One of the biggest questions in information services, and particularly legal information services, is generative AI. You guys have made a big investment, a big commitment to generative AI. My question is: do you feel like your generative AI products will end up being separate products and a module and will be a, a module that you charge separately for, like the way Microsoft is trying to do right now? Or do you feel like this is an enabling technology that's just going to drive overall innovation, and you're just going to sell products with at higher price points as they're more valuable?
Well, it's certainly not something we're just going to sort of you know, slip in as a normal course of business. You know, we made a significant investment. We've committed to spend $100 million a year or so in our generative AI activities. In terms of organic investment, we bought what we think is an extraordinary set of assets and capabilities through Casetext. We launched last night, to your point about legal, we launched our generative AI suite last night down at downtown, and we had about 5,000 online participants in that launch.
We had 250 attorneys in the room, and, let's just say that the sort of reactions to, to those products was some gasps in the room in terms of the step forward that it brings. So, with something like Westlaw, where we've launched Westlaw, Westlaw Precision AI, there's a pretty significant step up in price from Precision to the AI version. Same with Practical Law. Whereas CoCounsel, that we bought from the Casetext group, that's an entirely new set of activities for us. It's about drafting and document review and production of timelines and in-depth legal analysis.
So, I don't know whether that answers your question, Andrew, but we see this as, firstly, a way in which to achieve another step change improvement in our core flagship products, and secondly, a pathway for us to play a much broader role, in the lives of an attorney, be they in-house or outside counsel, and play a key role in terms of the transformation of the profession.
So you might not love, love this question, but so I want to-
Of course.
kind of understand the organizational design of Thomson with, with Casetext, and I'm going to make an analogy to another company which might not be fair. So Kensho at S&P Global are really kind of... That's their AI organization serving the other divisions, and that has proven successful over time at S&P Global. It just seems to me that Casetext is not taking that organizational design, that it's more, like, integrated into the businesses as opposed to separated from the businesses. Is that a fair portrayal, and why did you make that choice, given that there was some track record in the info services space for, you know, making sure that there's a catalytic effect of AI acquisitions?
Well, I think there's a couple of things you've got to bear in mind. The first is that we've been investing heavily in advanced machine learning and AI for over 30 years. So, so Thomson Reuters, well before I joined, Thomson Reuters put a high-functioning search algorithm on the front of Westlaw in the early 1990s, before Google was invented. So this is not, you know, it's not as if sort of this is our AI group. We have close to 250 people in our TR Labs group who are deep experts in machine learning and AI, and deep experts in generative AI. So Casetext is a turbocharger and an add-on to that, firstly. Secondly, we have a playbook around acquisitions, which has worked well with Practical Law and HighQ and Confirmation-
Mm-hmm.
Most recently, SurePrep, and now Casetext, which is we take a great new product, and we push it through our distribution. And that means we can afford to pay a higher price on the way in, and extract the benefit for our customers and ultimately our shareholders. And that's a playbook that we respect and always look to pursue. So, you know, we're looking for Jake Heller and Laura Safdie and Pablo and Ryan and a bunch of other people who've come through Casetext to play bigger roles within TR. They're not being sort of, you know, pushed down with the organization, but this is very much something that we are integrating into everything we do, and it's not just legal.
So the capabilities that Casetext bring in terms of combining unique and proprietary datasets with large language models is something that we'll apply to tax and accounting, and we're looking at applying it to risk, fraud, and compliance, and ultimately areas like ESG and news.
Right. But do you feel like there's going to be people who still feel like they work at Casetext, or is it really just integrated in, and we have to make the whole Thomson entrepreneurial, like Casetext?
Well, I think, I mean, in my view, every acquisition's a little bit different. You know, this is not a sort of a regional bank roll-up, where there's a playbook, and you just move through it like the Marines. I think every one we do is slightly different. You know, Dave Wyle, who formed SurePrep, you know, he's just taken on a new role of leading our audit, all our audit-related activities and our audit incubator. Jake Heller is a very important part of our product group, in addition to being the CEO of Casetext within. So I think everyone is slightly different, Andrew, but what we want to make sure is-...
You know, we have a very clear line of sight as to how our shareholders are going to benefit from any acquisition, and that the talent that comes with an acquisition views TR as a bigger playing field and a bigger sandpit that they can do great work around. And I think one of the things that gives us some optimism around Casetext is Jake had created a very purpose-driven organization. You know-
Yeah.
It was the application of AI and technology to create access to justice, and that syncs up really well with, with TR's purpose.
Okay.
Steve, I'd add, if you look at SurePrep at the beginning of this year and Casetext in August, I think it's fair to say we've kept nearly everyone and all the key players we wanted to keep from both so far.
I don't want them just to be kept. I want them to be, you know, energetic.
Good point.
Okay. Mike, how about the legal segment? Like, do you feel like legal, Organic Constant Currency Revenue Growth could accelerate from here, and what would it, what would it take?
We definitely do, Andrew. As we look at the September results for Westlaw Precision, and we look at the premium that it generated, it was definitely higher. And as we go into Q4, we're seeing a similar trend with that. Obviously, it takes time for that book of business to be recognized as revenue in the fourth quarter and as we go into 2024. But as we go into 2024, we see a step-up in the legal professionals' organic growth quarter-over-quarter. So we're quite optimistic, and it's not just Westlaw Precision, it's also Practical Law that Steve just referenced, and HighQ that we acquired back in 2019. All three of those really foundational assets are performing quite well, which gives us confidence we'll see continued momentum in legal professional.
It's funny, I don't quite get the math right. So you just said legal in 2024, organic constant currency should accelerate, and one of the key drivers is Westlaw Precision. Like, I think Westlaw Precision is adding 100 basis points to organic revenue growth within legal already. So I guess you're saying it's going to add more than that, you know, going forward.
Yes, it's a good point, Andrew. We've consistently stated that Westlaw Edge provides that 100 basis points. We see that actually increasing, Andrew, from a math perspective, as we go into calendar year 2024. So we'll see a continued step up.
Okay. That's, that's fine. Also, as I said before, this should be an open forum, or else I'm about to switch to tax and accounting, if someone wants to ask a question on legal product suites and stuff like that. Okay.
Let me just-
Mike, do you have a-
Let me just add a comment on legal.
Yeah.
I think, you know, what we see is a profession that for, you know, arguably sort of 300 or 400 years, it's stayed largely the same. We see that profession on the cusp of pretty significant transformation. And our role in that will be to provide content-driven technology to sort of facilitate that, to make the end work products better, to reduce the cycle time to produce them, and ultimately to improve the sort of working lives of attorneys. You know, whether that's in a general counsel's office or whether that's in-house, whether that's in the court system or the attorney general, all of those customer sets. We're in active conversations about how we fulfill that role.
So, you know, we'll come back at our Investor Day on March twelfth and talk more about sort of what that does to our TAMs. But as we sit here, I think to Mike's point, we feel pretty excited about, most particularly, our early start with these product innovations and most importantly, the customer reaction to those.
So you talked about it kind of improving the life of an associate in a law firm with these tools. Like, this is how I've heard it, heard it from the industry, is that an associate in a law firm gets put on a new assignment. They don't even really know what the main questions of the case is, and that Casetext helps them get to, like, what are the questions? And then you go back into Westlaw, so you go: Okay, what's the precedent on these key questions? Does that resonate with you?
Yes. Yes, it does. Casetext, the CoCounsel, and the skills in terms of document review, drafting timelines, are a broader set of skills that help an attorney sort of zero in on the key issues. And then Westlaw Precision AI enables them to get the best research-driven work product done, and Practical provides the know-how for particularly for transaction attorneys, as an example.
Okay, so we'll get the question over there. If he announces it without a mic, just question.
... issue, where have you guys seen, I know you were excited about the attendance of, of your launch of your AI product, but have you done any surveying or anything that kind of talks to the broader legal industries, where you're saying-
And user adoption?
Yeah.
Yeah. So we launched an effort earlier this year called the Future of Professionals, where we interviewed in depth about 1,200 professionals, in particularly lawyers and tax and accounting professionals, across geographies and industries. And 67% of them felt that their profession will be fundamentally transformed by generative AI and related technologies. And with that came an openness to experiment with it, to learn. Those numbers are extraordinary, sort of relative to those particular, you know, the sort of trend lines that we've seen in serving those industries and those professions for years. So look, it will be, as it always is, somewhat varied.
You know, some folks, particularly younger attorneys, will be more open-minded about adopting technology, whereas, you know, the sort of the oldest litigators will ensure that others are sort of doing that work and interfacing with the technology. But I do think the, you know, the adage that none of us will be replaced by AI, but we could well be replaced by someone using AI. I think that is very much taking hold in the professions that we serve.
All right. And with that in mind, like, do you feel like you're gonna still add, you know, kind of in-house curators, lawyers to your headcount? Or do you feel like, given the AI, you could just get increased productivity from the people you have?
Yeah, I mean, this is a, this is a key strategic conversation for us, Andrew. And I think, you know, when we started this journey, I think it was unclear as to, as to the value in a, in a world of large language models around proprietary, unique data sets. I think that has become clearer and clearer. And so with that in mind, we, we as, as part of that, part of that significant investment and the step-up investment, is making sure that our content is the deepest and broadest it can be and that it's usable in this environment. And so, that's a big part of our sort of competitive moat and something we plan to continue to invest in.
Makes sense. So switching to tax and accounting, the one thing that I've always thought about is that there's just more competitors in tax and accounting, and I know in Westlaw, you pride yourself in being in the top market position, Practical Law, top market position. And here, you're in a place where you really do have competitors, some of which are larger than you. And I know it varies a little bit by direct or indirect tax, but you know, how do you, you know, manage that? Or, you know, do you want to change that?
Yeah, I mean, certainly, if you know... There are very different flavors of this, right? So there's our service of tax and accounting firms with products like Virtual Office, which is a premier tax calculation engine for professionals who perform tax returns for a living. And then there's our corporate direct tax product, which is under the ONESOURCE banner, and our indirect tax sales and excise, which is also under ONESOURCE.
Right.
We like being number one and number two in the industries in which we operate.
Right.
Certainly, as we serve small and medium-sized tax and accounting firms, we're in that position. We think we've got some opportunity in the sort of larger tax and accounting firms-
Mm-hmm
... both here in the United States and in Brazil and in other markets. And then, in Indirect Tax, you know, we've got a smaller and less significant position. A great starting point, but a smaller and less significant position than we'd like. So-
In indirect, you said.
Indirect.
I think you're tied for three, right?
Yes. Yeah, tied for three, in that space, which, you know, it's a growing space.
Mm.
It's a space that's becoming increasingly important around not only determination, but also e-invoicing. And so it's a space you'll see us invest in over the next couple of years to bolster our position and benefit from the broader industry growth trends. And then-
Does that mean increase your innovation, or does that mean make an acquisition?
Both. It'll be both.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. Do you mind, could you say, just say one line on Vertex and Avalara. Those are your competitors in this space. Like, are you impressed by them?
Yes. Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of respect for both those firms. So, Vertex tend to go head-to-head with us at the top end with the larger customer set as they think about an-
Mm
... indirect tax software provider. Avalara, Avalara started its business very successfully in the sort of SMB space and have started to push up a little bit further. So we watch them carefully. We respect them a lot. But we think we bring a size and scale across our products and increasingly a tech and AI-driven skill set that ought to differentiate us over time.
Where do you see, within tax and accounting, the biggest impact from Generative AI? Like, well, maybe I'll just leave it at that.
Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's in, it's in some of the sort of, workflow areas like, document ingestion, you know, a composition of confirmation letters, summarization and report outs, and the, and the sort of ignition of advisory services. Because the core tax, tax calculation process is already very automated. I mean, a product like, like, UltraTax, or ONESOURCE really do, you know, in a, in a fraction of a second, all of the requisite calculations based on the latest and greatest tax rules and regulations.
Right.
So it's getting the source documentation into that engine, and then synthesizing and producing outputs and summarization. That's where we think AI is really gonna take some time and effort out of the process. And bear in mind, you know, we talked about work-life balance for lawyers. In tax and accounting, it's a slightly different problem, which is there just aren't enough graduates coming through.
Right.
So if you look at the number of tax and accounting graduates coming through and getting certified, those numbers are very significantly lower than they were seven, eight, nine , 10 years ago. So the technology has to play that role because the number of tax returns is going up, not down, and the complexity of tax returns is going up, not down. So, you know, so something has to fill that void, and that's why we're excited about that opportunity.
Right. Mike, what-
Do you want to mention that the excitement around the early proof of concepts in tax?
Yeah. So we had the launch event for our legal AI office here in New York last night. Last week in Colorado, we pulled together a couple of thousand corporate customers and a couple of thousand tax and accounting firms. And to Gary's point, you know, one of the things that we sort of went into the conference believing was that tax and accounting was a step or two behind the legal profession in terms of their anxiety around an interest in generative AI. That, I think, is not the case. The tax and accounting profession are on it, and they understand the power of the technologies. And so we had a series of product booths where we're showing our latest and greatest, and we're showing our product roadmaps.
And I think for me, one of the big takeaways from the week was the degree of interest and engagement around that product roadmap. So that was sort of exciting for us to see, and particularly exciting for our product and engineering folks who are involved in the build-outs.
Okay, and do you think Generative AI will accelerate your growth past your current targets, meaning over the medium term?
We're being cautious about 2024, not because we have any lack of excitement in sort of what we've built and the customer reaction we're getting. But you know, this has been a year where I think you know we've talked about elongated corporate sales cycles on the back of a different interest rate environment and some caution sort of moving through you know many of our customers and the broader software landscape. You know and we see some of those conditions persisting into 2024. Unfortunately it looks like we're gonna have two wars raging sadly and we'll have a presidential election to all collectively get through.
So, you know, there may, there may be some upside there, but we're gonna be cautious about what 2024 looks like. But we do see accelerated growth, to your question, Andrew, in 2025, 2026, 2027. And it's not just generative AI. You know, there's a number of areas that we're investing in to drive that accelerated organic growth, generative AI being an exciting part of it.
I don't understand caution about 2024. Like, I just interviewed our economist for lunch, and he said, you know, soft landing and, you know, sentiment should be rising. I mean, doesn't that help the sales cycles? I mean, we haven't even started 2024 yet.
Yeah, it should.
It's not, it's not too late, right?
It should. Well, in our February, when we report out on Q4, we'll be very transparent about what we've seen in terms of November and December sales activity. And of course, when you've got 80% recurring revenue, multi-year contracts-
I see.
You know, that... There's a fairly logical sort of a flow through. So we'll have more to say on it there. I think we're just being naturally cautious. You know, our legal business, as to Mike's earlier points, has performed extremely well through this cycle. Our tax and accounting business has performed extremely well. But we've seen a little bit of softness in government, and we've seen a little bit of elongation of the sales cycles in corporates. And we're hopeful that we'll sort of revert back to more normal conditions, but we want to be cautious.
Okay. When looking at the breakdown to your total organic constant currency revenue growth, and let's call it total organic constant currency revenue growth, 5%-6%, pricing is 3%. Like, how would you describe the balance? Like, is this coming from, of course, selling new products, new customers? Like, how would you describe what you would call the non-pricing element of organic constant currency revenue growth?
Yeah, Andrew, I think 3 items, the ones you just mentioned are certainly relevant, but market conditions, competitive conditions, and then the nature of our contracts. We have 60% of our contracts in legal that are multi-year in nature. It's about 40% in corporates, 10% in tax. So those factors, plus the ones you mentioned in product launches, certainly impact the pricing. Pricing is slightly higher in calendar year 2023. I think I mentioned on the last earnings call, about 30-40 basis points higher in 2023. To Andrew's point, in tax and accounting, we see the highest level of price increases.
Right.
-and we'll approach 10% organic growth for tax and accounting professionals, slightly over $1 billion in revenue for the full year 2023, there, then corporates and legal, slightly lower.
Yeah. It always struck me as odd, Mike, that the tax and accounting would have the highest price increases, let's call it so far, where the market structure seems to be just a lot more open.
Yeah.
I mean, you have competitors, but I guess you're going to say that's what the competitors are raising their price, too? Is that what it is?
It is. We see similar activity there, and it's been a trend that's been long-standing within the tax and accounting professional there. Roughly 5% is what we've stated during the earnings call, in regards to the total organic growth, 10%, and about half of that comes from pricing within tax and accounting.
Okay.
I think competitively, there's a distinction between the corporate tax revenue streams that are in our corporates business and the tax and accounting. The tax and accounting business, as you know, serves CPA firms.
Right
for the most part.
Well-
You know, Wolters Kluwer, their CCH business is our primary competitor, and we are, depending on which part of that market segment, a strong one or two. So that market, CPA firms, tax and accounting business, we have a very strong market position.
Those firms, and those firms run their practices on our software, on CCH's software.
Right.
So, you know, and if you've done a series of tax returns in our UltraTax, it's not. It's no easy thing to sort of change to another form of software because you've got all the past year's data in there, you know, all of those returns loaded up. So you can switch, but it's the switching costs are pretty high.
Okay.
Yeah, I think what Gary's really amplifying for clarification there, when we say tax, you know, there's tax revenue within tax and accounting professionals-
Yeah
There's tax revenue within the corporations there. I think that's what Gary's clarifying.
Those are good reminders. I agree.
Yeah.
I totally agree.
We have a question now, Andrew.
Okay, go ahead... Go ahead. Just ask your question.
Can I just ask on the legal analytics business, can you talk about your position, thank you, your relative position versus your primary peer, and kind of what level of white space still exists on analytics?
Gary, do you want to start on the relativity?
Yeah, you know, so, you know, obviously, you're talking about Lexis, and they talk about legal analytics.
Mm-hmm.
I think the way we think about it is a little different. You know, we have tremendous analytic capabilities within Westlaw, for example, and within Practical Law in the higher-tier products there. We also have a number of workflow software tools in that legal space. So, you know, so I think we think about online legal research, which is Westlaw and Practical Law, but ton of analytics in there, and then we think about workflow softwares, and generative AI is driving a convergence of that. It's a huge opportunity for us because we have a lot more share and a dominant position in the content and insights part.
Mm-hmm.
We have some great assets in software, but not the breadth of market share we have on the insights and content side. So we think this is going to push us to have a real opportunity. But it's hard to sort of apples and apples, what our primary competitor is talking about, because we slice up our portfolio and think about it differently. You know, I think on an all-in basis, we believe we've grown somewhat faster, consistently than the industry and the primary competitors.
Yeah. And you think that continues, correct?
We do.
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay. Steve, print and news, do these remain strategic core, core assets?
Certainly, you know, we have no intention to alter the portfolio in a significant way in the medium term, but all of our assets, we constantly review their role in the business and serving customers, and that includes assets within the big three. That includes print and Reuters. We've done a lot over the last couple of years to bring the sort of Reuters intelligence inside of our big three customer proposition. We're not all the way there yet, but certainly under Paul Bascobert 's leadership, that's a big area of focus for him, not only in better serving LSEG, but also serving our legal, tax, and accounting, and corporates customers.
Okay.
Andrew, just a reminder that the Global Print generates about 10% of our total free cash flow, will be approximately $1.8 billion in calendar year 2023, with 10% coming from Global Print.
Great. Talk about the funds that you've gotten from the LSEG shares, like, what are your priorities in allocating them? And, you know, is it burning a hole in your pocket?
Yeah, we were-
5%+ interest rates.
Yeah, just, just for clarity, we were able to accelerate some of the monetization that was scheduled later in 2024, 2025 during calendar year 2023. So we have 2 tranches left for 2024, 2025. For the monetization that we've done thus far, plus our very, very strong balance sheet, first and priority is in regards to growing our business. So we're always looking for strategic assets that will accelerate our top line there. Secondly, we'll continue to consider buybacks. We'll continue to consider return of capital transactions like we did during calendar year 2023. And we've last few years, we've done a 10% dividend increase, so we would expect that to continue. So a very focused, very balanced strategic capital allocation approach and very, very strong balance sheet.
We're less than 1 times leverage ratio now, and that will likely to continue going forward, but in a very strong position.
Just to clarify, it's not burning a hole. None of that capital is burning a hole in our pocket. We don't see a need to do any sort of transformative deals or anything that would surprise you, Andrew.
Thank you.
We'll always look for opportunities to better serve our customers within our big three segments. We look for opportunities to extend beyond those areas, but in very, very logical ways. And we love this playbook of taking pristine products and pushing them through our distribution.
Makes sense. Let's end on that. Steve, Mike, and Gary, thank you so much.
Thanks, Andy.
Thank you.