Clarivate Q3 Earnings Conference Call - CLARIVATE PLC

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to the Clarivate third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. I will now hand the conference over to Mark Donahue, Vice President, Investor Relations. Mark, please go ahead. Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Clarivate third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and webcast at its copyrighted property at Clarivated. Any rebroadcast of this information in whole or in part without prior written consent of Clarivates is prohibited. The company 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 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 and clarifies the business to differ materially from the anticipated results, performances, achievements, or developments expressed or implied by such forward-lookings 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 at the SEC and on the company's website. Our discussion will include non-GAAP measures or adjusted numbers. Clarivates believes non-GAP results are useful in order to enhance the understanding of our ongoing operating performance. But 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 GATT measures are available on our earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website. With me today are Mahdi Shemtov, Chief Executive Officer, and Michael Easton, Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, we'll open up the call to your questions. And with that, it's a pleasure to turn the call over to Mahdi. Thank you, Mark, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. The third quarter marks a major milestone in Clarivate's continued transformation. We completed the strategic sale of life science and healthcare segment ahead of schedule. This positions Clarivates as a more focused, higher quality recurring business centered on two scaled market leading segments, academia and government and IP. segments are driving commercial traction and customer validation from our ai led innovation web of science research intelligence and ip1 are strong examples of that innovation in practice i will discuss this in more detail later in q2 we said that we had a building blocks in place to accelerate organic growth the progress we made this quarter is a proof that we delivered on our commitments today's message is straightforward we have a clear path to accelerating sustained organic growth expanding free cash flow and reducing leverage all of which will continue to create long-term value for shareholders due to results reflect improving recurring revenue strong profitability and cash generation continued debt reduction and meaningful customer validation of our technology and ai capabilities organic acv growth was 1.8 percent up 30 basis points year over year as a reminder this kpi is our leading indicator for future organic revenue growth recurring organic revenue improved to 1.3 percent an increase of 110 basis points year over year. Within AMG, organic ACV and subscription revenue growth was approximately 2%. We are excited that in France, our best-selected climate to modernize its national academic library system. This multi-year agreement will replace legacy system with a unified Alma cloud-based platform that combines AI power discovery and library services across thousands of academic libraries and institutions. This is a powerful validation of both the scale of our platform and the critical role climate plays in the global research ecosystem. In IP, reoccurring organic revenue grew nearly 1% and a severe return to positive growth. for the first time in over three years. In terms of IP wins, the USPTO selected Clariway to power image search across the US trademark register, placing our image recognition capabilities within a core trademark workflow. This reinforces the value of combining trusted proprietary data, deeply embedded workflow solution and AI to solve the mission critical needs of our customers. Climate is now a scaled, focused, and highly recurring business with $2 billion of revenue and 93% recurring organic revenue mix. Our solution spans three complementary models, intelligence solution representing 50% of revenue, workflow solution representing 25%, and technology-enabled services representing 25%. This combination provides trusted decision support, embedded software, and expert-led services that customers rely on to execute critical work globally. AI is enhancing the value across these offerings. We now have more than 80 in-market AI agents, assistance, and capabilities supporting our customers at an increasing pace. Our platform has handled more than 465 million AI API calls, which is more than two and a half times the volume compared to this time last year. This demonstrates the scale at which AI is already deployed across Clarivate, but scale of deployment is only part of the story. Clarivate's ability to apply AI to trusted content and establish workflows while still maintaining trust, governance, and quality is what matters to customers. This is further evidence of why we believe AI is strongly positive for our business. Let me turn to our two segments, starting with academia and government and the strengths of our position across the global research ecosystem. AMG is approximately a $1.2 billion franchise with 95% recurring organic revenue and a deeply embedded position across a global research system. Our reach is significant. 99% of the world's top 400 universities use our solutions. More than 120 million students and researchers rely on our products to enhance the outcomes and our data powers 75% of national and regional research assessments. Our solutions are deeply embedded across research, teaching and learning, funding decisions, and library operations. Our advantages come from bringing together scholarly content and institutional workflows as well as research intelligence in a proprietary ecosystem. This asset supports a resilient recurring revenue stream and creates the opportunity to build new AI-enabled products. Web of Science Research Intelligence is a good example of what I just outlined. Following its launch in May, the platform has now secured more than 100 institutional wins across 25 countries. Importantly, we have developed an active sales pipeline for 2026 to 2027 of approximately $20 million, which we expect to continue to grow. The platform uses agentic AI to help institutions address complex questions around research strategy, impact, and funding with output grounded in climate-curated authoritative data. This matters because the decisions being made using our platform require the highest level of provenance, explainability, and trust. global customer attractions support our confidence in market adoption so the next step is clear convert that customer interest and pipeline into recurring revenue at scale we believe these revenue opportunities are both incremental and support even stronger retention for wave of science. Turning to intellectual property. IP is our other scaled segment with 800 million of revenues and 90% recurring organic revenues supporting the global IP ecosystem. 90% of the top 100 R&D investors use our solutions. More than 15,000 IP customers rely on Clarivate to manage and protect their portfolios and 40 patents and trademark offices including the five largest in the world use our solutions the work we support is non-discretionary and no deferable customers depend on clivey to create protect manage and commercialize intellectual property globally and to safeguard billions of dollars of intangible value with certainty and continuity Importantly, the fundamentals of this business are improving. Reoccurring organic revenue grew nearly 1% in Q3, and ACV returned to positive growth. This represents continued progress and proof that we are delivering on our commitment. Our competitive advantage comes from the combination of our IP management software, created patent and trademark data, lifecycle services, and one of the largest teams of IP specialists in the industry. It also gives us a stronger foundation to introduce the next generation of AI-agentic platforms. IP1 brings that strategy to life. IP1 is becoming an AI-native intelligence layer across the IP lifecycle, combining specialized agents, cloud proprietary data, and trusted intelligence. It is grounded in customers' proprietary IP data, held within cloud-based software, and inaccessible to general-purpose AI. We believe that IP1 can become the intelligence and agenting foundation across the IP lifecycle. Ahead of the November early adopter launch, we are working with more than 40 development partners across 25 countries, including more than 15 Fortune Global 500 companies. We have established an active sales pipeline of 151 customers, which we expect to increase in the coming months. The initial release is expected to include five purpose-built AI agents and a growing library of agentic workflow skills. They are grounded in more than 1 billion interconnected data points that Clive-Ed has developed and enriched over decades, supported by our IP domain experts. Through the IP1 introduction, we expect to create new revenue streams and improve subscription retention. Let me bring this together. We have taken deliberate actions to improve the quality and performance of Clarivate. Our strategy is working. We've increased the recurring revenue mix of the business, improved our commercial execution, accelerated product innovation, simplified the portfolio, and reduced debt. And increasingly, we are seeing these actions reflected in our KPIs. Recurring revenue growth is improving, IP ACV has returned to growth, and our new AI-led platforms are attracting customers and building commercial pipelines. Given the sale of life science and healthcare, we wanted to provide an early look at 2027. The current target is to achieve higher organic ACV and recurring revenue growth alongside side increasing free cash flow and lowering net leverage. We look forward to providing full 2027 guidance in February. I want to leave you with one point. Carver today is a different company from the one that began this transformation when I joined as CEO two years ago. With that, Michael will review our financial results in more detail. Thank you, Monty. We continue to drive progress toward growth while focusing our portfolio on scaled recurring revenue products. We are excited that IP has returned to positive recurring organic revenue growth in the quarter, and we continue to see organic subscription revenue growth in A&G. Slide 14 is an overview of our third quarter and year-to-date results compared with the same periods last year. As a reminder, the Third quarter and year-to-date financial results were impacted by the sale of the LSNH segment in October 2026, and the resulting presentation of the LSNH results as discontinued operations for all periods presented. On the waterfall schedules in the earnings presentation, we have shown the discontinued operation separately to provide visibility of our continuing operations performance and comparability to previously reported numbers. Q3 revenue from continuing operations was $482 million, bringing year-to-date to nearly $1.5 billion. The change in the quarter over the prior year was due to inorganic disposals, and the year-To-Date over prior year decline of 5% was due entirely to inorgantic disposals specifically the A&G books business. As a reminder, this wind down was completed in the second quarter this year, so we will anniversary this impact in the back half of 2027. The third quarter loss from continuing operations was $26 million, essentially flat year over year, and adjusted EBITDA was flat for the year to date and nearly flat for this quarter despite impact from the disposals. adjusted diluted eps in the third quarter was up three cents over the prior year to 21 cents bringing the year-to-date to 59 cents which is a 20 increase over the same period last year operating cash flow was 166 million in the quarter the change compared to last year was driven by lower adjusted EBITDA from the disposals higher taxes and working capital requirements due to timing of receipts and disbursements, partially offset by lower interest expense. Please turn with me now to page 15 for a closer look at the drivers of the third quarter top and bottom line changes from the prior year. The continuing operations changes over the prior year were driven by three primary factors. First, recurring organic revenues grew by $6 million or 1.3%, offset by decline in transactional revenues resulting in total organic revenue growth of $2 million or 0.4%. This is our highest recurring revenue growth in over a year and keeps us on track to improve this metric by 100 basis points from H1 to H2. The revenue growth along with cost efficiencies resulted in organic flow through the profit of $13 million. Second, the businesses we are disposing increased revenue by $48 million with a 25% impact on profit, almost entirely from the wind-down of the A&T books business. In Q3, we also decided to wind down a couple of smaller, low-margin transactional products, mostly in the IP segment, approximating 1% of total revenues with a negligible amount of profit, which wind- down will occur over the next one to two years. And finally, while the top line was only nominally impacted due to foreign exchange, we experienced more profit impact due to the weakening of the U.S. dollar against a basket of foreign currencies and realized transaction loss. In summary, a return to organic revenue growth, strategic disposals, and disciplined cost management allowed us to expand our adjusted EBITDA margin over 300 basis points versus the same period last year. Please turn with me now to page 16 for the same analysis for the first three quarters of the year. While year-to-date recurring organic revenue growth of $12 million, or nearly 1%, has been mostly offset by transactional revenue performance, FOSS Discipline has completely mitigated this impact, resulting in an organic contribution of $23 million to adjusted EBITDA. The exposals have lowered revenue by $85 million, but due to their low margin, results in only a $13 million reduction in adjusted EBIDDA. For the comparable period in the prior year, the U.S. dollar was weaker against the basket of foreign currencies, which caused a foreign exchange benefit to revenue, but resulted in a profit headwind from foreign currency fluctuations on costs and transaction gains last year that did not recur this year. Overall, the recurring revenue growth, strategic disposals, and disciplined cost management drove margin expansion of 200 basis points in the first three quarters of the year, an improving trend we expect to continue in the fourth quarter. of the year. Please turn with me now to page 17 to see how our adjusted EBITDA converted to free cash flow and how we continue to allocate our capital in a disciplined manner to further strengthen the balance sheet. Free cash flow was $110 million in the third quarter, which was $5 million lower than the same period last year. The changes due to higher taxes and working capital, largely due to the timing of collections and payments, largely offset by lower interest and capital spending. We used the free cash flow to repurchase another $75 million of notes due in 2028 at a discount of about 2%, bringing the debt reduction year-to-date to $293 million. Please turn with me now to page 18 for a look at our full-year financial guidance ranges. As discussed in the second quarter, with the closing of the divestiture, we are updating guidance to account for LS&H no longer being included in our financial results. Our updated guidance ranges for the revenue and adjusted EBITDA and related indicators no longer include LS&X results for any periods this year, as they are now treated as discontinued operations. As a reminder, when we announced the agreement to sell LS&J in early July 2026, we provided a full-year 2026 estimates for this segment of $370 million of revenue and $120 million of adjusted EBITDA, which, similar to prior years, was seasonally weighted to the fourth quarter. We are also narrowing the full- year guidance ranges as three-quarters of the year are now complete. Additionally, to more clearly present the ongoing business, we have provided guidance ranges for the fourth quarter of theyear in the earnings release. We expect our organic ACB to range from 1.75% to 2.25%, and note that in Q3, our IP segment ACB has now returned a positive organic rate. We expect recurring organic revenue growth to range between 1% to 1.5% for the full year, and importantly, for Q4 to exceed 2%. Our revenue range is now expected to be $1.965 billion to $1,985 billion down from the prior year due entirely from the strategic wind down of the A&G books business. With that wind down completed in the second quarter of 2026 entering 2020-27, we anticipate favorable year-over-year comparisons in the back half of the year on total revenue. Importantly, our organic revenue mix will now be in a range of 92% to 94%. We now expect that adjusted EBITDA will show positive growth for the full year in the range of $865 million to $885 million. This profit growth will all come in the fourth quarter. Adjusted EBITTA margin is expected to be about 44% at the midpoint of the range. We still expect adjusted EPS will grow about 9% at the midpoint of the range to $0.75. Finally, free cash flow guidance is updated to a range of $320 million to $340 million, as we have now incurred all transaction costs, approximately $30 million, to close the divestiture and will not have the seasonally stronger eligible free cash flows in the fourth quarter. Our 2027 perspective on free cash flow anticipates growth of 10 to 15%. Please turn with me now to page 19 for a review of the full year top and bottom line changes we are expecting compared to last year. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin will expand over 250 basis points driven by a return to organic growth, continued cost discipline, and completion of the strategic disposals. We anticipate total organic revenue growth of about 50 basis points, led by subscription revenue growth from continued ACP acceleration. We have executed on plans to achieve cost efficiencies resulting in $40 million in organic profit growth. This will account for a majority of the margin expansion. The inorganic disposals are expected to lower revenue this year by approximately $110 million, and we are reducing operating expenses by about $90 million, which yields a profit impact of about $20 million, with the remainder of the full-year revenue and profit impact being driven by changes in foreign currency exchange rates. Please turn with me now to page 20 to step through the expected improvement on our revenue, KPIs, and margin this year, which we have updated based on our year-to-date results. Our quarterly performance continues to build momentum, and as discussed in our second quarter earnings, we still expect recurring organic revenue growth in H2 to see an improvement from H1 of 100 basis points. Our expectation for recurring organic growth is above 2% in Q4. This will be the highest quarterly performance in over three years in positions as well into 2027. The organic growth, implemented cost efficiencies, and the benefit of the strategic disposals should maintain profit margins above 45% in Q4, and total revenue will be higher in Q5 due to the normal cadence of patent and trademark renewals and improving organic ACV and recurring revenue growth. Please turn with me now to page 21 to review how we expect the adjusted EBITDA will convert to free cash flow and how we plan to allocate this capital along with the proceeds from the divestiture to reduce our debt this year by about $875 million. We now expect free cash flow to approximate $330 million this year, as we have now incurred all transaction costs to close the divested year, and we will not have the seasonally stronger LSA free cashflow for the fourth quarter. The vast majority of the one-time cost of about $70 million will not recur next year. We now expect cash interest will be lower by about $25 million compared to last year due to the debt we paid last year and this year. We anticipate the change in working capital this year will be the use of approximately $35 million, primarily due to incentive compensation payments. And while we remain committed to investing in product innovation, the investor of LSNH in October 2026, the disposals and cost efficiencies will improve capital spending by about $35 million. From a capital allocation perspective, we plan to use the proceeds from the LS&H Investiture to repurchase at a discount a portion of the notes due in 2028 and 2029. Q3 was a significant quarter for us as we completed an important step to focus on our two scaled segments and continue to make progress on our BCP plan, driving growth, improving cash flow, strengthening our capital structure and creating value for our shareholders. Operator, we will now move to Q&A. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open, Manav. Please go ahead. Good morning. This is Brandon Cohen on from Manav Patnaikh. Thanks for taking my question. On ACV, you've called out pricing as a primary driver of the 1.8% growth this quarter. Would you be able to please unpack the price versus volume dynamic a bit, and what exactly needs to happen for retention and new subscription sales to become a bigger driver of The Acceleration into 4Q and into 2027? Thank you. Back and go ahead. Yeah. Thanks, Brandon, for the question. All right. We're pleased with the performance in the ATV this quarter, raising to 1.8%. As you said, one of the primary drivers of that is our pricing. Our pricing, we talked about that in the past, that we strive to get above or around 3% pricing. The pricing has been consistent and strong this year. And then volumes are continuing to see improvements there. And on an overall basis, we are now targeting to exit the year at 2% ACB growth, so another improvement from Q3 to Q4, and then further to improve as we move into 2027, as Bonnie has said. Thank you. Thank you, next question, please. Your next question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open, George. please go ahead hi this is alex flacker it's on for george tom thanks for taking my question if pacv returned to positive growth for the first time in more than three years while total segment organic revenue declined 0.4 percent can you discuss what's driving the acv improvement and how you see that translating into organic revenue growth from here we don't know that yes so first Just to remind ourselves about the strength of the IEP business, we are supporting non-discretionary, non-deferrable work. We are part of the larger IEP ecosystem. We've gone through a lot in IEP. We now have stabilized management. We have a much more focused sales organization team, reoccurring revenue growth at 1%. We've returned to ACV positive growth. We have Simon, which is now running the business in a tighter way, and we are very, very pleased also with our positioning around IP1. We are very confident that IP1 is the right new, you know, layer, agentic AI layer that will help us not only, you know, converting, having new HTTP, but also helping us to, you know, on the retention side or the recurring revenue side. So we're very, we've done a lot in IP, we're going through a transition of the management, we're introducing new products, and the title of this organization is a very positive group and I think IP is coming back. Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We have now reached the end of the Q&A session. I will turn the call back to Maddy Shemtov, CEO, for closing remarks. Oh, we do have one more question from Abe Londa with Bank of America. I will take this question now. Your line is open, Abe. Please go ahead. Thank you for sending in my question. You kind of mentioned that you were going to use the LSNH proceeds to repay the 28th and 29th at a discount. Can you maybe describe how you're going to go about doing that? Hi, Dave. Yeah, thanks for the question. For the course of this year, as well as we bought back about $290 million of debt so far year-to-date, that has been at a range of 2% to 3% discount in the second quarter and the third quarter. and our plan for the fourth quarter would be to approach it the same manner we've done the uh buybacks in the in the third quarter and the second quarter so there's no change uh from that and we'll um look for the right opportunity to start the process and want to complete that in relatively short order during the fourth quarter i guess how do you weigh buying back the 28th versus the 29th uh just given timing difference of when they come due and maybe how do you think about longer term uh your capital structure yeah no you're right it is good good delineation between the two those are the two near-term notes and so you really just balance the opportunity there with when those notes are coming due what we think is the right approach from a capital allocation between the two and obviously look to our cash proceeds and the free cash flow to be able to pay those off in due course and before they you know arrive or become current thank you thank you we have now reached the end of the q a session i will now turn the call back to maddie shemtov ceo for closing remarks let me just go by saying that we are proud of the progress and the continent in the future Our focus is now execution, translating that foundation into accelerating and sustaining organic growth, expanding free cash flow, and reducing our leverage. And thank you for joining us today. This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.