Medpace Holdings, Inc. (MEDP) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Medpace Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ: MEDP) Q3 2025 Earnings Call dated Oct. 23, 2025

Corporate Participants:

Lauren Morris — Director of Investor Relations

August Troendle — Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors

Jesse Geiger — President

Kevin Brady — Chief Financial Officer

Analysts:

Charles Rhyee — Analyst

Ann Hynes — Analyst

Michael Cherny — Analyst

David Windley — Analyst

Max Smock — Analyst

Jailendra Singh — Analyst

Dan Leonard — Analyst

Luke Sergott — Analyst

Justin Bowers — Analyst

Eric Coldwell — Analyst

Presentation:

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Medpace Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this call is being recorded.

I would now like to introduce your host for today’s conference call, Lauren Morris, Medpace’s Director of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Lauren Morris — Director of Investor Relations

Good morning, and thank you for joining Medpace’s third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Also on the call today are our CEO, August Troendle; our President, Jesse Geiger; and our CFO, Kevin Brady.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that our remarks and responses to your questions during this teleconference may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements involve inherent assumptions with known and unknown risks and uncertainties as well as other important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our current expectations. These factors are discussed in our Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. Please note that we assume no obligation to update forward-looking statements even if estimates change. Accordingly, you should not rely on any of today’s forward-looking statements as representing our views as of any date after today.

During this call, we will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP measures are not superior to or replacement for the comparable GAAP measures, but we believe these measures help investors gain a more complete understanding of results. A reconciliation of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly-comparable GAAP measures is available in the earnings press release and earnings call presentation slides provided in connection with today’s call. The slides are available in the Investor Relations section of our website at investor.medpace.com.

With that, I would now like to turn the call over to August Trendel.

August Troendle — Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of Directors

Good day, everyone. Cancellations were well-behaved in Q3, permitting record net bookings and a net book-to-bill of 1.20. RFP quality remained solid with decisions progressing on a usual tempo. Initial award notifications were strong, and our total dollar value of awarded work not yet recognized into backlog was up approximately 30% in Q3 on a year-over-year basis. We are making good progress toward refilling our pipeline of opportunities.

We will provide 2026 guidance when we report full-year 2025 results in February. However, I will provide a brief preliminary view in an attempt to avoid significant divergence between our view and analysts models. We anticipate 2026 revenue to grow in a low double-digit range of our updated 2025 full-year guidance. We expect EBITDA to grow at a high single-digit pace or greater. We believe pass-through costs will remain high compared to historical levels and represent between 41% and 42% of revenue. Jesse will now provide comments on the queue. Jesse?

Jesse Geiger — President

Thank you, August. Good morning, everyone. Revenue in the third quarter of 2025 was $659.9 million, which represents a year-over-year increase of 23.7%. Net-new business awards entering backlog in the third quarter increased 47.9% from the prior year to $789.6 million, resulting in a 1.20 net book-to-bill. Ending backlog as of September 30, 2025, was approximately $3 billion, an increase of 2.5% from the prior year. We project that approximately $1.84 billion of backlog will convert to revenue in the next 12 months, and our backlog conversion in the third quarter was 23% of beginning backlog.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Kevin to review our financial performance in more detail as well as our guidance expectations for the balance of 2025. Kevin?

Kevin Brady — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Jesse, and good morning to everyone listening in. As Jesse mentioned, revenue was $659.9 million in the third quarter of 2025. This represented a year-over-year increase of 23.7%. Revenue for the nine months ended September 30, 2025, was $1.82 billion, and increased 15.9%. As expected, revenue for the quarter was favorably impacted by higher reimbursable cost activity, particularly investigator sites, driven by a therapeutic mix shift to faster-burning studies in areas, which have a higher concentration of reimbursable cost. EBITDA of $148.4 million increased 24.9% compared to $118.8 million in the third quarter of 2024. Year-to-date EBITDA was $397.5 million and increased 14.7% from the comparable prior year period.

EBITDA margin for the third quarter was 22.5% compared to 22.3% in the prior-year period. Year-to-date EBITDA margin was 21.8% compared to 22% in the prior year period. EBITDA margins benefited from productivity and lower employee-related costs, offset by higher reimbursable costs. In the third quarter of 2025, net income of $111.1 million increased 15.3% compared to net income of $96.4 million in the prior year period. Net income growth below EBITDA growth was primarily driven by a higher effective tax rate and lower interest income compared to the prior year period. Net income per diluted share for the quarter was $3.86 compared to $3.01 in the prior year period.

Regarding customer concentration, our top 5 and top 10 customers represent roughly 23% and 33%, respectively, of our year-to-date revenue. In the third quarter, we generated $246.2 million in cash flow from operating activities, and our net day sales outstanding was negative 64.3 days. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 14,649 shares for $4.5 million. Year-to-date, we repurchased 2.96 million shares for $912.9 million. As of September 30, 2025, we had $821.7 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization program.

Moving now to our updated guidance for 2025. Full-year 2025 total revenue is now expected in the range of $2.48 billion to $2.53 billion, representing growth of 17.6% to 20% over 2024 total revenue of $2.11 billion. Our 2025 EBITDA is now expected in the range of $545 million to $555 million, representing growth of 13.5% to 15.6% compared to EBITDA of $480.2 million in 2024. We forecast 2025 net income in the range of $431 million to $439 million. This guidance assumes a full-year 2025 effective tax rate of 18.25% to 18.75%. Interest income of $12.2 million and 29.5 million diluted weighted-average shares outstanding. There are no additional share repurchases in our guidance. Earnings per diluted share is now expected to be in the range of $14.60 to $14.86. Guidance is based on foreign-exchange rates as of September 30, 2025.

With that, I will turn the call back over to the operator, so we can take your questions.

Questions and Answers:

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Charles Rhyee with TD Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Charles Rhyee

Thanks for taking the questions. Hey, obviously, congrats on the quarter here. When we think about sort of the kind of ranges that you’ve given for next year, how should we think about the pass-throughs in relation to maybe the increase in metabolic work? You know, obviously, we saw another increase here as a % of total revenue to 30% in the third quarter from 25% in the first half. You’re still calling out for pass-throughs to remain stable in 2026 at that sort of 41% to 42% range. When we think out of your current bookings, are you seeing less metabolic trials compared to your current burn, or should we expect to see some kind of leveling off in terms of the higher metabolic mix? Thanks.

August Troendle

Yeah. I think over the course of ’26, it’ll level off some and might even come down a little bit. And it isn’t just the shift to metabolic studies. That is the largest driver, which we’ve talked about, of course. The timing of projects and having a lot of late-stage projects in what we’re burning, as you know, we’re going to start ramping up new studies. New studies are, even if they have the same mix of pass-through costs, there’s greater direct costs incurred earlier in a trial. I mean, pass-through costs are late in a trial.

A trial starts, and some trials you can get halfway through the trial in terms of direct fees, and we’ve earned half of the revenue from our activities, and we haven’t paid sites anything hardly. It’s start-up. If it’s a very short trial, and start-up is a big part of it. The pass-through parts of a trial are backloaded. So, if you have a backloaded portfolio stuff you’re burning, you’re going to have more pass-through expenses at that time. There are a number of things driving it. Yes, we do expect pass-through to maybe peak in Q4 or so and come down over ’26.

Charles Rhyee

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. And our next question comes from the line of Ann Hynes with Mizuho. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ann Hynes

Great. Thank you. Thanks for the 2026 guidance. Typically, your EBITDA grows above your — initial thoughts. Typically, your EBITDA grows above revenue and it’s growing lower, is that just because of the pass-through dynamic, or is there something else going on? If you can just talk about the pricing environment, that would be great? Thank you.

August Troendle

Yeah. I think the driver there is the — is the pass-throughs. I mean, look, there’s a number of challenges to EBITDA, and that includes exchange rates and a number of factors. The biggest factor, I think, is the pass-through that challenges that a little bit. At pricing, look, we’ve talked and everyone’s talked about the pricing environment. As things have slowed in the industry over the last couple of years, there has been a bigger focus on pricing. Pure pricing is more an area for large pharma to get really aggressive at, and has the clout to do it. It is an area of — it’s always a competitive environment. It is — it’s always top of mind, but there has been a greater focus. Some clients just can’t get the cash to make it work, and so you’re looking for ways to help them get there. I do not think pricing is going to drive a meaningful change in margins at all.

Ann Hynes

Great. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Michael Cherny with Leerink Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Michael Cherny

Good morning, and thanks for taking the question. Maybe, if I can go back to your comment, August, on some of the pre-backlog filling, encouraging to see, especially given your customer base. As you think about what you’re positioning with relative to your preliminary views on FY26, how do you think about the conversion rate of those of the pre-backlog, your win rate, and how that should factor in relative to what you’ve seen over the last couple of years? Thanks.

August Troendle

Yeah. I mean, you know, the conversion of how much of it’s going to anticipated, pull into revenue versus backlog, I really don’t have that breakout. I provided the number to — there has been some concern that our burn rate has gone up quite a bit. Our backlog hasn’t grown much this year. It’s a low single digit, a couple of percent up over the past year. I wanted to let people know that, the overall pipeline of awarded studies — I mean, I’m not just talking about pipeline of opportunities — of awarded studies, we got a fixed scope of work. We’ve negotiated the price on it.

They’ve given us written award of that and it just hasn’t gotten to first patient in yet. We may be working on it, etc., and it just hasn’t gotten to first patient enrolled. That’s in our, you know, this bucket pre-backlog. That is up 30%. This pre-backlog bucket of awarded firm award work is larger than our backlog itself and is up 30% over the year. I think that puts us in a good position for refilling our backlog over the next year and not having what a number of people have described as some sort of air gap in our revenue growth and things will stall. We run out of backlog, kind of. We really are improving our opportunities for backlog conversion in ’26 and revenue generation.

Operator

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of David Windley with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

David Windley

Hi, thanks. Good morning. So that’s good timing. I’ll come in right behind that. So, August in ’23-’24, a lot of your peers saw their activity levels, which would be more akin to your kind of initial award timing moderate, decline, begin to feel the impact of lower funding? And then for you, that materialized for Medpace — I should say that materialized in the weaker book-to-bills more in the mid ’24 timeframe as you saw some of that pre-backlog cancel out and not move forward, etc. So, kind of a timing — same timing dynamic sets up for what was a pretty weak funding environment in the first half of ’25. So, your last answer may have been pointing at me specifically, I’ll take that. Why is this time different?

August Troendle

I don’t know. The difference — a big difference is this has been driven by cancellations, not weak business. There are many challenged clients and that does affect the business environment, and there’s been a really highly unusual series of cancellations that we went through. But the business environment underlying it has always been pretty okay. Maybe you’re saying, well, not real strong compared to what it had been a few years ago, but it’s pretty good. And despite all these huge cancellations out of this pre-backlog awarded study bucket, despite all of those, we still grew that bucket by 30% over the last year. It would have grown much faster, and we’d have a much bigger backlog at this point if we hadn’t had those cancellations. But the difference is, this has been driven by cancellations, not a really weak funding environment causing lack of opportunities.

David Windley

Got it. And so then from a — from kind of a metric cycling standpoint, you and I after the last quarter talked about your burn rate kind of naturally increasing in at least some large part because you hadn’t been adding a lot of early new to start studies into the, call it the early part of the backlog. And so now you’re getting into a period where it feels like that is probably going to happen, get healthier, more added to the backlog. And so, I appreciate also the ’26 commentary. If I were to kind of interpret, you would expect backlog to grow faster, burn rate to come down, and then your need to — and this is — my next question is your need to hire to support that growth is probably going to accelerate. Is that the right way to think about how the business is going to evolve?

August Troendle

Yeah. I think that’s a reasonable scenario.

David Windley

And on the hiring, where — we haven’t talked about your beginnings of your offshoring activity that I think you started in 2024. How is that progressing? And where is your hiring happening? That would be my last question. Thanks.

August Troendle

Sure. So, hiring in year-to-date and in the last quarter, the largest region of growth was North America, and all that really United States. The second largest would be Asia-Pac. The kind of two outlying areas that you — we’ve not really grown staff at all are Europe and China. And throughout Asia-Pac, it’s through — throughout Asia-Pac, although our largest hiring area in Asia-Pac as a single country was India. Over the last few years, you know starting as you say, a couple of years back, we started hiring in India and that has added a substantial number of staff overtime substantially not compared to our overall numbers, but that’s been a focus area in Asia-Pac. I think that it’s pretty — it’s pretty balanced and most of the hiring recently has been US and that’s kind of a transition in the market. There’s been more US-focused work lately, and a lot of the metabolic stuff is more US-focused. So, that’s been a very strong area of growth.

David Windley

I appreciate the answer. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Max Smock with William Blair. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Max Smock

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking our questions. August, maybe one on the — just expectations for book-to-bill here moving forward. You talked about initial awards being up 30% year-over-year, but based on kind of the midpoint of the guide here, I think you need to do 55% growth in bookings in 4Q to put up a 1.2 book-to-bill in the quarter. Can you help us bridge that gap or maybe just elaborate on your booking expectations for 4Q and what you’ve embedded in your guide for bookings in 2026? Thank you.

August Troendle

Yeah, we’re not — we’re not giving a guide to ’26, and I don’t know where the bookings are going to come out. So, I’m not going to get into trying to set them. We did say that second half of ’25, we did think that we could get to a 1.15. We thought a reasonable chance of getting there and that’s what kind of where we’re looking at towards Q4 is sort of the target. And I think that looks reasonable, but I’m not going to get into next year yet.

Max Smock

Maybe just following up on that point, I mean 1.15 still kind of implies 45% plus bookings growth in 4Q. Is that disconnect from the 30% growth in initial awards to that 45%, give or take on net new business awards in 4Q. Is that — is that disconnect? Is that typically there in a quarter? Like what’s your visibility into that bookings in 4Q, given that initial awards up 30%?

August Troendle

Well, look, as you said that bucket is a little bit bigger, and it’s 30% growth, not 30% increase in awards. I’m talking about the total bucket is up 30%. Awards — new awards were up sequentially a bit, but that’s you know that it’s the total bucket and how much of that has to is needed to drive a given booking number, I don’t know.

Max Smock

Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you for clarifying on that. Maybe just as a quick follow-up here, you gave some color on decisions progressing at a usual tempo. Just wondering how those decision-making timelines have changed more recently and what you’re hearing from customers around this confidence in the funding environment moving forward?

August Troendle

Yeah, no, I think things are moving a lot — Q1, we had a sort of things were held up, we weren’t getting our sort of pending RFPs, you know, total dollar pending decisions had kind of spiked and there was a lot of slowdown in things and that’s then improved quite a bit and it’s been now, I wouldn’t say, yeah, there’s still a challenged — funding challenges for clients and so some are delayed, etc. But I think overall, things are going on a pretty reasonable pace. It’s certainly — it’s somewhat normalized. I don’t — there isn’t a big — a large jump-in sort of that pending work and people not making decisions and holding things up. So, I think they’re moving along — things are moving along pretty well and that’s — that’s what we hear in terms of feedback. People are getting — are getting funding. I think things are moving along and there’s a parallel group that are stalled and having trouble, but we have the flexibility to jump where we need to be.

Max Smock

Got it. Thanks again for taking our questions.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Jailendra Singh with Truist Securities. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Jailendra Singh

Thank you, and thanks for taking my questions. First, a quick clarification on your preliminary 2026 growth expectations on numbers. Just to clarify, that underlying assumption there is the environment looks similar to what you are seeing in Q3 in terms of bookings flow and pipeline, right? That’s the underlying assumption. I want to make sure that?

August Troendle

Yeah, we kind of always push forward of the environment. But you know, a lot of ’26 is already kind of you know, cancellations are the biggest sort of wild card, but yes, you’re right, the business environment, there still are things that newly awarded now that will affect next year. But you know kind of most of the pipeline is there and the big question mark is cancellation rate. And what we’re assuming is, actually it could be a little bit higher than where it has been this quarter and last quarter or — in Q3 and in Q2, but it doesn’t jump-up again to like levels of Q1 and Q4 and things like that.

Jailendra Singh

Okay. And then my quick follow-up on the margin trend. So, thanks for the color on the growth number for next year. But outside of pass-through, as you think about the margins in the core direct service revenue business, can you talk about the leverage on gross margin and SG&A? You had a nice kind of improvement this quarter. Just trying to understand the trends there and I mean, do you think that you are pretty much at the peak on this margin on the — again, outside of pass-through impact?

Kevin Brady

Yeah, Jailendra, as August mentioned, we provided some color on both revenue and EBITDA for 2026, and the margin for the most part is expected to remain in a very good spot. And so we’re continuing to see a improved productivity from our existing employee base. Some of that is just driven by improved attrition rates. They remain very low. Great utilization levels and studies are progressing at a very good pace. As we said in the third quarter, we are seeing improved funding and with the fewer cancellations, things are progressing in a very good way. So, we do expect margins to remain in a good spot in 2026 and it’s really driven by just continued productivity of the business.

Jailendra Singh

Great. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question is going to come from the line of Dan Leonard with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Dan Leonard

Thank you very much. I’m curious how you would describe the breadth of outperformance in Q3? Would you attribute the upside to a narrow set of one to two customers or was it broader than that?

August Troendle

In terms of what? Revenue —

Dan Leonard

Yeah, exactly. Just looking at the revenue in Q3 compared to Q2, it looks like the growth came in top five, it came in metabolic. I’m just looking for color on breadth versus what otherwise might suggest that there was just a big trial that landed in the quarter.

August Troendle

Kevin, do you want to —

Kevin Brady

Yeah, Dan, I’d say it’s pretty broad-based. I mean, certainly some of that was just influenced by the pass-throughs. I mean pass-throughs continued to increase. I think for the quarter, we were right around 42%. So that certainly had an influence. But then also just the carryover of the improvements that we saw coming out of our conversation in Q2, where we saw improved funding in those studies progressing forward. The fewer cancellations in the second quarter and that translating further into the third quarter. So, it’s pretty broad-based. I wouldn’t say it’s isolated to a handful of studies.

Dan Leonard

Okay. I appreciate that. And then just a quick follow-up. Do you need to accelerate headcount growth further to service your sales forecast for next year or is that low-single digit growth rate and headcount growth the right number?

Jesse Geiger

Yeah, we expect headcount acceleration as we head into next year.

Dan Leonard

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Thank you. Our next question will come from the line of Luke Sergott with Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Luke Sergott

Great. Thanks for the questions. I’m also one of those that thought that there would be an air pocket. I just want to talk about the competitive win rate that you guys are seeing. We’re hearing from some of the larger CROs that typically haven’t played in that part of the — in your part of the market that they’re going to start competing or entering or bidding on some of this business. So are you guys starting to see — see the likes of them show up or just any color around that?

August Troendle

Yeah, they’ve always been there. I don’t know about the additional effort or attention there. Certainly, there’s a lot of talk about it, but we see the same players and it is the large providers that we’re often competing against. Our win rate has been okay. I mentioned last quarter, it was actually down a little bit. The awards were actually good because the total decisions were elevated. Our win rate did come back up this quarter and some fewer number of decisions, but again, good awards. We don’t see a trend towards a greater competition causing our win rate to deteriorate. There has been some movement over the last year or so to bring more providers to an opportunity. So instead of what you often see was three, maybe four CROs now is often it’s six or even more. And so that obviously reduces the win rate a little bit for everybody. But I think you’re correct for those situations and I think our competitive position is very strong.

Luke Sergott

Great. And then I guess a follow-up here, not to beat a dead horse, but on the burn rate and kind of how you’re thinking about that through next year. Where do you think that like not even through the end of next year, but where do you think that this kind of settles out as we think about kind of the out years? Could it be more elevated versus what you had, and let’s say before it started ramping up in like the high teens?

Kevin Brady

Yeah. I mean, I don’t think we can answer that question in terms of long term. It’s a lot dependent on our mix of programs, where they are in their life cycle. It depends on future bookings. If you go back to a couple of years coming out of COVID, when our bookings were very strong, our burn rate came down quite a bit. So, it is influenced by how things are progressing from award notifications into programs in the backlog, but it’s hard to say. Our range has been quite wide.

Luke Sergott

All right, great. Thanks.

Operator

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Justin Bowers with DB. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Justin Bowers

Hi, thank you and good morning, everyone. So, I just want to follow up on Luke’s comment and your remarks on the win rate, August. You said fewer decisions, but good awards and the win rate was up. So are we to infer that your average award size was larger or at least substantial this quarter? So that’s part one. And then part two is just, can you give us a sense of how your conversion or retention or win rates have been trending, call it, over the last couple of years of programs that you progress from Phase 2 to Phase 3?

August Troendle

Yeah, I don’t think there’s been any change in that. It’s kind of all over the map, but usually we can progress from Phase 2 to 3, but there’s — there’s a lot of times that products within our clientele are sold or move to someone else. And sometimes we also just don’t win the Phase 3. We’re considered not strong enough in a particular market or something. So, I don’t know that that’s changed at all.

Justin Bowers

Okay. And then in terms of the award size in the quarter?

August Troendle

Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t — I don’t actually have that. Anybody — anybody on the line have that?

Kevin Brady

I mean, it’s pretty normal, I would say, Justin, there’s been — there was no significant decisions. And remember, decisions where we’re notified of an award, those don’t go into backlog, right? Those fit into that kind of pre-backlog bucket. But I wouldn’t say there was anything out of the ordinary in the quarter from a decision standpoint.

Justin Bowers

Okay. And then in terms of the pre-backlog, how does that — how does the therapeutic mix of that compare to the revenue that you’re showing right now? So, just sort of frame things a little bit like oncology is 30% — was 30% in 3Q and like metabolic was 27%. When you look at the — the pre-backlog, is it, over-indexed or under-indexed relative to those two therapeutic areas?

August Troendle

It’s over-indexed in metabolic as you might expect.

Justin Bowers

Okay. All right. Thanks so much.

August Troendle

Not massively, but there is a — it’s a higher proportion, and that — again fits in with what we’re currently seeing in and burning.

Operator

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Eric Coldwell with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Eric Coldwell

Well, thanks very much. Good morning. I have maybe three. First, on these — on the preliminary views of 2026, talking about the revenue outlook. If we run various inputs on what the fourth quarter service revenue might look like, and then also what does low double-digit growth mean and 41% to 42% pass-throughs, you can run various scenarios. They all lead to service revenue implied growth or preliminary view growth of being somewhere in the upper mid-single digits to low-double-digits growth. Is that your interpretation as well or am I missing something?

August Troendle

Okay, I believe your math. Kevin, do you have comment in there?

Kevin Brady

Eric, did you — can say that again, upper mid — upper mid -[Speech Overlap].

Eric Coldwell

I don’t know if you’re going to do $400 million of — oh, sorry, go ahead.

August Troendle

No, go ahead. Say it again.

Eric Coldwell

Yeah, look, I mean, it’s going to be annoying on the call here, but I don’t know if you’re going to do $400 million of service revenue in Q4, $410 million. I don’t know what that number is. So, there’s various bases from which we have to grow. But if I model low double-digit revenue growth and I take it all the way up to 12.5%, which is my view of the low-end of — or the high-end of low double-digit, and then I say pass-throughs at the low-end of mix, 41% even using various inputs like that, I’m coming up with service revenue growth somewhere in the mid-to-upper single-digits on the low-end of the range up to low-double-digits on the high-end of the range. And the only reason I’m focusing on that, yeah.

August Troendle

That’s fair. That sounds. Yeah, that’s fair.

Eric Coldwell

Yeah. So I thought and maybe I’m still taking too many crazy pills here, but I thought last quarter, we came off thinking it was going to be more like 15% service revenue growth. And I — maybe I misinterpreted comments last quarter, but admittedly, I was a bit higher on my service revenue outlook for next year.

August Troendle

Yeah. I don’t think we made any comments about next year’s growth at all, let alone service revenue.

Eric Coldwell

I might have — I might have misinterpreted something. On the pre-backlog, the 3 to 6 — or I’m sorry, you said pre-backlog, you kind of again confirmed that it’s above backlog. So it’s above $3 billion. I think there’s a range out there of where it might be, obviously more than three, but less than x, I was hoping you could give us a little more specificity because I still think there’s a lot of confusion on the street about these quarterly net-new awards, they’re really not things that are happening in the quarter. It’s the amalgamation of everything you’ve built up in the past that’s moving into revenue generation phase. So, having a sense on that, that bucket is at $4 billion, $5 billion, $6 billion, having a sense on that bucket could help, you know, maybe help people think about what magnitude of that pre-backlog actually needs to convert to revenue generation phase, whereby it then goes into your reported backlog?

August Troendle

I mean, look, it’s part of an overall pipeline and there are firm awards at that point, but it is part of an overall pipeline, and we do tend to see — and have seen some very large cancellations there. So, we don’t treat it like backlog because until the study is actually running and gets patients in, there is a higher risk. But look, I don’t want to get into putting — putting numbers on that and then tracking just the size of it on the size of what other buckets, etc. I think we provide adequate information on their overall parameters that we look at and measure, and pay attention to give trends. But yeah, if the bucket is somewhere under $4 billion, right.

Eric Coldwell

Okay. That’s super helpful actually. And then last one, thank you for allowing my time here. You made a comment earlier about this total bucket of awarded work that isn’t in backlog being up 30% year-over-year. And then in that same vein of commentary, you said something about haven’t gotten the first patient in. So, then I got thinking, are you — are you basically telling us that you don’t put an award here until you actually have the first patient in the study? Because I used to think that the parameter was that you needed to be within 30 days of revenue generation. But maybe the real parameter is, you actually are live in the study generating revenue before you put something into backlog — street basing backlog?

August Troendle

That’s correct. It could be that there’s a revenue prior to — and even sometimes a chunk of revenue prior to reaching backlog.

Eric Coldwell

Okay. So this is how — this is how the revenue started growing before the headcount did. I’m just — I’m trying to get a sense like things started — they — the work sped up maybe a bit faster than you were thinking six months ago when you had some cancels and market uncertainty, the work sped up sometime between April and July, the tone and the messaging clearly shifted. It just feels like maybe this work really picked up pace, and you were sitting right there, not quite in backlog, but suddenly the stuff is in backlog, and now we get the big revenue spike. I’m just trying to get a sense on, what really are these dynamics between reported backlog, the pre-backlog, and then the notion that your revenue actually accelerated pretty quickly before your headcount growth did and that —

August Troendle

So yeah, and there’s a couple of components to that. One is, yes, you’re right, we put it in very late. Generally, a patient doesn’t — the patients got to be, kind of — we think a patient is going to go in a very short near-term, right? So, it’s — so it’s right about when you get the first patients in. But there’s other reasons why there might be some concern on that. There’s studies where — here we have a manufacturing problem and actually that was an issue recently. And in terms of — it’s right up to a lot of work being done and we haven’t got the patient, but there is uncertainty around a drug availability or there may be some other regulator — they need some decision at some regulatory authority to move forward with this. So, those kind of things we don’t put in backlog. So, there’s a number of gates, but yeah, things can be very close to large-scale revenue generation when they go into backlog.

Eric Coldwell

Very helpful. Thanks again, guys. I appreciate it.

Operator

Thank you. And one moment for our next question. And we have a follow-up question from the line of David Windley with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

David Windley

Hi, thanks for taking my follow-up. Eric asked one of the two, I was going to follow up on the other one is, on your metabolic indexing. So, a lot of the inbound questions I get on this particular topic, assume GLP-1. I wondered if August, you’d be willing to provide some color on the breadth or lack of your participation in metabolic. My sense is that, it is broader than just GLP-1 and maybe mostly non-GLP-1, but I wondered if you’d be willing to comment on that just so we’d have a better perspective of what your — what the drivers are of that fast-growing part of your revenue and backlog? Thanks.

August Troendle

Yeah. So GLP-1 is probably two-thirds of our obesity. So it is a big chunk. What do you call the GLP class is a large portion of the overall obesity, but it’s not all of it. There’s still a fair amount of other.

David Windley

And is that spread across multiple clients, I would presume?

August Troendle

Yes.

David Windley

Great. Thank you.

August Troendle

Yeah.

Operator

Thank you. And I’m showing no further questions. And I would like to hand the conference back over to Lauren Morris for closing remarks.

Lauren Morris

Thank you for joining us on today’s call and for your interest in Medpace. We look forward to speaking with you again on our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. [Operator Closing Remarks].