Okay, are we live? We are live. Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome. For those people who are in the room, it looks like the bride had more family than the groom. Thank you very much for coming. As someone told me this morning that there are, I think, somewhere around 27-30 companies reporting this morning. For those of you who are here with us physically, we now really know who our friends are. Thank you for making the time to come in person. I think we have a few hundred people on the webcast. It's a live stream link, we'll be taking questions both in the room and from the webcast. Welcome to the Informa Group.
This is our half year results for 2023. As you may well have seen in the release that we published today, it's really a story of international scale, growth, and expansion. We'll expand on that as we go through the presentation today. Before we get into Informa, worth stepping back because all of us in any business operate in the world in which we live, and the world in which we live is a really very difficult-to-read environment. Volatility, uncertainty, change, some geopolitical tensions. Depending on where you are in the world, a sense of continuing heightened inflation. In some parts of the world, is there a sense that inflation is stabilizing and beginning to taper off, either because of reductions in input prices and, in particular, energy prices?
We're having this conversation today on the back of another rate rise from the Fed. There's an ECB meeting today. There are experts from our treasury team and our advisors in the room who will have a better view on forward rates, or here's hoping they've got a better view on forward rates than I do. Nevertheless, it's certainly a very different world on the cost of money than it was three or four years ago. Depending on where you are in the world, you really have very different view of growth. Fortunately, if you do what I do for a living, most of the markets in which we are operating at scale are growth markets, with a real sense of forward momentum and forward growth.
We are obviously a U.K.-listed business. We're having this conversation here in London. Actually, if you look at our portfolio, where our revenues are, and you plot them by scale, really, they start in North America, they go to Mainland China, they go to the Middle East, they go to Southeast Asia, they go to Brazil and South America, they go to Europe, and they go to the United Kingdom in that order of importance. That level of reach and range and scale is, I think, allowing us to navigate our way through this level of global uncertainty with some, with some confidence about what the future brings. As you know, we're very committed to sustainability and recycling at Informa. I present this slide at every meeting. We operate in the knowledge and information economy.
We are focused on servicing at scale the B2B customers that we service in probably 20 or 25 markets, and driving depth in our specialism and in our knowledge. Similarly, in our academic business, we are subject matter experts in a range of subject areas, and similarly driving depth and scale of knowledge and expertise. Really, those are the twin themes of the business, they're, I think, what have always underpinned the strength of the Informa proposition: increasing international reach and scale and depth in market specialisms. That combination, if you can fund it, and if you can successfully acquire further market positions, it's really a very powerful combination.
One of the things you will hopefully notice in my presentation and Gareth's today, is I suspect we will use the C word a couple of times, but this isn't a presentation about are we pre-COVID or in COVID or post-COVID. This is really the first time in a long time that we can have a conversation with our shareholders and with the market about the fundamental strength of the commercial proposition that is the Informa company. It really is that combination of reach, scale, depth, and specialism. That will be the drumbeat that we can now get back to delivering, and I think today's results, more than underpin. I beg your pardon. Yeah, no, sorry, I'm in the right place.
In the midst of that macro change, what really are we doing on a macro level? We're trying to drive greater use of technology in our business, whether at a simple level, although it's not so simple to deploy, digitally enabling the services that surround our event product or our research product. We are driving further and further specialization. You see that again today in the two additions in the group, the Canalys research analytics business in TMT, further enhancing our Omdia research proposition. The emerging partnership with HIMSS, adding the single largest U.S. healthcare technology trade show to our already existing healthcare portfolio. That drive to more and more specialization really goes with the grain of where our customers are.
We are biased, and hopefully, our shareholders share that bias, that in a world of increased technology and data, there is actually an increasing value in live experiences and interactions if they are enhanced by a better experience and customer experience through the use of digital service technology around the event experience, and they're accompanied by a greater level of accuracy on lead qualification and lead generation. It's not an either/or, it's an and/also, and that combination we're well positioned to take advantage of. In a world of universally available instantaneous knowledge and expertise, there is equally an increasing value in research, validation, original research, and authentication. Those really are the markets that we've chosen to play in. This is the way to think about the group now.
We have a very simple mission statement, which I think is increasingly has resonance externally. For some time, it's had resonance internally, in that our role is to champion the specialist. That specialist might be an author, or a researcher, or a digital marketer, or a B2B buyer, or a provider of specialist services or components, or products in a particular market. We connect people with knowledge and ideas. Through that, we either enhance people's knowledge or we make more efficient transactions and more accurate partnerships. In our B2B business, it's a combination of market trading environments, buyers meet sellers, combined with an increasing range of digital services to enhance that buyer-seller interaction.
Underpinned by an increasingly effective first-party data source which is collected, collated, enhanced, and increasingly enriched and improved in order that we can both market our own products and services, and indeed, produce some additional products and services. Operationally, we run through, at the moment, through four divisions in our B2B business. The biggest by size Informa Markets, what people understandably call the trade show business. Really, buyers meet sellers, a transaction-led showcase environment for specialists in industries to connect with their customers and indeed to review their competitors, and increasingly to meet with their colleagues and their industry peers. We are now, by some margin, the leading and largest operator of live and on-demand events.
I said in a call earlier this morning, that if there are, in round numbers, about 200 working days in every year, although I have to tell you, this year it doesn't feel quite that small, we are probably running a scale event three or four times a day somewhere in the world. Informa Connect, which people used to call our old conference business. Now Informa Connect is actually a business focused on producing curated, high-value content events in specialist markets. We operate in five verticals now in that market, with increasing scale, in each of them. Informa Tech, our breakout sector business, which is a fully integrated service offering research, analytics, data, media, live events, and digital and on-demand and lead qualification services. Tarsus, which currently we're running as a standalone business.
Now, by the time we get to the end of the year and we go into next year, that Tarsus division will fall away. We're going through a process of intelligent combination at the moment, and you will see the assets, the brands, the portfolios, and the talent that we were fortunate to acquire with that business become an integrated part of our three operational divisions. In our academic markets business, known for its imprints, if you want, an old world publishing term, which probably actually the most famous, is not Taylor & Francis, it's Routledge. There are many others.
F1000 in the open market, open science market, Dove in the open access market, and then a series of market positions by subjects, where if you are a subject matter expert, a researcher, an author, an institution for whom sociology or psychology or economics or behavioral science are your area of academic expertise, we are one of, if not in a number of our subject areas, the leading provider of original research and validated independent research. All of that is underpinned by a commitment to sustainability, which we started recognizing was going to be a requirement for any business, probably seven, eight years ago. Our Faster Forward program speaks to basic things like how do we source energy? It speaks to important things like the building, the built environment.
We indeed have a relationship inside our markets business with the built environment. It also speaks to practical things like specification for stand construction or stand destruction after large-scale events. We've got a very clear set of commitments through our FasterForward program, which we'll see as I think, at the top end of any sustainability or ESG ranking or rating. We've worked our way over four or five years to a point whereby we are now ranked in the DJSI index as the leading player in our category globally.
We take this very seriously, and we devote both time, resources, and management attention, not just to building a sustainable revenue growth business, profit growth business, margin growth business, and earnings growth business, but a sustainable business in areas that matter to all of us as individuals. Like all companies, we've been on a journey. We were on a great journey for six or seven years, which we framed around a GAP program. How do you become a growth business? How do you accelerate that growth? How do you make that a programmatic reality inside an operating company? It was all going jolly well, COVID came along. Because nearly half of our business was predicated upon meeting in person, that business came to a grinding-...
shrink, not a halt, but a shrink. We then had a challenging two to three years. I was saying again on a call earlier this morning, it's worth remembering that mainland China only reopened in March of this year. There's a line in our release today, which you may notice, that says, "China will probably exceed 2019's revenues this year." Actually, it only opened three months ago, three, four months ago. The pace of that return has really been quite remarkable, by comparison to the return rates of other countries and other geographies. Understandably, we went through a period of stabilizing the business, securitizing our finances, not in a technical sense, but in a practical sense, reducing our costs, changing our debt structures, and husbanding our resources.
We began to see that coming to an end, or we knew it would take some time, really at the end of 2021, when we had a capital markets day to try and lift people's eyes out of the understandable human and commercial concern for COVID impacts, to think about the future of this business and where we could go. Inherent in that were a series of pillars around what we called GAP 2, of which probably the most counterintuitive at the time, and striking, was our decision to exit from our Informa Intelligence portfolio. Which of course, during COVID, had in part been paying the bills, because it was a pure-play subscription business.
We had always been open with ourselves and indeed with our shareholders, that we were going to turn those into valuable performing businesses, but we were always a third or fourth or fifth player in those markets. The cost to scale for us in that market really would have been stretching. And because multiples in that market were somewhere between 15-20 times earnings, depending on what you were acquiring, it would have challenged even our investor relations charm skills to have persuaded shareholders that there was a long-term or even medium-term route to return and growth.
We exited that market at actually 29 times earnings and used that income flow both to return some capital to shareholders, retire some debt, rebalance the balance sheet, and then provide ourselves with capital for further investment in the two markets in which we had strong market positions, if not leading market positions. As Gareth will outline in detail later, you see now we've done 5 of those acquisitions at about an average acquisition price of 9 times earnings. That's a very efficient recycling of capital and a compounding of our market position and our strength. You will see us continue to do more of that. Beyond that, we were investing in our digital capabilities, which we continue to do, our focus on market categories and areas of specialization, and seeking to improve returns to shareholders.
These slides give you a sense of the progress, the stop point, the restart, and then where we're heading back to. The pleasing thing, if you just take your eyes to the right of these slides, we're now firmly back and beyond. We're a bigger business, we're a broader business, we're a better business, and we're a stable business. You see that, I think, very firmly in the results that are posted today. Underlying growth rates of significant proportions in actually all of our businesses, including even the businesses that were not destabilized, in fact, might even have been beneficiaries of COVID. Strong performance from the Tarsus business, post our acquisition of it.
Strong performance from our tech business, despite headwinds in that market, in digital media expenditure and in some of the audience businesses that we've added to the portfolio. Overall, that tumbles down to an underlying growth rate of just over 30%, significant profit growth, significant earnings growth, a strong free cash flow performance, which you can see us recycling some of. If you do the math, at the half year, a dividend growth of over 90%, and if you blend that out, that probably means a dividend growth in the year of about 70%, because last year we didn't pay a dividend in the first half. At this half year point in 2023, where do you find us? We're back to growth.
You know, the clue's in the name, the growth acceleration plan. We're a growth business, and that's what we're here to do and deliver, and it's a pleasure to get back to that. Our margins got compressed during COVID for a number of reasons. Most obviously, because our revenues came significantly down, but less obviously, because we didn't destroy the long-term value in the company by taking a knife to our operating costs. We took a very forensic approach to where we could reduce costs, where we could, but we held our talent, we held our brands, we held our customer relationships so that we could come back post-COVID fast, and you're seeing that. Therefore, as a consequence, you're seeing our margins rebuild: 22% to 26% to 28% back to circa 30%.
Significant margin growth in the half year. It'll phase out a bit for the year end, but overall, a return of very attractive margins. Our balance sheet is in a strong position. We're recycling some of it, and you will see us continue to do that, albeit probably with a moderated view of what our leverage ceilings would be by comparison to where we were and indeed the world was pre-COVID. A significant shift in our attitude, our application, and our aggregation of our data. If you were being harsh, you would say that eight years ago, data was a waste product in our business. If you were being, I think, objective, I think we've now universally accepted as an operating set of businesses, that data is an asset to enhance the way in which we operate our existing business.
If you're being optimistic, you would say we can actually see that data is a valuable asset that we can monetize separately as another business, and we're on that journey, and that, I think, is a hidden underpinning benefit of the company. We've always believed there was an advantage in specialization. Championing the specialist, may not resonate quite alongside, "I Had a Dream," but the world is going to specialisms. Serving up depth of knowledge, expertise, connectivity, market access, customer connection, and lead qualification is a highly valuable thing to do and deliver in both research and in the B2B markets, and we're very focused on doing and delivering that. We, I think, are supported by a significant range of shareholders who've been with us for some time, and our job is to deliver consistent, recurring, and compounding returns.
It's good to be back in the business of doing that. On that note, I'll pass you over to Gareth. Gareth?
Cheers. Thank you, Stephen. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Thank you for coming along to the half year results presentation here this morning in Blackfriars or on demand if you're watching this on the website later. As you'll hopefully have seen from the results and the announcement, we're announcing a strong set of results for the first half of 2023, including good growth in revenues, profits, and cash flows. Those results for the first half of 2023, together with our forward visibility into the second half of the year, are what giving us the confidence to upgrade our full year guidance to a meet or beat of the top end of the range from the AGM trading statement.
Both evidencing our, you know, confidence in the business and the, and evidencing further proof points in our execution of the GAP 2 strategy. If I look at the specific results for the half year at a group level, overall, you know, in terms of the headlines, we'd point to the half year revenue at GBP 1,520, roughly, which is up over 50% year-on-year. As you can see, that's tracking to kind of near GBP 3,050 for the full year on a run rate basis, hence our meet or beat on the full year guidance at GBP 3,050.
In the half year, we've delivered underlying revenue growth of 32%, reflecting strong growth in the B2B markets and digital services businesses, underpinned by a further acceleration of the revenue growth at Taylor & Francis. Our adjusted operating profit doubles versus the first half of last year to GBP 414 million, that in turn, drives an improvement with the operating leverage from the revenue numbers in our operating profit margin for the first half of the year. Earnings are up 134% year- on- year, driven by that strong OP performance and also assisted by the benefit from the ongoing share buyback program that was running through the whole of the first half of the year.
Taking that earnings growth together with our dividend commitment, delivers the increase in the interim dividend, the half year of 93% year-on-year. That's all enabled by strong cash performance, strong cash conversion and free cash generation, which together with our balance sheet strength, with leverage around 1.2x at the year-end and tracking to a year-end leverage of 1.3x, gives us the ability to fund over GBP 650 million worth of shareholder returns in the full year for 2023. Those are the headlines. Turning to the income statement and starting to unpick some of the financial results in the numbers, this income statement is all on a continuing basis. It doesn't include any of the assets that we sold in 2022.
As I said in the headlines, the strong revenue performance and the operating leverage characteristics of the business produce a strong drop through into OP and an increase in the OP margin from around about 20.5 percentage points to 27.2 for the first half of 2023. Our half year financing costs were effectively zero. If you remember back to the year end, we started the year end with effectively 0 leverage as our cash balances were equal to our borrowings. Then the treasury team did a great job in securing deposits at good rates, which meant that our cash interest at times in the first half, was well in excess of the 3% that we were paying on our borrowings. That, as a net result, meant that we ended the first half with a net income on the interest line.
On a full year basis, we will have an interest charge because we started to spend some of those cash balances, investing them in acquisitions, therefore, the cash balances will be substantially lower in the second half of the year and we'll probably have a circa GBP 30 million full year interest charge as a result. Our effective tax rate increases to 19% in 2023, compared to circa 18% in the first half of 2022. That's really a reflection of our taxable profits increasing in the business and the fact that many of our tax deductions are relatively fixed in nature, therefore, as the profitability grows, the tax rate goes up. Looking forward, you should expect to see the tax rate increase to 21% in 2024, then 22% thereafter.
Really a function of increasing tax rates in the U.K. and also the OECD Pillar One programs coming into effect on a global basis. Our non-controlling interests increase substantially year-on-year. Again, really a reflection of the Informa Markets business in China, where a lot of our joint ventures are located, starting to trade again at scale. As Steve said, that came out very strongly in the first half of the year, and therefore, the non-controlling interest deduction increases in 2023 versus 2022. That still allows us to more than double earnings to 22.5p per share in the first half of the year.
These strong results for the half year, together with the rest of the guidance and the outlook, gives us good confidence for the second half of the year. If I look at the results by divisions, I'll start to unpick those on division by division basis. Starting with Informa Markets, our largest single business there, we delivered underlying revenue growth of 64% in the first half of the year, driven by that strong performance in China, but really underpinned by a consistently strong position in the rest of the portfolio as well, by region, by brand, by end markets, all performing strongly. We operate more Tier One shows in the first half of the year. Mainland China has a relatively strong margins in terms of how we're delivered in the first half.
That does mean the first half margins are likely to be stronger than the second half margins in this business. Overall, as you can see there on the slide, growth of over 10 percentage points year-on-year in the margin for that business. Connect also had a strong first half of the year, delivering almost 20% underlying revenue growth there. Again, fueled by the Tier One events that ran in the first half of the year, but a consistently strong performance across finance, life sciences, FAN EXPO events, a number of the areas that they work in.
They also benefited a bit, as we'll talk about in a minute, from the Winsight acquisition and that effect on the margin, and therefore, we'd expect the second half of the year margin to be lower than the 20% that they achieved in the full year, but still, you know, developing year-on-year. Informa Tech delivered underlying revenue growth around about 7.5% of the first half of the year, comprising double-digit growth in our events businesses, supported by solid performance from the research brands, things like Omdia, and then a year-on-year decline in some of the other revenues around media marketing services. We are seeing some choppiness in the short-term outlook for the technology market. You're seeing that in other announcements that companies have made to the market in the last couple of months.
You know, we're consistently confident about the view out into the medium term for this business and expected to return to higher levels of growth over time. The margin is broadly consistent year-on-year at the half year, which reflects the fact that we invested a bit in the first half of the year, and we expect it to tick up in the second half of the year as we operate more of the Tier One events in this division, and also some of the recently adopted cost measures take effect in terms of the business. IIRIS continues to expand and is already benefiting our B2B markets businesses in many ways, particularly in how they market to their customers.
We talked a bit about the Lead Insights project, product in the press release this morning, which is a new area where it's using data and synthesizing it to provide a different and enhanced customer offering. Tarsus has delivered strong year-on-year growth, and in terms of the upgrade to the guidance that we've delivered over the course of this year, really for Tarsus, that's the earlier completion of the acquisition than we originally thought it might complete at the time of the year end. The actual trading in the business is showing good year-on-year growth and a bit ahead of, you know, our original expectations. As we acquired that business in March, as you'd expect, you're pretty much tracking towards that plan.
Finally, Taylor & Francis, showing improved revenue growth, accelerating to 3.3% year-on-year growth from the 3.0% that we delivered in the full year 2022 numbers. In the mix, the operating profit margin is down a bit in the first half. That's just phasing, though. We think for the full year, we'll be back to comparable margins to where we were in FY 22. The phasing really coming from investment, a bit weighted towards the first half. Also, if you look traditionally, this business has always delivered a stronger revenue performance and a stronger operating profit margin performance in the second half of the year, and we expect that to play out again in 2023. You look at the growth in terms of underlying growth versus reported growth.
Underlying growth in revenues around about 32% for the first half of the year and just over 56% in terms of operating profit. You then track that into the reported growth, you get a bit of an extra benefit in the reported numbers from phasing, where we operated events in the first half of 2023 that operated in the second half of 2022, and we normalized for that in our underlying numbers. You're definitely getting a bit of a benefit in the reported numbers from both Tarsus and Winsight in terms of those acquisitions. Again, we normalize for that in our underlying growth, but that comes through in the reported growth as an upside. Finally, currency, where the US dollar is stronger in the first half of 2023 than it was in the first half of 2022.
We normalize for that in our underlying growth, but you get the benefit of that coming through in the reported growth. That's how the numbers move underlying to reported. You look at the operating profit margin and how that moves from HY 22 to HY 2023, the largest single driver there is performance, is trading delivery in the business and the operating leverage from that dropping through into the operating margin and improving that by almost 5 percentage points half year on half year. In terms of phasing of biennials, we get a bit of an upside from that, as some of the biennials are stronger margins, you know, from the long-standing guidance around biennials, so where they run in the odd years, that has a beneficial effect on our margins. Acquisitions, mainly that's talking to Winsight rather than Tarsus.
In Winsight, as I say, we had this structural dynamic where we only owned the business for six weeks, really, in the first half of 2023. We ran the main trade show of the year in that period, so it has a disproportionately upside effect on our operating profit margin in Connect in the first half. That's worth noting, because I'm sure this time next year, we'll be standing here talking about the tough comp Connect had from last year, we'll need to bear that in mind at that point in time. Finally, currency adds a benefit from the stronger US dollar. We generate more of our revenues in dollar than we have proportionately in costs, when the dollar strengthens, therefore, you get an upside on the operating profit margin as outlined there on the slide.
Overall, around 670 basis points increase in the margin, first half of 2022 to first half of 2023. If you kind of start taking that into the full year dynamic and how it grows across the years, as Stephen, you know, talked about in his slides, we're really looking at a growth trajectory going from sort of 22% for full year 2022 margins through 26%-28% to return to circa 30% adjusted operating profit margins in 2025. Our FY 2023 guidance implies a full year margin of around 26%, so a 4% increase on the margin that we delivered in 2022. In 2024, we're targeting a further improvement of circa 2 percentage points.
That's a biennial down year, which we'll get a bit of a drag from in the margin, but we think that'll be more than offset by the growth in the business and also by a full year benefit of Tarsus coming in at a above group average margin. In 2025, we'll be targeting a further 2 percentage point increase. That will be assisted by the fact that's a biennial up year, and the higher margins from those events will help us in that year. It's worth saying, as we're talking here about margin expansion and targeting margin expansion, we are always a group that targets underlying revenue growth on a sustainable basis as much as we target margin expansion.
We'll be looking to hit these margin targets, we'll also be looking to continue targeted investment in the business in the sort of areas we've talked about through our GAP 2 strategy, continue to drive and engineer future growth on a sustainable basis in the business. You look at the balance sheet, how that stands at the first half of the year, the first thing to say is that we're seeing a good cash generation from cash conversion of that operating profit growth, you're seeing that in the first half of the year, we see that continuing to the second half, which should enable us to deliver around about GBP 550 million plus of free cash flow for the full year 2023. There's a bit of a working capital outflow in the first half of the year.
When you pick through the results, you'll see the cash conversion was about 60% in the first half. Actually, if you go back to pre-COVID years, 2017, 2018, you'll see that's entirely consistent with what we've always done in the first half, as some events have operated where we've had cash received in the prior year. Also, we receive a lot of Taylor & Francis subscriptions and cash for the next year on events in the second half of the year. You always tended to have a first half outflow and then a correction in the second half for the full year, and that's what we'd expect to see happen in 2023. We're much closer to or at around 100% cash conversion for the full year on the whole.
In terms of the balance sheet, we have leverage at the half year of 1.2x and are tracking to 1.3x, including the acquisitions and the cash flows that we're announcing in terms of July. We have substantial liquidity of GBP 1.6 billion as we stand here today, so that number includes the dividend payment that we made a couple of weeks ago for the final 2022 dividend, and it also includes the maturity of the MTN debt, which we repaid in the first week of July. GBP 1.6 billion in maturity now, and our next maturity is not until October 2025. Good forward visibility in terms of the balance sheet, and we have no group level financial covenants in the debt stack, as we stand.
Our borrowings are almost entirely fixed rate, at just over 3%, which obviously in the current market is looking like a good piece of balance sheet planning. We're running a pension surplus of around about GBP 50 million at the moment on a IAS 19 basis, which together, you know, gives us good inorganic opportunity for capital allocation going forward, in terms of how we want to invest in the business, and also good opportunity for further shareholder returns. I think finally, just to conclude on this slide, the strength of the balance sheet really underscored by the fact that the three credit rating agencies that cover us have all issued notes in the last month or two, reconfirming their investment grade rating status for the business overall.
I touched on capital allocation, and the first thing I want to really talk about around our capital allocation discipline is the allocation for shareholder returns, which has been a key part of our GAP 2 strategy, you know, Stephen outlined in his slides, and we've made further progress with the delivery of this in the first half of 2023. Our buyback program is, you know, committed GBP 1 billion, which we committed to in March of this year, and we're delivering almost GBP 500 million of that in FY 2023, with the balance having been delivered in FY 2022. On current course and speed, we're tracking to complete that program right about November at the end of this year, and that will deliver on our commitment to return around half the post-tax disposal proceeds from the divestments to shareholders.
We're also announcing today a 90% growth in ordinary dividends at the half year, driven by the year-on-year increase in the earnings, and delivering on our commitment for a 40% payout ratio. As you look at our earnings projections for the full year, you'll expect to see a similar sort of or a double-digit increase, certainly, in the dividend, going forward into the full year. The other element of our capital allocation discipline has been our inorganic investment, which has been driven by that. As Stephen, you mentioned, you know, the three 2022 divestments, crystallized value around about GBP two and a half billion, and on a after-retained investments and on a post-tax basis, delivered proceeds around about GBP 1.9 billion.
On the four acquisitions we've announced so far, we're reinvesting around GBP 1.2 billion of those proceeds. You can see we've added about GBP 300 million worth of revenue from those investments, replacing the GBP 200 million worth of revenue we divested. We always said with GAP 2, although there was a divestment element to it was fundamentally a growth strategy. What you can see from this slide is through the disciplined capital allocation, we are getting the scale back. We've gotten the scale back in the business, and therefore, that is delivering on the growth strategy element of the divestments and investments in the business. I touched on forward visibility when I talked about the upgrade of the guidance.
What we're really talking about here is if you look at our live and on-demand events, bookings for the second half of the year, they're running at kinda 85%+ of what we need to deliver the forecast. As always, we've got a strong foundation that we're building off in terms of our subscription revenues, which are at 90%+ of the full year 2023 numbers. We're beginning to get good visibility into the 2024 numbers, where we're around about 70% booked in terms of the events that we'd expect to see rebooking at this stage of the cycle. What does that all mean overall?
I think what it means is that the forward-looking indicators across, you know, various elements of the business are all strong and give us confidence about delivery in 2023 and into 2024. I also think to the kind of COVID recovery comments that Stephen was making, it really underscores that I think rather than people being worried about returning to 2019 levels as a ceiling of our ambitions, that's really now a floor that we're building off as a foundation. You know, we'll talk about how we see our forward outlook in a couple of slides time as Stephen goes through his deck again.
To wrap up on the numbers, in summary, I think we're reporting a strong set of half-year results for 2023, with a strengthening outlook into the full year, guiding to a meet or beat at the top end of the previous guidance. We're seeing strong underlying revenue growth across the divisions and a significant improvement in the operating profit margin year on year from the operating leverage. The strong growth in earnings per share is driving good growth in dividend per share, delivered by the OP increase and the share buyback program, and the disciplined capital allocation, both to shareholders and in terms of inorganic investment to date, at around 9x EBITDA, I think will deliver further benefits for shareholders in the future.
Just to confirm again, full-year revenue and operating profit guidance at the top end of the range we reported previously. I'll pass you back to Stephen.
Thanks, Gareth. Okay, right. Just a few final slides, and then we'll get into questions. What I wanna try and do in this section is just give you a sense of how you should think about the company on a going-forward basis and why you might choose, on a good day, to be optimistic about that view of the company. This is the way we're looking at it from the top down. Increasingly, the B2B business, further improving its scale, its international reach, and its depth in specialist markets. Led in size by our Informa Markets business, transaction-led B2B events with a range of digital services around some of those events, not all, but some, and increasingly underpinned by better service experience at or before or after the event.
Targeting an ongoing 5%+ underlying revenue growth rate and margins north of 30%. Our Informa Connect business, really growing in size and scale. Content-led events, more highly curated, more specified, a significant proportion of delegate-based revenue and sponsorship revenue, as well as exhibitor revenue in some part. With actually a significant range of digital and data services, and partly because they're richer in originated and curated content, actually, with a much more developed set of digital platform capabilities to deliver video content, matchmaking, curated meetings, and lead qualification.
Slightly lower growth rate, but still 4% plus, and a slightly lower margin because there's a higher cost base in those businesses, because you've got a more deployed capital in technology and more deployed cost on the people side, because you're curating original content. Informa Tech, a specialist business offering the full range of services that any B2B marketer or sales or customer or product executive would be looking for. About 15 or 16 event brands, franchises, running about 40 to 50 actual physical events, because we multi-locate some of those brands. Underpinned by a very strong market research business now, Omdia, enhanced by the Canalys acquisition today, and a range of sales intelligence services, lead qualification, lead specification, and audience identification.
Higher growth rates, notwithstanding the current schools in the end market and technology, we see that over time being a 7%+ growth rate market, comparable margins to Informa Connect. That is our B2B event franchise, operating in 30 or 40 geographic locations around the world. Our academic business, a scholarly research business, a reference business, and underpinned increasingly by a range of knowledge services, which I'll come on and talk about. Targeting a 4%+ growth rate, we've been building to that over time. You see us at the half year at 3.3%, with an ambition to get that to 4% next year and 4%+ thereafter. Margins, at around the leveling out point of 35%+ post the investment period.
That gives you a group tracking overall at about 5% plus, with margins, as Gareth said, back to around 30%. Our ambition is to build a broader, bigger, and more scalable business with depth and specialism in all those markets. If you take the B2B business, what do you have to believe to think that that's a place where you'd want to deploy your capital and get further growth? Well, first of all, we have got brands in that market which have got visibility and reach, and in many instances, longevity. The market is shifting to specialists, and even in overall markets, the subspecialisms within those markets. The increasing value of digitally enabled, high-value, live events, underpinned by the increasing importance of qualified sales leads in competitive markets.
For most of our B2B customers, they're working in increasingly competitive markets. Within that, the key is increasingly becoming hosting buyers. Buyer identification and buyer qualification is really the kind of magic source of that business. There's a series of other, if you like, environmental circumstances that lead us to believe there is market expansion. This is our kind of geographic footprint. We're operating now in about 30 locations around the world, and really, as I said in my opening, if you kind of look to the left and the right and the south of that chart, that's really where the drumbeat of expansion is coming from. The availability of the core physical infrastructure that you need to deliver those live products is growing both in size and in quality.
Not just the event location itself, but the environment and the logistics and the infrastructure around the event location. If you look at the key locations around the world in which we both operate and have now become a significant counterparty for the venue owners, and in many instances, the city states and countries, you're seeing significant investment in quality venues, locations, accompanying infrastructure, transport, international hub airlines, smoothing of visa and access requirements for B2B customers in particular, and an increasing focus by key locations, city states, and governments on what is broadly called business tourism or MICE. Yesterday we were in this room.
Some of us who are here today, were here yesterday, where we hosted the launch of our Tahaluf joint venture in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is a business that we've taken from zero, really, two years ago. I'd predict that that business could be north of a $75 million-$100 million business within another year. Where we are developing new brands in that market and bringing our existing brands into that market in very, very specified categories. You're seeing new markets open up and investment in scale and capacity in existing markets. The airline industry, which a bit like us, had a pretty tough COVID, and you're seeing route return, capacity return, slight change in the mix of the fleet and the nature of fleet capacity.
It's actually favoring primary routes, which is good for our business, actually. Whilst the prices are going up, if any of you have actually bought a business class ticket rather than charged it's becoming an expensive thing, but that speaks to value. If you're demonstrating the value of the trip, and indeed, if you can offer a customer a single trip rather than 50 trips, in order to see all of their customers, identify what all of their competitors are doing and understand everything that's going on in their market, you've got a very, very high value proposition that you can sell to your customers. Those are the reasons why we have chosen this market.
I want to make a point here, which I've made before. For those of you who have the misfortune to have listened to me regularly, well, forgive me. We have not ended up in the markets we're in by either accident or in historical inheritance. For good or for bad, we've made these choices. This is still a relatively young portfolio for us. In the main, this portfolio has been built in the last eight to nine years, and we've chosen markets that have a series of characteristics. Generally, they're markets that have very, very fragmented supply chains, because then that means there are thousands of suppliers, there are many buyers, and there is a need, a market need for a way of connecting those buyers and sellers.
In the main, we've chosen to operate in high-value markets, where the end margin for the manufacturer or the distributor is an attractive margin. You're not dealing in a thin margin, low oxygen environment, where understandably, the buyer or the seller has to concentrate on every dime and every dollar. What they're looking for is value, not volume. We've looked at international markets because that allows us to divert, use our international scale and our international reach. Markets that are offering structural long-term growth rather than high volatility. You'll see we're not really in any retail markets. We're in almost no B2C markets. None of these things are accidental. Markets where digital and data has a value and an increasing underpin. Those features have led us to a range of markets: healthcare, pharmaceuticals, technology, health, nutrition, engineering, maritime, beauty, finance, aviation, aerospace.
Importantly, I could give you another 10 categories that it has led us not to go into. The choice of the markets where we're specializing is also part of what gives us confidence that the macro environment for this business is good, but the portfolio that we've built also has long-term value. Underneath that, we're trying to build real specialism, real market knowledge. Be a citizen of the market which you are servicing, whether that is through research or analytics or a digital media presence, or a learning product, or a research product, or an event product. All of those things serve to enable us to understand the trends in the markets that we're serving, so that our products can be progressively more relevant to our customers.
At the increasing heart of all that is the data that allows us to look at trends, look at preferences, and look at our activities, to enable us to be able to re-serve the product up the following year or the following cycle in a better form. The same is true in the academic market. What do you have to believe to see this as a market that you should choose to remain in? Is there an increase in research output? Yes. Is there an increase in investment in original R&D? Yes. Is this a market which is globalizing, where there is an increasing sharing of knowledge across geographic boundaries? Yes. Is there a shift to more specialisms? Definitely, yes. Subject matter specialisms, both at primary education, secondary and tertiary, and postgraduate education increase year-on-year.
Is there a growth in further and advanced education globally, not just in the traditional markets of the United Kingdom and Europe and America? Yes, there is. Is there a shift in new products, open research, open science, formats, different product formats, electronic, digital, you know, chapter versions, archive versions, subject matter cross-setting? Yes, there is. All of that requires just product shift. It doesn't undermine the fundamental value of what you're doing or the underlying growth. The growth rates here are a little bit more moderated than in the B2B markets, nearer 3%-4% rather than 5%+, but nevertheless very attractive, with a very clear underlying demand, which we see manifested most visibly in download volume growth and in submission growth, both of which have been growing over time. A shift in the mix.
Less print, more digital, less institutional, more individual, less intermediaries, more direct, less products, more services, less librarian, more non-librarian, and a mix inside the inside the operating products of researcher services and advanced learning. Still an attractive market, and one in which I think we're becoming an increasingly more relevant provider of services. There will be no results presentation in 2023 that would be complete without a slight touch on artificial intelligence. The point that really we would seek to make here is, like many of our peers in this market, artificial intelligence has long been an operating reality inside our business.
Actually, most notably in our academic research business, where the use of artificial intelligence on authentication, validation, verification, plagiarism tests, sourcing, has been going on for some time. We are increasingly using artificial intelligence in our content areas, in our B2B business, whether it be on content generation in that market. We're not using it on content generation in our academic business, but we are definitely using it in our B2B business. We're using it on our websites, we're using it in our content, we're using it in our content summaries that we're producing pre, post, and after events, and we're also using it in some of our service elements at the customer provisioning length. This will continue, it will advance. The technology is definitely getting smarter.
I don't know about you, but I find myself often using ChatGPT as a search engine now, rather than other search engines that I won't name. The technology is getting more and more accessible and more and more usable. Is it a threat or is it an additive capability? We are firmly in that this is an additive capability if you're in a knowledge-based business. As Gareth said, to finish, where are we? We're firmly beyond COVID. I think that was clear even when we did our full year results in March. We laid out our guidance for the year.
I think it was clear at our June AGM, where by that point, China was open, and we could see the return of both Mainland China and Southeast Asia, which back in January of this year, one did not know, because the decision had not been made. Even then, we probably couldn't have predicted how fast that return would be. You see that again in our half year results, where we're now, I think, confident and comfortable that we'll be at the top end of our guidance for this year. More importantly, we can see growth into 2024 and beyond. Next year, we will have the first full year of 12 months with no country in the world closed, God willing.
We will have the first full year of ownership of the businesses that we have added in 2023. We will have an ability to speak to value to our customers, given the investments we've made in technology and data and market effectiveness. We will be able to relook at our pricing, given that really we entered 2023 on pricing, at least half of which was set in 2019. We will have a full year of our ability to further extract value from our increasing pool of data expertise and market understanding. The company is in good shape. We're leaning into our markets with confidence, and we very much look forward to questions. Thank you very much for listening.
I'll start by taking questions in the room, for those who are on the live stream or on the webcast, and, but I will come back, and move between both. If we can start with those in the room who have hands up. Let's go to the room's guests.
Morning, Steve Liechti from Numis. Just three from me, please. One is, can you just give us a feel for international visitors by region? You alluded to a bit, I guess, in your comments about travel, but just anything you can give us there, please. Secondly, you talked about China potentially being above 2019 levels. Can you just confirm that statement and maybe talk more broadly about Hong Kong and then broader Southeast Asia and your view there? Finally, just on Informa Tech, given a relatively lower growth rate there, do you see things improving or getting worse in the second half?
I think you alluded to the events skew. Maybe in the other businesses there, you know, is there a danger that maybe the lead gen could go negative or even hopefully you see anything getting better there? Thanks.
Okay, thanks, Steve Liechti. I think I'll try and take those, but I might ask you to come in on the end on international visitors if you've got more specificity than I've got to hand. I'll take them in reverse order. On Informa Tech, I mean, if you broke the overall performance down into a, into, if you like, category specifics, which just to be clear, is not how we run that business. We actually run that business on a market-facing basis. I'm not misrepresenting the numbers, but it's not, in many instances, how we sell the product or the revenue to the customer. To answer your question, our event franchises are all in significant double-digit growth year on year.
Whilst there is some bundled selling going on, you can see that number if you break it apart. Based on what we see today on forward bookings, we don't see any reduction in that demand. Our specialist research business, Omdia, similarly. Actually, interestingly in there, we started the year in that business, slightly tepid. The key metric there is the ACV, the annualized contract value, and the business development pipeline. Actually, in the last three to four months, that has picked up quite comfortably on both those metrics, and we would look at that business with, I think, probably the most forward visibility and comfort in growth. In digital media expenditure, that is already year-on-year a negative number.
I don't know if we know enough to know whether that will see a further decline. Based on the public numbers that other people who are more singularly in that business publish, our decline is lesser, but that could be because we're able to offer a bundled sell, if you see what I mean. We're often having a multilayered conversation with customers. In lead qualification, lead specification, audience development, those businesses are sort of just about flat to marginally negative. Again, it's difficult to tell based on where we are at the half year. I think our view at the moment is it's not going to get structurally worse, but we don't have any evidence yet to say we're at the bottom of what has been a choppy period. What's driving it?
Well, I mean, the issues facing the technology end sector, particularly in the United States of America, and that business is very much focused on the US market, are well documented. There's been a lot of personnel change, there's been a lot of budget reallocation, there's been a lot of shifting from one category to another. It's difficult to predict how long that will take, but, you know, you will have seen the numbers that are being posted in the US by some of the tech firms at the moment. The decision, our perspective on that market structurally, is that this is a squall, it's not a structural change. We remain committed to the market, and in fact, it might give us opportunity to double down. You see a little bit of that today in our pickup of Canalys.
That kind of speaks to that. China, you're right to pick it out that way, Steve. I mean, or in fact, Asia, the way we run that business, as you probably know, is mainland China is a business, and indeed in within mainland China, we actually operate it in three different entities. That we wholly own, that we own the majority of, and that are a series of joint ventures. All of those businesses are doing extremely well, and I will leave you to the break to have the direct conversation with the gentleman sitting behind you, who probably knows more about it than I do. I think we feel confident that those businesses will do well. Hong Kong is different.
Because it is much more dependent upon international, and international return rates are not yet back to 2019, to kind of cut into your first question, and certainly not in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong government are very keen to reintroduce Hong Kong as a global city to the world. And of course, Hong Kong is suffering to a degree, suffering is a big word, but is responding to two changes. One of which is the civil unrest, and the other is COVID, and so they've had double jeopardy, if you like. So the return pace rate in Hong Kong will likely take a bit more time. But there is support for that, where we and others are getting support from the city government around venue and promotion.
Significant support. Our judgment is you will begin to see international trade return, but it's not comparable to the rest of the world. Southeast Asia, very strong. Really very strong, a couple of those markets are really exciting as I think about future potential, Vietnam, Indonesia in particular, Thailand, and India. Our Southeast business, we feel extremely good about. You're right to pick it out, it's a mix. On international visitors, that is probably the part of the world where international is not yet back to 2019. That will take some time to rebuild. In the Middle East, I think it's, if you've been there, it's become the international melting pot for a whole variety of reasons, which we won't get into.
In North America, actually, international has never been such a big feature anyway. Actually, the numbers are pretty comparable, I think, on international. In Europe, I don't have them to hand. Gareth?
Yeah, I mean, first I want to say on the China, Hong Kong piece, agree with what you said there about the travel. Really for us, Hong Kong is a 2023 H2 dynamic. When we talk about China being strong in the first half, that's really mainland China, that we're referring to there. The Hong Kong events are really from September onwards, so that's an H2 dynamic. In the Middle East, which is obviously, you know, places like Dubai, very much an inward, bound international travel trade show business, and that the Middle East is back at kind of 60% international travelers coming in, which is where it was pre-COVID, in 2019.
Overall numbers you'd say are up there in that market versus 2019, assisted by international travel being back where it is in those markets. In North America, a higher domestic market, but numbers back there. Europe, I'd say, obviously the Europe, we never really regarded outside of the EU type travel as international because, you know, those travel boundaries reset quite quickly after COVID. Those shows have traded well in the first half and are booking well for the second half. I'd say overall, that's looking pretty strong in the mix.
One more question in the room, and then we'll go to the call. Give you a second.
Thank you. It's Fiona Orford-Williams from Edison. First of all, on pricing, can you give us some comment behind what's happening with inflation, both on your venue costs and what you're being able to achieve in terms of pushing price increases through across the group? My second question is about IIRIS and the data monetization. You talked about seeing this as a valuable asset. Are you thinking about that in the context of adding value to your existing customer relationships, or can you see a way to monetize it as a separate income stream? My third question is more specific, it's about Tahaluf. Joint venture, is it of a fixed-term contract? The LEAP event that you talked about, is that something that could be replicated elsewhere? Thank you.
Okay, great questions. Let's take Tahaluf first. There's no fixed term. It's an open-ended joint venture of which we own 51%, and we have 3 shareholders in the kingdom who are our partners. It is a joint venture. It's an independent entity. There's a board. I happen to chair it, but the deputy chair is one of the other shareholders, and we will run it as an entity, a unitary entity. Leap is an invention of that market, and therefore, the intellectual property is housed within Tahaluf. Now, in theory, we own the majority of it, but we would not do anything unilateral with that. It's not the nature of the partnership.
The idea behind Leap is very particular to the ecosystem that they're seeking to build alongside their approach to the technology and market. I don't know if you've been to Leap, you know, but if you go there. I mean, I've been to a whole range of technology events over my life. Leap is really very different. It's quite distinct around innovation and forward technology innovation, startups, applications. There is an infrastructure element to it and a service provider element to it, but it is quite specific to that market, and an extraordinary event. I mean, an extraordinary event. IIRIS and pricing, those conversations are really connected. Just to be clear, we never push prices through.
I'm not picking up on your words, but it's just, that's not how we run our business. We don't mean that in a kind of virtuous sense. It's just, it's not the nature of our business model, because we essentially operate both in our B2B markets business and in our academic markets business. You have to have a license to operate. Now, that's true in every business, but it's doubly true when you are a facilitator and an intermediary. That's true. That's the essence of being a publisher, and it's the essence of being an event organizer. One sure far way to pollute that business model is to push prices through. As you probably know, 'cause I, you have definitely had the misfortune of listening to me, before, we're quite cautious prices for that reason, and always have been.
I think that has served the business extremely well over the period. It would be a relatively easy thing for us to do, to just put our prices up for 2 years and take the benefit, but it would not necessarily produce a significant long-term annuity value, and that's really where the rating value is in our business rather than the earnings value in our business. In order to justify more value and create more value, genuine value, what do you have to do? You've got to give your customers more, and that leads you in part, not in whole, but in part, to IIRIS.
You've got to be better at marketing so that your buyer participation has got higher value, and that might allow you to take the value of that, either as a separate service, which you do price, or at a higher price for the space cost. We're pretty agnostic about where we take the revenue, but what we're very focused on is improving the value. You do have a little bit of a reset moment because we took a view post-COVID that...
You know, one of my colleagues, who should remain nameless, but let's call him Steve, because that's his name, said to me when we went to his event that we restarted, he said, "We've had the best marketing experience you can ever have, which is we prevented our customers having our product for three years, and now they can't get enough of it." There is some truth in that. Also, we took the view that there might be a possibility in some markets with some customers that they just got out of the habit or they'd found a replacement because they couldn't have it. It probably wasn't advisable to push your prices up to regain, in real terms, the pricing equivalent. There is a bit of a reset moment, but there'll be no pushing.
There'll be value behind it, and some of that value will be IIRIS, and some of it will be other things. That's the way we think about it. I do think if you're looking at our business 2023 on 2024, there's a value opportunity there, and I have a high degree of confidence that our customers would share that view. Can we take a question, Richard? I don't know how. Are we just gonna-
The operator.
The operator will do it. Is that Marcel? No? Who's the operator?
Naomi.
Naomi, can you hear me?
Hello, hello. I can hear you, Stephen. Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We have Thomas Singlehurst from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. It's Tom here from Citi, and apologies for not being there in person. Maybe an idea for an event next year is you could host all of the UK media companies results at the same time. I'm not sure there'd be that much money in that. First question, just on Saudi again, obviously, as you said, it wasn't there pre-COVID. Is there any quantification you can give on its size? Linked to that, given its structure, how does it work through? Is the revenue fully recognized, and there's a sort of non-controlling interest with a pay away at the bottom of the P&L? That was the first question. The second question would be specifically for Gareth, and it's a housekeeping thing.
Can you talk about non-controlling interest or minority expense to the full year, just a guide, given what's happening itself? The third one is on the outlook for tech. Obviously, this year is a subdued year. Presumably, given what we're seeing in, you know, from the U.S. tech names, the forward bookings are incredibly strong. Can you quantify that or can you confirm it? Should we expect above-trend growth first half of next year? Thank you.
Thanks, Tom. I think I got most of your question. I wasn't quite sure about what your comment was about.
Can you scale it?
Can we scale it? Yeah. Okay. It was that what was behind it. Richard is interpreting your question. We'd be very happy, by the way, to host a results event for the entire industry. I was just thinking what brand we could give to that event, and also how many lawyers we'd have to have in the room. On KSA, and on Tahaluf, we as part of the agreement, we inside the agreement, we have already identified a series of other market categories that we can move into. The next one will be commercial real estate. In fact, actually, knowing the calendar, the next one will be maritime, which is an increasingly important industry for them. We're moving into commercial real estate, which is a very important industry for them.
There's a series of others. I think it goes to a maximum. I'm looking at Peter. Is it eight or nine?
Ten.
10? 10 market categories that we've identified. There's a real opportunity either for brand creation, like LEAP, or brand transfer, like Cityscape in real estate or Black Hat in cybersecurity. There's a pathway to growth and markets that we've identified, and all of those are aligned to the country's Vision 2030 strategy as to where they're driving economic growth and making investments in infrastructure and creating industry ecosystems. I'll let Gareth talk on the specifics of how we account for the revenue, but you're broadly right and more generally on the controlling interests.
I think you'd be broadly right there, Tom, in terms of the accounting treatment around full consolidation of the revenue and OP, and then a non-controlling interest for the element that we don't control. On the non-controlling interests, yeah, agreed. On the full year basis, it's quite difficult to forecast outside in. We did about GBP 18.5 in the first half, I think we reported today, which is almost a 100% increase on 2022. For the full year, I'd probably guide something like GBP 45-GBP 50 overall, in terms of the number for the full year, which again, a sizable step up year-over-year.
On tech, if I think I understood your question, it was how are we thinking about next year versus this year overall? You see that in my last slide. I mean, we're guiding a kind of 7% plus for that portfolio. It obviously varies underneath it. This time a year ago, we would have said that would have been a double-digit growth business. There is some, you know, we're taking a, you know, a sort of sensibly cautious view about what next year might bring. That's still a 7% plus growth business. Given the end market conditions, we still feel good about that in 2024. As I say, if you take a structural view, 3 years, you know, we would be disappointed if it wasn't a notch higher than that.
Naomi, can we take a second question on the webcast, and then we'll come back into the room?
Back into the room.
There is-
Back into the room. No more.
No more. Okay, next question in the room.
Hi, it's Nick Dempsey from Barclays. Just looking at markets division. Obviously, a lot of growth this year, but we're back to 2019. You've got a midterm aim of 5%. Do we have 1 or 2 years in between, sandwiched between those two things, where the benefits of price that you're talking about can give us some confidence that you'll do more than 5% in 2024 and maybe 2025? Is that how we should think about that process? Second question, 30% margin in 2025. Are we saying now that we kind of top out at that level, and the only fluctuation beyond that is when biennials move it up or down each year? Last question, just in terms of the net debt EBITDA, if we're talking excluding leases, where do you feel comfortable getting to?
I think you mentioned, Stephen, not where you were before, could you get up to 2 times excluding leases, we've got that much to spend or where? Thanks.
Thanks, Nick. I'm sure there were other companies reporting today. We haven't given a specific forward number on net debt. I mean, you know our business very well. You know, historically, I think the world had settled around, you know, 2.5, 2-2.5, go to 3 for a real, you know, opportunity that you can deliver. We just haven't concluded on a hard answer to that question. My point was more that I think the world has slightly moderated its view, and candidly, money's got more expensive. I mean, as you saw, our cost of debt is at 3%, give or take. You know, it's not yet clear where the cost of money is going to settle.
I think we're being, we're just being sensibly measured about how we think about that, and I don't think we need to take a hard view. We've got enough headroom to enable us to do what we want to do, I think. That will enable us, I think, to do more additions to the portfolio and still feel comfortable in our balance sheet and our leverage position. Anything you want to add?
No, I think that's it. I mean, I think certainly at 1.2, 1.3 times, you're not butting up against that question, I think in short order. I think as we get, you know, closer to those sort of levels, then we'll talk about that more specifically as an area. At the moment, I don't feel the need at this stage to, you know, set up a target that, you know, at the moment, we don't really need to do.
On your first question, which I would broadly interpret as, would you like to increase the guidance that you've just given? No. You know, are we an ambitious company? Yes. You know, do we set out to do better than the targets that we, that we think are already stretching? Yes, but I think in the range, that would be a very powerful position. On the margin, I love answering margin questions, as you know. I think if we can get back to 30% margin with a little bit of year-on-year variation from biennials, that's a very strong position to be.
I think our responsibility actually is to use any excess on that, unless you can't see value in it, you know, to invest further in the product and the service to drive further top-line growth thereafter. It's not a theological view. We're not dogmatic about it, and if we hit a seam of gold that justified a higher margin, we take it. You know, growth and the pace of growth is, I think, our first focus. It's not our only focus, but it's our first focus. There were some questions over here. Whoever's holding the mic, Helena, I think there were two questions here.
Thank you. Is it on?
I think so.
It's, David Tait from Goldman Sachs. I've got two questions, please. Firstly, just a quick follow-up on China. With revenues potentially above 2019 levels this year, will it be the same for operating profit? If not, how should we think about the margin trajectory there in 2024 and 2025? Secondly, as you touched upon AI earlier, how do you protect your IP with respect to generative AI? How much of your content is proprietary?
Okay, two great questions. The answer on China is no, the profit, the margin won't be the same, but do you want to give the detail on that?
Sorry, say that again?
The question on China.
Margin question. I think we would say that, you know, the volumes are back at north of 100% in 2023 in mainland China. Probably a bit of growth still to come in Hong Kong around the international business travel point that we made earlier. In terms of the margins, you know, there's a back at sort of 2019 levels, I think we'd say overall for that business. It's a bit of a pricing dynamic. It's tended to be more of a volume market than a pricing-driven market. That is a bit of a dynamic around it, but we're comfortable with the margins overall in that business being back at 2019 levels.
On AI, I mean, in our academic business, our IP is a core part of that business, and we would protect that IP and seek to do so as we do. I think you can see that in the debates that are going on amongst AI practitioners and creators that, you know, creating a sensible framework of regulation around a new technology, I mean, that's not fundamentally a new thought. You know, I mean, there have been multiple new technologies that arrived over the period that have created potential, which you want to harvest, and some concern that you want to put guardrails around. I think the protection of original IP and certainly in research and development will follow. We would certainly seek to protect that.
Do we own all of our IP? I mean, we do, and our brands and our content are a big part of our B2B, shifting to B2B, of our, you know, of our strength. You know, the conversation about Saudi is a good example of that. You know, you can create new IP, like LEAP, but when you arrive with intellectual property like Black Hat in cybersecurity, which is a very established brand, both in as an event franchise and as a training credential, you definitely would want to protect that and ensure that that was being respected. That's a very clear focus for us. The gentleman here, I think, had a question.
Thank you. I had two questions for me. The first regarding the steps being taken to manage costs and improve operational efficiency, and also if you could expand on how foreign exchange volatility have affected the company's financials, and if any hedging strategies were also employed.
If any hedges were employed?
Any hedging strategies were employed?
Okay. Can you want to take the second one, Gareth? I'll come back to the first.
On the second one, yeah, how we very much look at our financing costs is trying to fix it in dollars, mainly. That's where we generate a lot of our cash flows, and therefore, we hedge the risk around that by being having interest rate swaps and swapping the currency into dollars and borrowing dollars. A lot of the markets we raise in are in euros, and so we do have to take out derivatives to get to that position. We're looking to think about how we grow our presence in more of in jurisdictions that operate and issue more in dollars as a way of going forward, of delivering that without the synthetic derivatives in between the debt and our payables.
Happy with that? Your question on costs and operational efficiency, help me understand what's behind your question.
Mainly improving operational efficiency throughout the company. I just wanted to know the steps being taken.
Sure.
Yeah. Part of that is, I mean, there are probably, I don't know, three ways. I was hoping my colleague, Patrick, would be here, but he's obviously decided to slope off just when the questions get tricky. There are three ways of thinking about that. The first is systems investment to improve automation and efficiency. We put a portion of that work on hold during COVID. If you followed our company, during COVID, we managed to reduce our costs by, you know, GBP hundreds of millions, but without, you know, materially reducing our headcount. Part of the way in which we did that was we basically put pause on a series of system improvements, which would have driven automation and process improvement across the business. You will see us return to those.
In fact, we already have and will continue to do so in 2024 and 2025. That'd be one area. The second, I think, is capabilities. As we diversify the business, we're moving into new products, new services, new offerings, and that requires a different skill set inside the business to be able to do that efficiently and effectively. That speaks to recruitment. Where do you hire, and indeed, where do you house some of those skills, either geographically or organizationally? Investment for system efficiency, a different skills and capability mix, and then, you know, thirdly, an increasing use of data and analytics to make what you're doing, whether it be in marketing or sales or product development, much more market and customer informed, so you've got just a faster route to market with a better return.
We're looking at all three of those. I would say we're making definitely good progress on the second and the third, and we're restarting the first in 23, and you'll see more of it in 24 and 25. Yep. Okay, if there are no more questions. Oops, there's one question in the room here.
Hi. Is that Yuliya Kryzhanovska, UBS. I think I've got a few, if I may. My first question is about the Informa Markets growth in June. Could you please talk a little bit more about, you know, you know, the reasons why it accelerated so much? Is it because of China events, or is there any other drivers? A follow-up question about the guidance for this year. The guidance implied, I think, similar revenues in H2 compared to H1, despite the Tarsus. Is it because, you know, you expect that H2 number of shows will be fewer or maybe there are any other reasons? My last question is about the new joint venture. Do you expect any cash inflows from that? Thank you.
When you say the joint venture, you mean Tahaluf?
Yeah. Yeah. Thank you.
Do you want to take all of those, Gareth?
I'm sorry, on Tahaluf, what was the specific point on Tahaluf?
Cash inflows. Will there be any cash inflows in the back half of the year?
Okay. I'll go through in the order that you asked them. In terms of Informa Markets, I think what you're referring to is the fact that if you look at the growth rate in the AGM trading statement and you look at the growth rate in the half year numbers, there's definitely a step up between the two. The other divisions are all comparable between the two. What that really is in China is a strong portfolio of events in mainland China in June in Informa Markets, and that because the events didn't operate in 2022, there's no comparative on an underlying basis, and that gives you a sizable step up in terms of the number. The rest of the business was broadly comparable between the AGM statement and the half year numbers.
In terms of phasing, you're right. kind of you look at the full year guidance and the half year revenue number, it broadly doubles to get to the full year guidance. That's a function of you. You do have a bit of a task that's upside in the second half, because some of their biennials that operate in odd years are in the second half, that gives you a bit of an uptick. You've got some things like Winsight in the first half of the year, which make it comparable. Revenue-wise, it's broadly consistent, H1, H2, although you'll see from the guidance, we're expecting a slightly lower OPM, operating profit margin number, in the second half of the year, compared to what we delivered in the first half, for the reasons that I outlined in the speech.
In terms of Tahaluf, we're in an investment stage with that business, as you'd expect. We're really making sure the shows land really effectively and are really a, you know, visual spectacle, particularly in their first year, or in LEAP's case, second year of operation. The profitability of that business is slightly lower in the first year, as you'd expect, but it's going rapidly to scale, as I think Steve's spoken to, and therefore, you'd expect the profitability to be, you know, stronger in the second year of operation.
In the first half, I wouldn't expect a material cash flow dynamic, from that business in the first year operation, I should say, while we grow that business and really make sure it lands effectively and, you know, has a good foundation to grow in its second year of operations rather than just winning in its first year.
Any further questions on the webcast? Naomi?
Call from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Thanks very much. Can you hear me all right?
Yep, we can.
Perfect. The first question is, do you think once you've finished with GAP 2, there'll be a GAP 3? I mean, it seems like you probably will. The second question is on pricing. Somebody asked about pricing earlier on, but I didn't hear any figures. I think last time you mentioned for 2023, pricing was up by about 5%. You know, from what I've heard from you before, it sounds like pricing for 2024 is gonna be better than 5%. If you could just comment on that. Lastly, on sustainability, somebody asked a question about this before, but is there any actual evidence that people are consolidating trips in order to go to, you know, B2B events rather than, you know, spreading their meetings around?
A bit of a truism, lots of companies who run events say: "Oh, well, you know, we're gonna be much more sustainable because, you know, people can visit, you know, just one event instead of, you know, going around visiting all these customers." Is there any actual evidence of that, or is that just something that event people like to say?
Okay. Well, let me take those, give Gareth a rest. Just take them in the order you asked them. On pricing, I know there's nothing I'd like to say that I haven't said. I think we are doing a good job of managing inflation input costs, partly through, to go back to the gentleman's earlier question about cost management, partly through discipline on cost management, partly through our increasing scale, which is making our conversations with our big cost inputs in that business, venues and general contractors. I think we're able to manage those costs pretty competitively. As we touched on earlier with Fiona's question, I think it's really a question for us to demonstrate value to our customers.
We feel confident in the value we're demonstrating, and you should see that in our 2024 and our approach to value and pricing in 2024. I think it would be inappropriate to put a percentage number on it. On sustainability and consolidation, there is evidence. We actually did a piece of research work around what we call travel consolidation. In, I'm gonna say certainly a double-digit number of major events to get hard data, if by your question you mean data evidence as to what proportion of the choice to attend was driven by the efficiency of travel consolidation, to your question.
Actually, there was pretty compelling data evidence that it was for nobody really was it the primary driver of attendance, but it was a significant underpinner in the sort of 20%, 30% reason to attend. We continue to track what we call, slightly clumsily, travel consolidation as an underpinning benefit in our post-show data analysis in a selected number of shows. We feel confident that we have enough hard data from our own portfolio to validate that. I think you're right in your comment that, you know, people who do what we do for a living like to say, "Well, that's an obvious benefit." We believe that we have got recurring data evidence that says it is a contributory benefit, it's not a primary benefit, and it's definitely not a differentiator versus other events.
As you all know well, the value of building the sort of event portfolio that we've built is more often than not, the question for the customer isn't, "Will I buy our event product or another event product?" It's, "Will I buy this event product or no event product?" We feel, I think, validated that the right approach to this question is, have the best brands in the first place, and we have very good brands. Invest in them for quality and value, and we're doing that, and therefore maintain their attractiveness and continue to check that travel consolidation continues to be a benefit.
You also have physical evidence that it's true, because when you go to an event, certainly, and I go to enough to, I think, for my comments not to be anecdotal, whenever you meet people, they're running from one meeting to 30 meetings a day. Over three to four days, that's highly efficient. That is a central value of a appropriately scaled event. At its heart, it goes to buyer selection and participation selection, that takes you back to data. If you can maximize the accuracy of your buyer attendance and the curation of your exhibitors, that doesn't mean you're doing a lot of meetings, it means you're doing a lot of meetings of value. That takes you back to your first question, which is pricing.
I think the evidence is there, but you can't point to a single percentage data point that says, 83% of people say their primary reason for going to an event is it saves them doing 20 meetings. I hope that gives you some answer.
Yeah, that's helpful. Thank you so much.
Not at all. Thanks for the question. Is there any other question, Naomi, on the webcast?
No, there are no further questions. I would like to hand it over to you, Steve.
Okay, I definitely know how to take no for an answer. Thank you very much for those of you who came in on the webcast. Thank you very much for those of you who came in person. For those of you in the room who are supporters of the company, thank you very much for your continued support. It's much appreciated, and it's good night from me and good night from him.