Company: CRL
Filing Date: 2025-04-02
Form Type: DEF 14A
Source: 0001104659-25-030908
Chunk: 42

Company: CHARLES RIVER LABORATORIES INTERNATIONAL, INC.
Filing Date: 2025-04-02
Form: DEF 14A
Chunk 42
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VISORY VOTE TO APPROVE EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION In 2024, our shareholders approved the Board of Directors’ recommendation that we conduct an advisory vote on executive compensation on an annual basis. Accordingly, Proposal Two requests shareholder approval of the 2024 compensation of our named executives as disclosed in this Proxy Statement. Following the vote on this proposal, the next say-on-pay vote will occur in connection with the Company’s 2026 annual meeting. In fiscal year 2024, biopharmaceutical clients intensified their actions around restructuring initiatives and reprioritized their drug development programs, leading to constrained budgetary spending. The uncertainty from a combination of a macroeconomic slowdown, pending patent expirations, and the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on drug pricing had led to significant cost-cutting measures by our large biopharmaceutical clients, including significant restructuring initiatives aimed at improving efficiency and reprioritization of spending shifting to late-stage clinical pipelines. In addition, while biotechnology companies benefited from a more favorable funding environment in fiscal year 2024, recovery for this client base has occurred at a more gradual pace than anticipated due in part to uncertainty around future funding levels and the broader interest rate environment. Despite the current, challenging market environment, many of our pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients continued to benefit from the long-term value of strategic outsourcing to improve their operating efficiency and to access capabilities that they do not maintain internally. Many of our large biopharmaceutical clients have continued to rely on relationships with outsourced partners like Charles River to enhance their drug discovery and early-stage development efforts, and biotechnology companies to assist them in bringing new drugs to market. However, because of their more cautious view with regard to early-stage R&D spending, revenue from both large biopharmaceutical clients and small and mid-sized biotechnology client declined in fiscal year 2024. However, our ability to continue to deliver our leading suite of research, non-clinical development, and clinical bioanalytical solutions has endeavored our clients to continue to choose to partner with Charles River for our flexible and efficient outsourcing solutions, broad scientific capabilities, and global scale. For the past decade, we have continued to take many important steps to position the Company to meet shifting and oscillating client demand and to maintain responsiveness to clients’ needs. These have included acquisitions and scientific partnerships in each of our business segments—Research Models and Solutions, Discovery and Safety Assessment, and Manufacturing Solutions. Simultaneously, we implemented a variety of initiatives targeted at strengthening the