Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Steven Crowley – Craig-Hallum Capital.
Steven Crowley – Craig Hallum Capital
I think last quarter you were able to share with us some statistics or metrics on either the number of customers versus a year ago, or number of new customers. Do you have those again?
Richard Braun
Steve, yes and no. I can tell you that we looked at it, and we realized why you’re asking this, and the master accounts are up 9%, but the whole number of master accounts and sub-accounts is not very relevant because if you remember it was up 20-30% last quarter, but the increased revenues were $1.4 million last quarter in drugs of abuse, and this quarter, they were 1.7. There isn’t a correlation because a lot of the structure of the master accounts and subaccounts and the number has to do with the way we bill clients, the way they structure information that they send us, so it isn’t really a relevant number we don’t believe. What’s relevant is the revenue number.
Steven Crowley – Craig-Hallum Capital
Clearly the story continues to be a tug of war between sluggishness out of your existing customer base and some pretty substantial success on the new customer acquisition side.
James A. Schoonover
That’s correct. It’s still a difficult hiring environment, but yet we continue to make inroads with new accounts, so you’re right. It is pretty much of a tug of war right now.
Steven Crowley – Craig-Hallum Capital
In terms of the specialty lab services segment, clinical trials you’ve advertised as being a lumpy business as it grows in an overall annual path. Is this just one of those lumps that you reminded us from time to time that we’re likely to see? What can you tell us about the kind of visibility you have longer term for the clinical trials business?
Richard Braun
Steve, that’s a fair assessment, and I thank you for reminding us and everyone that we’ve continually said that it is lumpy. Now the irony of that is that this is the first quarter in all the years we’ve been telling that that it’s really been lumpy on the downside. We don’t see anything systemic. In the one case, there was a trial cancelled. That was the NICE trial ongoing because of an adverse event with a patient. We still have that client. They’ll continue to send us business. In the other case, it was a preferred client relationship where they had manufacturing issues with the FDA, and they shut down all their manufacturing and trial activity on a temporary basis till they could resolve them, but all indications are that they’ll be back probably fall or later in the year giving us business, and our backlog, etc., is respectable, so a longwinded answer is you’re absolutely right. It’s just a function of lumpiness, but it’s not systemic.
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