LabCorp 2013 Annual Report Download - page 6

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2
First Pillar:
Deploy capital to investments that enhance our
business and return capital to shareholders.
The 2012 acquisition of MEDTOX Scientifi c was an
important addition to our capabilities in toxicology
and pain management testing, and in 2013 solid
growth in these businesses contributed to strong
volume trends for the year. MEDTOX is the latest of
several successful acquisition integrations, including
Genzyme Genetics1, Clearstone Central Laboratories,
Orchid Cellmark and Monogram Biosciences. We
remain focused on identifying promising acquisition
opportunities and expect that acquisitions will
remain an attractive way to expand our test menu
and geographic footprint for the next several years.
We now do business in more than 40 countries,
and we evaluate expansion opportunities with an
increasingly global perspective. The acquisition of
Orchid Cellmark brought LabCorp a strong presence
in forensic testing in the UK, and the addition of
Clearstone Central Laboratories extended our foot-
print in the clinical trials central laboratory market
to key Asian geographies – China, Japan and
Singapore. We will continue to seek international
opportunities that require modest capital investment,
present attractive growth profi les and allow us to
leverage our core competencies.
Share repurchase, our vehicle for returning capital
to shareholders, increased in fi scal 2013 to approxi-
mately $1 billion, representing 10.4 million LabCorp
shares. In early 2013, we announced our goal to reach
a target leverage ratio of 2.5 times debt-to-EBITDA
over time, and our 2013 repurchase activity brought
us near this objective. Over the last decade, LabCorp
has repurchased nearly 77 million shares of stock at
an average price of approximately $71, and we have
strategically deployed our free cash fl ow between
acquisitions and share repurchase over this time. We
expect to continue to deploy capital in a balanced
manner between these two objectives.
Second Pillar:
Enhance IT capabilities to improve
physician and patient experience.
IT competencies are key to delivering knowledge
to our customers, so they remain an important
priority for LabCorp. LabCorp Beacon® is an end-
to-end platform that provides the framework for
a number of innovative IT products.
For example, LabCorp Beacon®: Analytics helps
clients better manage practice and population
health data. Supplemented with insights derived
from our extensive patient database, LabCorp
Beacon: Analytics helps physicians unify the
1 We now provide reproductive genetic testing services under the name Integrated Genetics and oncology genetic testing services under the
name Integrated Oncology.