Okay. We'll get started, shall we? Very nice to see everybody. Thanks very much. For those who've joined in person, thanks for finding the time. I know this is a busy time of year for half-year results presentations. For the few hundred people we've got on the webcast, I'm going to try and stay glued to this podium, not because I'm feeling nervous, but because I've been told it's easier for my friend, the cameraman at the back there. Let's see. Is this working? Yeah. Back one, back one, back one, back one. Okay. Welcome to our half-year results. It's that time of year, 2025. We're halfway through the year, a bit past halfway through the year. A good number of you may well have seen a release. I'll try and make this reasonably quick and to the point, and then we can get to Q&A.
Here's a simple summary.
The way I think to look at this is the top-line numbers tell you some slightly different things than the bottom-line numbers. The top-line numbers give you a sense of our reported performance in revenue, in profit, in earnings, in cash. Therefore, looking at the absolute company, how have we done in the first six months? Obviously, that includes the businesses that we added to the portfolio last year. What do the headlines say beyond the obvious, which is growth, growth, growth, and growth, is that the businesses that were added to the company have generally landed well. The brands that came into the portfolio have generally landed well. The underlying growth in the overall group is strong. Below that, you see the more like-for-like sales comparisons, underlying revenue growth. On like-for-like sales, you see us delivering 8% growth in revenue, slightly better in our profits.
We've confirmed the first payment, the interim payment for the 2025 dividend in line with our profit growth. You see our debt, which went up a bit last year because of the acquisitions we did, come down to about two and a half times, so touching the range. I would say on any measure, and it's clearly unbiased, I'm selling my own book here or our own book, these are very good numbers. They're very good numbers on good numbers. I think I'm correct in saying this is pretty close to our 18th quarter of consecutive growth since the depths of COVID. That speaks, I think, to the fundamental strengths in the portfolio and in the business.
On that point, that's really where I thought I'd start today, which is to come out of informal and just look at the markets in which we work in, the categories that we're in, specialist knowledge and live events. Both of those categories are demonstrating some fundamental strengths from which we are benefiting. We are benefiting on top of that, which you can see in our performance numbers, I think because of our geographic spread, because of our brands, because of the categories and the subject areas we've chosen. There are some conscious choices which are allowing us to over-deliver on performance. The neighborhoods that we've chosen to operate in, live and specialist knowledge, really are very strong. In a world of supercomputing capability, data analytics, and increasing artificial intelligence and artificial capability intelligence, specialist information, verified specialist information, authentic specialist information, is becoming more valuable, not less valuable.
Similarly, in a world of remote working, growing populations, much travel, digitization, workplace technology, live is becoming more valuable, whether it's in music or in sports or indeed in B2B events. I was looking for a comp, and the best comp I could find was the COP events, for those of you who follow the journey of the world on coming to agreements, intergovernmental agreements that will make for a better world that we all live in today and hopefully tomorrow. The first COP was in Berlin, and the attendance of the first COP, which I think was in 1998, was 4,000 attendees. The last COP was in Dubai, where the attendees were 120,000. The growth of live events, whether it's commercial events, consumer events, intergovernmental events, has been exponential over the period. We are seeing that in our portfolio.
It is one of the reasons why we chose to invest a significant amount of our capital and shareholders' capital in those two markets. How does that look in absolute numbers in the first half of the year? Our group underlying revenue is just below 8%. Our B2B events business is just over 8%. Actually, our academic business is touching 12%, a combination of an underlying growth in the fundamental long-standing business and the kind of reasonably predictable drumbeat of data licensing agreements, which in and of themselves individually don't necessarily recur and repeat. We are now in, I think, our third year of finding them in the year, but they're non-individually recurring.
The right-hand side of the slide gives you a sense of the shape of the company, the scale of informal markets, the specialisms that our connect and festivals, and what that means for the scale of our B2B event portfolio, the size of Taylor & Francis, the academic business proportionately, and then the arrival of TechTarget into the portfolio. Two things to pick out on this slide, slide five, in addition to the absolute numbers. You will see, therefore, that we have upped our guidance for the year from 5% growth to ±6% growth. That's partly on the back of what we've delivered already in the first half of the year. It's also partly on the back of what we can see with confidence in forward visibility. Secondly, we've increased the buyback. We've been running a share buyback program since the beginning of the year.
We're going to repeat that into the back end of the year with another GBP 150 million of our excess capital applied to buying back our shares through to the year-end 2025. Finally, the confirmation of the dividend. How are the brands doing inside the portfolio? The market, as we've said before, is migrating towards scale. The major brand, the signature brand, the primary brand doesn't necessarily need to be the number one brand as in the single biggest, although size does help. We think of brands in categories: marquee brands, power brands. The growth rates in those larger brands, those more signature brands, are generally higher. Now, very few brands get born at that scale. You have to kind of start somewhere and then grow into it. We have some examples of that.
Across that scale side of our B2B portfolio, you really are seeing hyper-growth, double-digit growth, and beyond in some instances. Geographically, in most locations, we're growing comfortably ahead of GDP growth rates. In some locations, we really are doing extremely strongly. Of which probably the most notable for us has been EMEA, which for those of us who've been around the company for a longer time is really where the story of our adventure in the B2B event trade show market really started. That was where the kernel of Informa historical trade show business came from. I think we are on track. I think I'm correct in saying that we're pretty close to being on track next year if the joint venture that we are currently piecing together with our partners at Dubai World Trade Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, comes together.
In that region, we may end up with more revenue out of that region than we had as a company when I joined the board of Informa. It really has proven to be a powerhouse market, both for the world and also for our own business. The geographic spread has really helped us. We've become an international business. Americas is by far and away our largest market, or the Americas geographically is by far and away our largest market. EMEA, I've touched on. Europe remains strong, large brands. ASEAN, smaller market but very high growth and very dynamic markets, and some countries and locations within there which are growing extremely strongly. Hong Kong, we look at differently from mainland China for obvious reasons. The Chinese market, whilst we would say it's below our tracking average growth rate, it's still circa 5% growth, which will serve our overall performance very well.
Coming out of geographies and into categories. Our category choices are serving us well. Healthcare, food, pharma, and finance being the kind of example high performers, but others too. We are doubling down on these markets. In most of them, we have significant market access, relationships with key customers. Our data is strong. Our understanding of the market trends, and therefore our ability to be able to shape and create products that serve that market, is doing well. What is allowing us to build growth on top of simple GDP growth is a mixture of things. We are pricing for value much more forensically than we used to. We are focusing on improving our market penetration, absolute share of activity by sector, by industry, by customer grouping. We are very focused on using our geographic spread to expand, syndicate, distribute, and further extend our larger brands into multiple markets.
In a good number of markets, the supply coming on and that increase of supply in most of those locations, we can fill. Not all square meters are born equal. There is a range, a price range, depending upon where you are in the world, and indeed where you are at a very prosaic level in the hall or in the show. Nevertheless, that net is a capacity gain for the overall market. In the major high-growth cities like Dubai, Riyadh, Bangkok, and Jakarta, we have a high degree of confidence that more capacity is just more sales, as opposed to more capacity ending up diluting your pricing capability. We are experimenting on attendee value as well as exhibitor value. Traditionally, in trade shows, the revenues came from exhibitors rather than from attendees.
We are experimenting on that, actually, with quite some success around straightforward attendee pricing, hosted buyers, specialist content, some product specification for some customers, major exhibitors. On top of that, you have additional services you can wrap around the activity, whether that be straightforward product directories or some slightly more sophisticated content marketing or lead gen work. Each of those allows us to build value into the proposition for our captured participating customers. In academic, as I said, the underlying growth there tracking to 3%-4%, so in line with our guidance. The absolute performance is stronger, a function of that consistent underlying growth, and the recurring. At a generic level, data licensing agreements, but not necessarily at a specific level. Our renewals in the subscription business have remained remarkably strong. They have become more individualistic. We have many now, dozens of individual transition agreements.
Some of them are still straightforward pay-to-read. Some of them are hybrid. Some of them are a complete mix. Some of them are very bespoke. Nevertheless, the role of that as a provision and service mechanism within that market remains. Alongside that, the open research business is growing at pace, both in absolute submissions in and in number of dedicated open journals or hybrid journals and in the value that you can deliver to your researcher audience. On top of that, you have the data licensing agreements. We are targeting increased growth in line with our guidance through to the end of the year. We see confidence in our forward bookings on open research, and we see. Continuing demand for further licensing arrangements. On forward visibility and predictability, this is an area where we've really tried to focus the business on what you might call quality of revenue.
What can we see? What can we predict? What can we recur? And we have high confidence and high visibility through to the end of 2025 and indeed into 2026. Comparatively, if you look at that level of visibility and level of revenue quality, 25 on 24 or 24 on 23, it's again progressively improving. That, I think, speaks to the stability in the market as well as the value of the market. Come inside the company a little bit. We've been very focused. We did a few acquisitions when we came out of COVID, take advantage of the fact that we had some available funds because of the transaction we did with Informa Intelligence to further scale our position in B2B. Since then, we've been focused on integration, execution, development, and improving some of the operational foundation layers within Informa.
This is a program being led by my colleague, Alex Roth, working in conjunction with Jill Dugan, who runs our marketing, and Jeremy Davis, who runs our technology operations, and Ian Branch, who runs our service delivery for our customers. In all of those areas, in marketing, in technology, and in service support, we would say, consciously, there is room for improvement. Actually, that's not a bad thing. We'd rather it was perfect today. The advantage of having room for improvement is it can get better for our customers. As it gets better for our customers, we can be more effective. We can deliver better services. We can make the event experience more frictionless. That will enable us to be an overall higher-quality experience, a superior performer, and have a unique platform which only we and we alone can benefit from. The balance sheet's in good repair.
We're concentrating on our capital allocation in a pretty rigorous way. We've done a progressively good job, or Gareth and the team have done a progressively good job on absolute free cash flow, cash conversion, and then what do we do with that cash? We have a progressive dividend policy. You see that again demonstrated today. We have available funds for inorganic investment, although that's not been a priority for 2025. We have added share buybacks as a recurring part of our capital allocation approach alongside dividends. That, I think, has served us very well. If you look at the effective average buying rate of our shares over the last six months, it's really been very efficient. That's part of the reason why we've committed a further GBP 150 million to this year's buyback program. Our debt structure is very comfortable and competitively priced.
We are now back within the range of our targeted leverage. We feel good about where the company is from a financial perspective. This is the group as it is. The B2B events business. Markets, the scale trade show and international business connect, our content-rich business and festivals, our experience-led business, our newest business. Having its kind of first full year in the sun. Our second biggest business, academic markets, fundamentally strong. Has made the transition to being a significant player in open, is focusing on developing further capability of the corporate market. Is experimenting in the embedded value in our data, in our content data, and what that means in a world of AI. Our newest business, Informa TechTarget, in a formation year, the foundation year.
There's work going on in that business, a lot of work going on in that business to create a single entity, to have a go-to-market structure that enables to take the three, four, five product service offerings for enterprise technology customers to market in an efficient way. That's meaning some product configuration, some technology configuration, and some work on customer service delivery. We're ahead of our target on cost synergy. We're behind our target on revenue delivery. For the former, we feel good. For the latter, some of that is the external market. Some of that, I think, is some distraction around the creation of the company. Some of that is some technical issues. All of that gives us confidence that there's an opportunity for us to see that level out at the back end of 2025 and get back into growth in 2026.
As we look into 2026, we see a strong position for the group as a whole. We've tried to invite more people inside the company, and in particular, the B2B business, in 2025. By opening up capital market events or shareholder engagement. We've done two already. We had a good number of people who attended SuperReturn. A larger number of people attended CanLion in June. The next one off the calendar is the Dubai Air Show, where we will actually formally run a capital market today, where those who attend, I think we've got about 40-45-plus registrations. If anyone is interested, please, who hasn't registered, please do. The actual event itself, the Dubai Air Show, is a really outstanding showcase. It is the most significant commercial transaction air show in the kind of calendar portfolio. It's a great time of year to be in that part of the world.
We have a major market presence in that part of the world and will be really very significantly further down the path in our partnership joint venture with the city of Dubai. It'll be a good time to join us at the Dubai Air Show. To see out the year, who doesn't want to be in Paris for some Christmas shopping in December? Along the way, you can come to our fantastic food show. Hopefully, that's allowing more people to get a sense of actually what we do, how we do, and what it means for very different end markets: private capital, global creativity, advertising and media, aviation, and food and food ingredients. These are all very, very different markets, specialist markets.
If you've had a chance to see all four of them, you get a very clear sense of why we believe the fundamental category truth of where the Informa company is operating is strong: live events and specialist knowledge. These are very powerful places to be. We have built a very strong geographic and sectoral position, and we're really pleased with the way the company has performed to date. We'll now throw it open to questions.
I think there are mics.
Thanks for the presentation. Will Lowth from Berenberg. Firstly, on Taylor & Francis, obviously, you reported sort of good visibility into 2026 and renewal cycles for subscription. What are you hearing in terms of any changes in behavior? Obviously, you spoke about those transformative agreements. A little bit more detail would be helpful there.
Then just into the B2B Events division, if you could share some color on the margin for the remainder of the year. I think consensus has got sort of 27.5% for that division, and obviously, you delivered 30% in H1. Just a little bit more color there would be helpful.
Sorry. I don't want to be a poor person's politician to answer your question with a question. When you say change of circumstance on your first question, what exactly are you—
I'm referring to the NIH cuts. Just any cuts.
Okay. All right. Let me take the first one then, if I understand it. Maybe Gareth, you might want to come in on the B2B margin and margin more generally.
Yeah.
Okay. I mean, the short answer is it's a fact. For our business, it's maybe less of a potential fact than one might imagine from the outside.
If you look at our academic business overall, in round numbers, it's about a $900 million turnover business. Probably about a third of that is US revenue, so maybe $300 million-$350 million. Of that $350 million, maybe less than half of that is journals, or what we would call academic research. Of that, maybe less than half of that half is—maybe only a third of that half is medical or STM, which is where the NIH cuts are really going to bite because our business pivots more towards humanities. Of that, we think maybe less than 5% is direct government funding. I'm not saying it's not relevant, but proportionally for us, it's less relevant, partly because of where government funding directly goes. Now, the truth of the matter is people generally don't know, and I would say we don't actually know as accurately as maybe we should.
Whether or not any research money that gets gathered, sort of a bit like raising capital anywhere, you get a dollar here, and that then enables you to raise another $4, if you know what I mean. Will the corresponding fundraising go down or go up? That is really unknown. If the NIH cuts and other similar funding really continues to go down, will there be less money available from other sources? I have a view on that, which is if you look at the input supply in academic, the input supply is up. The world does not want any less knowledge. We are not seeing any decline in submission volumes. We are not seeing any decline in, alternatively funded research activity. We are not seeing any decline in new subject area expansion. There is no lack of curiosity around the world for further research in new areas.
I think there is a specific issue, which is it is a fact, but it is not a major fact for us. Partly because of the mix of our business. I think it is entirely possible that there might be alternative sources of funding that get sourced because the underlying demand remains strong. That is kind of how we think about it. Does that answer your question? Margin, Gareth?
Yeah. On margins, you are seeing a tick up in the margin in the first half of 2025 compared to the first half of 2024. It has gone up about 80 basis points year on year. This really reflects primarily the trading performance and operating leverage of the business in terms of the growth year on year.
In terms of kind of the outlook for the full year, we would say what we have delivered in the first half will be broadly comparable into the second half. We think we can maintain that level of trading and therefore that level of operating leverage drop through into the full year operating profit margin for the group. Within that, to the point of your question around B2B markets, I would say it is consistent. Again, we think we can do in the second half or for the full year what we have done for the first half of B2B markets. As I say, that applies at a group level as well as just B2B markets.
Yes. Question? There are three here along here. You choose, Kaylee. Thank you.
Hi. Good morning. It is Adam Berlin from UBS. I have got a few questions, if I can.
I suppose my first question is, can you make a comment on why Europe is so strong at the moment? You said over 10% plus growth, growing much faster than the Americas. Just interested to know what the dynamics are there, why that is happening. In the note this morning, you talked about bookings for 2026 being up 15% year on year. Is that because of the acquisitions, or is that a like-for-like number? I mean, are we seeing that level of like-for-like growth in 2026 bookings? Because that would be really interesting if that were true. I'll just pick one more. Yeah. How much of the 8.5% growth in B2B events in H1 would you say is price? Should we tag team on this? Where would you like to start?
Let me deal with Europe, and then maybe you come in on bookings and the 8.5, and then I might add a gloss. On Europe, it's a function of size, as in the size of the events. It's not Europe. I mean, we don't really have, unlike in North America or Southeast Asia or EMEA or China, we don't have a— What's the word? I don't want to say long tail, but we don't have a distributive portfolio of events. We have major brands that trade in the European geography. Those major brands are doing disproportionately well to the point that we made in the presentation. Therefore, it's more of a brand point that happens in Europe rather than a European point, if that makes sense.
Indeed, there are, as you know very well, Adam, there are two or three categories in a good way where the event that happens in Europe has actually become the global event for a sector. One of what is now ours, CanLion, is a good example of that. One of which actually used to be ours but isn't anymore, Mobile World Congress, is an example of that. The event happens in Europe, but it's really a global event that happens to be located in Europe. I would say SuperReturn falls into that category. Hence, our European numbers look very strong. That's really what's driving Europe. Margin.
On the price volume question, I think that we just kind of come up a level from just pure price volume because I'll answer the question. I think it's important that we don't just look at it in that sort of black-and-white way.
As outlined on slide 10, there's lots of different areas where we're pushing for revenue growth, new revenue sources, revenue expansion, trying new things in terms of revenue, and then rolling them out across the B2B markets more widely. Yeah, I get price volume is the left-hand side of that sort of six-column chart, but there's a lot also to go for. I want to make sure that we're not just thinking it purely in terms of those levels. Definitely, price and volume are opportunities for us. We continue to—we have centralized pricing to a much greater extent than it was a couple of years ago, and that's paid dividends, and it continues to pay dividends. Also, volume growth kind of organically in the existing businesses through expansion, through launches, is also helping.
If you want to kind of headline answer, I'd probably say it's kind of 60/40, 60% sort of yield and sort of 40% volume. But as I say, there is quite a lot more in the mix and more to go for going forward, I think, crucially, than just that pure sort of price volume point. In terms of the revenue visibility, yeah, you are right. That is an absolute number. It is not a like-for-like number. So it does benefit from the increasing scale of the group. Really, what we were trying to say there is even at the halfway point of 2025, we are getting good visibility into 2026, getting good rebooks at shows as they run and beginning to build up that volume of 2026 revenue. So alongside the GBP 3 billion-plus number for 2025, we are beginning to get some confidence around 2026.
Do you know what the like-for-like number would be for bookings for 2026?
It would be up. It is certainly growing. At this stage, it is quite early to be kind of giving like-for-like comparisons or reading too much into that. I think the key message is there are GBP 500 million worth of revenues booked for next year already.
Okay.
This is the questioning row.
Morning, Stephen Moore, Gareth, George, Weirbutt, Morgan Stanley. Got two questions, please. Firstly, Stephen, I think we have discussed in the past the theory that supply chain disruption is not necessarily a bad thing for Informa. Maybe even it could be a good thing as companies need to stay closer to their suppliers and customers. From what you have seen in the first half of this year with tariffs and everything, have you seen that now?
Are you confident enough to say that is a real thing, maybe not just a theory? That is the first question. Then secondly, on Taylor & Francis with regards to the data licensing agreements, one obviously signed during the first five months. You mentioned that at the AGM updates. Can you add any color around what the nature of that deal was? Was it with a new or an existing LLM partner that you had already signed with? Was it a traditional book backlist content deal? Was it slightly different? And kind of what does that pipeline look like? Thank you.
Sure. I will take the first one. Do you want to come in on the second?
Trade disruption. I like the way you frame it.
I do not know if we have got—I am never really entirely comfortable using our business as a sort of prognosticator for what is happening in the global world. Either way, actually, which rather suits our argument because, as you and I have discussed many times, the great strength of our business is we operate in the niche. We do not really operate in the macro. We are not oblivious to the macro, but we are not buffeted by it in the way that I think many people often believe we kind of should be or would be. What we have not seen is any decline in attendance, any decline in participation, any decline in exhibitor numbers, any decline in forward booking, any decline in rebooking, any decline in forward commitments. There is a significant amount of trade disruption, and we have not seen that.
In fact, what we have seen is growth. I am not sure how I draw a kind of causal connection between those two to convert a theory into reality, but I think it exemplifies the fundamental truth of the trade show value proposition, which is for another typical customer, you can spend with us, pick a number, 20, 30, 40 thousand dollars. You might then double that to do build. You might spend a bit more to do customer entertainment. You might spend a bit more to do a product launch. You might spend a bit more to do some marketing. The value return for you for that investment is extremely high. It is extremely high. If other ways of you getting to market are facing challenges, that remains robust and actually has got a high return.
I am not sure it is a causal connection, but it puts a spotlight on the value proposition. That, I think, is. Having said all of that, at a macro level, the only thing I would say with some degree of, I think, certainty is that the geopolitical tension between the U.S. and China on tariffs is unhelpful for our business. Would we rather our Chinese business was at 6-8% growth than 5% growth? For sure, we would. Do we think there is some connection between those two? We do. Having said that, look at our IMEA business. Our IMEA business is in hypergrowth. Why is that in part? Because the world is meeting there. It so happens that we own probably seven of the major meeting brands in that part of the world. That is a big advantage.
Quite how it all would trade off, I am not sure I know enough to know. When you add it all up, it looks pretty good right now.
On data licensing?
Yeah. On Taylor & Francis, you are seeing half-year growth, circa 12% year on year. As we said, within that, the core is kind of 3-4%. That is important because we do want to secure the data licensing opportunities. We want to do that alongside progressive performance in the core business at the same time. They are both kind of equally important to us. In terms of the maths, there is about a GBP 15 million incremental non-recurring data licensing revenue number in that in the first half, which is what helps you get to that 12% growth overall. I think that will normalize out a bit as you go across the rest of the year.
I think consensus there for underlying for the full year is kind of about, it is really a - 1, - 2 around there once you have taken out the, or allowed for the comparative number in 2024 for those revenues. In terms of the nature of the contracts, there is not a lot we can say about the. New 2025 contract. It's kind of fairly underrated, both in terms of the customer and the deal we're doing. It's the nature of the deals in that space. They generally don't want us to talk about it because they want exactly what they're doing as part of their competitive advantage around what they're trying to do. So kind of we respect that. But that's hopefully the shape of the numbers, at least on our side, are clear.
But we can say it was a different customer?
We can say that.
That's true, yeah.
Next question.
Yeah. Morning. Steve Osty from Deutsche Numis. I hear what you're saying on second-half visibility, which sounds great. Can you just give us some more detail in terms of where the big skews are in events in the second half? I know China clearly tends to be bigger, and that's growing slower. So kind of what are the puts and takes there to get us to a sort of decent growth rate towards the sort of full-year guidance? That's the first question. Second question, just on TechTarget. I mean, we've talked about the cyclical issues in the U.S. enterprise tech market. Are there any structural issues that you're concerned about? I'm thinking of technology, AI, and stuff like that, which might be disrupting that space that perhaps we haven't really focused in on or talked about currently. Or is it an opportunity?
Just some color there, please. And then can you just give us, in academic, a split in terms of, I don't know, revenue submissions, whatever, between subs and OA? Just to try and get the differential there if you can. Thanks. Both, if possible. I'll take whatever I can get.
Okay. Gareth, do you want to come in on that?
On TechTarget. I'll take that. And then your first question was, what are the puts and takes in the back half of the year in B2B events beyond China?
Yeah, please.
On your first question, I mean, the back half of the year is, I'm looking at Patrick here as I answer this, it's important for the entire portfolio. It's particularly important for China because China doesn't really trade in the first half of the year.
Equally, there are significant brands in the markets portfolio that trade, probably weighted more for Informa Connect than for Informa Markets if you look at back half to front half. And then there are some signature significant events in festivals, not least the launch of Money20/20 in Riyadh in September, which is important for multiple reasons. A, because it was a big part of the acquisition case, and C, because we're very keen to see that be a very successful launch for the market in the category because fintech is an important sector for the economy there. And we're feeling very good about how that's going to trade. I mean, that's the kind of mix. There is nothing I would particularly call out that we are concerned about.
As you can see from the forward visibility numbers we have given, we have really quite a good window on most of how those are going to trade. On TechTarget, short answer, no. I do not think we are looking at the future thinking—oops—there is some structural change that we should worry about that we had not anticipated. Clearly, there is a big shift in audience volumes on search, and that is relevant. If you own a media portfolio, we own a media portfolio, 225 brands in that portfolio. It is not like we are not in that market. We are firmly in that market.
We actually take the view that in specialist markets—this goes back to my opening point, Steve, around the value of specialist knowledge—in specialist markets, actually having primary relationships with your audience rather than intermediated relationships with your audience, actually, I think, is a bad thing. It is a good thing if you can do it at value, which we can. The issues that our business is facing is a combination, in order, in our analysis, of diversion of funds from product support, marketing support, sales support into AI investment or AI prioritization by the big enterprise technology players, some diminution of trading, end trading for many of the vendors, and therefore they have got a keen eye on costs. To George's earlier question, just some inside the U.S. macro disturbance.
On top of that, there were some local issues for us. It is a foundation year. There is always a bit of distraction when you put together four or five different businesses. Specifically, the lead gen business has had a tough time, and that has partly been a function of price and commoditization. That is not our route. We are not in that business to be a price business. We are in that business to be a value business. Do we think there is a sector for a high-value lead gen product? We definitely do. Do we have the capability to serve that up? We definitely do. We remain very comfortable with the decision we have made. Would be more comfortable if it was a 5% plus growth and a revenue declining business, for sure we would. As I say to the management team, look on the bright side.
The comps will be easy for you for next year.
On subs and OA, do you want to come in on that?
Yeah. If you look at the core business in Taylor & Francis, that splits roughly 60/40, 60 what we call research and services and about 40% advanced learning. Within the 60% that is research and services, about a quarter of that is OA and about three-quarters of that in the core research and service business. Happy with that, Steve?
I was hoping you could give me a growth rate relative between the two, between the subs and the OA.
It's higher in open research, remains sort of double-digit. Organic growth rate for that business. Research and services kind of low single digit.
Okay. Thanks.
Yeah. Hi. So Nick Dempsey. I've got two left, please.
First of all, within the good growth in B2B events, are you seeing a measurable benefit at this point from adding data to the offerings, or is that really still something that's getting started? Isn't moving the needle yet for your growth? The second question, regarding OneInformer, I guess we'll hear a bit more about that at the CMD in November. Are we going to find that your plans require some incremental investment, or is that all self-funded so it won't lead to any knocks to margin in 2026?
On the second question, it's fully funded in our guidance. I mean, we are making an investment, but it's fully funded in our guidance both on margin and as it flows through. No, you shouldn't see any knocks to guidance as a result of that. On data, I'm looking at Patrick at the end of the room.
Do you want to come in on that, Patrick, if we've got another microphone that we could give Patrick? Are we seeing measurable benefits from our use of first-party data and IRIS and customer understanding?
Yes, I think. I'm off the show. You can hear me. As far as targeting audiences, it's providing us with significant benefit. Also, that's our ability to drive higher volume audiences and better quality audiences to our events. Also, it's giving us much better opportunity for matchmaking, both before, during, and after the event. We're seeing real measurable benefits there.
Just to follow up, but in terms of actually people paying more for it as part of what they spend on their stand, etc., is that something that's measurable?
You can see that in the numbers.
I mean, that was if I flip back to this slide, I mean, are we going to break it out on a price per customer or revenue line? No, we're not going to do that. That's exactly what was behind this slide. I mean, one of the things that's fundamentally happening in this business is if you went back 15 years ago, this was a space business. It was a media business. Buy space, sell it. Ideally, buy it for a lower price than you sell it. Then you make a margin. That was the model. Actually, the model now is you buy the space, and then you create something, and then you create value. From that value, you price for it. That's yield. It's not simply a matter of here's a kind of menu.
Do you want to pay GBP 5 for the milk and GBP 10 for the steak? It's, here's a total price. Here's a total value proposition. That might include customer information. It might include specialist access. It might include data analytics. It might include in real-time activity. It might include customized meeting scheduling or meeting management. We do various versions of that in multiple brands across the portfolio. All of that leads to yield. All of that allows you to price in a different way. In that pricing, you get growth ahead of GDP. It's not a menu of prices. It's yield management. Fundamentally, that's what's allowing us to build a superior platform in this market. That's a large part, to go back to your second question, Nick, of what OneInformer is all about.
Thanks.
Any final questions in the room? Are there any questions online, Richard?
Yeah.
I've got a couple, actually. There's a couple of modeling questions to follow up on, but a couple. One follow-on on TNF. Just on, can you give any sense on confidence in subs renewals just as you start to have conversations? Where are you on that? Do you feel, given everything going on, it might be a more modest performance around that going into 2026? Just some commentary around that. And then a second question. On the B2B event side, given the uncertainty around the Middle East, have you seen any impact on attendance at any of the events in that region?
Okay. I'll take the second. Do you want to take the first?
Yeah. I mean, I think, I understand on the first, I understand where the question's coming from. There's quite a lot of noise at the moment, particularly in the US space.
The librarian community in particular is quite chatty. Therefore, you do get both news flow, commentary, etc., around it. That, I think, is behind the question. In terms of the numbers, no, we're not seeing anything at this stage that gives us a different view about the outlook. 2025 is basically sold in the research services subscription space. That's kind of done. In terms of 2026, as I say, early days, but not seeing anything particularly that would cause us to talk about a different outcome from what we're seeing. I appreciate where the question's coming from.
On the second one, again, short answer, not at all. In fact, our forward pacing and booking in Dubai, in Abu Dhabi, in Riyadh are all tracking out or ahead of both plan and guidance.
We have a slightly, to go back to the earlier question from Steve, we have a significant portfolio of events that trade in the next six months. Sorry, in the next five months in 2025. Then in January and February, the significant new capacity coming into the market, particularly in Dubai and in the UAE, which we are already in market selling. We're seeing no lessening of demand. In fact, quite the opposite. There are no further questions in the room. I think no further questions online. I just thank everybody again for their attendance and to people on the webcast who took time to watch and listen. I hope you got something out of it. For those of you who are having a summer break, have a good one. Thanks very much.