Springer Nature AG & Co. KGaA ($SPG)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Springer Nature analyst conference call Q1 2026. [Operator Instructions] Let me now turn the floor over to your host, Tom Waldron.

Thank you, Anna. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Springer Nature's Q1 2026 trading update call. I'm Tom Waldron, Head of Investor Relations. Today's presentation will have the following structure. Frank will start with a business update, followed by Alexandra with a review of our Q1 2026 financials before we move on to Q&A. Before handing over, let me briefly remind you that revenues and adjusted operating profit, we present both reported figures based on actual currency rates and portfolio composition and underlying growth rates, which exclude currency and portfolio effects to ensure a like-for-like comparison. Our financial guidance for 2026 is based on constant currencies and the expected underlying performance of the business, excluding portfolio changes. With that, I will now hand over to Frank.

Thank you, Tom. And again, a warm welcome from my side. Let's start with a brief overview of our first quarter results. We delivered strong results with revenue growing by 6% in underlying terms and AOP increasing by 9%. Our Research segment continues to be the main growth driver with strong performance across our journal portfolios, led again by full open access. Okay.

Anna, we seem to have some noise on the line.

And finally, we've delivered a strong cash flow performance and reduced leverage. It's only been 7 weeks since we reported our full year results. And since then, there have been no material changes. So on the back of the strong first quarter performance, we can confirm our full year 2026 outlook. But before we get into the details of our Q1 performance, I'd like to share again some examples of research from across our journals. These examples demonstrate the value we create for our communities by making trusted knowledge accessible. First, continuing a series of papers from teams at Google DeepMind was a paper on AlphaGenome, in Nature, in January. This AI system can predict how DNA sequence variations affect a wide range of biological processes, offering potential to help researchers understand the mechanisms of things like genetic disease and cancer. Secondly, an extraordinary moment of natural history published in Scientific Reports. Researchers documented a sperm whale birth with all 11 members of the group taking part and with some acting like midwives, attaching the newborn calf and helping it to the surface to breathe. A And thirdly, from Geoscience, published by Springer, a paper presenting the results of a randomized controlled trial, which shows that resistance exercise can slow brain aging. These 3 papers illustrate the crucial role that we play and the things we stand for, trusted science, real-world impact and sustainable growth. Let's now move to our financial performance in the first quarter. As you know, the first quarter is typically a smaller quarter, both in terms of revenue and operating profit. And if you look at our 3 segments, you can see that research is by far the largest, accounting for 80% of Springer Nature Group revenue and almost 95% of adjusted operating profit. Let's now move to our different segments, starting with Research. Our Research segment delivered strong results in the first quarter with more than 7% underlying revenue growth and more than 8% AOP growth. Our Journals portfolio continued to show strong momentum. By the end of March, we completed about 90%, 9-0, of 2026 renewals and are very much on track for another year of close to 100% renewals. Our article publication growth of 15% continued to outpace the market, which we estimate grew around 6%. We signed 14 new transformative agreements, further accelerating open access across our portfolio. We successfully launched 19 new journals, 1-9, including the introduction of Nature Progress, a new OA journal series, starting with Nature Progress Oncology and Nature Progress Brain Health, a strong start to what we expect to be a significant addition to our portfolio. Our growth is being supported by the AI strategy we outlined in our full year presentation in March. New authors are coming to us through our Journal Finder. Our AI tools are helping editors to find the right reviewers faster. Our transfer recommender is ensuring that good papers rejected on grounds of scope are retained within our ecosystem. And AI tools are helping our teams ensure research integrity across the portfolio. Research underlying AOP growth of 8% reflected operating leverage and cost control. Let's turn to the developments in other 2 segments, Health and Education. As I mentioned earlier, Q1 is a relatively small quarter for both segments. Starting with Health, we saw good performance in scientific affairs services within our International Healthcare segment despite ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. And we also recorded growth in our DACH markets. Revenue in the Netherlands was broadly level with last year, reflecting a strong prior year comparison to Q1 2025. AOP growth benefited from revenue growth and cost containment measures, partly offset by targeted investments in sales capabilities in the DACH region. Turning to Education. We experienced a positive start to the year across the Southern Hemisphere. We delivered strong underlying growth in AOP, driven by more favorable product mix and continued progress in our operational excellence program called Elevate. Before I hand over to Alexandra, I'd like to pause to review one part of our journals portfolio in a little bit more depth, the Springer Journals. Springer can trace its root back to the founding of a bookshop and publishing house in Berlin in 1842, Julius Springer on his 25th birthday. That business quickly evolved into one of the largest publishers in Germany. We're proud to be the custodian of that legacy, which spans not just the Springer Journal portfolio, which I'll talk about today, but also academic books and our Springer Medicine business in Health. By the late 19th century, Springer was focused on academic journal publishing with an initial bias to science and engineering before broadening to medicine later. Springer flagged journals played a crucial role in codifying disciplines, formalizing the process of peer review and providing trusted venues for communities in highly specialized fields. Amongst examples from today's journal portfolio on the right side of this slide, you'll see Mathematische Annalen, a journal that launched in 1868 and was edited in the 1920s by Albert Einstein and David Hilbert, amongst others. Today, portfolio of Springer Journals has more than 2,000 titles and includes both owned and society journals. Our Society partnerships include some prestigious titles that add to the weight of the portfolio and make an important contribution to our communities. Examples from the portfolio on the right-hand side include electromechanical engineering energy reviews, which is a Society journal and The Astronomy of Astrophysics Review. Both of these journals have impact factors, which put it in the top 1% of indexed journals. Our publishing and editorial teams lead the engagement with our communities of editors, peer reviewers and researchers across these journals to bring their deep domain knowledge and extensive networks. We serve a large community with around 120,000 editorial board members across the Springer portfolio. And our high levels of customer satisfaction speak both to the great job that our teams do and to the ability of our tools and platforms to remove friction from the publishing process. Springer has always been at the forefront of technology and was actually the first publisher to digitize its entire back catalog. It was also an open access pioneer, leading the OA transition over the last 20 years. Springer signed the industry's first transformative agreement in the Netherlands in 2015. And today, the Springer portfolio has more than 80 TAs, 8-0, and those are driving global OA adoption. The Springer portfolio today includes more than 340 full open access journals with more launched each year. And in addition to those launches, we also flip between 10 to 20 journals from hybrid to full open access annually. The Springer Journals are a key part of our portfolio and driver of current and future growth. We're the proud owner of the Springer Imprint and the legacy of quality and innovation for which it stands. And with that, I'll hand over to Alexandra for the financial update.

Thank you, Frank. I'll now walk you through our key financials for Q1 2026 in more detail. It was a strong performance. Reported revenue for the group reached EUR 451 million with adjusted operating profit of EUR 107 million, which includes actual currency movements and small impact from scope. We delivered strong underlying growth with revenue increasing by 6% and adjusted operating profit rising by 9%. Our underlying AOP margin improved by 53 basis points, slightly ahead of our full year guidance of around 30 basis points. Free cash flow improved by EUR 46 million, reaching a total of EUR 204 million. This reflects strong operational delivery supported by favorable phasing impacts. Our leverage is down significantly year-over-year, supported by favorable cash flow phasing and now stands at 1.5x net debt to EBITDA at the lower end of our 1.5 to 2x target range. The next slide provides further insight into our segments, covering both reported as well as underlying revenue and adjusted operating profit growth. So this slide summarizes our performance in detail as usual, and Frank has already covered the key drivers here. FX has an impact on reported numbers, but all of our teams have executed well against their plans and we've delivered a good top and bottom line performance for our group. Turning to cash. I'm pleased to report that our cash generation in Q1 2026 was very strong. We performed well in operational terms, but also saw some phasing benefits, as I've already said. Free cash flow rose by EUR 46 million to more than EUR 204 million, supported by improved operating performance and lower interest payments. With Q1 free cash flow also we are benefiting from positive phasing impacts in tax, investments and interest. Lower interest and fee payments reflected both lower average debt levels and interest rates and the timing benefit from the 2025 Schuldscheindarlehen, which defers a portion of cash interest into later quarters. Strong Q1 cash generation, including favorable timing effects, supported continued deleveraging, and we ended the quarter at 1.5x net debt to EBITDA. Finally, following a strong start to the year and the ongoing business momentum, we feel confident in reiterating our full year 2026 guidance. We expect underlying growth in revenues of 5% to 6% with underlying improvement in AOP margin of around 30 basis points. With that, I'll hand back to Frank, who will close today's presentation.

Thank you, Alexandra. We're proud to have delivered a strong performance in the first 3 months of '26. The first quarter clearly demonstrates the strength of our business, both in terms of financial performance and strategic execution. Research is the key driver of that momentum, powered by our leadership in open access and our commitment to embracing AI across the portfolio. This gives us confidence as we look ahead. Our '26 outlook is confirmed and we're well positioned to continue to grow sustainably and responsibly as we outperform the industry. And with that, I'll hand back to Tom for Q&A.

Thank you. We'll now move to Q&A. As a reminder, we ask that each analyst limit themselves to just 2 questions initially. If you have additional questions, if you have it come back at the end. And with that, I'll hand back to the operator, Anna.

The first question is from George Webb, MS.

I'll stick to the 2 questions. So maybe firstly, on Nature Progress, you kind of flagged it as the new fully open access series. How do you see that series sitting alongside the existing Nature titles? And how will you manage the positioning and the managed script flow between Nature Progress and the rest of that Nature portfolio? And then secondly, just on the free cash flow, good Q1 and some seasonality in there. Is there any kind of guidance or framework you could give us with regards to the full year outcome there?

Yes, George, thank you very much for your questions. All well here. Of course, very happy with the results on the first quarter. So I will take the first question on Nature Progress, and then Alexandra will come back on the free cash flow. So if we look at Nature Progress, it's essentially a new series that we have launched. And if you look at our, let's say, our whole portfolio with, let's say, the major flagship journal sitting at the top, then essentially, you have the -- which is essentially a portfolio of about close to 60 -- more than 60 journals. Then essentially, you have Nature Communications sitting below it and then you have the communications journals and scientific reports. And we felt there's actually a gap between, let's say, the Nature branded journals and Nature Communications, and that's where actually Nature Progress fits in. So essentially, it fills gaps in our, let's say, portfolio in terms of being able to cascade across the different levels of impact factor. And if you keep in mind that we basically reject close to 95% of the submissions we get, you can imagine that actually the chances of cannibalization across the portfolio are pretty limited. And we've done quite extensive analysis to look at where rejected articles that we don't publish end up with, with our competitors. And we felt that actually Nature Progress in that sense fills the gap and that's the reason why we have launched the Nature Progress series.

Frank, happy to take the second question. Yes, talking about free cash flow. We had a strong business performance in our first quarter. And looking in particular at free cash flow, we always know that Q1 and Q4 tend to be our strongest quarters. This year, we had even a stronger Q1 as normal and this is partially driven by the phasing of interest payments, and I just alluded to that. Looking for free cash flow for the full year, I would generally see free cash flow increasing or exceeding the AOP growth. So that's the kind of general, I would say, trend I could confirm.

Yes. And just, George, because I realize I probably said it the wrong way around. So Nature Progress is actually sitting between Nature Communications and Scientific Reports, because that's where we have the gap.

The next question is from James Tate, Goldman Sachs.

It's James from Goldman. I've also got 2 questions, please. I guess, firstly, you mentioned quite strong 15% year-on-year growth in articles published. Could you add any more color on what you're seeing on article submission trends through the first quarter? Have you seen the continued momentum around the 30% level from last year, or have you seen some softening? And just secondly on some of the AI initiatives, you mentioned the number of AI assist and checks on papers are growing strongly. Are you starting to see the time it takes to peer-review articles come down? Or are there any data points that you know help quantify the efficiency savings from AI more generally?

We'll take both questions. So if you look at the publication growth in the first quarter. And keep in mind, it's only a quarter, right? So it's 3 months, and it also depends how Chinese New Year will fall, how many working days we have, et cetera. So I think it's always a bit -- don't look too precise at, let's say, quarterly performance. But basically, what we have seen is indeed 15% publication growth, quite significantly ahead of the market and also a little bit higher than last year, where we had 12%. And if you look at the submission growth across the portfolio, it's pretty much in line with what we saw last year, so around 30%. Full open access, of course, it came down a little bit from last year, but that's also because it's on a higher base. Now the full open access portfolio is, of course, significantly larger. Then your other question around the AI assist and checks. Yes, essentially, we're expanding the number of articles that will be able to benefit from our AI assist and checks as more journals and submissions are going through our Snapp infrastructure because that's where we basically build on most of the AI tools that we have. And we expect that to see quite a significant increase this year. Year-to-date, we had about 25% increase of article submissions that benefited from those AI checks and tools. If you look at the turnaround time, I think it's still relatively flat over the last, let's say, 2 to 3 years. And that essentially has to do with the fact that we see quite a lot of additional submissions, which drives workload. So I think it's fair to say that if we wouldn't have these tools, we probably would see a significant increase in turnaround time. So at the moment, basically, our AI tools and services help us to maintain the turnaround time where it currently sits.

Next is [ Brandt Contin ] from Barclays.

I'm just jumping in for Nick Dempsey today. Two questions from our side as well, please. The National Science Foundation funding body has removed its board and some have worried that a large proposed cut in its funding could follow. How likely is it that the big funding bodies could see a cut to the '27 funding and that this could impact U.S. university funding? That's my first question. And then second question, you already spoke about Nature Progress and said it's unlikely for us to expect cannibalization. Do you expect to already see a noticeable impact on growth in the Research division in 2027?

Yes, thank you very much for both questions. Maybe to start with the latter one. Typically, you see that new journal launches don't have a material impact on our results in the short term. Basically, these are investments for longer-term growth. That's especially true for new journals that we launched in our full open access portfolio and in the Springer portfolio. If you look at the Nature portfolio, it tends to be a little bit quicker. But I would say that in '26 and in '27, I would not expect a material impact of the Nature Progress series on our revenues. I think it's going to be more 3 to 5 years before we see an additional significant impact. And of course, we're also planning to launch more journals on the Nature Progress series. So we started with 2 and we have plans to launch more. Now coming back to your other question around the NSF. Just to put things in perspective, of course, the NSF is the National Science Foundation is just one of many U.S. funders, the largest, of course, being the NIH, which I think we've talked about in the past as well. And again, to put things in perspective, as we said before, so if you look at the U.S., it's about 1/4 of our total revenues, accounts for about 12% of our total articles and about half of those, so about 6% of our total articles, are the result of federally funded research in the U.S. And I think it's fair to say that we do see continued pressure on research and development funding in the U.S., I think we saw that last year. And to be honest, if you look at what it meant for '26, we didn't see a significant impact. We had good progress on our renewals and we also had good, let's say, continued good growth in our submissions. So I think that's what we've seen so far. I think it's a bit early to tell whether these type of developments will have an impact. But yes, I can only say that if we look at what happened last year and the impact it has on our business, then I think we're confident to -- yes, if we look forward and what we will be able to achieve in our guidance for this year.

Next question is from Steve Liechti, Deutsche Bank.

Two questions. Just on the margin, you did 53 basis points increase constant currency in the first quarter. Your target is 30 for the full year. Can you just talk us through the sort of puts and takes sort of that take you from the first quarter number, which is good to the full year number overall? So that's the first question. And then the second question, just picking up what you just said in the U.S., I might have misunderstood what you said. But are you saying there's been any difference in terms of article submissions in the U.S. or maybe in terms of renewals in the year-to-date. Obviously, we spoke about it a bit 7, 8 weeks ago. But I don't know if I misunderstood you, but it sounded as though you were just hedging slightly in terms of what you're saying on the U.S.

Yes. Maybe I will ask Alexandra to answer your first question maybe immediately to clarify on the second one. We have not seen a material impact on our renewals or submissions from the U.S. So sorry if I was not clear about that.

I'll take the first question, Steve. With regards to the margin, yes, we are very pleased to see an improvement of 53 basis points in the first quarter. But what probably we also have noted with research we have been spot on with 30 basis points of margin expansion. And I think what we always have seen in the Health and the Education business, there is a bit more volatility. And you also see there are small numbers. So yes, it's nice to see that they also have contributed to the margin expansion. But as also said it's the first quarter and we have to see the research we are really spot on, I think that's the kind of perspective that I can also give you for the full year.

The next question is from Conor O'Shea, Kepler Cheuvreux.

So my 2 questions, first question in terms of your market share gains in terms of published articles. You mentioned in the press release, 15% growth versus 6% for the market. And I understand that you see all the large publishers taking market share. So I'm just wondering who are they taking share from? Is it from pure-play open access platforms or does it go further than that? And if you could just remind us what the market share is of the large top 4 publishers in just the premium end help me to see how much scope there is for such market share gains to continue in the future? And then the second question, just in terms of the ForEx headwind, obviously, related to the timing of contract renewals and '24 and so on. In the Research business for the second quarter and the full year '26 as current rates stand, can you give us an indication of what the headwind could be compared with Q1?

I will take the first question first and then Alexandra will come back on the FX question. So if you look at our industry, I think it's fair to say that the larger publishers have been able to grow faster than the market on average. So I think if you were to estimate where, let's say, the top 5 are today, it's probably around 65%. Now if you look at where share gains are coming from also in our case, we're not -- it's not that we are not gaining share from only smaller publishers or society publishers or benefiting from our article growth. We're also taking share from our competitors. I mean, we're growing faster than them. And I think that's definitely the result of, let's say, if you -- actually, if you look at it, there's like 4 different components of article growth. The first is kind of organic article growth. So that's by the service we provide, the quality of our portfolio, the marketing we do, the networks of our editors and our publishing staff. So that's the kind of organic growth that we have, which is, to be honest, actually accounting for most of the growth that we have seen over the past couple of years. Then the second, of course, is launching new journals. But as I've explained before, those don't, let's say, contribute to growth in the short to medium term. Now the third driver of growth is actually societies, acquiring new societies, making them part of our portfolio. If it works from, let's say, both an economical and portfolio perspective, so do certain societies allow us to create a more rounded offering in certain segments of the market or geography. And last but not least, of course, acquisitions. And there's still -- if you think about it, there's more than, I think, 25,000 to 30,000 journals in the world. And yes, there's still quite a lot of opportunity for small fill-in acquisitions. And so those will be the different growth drivers of article growth that we have. And maybe with that, over to you.

I take the foreign exchange question. Yes, Conor, I would say your question is primarily around the impact on Research and then renewal and also then how the U.S. dollar has been, I would say, progressing last year and what we expect for this year. The kind of full year guidance we have provided to you when we released the full year earnings results, and this is unchanged. I think this morning, the U.S. dollar was still in the same ballpark. So nothing has changed for the full year. With regards to quotas and then also the renewal U.S. dollar exchange rate that you can assume, we have been benefiting in '25 from the strong U.S. dollar we have seen in Q4 '24 as well as in the first quarter. So we have been hovering with the renewal rate somewhere around $1.07. And then I would say, March, April time, U.S. dollar has started to weaken, and this is also something that you will see that as an impact for this year. I think this is not a kind of magic behind this year's renewal rate has been tragically up, so we are seeing this somewhere around $1.15, so this really then has the biggest impact for us in terms of FX in the first quarter. And as I've just said, the dollar was weakening then in the second quarter last year. To give you the other kind of data point last year, FX rate for U.S. dollar was in Q2, something around $1.13, close to the average of the year. Q1 was at one off par. So taking all of that together, I would say, yes, you will see the impact of U.S. dollar across the year when [indiscernible] U.S. dollar is, I would say, dramatically improving. But the impact on a quarterly base will be less -- lessen over time and also already Q2 will be less impacted than Q1. But still, you'll see the strong impact of our subscription and TA business with the more favorable renewal rates last year.

The next question is from Konrad Zomer, ABN AMRO - ODDO BHF.

The first one is on free cash flow. You showed us a EUR 20 million positive swing in your free cash flow from lower interest payments. And part of that is related to phasing and the other part is related to the Schuldschein or the promissory notes. Can you give us that breakdown, please, as to what percentage of that EUR 20 million is due to phasing, so which might reverse in Q2? And my second question is on your full open access journals. You gave us the 15% overall growth in articles published. But can you also give us the year-on-year growth rate for your full open access journals, please?

Yes. Why don't you start with the interest one, and then I will take the full open access.

Yes, Konrad happy to answer your interest payments question. So yes, we have a EUR 20 million improvement provided in Q1 versus last year. And the phasing factor is driven by the promise of the Schuldscheindarlehen because they have different payment terms. We pay those interest in May and November. So that's shifting the first portion then, let's say, to the second quarter, and that's around EUR 10 million in total. And then the second is related then to lower interest and that's a combination of the repayment that we have done last year. We have seen lower base rates and also lower margins. And the EUR 10 million are roughly split half between the lower debt and then also the lower interest rates.

And to comment on your question around full open access growth. So yes, in the presentation, we mentioned that we did overall growth of about 15% versus market growth of 6%. And the 15%, of course, is a bit up from 2025 when we had 12%. And if you look at our full open access portfolio, it's around 20% against what we estimate to be a market growth of about 10%. So about twice as high as the market growth and, of course, a substantially bigger base compared to last year.

At the moment, there are no further questions in the queue. All right. There's been no more questions incoming. So I hand back the floor to Tom.

Thank you. So thanks, everyone, for the call today, and we'll speak to you next time.