Step 1
Unite with Fellow Investors
Step 2
Choose the Best Attorney
Step 3
Provide Documents
Step 4
Follow Case Progress
Step 5
Get Payout
SYNH.US
id: 788
Syneos (SYNH) After-COVID Misrepresentations Case
S.D. New York
Court1:23-cv-06548
Case number09 Sept 2020
Class period Start03 Nov 2022
Class period End25 Sept 2023
Lead Plaintiff motion deadline- Syneos revealed that its book-to-bill ratios had plummeted below even the reduced figures provided in September 2022.
- $SYNH fell over 46% and lost more than $2 billion of its capitalization, damaging investors.
- Investors suspect the Company and its Leaders of misleading.
On November 4, 2022, Syneos (SYNH) revealed that its book-to-bill ratios had plummeted below even the reduced figures provided in September 2022.
Specifically, Syneos stated that its Clinical Solutions segment had achieved net new business awards of $182 million including reimbursable expenses – a startling year-over-year decline of 87% – and a book-to-bill ratio of just 0.18x for the quarter, which was just one-tenth of the new business growth expected by some analysts.
On this news, $SYNH fell over 46% and lost more than $2 billion of its capitalization, damaging investors.
Going back the Company made multiple representations:
- On February 17, 2022, Syneos revealed that its reimbursable expenses would likely never recover to pre-pandemic levels. As a result, Syneos segregated reimbursable expenses from many of its operational metrics, revealing that $3.8 billion of Syneos’ Clinical Solutions backlog (36%) was at risk of never being collected and providing an alarmingly low book-to-bill ratio of just 0.34x in the segment when reimbursable expenses were included. Although Syneos did not disclose the magnitude of the backlog “adjustment,” some analysts estimated that Syneos had eliminated as much as $950 million in prior pass-through revenues.
- On August 2, 2022, Syneos revealed substantial deterioration in its business, disclosing that net new business awards within Syneos’ Clinical Solutions segment had declined by roughly 34% including reimbursable expenses and 15% excluding reimbursable expenses, reflecting book-to-bill ratios of 0.94x and 1.29x, respectively. In addition, Syneos disclosed that it would not achieve even its lowered expectations for reimbursable revenues for the year, causing Syneos to slash expected 2022 revenues by $185 million at the midpoint.
- On September 13, 2022, Syneos disclosed that it expected to announce a book-to-bill ratio in its Clinical Solutions segment for the trailing 12 months ending September 30, 2022, in the range of 1.05x to 1.15x, excluding reimbursable expenses.
Taking all representations into account, Investors have reasons to suspect the Company and its Leaders of misleading statements:
- Syneos’ business development capabilities had been materially impaired by workforce reductions and leadership and operational changes, as well as labor force turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic;
- Syneos had struggled to integrate recent acquisitions, causing Syneos to suffer from a bloated and confused organizational structure and impairing Syneos’ ability to provide comprehensive or effective customer engagement across its product portfolio;
- Syneos was suffering from acute competitive disadvantages as clinical trials moved to remote monitoring and decentralized administration, as Syneos lacked the tools possessed by some of its rivals to successfully run remote and decentralized trials, such as certain data visualization and statistical modeling capabilities, and Syneos had failed to adapt to changing business demands in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic;
- Syneos’ backlog, book-to-bill ratios, and net new business awards had been artificially inflated by more than $500 million through the inclusion of reimbursable expenses that Syneos would never collect;
- Syneos was struggling to execute its existing contracts and to agilely respond to its client needs, causing Syneos to suffer client dissatisfaction across its client base;
- Syneos was exposed to a material undisclosed risk that Syneos would lose customers, be unable to grow its client base or win significant contract renewals, and cede market share to its rivals.
Case Status
Lead Plaintiff Appointed
Alleged Offence
Misleading Statements,
Failure to Disclose,
Omissions
Suspected Party
Directors,
Management
Security Type
Stocks
Trade Direction
Long
Shock Event Date
04 November 2022
Filing date
27 July 2023
Lead Plaintiff Deadline
25 September 2023