Let's get right to it on slide 6. First half revenues were EUR 3,052 million, an increase of 6% in constant currencies. Organic growth was 5%, slightly lower than the prior period as we had guided. This was largely due to a downturn in our non recurring revenues, which I'll come back to in a moment. Adjusted operating profit was EUR 865 million, an increase of 14% in constant currencies. As a result, the margin increased by 190 basis points to 28.4%. The increase in adjusted operating profit drove a 14% rise in diluted adjusted earnings per share in constant currencies. Adjusted free cash flow was EUR 505 million, up 13% in constant currencies, reflecting the increase in operating profit and higher cash conversion. Net debt to EBITDA increased to 2.1x following the recent acquisitions. Lastly, return on invested capital increased to 18.5%.
Now let's look at revenues by division on the next slide. Health grew 4% organically, slowing from 6% a year ago due to several factors. These include timing of UpToDate renewals, sharper print decline, and a challenging comparable in medical research. Tax and accounting grew 6% organically compared to 7% a year ago, which was largely due to a decline in non recurring outsourced professional services against a tough comparable a year ago. Financial and corporate compliance delivered 4% organic growth similar to the prior period. FCC's recurring revenues grew 6% organically while FCC's transactional revenues slowed to 1% organic growth. Legal and regulatory achieved 6% organic growth compared to 5% growth a year ago. This reflected steady growth in digital information subscriptions and favorable timing of print subscriptions. Lastly, Corporate Performance & ESG grew 7% organically compared to 9% a year ago.
Recurring cloud based software revenues continue to see double digit organic growth. However, as expected, non recurring revenues including on premise software licenses declined 10% as more of our customers opt for our recurring cloud software solutions. Now let's take a look at revenue by type on slide 8. The chart on the left shows our recurring revenue streams which represent 84% of total revenues. Total recurring revenues grew 7% organically in line with a year ago. The largest component, digital and service subscriptions, shown by the blue line, also grew 7% organically, slowing slightly from 8% a year ago. This was due to slower subscription growth in health. Related to the factors I mentioned previously, total non recurring revenues turned negative in the first half, declining 4%. This was due to several factors. First was a downturn in other non recurring revenues.
This includes on premise software licenses and implementation services. This category fell 9% organically compared to 1% growth in the comparable period. This trend is due to market demand which favors recurring cloud software. Next we saw a slowdown in FCC transactional revenues from 3% a year ago to 1% this year. This reflects the continued stagnation in U.S. M&A volumes and corporate lending activity. Finally, print book revenue experienced a sharp downturn. Print books were down 11% across the group and down 17% in health. Now let's take a look at divisional margins on Slide 9. As noted, the adjusted operating profit margin increased by 190 basis points to 28.4%. This strong performance on the margin was driven by mix shift towards expert solutions and initiatives to manage discretionary expense and drive long term efficiencies.
The strong start on margin will help us in the second half as we'll face currency headwinds, additional restructuring and the absence of last year's EUR 27 million pension gain in the Netherlands. Now let's cover the rest of the P and L. On the next slide, adjusted net financing costs increased to EUR 38 million reflecting higher gross debt and higher coupon rates on refinance debt. Included in net financing results was a net foreign exchange gain of EUR 2 million compared to a EUR 6 million net foreign exchange loss in the prior year. Adjusted pre tax profit was EUR 828 million, up 11% in constant currencies. The benchmark tax rate on adjusted pre tax profits increased to 23.8% as guided and was primarily driven by an adverse movement in our deferred tax position.
After tax, adjusted net profit was EUR 631 million, or up 11% in constant currencies. As a result of the ongoing share buyback program, the weighted average number of shares outstanding decreased by 3%. The lower share count helped offset the increase in interest and tax. As a result, we delivered a 14% increase in diluted adjusted EPS in constant currencies. Let's cover cash flow on Slide 11. Adjusted operating cash flow increased 19% in constant currencies reflecting the increase in adjusted operating profit and higher cash conversion. Net working capital outflows reduced to EUR 110 million reflecting more favorable timing of vendor payments as compared to a year ago. Capital expenditures were stable at EUR 147 million or 4.8% of revenues. We continue to expect full year CapEx to be in line with our guidance range of 5%-6% of revenues. Cash conversion improved to 85%.
We continue to expect our full year cash conversion to be in the range of 95%-100%. Net interest paid more than doubled to EUR 53 million reflecting the initial coupon payment on the five year euro bond issued in March of last year. Taxes paid increased to EUR 192 million. This was due to higher net income and the timing of tax refunds and prepayments. All in all, adjusted free cash flow was EUR 505 million, up 13% in constant currencies. Now let's turn to the use of cash on slide 12. Acquisition spending was significantly higher than a year ago at EUR 833 million. This included the amounts paid for RASi in March and Brightflag in June and a few smaller acquisitions. Dividends paid amounted to EUR 297 million. We've spent EUR 509 million on the share buyback. In the first half.
Overall net debt increased to EUR 4.3 billion. This represents an increase of EUR 1.1 billion compared to year end 2024. Our leverage ratio based on a 12 month rolling EBITDA increased to 2.1x , which remains within our target range of 1.5 x- 2.5x . Now let me turn to the dividend and provide an update on our 2025 share buyback program as we move to Slide 13. In line with our policy, the interim dividend for 2025 was set at 40% of the prior year total dividend or EUR 0.93 per share. This will be paid to shareholders in September. As of this week, we have completed approximately EUR 637 million of the up to EUR 1 billion share buyback program which we announced in February. For the period July 31st, 2025 up to and including November 3rd, 2025.
A third party mandate is now in place to execute approximately EUR 175 million on our behalf. Let me sum up the first half results before handing it back to Nancy. Let's go to slide 14. Organic growth was 5%. As expected, we delivered a strong improvement on the margin. This helped drive a 14% constant currency increase in diluted adjusted EPS and a 13% constant currency increase in adjusted free cash flow. Return on invested capital reached 18.5%. Acquisitions increased net debt to EBITDA to 2.1x , but this remains within our target range. I'll now hand back to Nancy to cover divisional developments.
Thank you, Kevin. I will begin with Health. On slide 16, Health delivered 4% organic growth led by Clinical Solutions. The adjusted operating profit margin increased to 33% due to the ongoing mix shift towards Clinical Solutions, expense management and long term efficiency initiatives. Clinical Solutions delivered 6% organic growth, easing slightly compared to a year ago due to the timing of renewals, the leap year effect and product sunsets.
We made good progress moving our U.S.
Institutional customers to the new UpToDate Enterprise edition which includes data analytics and AI enhanced search.
Last month we began rolling out UpToDate.
Enterprise to European customers. Learning, Research and Practice slowed to 1% organic growth compared to 4% in the prior period. Excluding print, organic growth would have been 5% as anticipated. Growth in our medical research unit moderated against a tough comparable which had benefited from the full-scale distribution of the New England Journal of Medicine in Learning and Practice. We delivered strong growth in our digital nursing solutions which was to a large extent offset by a 17% decline in print books. Now let's turn to Tax and Accounting. On slide 17 in Tax and Accounting, organic growth was 6% with recurring cloud software revenues up 17%. The adjusted operating profit margin expanded by 170 basis points reflecting operational gearing and expense management which more than offset increased investment.
North America delivered 6% organic growth driven by double-digit organic growth in our cloud software solutions, CCH Access in the U.S. and CCH iFirm in Canada. Revenues in our outsourced professional service unit declined against strong double-digit growth in the comparable period. Growth in our U.S. publishing unit was stable. Europe delivered a steady 7% organic growth with good performance across all regions. Growth was driven by double-digit organic growth in our European cloud and hybrid cloud solutions. Now let's turn to Finance and Corporate Compliance. On slide 18, Finance and Corporate Compliance delivered 4% organic growth supported by 6% growth in recurring revenues. The decline in the adjusted operating profit margin reflects increased investment. Legal Services delivered a steady 6% organic growth supported by 8% growth in recurring service subscriptions. Transactional revenues slowed to 2% reflecting still.
Weak M &A deal volumes in.
The U.S. RASi, which builds on our position in the U.S. mid market, is performing well. Financial services grew 1% organically as 3% growth in recurring revenues was partially offset by a 4% decline in non recurring revenues. Our U.S. banking compliance solutions delivered steady growth. However, Lien Solutions transactional revenues declined compared.
To growth a year ago.
Earlier this month we announced the divestment of FRR to Regnology for an enterprise value of approximately EUR 450 million. Moving now on to Legal and Regulatory. On slide 19, Legal and Regulatory posted 6% organic growth led by 7% growth in digital subscription revenues. The adjusted operating profit margin rose by 320 basis points driven by operational gearing, expense management and longer term efficiency programs. Legal and Regulatory information solutions delivered 6% organic growth supported by strong subscription renewals. Print products showed mixed performance. We continue to expand generative AI capabilities across key platforms. In the first half, Legal and Regulatory software posted 5% organic growth led by continued strong performance in legal practice management solutions that includes Clio and Legisway which grew 9%. ELM Solutions reported low single digit organic growth.
In June, Legal and Regulatory completed the acquisition of Brightflag, a global provider of AI-enabled legal spend and matter management solutions for mid-sized corporations. Now turning to Corporate Performance & ESG on slide 20, Corporate Performance & ESG grew 7% organically with recurring cloud software revenues up 17%. The adjusted operating profit margin was broadly stable reflecting sustained investment in product development, sales and marketing in EHS and ESG. The Enablon suite grew 10% organically with strong growth in Europe and Asia Pacific. Recurring cloud software revenues rose 18% while on-premise license revenues were stable in Corporate Performance, Tax and Audit. Overall organic growth was 5%. The CCH Tagetik corporate performance management platform delivered 5% growth with double digit growth in recurring cloud software. This was partially offset by a decline in non-recurring revenues including on-premise licenses.
Our Tax and Audit units posted single digit growth supported by continued momentum in our cloud software solutions. Now let me update you on the strategic progress that we are making on slide 21. We made good progress on all three pillars of our strategy. Expert solutions made up 59% of total revenues and grew 6% organically in the first half. Nearly 80% of our expert solutions are software products which overall also grew 6% organically. Within software, recurring cloud software subscription revenues grew 15% organically. These cloud software revenues now exceed on.
On-premise software revenues at the group level.
Driving penetration of our cloud solutions is of strategic importance not only because market demand is favoring cloud solutions, but also it facilitates the rapid integration of AI including agentic AI to support our customers with their complex daily workflows. Secondly, we also made progress on expanding and extending our presence in higher growth adjacent market segments. The acquisition of RASi and Brightflag increase our opportunities in the mid-sized corporate market. We also continue to expand our partnerships or sign new ones. For example, Health has expanded its list of partnerships with a new collaboration with Microsoft to integrate UpToDate into their Dragon Copilot for ambient listening and other healthcare workflows. Thirdly, we are making progress in upgrading our systems and capabilities to support sales effectiveness, customer support functions and go to market.
Turning to the next slide, I'm proud to report that we have made enormous progress in proliferating generative AI features across products in the last two years. A significant majority of our revenues are AI enabled and most major product suites.
Now also include generative AI capabilities.
This slide highlights examples of products that incorporate customer-facing GenAI features. These GenAI features are of course only in our digital offerings, which are highlighted in the colored part of the chart. These GenAI features enhance customer workflows in many ways. Tools such as summarization, drafting, Q &A , and virtual assistants save time, raise productivity, and improve outcomes. These key AI features are supporting subscription renewals and attracting new customers. This week we are announcing an enhanced version of UpToDate to Early Access customers. This version will have full GenAI-enabled capabilities and will draw not only upon UpToDate content but also our drug databases. As always, we build responsible, expert-validated AI leveraging our trusted proprietary expert content. This upgraded version will significantly increase the speed at which doctors can get a concise and accurate and transparent answer to their complex medical questions.
Now let's take a look at some of the first agentic AI solutions.
That we have in market for testing.
On the next slide we have several agentic AI solutions in development or in customer beta. I want to just highlight two examples. In Tax and Accounting, we're building AI agents into our cloud-based CCH Access platform. This technology will empower our customers, which are CPA and tax advisors, to focus even more of their time on higher.
Value work as the software will not.
Only automate tasks but also anticipate needs, reason through problems, and offer recommendations tailored by the customer in real time. In Corporate Performance & ESG, we built and recently launched TeamMate AI Editor. This is an agentic gen AI writing engine that helps internal auditors improve the quality and consistency of their audit documentation. It includes a variety of pre-built prompts tailored to audit workflows and is built with advanced data protection measures and safeguards to ensure the output is relevant, accurate, and free from biased language. The development of AI agents is accelerated by our proprietary AI-enabled platform, which was created by our DXGT. This platform is being used across all divisions and it helps us speed our.
Development and drives economy of scale.
Now let me talk about a few of the recent portfolio changes. This year we made a number of moves that strengthen our market positions and increase our strategic focus. In March we completed the acquisition of RASi, a U.S. provider of registered agent and other compliance services to mid sized corporations. RASi builds on our existing position serving the U.S. mid market, which is a higher growth segment than our traditionally large corporate space. RASi is performing well and the integration is well underway. In June we acquired Brightflag, a global provider of legal, spend and matter management software that extends our ELM Solutions business into mid sized corporations and brings us a significant position in Europe. Brightflag is proving to be a great addition to our portfolio and we are working to drive additional revenue synergies with ELM Solutions.
As I mentioned, we agreed to divest our FRR reporting unit. This disposal will take some time to complete due to regulatory processes and employee consultations. Ultimately, this move will allow the FCC division to focus its efforts on developing its U.S. banking compliance business and corporate legal services. Now let's take a look at the outlook on the next slide. As indicated in today's release, we have updated our guidance for the full year. We continue to expect full year 2025 organic growth to be broadly in line with prior year's growth. Despite the unfavorable US dollar exchange rate movement, the absence of last year's pension gain and additional restructuring costs, we now expect the adjusted operating profit margin in reported currencies to be near the top end of our guidance range. Our guidance for adjusted free cash flow is unchanged.
We continue to expect between EUR 1.25 billion and EUR 1.3 billion in constant currencies. Underpinned by the improved view on margin, we now expect mid to high single digit growth in diluted adjusted EPS in constant currencies. Finally, due to the adverse dollar exchange rate, we now expect return on invested capital in reporting currencies to be around 18%. Now let's conclude with the divisional guidance on the next slide. We expect in Health organic growth to be in line with or slightly below prior year. In Tax & Accounting we expect organic growth to be in line with the prior year. For Finance & Corporate Compliance, organic growth is expected to be below the prior year due to weaker non recurring revenues. In Legal & Regulatory, we expect organic growth to be in line with the prior year.
Lastly, in Corporate Performance & ESG, organic growth is expected to be above the prior year reflecting higher growth for the CCH Tagetik platform. Thank you very much for your attention and now I'll be happy to take questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now take the first question from the line of George Webb from Morgan Stanley, please go ahead.
Afternoon, Nancy and Kevin. I've got a few questions to kick off with, please. Firstly, just touching on the margins. Clearly a very strong performance and margins in the first half you mentioned 190 basis points increase year over year. As you also mentioned a few moving parts in the second half. The pension gains structuring looks to me like the upper end of the guidance maybe implies that margins in H2 this year are broadly around where they were in H2 last year, if I've got my maths right. I know FX is a factor, but curious how you're approaching the second half internally around cost management and whether you're putting more investments through the business in the second half after the good cost control in the first.
Secondly, on the full year growth, you've talked about growth being broadly in line with last year, which was 5.8% on organic in first half, shook out about 5%. So there is some acceleration needed in the second half. You've kind of given the segmental growth outlooks, but perhaps you could just summarize at a high level where maybe the main areas are that you're expecting to slightly accelerate in the second half to deliver on that ambition. And then lastly, just as we think about the SaaS and subscription transitions you're doing in the business, moving away from on premise with perpetual licenses, clearly that's having some short term negative impact on your top line within the mix as you move away from those license sales. Have you tried to quantify internally how much of a headwind that is maybe proving at present on the group's growth rate?
Thank you.
Yeah, so I'll start around the second question and also touch on licenses.
Will turn it over to Kevin for.
More details around second half growth.
The margin question.
Just, you know, what is going to drive acceleration of growth.
In the second half? It's really three factors.
First is of course comparables. As we indicated, we had tough comparables in both Tax and Health in the first half. That abates as you go into the second half. Second is we often, you know, is typical as we have a higher retention.
Period and new selling period in the second half, we are seeing good retention.
Good new sales. We expect that that will continue and accelerate in the second half. Of course, we have the effect of a lot of the new products that we launched last year that come stronger into the mix in the second half as well as some new things that we're also doing now.
Terms of product launches. Those are the three factors that.
Will drive accelerated growth in the second half of 2025.
In terms of licenses.
The transition from on-premise to SaaS.
Is most apparent in our CP & ESG division, primarily in the Tagetik space.
Enablon, Tax, TeamMate.
They are further along in that transition.
It clearly that move in.
Tagetik from on-premise to SaaS is.
Clearly weighing on the organic growth of that particular unit. Now we are reaching sort of that tipping point. As we think about 2026, we will now, you know, that effect will be far less in terms of the weighing on the organic growth. We aren't disclosing the figure of what that is, but it is significant enough in that one business unit. In the overall of Wolters Kluwer, most of that balance between on premise.
SaaS has been achieved. With that, Kevin, do you want.
To touch on margin and anything else.
You want to add?
Yeah, happy to. On the margin. Certainly we're pleased to deliver the good margin in the first half of the year, the 28.4%. You are right that in the second half of the year we will see the margin come down a little bit because we are pleased that we've got such a good first half start because in the second half we will face headwinds from the currency. No question about that. The U.S. dollar in particular. Also the press release today does announce a step up in restructuring spend that we will incur in the second half of the year. We're now saying between EUR 20 million and EUR 35 million in restructuring. Finally, last year we did have the one time pension benefit in the Netherlands. We do have that to overcome in the second half.
Nonetheless, we are very confident in our guidance that we've updated today telling you that you should expect us to land at the top end of our guidance range.
That's great. Thank you both.
Nancy, can I just ask one follow?
Up on the whole license to subscription transition on Tax & Accounting with regards to the shift from ProSystem fx to CCH Access, how far through that are you now?
Yeah, so one thing that's unique in.
Tax, just so you realize, is that we always get an annual fee even for our on-premise software because there's changes every year that are very significant even without tax changes. That has been the pattern.
Today the SaaS version of the.
Tax product or CCH Access, the total.
Absolute revenues exceed now the on-premise.
The SaaS version obviously continues to be the growth engine of the division, not only in tax but also in audit as we've been launching Global Audit.
Great, thank you.
Have a good luck for the second half.
Yeah, thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Nick Dempsey from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon guys. I've got three questions, so first of all a bit of a follow up on George's question on, I guess, headwind from licenses on a group basis. Your other non-recurring line saw an organic revenue decline of 9% in the first half. When I look back, that was minus 4% in full year 2024, plus 1% in first half 2024. And it's kind of spread through the division, so it's not just CP & E. Is that a trend now that we should expect to continue across the divisions, or are there particularly—you've addressed Tagetik very clearly, but are there factors in the other divisions which mean we should pencil in decent declines going forward for that particular line? The second question, maybe print books in Health, that's been particularly weak in the first half compared to your previous trend.
Are you assuming within your guidance for Health that things get better in H2, or do you have timings of orders or anything like that that mean it will definitely get better? I just try to understand how much hope there is around print in the second half. And then the third question, can you talk about the potential competitive threat that Open Evidence could pose to UpToDate, but does that product come up in your renewal discussions with hospital groups, or do you just kind of occupy different niches?
Yeah, so why don't I cover the.
Health questions and then Kevin, if you.
Could cover the non-recurring, you know, because that has other things in it other than just licenses that Kevin can talk about.
Just in Health on the books.
Question, you know, it did decline in the learning and practice -17%. We do expect that that will improve in the second half but still be a negative number. The first half, you know, it faced two things. One is books, frankly, are always a bit lumpy. We also had a good first quarter 2024, so it was a bit of both a comparable issue and just the market factors. Again, expected to improve a little bit in the second half but not turn positive. On OpenEvidence and other competitors in the market, we remain very bullish on our prospects for UpToDate. We have a very strong market position with incredibly loyal customers. We continue to see customers really embrace the new gen AI features that we've been introducing in the enterprise version.
We've also added a layer of analytical, you know, information that allows them to understand what clinicians are looking at, et cetera. We've also announced some of these partnerships with ambient players, both Abridge and Microsoft, which allows us to integrate UpToDate into the workflow at the point of care. We've done, you know, we're doing.
Many, many things in UpToDate.
We are very confident in our competitive position with that.
Kevin, you want to talk about non-recurring?
Yeah. Other non-recurring, just to remind you, Nick, is made up of a number of different things. In addition to licensing, there's also implementation fees, there are, you know, some advertising would be in there, consulting fees, training and the like. In this non-recurring line item we do see some lumpiness from period to period. I would not necessarily take the trend as continuing. It does fluctuate with market demand. I hope that addresses what you were going for.
Also in non-recurring is things like.
Professional services and other things as well, Nick. It is always, you know, a little bit, as I say, lumpy on that as well.
Thank you Nancy and Kevin, that's great.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Adam Berlin from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi, good afternoon. Three questions from me as well. Adam Berlin from UBS. The first question is I know you said, Nancy, that now in North American tax, the cloud solution has more revenues than the on-premise solution. How far away do you think we are from kind of all the customers who want the cloud solution taking it?
You know, there's still a lot more.
Customers to migrate or are there lots of small customers you think will just?
Be sticky and be really hard to move off the on-premise solution?
Does the investment you're making in the agentic AI product you talked about?
For the cloud only product, does that.
Help convince more customers to move to the cloud version? Thoughts on that would be really helpful. Secondly, I know when you've talked about margins, there are a lot of one offs this year, but it does seem that on an underlying basis you have made a lot of progress in terms of delivering efficiencies and savings. Is that something we can expect to continue or has there been so much progress this year that we should expect a slower progress the next couple of years? Thirdly, can you tell us the tax impact of the disposal of FRR?
Okay, I'll cover the first couple.
Ask Kevin to talk about FRR and elaborate.
In terms of the migration from.
On-premise to SaaS both in tax, but this would be true across the enterprise, is that we do not force customers. We provide our products in the media that our customers want, in the form that they want. Of course, we prefer SaaS offerings for the good quality, both revenue aspects of it, but also because we know once customers do move to our SaaS solutions, particularly in tax, they add more modules. It very much facilitates upselling.
We expect it's still going to.
Take quite some time to get those last customers over to SaaS.
I would say that the agentic technology.
Is going to be a catalyst because.
While not impossible to add agentic technology.
To on-premise software, it is far more difficult and you do not get as a customer, you do not get that full benefit. Most of the investment that we are making in agentic technology is of course.
In our SaaS solutions.
We believe that customers will want the advantages of that newer technology. We do see that as a catalyst. Again, we do not force them. We provide various incentives to get them to migrate, but we fully expect that will happen over some period of time. As it relates to the margin developments, and I'll ask Kevin to elaborate, a big part of that is the rotation of our portfolio towards expert solutions. As we've talked in the past, the.
Margins of our expert solutions, when those.
Products are at scale, significantly exceed the margins of our digital content.
The quality of the earnings is.
Improving as that mix shifts. Then we've done a lot of.
Efficiency programs and cost management as well.
Kevin, why don't you take it from there on efficiencies and also the.
Tax impact of FRR.
Yeah. With regard to efficiencies, I mean, this is something we're always thinking about as we run the business. We've got efficiency programs in everything from our finance, operations, content gathering and enhancement, sales and marketing. This is something that we're always looking operationally to do better. I would say I don't see us coming to an end of being completely perfect in efficiencies. I will always have something to look forward to in the future. That does contribute to the margin story, as does the mix shift in the portfolio that Nancy pointed out. I'll also say that I think, you know, our businesses all around the world are just being very thoughtful about cost management during this economic backdrop, as many companies are. With regard to the divestiture of FRR, we do expect to record a gain when we close that business.
Obviously there will be a tax impact related to that. I will just remind you though, FRR is a relatively small business in the portfolio. It's about EUR 123 million in revenue and, you know, a margin that is, you know, below the group average. There will be a positive gain that we will be paying taxes on and that is reflected in the guidance that we've given to you.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Thymen Rundberg from ING Bank. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. First one on Legal & Regulatory. You've posted 6% organic revenue growth in the first half, yet you continue to guide for full year growth to be in line with 2024, 5%. What are the underlying assumptions behind this cautious stance? Are you expecting a deceleration in 2nd half of 2025 or is it simply a bit of conservatism from your side? Lastly, you've made some targeted moves into higher growth adjacencies like mid market, legal, tech and beyond this. Where do you see the next wave of scalable adjacencies? Either by vertical or geography or capability that could materially shift the group's growth profile over the next, let's say three to five years.
Yeah, why don't I take the last.
Question and ask Kevin to comment on the developments in Legal & Regulatory in the second half. As you point out, our organic efforts and our potential M&A efforts are really focused on driving acceleration of growth, right? Most of our capital goes to organic activities. We reinvest 11% or even more in some divisions, 11% of our revenues back in new and enhanced products. That drives a lot of that innovation, drives a lot of the new things.
That we’re doing and enhances the growth. In terms of the adjacencies.
We are looking to go into two areas. Sometimes it's within the core business. If you look at RASi and you look at Brightflag, we're already in those markets. These products address the mid market segment, which is growing faster than the large segment.
It's a nice addition.
Gives us both cost synergies and revenue synergies and gives us a stronger market position in that vertical area. The second way that we potentially drive adjacencies is through extending our workflow. If you look at the FINCA or the Isabel Group that we bought.
That was pre accounting, we do accounting.
You put that together and you have a stronger integrated workflow from the customer's perspective. That is kind of the strategic element, either deeper within a vertical or horizontally in a workflow. We're looking at those kinds of things.
Across every single division.
You know, what we end up doing becomes in the end very opportunistic based on the assets that might be available. We'll continue to develop prospects over the coming years.
Kevin, do you want to talk about Legal & Regulatory ?
Sure. I will say that we're very pleased with the delivery of Legal & Regulatory in the first half of the year. A lot of that good performance has come from our information solutions businesses. In particular with those businesses, organic growth over the year can be impacted by the timing of when products are released. I do still think we will have a strong second half in Legal & Regulatory. You know, due to some timing issues, I think that giving you guidance for the full year to be about what it was last year still makes perfect sense in this environment.
Great.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Sami Kassab from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I have three questions, please. Within FCC, financial services have been a perennial drag on organic revenue growth. Nancy, you have announced the disposal of the regulatory reporting segment. What is the rationale for keeping Lien Solutions and mortgage documentation and the other banking products you still have, please? Secondly, print is much less of a drag than it was 10 or 15 years ago, but it is still a headwind and it is still the topic of questions on this call. As you certainly saw, RELX recently announced its intention to accelerate the exit from print through outsourcing or JV deals. RELX no longer includes print in its organic revenue growth. Will you do the same? Lastly, CCH Tagetik has slowed down from the run rate of double-digit growth historically to 5%. Now, is this the new growth rate for this product?
Is the slowdown only related to the license to cloud transition or is there a competitive element to point out also on Tagetik? Thank you, Nancy.
Okay, so Kevin, why don't you do print and I'll cover the other two. Why don't you go ahead and.
Start on the question of print and organic growth. Yeah,
Certainly, Sami, as you pointed out, print has become much less of a drag on the portfolio. It's, you know, around 5% or less than the total portfolio. We were actually surprised to see the change in RELX organic growth calculations. Our organic growth calculation has not changed. I can tell you if I do the back of the envelope math very quickly. If you were to remove print from our organic growth calculation, that would be worth about 50 basis points in both this year and the prior year.
Terms of the organic growth.
Organic growth,
Yeah.
We'll look at Sami, whether what.
We do in the future, I think that's a topic to come. On FCC and the disposal of or the announcement of the disposal of FRR, very different businesses that make up the financial services portfolio. If you look at what remains in the business, we have very strong positions in the U.S. in the community bank.
Market in particular.
In the software businesses or in the software that underpins lending and deposit taking for banks. A very strong position in Lien.
These are great businesses that we.
Will continue to invest in. What you see of course is that with interest rates remaining relatively high, that has dampened the transaction volumes for both Lien and for mortgages. That is a cycle and we fully expect that it will, you know, it will change over time. We remain committed to the businesses that we have in the financial services portfolio and feel very good about the long term prospects of those individual units.
CCH Tagetik .
What you see is again we remain very bullish on this segment. The market continues to grow well for corporate performance management. We continue to be rated extremely high by any third party analyst who covers the segment.
What you're seeing in the growth rate is really this transition from license to SaaS.
Long term it's a positive in terms.
Of the quality of the revenues.
In the short term you have this lumpy effect. We do think that as we look to 2026 and 2027 that that will abate as more and more customers are choosing the SaaS product line.
Hopefully that addressed.
Yeah, thank you very much. Just to confirm, Kevin, the printing impact you talked about, was that 50 or 15 bps in organic revenue growth?
five, zero, 50 bps,
five, zero.
For the half year if you exclude it, it'd be about 50 bps.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Robert Vink from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thank you. Two questions from my side. The first question is last year you launched UpToDate Enterprise which adds data analytics and AI enhanced search to UpToDate. Clearly these types of features are also relevant for workflows in the healthcare sector. I would be interested to get a little bit more insight on the early usage trends and customer feedback that you're seeing from this enterprise solution. What do you expect from the solution over time? My second question is about Brightflag. You acquired Brightflag in June this year, which is present in enterprise legal management. It's clearly an asset which is growing well and mainly has recurring revenues, which I think is interesting because your existing enterprise legal management solutions actually mainly have non-recurring revenues and the main growth driver for these solutions was also non-recurring revenues.
I understand what you're saying is that this acquisition is complementary with more mid-market exposure and also in terms of regions. It does appear that also Brightflag pricing model might be a bit different or at least the revenue mix is a bit different. Yeah. I'll be interested to get a little bit more elaboration on that.
Thank you.
Yeah, so let me cover these. In terms of UpToDate.
Enterprise, you know that that has been.
Very well received by customers.
It does a couple of things. It adds a lot of gen AI features which makes the ability for the health care provider, whether it's a doctor or a nurse, to get to their answer very quickly and that speeds up the whole patient encounter. We've heard from doctors, you know, if they can even save one or two minutes of time, it's for them a very big positive.
The enterprise version helps them speed.
Their work and therefore gives them productivity benefits. It also incorporates some of the drug information in different ways, so again improves.
That ability to get to the right.
Dosage as they make prescribing decisions. Finally, this analytical layer has been useful, not really a bit for the clinician, but really for the CFO and the CEO and the Chief Medical Officer in the hospital, because they can see how clinicians are using it across the different departments of the hospital and understand if there are things that they want to take action on, they can do that.
We're rolling that out.
We're adding even more features. As we talked about, we've also created.
Two partnerships now in the ambient space.
We're embedding the UpToDate content even more and more into the workflow of the physician. We're very excited about the customer reaction and excited about where we can take the product.
On Brightflag, yes, there.
are some differences between the enterprise legal management business. One is that we sell, in the enterprise legal management business, we sell both.
An on-premise version or sort of.
A hybrid cloud version and then we.
Sell a pure cloud version that serves the upper end of the large corporate market.
It's a more mature market.
A lot of the growth that.
We get in ELM comes from upselling. We have our Legal BillAnalyzer product line. We have more recently a LegalCollaborato r product line. We upsell a lot there versus adding new logos because the market is more mature. The second thing is we do get transactional fees from the law firms as their matters flow through the software that underpins Brightflag. Very different scenario. You know, total cost of ownership is lower because it's going after the mid market solution. They do not have other products yet. That is one of the opportunities for us.
Is to cross sell some of the.
Things we have in ELM to their customer base. They do not have the recurring or, sorry, the non-recurring elements with the law firms. That is the difference in the models. It is mostly about serving a very different segment with different needs and that.
Segment of the market is growing more quickly.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Yeah, I have a few more questions left. The first one is if you can comment across the portfolio whether you've seen any changes in customer behavior with new sales or renewals given the macro and tariff uncertainty, especially in the most recent month. For instance, I saw that, you know, in FCC you changed the wording a bit. You expect FCC to be below versus slightly below. So in FCC in particular, like obviously maybe a deterioration in the exit rate in Q2. That's the first one. The second question is on AI. I mean, you laid out earlier in your presentation all the new features you roll out. Looks like the progress is very encouraging. Do you think you're able to quantify the benefit you're seeing so far in terms of maybe revenue uplift per customer, ability to raise prices more, or even seeing greater operating leverage?
Are you able to give us any sort of quantification so far? And which division are you basically seeing the most benefit at this point? The last question is just on calculation. M&A . Obviously, M&A spend increased a lot. I think almost EUR 1 billion spend over the last 12 months. Does this signal a potential change in your strategy? Do you expect M&A spend to remain elevated going forward? What does that mean for the buyback? Is it possible to also get a sense of how, like, the three big equity, Isabel, RASi, and Brightflag, what's the growth rate of this business season? Just to get a sense of the organic growth accretion once these get into your organic growth calculations. Thank you.
Yeah.
Kevin, do you want to take.
The M&A question and then I'll talk about AI and trading.
I would say on M&A and capital allocation in particular, nothing has changed in our philosophy. We continue to have the same three priorities for allocating capital: investments in the business, both organic and through smaller bolt-on M&A, paying down debt, and rewarding our shareholders. We do have a progressive dividend program, but a share buyback has been an important component of that capital allocation and will remain so going forward. We do expect to continue with the M&A, I'm sorry, the share buyback program that we have this year and we will continue to evaluate that for future years.
On the trading conditions, we have not seen any material changes in our pipelines or in our conversion rates on new sales across the portfolio. We continue to see positive renewals. I would say that the transaction volumes, though, you can see that has turned negative in several places across the portfolio. I think that reflects the economic uncertainty as well as subdued M&A volumes and lending volumes quite significantly, both in mortgage and non-mortgage asset classes. You know, certainly, that is where you see, I think, the impact of the economic cycle is more on the transaction non-recurring line than in the core recurring business. Our recurring revenues grew 7% through the first half. I think that speaks to both the quality of the renewal process that we are underway as well as new sales.
In terms of AI and the monetization of that, clearly, we have been at AI for over 10 years. The vast majority of our digital products are touched by AI in some way, and as we noted, a lot of introduction around gen AI features and very recently the agentic technology. We fully expect that we will.
Over time be able to quantify that for you.
I would say it's early days right now in terms of doing that. We do see that the introduction of these enhancements and new products supports retention, supports price increases.
In terms of being able to.
Say here's exactly how much is coming from the AI components, we're still working through that as we launch newer products into the marketplace.
Thank you.
Just on the growth rate of the three acquisitions, you need any color?
Yes. So we don't disclose that, but I.
Would say that all three of them, meaning the Isabel Group, the RASi and Brightflag, are growing more than the core.
Right.
That's higher growth than the core and leave it there.
Thank you.
Thank you. We currently have no questions coming through. As a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one one. There are no further questions, so I will hand you back to your host to conclude today's conference.
Thank you very much.
On behalf of Meg, Kevin and myself.
We want to thank you for your.
Participation and wish you a good rest of your day.
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