Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript November 7, 2023

Clarivate Plc beats earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.21, expectations were $0.18.

Operator: Good morning. Thank you for attending today’s Clarivate Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Flam, and I’ll be your moderator for today’s call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to pass the conference to our host, Mark Donohue, Head of Investor Relations.Mr. Donohue, please proceed.

Mark Donohue: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. With me today are Jonathan Gear, Chief Executive Officer; and Jonathan Collins, Chief Financial Officer. Both will be available to take your questions at the conclusion of the call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and webcast and is copyrighted property of Clarivate. Any rebroadcast of this information in whole or in part without prior written consent of Clarivate is prohibited. An accompanying earnings call presentation is available on the Investor Relations section of the company’s website, clarivate.com. During our call, we may make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the applicable securities laws.

Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the business or developments in Clarivate’s industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance achievements or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results or performance can be found in Clarivate’s filings with the SEC and on the company’s website. Our discussion will include non-GAAP measures or adjusted numbers. Clarivate believes non-GAAP results are useful in order to enhance an understanding of our ongoing operating performance, but they are supplement to and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP measures are available in our earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website. After the prepared remarks, we will open the call to your questions. And with that, it’s a pleasure to turn the call over to Jonathan Gear.

Jonathan Gear: Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Before I begin, I would like to share some thoughts about the situation in Israel. Clarivate has over 500 colleagues in our Jerusalem office and the recent terrorist attacks changed their lives. While the reports should not alluded any colleagues that day everyone in the office, you know someone who has been impacted by a loss, casualty or the ongoing hospice crisis. Our colleagues are our number one priority and we have established a fund that’s $200,000 for the local team to use to support the colleague connections and community outreach. We have arrangements in place for operational continuity at all levels and did not expect any disruptions.

All of us at Clarivate hope for peace in the region. Now let me turn to our third quarter results. I am pleased with progress of our business this quarter, which demonstrated sequential improvement in two of our three operating segments, while also achieving our company’s highest organic growth on a consolidated basis since I joined Clarivate a year ago. We are moving in the right direction. Despite the ongoing challenges in the macro backdrop, which are having a greater impact on our transactional businesses, we leveraged several key wins highlighting the resilience of our business and the mission-critical nature of our data and products. We continue to innovate our products and establish new generative AI solutions in our IP and life sciences and healthcare segments.

As discussed at our Investor Day in March, driving value enhancements to our mission-critical data through product innovation is core to our long-term strategy. We remain focused on accelerating organic growth to industry growth rates and continue to see generative AI as a very large untapped opportunity for our company. Revenue in the quarter was $647 million, an increase of $11 million on an organic basis or 2% growth. This was in line with our expectations. Our performance was driven by strong momentum in Academia & Government and they returned to positive organic growth in life sciences and healthcare. We continued to face temporary headwinds in IP such as a delayed contract starts date with the United States Patent and Trademark Office, and moderate impact to the ongoing US actors strike, both of which I will elaborate on momentarily.

Adjusted EBITDA of $281 million and EPS of $0.21 were both up from last year and we continue to make progress towards our long-term EBITDA margin targets at 42%. Jonathan Collins will discuss this I more detail. Now, turning to our segments, beginning with Academia & Government, last quarter, you heard me discuss improved performance in A&G as our investments are helping drive new subscription business, account updates and higher retention. This quarter, I’m happy to report we were able to build an implementing with organic revenue growth accelerating to 3%. This is our strongest growth quarter since last year’s second quarter. We believe this is confirmation that our strategy is paying off. In the quarter, growth was strong across content aggregation transactional sales which had historically been a strength for us, but we also recorded wins with three major universities for workflow solutions.

Accelerating adoption of our workflow solutions through our risk analyzer products has been an important area of focus for us and is a prerequisite to bridging our gap to industry growth. I’m confident we will get there and this quarter is just the beginning. In October, we were selected by Yale University to provide its library services, and discovery platform. By implementing Alma and Primo, Yale will unify its workflows and data onto a single platform elevating the user experience and enhancing services within its library ecosystem. As a reminder, Alma is our cloud-based library management platform which unifies print, electronic, and digital collections, while Primo provides fast access to scholarly materials, and tutor ways to discover new content.

Yale will implement these services in both its main and law libraries workflows and data, combining the benefits of generative AI with trusted content sources will enable users to find new insights fast and at scale. Another win in the quarter was OhioLINK, which is the entire state of Ohio’s academic library consortium of 117 member of libraries. OhioLINK chose Alma for its cloud-based shared library services platform as it bolsters its investment in higher education technology infrastructure. A key factor behind our win was the investments we have been making in the Alma platform and our roadmap which best meets the consortium’s current and future expected needs. In addition to Alma, OhioLINK will implement Primo, and a wider suite of Ex Libris products, that will enhance services for users, staff and administration.

Lastly, we established the Academia & Government innovation incubator, late in the quarter. We expect this will further accelerate our strategy to advance knowledge through research and education, but introducing novel solutions for our customers and academic users. As part of the incubator’s first program, we make a small, but important acquisition of Alethea an AI Powered student engagement platform. Alethea facilitates meaningful engagement with academic texts, class readings and assignments to personalize and adaptive guidance, which helps to realize better learning outcomes and student success. As you can tell, we’re seeing strong momentum in our A&G business and I was very pleased with the performance this quarter. We remain confident that we are well on our way to bridging the gap to market growth rates.

Moving to IP, in the quarter, organic revenue growth – pressure from the ongoing US actors strike which began in mid-July and in fact on our trademark business. Trademarks are a critical part of the movie industry where film studios use trademarks to protect movie titles and register other elements related to films, which can pave the way to potential licensing and merchandizing agreements. We also saw a delay in the start date of a new contract with the United States Patent and Trade Office, which was awarded to Clarivate earlier this year. This enhanced contract was saved by the client and we received a word, the contact will start in early first quarter of next year. The delay will have a modest impact in Q4. I am pleased to share with you that we secured a multi-year deal with a large Indian telecommunications provider to deliver patent services.

On the product side, we launched Forecast in September. Forecast is an AI powered tool that delivers powerful capabilities for predictive budgeting and is fully integrated with leading IP management systems. The rising cost of managing IP as a strategic asset is an issue of increasing importance for customers and Forecast enables IP professionals, to create budget scenarios to make smarter filings and maintenance decisions, while collaborating more seamlessly across their organizations. Net of all this, the view of our IP business remains the same. I remain confident that the slight pullback on organic growth for IP is only a short term event and we continue to expect to return to normal growth next year. Turning to life science and healthcare, I am pleased to report improved performance with positive organic growth for the first time in four quarters of 2% year-over-year.

Though we remain conscious on the macro and are still seeing pressures on parts of our transactional business as a result of the lower drug approval pipeline last year and a still challenging funding environment in biotech we did see some pockets of relief in the quarter. Our consulting business delivered 7% growth in the quarter, and we secured a large engagement with a global Top 20 pharma to extend our partnership in epidemiology analytics supporting market access and clinical trials. We also signed a strategic agreement with a leading US biotech to accelerate commercial and market strategies for their lead drug candidate. Lastly, in a regulatory and safety portfolio, we continue to demonstrate consistent growth, which is up 5% from last year.

As I shared with you at our Investor Day, commercialization is a key area of focus for us to accelerate our vision to market growth rates. Real world data offers our customers, a wealth of information around the activities and outcomes of key healthcare providers, patients, and payer stakeholders. Analyzing medical and pharma claims and other specialty data sets enables many factors to maximize their impact and launch planning by understanding the diagnosis, referral, treatment, and reimbursement dynamics among stakeholders in their target markets. We continue to add to our existing datasets to drive further value to our customers. In the quarter, we enhanced our real-world data business with additional German hospital prescription data that will reinforce our position as a leading provider of real-world data solutions in Europe.

We’re also making progress on our software platform. In August, we launched Enhanced Sourced powered by generative AI as part of the latest iteration of our patent pending platform. The new capabilities enable clinical, regulatory affairs and strategy teams to interact with complex data sets using natural language to obtain immediate and in-depth insights. The beta version of the enhanced source platform is now available to select customers and general availability is anticipated later this year. As part of the commercial launch we further extend the platform by integrating additional data sets across our Cortellis line, including clinical trials, deals, drug discovery and more. This is all part of our long-term strategy to enhance the value of our critical data through more analytic and insights, while shifting even greater mix of our business through subscription.

In closing, we have a great business with an unparalleled suite of mission-critical products, world-class customers and a long-term strategy is intact. Like everyone in the industry we wish we knew when the macro pressures would ease, nonetheless, we made financial progress in two of our three operating segments. And more importantly, we are not getting still. Our company is accelerating its innovating efforts, and we’re seeing positive early signs of our strategy based on our customer conversations and highlighted wins but understand, we still have much work to do. I’d like to thank my colleagues for their continued dedication, collaboration and hard work. I look forward to sharing our progress with you all again in three months time. With that, let me turn the call over to Jonathan Collins to walk you through our financials.

Jonathan Collins: Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning, everyone. Slide 11 is an overview of our third quarter results compared with the same period last year. Q3 revenue is $647 million, an increase of $11 million or 2% versus 2022, driven entirely by organic growth as the impact of the MarkMonitor divestiture was offset by foreign exchange. Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded 80 basis points over the prior year to 43.5% in Q3 on strong cost discipline and the cost synergies from the ProQuest acquisition. Third quarter net loss was $7 million, an improvement of $4.4 billion, as a result of the non-cash goodwill impairment charges associated with the CPA Global and ProQuest acquisitions reported in the same period last year. Adjusted diluted EPS, which excludes the impact of one-time items like the impairment was $0.21 in Q3 a $0.01 improvement over the same period last year, primarily due to higher adjusted EBITDA.

Operating cash flow was $163 million in the quarter, a decrease of $44 million, due entirely to higher working capital requirements, primarily stemming from the intra annual timing of payments in our IP renewals business. Please turn with me now to Page 12 for a closer look at the drivers of third quarter top and bottom line changes from the same period last year. Our third, quarter revenue and profit results are right in line with our expectations and were driven by four key factors. First, revenue was up $11 million on organic growth of 1.7%. As Jonathan highlighted, the organic growth in the A&G segment is the best it’s been in over a year as we continue to see the benefits of accelerated growth in the research and analytics sub-segment due to the investments in the Web of Science product.

Our LS&H segment grew on a transactional basis due to soft comps from last year, despite the pressure in the subscription file we forewarned of stemming from the soft real-world data sales from the past few quarters. These segments more than offset the headwinds we continue to see in our IP business due to macro pressures. The profit conversion on the organic growth was particularly strong as a result of the cost discipline we are exercising over the business. Second, inorganic activity, namely the divestiture of the MarkMonitor business last year, lowered revenues $19 million and profit $11 million this year. Third, cost synergies from the ProQuest acquisition contributed $10 million of incremental profit. And finally, the translation impact of subsidiaries denominated in foreign currencies increased revenue by $20 million as the US dollar remains weaker the basket of foreign currencies compared to the same time last year.

The profit increase was negligible as transaction gains incurred in the third quarter of last year did not recur this year. Please turn with me now to Page 13 to step through the conversion from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow and how we allocated this capital in Q3. Free cash flow was $102 million in the quarter, a decrease of $39 million over the same period last year, bringing the year-to-date conversion on adjusted EBITDA to 46% and the cumulative improvements so far this year to a $159 million. Interest payments were $40 million in the quarter, nearly flat over the prior year, as the impact of base rate increases were offset by the lower debt quantum due to the deleveraging in the fourth quarter of last year and the first half of this year.

Cash taxes were $14 million lower than the same period last year, as we recognized the benefit of planning initiatives. Working capital was a use of cash of $64 million in Q3, when it was a source of $12 million in the same period last year. This change was driven primarily by the timing of payments within our patent renewal business in the IP segment. Year-to-date, working capital is essentially flat. And we expected to be for the full year. Capital expenditures were $62 million in the quarter, in line with the prior quarter in last year’s third as we continue to invest in product innovation. We do start third quarter free cash flow to repurchase $13.8 million shares of our stock at an average price of about $7.20. Please move with me now to Slide 14 for our current view on the remainder of 2023.

Our third quarter results place us on track to deliver full year results near the midpoint of the ranges we provided in August. We expect organic growth will approach 1% in the fourth quarter, resulting in full year growth of about a 0.5%. This is slightly below the midpoint of the range as during the quarter we received word from the USPTO that a large contract we were awarded earlier this year has been delayed from Q4 until Q1 of next year. Additionally, we’ll experience the aforementioned effect of the Actors strike on trademark transactions and anticipate tepid year end spending in life sciences. We continue to expect revenue near the midpoint of the range at $2,635 million as the modest organic growth effects are offset by a later closing of the small divestiture in our IP segment and a slightly weaker US dollar.

We anticipate adjusted EBITDA $1,115 million yielding a profit margin of about forty two and a quarter percent at the midpoint of the ranges. We continue to expect adjusted diluted EPS at about $0.80. And finally, we anticipate free cash flow near the midpoint of the range at about $475 million. Please turn with me now to Page 15 for a closer look at the full year top and bottom line outlook, which is unchanged from our prior guidance. Similar to the third quarter results, our full year outlook for revenue and adjusted EBITDA is driven by four key factors. First, organic growth will add about $15 million to the top line, funding a comparable amount of incremental cost leaving the profit impact for this component to be flat. From a segment perspective, we anticipate A&G will continue accelerating their growth from historical performance to the market rate we outlined at the Investor Day in March, IP will decline slightly and LS&H will decline this year, due to the macro pressures we highlighted.

Second, the divestiture of MarkMonitor last year will deduct about $65 million of revenue and about $30 million of profit this year. Third, we’ve completed the integration of the ProQuest acquisition, enabling us to deliver the remaining $40 million of cost synergies this year accounting for all of this year’s expected margin expansion. And finally we anticipate a $25 million foreign exchange tailwind on the top line as the US dollar has weakened slightly, compared to a basket of foreign currencies. The small headwind to the bottom line is caused by the transaction gains realized late last year that we do not expect to recur this year. Please turn with me now to Page 16 to walk through how we expect the more than $1.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA will convert to nearly a $0.5 billion of free cash flow and our plans for allocating the remainder of this capital in Q4.

Nearly all of the $170 million improvement in free cash flow projected for the full year, which is largely due to lower one-time cost and augmented by improving working capital has been delivered in the first three quarters of the year as we anticipate fourth quarter free cash flow will be roughly in line with the same period last year. As a reminder, last year we incurred more than $200 million in cash outflows associated with one-time cost related to the acquisitions and expected improvement about $155 million this year as we incur about $60 million largely to complete the ProQuest integration. We do expect the cash interest increase of about $25 million as base rates were up considerably over last year. Our working capital requirements have leveled off this year and will yield an improvement of about $56 million.

We remain on track to increase capital spending by about $40 million to accelerate organic growth. The impact of all of these changes is about $170 million improvement in free cash flow to approximately $475 million at the midpoint of the range, which is an increase in the conversion on adjusted EBITDA of 15 percentage points. We expect to use all of our fourth quarter free cash flow and an additional $50 million of cash on the balance sheet to prepay another $150 million of our term loan bringing the full year total to $300 million, and our net leverage to just below four turns. Please turn with me now to Page 17 for a look at how we’re tracking to our long-term financial objectives. You’ll recall that when we outlined the financial objectives for our business at our Investor Day in March, our primary aim was to accelerate our organic growth.

The first area we committed to improve was the Research and Analytics sub-segment within A&G and this segment group business remains on track to achieve its growth plans with continued momentum, delivering organic growth in the third quarter in excess of 3%. However, the economy-related end-market softness facing our LS&H and IP segments leave us behind the pace we expected, but we remain laser-focused on the product innovation that will help us to lift these segments to their market growth rates over the next few years. But a slight tracking behind on the first objective, we made solid progress towards the other three we outlined. Our second goal is to maintain durable profit margins as we invest to accelerate our growth. We executed on this objective in the third quarter as our margins expanded by 80 basis points even as we increased our operating and capital expenditures to drive product innovation.

The third objective we outlined was to slightly improve our free cash flow – significantly improve our free cash flow, which we delivered in the first nine months of the year with an increase of 73% on lower one-time cost and improved working capital. And finally we committed to allocate our capital in a disciplined manner. We’ve demonstrated balance in this area by repurchasing $100 million of stock in Q3 and remain committed to deliver our year end leverage targets through continued debt prepayments in Q4. The entire Clarivate team remains completely focused on the solid execution that will deliver all of these financial objectives. I want to thank all of you for listening in this morning. I’m now going to turn this call back over to Falam, to take your questions.

And as a reminder, please limit yourselves to one question and then return to the queue for any additional. Falam, please go ahead.

Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Tony your line is now open.

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Q&A Session

Toni Kaplan: Thanks very much, Just in light of a few additional 13D filings during the quarter, can you just give us your latest thoughts on whether you think this three businesses are more valuable together. What synergies you generate from having them together? And if there are any assets that you view as sort of not as core to the portfolio? Thanks.

Jonathan Gear: Hi, toni. Yes. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I mean, first obviously, we always feel great about the investors set that we have and the kind of renewed interest and the new commitment from some of those that you mentioned are just fantastic. And so, we feel very lucky to have in part of our investment community. In terms of portfolio, really as I highlighted in my remarks, Toni, and nothing hs changed. We’re so very focused on executing against the plan that we have right now. One of our feedback we’re getting very close to market growth rates. We made improvement in life science and healthcare. And again, we have some short-term market headwinds in IP, which we are focused on improving and we think will turn around next year.

So it’s really telling, nothing has changed in our markets. We’re always of course looking at where we should add our portfolio and putting that we can make, but we feel very good about the collection we have right now. Thank you.

Mark Donohue: Next question, please.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Manav, your line is now open.

Manav Patnaik: Thank you. Good morning. I just – apologies if I missed it but, if you could break out the subscription growth and the non-subscription growth in the Academia & Government side? and just talk about how these new contracts you highlighted and the demand can you talk about directionally help that subscription run rate perhaps?

Jonathan Gear : Sure. Thanks for the question, Manav. So, throughout our A&G business, we highlighted in the first three quarters we’ve seen improvement in our renewal rates in that segment, and we’ve seen some new business growth largely driven by the Web of Science product. So we made a pretty meaningful investment in that product late in 2021. In 2022, we saw significant increases in monthly active usage. And then we follow that up with some really nice augments or enhancements to the product in 2022. You’ll recall we significantly increased the number of journals that receive a journal impact factor and we started to do some very thoughtful integrations with some of the ProQuest products such as the dissertation and PCs collection.

That’s put us in a place where we’ve seen nice improvements in the renewal rates that have helped to improve the subscription growth rates in the A&G segment. As Jonathan highlighted in his comments, we did have a nice quarter in Q3 on a transactional basis within A&G. So that business can be a little bit lumpy from quarter-to-quarter. It wasn’t great in Q2. But we saw a really nice growth rate in the third quarter. The fourth quarter is important for that business from a transactional perspective. So the team, bars entire team remain heavily focused on delivering a strong year on the transactional side to augment the improvements, we’ve seen in subscriptions.

Mark Donohue: Thank you. Next question, please.

Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Surinder Thind with Jefferies. Surinder, your line is now open.

Surinder Thind: Thank you. Just a big picture question here. When we think about the cyclical exposure that you have in the business and the commentary that was last quarter to some of the one-time items, and then we kind of look ahead, how would you characterize the upside or the downside that’s kind of left in that part of the business as we move through the current economic cycle of exchange order maintaining your current levels? Or if perhaps things were to get a little tougher from a macro perspective?