And Michael Petusky, a Barrington Research analyst, said an important piece of new equipment — a high-speed, multipurpose, five-head isolator filler — may boost business for the company.
“It’s sort of like the old ‘Field of Dreams’ movie: If you build it, will they come?” Petusky said. “And in this case, they certainly are hoping that they’ve built capacity and now pharmaceutical companies will come.”
As an industry, contract development and manufacturing organizations have faced turbulence since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Matthew Hewitt, an analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group, said they performed better during the early years of the pandemic, as governments invested in vaccine manufacturing. As the pandemic shifted, the funds dried up. Silicon Valley Bank’s blowup in March 2023 also disrupted many small pharmaceutical companies and biotech companies that could have hired Lifecore to produce their products.
“Lifecore wasn’t immune,” Hewitt said. “Their customers were facing some of the same types of headwinds.”
