HOW TO PLAY IT

Drug development is hazardous, because most novel therapies flop and politicians are aching to crack down on the crazy pricing of the few that succeed. A more sedate way to make money: Run clinical trials and do other contract work for pharmaceutical companies. Syneos Health gets $4.5 billion of annual revenue that way. Two negatives are an impairment of operations during the pandemic and the recent decision by two private equity backers to unload shares. The positives include a growing order backlog and a reasonable price: The enterprise value is 10 times likely 2021 earnings before interest, taxes and amortization.

William Baldwin is Forbes’ Investment Strategies columnist.