Clarivate Plc (CLVT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Sabadra, and I cover information services companies here at RBC. Matti -- we are excited to host Matti, CEO; and Jonathan CFO of Clarivate. Thanks for giving us this opportunity.

Yes. Thank you. Happy to be here.

We'll kick off with the #1 question that we are getting across our coverage universe. It's all about GenAI. GenAI, GenAI, GenAI. So GenAI first from the top line, how do you think about -- one of the concerns is disintermediation risk. So can you talk about how proprietary is your data? How deeply embedded are you in your client workflows? And if you can go through all your segments, like all 3 of them at a very high level, talk about why is -- how do you think about GenAI, but also from not only disintermediation risk but also monetization opportunity, how it's going to open up newer ways for you to monetize.

Yes. Sure. First of all, thank you for hosting us today here. Definitely, AI is not going to displace Clarivate. In fact, AI is a great opportunity for us because of the unique nature of our proprietary data and I'll talk about it in general and then I'll talk about segment by segment. Our data is unique, and we are in a very unique position to strive in the era of AI because the foundation of the company is built on proprietary created trusted data assets that cannot be replicated by public AI. While the generative AI and open LLMs offer very convenient. They lack the depth, they the lack accuracy and the governance that our customers, in fact, demand -- our customers such as research, intellectual property customers and life science. Beyond the data, the unique data that we have, we have IP protected SaaS platforms. Our expert services embedded into the intelligence into a mission-critical processes, the combination of proprietary data and workflow solution that we own and expert services, AI will find it very difficult to displace. In fact, as I mentioned, it's an opportunity of ours to go forward and to further strengthen the company. Let's take some example from the different 3 segments. On the A&G side, the vast majority of our organic revenue is protected by the proprietary data we have and workflow solutions that we have. These assets, just to give you some examples, include the biometric database, for example, Web of Science; it includes research and analytics, for example, the Impact Factor; enrich AI-enabled aggregation product that we license with partnership with other vendors, ProQuest offering; and proprietary library solutions that we have developed over many years, Alma and the like. These are all deeply embedded in a customer research environment and workflow. All of this cannot be replicated. This data is not open for ChatGPT, LLM. They don't simply have the access for this proprietary data. This is on the A&G side. Let's move to Life Science. The vast majority of the revenue from our Life Science segment come from proprietary data. I'll just give you some example. These assets include our own primary market research, licensed and semi-exclusive data of health care, journal content, data partnerships, proprietary predictive analytics and forecasting model and proprietary taxonomies metadata and created -- and creation policy applied to public and licensed data. It's unique, and we own the data. And then the IP segment as well, we have a series of proprietary data. I'll just keep reminding us, Derwent World Patent Index; Darts-IP litigation intelligence; and Innography proprietary data, which control, which is covering over 190 jurisdiction. On top of this, we have our own internal tools in IP, the workflow solutions that takes advantage of the proprietary data, plus the proprietary workflow solution, and we definitely position us ahead of generic AI solution. That's on the proprietary of the data. I can then go ahead and talk a little bit about what we've done, what are the type of innovation that we're actually doing with using and utilizing our proprietary data across the 3 segments, academic AI or in the academic and government landscape, we have empowered many of the A&G product with AI research assistant. But not only that, we have empowered and we're actually deploying agentic AI across our solutions. We have literature review agentic AI in the Web of Science. We are now deploying agentic AI around the Alma workflow solutions. So there are a lot of AI innovations using our technology and our proprietary data, automate and we are monetizing these capabilities in A&G and other segments in different ways. On the IP, we're also leveraging the AI capabilities. We introduced a number of new products, utilizing our products. Some of them we can mention RiskMark and other products that we have introduced over the years. Life Science as well, a lot of energy going to AI empowerment of our proprietary content, something that AI will find it difficult to do just by having an open data. So that's a long answer. We are encouraged by the opportunities that AI brings to the company. Sorry for the long answer.

No, this was very helpful. I think this was a very detailed response, and I appreciate you going through each segment and talking about the products and proprietariness of the data set. So that was very helpful. I think it was very clear the amount of AI investments that we've already made in the business to help position you very well for the future. I was just wondering, as you think about going forward, any color that you can provide. Do you need to -- do you anticipate any material ramp-up in investments going forward?

Yes. Thanks for the question, Ashish. Our current perspective is the level of capital spending that we've ramped up to over the last couple of years is adequate for the level of investment that we need to continue to make. As a reminder, a lot of our capital investment is on the development of these solutions that Matti just highlighted. So more and more of our capital spending has been allocated or dedicated towards these types of efforts. But I think for the foreseeable future, over the next couple of years, we think we'll probably remain at about that level. We do think longer term, there'll be some opportunities as we leverage AI internally to help drive some efficiencies, even on the investment that we're making. But we're encouraged by the results that we're seeing, and we want to continue to invest. We think that's a very big driver of the growth acceleration we've seen this year in 2025.

That's great color. And maybe if I can just drill down further on the efficiency part. Can you also talk about how do you think about efficiencies coming from AI? Can you give some anecdotal examples?

So, so far, we've been very focused on AI around innovation. So a lot of product innovations, lot of AI energy is going into -- and investments going into our product lines. At the same time, we've done some tactical moves around efficiencies using AI. We have -- we are deploying Copilot across organization. We are deploying Copilot in our software development process. We've also done some tactical moves around efficiencies in the content operation environment. But we believe that we should go to a more comprehensive move and trying to have a robust plan, and we will be doing this in 2026, have a robust plan to deploy AI internally into the company to drive our margin to drive our margin up, specifically in the area of content operation and customer place and customer care, there is a room for us to do better deploying internal AI tools in order to improve our margin. That's our plan for 2026.

That's great. That's fantastic. I know we covered a lot about the proprietariness of the data and the new product suite that you're adding. I was just wondering if you can add any more color on terms of how do we think about AI contributing to ASV growth? Any other color that you would like to add on?

AI contributing to?

To the -- like your subscription growth or recurring revenue growth, if you have any incremental. Obviously, you talked a lot about the new products you're launching, but anything that you would like to add on top of it, the ACV growth, sorry, my bad.

No, definitely, AI is front and center in everything that we do. Like if you look back at our value creation plan, AI innovation is central to what we do. We believe AI is helping us in 3 ways. One is to improve our recurring -- our retention rate or renewal rate by us going into the customer -- into the existing product lines, empower them and enable AI-enabled existing products, increasing our competitive in the market and increasing our retention rate. We went from 92% to 93%, one. Secondly, there is also an upside opportunities. So many of our -- a lot of our AI innovations is going within the existing fee that the customers are paying, but there's also an upside certain AI capabilities. It's coming at additional price. So AI innovation into the customer base, into the existing customer -- into the existing product with some upsell opportunities. And more important, we also have the notion of introducing -- using our existing data assets, introducing new completely new products and going after new money. Two examples, RiskMark, which is a new offering from our IP segment is a product that we are charging. It's new money. Web of Science Research Intelligence, which is a new product, which is complement. It's analytics tools around Web of Science. It's a new product that we have currently introducing. We have 25 customers already subscribing to this product. That's a new opportunity for us with AI. So going into existing products, upselling existing products and new money coming from new products, which are native AI, that's an opportunity for us as well.

That's great color. Shifting gears here, value creation plan. That obviously has been a lot of investor focus on value creation plan. I think it's been in place for a year now. Can you just provide us an update on the progress?

So we are very pleased. So far, I'm very pleased with the product -- with the progress. We have announced a detailed plan in February 2025 definitely working. I've been in my job for 15 months. The value creation plan is working. We do have -- we do plan to do some minor adjustment for 2026. But obviously, this is going ahead, it's going well. Subscription has gone from very strong focus on subscription. We went to 80% to 88%. We do have the ambitions to take the company from 80% to 90%. We are already 88% of our organic revenue is on subscription. We are moving more and more of our offering towards the subscription. And we are going to discontinue. We have mentioned before that we will discontinue certain products at the end of '25, some products at the middle of '26 and some at the end. We are on plan to discontinue this product. And I think the smart way, if we can complement ourselves, the smart way that we did that, we are stopping the onetime, but we also came back with some alternative subscription back office -- subscription-based offering. I want to mention 2. One is the ProQuest e-books notion, which we have about 100 customers already buying the subscription business. And the other one, which we are very, very pleased with is in Life Science, a product called DRG Fusion, which is replacing our data brokerage business. We're already pleased to announce that we have 6 customers that acquired subscribe for DRG Fusion, including 2 of the top 20 or 30 pharmaceutical. It's going well, the transition to subscription. Sales execution, the second pillar of the value creation plan is going well. We have adjusted some of the sales organizations, putting more energy towards customer success. We've replaced some of our management team in sales execution. So most of the sales execution is already in effect. And then lastly, product innovation. I think we've spoken a lot this afternoon about product innovation, but it's a strong, strong focus of us. And lastly, the solution rationalization. The strategic review is still going, and we will be in a position to -- in February to give -- to provide an update about the solution rationalization exercise.

Yes. That's great. Yes. No, I think the investors are definitely focused on the strategic review, and we look forward to that decision in Feb. Just moving on to renewal rates. As you talked about renewal rates have improved 100 basis points. Maybe if you can point to what are some of the key customer initiatives that are contributing to that improvement in retention rates?

I have to twist a little bit the answer here. For me, the increased renewal rate is number one is product. But the fact that we go and invest in the product and we show AI and some of AI we give at the existing fee, it's working very, very well. On top of it, I mentioned already, we have increased the number of our customer success team. We work with the customers periodical, depends on how strategic is the customers, more touch points, more accountability for the CSM for the Customer Success Management. It's a combination of putting more people, more attention and the right product investment.

No, that's great. And maybe the follow-up there would be like a lot of the things that you talked about on product innovation, a lot of the success on VCP that you talked about, but which inning are we in, in moving towards the -- back to the market growth rates? How do we think about Clarivate where we are in that process of moving towards the market growth rate by segment?

Yes. We're making really good progress. I think what's most encouraging about 2025 is the fact that the momentum is headed in the right direction. ACV is accelerating. We plan to end the year towards the upper end of the range that we indicated, approaching a 2% exit rate that bodes well now as Matti highlighted with 88% of our organic revenue coming from subscription and recurring products for the revenue growth acceleration moving into next year. Just as a reminder, the perspective we take on the markets, we think A&G market that we operate in grows in the 3% to 4% range. We're currently growing at about 2%. We think that's the one where we are the closest to achieving the market growth rate. It's going to be a combination of continued improvements in retention with the investments that we made as well as some of the new products that we're bringing to market. We've talked about research intelligence, the exciting new AI native tool that's going to be available to support those research projects. Also new projects like Alma Specto that are coming to market. So encouraged by the contribution that those will make. When we move into the life science business, this is a market that we think probably has the highest growth potential of any market we're in. It is our smallest business, but we think it grows mid-single digits. This is an area where our subscription business had declined over the last couple of years. We returned to a healthy level of growth at 2% as at the end of third quarter. A lot of the investments that we've made in the Cortellis suite of products have driven that. So that one is progressing towards that mid-single-digit growth. And I think the one where we still have work to do is in the IP segment. This is a part of the business that has been essentially flat, slightly down as of late. And we think it's going to be a combination of the investments that we're making in products, combined with some market recovery will help that one to get to kind of that 4% range that we talked about for the IP segment over the course of the next couple of years. So that's the progress in each of those, and we think this is an effort that's going to happen over the next couple of few years.

Okay. That's very helpful color. And maybe I was going to drill down further on the last point you made on the IP side, you talked about some of the market forces. I was wondering if you could provide some more clarity on how is the IP or patent in-force end market shaping up? Any color there?

Sure. Some more encouraging signs are out. We've referenced before a third-party data source that the World Intellectual Property Organization published. They just published the data for 2024, which confirms some of our thoughts there that the market is recovering. So new patent filings were up 5% last year. It was very close to the number that we were expecting. That's the highest new patent filing year that we've seen since before COVID. So we believe and we highlighted this at Q2 earnings -- the significant investment in AI is driving increased filings around the world. That number I cited excludes the domestic China market, which is higher. But without that, it's a better representation of the value of our business. The patent in-force metric that we've talked about before was flat for a couple of years coming out of COVID. 2023, it grew about 4% for that same geographic distribution I just gave in 2020 -- just last year, it was about 3%. So we're in that 3% to 4% growth range, 2 years in a row, that bodes very well for volumes for our annuity business or our patent renewals. So we are seeing signs there that, that market is recovering and on a lag that's going to have a benefit to our business, particularly in the area of the annuities or the patent...

Makes sense. And then just sticking with IP. Obviously, Matti, you talked about a lot of product innovation, some of the new product launches that you have in there. But just as we think about the competitive environment, I was wondering if you could comment on, has there been any change in the competitive environment? And how with these new product launches, your competitive positioning has improved?

Definitely have a unique position in the market, the fact that we have a comprehensive suite of products, which I don't know that our competition have the same. So we are doing both patent and trademark. But not only patent trademark, we are doing -- we have a comprehensive portfolio. Obviously, our leading IPMS solution, IPfolio, the annuity and trademark renewal business. And then we also have a risk -- the trademark business and also the Derwent business. So we are providing a comprehensive solution, something the competitors cannot do. And also the databases, again, the databases that we have, whether it's Derwent World Patent, whether it's Darts-IP, Innography Proprietary PatentStrength indicator, which also is all combined of this -- the fact that we're having a very comprehensive solutions, that's a major strength of us, which differentiates us from most of the competition we have.

That's helpful. And then, Jonathan, going back to your point around A&G, switching gear to A&G, you talked about like where you're further ahead in the transformation process. You've already achieved 2% growth there. How do we think about the drivers? And maybe, Matti, this goes back to the product questions that you -- or product innovations that you talked about. How do we catch up from 2% to the market growth of 3% to 4%?

I think it's constant influx of new product innovation, and we have a lot of new products that we already launched. We talked about -- Jonathan spoke about Alma Specto. We spoke Web of Science Research. Intelligence, we have another product, we don't talk about it enough, we call it Vega community engagement product. We have 70 or 100 -- 70 or 80 customers already. There is a constant influx. The A&G has a good trajectory of ongoing introduction of new products into the market. I believe we will go to market that A&G will be the first to reach the market growth rate out of the 3 segments.

That's very helpful. And one of the questions that we get a lot on A&G is particularly the sales pipeline, the state of the consumer -- customer budgets. But also, do you expect any implications from the shutdown or any of those things affecting any of the library budgets, any color on that one.

Yes, the shutdown impact for us was insignificant. We had a few delayed payments, but nothing material. I think from an overall library funding status, we started this year a bit cautious around North America and the impacts that, that would have. The renewal cycle at the beginning of the academic calendar year, late summer, early fall, was very encouraging. The business continued to grow at 2%. Renewal rates were very strong. So we feel quite good about that. Funding in other jurisdictions around the world continues to be solid. And as Matti said, this is a stable market and by continuing to invest in innovation, we feel really good about the ability to reach the market growth rate relatively soon.

That's very helpful color. As we think about geographies, are there any particular geographies which from a growth perspective that you would flag having more outsized or places where there's still more room for turnaround?

Not necessarily. We see it as a relatively mature market. We've had some nice growth in developing nations with new solutions, particularly on the research and analytics side. So we pointed to a deal earlier this year that we were quite encouraged about where we were cross-selling between a couple of segments. But I think what we're generally seeing in most major geographies is stable budgets and we're encouraged by the performance so far this year in North America.

Okay. That's great. That's great. Moving on to the next segment, Life Sciences and Healthcare, can you just talk about the underlying growth in the market there? Anything that you've seen from like underlying growth perspective?

Maybe I want to just start with reiterating the 2% growth we have in Life Science. It's been a while. We also see the renewal rates going up 300 basis points, which is great. There is a strong demand. We feel there is strong demand of digital and research advanced data analytics solution. And our pharma and biotech clients are increasingly focused on personalized medicine, genomics and integrating AI into the drug and discovery launches. It give us an opportunity to demonstrate our capabilities and help our customers with our -- both R&D products and also commercialization product and that we see an ongoing improvement in the Life Science business, and we anticipate this to be something we will pursue further in years to come. And we are confident that the market is coming back at least for us, and it shows in our numbers.

That's great. And so maybe a follow-up question on Life Sciences would be just the transition, as you mentioned, from transaction to subscription revenue. And particularly, you obviously flagged the DRG Fusion and the success that you're having in signing up new customers. I was just wondering if you could drill down further on that transition.

Maybe just kind of reframe or talk a little bit about the Life Sciences segment. Life Science is basically 2 subsegments. One is the R&D Cortellis, which is powered by Cortellis. This business is 97% subscription business. It's an amazing business. It's 97% recurring. And then there is also the DRG business, the commercialization business, which is less of a subscription base. But we believe that both combined -- this Cortellis and the DRG business or commercialization will grow to be a 90% subscription business. This is currently 85% recurring. And then there is also the consulting business, which is the third component, which is obviously one time, but the product side of the house of the Life Science business, 85% subscription going to notion and there is a strong emphasis within the company to move more and more of our business to subscription and reoccurring. Just like we did with A&G. And A&G, we are now at 93% recurring. We see the path for life science to become a 90% business and then we still have -- obviously, we will continue to have the consulting business as additional subsegment for life science.

That's great color. We spoke about the efficiencies that you're planning for next year. Some of the margins headwind, tailwind as we think about investment. But as we think about the midterm -- as we think about some of the other things as we go for margins, I was just wondering if you could, Jonathan, provide any more color on the margin front that we need to be cognizant of?

Yes. I think we've indicated a few times, we do see the opportunity for near-term margin expansion. As we turn to 2026, we will complete the business disposals that Matti mentioned as those business leave, those were subpar margin businesses that had a negligible cash flow contribution. So they've helped buoy our margins moving into next year. We expect some improvement there. In addition to that, that's helped on the CapEx front. So our CapEx on a dollar basis has certainly come down this year. There's a little more opportunity there as we finish those disposals. So that's going to help. And we think that sets us up well for continuing to be able to improve our cash flow conversion as we step forward as well too.

That's great. And that was going to be a good segue into my next question around cash flow conversion, always had really robust free cash flow generation. How do we think about the cash flow conversion going forward but also allocation of capital, particularly with stock having pulled back so much. How do you think about buyback -- opportunistic buyback, but also deleveraging and balancing those?

Yes. I think the things I mentioned on the margin profile are going to help on the cash flow side. Below adjusted EBITDA, the opportunity to have our onetime cost abate as we get through some of the restructuring that the VCP brought along and we complete the strategic review. There's certainly an opportunity there. We have some other costs that are running out related to those businesses that we've disposed of. We don't need a working capital investment as we return to growth given the nature of the business. So those drivers with some continued deleveraging can help to improve that conversion as we move forward. On the capital allocation front, we've been -- continue to be pretty balanced so far this year. At the end of the third quarter, we had repurchased about $150 million worth of stock and it paid down $100 million of debt. You'll continue to see us be a reasonably balanced between those 2 as we move forward.

That's great color. With that, we'll keep it there. Thank you again. Thanks, everyone, for joining. And thank you, Matti.

Thank you, have a good rest of your day. Thank you.

Thanks for having us.