Syneos Health, Inc.

On February 17, 2022, Syneos disclosed that its reimbursable expenses would likely never recover to pre-pandemic levels and that $3.8 billion of the Company’s Clinical Solutions backlog was at risk of never being collected. On this news, Syneos’s stock price fell $4.01, or 4.8%, to close at $79.36 on February 17, 2022, thereby injuring investors.

Then, on August 2, 2022, Syneos revealed that net new business awards within the Clinical Solutions segment had declined by approximately 34%. Additionally, the Company reduced its expected revenue for 2022 by $185 million. On this news, Syneos’s stock price fell $13.94, or 17.6%, to close at $65.20 on August 2, 2022.

Then, on September 13, 2022, Syneos disclosed that it expected to announce a book-to-bill ratio in its Clinical Solutions segment in the range of 1.05x to 1.15x, excluding reimbursable expenses. On this news, Syneos’s stock price fell $8.65, or 13.6%, to close at $54.72 per share on September 13, 2022.

On November 4, 2022, Syneos revealed that its book-to-bill ratios had fallen lower than expected. Specifically, the Company stated that its Clinical Solutions segment had a reimbursable expenses 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. On this news, Syneos’s stock price fell $22.11, or 46.2 %, to close at $25.70 on November 4, 2022, thereby injuring investors further.

The complaint filed in this class action alleges that throughout the Class Period, Defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements, as well as failed to disclose material adverse facts about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects. Specifically, Defendants failed to disclose to investors: (1) that Syneos’s 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; (2) that Syneos had struggled to integrate recent acquisitions, causing the Company to suffer from a bloated and confused organizational structure and impairing the Company’s ability to provide comprehensive or effective customer engagement across its product portfolio; (3) that Syneos was suffering from acute competitive disadvantages as clinical trials moved to remote monitoring and decentralized administration, as the Company 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 the Company had failed to adapt to changing business demands in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic; (4) that Syneos’s 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 the Company would never collect; (5) that, as a result, Syneos was struggling to execute on its existing contracts and to agilely respond to its client needs, causing the Company to suffer client dissatisfaction across its client base; (6) that, as a result, Syneos was exposed to a material undisclosed risk that the Company would lose customers, be unable to grow its client base or win significant contract renewals, and cede market share to its rivals; and (7) as a result, Defendants’ positive statements about the Company’s business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times.