Holdings’ financial discipline remains a focal point, with a focus on sustainable growth, margin expansion and maintaining a strong balance sheet with improved leverage ratios.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Thank you for standing by and welcome to Fortrea Holdings’ third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Currently, 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 11 on your telephone to remove yourself from the queue. You may press star 11 again. I would now like to hand the call over to Tracy Krumme, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations.

Please go ahead.

Tracy Krumme (Senior Vice President of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good morning everyone and welcome to Fortrea Holdings’ third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. With me today on the call are Anshul Thakral, Chief Executive Officer, and Jason Knoblauch, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, please note this call is being webcast. There is an accompanying slide presentation which can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website, fortrea.com. During this call, we’ll make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations.

We strongly encourage you to review the reports filed with the SEC regarding these risks and uncertainties, in particular those that are described in the cautionary statement concerning forward-looking statements and risk factors in our press release and presentation which are posted on our website. Please note that any forward-looking statements represent our views as of today, October 29, 2026, and that we assume no obligation to update the forward-looking statements even if estimates change.

During this call, we will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not superior to nor a replacement for the comparable GAAP measures, but we believe these measures provide investors with a more complete understanding of results. A reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in the earnings press release and the presentation slides that are provided in connection with today’s call.

Lastly, I would also like to note that Anshul, Jason and I will be participating in the Jefferies Global Healthcare Conference in London on November 17. A live webcast and replay of our fireside chat will be available on the Investor Relations section of our website. Investors interested in meeting with us at the conference should contact their Jefferies representative or reach out to me directly. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Anshul, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Tracy. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our third quarter 2026 results. Before we start, I’d like to formally introduce our Chief Financial Officer, Jason Knoblauch, who many of you have already met. Jason has quickly made a strong contribution to Fortrea Holdings, and I’m confident his leadership and experience will help shape our journey in the near and longer term. Turning to our performance, we are pleased to report another quarter of progress on our Return to Growth strategy, which is focused on revenue growth and margin expansion. Our third quarter results reflect continued execution across our three pillars: commercial excellence, operational excellence, and financial excellence. They also reflect an important evolution for Fortrea Holdings as we focus on the next chapter of our journey, translating improved demand, stronger execution, and disciplined investment into sustainable, profitable growth.

For the third quarter, we delivered revenue of $691.5 million, adjusted EBITDA of $58 million, and net new business awards of $770.73 million, resulting in a book-to-bill ratio of 1.12 times and a trailing twelve-month book-to-bill ratio of 1.1200 times. We delivered a strong third quarter reflecting continued progress against our strategic priorities. With continued execution against those priorities, we raised the midpoint of our full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance while narrowing both ranges.

We also recently completed our acquisition of the Early Phase Services business from Worldwide Clinical Trials, expanding our clinical pharmacology capacity, bringing our total beds across the US and UK to more than 570, and adding dedicated bioanalytical and safety lab capabilities. This strategic investment strengthens our early clinical development platform, enhances our ability to deliver integrated solutions to customers, and supports our long-term growth strategy.

Our progress this quarter reflects the work we’ve done to expand our commercial pipeline, strengthen operational execution, and improve financial performance. Our focus is clear: expand our opportunity set, execute with greater consistency, and build a model that creates meaningful operating leverage as growth returns. I will now walk through our progress against each of these three pillars of excellence. Let’s start with commercial excellence. Our progress is becoming more repeatable and process driven. Over the past year, we’ve enhanced our commercial capabilities by focusing on talent, analytical tools, and integrated account management. Our tailored and flexible offerings resonate with customers. Fortrea Holdings can operate across multiple service models, which is an advantage as sponsors want providers capable of combining FSO, FSPs, and point solutions rather than forcing customers into a single operating model.

Our ability to be agile in providing tailored solutions means we can be a strong partner to innovative large pharma and smaller biotech companies. I remain pleased with the balanced mix of business that we are winning across therapeutic areas, customer types, and geography. Our strategy remains grounded in the three R’s: reach, relevance, and repeat. Reach means increasing the aperture of our customer relationships and opportunities. Relevance means bringing differentiated scientific, regulatory, therapeutic, and operational expertise into the process earlier.

Repeat means earning follow-on work by delivering consistently and creating a better client experience. We’re seeing progress across each dimension. We’re expanding our reach and generating more demand, with the value of our pipeline increasing both sequentially and year over year. The breadth of activity is important. It shows that Fortrea Holdings is competing at a stronger position across a broader customer set. China is another important area of opportunity. China continues to be a meaningful source of innovation within the global drug development ecosystem.

We’re seeing Chinese biotech companies and global sponsors that are partnering with Chinese innovators seek experienced partners to advance differentiated assets into global development. We appointed a new leader in China over the summer with a mandate to leverage our strong position and drive growth with both China-headquartered biotechs and multinationals. Stepping back, I would characterize our commercial position this way: the market is becoming more supportive.

But our progress is not simply a function of market recovery. It reflects deliberate changes to our go-to-market model, a sharper focus of where Fortrea Holdings can differentiate, and greater coordination across our teams. Now, we still have work to do, but the quality and the breadth of our pipeline gives us confidence that we’re building a stronger foundation for growth. Our second pillar is operational excellence. In the services business, as I have said before, consistency is paramount. Clients judge us not only by our ideas or scale, but really by our ability to execute. We remain focused on improving delivery across the areas that matter most: project management, site activation, enrollment, quality, and predictability, just to mention a few. These represent the daily discipline required to turn backlog into revenue, protect margins, and earn repeat business.

Clinical pharmacology continues to be an important example of differentiated execution for Fortrea Holdings. Our business benefits from strong scientific capabilities, an integrated global network, and demand for studies that typically convert to revenue more quickly than later-stage programs. We remain focused on building on our leadership position through targeted investment. We recently closed on our acquisition of the Early Phase Services business from Worldwide Clinical Trials. This transaction is strategically important and signifies our growing confidence as we invest opportunistically for growth. Last week, I had a chance to visit our new sites in San Antonio and Austin, Texas, and welcome our new colleagues. The feedback from clients has been very positive in terms of the added capacity and added capabilities.

Our bioanalytical laboratory in Austin allows us to perform testing in house rather than relying on third parties. Our clients have been asking for this capability as part of our solutions, and now we can deliver it for them. This in-house capability also gives us greater control over execution and allows us to convert certain pass-through activity into service-fee revenue. Our new 200-bed San Antonio facility that includes a safety laboratory, combined with our Dallas unit, creates a 300-bed Texas network and expands our ability to conduct larger bioequivalence and high-capacity studies across the global network.

The transaction means that Fortrea Holdings now has more than 570 beds, adding to the scale and speed of our integrated early phase offering. Technology is another important enabler of operational excellence. We launched Fortrea Intelligent Technology, or FIT, earlier this year. It combines our data foundation and Accelerate platform with analytics, machine learning, risk intelligence, and AI, embedding intelligence into workflows our colleagues use to deliver clinical trials. We’re delighted to be shortlisted for Best Use of AI in Clinical Development and Trial Innovation in the Scrip Awards 2026.

Our approach is pragmatic, outcomes-focused, and responsible, and we continue to make good progress in its adoption. We are developing FIT intentionally, module by module, workflow by workflow, persona by persona. Our CRA mobile app is now deployed across more than 49 countries, and early data points indicate that it’s delivering greater monitoring efficiency, creating capacity for higher-value, quality-focused site management. These tools do not replace accountability or judgment.

They help our people prepare more effectively, identify risks earlier, and work with greater consistency. As I have said before, our goal with AI is not automation for the sake of automation. It is to create a force multiplier for our people and our clients. Automation can improve efficiency; judgment improves outcomes. Our strategy brings the two together with appropriate human leadership in a highly regulated environment. That is also the purpose of a unique internal program that we call FELIX. We launched FELIX over the summer, connecting AI literacy, practical adoption, and measurable value. FELIX combines self-paced learning, instructor-led sessions, and role-specific support. Employees can earn belts at different levels that equip them to use AI responsibly and confidently based on their role. It’s making an immediate impact. For example, more than 95% of our colleagues have integrated AI into their weekly routines.

We’re confident that we’re creating a strong platform of AI literacy and adoption at scale. We’re now turning our focus to value realization, embedding AI into priority workflows and managing outcomes through consistent KPI cadence. At the same time that we’re enabling our employees, we also have taken the approach of having our employees enable Fortrea Holdings’ growth through innovation. This year we staged three grassroots innovation hackathons.

These events were held across different regions. Together, these enterprise-led and colleague-led initiatives strengthen how we deliver today while building capabilities that can improve productivity, predictability, and client experience over time. Now let me turn to our third pillar, financial excellence. Jason will discuss this quarter’s financial performance, cash flow, balance sheet, and outlook in greater detail, including the adjustment we made to our reported backlog. We believe this was an appropriate step, and Jason will provide additional context shortly. We continue to operate the business with financial rigor. The major actions to better align our cost structure with the scale of the business are largely complete.

While we will continue to identify opportunities to operate more efficiently, our focus is increasingly on transforming how we work as a global team to drive sustainable growth and margin expansion. Looking ahead, we expect margin expansion to be increasingly driven by revenue growth, favorable business mix, improved utilization, and operating leverage. Mix matters. Our objective is not to grow at any cost. It is profitable growth built on work where Fortrea Holdings can deliver differentiated value.

Our infrastructure is positioned to support additional growth without requiring non-billable costs to increase at the same rate. As we have discussed, low single-digit service-fee revenue growth should begin to produce incremental drop-through. As growth moves towards the mid-single digits, operating leverage should become even more apparent. That is central to our objective of reaching mid-teens adjusted EBITDA margins. Our continued progress and disciplined execution are reflected in our updated full-year outlook. We narrowed our full-year revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance ranges and raised the midpoint of both. We continue to manage costs carefully while investing with discipline to support growth and margin expansion. We also remain focused on the balance sheet and capital allocation, and we continue to expect positive free cash flow in the fourth quarter and for the full year.

Our capital allocation priorities remain focused on investing for organic growth, improving productivity, and continuing to delever while pursuing targeted opportunities that strengthen capabilities and meet disciplined return thresholds. As we look ahead, I want to leave you with three key points. First, our commercial opportunity set continues to expand: the market environment is improving, our pipeline is broader and stronger than it has ever been, and our go-to-market investments are opening doors across large pharma, biotech, China to global innovators, and new-to-Fortrea Holdings clients. We’re now competing from a stronger position. Second, operational execution is strengthening the foundation for profitable growth.

We remain focused on quality, predictability, and client delivery while investing selectively in clinical pharmacology, FIT, AI literacy, and colleague-led innovation. These capabilities are intended to help our teams work with greater speed, consistency, and insight. Third, financial discipline remains central to our strategy. With the major cost actions largely complete, our focus is increasingly on converting stronger demand and bookings into service-fee revenue growth, improving mix and utilization, and capturing the operating leverage embedded in our model.

Most importantly, none of this progress would be possible without our colleagues around the world. As we prepare for what’s ahead, we’re committed to humans in the lead. The experience, agility, and dedication of our people are the foundation of our client and site relationships, of our quality, and of our ability to innovate. We’re asking a great deal of the organization as we return to growth, and our teams continue to respond with commitment, accountability, and energy.

Jason, I’ll turn the call over to you to discuss our third quarter financial results in more detail.

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Anshul, and thank you to everyone for joining us today. Before turning to the results, I’d like to say how pleased I am to have joined the Fortrea Holdings team. I’ve been particularly encouraged by the focus I see on the customer experience and continuous improvement, and I intend to do my part to foster successful outcomes on our strategic imperatives. Now let’s turn to the financials. The third quarter was another solid quarter, demonstrating continued progress on our strategy. Before getting into the details, I’d like to briefly highlight our progress against financial excellence, the third pillar of our growth strategy. First, we achieved a book-to-bill ratio of 1.12 times in the quarter compared with 1.06 times in the second quarter of 2026 and 1.13 times in the third quarter of 2025. This third quarter performance sustained a trailing twelve-month ratio of 1.12x.

Second, we continue to drive improvements in adjusted EBITDA reflecting the benefits of portfolio mix as well as continued progression of our cost optimization and efficiency initiatives. These outcomes are a nice reflection of the commitment and performance exemplified by our talented workforce, one in which we have been making increased compensation investments this year. Now I’ll cover the financial results in more detail. Third quarter revenue was 691.5 million, 1.4% lower than the prior year quarter and 2.0% higher sequentially. This compares with revenue of 701.3 million in the third quarter of 2025 and 678.2 million in the second quarter of 2026. Our third quarter revenue represented backlog conversion of 8.9%, representing a 30 basis point acceleration versus the second quarter of 2026, driven primarily by conversion in the FSO part of our portfolio as well as in FSP contracts.

The year-over-year decrease in revenue during the quarter was driven primarily by a slower conversion rate within the pass-through element of backlog. On a GAAP basis, direct cost in the quarter decreased 4.6% year over year and increased 2.4% sequentially. Both periods were largely impacted by fluctuations in pass-through expenses. SG&A in the quarter decreased 2.8% year over year and increased 1.7% sequentially. The year-over-year change was driven primarily by continued management of our operating expenses, the non-recurrence of certain credit loss provisions in the prior year, and a decrease in one-time spin-related costs.

Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was 58.0 million compared with 50.7 million in the third quarter of 2025 and 58.7 million in the second quarter of 2026. This represented an increase of 14.4% year over year and a decrease of 1.2% sequentially. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 8.4% compared with 7.2% in the third quarter of 2025 and approximately 8.7% in the second quarter of 2026, representing a 120 basis point increase year over year and a 30 basis point decrease sequentially.

The year-over-year margin expansion was fueled by continued improvement in the mix of our portfolio as well as good performance on our cost management and efficiency initiatives, which combined were more than 300 basis points of impact. These gains were partially offset by increases in compensation investments in our workforce, including incentive compensation funding. For the nine months ended September 30, 2026, adjusted EBITDA margin was 8.2% as compared to 6.6% for the nine months ended September 30, 2025.

This 160 basis point expansion versus prior year was enabled by improvement stemming from the impact of changes in the mix of our portfolio as well as good performance on our cost management and efficiency initiatives. This was partially offset by increases in compensation investments in our workforce including incentive compensation funding, as well as 60 basis points of foreign currency headwind. Interest expense for the quarter was 20.2 million compared with 22.6 million in the third quarter of 2025 and 19.3 million in the second quarter of 2026. The year-over-year reduction is due to paydowns of borrowings on our senior secured notes and revolver during the second half of 2025. Compared to the second quarter of this year, the increase in interest is due to higher benchmark interest rates on our variable rate debt, which is about 40% of our total gross debt when considering interest hedges in place.

Turning to our tax rate, during the third quarter, we recognized income tax benefit of 4.2 million, resulting in an effective tax rate of 116.7%. Our quarterly result was impacted by the timing of certain elements of our tax provision. Moving to net income and adjusted net income, in the third quarter of 2026, net income was 0.6 million, compared with a net loss of 15.9 million in the third quarter of 2025 and a net loss of 13.2 million in the second quarter of 2026. Adjusted net income for the quarter was 27.9 million, compared with 11.7 million in the third quarter of 2025 and 22.7 million in the second quarter of 2026. Adjusted basic and diluted earnings per share were $0.29 and $0.28, respectively, compared with $0.13 and $0.12 in the prior year quarter and $0.24 and $0.23 in the second quarter of 2026.

In terms of customer concentration, our top 10 customers represented 53.5% of revenue in the quarter compared with 60.0% in the third quarter of 2025 and 55.4% in the second quarter of 2026. Our largest customer accounted for 17.6% of third quarter revenue compared with 19.8% in the prior year quarter and 16.8% in the second quarter of 2026. Backlog, which includes both direct fee value as well as pass-through fee value, was 7.3 billion at the end of the quarter compared with 7.8 billion at the end of the second quarter of 2026 and 7.6 billion at the end of the third quarter of 2025. Cancellations during the period were within normal bounds, albeit slightly elevated. In addition to the cancellations and contract amendments that occurred during the quarter, we also recorded a cumulative adjustment to backlog of 558 million.

This adjustment reduced the value of backlog such that our resulting balance is a more appropriate estimation of remaining revenue expectations for the contracts in our portfolio. This adjustment was not part of reported net book-to-bill. Additionally, it does not have an impact on reported financial results or revenue planning. It is simply an accumulation of ordinary course changes that can and do occur in the scope needed to fulfill our customer contracts, and it is inclusive of trials that can slowly become inactive.

I’d like to now turn to our cash flow performance. We generated 60.8 million of operating cash flow and 52.5 million of free cash flow in the quarter, representing improvement versus the second quarter, which had 28.9 million operating cash flow and 19.9 million free cash flow. The sequential improvement in cash flow was primarily driven by net DSO, which I will discuss shortly. For the nine months ended September 30, 2026, operating cash flow was a positive 72.7 million compared with a negative 15.6 million in the prior year period.

Free cash flow for the first nine months of 2026 was a positive 47.4 million compared with a negative 33.3 million for the first nine months of 2025. Key contributors to the improved cash flow performance include growth in adjusted EBITDA, improved net working capital, reduced cash interest, and fewer one-time costs. Net DSO was 15 days as of September 30, 2026 compared with 33 days as of September 30, 2025 and 20 days as of June 30, 2026. This represents an 18-day improvement year over year and a 5-day improvement sequentially, primarily reflecting continued execution in our order-to-cash process.

We ended the quarter with no borrowings outstanding on the revolver consistent with the preceding four quarters. Combined with cash and cash equivalents, our available liquidity was approximately 668 million dollars at quarter end. Our gross debt balance at the end of the third quarter was 1.066 billion and our net debt was 845.7 million, which results in net leverage of 3.9 times over the last 12 months. We have improved net leverage by 1.4 turns due to a combination of EBITDA growth, debt paydown, and cash accumulation.

The October 19 closing of the acquisition of the Early Phase Services division of Worldwide Clinical Trials will only slightly impact our liquidity and net leverage, with the latter impacted about a quarter turn of leverage. We expect to maintain ample liquidity and flexibility under our financial covenants for the foreseeable future. Our capital allocation continues to be oriented toward investing for organic growth and productivity, maintaining optionality in our capital structure, and steady deleveraging.

Now, moving to full-year guidance. As Anshul discussed, we raised the midpoints of our full-year 2026 revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance while narrowing both ranges. We now expect full-year revenue of 2.665 billion to 2.690 billion, and adjusted EBITDA of 210 million to 218 million. In closing, our third quarter and year-to-date results reflected good improvement in our business performance and progress against our three pillars of excellence, but our performance was by no means a reflection of our fullest potential. As we look ahead, we are encouraged by both external demand signals and internal capability to drive profitable growth and margin expansion. We continue to expect that margin expansion to come from favorable business mix, improved utilization, technology-fueled efficiencies, and operating leverage.

As we grow service fee revenue, we are going to continue to build and iterate toward those outcomes, and I look forward to continuing the conversation with many of you in the months and quarters ahead. We’ll now open the call for Q&A. Operator, you can now open the lines, please.

Tracy Krumme (Senior Vice President of Investor Relations)

Before we proceed to Q&A, the company would like to remind listeners that non-GAAP measures are not a substitute for comparable GAAP measures. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures can be found in the earnings release, current presentation, and Q2 2026 and Q3 2025 presentations on the Fortrea investor website. As a reminder, to ask a question you will need to press Star 11 on your telephone to remove yourself from the queue. You may press Star 11 again. You will be limited to one question and one follow-up to allow everyone the opportunity to participate. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Elizabeth Anderson of Evercore ISI. Your line is open, Elizabeth.

Elizabeth Anderson (Analyst at Evercore ISI)

Hi, guys. Thanks so much for the question, and congrats on a nice quarter. I wanted to ask maybe a two-parter. One, the EBITDA guide for the fourth quarter maybe came in a little bit below what we were expecting given the ramp. Can you talk about the factors that might be impacting the 4Q guidance? And then secondarily, on the Worldwide acquisition, can you talk about how does that work with the TSA? Obviously I’m sure those facilities are mostly full now, or when do you start selling in?

You’re supporting those clients. If you could just help us talk through those dynamics conceptually, that would be helpful. Thank you.

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Okay, great. Thanks for the question, Elizabeth. Jason here. So in terms of the Q4 guide, a couple of variables at play. We do expect a little bit of a sequential slowdown in revenue, and that’s really just a function of the number of working days that are in Q4 versus Q3. Q3 was a nice quarter in terms of available capacity of working days to generate revenue. With that revenue and number of working days also just comes a little bit of enhanced leverage in the profile, and so that’s really kind of a primary item that’s driving our guide for Q4.

We do have a little bit of a step-up sequentially in some of the IT opex investment that we’re making, but that’s a secondary factor to the sequential revenue dynamic and the resulting impact on productivity.

Elizabeth Anderson (Analyst at Evercore ISI)

Thank you. Question on TSA and then in terms

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

On your question on the TSA, we do have an arrangement in place that canvasses a number of different support functions and areas across HR, IT, finance, et cetera. I think your question was also starting to touch on the commercial apparatus. Recall we already, pre-acquisition, have been working a bit with that business as they’ve been able to help augment some of the patient needs in our portfolio in CPS. But the commercial conversion is starting.

It’s just one of those areas that’s going to take a little bit of time to play out.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Eric Caldwell of Baird. Your line is open.

Eric Caldwell (Analyst at Baird)

Eric, thanks very much and good morning. I wanted to hit on the backlog adjustments. It felt like this number was a bit more than you were indicating in the past. I think you’d thrown around low single digit to mid single digit impact on previous backlog. Maybe it was a touch higher than I felt like it might be. It also seemed like it was perhaps a bit broader in scope and that could just be the language that you used to define it versus, you know, a recent peer adjustment.

But it does seem like it’s more than just an active trial. So I’m hoping to get a little more color on the adjustments and then perhaps what portion was solely inactive trials and if there was stuff beyond that, what exactly it was. And sorry for the three-parter on one topic, but your wording on no impact on revenue in the near term felt like it left open some potential that this actually would temper your perhaps intermediate or longer term revenue thoughts.

So yeah, three topics on the backlog scrub.

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Yep. Thanks, Eric. So our work only completed on the assessment in Q3, so the team’s been working to assess the contract positions, the backlog positions across our portfolio—FSO, FSP, CPS. Ultimately, the goal of the exercise is to ensure that we come out of it with a backlog value that is more appropriately representative of the remaining life revenue on the contracts that we have in the portfolio. It is a mix of both inactive study dynamics as well as what we internally will call not-to-deliver dynamics within parts of the portfolio as well.

And that’s just a natural byproduct of the ebbs and flows that happen in clinical development. The inactive study, the way those often start to develop is slowly. Right. So a study might go on pause or the sponsor might be thinking about reprioritization of their investment allocation and so on and so forth. And there’s often not a bright line in terms of whether it’s canceled or not. And so you have a number of situations that have some ambiguity around them. And ultimately what we’re doing through this adjustment is getting our backlog to a point that better reflects the rest-of-life revenue, which is what it’s intended to be.

In terms of near-term versus longer-term impact, this does not impact any of the variables that have been going into our revenue recognition. It doesn’t impact any of the variables that have been feeding into our near- and medium-term revenue modeling. In this business, this backlog is representative of many, many years of revenue value. The bleed-off goes out 10-plus years at the bottom end of the spectrum, and so that’s why ultimately we’ve characterized it the way that we have.

OPERATOR

Our next question comes from the line of Luke Surgat, Barclays. Please go ahead, Luke.

Luke Surgat (Analyst at Barclays)

Great, thanks for the question. I just want to talk about the gross margin improvements that you guys saw—if you back out the pass-through, it had a pretty sizable step up there year over year and even quarter over quarter. So there’s a lot of moving parts here, I guess, as you’re thinking about mix from customers and FSP versus FSO. So, kind of walk through what were the changes? Are we starting to see some improvements on the initiatives that you guys enacted over the last couple years?

And then lastly, the second part is unrelated but on the burn rate. If you adjust for the 600 out of the backlog, 4Q guide implies a modest step down in burn rate. Should we be thinking about that roughly about 8.5% burn rate as like a good jump-off point to think about what ’27 could look like?

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Yep. Okay, Jason, again appreciate the question. So yeah, look, we feel good about the progress we’ve been making in all parts of our P&L and the margin. So I think your question was primarily focused on gross margin. One of the nice features playing out in our results already, and we expect it to continue to take a more pronounced effect, is this portfolio mix conversion that Anshul and team have been talking about. So we are seeing, as the revenue and the backlog and the contracts within it all start to convert to a nature that are higher economics for us, if you will, that’s been a part of the apparatus of driving some of the gross margin improvement year over year. But also our operations team has been really driving a number of efficiencies in terms of how we convert that backlog and that revenue to our gross profit margins.

And I think we’ve characterized within all that, that’s all happening against the backdrop of a non-inconsequential headwind associated with some of the investments—and they’re good investments—that we’re making in the compensation of our workforce that’s on the order of magnitude of a couple hundred basis points. So, feel good about the progress we’re making. Feel good about the continued progress that we expect that we’ll be making over the horizon as well. And then Q4 burn rate—in terms of the Q4 burn rate—yeah, I think that’s about right in terms of the percentage conversion assumption for Q4. It goes back to that working days dynamic that I mentioned. But, you know, we have been seeing some nice step up in that conversion rate and so putting aside some of the period-to-period fluctuations that can happen in terms of the days of capacity, I think we’re on the right track and trajectory there.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of David Windley of Jefferies. Please go ahead, David.

Cassidy (Analyst at Jefferies)

Hi, it’s Cassidy on for David. Thanks for taking our questions today. So could you just provide a little bit of context on the demand that you’re seeing, firstly by customer cohort, and then business segment—phase one versus phase two, and FSP versus FSO? Thank you.

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Sure, Cassidy, I’ll take that. I appreciate it. Look, I think as we’ve seen as other peers have reported out and other elements of the pharma services sector reported out, I think we are starting to get into the middle of this market recovery. I’m starting to get optimistic about where the market’s headed and the overall recovery and the growth at which pharma services is starting to grow again. I think that’s now starting to become a clear signal across not just CROs but across the sector. So that is good.

As I’ve said in the past, and our numbers show the same thing, biotech recovery came faster. We saw good growth here this year in biotech. If I look at our bookings, we saw almost double-digit growth in biotech bookings here in 2026. BioPharma recovery is coming quickly on the heels of that. If I look at our RFPs going forward for the next quarter or two, we’re seeing a lot more coming in from biopharma than we were historically. It’s playing out as we had talked about.

As we predicted, biotech recovery came faster. Biopharma recovery was a little bit slow, but now we’re square in the middle of a recovery market where both biotech and biopharma sectors are generating RFP flow and pipeline flow. For that we’re excited about.

Cassidy (Analyst at Jefferies)

Thank you.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jalendra Singh of Truist Securities. Jalendra, your line is open.

Jalendra Singh (Analyst at Truist Securities)

Thank you and good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Actually, I want to ask about the large pharma partnership. Are you seeing any meaningful changes in wallet share there or sourcing behavior among your largest pharma customers heading into next year? Some of the CROs have talked about scale becoming a bigger factor in winning work with these sponsors. Just curious what your observations have been and is this consistent with what you are seeing?

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Jalendra, I appreciate you asking that question. So I think there’s a couple of points I would make. One is, as I just said to Cassidy, we’re seeing an inflow of RFPs now coming in from biopharma, not just our existing customers, but as I mentioned last quarter, we’ve been invited into processes for various biopharma refreshes, new RFP models, new outsourcing models, et cetera, that we hadn’t been invited to in the past. In fact, recently we’ve actually won one of those and we’re excited about that.

That should start converting into awards in 2028. Your question around does scale matter in biopharma? I would argue that’s not a new trend. Scale has always mattered in biopharma, and I think biopharma companies continue to see the viable players in that market to be the top six CROs, us included, the ones with established global footprints and global scale. So that’s always mattered. It continues to matter, and I’m excited about the existing new processes that we’re engaged in now.

Jalendra Singh (Analyst at Truist Securities)

Quick follow-up on Worldwide Clinical Trials acquisition. The early phase services with this deal, how is your approach changing on going after CPS work? I understand it increases the capacity—you can go after more work. But does this deal also make you more price competitive? Does it get in front of new sponsor, or is it more about going deeper with current sponsor partners? And how quickly can we start seeing that in bookings numbers?

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Well, I think, look, it adds new capabilities as I have suggested. One of the things our sponsors have been asking for—and one thing I would tell you, Jill, and I appreciate the question—part of what led to us doing this acquisition is really our clients and our sponsors asking for a certain set of capabilities. They love working with Fortrea Holdings, and the two big were our own bioanalytical lab so that we can have an integrated approach between bioanalytical labs, safety labs, and the CRUs, which we now can, and an expanded network, especially in Texas.

Now, within a few hours’ drive we’ve got a 300-bed network which allows you to do larger cohort bioequivalence studies at an economics that makes a lot more sense. So this is really about adding capabilities, not just capacity. And those two new capabilities open up a little bit of the TAM for us in this sector. As far as bookings conversion, look, we closed the deal last week. We got our first award yesterday for bioanalytical lab services that is a Fortrea Holdings client. I think the bookings conversion will come. I’m not going to tell you which quarter. I think the sales team is out working it since we closed the deal last week, and I look forward to some early results here.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin Kalendo of UBS. Please go ahead, Kevin.

Kevin Kalendo (Analyst at UBS)

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Appreciate it. I wanted to follow up on Jalendra’s question a little bit in terms of Worldwide. Is this—I understand, strategically, this step—is this the last step for you? Angela, when you think about where you want this company to be in a couple years, what’s the additional capabilities that you’re getting from this now? Understand the impact that it has and the capabilities. I’m guessing this isn’t all the capabilities that you want to have.

And if you think about where you want Fortrea Holdings to be in three years or five years, what else do you want to add to the suite? What else do your customers want you to do? Maybe that’s a better way to ask it.

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Well, I’ve been here about 15 months, so it’d be hard if this was my last step. Kevin, I appreciate you initiating coverage and welcome back to the sector. No, I’d say this is our first step—first step in a long journey, a long journey in establishing, marching towards our goals, but establishing Fortrea Holdings as a CRO of choice when it comes to evidence generation. The theme by which we’re going to pursue growth is evidence generation. We want to be able to support our sponsors, big, medium, small, across the spectrum of evidence generation. Everything from first-in-human to post-approval services. That’s our goal. And there’s areas in which we’ll continue to look for opportunities to fill capability gaps, both through organic investments, some of which we’re making now and some of which show up in our numbers, as well as inorganic acquisitions such as this one.

But I would say, Kevin, I appreciate the question. It’s the first step in a long journey.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Justin Bowers of Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Justin.

Justin Bowers (Analyst at Deutsche Bank)

Hey, good morning. So just going to stick with the M&A. There in the prepared remarks, in the deck you talk about that asset being EBITDA profitable in 2027. So just would like to understand the course of action to get there and what initiatives to drive EBITDA profitability.

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Yep. Jason here. So thanks for the question, Justin. So we, you know, our team’s already been working to integrate it. Primary focus out of the gates has been on the commercial apparatus around it. And so the exercise that’s happening, you know, by day, by week at the moment is, you know, as our very large pipeline of CPS opportunity work through the sales cycle, it’s getting this business embedded into that pipeline and the conversion of the opportunities and really to fill up their funnel. And a lot of that work would have come through our 606 numbers anyway.

And this is just kind of now re-piping some of it into the direct fee profit-generating part of our P&L and CPS.

Justin Bowers (Analyst at Deutsche Bank)

Okay. And then somewhat related but also somewhat separate, could you talk a little bit about the CPS sales cycle, the lead times and how that business is booked and what investors should do to take that into consideration when comparing book-to-bills to you versus peers that don’t have as much exposure to that business?

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, look, I think that’s a great question. Sales cycles in CPS tend to be shorter, studies tend to be shorter and faster-burning. We can have a client, especially some of our big pharma partners who have now run dozens of studies with us in any given year, make decisions and we could be starting a study up in a matter of two months. We can have sales cycles last anywhere from six weeks to five or six months depending on the size of the company and whether it’s big, medium, small, how well funded it is, et cetera.

But the sales cycles tend to be faster in CPS than they do in the global clinical development, and the studies tend to burn faster than they do in global clinical development.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Charles Ray of TD Cowen. Your line is open, Charles.

Charles Ray (Analyst at TD Cowen)

Yeah, thanks for taking the questions and welcome, Jason. Maybe just sticking on the financials and thinking as we think about next year. Obviously a lot of great improvements over the last year and a half, plus, Anshul, since you’ve been here. Just trying to understand, because I believe in the past, and obviously this predates you, Jason, but the discussion of where at the curve scale we can see margins getting to, and I think, Anshul, you guys had talked about, you know, with the current structure, getting to sort of a mid-teens is a very reasonable area to get to.

Obviously what we’re like, what, eight and a half right now. Just, you know, and that’s, we’ve had, what, 14, looks like we’re on track for mid-teens EBITDA growth. You know, any reason why this kind of progression, given sort of the demand environment we’ve been in and the progress we made, that we could not see something similar as we’re trying to get back to, you know, let’s call it a target margin range of mid-teens. Anything that would hamper that or is that a fair way to think of the current trajectory?

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Look, I appreciate the question, Charles. I think as you said, getting back to what I would consider competitor-level profitability margins, defined as competitors of size, scale and breadth of services that we have, getting into that mid-teens margin remains our true north. It drives a large part of our strategy. The strategy at Fortrea Holdings is growth and margin expansion. Currently we see a clear path. It’s not easy. You got to work at it. You got to work month by month, day by day, quarter by quarter.

But that’s the path we’re on. As the market environment continues to get favorable, that’s a positive. As the market environment gets favorable, bookings remain consistent. Those consistent bookings continue to translate into revenue growth and that revenue growth continues to drop closer to the bottom line as we’ve talked about in the past. So from everything I’ve said to you the last quarter and the quarter before that, that remains our true north.

That’s what we’re marching down. And I think this quarter is a demonstration of evidence along that journey. And I think it was one of your colleagues who picked this up and asked the question earlier around gross margins. I think gross margins, when you back out pass-throughs, that’s really what tells you the health of the business and the progress that we’re making against that true north.

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

I can maybe add some additional context to that. So if you just look at our year-to-date September performance, I think you’ve seen a 606 margin expansion of 160 basis points, as Anshul just alluded to. Kind of go up the chain a bit into 605 margin performance, we had north of 200 basis points of expansion, and that’s more than 200 basis points of expansion that occurred with negligible direct fee revenue growth. We’ve now, in the last two quarters, started to reach a different plateau on that, so feel good about how that’s going to continue to build.

And that’s more than 200 basis points of direct fee margin that’s happened despite some of that compensation investment that we made, which is, on a 605 basis, in and around 200 basis points as well. So the, you know, the kind of portfolio mix is playing out, the efficiencies of the business are playing out. And as I mentioned in my opening remarks, we’ve got a number of different avenues that we’re going to continue to bring to life next year and beyond.

Charles Ray (Analyst at TD Cowen)

Great. And if I could just quick follow-up, I think in the comments of when you talked about sort of cancellations of the quarter, forgive me if I missed it, but you kind of mentioned about contract amendments. Can you talk about what that generally entails and what kind of… and how, you know, how typical is that as well? Thanks.

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Yes, it’s really just kind of lumping together both the concept of cancellations and negative contract amendments versus the positive ones. The quarter was slightly elevated in terms of what actually came through and consummated in the quarter, and that was part of our book-to-bill. But it wasn’t materially elevated. So definitely within one standard deviation.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Albert Hu of Citi. Please go ahead, Albert.

Albert Hu (Analyst at Citi)

Perfect. Thanks for taking the question. So maybe on the book-to-bill, seems like the trailing twelve-month currently 1.12. How do you guys see this playing into growth for next year? I think Street has you guys at the high end of low single dig right now. Do you guys see this as doable? Is there anything that makes this assumption unreasonable? Appreciate the color. I have a follow-up.

Jason Knoblauch (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, I’ll start and Anshul can add to it, supplement. So look, we’re not giving any guide on 2027 at this particular juncture. We’ve got a heavy set of commercial efforts happening now and over the next few months to get our Q4 contracts and books solidified. Feel good about, as we’ve alluded to, feel good about where the pipeline’s at, feel good about the opportunity that we’ve got for Q4. But we ultimately need to get that in print, and then we’ll be working through some of our revenue expectations and guidance thereafter.

Albert Hu (Analyst at Citi)

Okay, perfect. Thank you. And maybe on China. I mean, some of our conversations have been related to the COINS Act proposal recently on restricting investments in Chinese biotech. It doesn’t seem like that has affected China for you guys in terms of your conversations. Maybe if you can break down for us more on what you’ve seen in China in the quarter. I know we called out China biotech being strong, so maybe additional color there will be helpful, and then any conversations you guys are having potentially with this COINS Act proposition.

Appreciate the color.

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Sure. Look, as you know, one of our colleagues, Sandy Kennedy, is in a leadership position at ACRO, which allows us to really work with that group and keep on top of the various things happening in D.C. Look, I’m not going to comment on the politics, geopolitics here, but from everything we can see, the concept of service providers is not impacted. If we look at our China business, we look at where we are getting the biggest amount of growth, and we happen to be an at-scale player—which not everybody is an at-scale player in China.

We happen to have that history. And being an at-scale player, it’s two places. Multinational companies continue to invest in clinical trials in China, using Fortrea Holdings as one of their CROs to provide those services. And also for Chinese biotech companies who are looking to go global and run clinical trials of innovative medicines from China in the U.S. and Europe, Fortrea Holdings happens to be one of the preferred players that those companies go to.

That trend for both in terms of pipeline, RFP and bookings has been positive here over 2026 for us and it continues to be a healthy tailwind for us.

OPERATOR

Thank you. To save for time, we ask that you limit yourself to one question. Our next question comes from the line of Ann Himes of Mizuho Securities. Your question please. Ann.

Ann Himes (Analyst at Mizuho Securities)

Hi, good morning. I know you’re not giving 2027 guidance today, but is there any kind of high-level headwinds or tailwinds that you want to highlight for us? Thank you.

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

As Jason said, we’re not giving 2027 guidance. I think what we’ve talked about in the past—what I think for the entire sector, this is just a Fortrea Holdings comment—as the sector continues to be square in the middle of recovery and as bookings continue to come in and be consistent, not just elevated, but consistent, which is really important, which is something we drive for to make sure we’ve got consistent growth quarter over quarter, that’s what yields how 2027 plays out.

OPERATOR

Thank you. Our final question comes from the line of Jared Haza of William Blair. Your question please. Jared.

Jared Haza (Analyst at William Blair)

Hey guys, thanks for squeezing me in here. I want to go back to the prepared remarks. You talked about some of the areas where you’re focusing on improving service delivery and sort of this mindset of operating excellence. I just wanted to clarify, when you talk about some of these areas like project management, enrollment, et cetera, how much of execution there is a technology innovation story? You talked a little bit about the CRA mobile app as an example.

How much of that is tech versus restructuring how you manage your teams, maybe doing more oversight and training, things like that, more people management, I guess, in a sense to drive that execution.

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Sure, Jared, it’s a bit of both. At the very beginning, let’s cut. When I say very beginning, I say

OPERATOR

Thank you. I would now like to turn the conference back to Anshul Thakral for closing remarks.

Anshul Thakral (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you everyone for your continued engagement. As we close, I want to reinforce that our third quarter performance reflects continued progress against our strategy. We’re expanding our commercial opportunity set, as I’ve said, we’re strengthening operational execution and we’re maintaining financial discipline as we position the company for more profitable growth. The demand environment, as we’ve spoken about today, is clearly improving. Our commercial model changes are gaining traction and our infrastructure can support meaningful operating leverage as service fee revenue returns to growth. While there’s still work to do, we are confident in the strategy, we’re encouraged by the progress, and we’re converting this momentum into sustainable growth, margin expansion, and ultimately that leads to longer-term shareholder value creation.

So thank you for joining us today.

OPERATOR

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

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