Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions). And we will open today with a question from Dave Windley with Jefferies & Company. Please go ahead.
Dave Windley - Jefferies & Company
I wanted to, I guess, start on the PCS side. Jim, you saw a little bit of softness in 3Q, but it seems from your comments that demand is softening maybe fairly precipitously. I don't want to over read that, but I wondered if you could reflect to us a little bit more the feedback that you're getting from clients kind of in real time that give you the sense that the fourth quarter will be softer still.
Jim Foster
I'd say that's a fair characterization. We saw some softness in the last quarter. We had some study slippage and delays. We had essentially commented and guided on the fact that we thought that we would have a similar growth rate in the third quarter. As you saw, it was slower.
We certainly have confirmation and are living through continued study slippage and delays, somewhat on an accelerating basis tied probably to a whole range of factors from the overarching economic situation in the country, particularly as you get into the fourth quarter, which had been preceded by lots of restructuring and still lots of restructuring going on by many clients, both US and abroad.
There's been a constant reprioritization of drugs to be developed a lot of this year, and clearly, an emphasis on the late-stage aspects of the drug development process, even though, as I've said in my remarks, there are a larger number of molecules actually in early stage waiting to be developed. So I think the looming patent expirations are also pushing people to the sort of more on the late-stage focus.
So, clearly, we have a large international infrastructure on both sides of the ocean, very small facilities, and very large ones, different types of toxicology work, both highly specialized and more general in nature. We have, notwithstanding the fact that the North American sales were up in the high single digit ranges earlier, we're definitely seeing accelerating movement.
We saw studies in August move to January rather than to October, for instance. A lot of the studies that were "booked" in the fourth quarter have slipped as well. So slippage is a fundamental part of the preclinical business. It's always been there and it's always been relatively modest. The drug isn't quite ready and we've reprioritized it and the backlogs are sufficient to sort of fill that in.
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