Afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Springer Nature AG analyst conference call, nine month 2025. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. The floor will be open for questions following the presentation. If you would like to ask a question after the presentation, you can already register for a question now. Please press 9 and the star key on your telephone keypad at any time during the call to register for a question. Let me now turn the floor over to Tom Waldron, Head of Investor Relations at Springer Nature.
Thank you, Eureka. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the Springer Nature nine month 2025 results call. I'm Tom Waldron, Head of Investor Relations. I'm here in Barcelona with our CEO, Frank Vrancken Peeters, and our CFO, Alexandra Dambeck, to participate in the Morgan Stanley European TMT Conference over the next couple of days. First, to our nine month results. Today's presentation follows a normal structure. Frank will start with a business update, followed by Alexandra with a review of our financial results before we move to Q&A. Before handing over, let me briefly remind you, for revenues and adjusted operating profit, we present both reported figures based on actual currency rates and portfolio composition and underlying growth rates, which exclude currency and portfolio effects to ensure a like-for-like comparison. Our financial guidance for 2025 is based on constant currencies and the expected underlying performance of the business, excluding portfolio changes.
With that, I will now hand over to Frank.
Thank you, Tom. Actually, great to have you on board. I think it's your first call, right?
It is.
Exactly. Great to have you on board. A warm welcome from my side as well. Let's start with a brief overview of the key highlights from the first nine months. We delivered strong results with revenue growth at 6% in underlying terms and AOP increasing by nearly 10%. Our research segment continues to be the main growth driver, with our journals outperforming the market, especially in full open access. Education grew despite a challenging environment and health performed in line with expectations. All three segments contributed to the growth in AOP, and we continue to deliver a strong cash flow performance, which Alexandra will take you through later. The strong momentum year to date means that we're confident that 2025 will be within our guidance range, and we are well positioned for 2026.
Before we go into the details of our nine month performance, I'd like to share three examples from across our journals' portfolio demonstrating the value we create for our communities by making knowledge accessible. The unveiling of DeepSeek- R1 by Chinese researchers in January was celebrated in the press as a fundamental and transformational shift in the cost of AI interference. The first peer-reviewed analysis of how this was achieved was published in Nature. The second example is an article published in BMC, which finds that people tend to regain significant weight within weeks of stopping anti-obesity drugs, highlighting that obesity management may require long-term medication or lifestyle support, a finding crucial for global health policy, future research on obesity drugs, and for pharma companies developing them.
Lastly, I'll mention how proud our Springer team were to congratulate the three winners of this year's Nobel Prize for Physics, particularly Professor John Clark, who's an editorial board member for Springer's The Journal of Low Temperature Physics. In celebration, the journal has made the 22 articles it has published over the years by John Clark, Michel Devoret, and John Martinez, free to read until December. These examples illustrate the crucial role that we play and the things we stand for: trusted science, real-world impact, and sustainable growth. Let's now move on to our different segments, starting with research. The largest part of Springer Nature accounted for almost 80% of group revenue and 90% of group adjusted operating profit. This reflects the scale, the quality, and the resilience of our research portfolio. Our research segment delivered 7% underlying revenue growth and 8% AOP growth.
We've seen continued strong development of our journals' portfolio. The 2025 renewals season was completed successfully, and the 2026 renewals season began in September, with renewals progressing as expected. The global article market grew by about 7% in the year to September, while our own article output increased by a little bit more than 10%, reflecting both market dynamics and our ability to capture market share. The full open access market grew 11%, and we've continued to perform well above that level, with growth exceeding 25%. Submissions across the journals' portfolio continued to grow very strongly, at more than 30% across the portfolio and more than 50% in full open access. We are capturing market share due to our investment programs, the quality of our portfolio, and better execution driven by technology. For example, we continue to roll out our next-generation publishing platform, Snap, which now covers half of our journals.
T-REX automates transfers within our journal portfolio and has driven a 40% increase in transfer accepts. Nature Research Assistant continues to make great progress as we expand the beta program with more than 8,000 researchers using and providing overwhelmingly positive feedback on the tool. Lastly, none of this happens without ensuring the research we publish can be trusted. This is why we continue to invest heavily in research integrity and have developed tools to protect potentially problematic content, including non-standard phrases, nonsense text, duplicate or manipulated images, and irrelevant references. Now turning to books, the long-term trend is for digital books to drive growth as print gradually declines, with digital rising in the mix from the current level of 70% of revenues. However, in the first nine months of 2025, we've seen growth in print, benefiting from a weak comparison to early 2024.
In addition, we have seen the pooling of some print distribution orders into Q3 2025, which will not repeat in Q4. Finally, within services, we have seen strong demand from corporate R&D clients for text and data mining solutions for the more challenging environment and talent-related services in the US. Now let's turn to the developments in our other two segments, health and education. Starting with health, we saw continued momentum in scientific affairs services for international pharma clients. Our Dutch events and book business also performed well, offsetting a lower advertising and event business in DACH markets. Growth in digital revenues and a more streamlined organization, together with positive phasing, continue to support good underlying revenue growth in AOP in the segment.
Turning to education, after a solid performance in the first half of 2025, education is held back by tough conditions in one of our larger markets, South Africa. Elsewhere, we have continued to benefit from good curriculum sales in Argentina and India and are looking forward to the launch of new ELT content in 2026. We delivered over 20% underlying growth in AOP, supported by continued progress in our operational excellence program, ELEVATE. Now, before I hand over to Alexandra, I'd like to pause to renew one part of our journals' portfolio in a little bit more depth. In article volume terms, Nature is only a very small part of our portfolio, but its unique positioning and model make it a unique asset for Springer Nature.
From the first issue published in November 1869 to today, Nature has grown from a weekly journal of science to a portfolio of almost 70 respected multidisciplinary publications. Nature's format, combining news and independent editorial content with peer-reviewed articles, is unique, as is its reputation for publishing research which changes the world. From the discovery of the neutron, DNA, quasars, plate tectonics, monoclonal antibodies, to the research on AI I showed earlier, Nature plays a proud role in helping researchers to advance human progress, exemplified by the fact that three-quarters of Nobel Prize winners over the last 50 years have been published in Nature. By the way, more than 90% of Nobel Prize winners have published across the Springer Nature portfolio. Nature and Nature Communications are the world's most cited hybrid and full open access journals, demonstrating the impact of the research they publish and the selectivity of the editorial process.
Nature's unique model includes a staff of more than 500 full-time PhD-level editors, domain experts with extensive networks in the areas of specialism. As you can imagine, Nature is a door opener with customers and is a brand that attracts great talent. We aim to expand the portfolio by two to three titles per year, leveraging but not diluting the brand and focusing on areas of science where the need and opportunity is the greatest. For 2026, we plan two launches: Nature Health, prioritizing research into health in resource-limited settings, and Nature Sensors, which will publish fundamental, applied, and engineering research across a full spectrum of sensing technologies. Customer penetration in upsell is supported by a dedicated sales organization across the world, working alongside our team of global account managers.
I think it's fair to say that Nature is a unique part of our portfolio and we're a very proud owner. With that, I'd like to hand over to Alexandra for a financial update.
Thank you, Frank. The achievements you have just highlighted, especially within our Nature portfolio, really underscore the impact Springer Nature has on the global research community. One of the things I look forward to every day is the Nature briefing email, which is always a great read and an accessible and fascinating way to keep up to date with developments in diverse fields, including AI, biology, health, and climate science. With that inspiration in mind, let me now walk you through our key financials of 2025. As Frank mentioned, we have seen a strong performance. Reported revenue for the group reached EUR 1,429 million, with an adjusted operating profit of EUR 408 million, which includes scope changes and the impact of actual FX movements. We delivered strong underlying growth, with revenue increasing by 5.9% and adjusted operating profit rising by 9.9%.
Free cash flow improved by EUR 103 million, reaching a total of EUR 175 million. Our financial leverage is down significantly year over year and remains within our target range of one and a half to two times net debt to EBITDA. The next slide provides further insight into our segments. As you have heard from Frank, our nine-month results show continued momentum, especially in our research segment. Health continued its solid delivery, while education, after a good first-half performance, faced an adverse impact from a tough funding environment in South Africa. Group revenue increased by 5.9% on an underlying basis and 4.3% on a reported basis. The research segment was the primary growth driver, with 7% underlying growth. Reported growth of 6.5% was lower due to the strength of the euro against the US dollar and other currencies, and a small portfolio impact of the divestment of HAE.
Nearly half of revenues in research are in US dollar, and so you might expect to see a larger impact from the fact that the dollar ended September around 8% lower than the average rate in 2024. The reason you do not is because more than two-thirds of our US dollar revenues are contracted and generally paid annually in advance. That means that our reported growth in 2025 sees a muted FX impact due to the much stronger dollar during the last renewal season than rates were hovering around EUR 1.05. If the current rate of around EUR 1.15 persists through next year, you would expect to see a bigger FX impact on reported growth in research. In education, underlying growth was 0.7%.
As you've heard from Frank, the business performed in line with our expectations in most markets, but we faced unexpected headwinds in South Africa, where we have seen both delays in a new curriculum and an uncertain funding environment for some provinces, which has impacted our revenues. We expect these conditions to continue in the near term. Reported growth of -7% is primarily impacted by hyperinflation effects in Argentina and the weakness of the Mexican peso and Indian rupee. Now looking at adjusted operating profit. Group adjusted operating profit increased by 9.9% underlying and by 7.6% on a reported basis. For research, underlying growth was 8.2% and reported 7.7%.
FX had a small negative impact due to the strength of the euro against the dollar and yen, offset by two factors: a slightly weaker pound, where we have more cost than revenue, and the positive portfolio impact from the HAE divestment. In health and education, we saw the benefit of product mix and the efficiency measures that we began to implement during the course of 2024. The performance in Q3 was helped by phasing. This will partially reverse in the fourth quarter as education is impacted by South Africa and in health, where last year's fourth-quarter AOP margin benefited from very favorable product mix. In education, the reported AOP in the nine months declined 2.8%, affected by the strength of the euro against the number of local currencies. Our cash generation in the first nine months continued to be very strong.
Operating cash flow increased by EUR 71 million year- on- year, driven by higher operating profit and stronger working capital inflows, again reflecting excellent collections across all segments. As a result, free cash flow rose by EUR 103 million to nearly EUR 175 million. This was supported by improved operating performance and significantly lower interest payments due to reduced cross-debt and lower interest rates, linked to our continued leveraging. There is always some potential for variability around the timing of payments in Q4, but we are on track to deliver a strong cash performance in 2025, helped by a strong start to the year. We received our first investment grade, our first investment grade credit rating in October, reflecting the effectiveness of our capital allocation strategy, the strength of our cash generation, and our solid balance sheet position.
We are in the final stages of our first refinancing initiative and expect to issue our inaugural promissory note by the end of November. We are very pleased with the market reception. In addition, we will continue to actively review and optimize our financing structure in the near term. Moving on to our guidance. As Frank said, our performance in the first nine months puts us in a good position to close out the year in our guidance range. Within the mix, education revenue will likely deliver similar full-year underlying growth to the performance seen in the first nine months. Health has continued to perform well but does face a challenging comparison in Q4. Bioresearch, which accounts for around 80% of our revenues, continues to enjoy very strong momentum.
You'll see in the FX note on this slide that rolling forward current exchange rates for the US dollar and other currencies would imply a total FX headwind to full-year reported numbers of only around EUR 20 million on revenue and EUR 9 million on AOP. The impact of significant weakness in the US dollar in 2025 has been muted by the fact that the dollar rate was stronger against the euro during the last renewal season, as I explained earlier. With that, I'm happy to hand back to Frank, who will close today's presentation.
Yeah, thank you very much, Alexandra. To sum it up, we have delivered a strong business performance in the nine months of the year that supports our confidence in meeting 2025 guidance and positions us well for 2026. Research is the key driver of that momentum, demonstrating the strength and resilience of our business and our strategic execution. We are a trusted partner in the constantly growing global research ecosystem. We've built on that foundation with targeted investments to drive the shift to open access and to further harness technology. Our teams have driven AOP margin improvement across research, health, and education with a focus on operational excellence. We've strengthened our financial position in our first year as a public company, and all of this positions us to continue to grow responsibly and deliver long-term value. With that, I'll hand back to Tom for Q&A.
Thank you, Frank. We will now move to Q&A. As a reminder, we ask each analyst to limit themselves to two questions initially. If you do have additional questions, we will come back to you at the end of the call, as we have done on previous calls. With that, I will hand back to Ulrika to start the Q&A.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question now, please press nine, followed by the star key on your telephone keypad. We will start with the first question that comes from Steve Lichty, Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi there. Thanks for taking the questions. My two would be: one, can you just give a little bit more detail in terms of renewals for 2026? Any kind of trends, changes that you're seeing, and anything that you can say on experience in the U.S. renewals specifically? I know there's a few less proportionately, but anything you can say there? Maybe you can bring in discussion in terms of yield and price that you think you're going to get this year relative to 2025. My second question is just on research like for like. I know it's about 7% at the nine months. We were at a similar sort of stage in nine months 2024, but the fourth quarter growth specifically in that year was a lot lower, which kind of dragged down the full-year number.
I'm just looking at that and thinking, is there anything sort of specific in the fourth quarter that did that in last year, or is there a risk of the same thing happening in this year, if that makes sense? Thanks. That's my two questions.
Yeah, thank you, Steve. Let's maybe start with the first one on the renewals and then specifically on the U.S. As I think I've mentioned before, we're a global diversified business. The U.S. accounts in total for about 24% of our total revenues. If you look at the U.S., actually, about two-thirds of our research revenues are contracted. The renewal cycle typically begins in September, and our goal is to have at least 50% completed by year-end. I think it's fair to say that if we look at the U.S., actually, the progress is according to our plan. We're actually a little bit faster than last year, but that's because we prioritize the U.S. I think we're in a good position.
Maybe one additional pointer, if you look at the U.S., I think it's also good to know that actually, if you look at submission growth across the portfolio from U.S. researchers, it's above 20% across all different parts of the portfolio. In that sense, I think that's also why we made the statement that we're well set for 2026, and at the moment, things are moving in line with our expectation. Now, if you look at your other question around, let's say, the like-for-like growth in research year to date and also full year, what that means, I mean, I think a couple of points. Basically, what we have seen this year in research is that growth in Q1, Q2, and Q3 has been at around 7%. That's also what we expect to be around for the full year. There's essentially been three drivers behind that growth. First.
That growth. First, we have explained strong growth in journals, strong growth in journals, outperforming the markets, especially in full-open access, especially in full-open access. Second, as you may remember, our books revenues actually this year stabilized. We actually had quite a significant decline in the first last year, and this year we saw stabilization. Last but not least, the same actually also true for. Maybe a little bit more detail mentioned about three. We already mentioned the fact that in full-open access, the market grew by 11%, but we did more than 25%, and submissions are well above 50%. That shows you a little bit that knowing that those submissions turn into publications in the next 200 days, it does give us actually quite good visibility. There was a little bit of positive phasing in the third quarter on print.
We had some of the big orders in print already being fulfilled in Q3, and those will not come in Q4. Advertising, we would expect a further stabilization. Our current view is that probably for research, we would finish at a similar growth rate that we have seen so far. I think already Alexandra gave a little bit of color on health and education. I think education, fair to say that it will continue as we currently have seen in terms of growth rate. In health, we are the comparison is a pretty strong Q4 last year. I think that probably gives you a bit of a feel of the revenue dynamics for the remainder of the year and also on the progress against the renewals.
Sorry, just one thing I sort of threw in there in terms of what to think about in terms of yield and price, what on renewals?
Yeah, it's a little bit difficult to compare that because essentially in every renewal cycle, you do kind of different if it's active renewals, you, of course, renew different clients. I think so far, we have seen not a major deviation versus 2025.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, the next question then comes from Nick Dempsey, Barclays. Your line is open.
Yeah, good afternoon, guys. My two questions are, first of all, in full open access, you clearly benefited in the last couple of years from the Hindawi situation and lack of trust for those guys, but also other sort of younger pure open access publishers. Do you think that the good volumes that you're seeing now are still benefiting from that, or that you're really hitting a normal market rate of submissions and therefore that trend I'm describing is kind of behind you? The second question, education is about 3% of my sum of the parts value in my model, but every quarter we're seeing volatility, a bit of uncertainty, emerging markets, currency effects, which have some effect on the highly reliable kind of progress in the rest of the business. Can you remind us what the logic of owning education is?
Yeah, thank you, Nick. I will start with the first one, basically the long-term trend in open access. Alexandra will take the second one on education and let's say the fit within our portfolio. Now, if you look at open access, yes, I mean, we're seeing very, very strong growth year to date. Obviously, we would not expect that to suddenly stop. At the same time, I think it's fair to say that over time, as the market is moving more towards open access, that growth rate in open access will come down. That's why we've always said we would expect a kind of 10% growth in the midterm, but then overall, at some stage, it has to come down to the overall market growth in terms of publications. I think we are benefiting from the strength of our portfolio.
I think also the fact that we made quite significant investments in terms of expanding our journals, by launching new journals, implementing collections, using technology to drive, for instance, things like transfers, but also increasing our footprint in India and China, which are two important growth markets. I think that's why we're able to capture market share. I think your question around, let's say, to what extent young kids on the block, and mind you, those young kids by now are 25. Compared to my age, that's still relatively young, and I wish I was still that age, but that's no longer true. I think they are growing now as well. In that sense, there's more kind of a balancing in the market, but as I said, we're seeing good continued growth.
I think also what you see this year is that our growth is now again above market, growth is above 10%, and we have that kind of ambition to outgrow the market. Yeah?
I take a second on that. Yeah. Nick, the question around education, I would say it boils down to why do we own education? I would say, first of all, education really aligns with our mission that we want to advance discovery and learning. It is a nice fit for us from that perspective. Operational synergies with the rest of Springer Nature, they are mainly shared in the infrastructure, technology, and the procurement field. However, this segment has a strong market position and strength in the areas where we are present. We also do see this as strong growth areas for research in the future with India and also with South America. We are also talking about the excellence initiatives that we have underway. That would mean for education, our Elevate program. This is set up to help us to reduce costs.
We will improve margins, and this also will then enhance the value of the business. I would say it is with all other parts within our portfolio, so maybe with the exception of Nature, what usually Frank says then. We are regularly assessing whether we are being.
And Springer.
Springer. Okay. There's a new addition to that. Every time something new. Yes, we are regularly assessed, but currently, we believe we are the right owner. As I've just outlined, we see potential to further improve that business.
Okay, thank you, guys. Appreciate the answers.
The next question comes from James Tate at Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.
Hi, it's Frank, Alexandra. I've got two questions, please. I guess firstly, just coming back to the full-year guidance, given the better-than-expected AOP in Q3, can you just go into a bit more detail why you don't expect to see this flow through into Q4? I appreciate there are some phasing benefits in education and health, but margins in research are also slightly better than expected. Are you just being conservative? A bit more detail here would be helpful. Secondly, we know that NIH are looking at its cost of publication and announcing policies to cap APCs of NIH-funded research. Could you just give an update on where we are in terms of implementation, how you think about the potential impact on Springer Nature, and any levers you might have to mitigate these potential changes? Thank you.
Yeah, no, thank you, James. I'll take the NIH one first, and then Alexandra can talk about our, let's say, margin expectations for the remainder of the year. As I just mentioned, if you look at the US, just want to repeat that it's about a quarter of our total revenues. I think in the past, I also said it's about 12% of the articles that we publish. If you look at the 12%, about half of those are the result of federally funded research, and about, let's say, 4% of that 12% is coming from NIH-funded research, so about two-thirds of the half. I also said that two-thirds of US revenues are contracted. Those are more or less done, and I just gave a little bit of a view on the 2026 renewals.
If you look at the NIH specifically, the two topics, first, of course, which you didn't ask, but I think it's also important, is that, of course, there was a discussion about whether NIH funding will be cut, whether there will be a cut in the research budget. Given the shutdown, of course, we don't know where that stands. Maybe we'll know more over the next couple of months. I think it's important to recognize that if there is a reduction in research funding, it typically has a lag of, let's say, three to five years in terms of publication flow. That's number one. Number two, the NIH indeed is looking at ways to manage their publication costs. They have identified five different options. They have asked various stakeholders in the industry to give their views. We have given our view as well.
The reality is, due to the shutdown, we have not heard anything back yet. We'll just have to be a little bit patient there. At the same time, I think if I look at it from an operational perspective, both in terms of renewal progress in the U.S., but also in terms of submissions to our portfolios, I think we're well positioned. I think maybe one thing to also keep in mind is that by the January 1st, the Public Access Policy will be in place in the U.S., which was already implemented by the NIH by the middle of the year. That means essentially that researchers that are funded by federally funded research need to make their articles publicly accessed, read open access by the January 1st.
I do think that it will actually have a positive impact on our full open access portfolio. With that, maybe.
Yeah, I take then the second one, the question around Q4. Yeah, James, so when I look at our reiterated guidance and would apply that then for Q4, I do see the revenue then a range between, I would say, 3%-9%. And yes, on one hand side, this is a wide range, but we also do not want to adjust our guidance every quarter. Maybe that is just the first one. There are some uncertainties around our business, taking the example of education we talked about at the timing of order. There is always a kind of discretionary element also in Q4 in research in terms of spending for books and services that also needs to be considered. I agree with you that I would consider the low end of this range as very unlikely.
From my perspective, we are better positioned in the middle of that range. Talking about AOP and the margin that you see currently, what you have to bear in mind are a couple of elements. On one hand side, I talk about education. We do see that the fourth quarter for education usually comes at a negative AOP. That will bring the margin down in education. We also always talk about there is a positive phasing element in AOP in education, but also in health. Because health, and you have also heard it in my notes before, health has really a tough comp with a very strong product mix last year in Q4, which then also will result in a lower margin that we are seeing this year in Q4. I am very confident about the research margin.
All in all, for me, in the summary, I'm also very confident about the guidance that we have just reiterated. As I said before, I always believe around the midpoint is a good perspective on our guidance.
Yeah, and I think, Alexandra, you're right. I mean, I think the low end of the guidance would be not really realistic. Maybe just one point on the phasing, of course, in both health and education, we started our operational excellence programs in the second half of the year. Last year, of course, in the last quarter, we already had some benefits of those.
That's another topic that makes the comparison for the fourth quarter more challenging for both businesses.
Very helpful. Thank you.
The next question comes from Conor O'Shea Kepler Cheuvreux . Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Thank you for taking my questions. Two questions. Just to follow up on the previous question on fully right look for margins, taking into account all the factors that you mentioned and phasing and the start of the Operational Excellence Program last year and education being weak and so on, would you expect the Q4 margins to be down year on year just on a standalone basis for Q4? The second question, just on the Forex, taking into account the timing of the renewals early year and the upfront payments this year, which avoided the Forex drag, can you give us a sort of a range of what the drag for the revenues could be if rates remain unchanged today during 2026 on 2026 revenues? Thank you.
Thank you. I take the question then. We continue to expect a margin extension for Q4 as well as the full year for the group, just to take that simple. Regarding your FX question, I think what we also have done, and we know about the complexity of that topic, we have provided in the backup a sensitivity that really guides us through the impact of our most important currencies. Also, with regards to the impact that we are seeing from contracted revenue and the recognition during the renewal phase, to give there a little bit more color based on that effect that you have just mentioned. You would see for the US dollar for the year, based on the current rates, roughly an average of 113.
On our end, this will be based on the fact that we had seen from last year's renewal in this year 110. I would say this data point, as well as the reference point of the updated sensitivity table, should give you a good indication how to think about this then for 2026.
Okay, very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from Conrad Zoma, ODDO BHF. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on the significant margin progression you achieved in both health and education year to date. The growth rates have not been dissimilar to what you achieved in the past, but your margins have structurally improved to higher levels. Other than the short comments in the press release, can you elaborate a bit more on where this significant margin improvement comes from, given the more than 20% year-to-date improvement in AOP? My second question is on education. The absolute amount of profits you tend to generate in the third quarter is relatively large. Is that just the effect of most school seasons starting in that period, or are there other factors that play a role? Thank you.
Yeah, I'm happy to take both. Starting with the high margin and also AOP improvements that we have seen for both health and education over the course of the last three quarters. We have been talking a couple of times about the excellence programs that we have underway. Definitely, part of that is also that we are continuously reviewing our portfolio, and we have been able really to shift us to a higher margin portfolio. One of the benefits that you're seeing there is really the improved margin and the AOP growth that we have in both business. I think it's always fair to state that on absolute numbers, the AOP contribution of those two businesses are still rather small in the context of the entire group. Sorry, could you just, sorry, remind me of the second part of the question?
It was first, it was the AOP of both businesses, and the second.
Yeah. The relatively large proportion of your full-year profits in education that's being achieved.
That's essentially because the renewal cycle in the northern hemisphere is happening in the third quarter. That's why typically you see most of the revenue growth in the, so if education is Q3 heavy, health is actually Q4 heavy, and research tends to be more equally spread across the quarters.
That's for education, a standard pattern that we see every year. It's always that the Q3 is a kind of peak in terms of revenue as well as AOP for that business.
Yeah. Okay. Thank you very much.
Okay, so thank you, everyone, for the questions. At the moment, I can see that there are no further questions in the queue. I would like to hand it back to you, Tom, for some closing remarks.
Thank you very much, Eureka. And thanks, everybody, for your participation today. With that, we'll close the call. If there are any further questions, you know where we are at the IR team at Springer Nature. Thank you.
Yep, thank you very much.