CLARIVATE PLC Q4 2025 earnings call

Thank you, good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Clarivate Q4 and full year 2025 earnings conference 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. The accompanying earnings call presentation is available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website. 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 differently 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 understanding of our ongoing operating performance, they are a supplement to and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP measures are available in our earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website. With me today are Matti Shem Tov, Chief Executive Officer, and Jonathan Collins, Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, we'll open up the call to your questions. With that, it's a pleasure to turn the call over to Matti.

Good morning, everyone, thank you for joining us today. We are at a positive inflection point in the Clarivate journey. In 2025, we delivered on our initial full-year financial guide for the first time since 2019. The value creation plan is working, as evidenced by improved performance and forward outlook. We have accelerated organic ACV, organic recurring revenue, and enhanced our free cash flow conversion. Looking ahead to 2026, our guidance calls for 10% free cash flow growth and continued improvement in our KPIs. With strong cash generation, stable revenue retention rates of 93%, and a business that generates 97% of its revenue from proprietary solutions enhanced by AI, we see tremendous opportunity in front of us. Last February, we announced a strategic review of our business portfolio, which involved evaluating multiple options.

After an in-depth analysis, we have launched a process to sell our Life Sciences & Healthcare business, which, if the deal is co-concluded, could accelerate value creation for shareholders. We believe selling this segment will allow further emphasis on the A&G and IP market and strengthen our balance sheet through reduced leverage. We are currently engaged in active discussion with interested parties. There are no guarantees we will reach an agreement. We will update the market when appropriate. While we understand the market's concern around AI disruption for software and information services companies in general, we believe our business is highly proprietary with significant moats. A few weeks ago, we launched a webinar titled Clarivate Intelligence Amplified in the Age of AI. If you have not viewed it yet, I encourage you to do so. For us, AI is not a disruption to our business model.

It is an amplifier of what already sets us apart. Today, 97% of Clarivate's revenue come from proprietary assets, including intelligence solutions, workflow software, and tech-enabled services. This reflects decades of strategic investment in proprietary content, expert enrichment and curation, and the development of software products embedded across customer workflows. This strong and proven foundation provide us with a significant advantage in the age of AI. Our customers operate in high-stake environments such as research, intellectual property, and highly regulated life science industry, when provenance, accuracy, and trust are essential and non-negotiable. Let me explain our AI strategy. We are leveraging AI to capitalize on our strengths. By combining our proprietary data and deep domain expertise with cutting-edge technology, we are delivering what we call Intelligence Amplified. This shows up in three ways.

First, AI research assistants provide a conversational, contextual search and discovery, a front door to our trusted intelligence, where customers can simply ask questions in natural language and get precise answers backed by our proprietary data. Second, AI workflow agents are embedded directly into customer workflows, acting as digital analysts that enable execution at speed. Tasks that used to take hours or days can now happen in minutes. Imagine a patent analyst who has an AI agent that can monitor thousands of patents, identify relevant prior arts, and flag potential conflict automatically. That is the power we deliver. Third, through AI ecosystem access, we are extending our gold standard intelligence across the broader AI ecosystem via secured integrations such as MCP Servers. By expanding our reach beyond cloud boundaries, we are ensuring that our assets remain available to user as they develop new ways of working.

For example, we recently introduced Nexus, which exemplify our ecosystem access strategy. As students increasingly begin their research in general-purpose AI tools, Nexus meets them where they are, embedding our gold standard curated content, such as Web of Science, directly into public chat tools. This is how we extend the value of our proprietary assets beyond our own platforms, turning AI adoption into a distribution opportunity rather than a displacement risk. We will continue to capitalize on the benefits of AI by enhancing and developing solutions that are trusted by more than 45,000 customers globally. We see this new technology as a legitimate accelerant to our organic growth. Now, let's turn to 2025 results. I am proud of the results we delivered in 2025, which lay a strong foundation for 2026. We delivered nearly 2% organic ACV growth at the high end of the range.

We also improved the mix of organic recurring revenue to 88%, clear evidence of continued progress towards a more predictable subscription-based model. We delivered more than $1 billion of adjusted EBITDA and $365 million free cash flow. As Jonathan will cover in more details, we expect approximately 10% free cash flow growth in 2026. Our value creation plan has built strong momentum and better focus across the organization, which has improved our operational and financial performance. We optimized the business model, which has led to an improvement in our recurring revenue mix. We improved our sales execution, and as a result, delivered nearly 2% organic ACV growth, representing approximately 90 basis point improvements year-over-year. We drove innovation forward by introducing 12 major products and AI-powered features, strengthening our unique position in the market.

Our strategic review has led to the initiation of a process to sell our life science business. If successful, this will focus our organization and strengthen our balance sheet. Let me take you through each of our business segments where we have made meaningful improvements, starting with academia and government. This segment delivered solid performance in 2025, achieving 2% organic ACV growth, despite funding headwinds in the U.S. academic market. On the innovation front, we launched 10 AI assistants and AI-native agentic solutions, these are being used by over 4,000 institutions today. Here is the foundation that makes this all possible: 97% of our A&G revenue is generated from proprietary solutions. Last year, we successfully transitioned the business model away from transactional revenues. This increased our organic recurring revenue mix to 93%, with mid-90s retention rates.

Looking ahead, we expect organic growth acceleration as our AI innovation continues to materialize, supported by improving market dynamics. Let us talk about the Intellectual Property business. It is powered by the industry's largest agent network and a comprehensive portfolio of solutions covering the full IP life cycle. This includes patent and trademark, curated proprietary data, decision intelligence, tech-enabled services, IP management software, and the largest annuity book in the market. This give us scale, reach, and competitive advantage no one else can match. With a new leadership team, including the president, CTO, and the head of software and clear priorities, we are confident in returning IP to growth. On the innovation side, we launched five GenAI and AI-native products and enhancements last year. 2026 will bring additional AI product launches across the IP landscape. The changes we have implemented are starting to show up in the results.

We delivered 270 basis points of year-over-year improvement in annuities revenue, reflecting stronger execution. The outlook for IP is increasingly positive. The fundamentals are there, the team is aligned, and the AI-led innovation and products are resonating positively with our customers. Turning to Life Sciences & Healthcare. Life Sciences & Healthcare is anchored in expert-curated, highly enriched data, which is optimized for compliance-critical workflows, where accuracy, provenance, and trust are essential. We now have 11,000 global active users leveraging our AI research assistants and workflow agents. That is incredible adoption in a market where accuracy and trust are non-negotiable, and we are not slowing down. We are due to release more than 10 additional AI solutions this year. We have reached a clear inflection point. Cortellis, DRG, and MetaX, our three major product lines, are now moving in the right direction with consistent quarterly ACV growth.

Based on this, we closed last year and our current pipeline visibility, we expect a return to organic revenue growth in 2026. Now, let's talk about where we are headed and why we are confident in the outlook. For 2026, we are guiding to 2%-3% organic annual contract value growth. That is a meaningful acceleration from where we were just two years ago. On recurring organic revenue, we are targeting 1%-2% growth for 2026, an improvement of almost 100 basis points compared to last year in the middle of the range. Finally, free cash flow is expected to grow to about $400 million. That is approximate 10% increase over last year. I am optimistic that we can achieve our target in 2026 because we have built the foundation.

We have optimized the business model, we have strengthened sales execution, we are accelerating innovation, and we are rationalizing the portfolio. In closing, 2025 was a turning point for Clarivate. In 2026, we expect to continue to improve our key financial metrics. Under my leadership, we have built a more focused, accountable, and performance-driven culture, and we will maximize shareholder value through portfolio simplification and disciplined capital allocation. I will now turn the call over to Jonathan for a review of our financial results and outlook.

Thank you, Matti. Slide 17 is an overview of our Q4 and full year financial results compared with the same periods from the prior year. Q4 revenue was $617 million, bringing the full year to $2,455,000,000 . The change in the quarter and the year was entirely inorganic, as we disposed of and divested businesses over the last year. Q4 net income was $3 million. The $195 million improvement over Q4 of the prior year, and the full year improvement of $436 million, was driven by the non-cash impairment charges recorded in the prior year that did not recur in 2025, as well as lower income tax and interest expense. Adjusted diluted EPS, which excludes items like the impairment, was up $0.02 sequentially at $0.20.

The change over last year was entirely inorganic. Operating cash flow was $160 million in the quarter. The $19 million improvement compared to last year is driven primarily by working capital and lower interest in taxes. Please turn with me now to page 18 for a closer look at the drivers of the fourth quarter top and bottom line changes from the prior year. As expected, the changes over the prior year were driven by four primary factors. First, while organic subscription revenues continued to grow at 1%, followed the continued acceleration in our ACV, total organic revenue declined by about 1%, as the subs growth was offset by recurring and transactional. Q4 operating expenses were higher as we continued to invest in innovation and incurred higher incentive compensation expense as we delivered our full year guidance, resulting in a $16 million profit decline.

Second, during Q4, the businesses we are disposing decreased by $43 million over the prior year, but was largely offset by cost reductions in these businesses, yielding a net $10 million reduction in adjusted EBITDA. Third, as we have seen in the last couple of quarters, we experienced a modest inorganic impact from the ScholarOne divestiture. Fourth, the U.S. dollar remained relatively weaker against the basket of foreign currencies, which caused a foreign exchange tailwind on the top line that was partially offset by fewer transaction gains than the prior year, resulting in a small profit impact. We exited 2025 with a Q4 profit margin run rate of just over 41%, which was about 50 basis points higher than the full year results.

Please turn with me now to page 19 to review how these same drivers impacted the top and bottom line changes on a full year basis compared to 2024. As Matti noted in his remarks, our full year revenue and profit results were above the high end of the original guidance ranges we provided a year ago. While recurring organic growth approached 1%, this was offset by organic transactional revenues, resulting in essentially flat organic revenue. Full-year operating expenses were higher than the prior year as we continued to invest in growth and incurred higher incentive compensation expense as we delivered our full-year guidance. The entire revenue change and the vast majority of the profit difference came from the combined impact of the disposals and divestitures, which lowered revenue by about $116 million and adjusted EBITDA by about $44 million compared to the prior year.

Both the top and bottom lines benefited from foreign exchange translation as the US dollar weakened compared to a basket of foreign currencies. Please turn with me now to page 20 for a look at how the Q4 and full year adjusted EBITDA converted to free cash flow and how we allocated the capital. Free cash flow was $89 million in the Q4, bringing the full year to $365 million, towards the higher end of our guidance range, which is about 2% growth over the prior year, has lower adjusted EBITDA and higher one-time cost, were more than offset by lower working capital spending, interest and taxes.

We used the free cash flow we generated to buy back $225 million worth of stock, and we called $100 million of the bonds that were due later this year, and then called the remaining $100 million in January of 2026. This balanced deployment of capital allowed us to maintain net leverage at approximately four terms while retiring $56 million or 7% of our outstanding shares. Please turn with me now to page 21 for a look at our full year financial guidance ranges for this year. Beginning at the top of the page, we anticipate the acceleration of our organic annual contract value last year will continue in 2026, resulting in growth of between 2% and 3%, representing continued steady progress and an increase of about three-quarters of a percentage point at the midpoint of the range.

We expect recurring organic growth of about 1.5% at the midpoint of our range, which is an improvement of nearly a percentage point over last year. Due entirely to the wind down of the businesses we are disposing, we expect revenue to decline by almost $100 million at the midpoint of the range to $2.36 billion, and that our organic recurring revenue mix, which excludes the impact of the disposals, will improve to between 88% and 90%. Moving down the page, we expect adjusted EBITDA will grow modestly despite the lower revenue, increasing our profit margin to nearly 43% at the midpoint of the range. We anticipate diluted adjusted EPS will grow about 9% at the midpoint of the range to $0.75, largely due to the share repurchases we completed last year.

Finally, free cash flow is expected to grow by about 10% to $400 million at the midpoint of the range. Please turn with me now to page 22 for more details on the full year top and bottom line changes we are expecting compared to last year. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin will expand by about 200 basis points at the midpoint of the ranges, driven by a return to organic growth, continued aggressive cost management, and completing the strategic disposals. We anticipate organic growth of about 1%, led by subscription revenue growth from continued ACV acceleration. We have plans in place to achieve cost efficiencies to fully offset inflation, resulting in a full flow-through of the approximately $25 million of revenue growth to profit. This will account for about a third of the profit margin expansion.

The strategic disposals are expected to lower revenue this year by approximately $130 million, and we are reducing operating expenses by more than $100 million, which yields a profit impact of about $25 million, delivering the remaining two-thirds of the profit margin expansion. As Matti highlighted, we are pursuing the sale of our LS&H segment. However, our financial guidance for this year assumes we will own this business for the entire year, and if agreement is reached, a revision to our guidance for this potential divestiture may come later in the year. We continue to anticipate a modest foreign exchange translation benefit to the top and bottom lines of $10 million and $5 million, respectively, as the U.S. dollar is expected to remain slightly weaker against other foreign currencies compared to last year.

Please turn with me now to page 23 to step through a high-level overview of the expected seasonality of our revenues and profits this year. Broadly speaking, we expect to make continued progress as we move through the year. It's worth highlighting some timing differences that will affect our trajectory. In our annual contract value, we often see timing differences with renewals in the first quarter, and as a result, we anticipate a slight sequential pullback in Q1, but steady acceleration through the balance of the year. Last year, we saw mid-single-digit organic growth in our reoccurring revenues in Q1, due largely to patent renewal accelerations in the U.S. that will not recur this year and will unwind in the first half.

The combination of these two factors should result in recurring organic revenue growth that is essentially flat in Q1 and will result in a profit margin that's similar to Q1 of last year, with a margin expansion occurring in the balance of the year. Finally, it's worth noting that our transactional books revenue will cease this summer, resulting in a sequential step down from the first to second half. As I noted on the prior page, this disposal will expand our profit margins. Please turn with me now to page 24 to step through our expected path to delivering approximately $400 million of free cash flow this year. At the midpoint of our range, we expect free cash flow will grow about $35 million or 10% over last year.

One-time costs are expected to abate, primarily on lower restructuring costs. As noted a couple of pages ago, our guidance does not contemplate the sale of our LS&H segment. If we reach an agreement, this is an area we would update later this year. We expect cash interest to improve by about $20 million over the prior year as a result of the debt we prepaid last year and last month, additional debt we plan to prepay this year, and some savings associated with the projected forward base rate curve. Cash taxes are expected to be $5 million-$10 million higher than last year, due largely to new corporate tax in Jersey. We anticipate the change in working capital this year will be a use of approximately $20 million, compared to last year's source of just over $10 million, primarily due to incentive compensation payments early this year.