Catalent Inc. reported a business update and appointed Ricky Hopson interim chief financial officer. Hopson, who had been serving as the company’s president, division head for clinical development & supply, assumed the role of interim chief financial officer on April 14. He replaces Thomas Castellano who left the company. The company is engaging a leading, global executive search firm to evaluate candidates for a permanent CFO.

“Ricky is an experienced financial executive who deeply understands Catalent and can successfully lead our financial function through this interim period until we identify a new, permanent CFO,” said Alessandro Maselli, President and CEO. “We also thank Tom for his 15 years of service, during which he played an integral role in our successful initial public offering in 2014 and served in multiple senior positions. We wish Tom well in his future endeavors.”

While complete financial information and operating data for the company’s third fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2023, are not yet finalized, Catalent expects that productivity issues and higher-than-expected costs experienced at three of its facilities, including two of its largest manufacturing facilities, during the quarter will materially and adversely impact the company’s financial results for the third fiscal quarter and its outlook for the remainder of the 2023 fiscal year.

One of the facilities that experienced productivity issues is the company’s gene therapy manufacturing site in Harmans, MD near the BWI airport, where the company’s plans to increase capacity for a customer’s product during the third quarter in order to ramp production was slower than expected.

During this ramp-up, certain operational challenges, including those related to the initial deployment of a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system at BWI, significantly reduced the expected revenue in the third fiscal quarter associated with the site, and will also impact revenue previously expected in the fourth quarter.

In addition, timely resolution of these issues was delayed by the necessity of focusing site resources on important regulatory inspections involving the BWI site, which were successfully completed. The ERP-related challenges were operational in nature and will not impact the Company’s ability to produce timely and accurate financial statements.

None of these issues are expected to adversely impact the quality or commercial launch quantities of any product made at BWI in light of, among other things, the level of “bright stock” on hand. However, revenue from the unproduced batches cannot be made up for in this fiscal year due to manufacturing capacity constraints.

Catalent said that it expects to recover related revenue in the second half of calendar year 2023 (the first half of the Company’s 2024 fiscal year).

In the third quarter, the company also experienced productivity challenges and higher-than-expected costs at its drug product and drug substance manufacturing facilities located in Bloomington, IN and Brussels, Belgium, due in part to the continued need to implement enhancements to its operational and engineering controls following regulatory inspections that occurred earlier in the year.

Productivity levels in Bloomington are expected to be restored to previously forecast levels in 4Q. As with BWI, the company does not expect to make up for the lost production at Bloomington until after the close of the current fiscal year.