Charles River Laboratories International Inc. will look for strategic acquisitions. During the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, James Foster, CEO, said, "We continue to be focused on expanding our portfolio, principally through M&A. It's been the principal driver of our growth and how we've created this portfolio over the last, let's say, 20 years". "So we're in a really good position to do more M&A. We have a bunch of debt, 3/4 of which has fixed rates.
We generate a lot of cash. We have a lot of borrowing power. So I think we're in a very good place to do that.
And M&A has sort of been the hallmark of the company over the last couple of decades. So we invested $4.5 billion in acquisitions since 2012 and of course, announced a couple of deals yesterday. And we have others that we're working on right down the ally in the areas in which we participate".
