Clarivate Plc (CLVT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. We can go ahead and get started. Hello, morning. I'm George Tong. I cover business services at Goldman. And really pleased to be joined by Jonathan Collins, CFO of Clarivate. Jonathan, thank you for being here with us today.

George. Thanks for having me.

Of course. So I'd like to start off at a high level with organic revenue growth. At the last Analyst Day, Clarivate had implemented an organic revenue growth target over the medium term of 6%. Can you talk about how confident you are in that medium-term target and some of the key growth drivers to get the organic growth accelerated to that level?

Sure. So as you highlighted, earlier this year, we indicated we see a path over the next couple or few years to move organic growth from what's been essentially flat or just above flat to somewhere in the 4% to 6% range. So 5% would be the midpoint, best case scenario towards the higher end or potentially somewhere in that 4% to 6% range. So there are really a few key things that have to happen. The upshot to your question is, we certainly believe that the markets in which we operate on a weighted average basis grow mid-single digits. And in each of our business, we're in the process of making investments to help us achieve that market growth rate. So we are closest in our largest segment, which is A&G. This is a business that's been growing around 2%. In the first half of this year, we saw our subscription growth in that area accelerate to above 3%. That's really been the benefit of the investments that we've made in the Web of Science platform. So we talked about the fact that we built a new UI a couple of years ago. We followed that with meaningful coverage expansion, moving to add 9,000 high-quality publications that are now receiving a Journal Impact Factor. Really excited to announce that just within the last week, we put a press release out for a new capability that we've launched on this platform called the researcher assistant. So this is leveraging next-generation AI technology to have a more interactive or conversational experience in the discovery on that. So that's another great example of where we're making investments and starting to see greater usage, great feedback from customers that are helping to expand growth within the A&G segment. That's been held back a little bit by the transactional business being a bit softer. There's a lot of spending on digital collection development coming out of COVID that we've seen abate a bit in the last few quarters. But the underlying part of that business and majority of that is the subscription file that's really growing nicely. So we're making our way towards that 4% target on the A&G side and made real good progress there. Next largest segment is our IP business. And within IP, we have a software and services business that helps to manage the renewal of the patent portfolio, it's the largest portion there. That's a part of the business that's been soft in the last year or 2. Most of that has been the fact that the market has pulled back a little bit there. Fewer patents have been renewed. We've talked about a few of those things. But we're seeing signs of life that those patent renewal volumes are starting to move in the right direction. And we've made really nice progress on our suite of software solutions, IPfolio being one of those leading products that's really starting to get traction in the market this year. We've got a really nice win rate there, which is a very good leading indicator of how the software and services business will perform. Our trademark business has been one that is a bit more cyclical than the others but we started to see that business improve in 2024. We've seen nice momentum moving into the second half of the year on both watch and search services and some of the tools that come with that. And then the last area that we have the biggest lift in terms of where we are in the turnaround of IP, is our Patent Intelligence area. So here, we offer multiple solutions, Derwent, Innography and incoPat are the big offerings there. And these are products that we've made significant investment in. We'll be in -- we're in beta right now with the first two application search and watch. Those will move into general release here in the next couple of quarters. We really expect to see a nice improvement in our usage statistics and feedback from customers as that moves into general release and that should be a good indicator of that really starting to turn. So that's the real driver of what we expect to happen within the IP business. And then our smallest segment is the one that's furthest from its growth potential and that's our life sciences business. This is where we serve the full ecosystem, all the way from early stage analysis and strategy and corporate development through to R&D, into the regulatory and safety and then ultimately, after the approval, commercializing that drug. And we've made a lot of progress in this area, reinvesting in the platforms but we've been held back by a pivot that we've made in our real-world data business to focus on creating more value with analytics and insights around that data to sell directly to our life sciences customers. For the past few years, we sold that in a lot of different places with minimal -- or less enrichment, great opportunity here to enhance that. So that's the one that needs the most work. Really excited and laid out the path for that product over the coming quarters. Moving to launch the analytics platform this year and then bring some franchise capabilities, is what we're referring to them into market in '25 and '26. So those are the big components to help get us from where we've been, combination of market and investments that we're making to accelerate growth into the mid-single digits but still working hard on that. And of course, with our new CEO, Matti, he's getting up to speed on each of these items. And I'm sure he's going to have some thoughts on how we focus on that. So more to come in next few quarters on that.

That's great color. You mentioned you're targeting, getting to around the mid-single-digit growth range and organic growth in a couple of years. Do you have a firm time frame in mind, any specific year or a number of years, do you think you'll require to get to that 4% to 6% range?

Yes, it's definitely a multiyear journey. So it's more than just a few quarters for sure. The guide we gave earlier this year is that 4% to 6% range by 2026. So we haven't made a change to that. We still see line of sight to that. But I'm sure Matti is going to have some thoughts and views on some of the levers we can pull in that time frame. But yes, no change at this point, 2025 -- or 2026, excuse me, is the horizon that we see.

Got it. Over the past couple of quarters, Clarivate's subscription revenue growth has outperformed the reoccurring and the transactional revenue streams. Is there a desire internally to manage the portfolio, either through acquisitions or divestitures to emphasize the subscription part of the business and perhaps deemphasize the nonsubscription part of the business to help with the organic growth trends?

Yes. I think it's a really fair point. Certainly, with our organic investments, we are focusing on areas where we can drive subscription and recurring revenue streams. So those are the types of projects, the ones I've talked about, real-world data would be largely a subscription model, or is coming to market that way. The Derwent and Patent Intelligence products that we're rebuilding our subscription products. Virtually all of the Web of Science offering is subscription in nature. So certainly concentrating our investment there. We have the one move that we made about 1.5 years ago with our MarkMonitor business, was a more transactional business that didn't fit as well. And we have been very clear about the fact that we are looking through the portfolio. It's one of the things we're going through with Matti in his early days, so some of the areas where we may have noncore businesses that either are growth dilutive or a little bit off [indiscernible] from where we can really compete and win and we'll look to see if we can find options for. But certainly, that focus or emphasis on recurring revenue streams, whether it's subscription or reoccurring is a place that we definitely want to take the business.

Got it. That's helpful. Staying at a high level, Clarivate has invested increasingly in generative AI to help augment medium-term growth trajectories. Can you provide an update on your latest GenAI initiatives and when you would expect revenue benefits from GenAI to meaningfully accrue and show up in numbers?

Sure. I think the view is that we'll start -- I'll start with the second part, which I know is a lot of the interest. I think we'll start to see an impact as we move into next year. And I'll give you a couple of examples in each of the business. One of them I already shared is the new researcher assistant on the Web of Science that we just launched. So that is a feature that is now existing in the products. Customers are starting to use. Our model is always as customers use the product more, see more value from the experience that's the leading indicator that we can drive upsell, cross-sell of expanded collections and higher pricing for what they already buy. So I think that's an example where we should see benefit as we move into 2025. I think there are other cases where we started to see it already. One of the exciting products we have within the life sciences space is the TrademarkVision solution. We won a nice contract here in the U.S. on that, that is coming into the business as we speak. And that's an example where we're using visual recognition technology from AI to help manage the capabilities of getting a patent approved and protecting that patent. That's an example of one where we're already starting to see growth on within the IP space. And then on the life sciences side, one of the early applications here, we bought a business called MotionHall, almost 1 year ago now, it was from this area, from the Bay area. And that business came with some employees and some IP that gives us the ability to really enhance the discovery within the life sciences space. So the pace of new terms and new technology within this segment is very fast and the capabilities that MotionHall is bringing us, gives us the ability to update indexes, make content much more discoverable as the pace of technology and the terms grows very quickly. So that's another example where we're starting to see good feedback on that within the Cortellis suite of products and there should be an opportunity to monetize that in the coming years. So we certainly have places where AI solutions have gone into production. And I think we're starting to see some benefit now and will for the next couple of years.

That's great. You touched on Matti Shem Tov, the recently appointed CEO, coming on board. Can you elaborate on which aspects of his experience should help drive improved execution and performance within the company? What are you most excited about with this change?

Yes. So I've known Matti for over a decade. We acquired the business that he was a CEO of when I was formerly the CFO at ProQuest, prior to becoming a part of Clarivate. I have tremendous respect for his technical and commercial acumen. He's built some really amazing products that are great solutions in the market. So one of the examples that we cite often is our flagship software product in the A&G business called Alma. This is a project that he and his team conceived, developed and brought to market and it is truly the leading solution for top research universities, not just here but around the world. And it's that product expertise and that commercialization expertise that he brings that I'm most excited about. We are making some significant investments in all of our businesses. I just touched on a few of those, really reinvigorating, Cortellis and DRG Solutions in life sciences, what we're doing in Patent Intelligence and in IPMS systems within IP. The work we're doing in Web of Science and he's certainly got the -- such a great background in bringing technologies like this to market and driving growth. So that's really exciting. It's interesting. He obviously knows half of the business incredibly well. And I've spent the last couple of weeks on the road with him doing deep dives in our business within the IP and the life sciences segment, getting him up to speed on those things with Henry and Gordon's teams, respectively. So really excited about what he's going to bring with respect to product development and the commercialization of new capabilities.

Got it. Let's dive a little bit more into some of the revenue trends. If we look at the A&G business, like you said, first half of the year, very solid growth, 3% in subscription revenues, driven by renewal rate that are healthy and strong product enhancements. Can you recap what product enhancements you've made to Web of Science that helped drive these level of growth trends and what you're most focused on?

You got it. So with Web of Science, I had mentioned this a bit earlier, I'll dive a little bit deeper here. Over 2 years ago, about 2.5 years ago, we launched a new user interface for the product. That was the first investment, really modernizing the search experience and the navigation capabilities on the platform. That was followed up the next year by making a pretty meaningful expansion in the content coverage for the Journal Impact Factor. So the Journal Impact Factor is the primary designation of the citation references and quality of periodicals that are put out in the academic research space. And this is a household name. It's really important and we expanded the number of journals that now have that impact factor coverage. So that was another big investment. And then we're following that up with further investments in the UI researcher assistant that I touched on. So we think it's the combination of each of these things, continued investment in the platform that shore up that really great value proposition when you're looking for the most cutting-edge, peer-reviewed research. This is the place you go to find out where that's happening and to get to the highest quality content as quickly as you possibly can. So that's a great example of what's happened on the A&G side within Web of Science.

Right. And looking ahead, what are some of the additional areas of potential improvement that can be made to the product that can help drive further acceleration?

Yes. There are great opportunities for further integration with content sets within the A&G space. So we've started to do some light integration with the ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. So this is the largest corpus of premoving into peer-reviewed content in the world, great content set, great opportunity to explore that content in the context of the research that you're doing on the Web of Science platform. So I won't give away every aspect of the product road map for the team but there are really interesting ways that we can continue to integrate the content of Web of Science with the content that we have within ProQuest. And even on the software and tools side, we built integrations with Alma and the Insights. So Alma being the software solution for managing the library that has great analytics capabilities and then Insights is the analytic platform on the Web of Science, another good example of where we can drive further product integration to enhance the customers' experience.

Right. Now the IP segment in the second quarter saw a 2% decline due to muted trademark and patent volumes. Can you talk about how much of the decline you would attribute to industry factors versus more company-specific idiosyncratic factors?

It's a really fair point. At this point, in our most recent results, we still believe that most of the impact that we're seeing on a year-over-year basis is being driven by industry volumes. So we touched on those about 1 year ago at this time, some of the things that we were seeing that caused volumes to pull back and some items around the world, we touched on. More impact we saw in Europe and in Asia. We are starting to see some signs that, that is abating and we expect that the reoccurring revenue type for us will grow in the second half of the year, where it contracted in the first half of the year, largely driven by those comps. We've also been clear about the fact that software and services together are really important in our business. We touched on some of the traction that we have made in the last year on software win rates. And really, the investments we're making in great products like IPfolio and FoundationIP and we're seeing success there in a number of regions that are giving us that confidence that, that better together solution of software and services will help really cement our position in the marketplace as a leading provider of renewals for your patent portfolio around the world. So I think we're headed in the right direction there and I think most of it has been on the macro side.

Got it. Within the IP segment, can you describe any differences you're seeing in performance between patents and trademarks? Do the 2 typically move together? Or are there some variations in performance?

It's a great point, from a industry volume perspective, they tend to move a bit differently. Over time, our trademark business has demonstrated to be a bit more cyclical and business sentiment driven. So when companies either spin off businesses and have to create a new set of brand and trademark or launch new offerings that are going to create a new trademark registration and the work that goes into it, that's really what drives demand there. As you know, as you follow us closely, it's been soft for the last couple of years but we are seeing some signs of life in that in 2024. And that's generally how this business has tended to move. It can be down for 1 year or 2 and then it's generally on an upswing for a couple of years. So that's certainly a bit more -- has a bit more volatility than patents have been. Typically, patent renewals are much more stable in terms of growth. Patent registrations continue to grow. The number of patents available for registration continues to grow. And it's pretty rare where we've seen what we've seen in the last couple of years where the actual registrations are down a little bit. So yes, I think the 2 are fundamentally a bit different in how they are sensitive to the macro.

Got it. And on that last point, the deviation with patents from historical trends, what do you think are some of the key drivers that's caused the patent -- moderation in renewals?

Yes. We touched on the things that we started to see last year. So there were certainly some government funding, particularly in Asia for patents -- effectively, that was going to patent renewals that we've seen pull back a little bit. We've seen a little bit of a pullback in China as well, too. That's affected our Patent Intelligence business, incoPat a little bit this year as well, too. And in Europe, we cited before that a bit of the impact from the unitary patents and from the protracted conflict in Eastern Europe has put the business in a situation where some countries have renewed less than they have in the past. So a couple of those unique items that we think have been affecting that. We tend to look at the [ Dutch PTO ] as a good barometer for where overall renewals are. That's got the highest level of disclosures for many of the jurisdictions and we've seen that taper and started to see some signs of life there as of late. So -- but those are some of the drivers we saw in the last year or more.

Got it. That's helpful color. If we -- if you look at the IP business, what are some of the synergies that IP has with Academia & Government and Life Sciences & Healthcare. In other words, what are some of the ways that IP interacts well with the other segments? And why does it belong within Clarivate?

Sure. So what we've talked about before within the Clarivate portfolio is, these businesses each have the opportunity to share content, share technology, share commercial channels. And in doing so, achieve a better scale from a profitability standpoint than they had in the past. So as the business was put together, we've taken out a few hundred million dollars of cost that have come largely in those areas. IP, specifically from a shared commercial channel standpoint. Life sciences is a very important IP market. So there's a tremendous amount of highly complex patents that are in this space, that a lot of intelligence work happens on those, the management of the process of securing those and renewing those, the outsourcing of that to us and even on the brand and trademark side is very important. So we certainly share an important commercial channel there and the work that we do on the R&D side is an area where we can provide Patent Intelligence solutions and also more core solutions like Cortellis and the work we do within DRG. On the academic side, academia also participates in that channel. So R&D departments that are buying patent intelligence work are also looking at peer-reviewed research, such as what's included in the Web of Science. So this is a place where we certainly share a commercial channel. And it's also relevant to know that Derwent Innovation, the content for Derwent Innovation is included in the Web of Science for our academic customers. So if you're doing research around peer-reviewed scholarly content on a new and emerging field, you may find out that there's less that's been included there but there may be IP that's been registered already by companies in these areas. So you can find out current trends in patent filings and work that's being done there. So that's an example of shared content. All of our businesses are making pretty meaningful -- starting to make more meaningful investments in AI. So there's an opportunity for us to share on the technology side, whether that's on infrastructure or best practices on applying that technology. So I think that is -- it's true for IP as it is for the other 2 segments.

Yes. Makes sense. The life sciences business is seeing some impact from broader pharma company budget pressures. Can you talk a little bit more about what you're seeing there and when you might expect these pressures to abate?

Yes. I think we've had about 1.5 years, maybe a bit more, where we've started to see some headwinds there. Our subscription business, within life sciences, is going to be a little bit lower than we were anticipating when we started the year. We are seeing pressure. We know there's funding pressure. We have -- some of our largest customers that have blockbuster drugs that are in market right now, where spending is more aggressive but many of our largest big pharma customers and midsized pharma are a bit tighter with spending. We do see a path to that improving in the next 1 year or 2 as they moderate to some of the conditions that have changed within the market but we also think it's critically important for us to make investments that enhance the value proposition of our products to take advantage of as much of that share of wallet by helping them to get drugs approved quicker, comply with regulatory more efficiently and ultimately accelerate the pace of those drugs being approved on a commercial basis in the market. So these are all the types of things we can continue to do there to take advantage of what's still a very large spending pool within the industry.

Right. Within Life Sciences & Healthcare, you're in the process of realigning your real-world data offering to be more subscription-based and to rely less on data aggregators. Can you talk a little bit more about your journey there?

Absolutely. So we laid this out with a bit more specificity than we have in the past when we reported our earnings for the second quarter in early August. And what we identified is that, historically, we've been selling the data largely as a product where we're providing full access to the data for a variety of uses to many participants within the industry. What we've started to build next is an analytics platform that will expand from not just 1 basic functionality but to add 4 more analytical capabilities that are very common across user groups of the data that will help to accelerate the intelligence that can be gleaned from the information. This is a product that's in beta right now. We expect it to be in general release towards the end of the year, fully available for sale on over a dozen therapy areas starting early next year. So great progress there by Henry and his team. We also highlighted what we see as a potential future opportunity here and we refer to it as franchises, where we can incorporate additional datasets. The example we gave is genomics data that can be provided in addition to that to help draw really attractive insights. So leveraging those analytical capabilities with a more unique dataset for specific use cases. The one we shared was around rare disease and patient identification, we think is an opportunity that we have a very attractive offering. So we see a longer-term road map for this product to be able to build up capabilities and we expect to share more on that in the coming quarters.

Great. Looking across your segments, which do you believe have the strongest longer-term organic revenue growth potential and why?

Yes. So we've been pretty clear about the fact that our largest segment, A&G, we think is a market that through cycles is about a 4% grower. So a very stable business, very stable funding sources, very entrenched competitive position but it's been growing 2%, subscriptions are now growing above 3% and we see a path to getting to that 4% in the next couple of years. But we also believe that's going to be our lowest growing segment in the longer run. We think the IP business grows faster than that. We think on balance through the cycle, it's a business that's about a 5% grower, give or take. So we see potential there with the investments that we've discussed to grow faster than we would in the A&G space. And we've also been very clear about the fact that we think that in the longer run and through different levels of spending within R&D, we believe the Life Sciences space has the highest growth potential. We think that is a high single digit, probably around 8%, where software and tools and information services that support those components of the drug development life cycle and for med tech as well, we think is a higher grower. So on balance, that's where we get into that 4% to 6% range that we think the market growth is. But certainly, we believe life sciences has the highest growth potential out of the 3, the other 2 being closer to that, that mid-single digit range.

Got it. Now pricing can be an important contributor to organic revenue growth. Can you talk about what pricing increases look like today and where you think it can get to over time?

Yes. We've historically been in that 3% to 4% range across the business. And with the lower level of product investment in prior years, our attainment has probably been closer to the lower end of that range. We see a great opportunity in the coming years, where by providing more value for customers, not only will we harden our renewal rates within the life sciences and in the IP space, particularly in real-world data and in R&D and in Patent Intelligence, respectively but also we'll have the opportunity to monetize some of that investments in the form of pricing. So by providing greater value to customers, helping drug companies to shorten that development cycle and get drugs to market quicker, we think there's an opportunity to participate in that with additional offerings in our products. We believe the same is true on the IP side, helping to find greater areas to create proprietary technology can be met with value-based pricing. So I think there's some potential there. But it's really going to come through investments that we make in the products and enhancing that value prop for our customers.

Got it. Makes sense. Let's switch gears and talk about margins. The guidance for this year implies margins will compress about 100 bps to approximately 41.5% because in part of the reinvestment activities you talked about. Can you elaborate on what your top reinvestment priorities are for this year and just maybe next several quarters and when you would expect to see some returns from those investments?

You got it. So a little over a year ago, we indicated that we're going to go into about a 3-year investment cycle where we expected to spend between $100 million to $150 million of incremental investment, largely around product. So this is going to be building new capabilities through our product development organization, acquiring and ingesting new forms of content and that certainly includes aspects of AI in both of those areas. We're on track to do that. So we spent more this year than we did last year. We were willing to bring our margins -- margins were at the higher end of our range last year and we brought those down about 1% this year, as you noted, to about 41.5% and that represents our commitment to add some of that capacity that's needed. But also we've increased our CapEx. Our CapEx is running at about 10% of revenue. It's the highest level it's been since the businesses were brought together as we make these investments in new product innovation to help drive some of these. To your point on returns, we do expect to start to see organic growth accelerate in the next couple of years, as we have outlined. Don't have a specific guide out for next year yet but we do believe some of the things that we're building and have made their ways in the customers' hands are going to start to help the business grow as we move into '25 and to '26. So we'll start to see a return on that investment. But we think we'll remain committed to that for the next couple of years as we bring these capabilities into the market. And longer term, we get that organic growth in the low single digits and into mid-single digits and we see a really attractive opportunity to expand margins in the coming years.

Right. You talked about investing in AI, in GenAI. Do you have a specific portion of your budget that's dedicated to GenAI?

So we, of course, look at that carefully. We haven't given the split of the exact dollar amount spent on AI but it's certainly meaningful. The teams are doing a lot of work in those areas. And I think the best proof on that is what we're putting into the actual products, gave a couple of those examples earlier. But it's becoming a more meaningful portion and we think it will continue to be over the next couple of years.

Right. Are there internally any productivity or active cost management initiatives that you think will help accelerate the return to margin expansion?

It's a really great point. I tend to go to the product first and what we're putting into the product. But our development organization within the last year have started to implement some of those tools. We're starting to see really good efficiency indications. So the same development team is able to increase their throughput by leveraging tools to help to accelerate, not only the maintenance of code but the writing of new code. So we are seeing some of those. And the point you raise is really interesting. Over the next couple of years, we'll have a decision that we can make whether we continue to invest that higher utilization or if we can see some efficiencies there in that process. So certainly that is something that all of our dev leads in each of our segments are focused on.

Got it. What would you say is a reasonable rate of EBITDA margin expansion on an annual basis over time? And do you have a targeted EBITDA margin or structural ceiling or plateau for where EBITDA margins can trend to over time?

I think this is something we'll start to focus on giving an indication further out in the next couple of years. Right now, we're at a place where the margin expansion is not the primary focus. The primary focus for us is reinvesting in technology and reinvigorating the growth and having the right commercial motion to bring that to market and take advantage of that. Longer term, we have said before and I continue to believe that as growth moves into low single digits and into mid-single digits in the next couple to few years, there is an opportunity to expand margins. So we're talking, once you get into that mid-single-digit growth range, adding 50-plus basis points or even more of margin expansion, is something that's very reasonable. So I think that will become an increasing part of the story as we start to make progress on the organic growth.

Got it. You currently have gross financial leverage of 4.3x. Can you talk about how you plan to balance debt paydown with share repurchase activity and M&A? What are your overall capital allocation priorities?

Yes. We touched on this at Q2 earnings. So I've been with the business for about 2.5 years and have repaid about $850 million of debt. That brought our leverage down below 4 turns at the end of last year. So just net debt over adjusted EBITDA of about 3.9x by the end of the year. That was a big initial milestone for us once we got under that. What we indicated is, we were going to be a bit more balanced with our capital allocation. So rather than spending most of our cash proceeds on deleveraging, we would spend less on that and more on buyback. We actually just completed a buyback in the third quarter of about $100 million. So we used cash within Q3 that we just wrapped up to buy back stock in Q3 and we'll continue to give a more specific indication on that in the coming quarters. But you'll see us tend to lean more towards that than the debt paydown that we've been doing for quite some time.

Got it. Well, we're just about out of time. Jonathan, thanks for the great insights. .

Thank you for having me.

Please join me in thanking, Jonathan.