What Makes IQVIA (IQV) an Attractive Investment?

In its second-quarter 2025 investor letter, Artisan Select Equity Fund highlighted stocks such as IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE:IQV). IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE:IQV) is an analytical technology services and clinical research-providing company to the life sciences and healthcare industries. The one-month return of IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE:IQV) was -5.90%, and its shares lost 24.23% of their value over the last 52 weeks. On September 26, 2025, IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE:IQV) stock closed at $179.56 per share, with a market capitalization of $30.525 billion.

Artisan Select Equity Fund stated the following regarding IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE:IQV) in its second quarter 2025 investor letter:

"We added IQVIA Holdings Inc. (NYSE:IQV) to the portfolio this quarter. IQV is the leader in the contract research organization (CRO) industry. CROs conduct clinical trials for large pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies. Because of their scale and global operations, large CROs such as IQV can run clinical trials cheaper, faster and better than their clients can do themselves. This explains why CROs have been taking share from pharmaceutical companies’ internally run clinical trials for decades. Clinical trial outsourcing penetration 15 years ago was around 30% but is nowmorethan50%. Industry observers project it could eventually reach 70% or more as the pharmaceutical industry continues to manage its fixed cost base. Finding participants for clinical trials, running the trials and navigating the regulatory landscape is complex, expensive and time-consuming. IQV has about a 22% share of the CRO industry, followed by ICON and PPD (a unit of ThermoFisher), which each have 20%. The rest of the industry is fragmented across multiple players.