Hello, and welcome to the RELX Trading Update call. Participants will be in a listen-only mode to begin with and will be able to ask questions later on by pressing star one. I would now like to hand the call over to Chief Financial Officer Nick Luff. Please go ahead.
Thank you, operator, and morning everyone. As you'll have seen from our press release this morning, RELX delivers underlying revenue growth of 9% in the first nine months of 2022, up from 6% in the same period last year. As we enter the final quarter, momentum remains strong across the group, and we continue to expect full-year underlying growth rates in revenue and in adjusted operating profit, as well as constant currency growth in adjusted earnings per share to remain above historical trends. Turning to the performance of each business area. In Risk, underlying revenue growth was 7%, in line with the first half and on top of the particularly strong growth of 10% that we reported in the first nine months of last year. In Business Services, which represents around 45% of revenue, growth has remained strong.
In Insurance, representing nearly 40% of revenue, the improvement in momentum that we reported at the results in July has continued, with growth rates currently running in line with historical trends. For the full year, we expect strong revenue growth in line with historical trends, with underlying adjusted operating profit growth broadly matching underlying revenue growth. In STM, underlying revenue growth was 4%, in line with the first half. Primary research has continued to grow well, with a number of articles submitted and published remaining ahead of last year's elevated levels. Databases and tools and electronic reference, which represents nearly 40% of divisional revenue, has continued to grow strongly. For the full year, we expect underlying revenue growth to remain above historical trends, with underlying adjusted operating profit growth slightly exceeding underlying revenue growth.
In Legal, underlying revenue growth was 5%, up from 4% in the first half. The improvement in growth was driven by the further development and uptake of legal analytics, with renewals remaining strong and new sales continuing to show positive momentum. For the full year, we expect underlying revenue growth to remain well ahead of historical trends, with underlying adjusted operating profit growth continuing to exceed underlying revenue growth. In Exhibitions, underlying revenue growth was 85%. Revenue growth has been driven by a significant increase in face-to-face activity as venues have reopened across most geographies, with digital tools supporting our physical events. For the full year, we expect strong underlying revenue growth, while the operating result will continue to benefit from the structurally lower cost base. With that operator, we are ready for questions.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Please ensure your line is unmuted locally, as you'll be advised when to ask your question. Once again, that's star one if you would like to ask a question. The first question comes from the line of Sami Kassab from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, Nick. Good morning, everyone.
Hi, Sami.
Thank you, Nick. I have the three usual questions. First one, can you provide us with a geographic breakdown of RELX's headcount, possibly by regions, North America, Europe, UK, Asia, rest of world would be fantastic? Secondly, does your guidance in risk imply some sort of acceleration in Q4? And why would that be the case? Why would Q4 be stronger? Lastly, can you please provide us an update on RX Chinese shows for the rest of the year? Do you expect November and December shows to go ahead? Thank you, Nick.
Okay. The geographic headcount, there is some analysis in the annual report actually. So I'm not sure I can remember the exact numbers, but we have about 40% of the headcount is in the U.S. I guess about just under 20% in the U.K. And then the rest split between continental Europe and Asia. There is an analysis in the annual report. If you, I think note six, I think. Your question about Risk in the fourth quarter. As we said in the statement , Business Services continues to remain strong. We are seeing improving trends in Insurance with growth rates there now back in line with historical trends.
Clearly it's a transactional business to a fair degree in Risk, so we can't see exactly what's gonna happen in the last couple of months of the year. Obviously we do know that the comparative from last year, it does get a little easier in that we've had those very strong revenues in the first nine months or first half really of last year, which obviously have a less of an impact as you get through to the full year. That's the dynamics as we enter into the fourth quarter. Your question on Exhibitions in China. We have been running events in China. We ran a couple in Shanghai in September. Clearly there remains uncertainty. Looking forward, I think it's hard to know.
Elsewhere in the world, you know, everywhere is up and running and operating in a reasonably predictable manner. China's not a huge part of our overall portfolio.
Thank you very much, Nick.
My pleasure.
The next question comes from the line of Nick Dempsey from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Yeah. Good morning, Nick. I've got three questions. The first one, we do get a few questions on how the transactional component of Business Services, specifically inside Risk, will be impacted by a U.S. downturn. I don't know if you can help us out by talking through the kinds of transactions you're exposed to and where those would be impacted by weaker macro. Second question, one of you give us a quick update on the debt you have coming up for refi in the next couple of years, and whether we should expect a notable impact on net interest from the rate environment moving up. Third one, just on Legal. You pointed to momentum in analytics and good new sales in the release. Is inflation also helping your ability to drive higher increases in renewals?
Because it seems like quite a remarkable step up now, if it's just coming from actions that you're doing on your product base.
Yeah. Okay. The first question on transactional revenue in Risk. Obviously Insurance is very transactional. It's sort of 90% transactional revenue. Business Services is more sort of 60/40 with firm subscription. On Insurance, based on experience of the last downturn, the volumes actually went up rather than down in the recessionary environment. Of course, as we said in the statement, we have seen a pickup in activity levels in Insurance quite recently. That's sort of different dynamic than you might expect. On Business Services then, you know, I think there are some parts of the revenue base that, you know, if there's a deep recession might be impacted. You know, certainly more muted and delayed compared to many others.
We're not exposed to any significant degree to the mortgage market, for example. We no longer do employment screening. You know, there's no advertising revenue left in the Risk business, which there used to be many years ago. Very different business profile to what we had at the time of the last significant downturn. You know, obviously we're not seeing anything in the revenues at the moment that would suggest there's any impact from changing economic environment. You can see there's good momentum in the business right now. On the debt refinancing, we have a couple of maturities in the next couple of years.
You know, we've got about $800 million of debt maturing next year, although some of that's at quite high rates. You know, I think it's over 4%, some of it over 6%. So not particularly different to current rates. There's a billion or so in 2024, which is at lower rates, but we'll see where rates have got to by then. True that I would say that the more significant impact in terms of the more rapid impact is from the floating rates. You know, we do have 40%, 45% of our debt at floating interest rates. Clearly we have seen quite rapid increase in floating rates through this year.
Right now the average cost of our debt is running at about 3.4%, having been 2.3% in the first half. You know, it looks like it's gonna average 2.8%-2.9% for the full year with that run rate at 3.4% as we go into next year, subject to what floating rates do from here. Your last question on Legal and inflation. No, I think we shouldn't say there's anything in these growth rates for inflation. Clearly, most of the revenue that we're recording at the moment is under agreements that were signed some time ago before inflation became that significant. It is coming from the rollout and the adoption of analytics tools.
We are seeing good traction, good take up, as we introduce those new products and roll them out across the customer base.
That's great. Thanks.
Hope that helps.
The next question comes from the line of Adam Berlin from UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Nick.
Hi, Adam.
Adam Berlin from UBS. Got three questions if that's okay. The first one is on STM. I think you made the comment in the note that article submissions and articles published are above last year's high levels. Are they still growing at the same rate, or do we take that to mean the growth rate has slowed a little bit as the year's gone on versus the very high growth rates we saw last year? That's the first question. Second question on exhibitions. For the three kind of big regions, you're in Europe, North America, and Japan, can you give us your view on where we are versus 2019 in terms of revenue as a percent of 2019 for those three regions? Either for the most recent quarter or for the nine months, whichever is easier.
Third, just following up.
Mm-hmm.
On your point about finance costs in 2023, which is you very helpfully gave us this runway of 3.4% as an average cost. Can you tell us what floating rates you're exposed to? Is it LIBOR? Is it the U.S. federal funds rate? Of the 40%-45% floating, can you kind of split that by which where you have the exposure? That'd be very helpful. Thank you.
Okay. The first question on articles in STM, I think it was actually 2020 that saw the very sharp spike in pick up in submission rates. That was sort of the COVID impact. At least our interpretation is people couldn't get into their laboratories, and so therefore wrote up their research and then submitted it. Then for the last year and this year, the volumes have remained at those elevated levels. You know, you almost had three years growth in one in 2020, and then it sort of stayed up at those levels, which just, you know, shows the underlying strength and you know, the importance and continued pace at which scientific research is being published.
Your second question on exhibitions and regionally, I think it does vary quite a lot from event to event. You know, we're actually getting very positive reaction from both exhibitors and attendees as we're able to run events. Participation rates have improved steadily through the year. Globally, we're on a sort of like-for-like basis at about 75%-80% of pre-COVID levels year-to-date, and that is you know steadily improving. Some events now you know above their 2019 levels. Overall, it doesn't vary. That 75%-80% doesn't vary hugely between regions. It does between events, but if you average it out across all the events, it's broadly close to that sort of level.
Your last question was on interest rate exposures. Our debt is split roughly 50/50 between dollars and euros. We don't have any sterling debt. The floating rate debt is more in dollars, so the most important thing is the federal funds rate. If you're looking at forward rates and whatever the market implies, then you should look at the federal funds rate.
Sorry, Nick, do you mind if I just ask one follow-up on Exhibitions?
Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah.
When you talk about 75%-80% participation versus 2019, is that a good proxy for revenue or does revenue kind of-
Yeah.
Lag participation a little bit?
Yeah. It's roughly that, whether you're looking at attendees, exhibitors, revenue. They're all roughly in that sort of range.
Thanks very much.
Next question comes from the line of Omar Sheikh from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Morning, everyone. I just had a couple of questions, actually. Just maybe starting on Insurance, Nick, if I could. You mentioned we've talked about Insurance, yeah, improving from the H1 stage. Could you maybe just talk a little bit about what's driving the improvement in transactional revenues with Insurance and how sustainable you think that is into Q4 and into next year? Just wanna get a better understanding of what's happening there. Secondly, just on Exhibitions again, when do you think if you look at the business ex-China, when do you think you're gonna get back to 100%, given what you can see today? You know, how are you thinking about the next sort of 12-18 months? That'll be helpful to get some context. Thanks.
Yeah. The first question on Insurance, there's lots of factors that go into driving transactional volumes, driving patterns and how they affect claims, which I think, as we said, we're sort of have been improving since the early part of this year. Car transactions have an impact, both new and used car sales, which often prompt activity in the insurance market. There with those, there was a drop-down in the middle of last year and, you know, we're now lapping significantly lower numbers. The impact of that drop-off in car transactions has sort of come out of the numbers now, which is helping insurance carrier activity and what they're doing with their pricing and their marketing.
Obviously it's been a you know with driving patterns and claims dropping significantly in COVID and then coming back as people started driving again. It's made it quite a choppy environment for insurance carriers. That's settled down and they're getting back to more normal levels of marketing activity and how they're moving their pricing. All those things feed into it. It tends to move in relatively long cycles, the Insurance market you know perhaps compared to Business Services. It moves a bit more slowly in terms of the cycles.
Yeah, I think the improving momentum we've seen right the way through this year and in an activity in sort of shopping and switching in the last few weeks in the second half as we come into the second half has been very positive. Your second question on Exhibitions. Our focus is all on running events when we can. We're staying flexible with the calendar and, you know, pleased to see the level of activity we've managed to achieve. Our focus is very much on how do we keep improving the events as we run them? How do we seize the digital opportunity that is increasing? It's exactly what that means relative to history. I think we don't focus on so much.
Okay. Makes sense. Thanks a lot.
The next question comes from the line of Silvia Cuneo from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Nick. I would also like to ask three questions. The first one is a follow-up on Legal. You reported further improvement in underlying revenue growth driven by legal analytics. Can you please remind us on the typical renewal patterns in a year and also about the new sales positive momentum? Can you please comment about how much visibility that this gives into 2023? Second, a bit of a higher level question. When thinking about subscription-driven revenues, can you please remind us of the typical contract length and if there are any automatic price renewals linked to inflation? Finally, within STM, primary research continued to grow well with the number of articles submitted and published still ahead of last year. Can you please comment also on the specific trends for open access articles and their share within the mix? Thank you.
First question on renewal patterns in legal. There isn't really a renewal season, perhaps unlike STM. It does vary a bit through the year, but it varies depending on when the customer first signed up. There's renewals going on all the time. When we're commenting on renewals being positive, then that's sort of current comment. New sales and uplifts to existing customers and taking on new modules is what's driving the growth. It's largely a subscription business, so that does give you quite good forward visibility. Your question on subscription revenue and sort of inflation linkage.
I won't say never, but I don't think any of our contracts at any scale have direct links to inflation built into them. They will often have escalators, but that's because typically volumes are rising, whether you're talking about number of scientific articles or number of legal cases, number of downloads, whatever metric you care to use. There typically will be assumed volume increases and therefore is built in some increase in overall revenue coming from the contract. Rarely, if ever, would it be directly linked to RPI or anything or any other inflation index. Your last question was on open access articles. Yes. I mean, open access does continue to grow strongly.
I think at the half year we said open access volumes were up 40%, in that sort of range. They've, they remain at that sort of level. Obviously, we've been launching, continuing to launch journals, dedicated author pays open access journals. We're strategically wanting to make sure we've got good coverage of all the branches of science, all the disciplines, and all the quality tiers, such that there's always somewhere within the Elsevier journal that a scientist can, you know, if they, if they've got good science that can be published, we'd like to publish it in an Elsevier journal. That's what we're doing, and that's what's helping drive that very strong growth in open access volumes.
Great. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Matthew Walker from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thanks a lot. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Nick. I've got three questions, please. The first is on the recent announcement by the OSTP and the states about federally funded articles open access from 2026. Can you give us your reflections on what that might mean for revenue? If you think it means that by that point, you know, significant portion of the world's articles will be free. Is there any risk of people asking for discounts on remaining subscription journals or, yeah, any thoughts you could give us on that transition? Just in the quarter or in the nine months STM, I think in the first half, you commented that print decline was running at roughly half of the normal level.
You didn't make any comment in the statement this time. Could you give us an update on where print is in, is running in STM? The last question is on events. For exhibitions, what are rebookings looking like for 2023? What sort of margin do you think you could achieve in 2023 for exhibitions?
Okay. Let's see if I get to those. The first question on the OSTP announcement, for those that are familiar, this was a guidance being issued to U.S. federal agencies that fund scientific research and giving some guidance on the publication of that scientific research or articles based on that scientific research, how it should be done. It only comes into effect in 2026 or for research that starts in 2026. The lag after that, before you get to the publication, on the OSTP numbers, they cover something between 7%-9% of the world's scientific articles.
Of course, a significant proportion and an increasing proportion of those are already published on an open access basis, and that will continue to go up. I don't think we see it as a significant change in the overall direction and trend. Clearly it's a shift in payment model between author pays and subscription or from subscription to author pays. But that's something that's been going on for some time and is obviously reflected in the financial performance of the business today. Your second question on print decline STM. Yeah, good question. We actually did not see the normal level of print decline in the first nine months. We called it out at the half year, and that remains the position today.
Clearly, the growth rate you're seeing does have a small benefit in it from not having that normal print decline. Against that, I would remind you that we had some tough comparatives 'cause of quite strong growth in the first nine months of last year. By the full year, the fourth quarter, the growth was slightly lower last year, so the comparative gets a little easier. We'll see what happens in the final three months. Your last question on Exhibitions and rebookings. We are seeing strong appetite to get back to face-to-face events.
The people want to see the value in coming to exhibitions and want to be there, you know, when they're confident we can run them. It obviously does vary from geography to geography and it varies from sector to sector, but overall, the picture is positive. Yeah, I'm not gonna start speculating on next year's margin. You know, we're focused on seizing this opportunity from the reopening and, you know, building on it with the digital tools that we're offering.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you so much.
The next question comes from the line of Matti Littunen from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Hello, good morning. First question on Legal. You mentioned the new product boost there. Would it be possible to identify the specific contribution from Lexis+ into the underlying growth this year? In Risk, I just wanted to check whether the growth for the acquisitions, ThreatMetrix and Emailage, is it still tracking in line with H1? Finally on Exhibitions, other than the China question you already covered, are there any sort of sources of sort of uncertainty into Q4, maybe the pacing of events which you know mean that we shouldn't kind of project the underlying growth for the nine months so far into the full year? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. The first question about Legal and Lexis+ in particular. The key driver of the growth and the improved growth in Legal is the development and rollout of analytics tools. Lexis+ is an important component of all that, but it's a platform and a packaging and a way of presenting and making the analytic tools accessible. It's a brand name, it's a marketing position. We are getting good adoption of Lexis+. Virtually all new customers take Lexis+ and most renewing customers switch to it, but they're doing it because that's what gives them the ease of access to the analytic tools. It's the analytic tools underlying it that are the key driver of growth.
Your second question on Risk and ThreatMetrix and Emailage. Yes, you know, the Fraud and Identity segment continues to show strong demand, and the electronic identity tools such as ThreatMetrix and Emailage continue to do well within that. Between them, they're currently growing but currently running close to 20%. So obviously, as they've got bigger, the dollar growth has remained good. Obviously, as a percentage of the base it's not quite as high as it was when they were smaller, but still growing very well. Your final question on Exhibitions and nine months to full year.
The only comment I'd make is just remember, of course, that in the first half of last year there was very little face-to-face activity, and by the second half we were somewhat busier. The dollar base gets bigger as you go through the remainder of the year, which obviously will impact percentage growth rates. I, you know, have given you an indication of how individual events are doing on a like-for-like basis compared with their pre-COVID level. You know, remember that we kept in our portfolio ongoing events that represent about 90% of the revenue base. We dropped some of the more marginal events. I've given you an indication of how they're doing on a like-for-like basis.
That's probably your best starting point.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from the line of Tom Singlehurst from Citi. Please go ahead.
Well, thank you very much. Yes, Tom here from Citi.
Hi, Tom.
Hey. Two questions, if that's okay, both on exhibitions, I'm afraid. I completely understand the point you're making about each show being individual and also that 2019 really is ancient history, and we shouldn't focus on it so much. I guess equally there's no reason why 2019 should be a ceiling rather than a, you know, relative to being a floor. The question is this, for the next 12 months, can you just confirm, you know, how many exhibitions you're gonna be running, or at least the percentage change in the number of exhibitions you're gonna be running relative to 2019 levels?
Such that if we assume that attendance is approaching historic levels, you know, what sort of level of structural shortfall in revenue should we expect given there are just fewer shows happening, relative to where we were in 2019? That was the first question. The second question, and I completely understand your reluctance to comment on margin for 2023. That makes a lot of sense given you don't know where the revenue is gonna be. You had previously sort of talked about a sort of fixed level of cost, or at least, the fact that you'd taken out some costs. I just wanted to double check that there was no reason why those costs wouldn't come back in if indeed growth, you know, continues to be strong and may even surprise on the upside. Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. I think on comparison to 2019, as I've said, we did rationalize the portfolio of events. We kept events, if you weighted by revenue, that represent 90% of the 2019 base. There's your starting point, and I'll take your view as to exactly how they'll do relative to them on a like-for-like basis with that, starting at that 90% of history. On the second question on margin, you know, we did take out a significant part of the overhead base. That was a permanent structural change. Clearly, the cost base will change to some degree over time and depending exactly which events we're running where. But we do expect to retain the benefit of that structural reduction in the cost structure.
On a like-for-like basis, that would ultimately give you a better margin business.
Got it. That's very clear. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hey. Good morning. I only have two questions. First, on Legal, assuming that sort of 5% or maybe 5%-6% could potentially be the new normal, what do you think happens to, like, operating leverage and margin? Because obviously this segment is still the lowest margin segment of the group. Is it fair to assume we should start to see meaningful improvement margins going forward, converging with some of the other businesses? That's the first question. Second, on Exhibitions, obviously, you know, it feels like, you know, consensus has about 80% organic growth next year. I think should normally imply that we're going back to 100% of 2019 level, adjusted for, obviously, the shows you have pruned.
How do you think about the seasonality or how the macro would impact events? Obviously, 2009, you were down 15%. I think revenue mix might have changed a little bit, but just curious to see, for instance, how that could affect 2023 and actually even 2024, if, for instance, number of attendees were to go down a lot next year and how that impacts, I don't know, how the exhibitors might think about rebooking for 2024. Thank you very much.
Okay. Yeah. First question on legal and margins. Look, our primary focus is on continuing on this path of improving organic growth in Legal. That does mean putting the resource behind the growth opportunities through product development, new product development of new analytic tools, and rolling those out across the customer base. Our approach in Legal is the same as it is across the group, which is to always ensure that cost growth is, on an underlying basis, below revenue growth. That certainly applies in Legal. All other things being equal, if you achieve that, of course, subject to variations year to year through currency and M&A and things, but all things being equal, that will drive incremental margin improvement and, you know, that remains the objective.
I wouldn't say that changes that dynamic changes because the growth rate has gone up. On Exhibitions and the macro, I think it's gonna be very hard for us to identify any overall economic impact. Clearly, it would. It varies significantly from sector to sector and geography to geography. The key drivers at the moment are ability to run events, international travel, and how events are doing when they get back to the right place in the calendar and things like that. Those are more significant drivers of the result. It's hard for us to separate out whatever economic impact there might be.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Sarah Simon from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Sorry, I've got a few more. First one, still on Exhibitions. You've talked about the level of revenue recovery and so on. Can you talk about whether there's any difference in terms of the rate of recovery of the exhibitor-specific revenues as opposed to the ancillaries? 'Cause obviously those have tended to be a bit more kind of cyclical. I'm wondering if those have recovered as quickly as the revenues that you're getting from, you know, renting space to exhibitors. Second one was just on Legal. What proportion of revenue is coming from analytics and tools?
The third one was just on STM, and I know you never comment on specific deals, but can you just confirm that your arrangement or lack of arrangement with Germany is still the case in terms of Project DEAL? You haven't reached an agreement with them. Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, on Exhibitions, the additional value through, particularly through digital and data to exhibitors, so they can get maximum value out of attending an event is clearly a key part of our overall strategy. That is reflected to some degree in the underlying revenue that we get for the rental of the space. Some of it we charge for separately, but I don't think I'm able to separate out the different revenue streams.
I'm thinking more actually about things like marketing and sponsorship. Whether that's recovered as quickly as attendance?
Yeah. I mean, it's the key is holding the events. If the events are on, then the mix of revenue is very similar to what we've seen historically.
Okay.
Other than we're driving it towards, you know, more digital tools and more support from a strategic point of view.
Mm-hmm. Okay.
Sorry, your second question on Legal was the proportion of..
I was just wondering what proportion of revenue is coming from analytics now, given that this is..
Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah
the key driver.
Yeah. Yeah. It's obviously, it's a little tricky to measure that, because some of the digital tools are built into the core platform and available for everyone to use. I think we would say 25%+ of the revenue is coming from products that have a significant analytic feature to them, something like that.
Okay.
On your third question, you're quite right. We don't comment on individual countries or individual negotiations or contracts.
Okay.
I can't help you.
All right.
There are no further questions in the queue, so I will hand the call back to your host for some closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us this morning. If you have further questions, I'm sure you'll come back to us. Thank you very much.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.