Good morning, and welcome to the Clarivate Fourth Quarter twenty twenty Earnings Release. All participants will be in listen only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mark Donahue.
Please go ahead.
Thank you, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Clarivate fourth quarter and full year twenty twenty earnings conference call. With me today are Jerry Stead, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Richard Hanks, Chief Financial Officer and Muqta Ahmed, president of Science Group. Unfortunately, Jeff Roy, president of IP Group, could not be with us today due to a personal conflict. We're pleased that Gordon Sampson, head of APAC Strategy and Growth, could stand in for Jeff.
Gordon is the former chief operating officer of CPA Global. All will be available to take your questions at the conclusion of the prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and webcast and is copyrighted property of Clarivate. Any rebroadcast of this information in whole or in part without prior written consent of Clarivate is prohibited. This morning, Clarivate issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ended 12/31/2020.
The release as well as an accompanying supplemental presentation is available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website, clarivate.com, under Events and Presentations. During our call, we may make certain forward looking statements within the meaning of the applicable securities laws. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the business or developments in Clarivate's industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance achievements or developments expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Information about the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results or performance can be found in Clarivate's filings with the SEC and on the company's website. Our discussion will include non GAAP measures or adjusted numbers, including adjusted revenue and adjusted EBITDA.
ClaroA believes non GAAP results are useful in order to enhance an understanding of our ongoing operating performance, but they are supplement to and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP measures are available in our earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the call up to your questions. With that, it's a pleasure to turn the call over to Jerry.
Thank you, Mark, and thanks to all of you for joining us this morning. 2020 was a year we will never forget. I've been leading public companies for more than forty one years, and last year presented a whole host of new experiences and challenges. Fortunately, Clarivate has an incredible leadership team which is supported by an amazing global team of more than 8,400 colleagues who have continued to go above and beyond. The contributions from all these individuals made it possible for us to deliver growth during uncertain times, complete several acquisitions including two transformative ones and continue to make significant progress on strategic growth and sustainability objectives.
I am very, very proud of how swiftly our team migrated to almost 100% of our workforce working from home within a few weeks when the COVID pandemic swept across the globe. We're extremely pleased that we experienced no disruption to any of our services. At our Investor Day last November, we highlighted how we are reimagining the way we work going forward based on the success we enjoyed last year. We used last year's disruptive events to chart a path to a more efficient way to run the business today and into the future. We've seen significant benefits from these actions such as higher productivity and higher colleague engagement.
Additionally, we'll benefit from cost savings that can be invested back into the business to drive growth. Richard will cover the financials in detail. However, before I highlight some of our major achievements, let me provide a brief overview of our results. Adjusted revenue for the fourth quarter increased 83% on a constant currency basis. Adjusted EBITDA was up 137% and our adjusted EBITDA margin improved more than nine twenty basis points to be exact to 42 compared to last year's fourth quarter.
The transformative acquisitions of DRG in February and CPA Global in October were leading contributors to our growth. We're also very pleased to see a recovery in transactional revenue during the fourth quarter on both a sequential and year over year basis. On a full year basis, 2020 was in line with our full year guidance and an improvement over 2019 on an organic basis despite the headwinds of the global pandemic. Adjusted revenue increased 31%. Organic revenue increased 1.2% at constant currency due to a 3% increase in subscription revenue, partially offset by a 7% decline in transactional revenue as a result of the COVID pandemic.
Adjusted EBITDA increased 66% and adjusted EBITDA margins for the year increased to 38%, almost 800 basis points over 2019. We continue to see the many benefits of the organization improvement initiatives we've implemented during the last eighteen months. These actions were beneficial in helping to drive organic subscription growth and our subscriber retention rate of 91% during a year of economic and social confusion and disruption. This is also a testament to the value of the products and information that we provide to our customers. The benefits of the acquisitions are clearly paying dividends as we delivered strong adjusted free cash flow of $3.00 $2,000,000 in 2020, an increase of two zero one million dollars over the prior year.
We expect another significant increase in adjusted free cash flow this year, growing to a range of $450,000,000 to $500,000,000 This will allow us to delever as well as to continue to invest in organic and external growth opportunities. Since going public less than two years ago, we simplified our organization structure. We've implemented cost efficiencies. We've realigned our sales structure. We've improved automation and optimization of data processing, and we've added strategic and transformative acquisitions.
All of these actions drove growth in 2019 and 2020 and will lead to even stronger growth in 2021. In fact, by the time we exit 2021, we will have almost doubled our revenue from the 2018 levels, almost tripled our adjusted EBITDA and expanded our EBITDA margins more than 1,500 basis points to 44% to 45% from less than 29%, and we are far from being done. In fact, we're just getting warmed up. In 2020, our team made great progress across our four strategic goals and on many sustainability initiatives. We saw a significant increase in our colleague engagement score, which increased to 77 from 69.
With the increase, we moved above the benchmark of 74. I'm very proud of the work the team's done to better connect with our global colleagues, ensuring their voices are heard and that we continue to build an organization that is considered one of the very best places to work in the world. This gave us even more confident confidence that a digital workplace can be very effective at Clarivate without impacting our culture. We also spent significant resources on continuing to improve our customer delight score. Our score increased from 79 to 79 from 76 in 2019.
Best practice world class is in '82, and we're clearly moving in that direction. We continue to receive very high marks and positive comments about our products and our information quality. Another key priority is focusing on top and bottom line growth. At our Investor Day in November 2019, I announced my personal goal to achieve $1,500,000,000 in revenue, dollars $650,000,000 of EBITDA and $450,000,000 of free cash flow exiting 2023. In 2020, we acquired DRG and CPA Global, two transformative acquisitions that have moved us beyond these financial targets by the end of the year, two years ahead of that schedule.
By adding DRG to our science group and CPA Global to our IP group, we created a true end to end platform to better serve our more than 30,000 global customers and provide enhanced offerings to potential customers. One of the many appealing attributes of this addition to our industry leading portfolio of products is the abundant opportunities we have for cross selling and up selling across our entire customer base. We also completed several tuck in acquisitions last year, including IncoPak and Hanwha, which provide additional IP offerings both in the high growth Asia region and to help us to continue to improve our customer engagement and delight scores we acquired Customer First Now. We also pruned our portfolio over the past year by divesting noncore assets. We sold Mark Monitor on 01/01/2020.
And this past November, we divested the Techstreak business. During 2020, we launched 19 new products and implemented enhancement to numerous more product offerings. It's a direct outcome of the investments we made as a premier provider of information and analytics to the science and IP industry worldwide. At our last Investor Day, Jeff Roy and Mukhtar, who will be is with us today, outlined how our recent acquisitions and enhanced offerings are well positioned to capture a significant part of the growing addressable market across these industries. The realignment of our sales force and new global business centers will play a leading role in capitalizing on the upsell and cross sell opportunities in front of us.
Since mid-twenty nineteen, we've identified more than $80,000,000 of permanent cost savings to improve efficiencies and drive future growth. Additionally, we'll realize over $100,000,000 in cost synergies from these acquisitions. We're ahead of our plan for all cost savings and integration activities. We exited 2020 with $118,000,000 of cost savings implemented and expect to realize the remaining savings by the time we exit 2021, at least three months ahead of schedule. During 2020, we kicked off sustainability initiatives with a goal to create a world leading sustainable company.
We launched, implemented and completed numerous ESG objectives last year. We will be publishing our first sustainability report within the next few months. We set a goal to be listed in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the FTSE4Good Index by the end of twenty twenty three. Please take a minute to review the supplemental fourth quarter earnings deck posted within our IR section on our website for a list of our progress on the sustainability initiatives. Turning to 2021, the COVID pandemic is unfortunately still relevant across the globe.
We expect the pandemic to gradually reduce during 2021 and have planned on that basis. This morning, we reaffirmed our full 2021 guidance, revenue of $1,780,000,000 to $1,840,000,000 adjusted EBITDA of $785,000,000 to $825,000,000 adjusted EPS of $0.73 to $0.79 and adjusted free cash flow of $450,000,000 to $500,000,000 I'll now turn the call over to Richard.
Thank you, Jerry. Two thousand twenty was clearly an interesting year. While a small segment of our business did not go unscathed, we were able to successfully steer the company through a couple of turbulent quarters and deliver organic growth. We exit exited 02/2020 stronger than than than when the year began as a result of a series of strategic acquisitions and significant operational improvements. Fourth quarter adjusted revenues were $471,000,000, an increase of $216,000,000 or 83% at constant currency compared to last year's same period.
Included within the $471,000,000 is $6,000,000 of revenue from TechStreet, which we which we divested in early November. So adjusting out for TechStreet, stand alone revenue would have been $465,000,000 for the quarter. Adjusted revenues exclude the impact of a $16,000,000 deferred revenue adjustment made as a result of purchase price accounting primarily stemming from the October 2020 acquisition of CPA Global. The acquisitions of CPA Global, DRG, IncoPat, and Hanlim together added 91% to revenue growth this quarter. The growth was partially offset by the Techstreak disposal and the Mark Monitor brand protection divested products.
The foreign exchange impact on our revenues in the fourth quarter was a favorable 1.6% due to dollar weakness as compared to last year's fourth quarter. Organic revenue grew 2.6% on a reported basis and 1% at constant currency in this year's fourth quarter compared to the prior year period driven by the rebound in transactional revenue. The organic revenue growth rate was negatively impacted by a onetime $3,500,000 deferred revenue
onetime
onetime basis by 1.4%.
Total subscription revenue was $236,000,000 an increase of 11% at constant currency, driven by acquisitions, partially offset by divested products and a onetime $2,600,000 reduction stemming from the previously discussed deferred revenue adjustment. Organic subscription revenue growth in the fourth quarter, excluding the impact of the 2,600,000.0 adjustment, would have increased 3% on a reported basis and was up 1.5% at constant currency. As Jerry noted, subscription revenue renewal rates were 91% for 02/2020, up from 90% reported in 02/2019 despite the impact of the global pandemic. Transactional revenue increased to $121,000,000, up 75,000,000 or 163% year over year on a constant currency basis driven by our acquisitions. Organic transactional business revenues increased by $2,000,000 or 4% at constant currency, reversing the decreases we experienced in the second and third quarter of two thousand twenty due to the COVID pandemic.
Transactional revenue growth was also reduced by $1,000,000 on a onetime basis as a result of the deferred revenue adjustment. Absent the onetime ref deferred revenue adjustment, organic transactional revenue growth was 8%, including the favorable impact of currency and up 6% at constant currency. The improvement in transactional revenue was primarily driven by growth in Webber Science, Backfile, and customer data sales, life sciences professional services, and partly assisted by a return to growth in CompuMark search volumes. Starting with this quarter's report, we are breaking out reoccurring revenue within the supplemental revenue tables to distinguish it from subscription revenue. Reoccurring revenue is the highly predictable revenue streams from the patent renewals business acquired as part of the CPA Global acquisition.
Recurring revenue in the fourth quarter was $115,000,000 with no figure for the comparative period. Subscription plus reoccurring revenue accounted for 75% of adjusted revenues in the fourth quarter, demonstrating our highly predictable revenue model and was 77% on a full year basis. ACV growth was 14% for the fourth quarter, which includes acquisitions. Excluding divestitures from both periods, ACV growth was up 25%, while on an ongoing basis, ACV increased by 3.4% driven by organic growth and annual price increases. Adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter increased by $116,000,000 or 137% to 200,000,000 compared to the prior year period.
This was driven by contributions from acquisitions, strong margin flow through, and the benefits of the cost saving initiatives. Excluding a small contribution from Techstreets in the fourth quarter, adjusted EBITDA was $199,000,000. Our fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 920 basis points to 42%. Cash taxes in the fourth quarter were $7,000,000 compared to $8,000,000 in the prior year period and were $28,000,000 for the year. Adjusted net income increased by $94,000,000 to $136,000,000 for the fourth quarter, and adjusted diluted EPS increased to 22¢ per share compared to 13¢ per share in last year's fourth quarter.
The weighted average share count of 627,000,000 shares used to calculate fully diluted adjusted EPS increased by 90% or 297,000,000 shares since last year's fourth quarter driven by the issuance of ordinary shares in conjunction with the acquisitions of CPA Global, DRG, as well as a primary offering in June and the exercise of public warrants. On a full year basis, adjusted revenues were $1,277,000,000, an increase of $302,000,000 or 31% at constant currency. Excluding the divestiture of TechStreet, adjusted revenues were $1,228,000,000 for the year. Adjusted EBITDA for 02/2020 of $487,000,000 increased $193,000,000 or 66%. Excluding TechStreet, full year adjusted EBITDA was $478,000,000 with adjusted EBITDA margins for the year of 39% ex Techstreit.
Adjusted net income in 02/2020 increased $137,000,000 to $289,000,000, and adjusted fully diluted EPS increased to 64¢ per share compared to 53¢ per share in 02/2019. The 02/2020 EPS was impacted by a 57% or 177,000,000 increase in weighted average common shares using the calculation. Adjusted free cash flow for the full year 02/2020 increased by $201,000,000 to $302,000,000 driven by the growth in revenues and EBITDA. Additionally, in the fourth quarter, we benefited from a $45,000,000 cash benefit from CPA Global. There was a favorable working capital timing difference between the q three pre acquisition period and the q four post acquisition period.
Capital expenditures in 02/2020 were $108,000,000, an increase of $38,000,000 over 02/2019. The increase is a combination of the addition of DRG and CPA Global as well as a higher level of product application development as we accelerated the delivery of new products to our clients and drove improvements across the product portfolio. We ended 02/2020 with $258,000,000 in cash, gross debt of 3,500,000,000.0. With the incremental borrowing associated with the CPA acquisition and DRG acquisition, our total debt increased by $1,900,000,000 in 02/2020 as compared to 02/2019. Stand alone adjusted EBITDA, which we are required to report on a trailing twelve month basis pursuant to the reporting covenants contained in our credit agreement and indenture, was $762,000,000 for 02/2020.
This includes the benefits of the CPA Global and DRG acquisitions. Please refer to our earnings release for a reconciliation from net loss to adjusted EBITDA and from adjusted EBITDA to stand alone adjusted EBITDA. We ended 02/2020 with a net leverage ratio of 4.3 times compared to 4.7 times at the end of 02/2019. Our goal is to be in the low three times range in the medium term. Turning to the 02/2021 outlook.
Jerry highlighted our 02/2021 financial guidance metrics. Let me add some additional color around the year. As you think about the quarterly cadence of our growth throughout 2021, a few things worth reiterating. As we've previously stated, DRG revenue is much more heavily weighted to the back half of the year. Approximately 60% of its revenues occur in the second half with about 60% of that occurring in the fourth quarter.
Or said differently, more than 35% of DRG revenue for the year comes in the fourth quarter. Transactional revenue typically has seasonality within the portfolio with the fourth quarter historically being the strongest. Budgets reset at the beginning of the year, so we normally see a a pullback in backfile sales and, volumes at the start of the year, and then it picks up as we as we transition through 2021. We expect organic revenue growth to be back half weighted as the operational improvements really start to take hold and we begin to realize the benefits of the strategic acquisitions. Additionally, we currently believe we will start to see some economic recovery from the COVID pandemic later in 02/2021.
Taking all of these factors into consideration and including the recent addition of CPA Global, our full year revenue profile is weighted at approximately forty seven percent first half and approximately fifty three percent second half. With that, I'll now turn the call back to Gerry.
Thank you, Richard. We're really pleased about the changes we made in 2019 and 2020 and the new additions to our portfolio of industry leading IT and science products, and we're very optimistic that 2021 will be an ever stronger year as we continue our pursuit of excellence. Our team at Clarivate is laser focused on delivering stronger growth this year and maximizing the many, many benefits of the improvements we're making and will continue to make and our recent acquisitions. We're now ready to take your questions. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question, then return to the queue.
Operator, please.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question is from George Tong from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. Good morning. Jerry, you outlined several initiatives hi. You outlined several initiatives to accelerate organic growth in 2021, including new product introductions and a realigned sales force.
Can you elaborate on what you believe will be top drivers of organic growth acceleration this year and what your latest expectations are for organic growth exiting 2021?
Yes. Great question, George. Just as a reminder, if you look at Q4 exit and use current exchange rates and then take out the deferred adjustment that's required with acquisitions, we actually delivered 3.9%, almost 4% organic growth in Q4. So that's where we're taking off from, which is a great place to lead. Back in 2019, when we did our first Investor Day, Richard and I, representing our entire team, said we expected to operate between 68% organic growth in 2021.
And we feel very good today, particularly if you think about pro form a because we'll only have one quarter of of of organic growth of CPA because we didn't close till the fourth quarter. But if you think about that, and we'll report it, by the way, so you can see it, I feel very good about the upside of that 6% to 8% range. I also am really pleased with when I look back now at what happened in the pandemic and I look back at a lot of our customers, I couldn't be more pleased with where we're at from a growth standpoint. Two huge things. Richard said we would see organic growth increase in the second half, which we will.
A big piece of that, of course, is being able to have DRG in for ten months and have CPA in for three months of our organic growth in the second half. But a big piece is where we'll also see the inside sales effort taking place. I couldn't be happier. On our call yesterday, our weekly call, Mukhtar emphasized along with Mike Morhardt, and Jeff how critical it was that we use that inside sales organization. We're in the process, really important to understand, we'll exit 2021 with about 75, almost 80% of our total worldwide customers, existing 30,000 base, that will be managed by inside sales.
Perhaps not only are we gonna see including putting hunters in the inside sales, we're also gonna see our ability to focus much better on five external global markets. Just couldn't feel better about it. It's a great question, George. Hang on and you'll see that happen as the year goes on. You.
Next question.
Very helpful. Thank you.
You bet.
Next question is from Manav Patnaik from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. I just wanted to ask, you know, just broadly, you know, I understand the impact from COVID, obviously, will continue for some time. But, you know, on a high level, can you just talk about your customers, you know, in terms of how they've held up relevant to, you know, their budgets and businesses? And and perhaps also just throw in some comments on, you know, have the competitors held up as well as you?
Does that create opportunities, or, you know, are the valuations still, you know, high?
Thanks, Manav. Great question. I'll start, then I'll have Mukhtar comment, and then Gordon, and then Rich will wrap up because this is a critical question. It it's actually really looking back in hindsight, I'm amazed at how well we did execute with the pandemic in 2020. If you think about our biggest customers in our five global businesses, that markets that we participate in, disruption was amazing.
Some
of
the good news, of course, was the great job that Mukhtar and his team have done in the life science piece and the fact that we actually provided a data pool for all of our life science customers to help them, attack COVID. But, Mukhtar, you start and then Gordon, please pick up on your view of, particularly the customers from a CPA standpoint. Mukhtar?
Sure. Sure. Thank you. Thank you, Jerry. Certainly looking at our business, it's one that certainly has shown resilience certainly through the pandemic.
And, you know, whilst we've seen, you know, some of our customers, you know, certainly delay some of the decision making, which is is really a timing issue and no reflection on our data or our products, which, you know, remain a necessity for our customers. You know, overall, you know, it you know, our business has has held up very well. If if I look at the top tier of our our academic customers, and this is, you know, typically top tier university, most most of them have have have held up pretty well with with their budgets and investments. Naturally, you know, there's there's an evolution that will occur in in academia in future years, but we think we're very well placed here to partner, with academia as as they go through those changes. And and and that's key for us moving forward is is really being a partner for for for that transformation and change.
And and broadly across life sciences, what we've seen is, certainly an acceleration in investment in the science, in the regulatory space just by virtue of of the vaccines that have all been accelerated to market around the world. You know, we're seeing, a constant need for more information to, improve those regulatory pathways. And so that's really driving, you know, more customers and prospects towards us because, you know, those changes are data driven changes. And so with with all of the investments that we've made in our products, And, of course, we released those at the tail end of last year. Typically, with products, you know, our focus is on peak adoption of those products, and that typically takes sort of six six six months or so in a normal market.
And in 2021, we we expect to to very much sort of, you know, pursue those opportunities.
Thanks, Mukhtar. Gordon, please.
Thanks, Jerry. Thanks, Mukhtar. Think Mukhtar has covered a few things that are in common with the IP business. The IP business, in its underbelly, is largely around nondiscretionary spend. And what I mean by that is that for most customers protecting and managing their IP across the whole IP life cycle, there is a minimum spend you need to make to keep it healthy.
So whilst we've seen some pressure on some transactional areas, they are largely areas of downgrading spend as opposed to ceasing spend. I think there are two things that encourage us as we watch the economy coming out of COVID this year. One is there is a continued investment in RMB globally and certainly in certain regions more so. That is both customer investment as well as institutional or government investment, and there's real confidence in the IP filings that we track, which are a good leading indicator of what's to come down the line in terms of IP management spend. So those are factors that I think give us confidence.
Thanks, Gordon. Richard, wrap up because it's a critical question for us. And I'll I'll just say that the team has done an amazing job as we get ready. And early indications in q one this year, all the things we said we're gonna do, it's happening. Richard?
Yeah. Just some final comments. I would say this that, you know, our academic and government business, you know, anchor you know, centered on our Web of Science portfolio is is rock solid and an anchor tenant. In the life sciences space, we're very attracted to that segment. It's high growth.
We've got broad end to end offerings and an area that we're particularly focused on. And then in the IP space where we now have a a billion dollar revenue business with the, acquisition of CPA Global, in that the CPA Global business is is growing right in the ZIP code in that six to 8% range, with upside. And so that will be a very important driver for us in 02/2021 as we continue to take market share. And then finally, we're very focused on our data offerings and the data exhaust from our products, and that will be a driver for us in terms of bringing new product to market this year, which will drive growth at the back end of this year and into 2022. So overall, I think, you know, we consider ourselves very well placed.
Thanks, Manav. Next question, please.
Next question is from Tony Kaplan from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Hey. This is Greg Paris on for Tony. Thanks for taking our question. I was hoping you could get some additional color on APAC. There's a little bit of deceleration there last quarter, and we'll have the growth once the K comes out.
But how was the growth this quarter? Did you see a rebound? Or is there still some pressure? And other reasons, a key growth driver for you. So if you could talk about your expectations for 2021.
Thanks.
Yes. No. Thank you. Gordon, that's right up your alley right now. So give him color and then Richard will pick up on it.
Thanks, Jerry. So in APAC in quarter four, we saw some very good transactional recovery in backfile sales, also very good custom data sales in the quarter, and that was supported by the recovery that we've now now been watching in our CompuMark search business, and that continues into quarter one. We are also very much focused on our market verticals, so focusing on those areas of highest growth potential, both reflecting investment in the market, but also reflecting areas where we believe there's additional growth from the existing, customer base or prospect base.
Thanks, Gordon. Richard, a little more color, and we'll move to the next question.
Absolutely. So, so, Greg, for the year, APAC up 4.6% compared to '4 point nine percent 2019, so right in the same range of growth as we enjoyed in 2019 even given the the pandemic. So we're very pleased with that result. As we have said previously, we consider APAC to be strategically a very, very important driver of growth for us. We completed the IncoPack transaction in China in q four.
We completed the Hanlin acquisition in South Korea in q both of those businesses in IP space. So you will see, as you have seen, a continuing focus on the region because as the underlying growth prospects there are very, very attractive to us and apply across our portfolio.
Thank you. Next question, please.
Next question is from Andrew Nicholas from William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning.
Good morning. How are Pretty
good. Pretty good. With CPA Global now having been under your leadership for three to six months now,
I
was hoping you could speak to clients' reception to the combination and how it seemed to be impacting the competitive environment in the IP space more broadly. And then relatedly, I think we've seen a few of your bigger competitors in that space adding the M and A of late. And so I'm just wondering the extent to which you expect additional competitive pressure in that market over time as other players try to match your scale. Thank you.
Happy to great question. I'll start. Gordon will pick up. Just as a refresher for everybody, we're a $1,000,000,000 business today in IP. Our next closest competitor is about $242,000,000 So good luck to them to try to catch up because what we would expect to be doing is growing seven to 9% as we exit 2021.
Couldn't feel better. We're well ahead of the schedule we laid out for the cost savings and revenue integration that we're getting out of CPA. So this is I I just couldn't be happier with where we're at at this point. And I always like being in a position where the competitors are chasing us, and we're going to do our very best to keep it that way for years to come. But Gordon will give you a great color on how the perception of the customers is.
I should tell you before we start, late in fourth quarter, we ran our first customer delight survey, for with CPA customers as well as we did DRG, by the way, and couldn't feel better. Came in very high when the belief systems of, the value of the product actually scored higher and easy to do business with. So we're trying to learn, not trying our learning or what CPA did so well to make it that way with us. Gordon?
Thanks, Sherry. Yeah. The customer reaction, that I've had firsthand as well as from the broader team has been entirely positive. I'm actually quite excited about the prospects of innovation in in large business with CPA. There are a couple of critical areas in that comment.
One is the expanded product portfolio, which allows Clarivate now to truly offer that end to end life cycle service, which neither organization could do independently. And those solution sets are dependent on integration, which Cloudera has a good and continuing track record of delivering. That means that customers can really get their IP to market faster, easier to do business with, and also the cost of them doing business is critical to them, which again is enabled by the combination of CPA and Clarivate. So all the feedback at the moment is, I would say, universally positive. And as for the M and A of the competitors, I think Jerry said it all.
Thanks. You know, the other thing thank you, Gordon. That you should all be thinking about, we've probably not covered it. We'll cover it more in weeks to come, but don't get confused about science and IP groups. The cross selling inside of IP into Muktar's business opportunity is huge.
We've never really had that. I'll give you just a couple of quick examples. Mukhtar could expand on this a lot because it's so exciting. I this last year, I we all support customer focused selling teams. One of the ones I supported was the top research universities in The United States where we do well.
Of those universities, none of them none of them had we as CPA ever sold into. But none of and in fact, I won't name universities, but as I've talked with them, some of the university track their own IP and patents in as many as six separate places inside of a university. You can think about our it'll take a year or two because that's things don't move that quick in universities. But think about us saving them 4 out of $5 and making sure they're far more efficient. So that's exciting.
Same thing's true though as Muktar drives forward of selling inside of science, the life science business offerings we have into universities too. Now the flip side goes on for us if you think about what we can provide with life science into some of the largest customers that CPA has. Samsung just as an example, which is one of the leaders in the world, and we've got great opportunities. So you're gonna see that happen for for years to come. And as we bundle our offerings and focus the outside sales groups, now that we have freed them up from chasing so many smaller customers, focus the outside groups on bundles that go across the board.
Think about us being the only company that exists with end to end solutions for research in the world. And and I must say the new products, which Mukhtar briefly commented on, inside of science, are so exciting because that too will kick in on both sides of the coin in 2021, '20 '20 '2. So feeling really good. Great question. Thank you.
Next question.
The next question is from Shlomo Rosenbaum from Stifel. Please go ahead.
Good morning, Shlomo.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Just given that this year is really where the rubber is supposed to meet the road in terms of getting the organic growth to accelerate, Could you just maybe talk a little bit more about how pricing layers in through the year? How much pricing was in the fourth quarter? And then might be helpful, Richard, also to give us kind of a base revenue for each of the first couple quarters, normalizing for the divestitures so that we have really a base number upon which to model.
Maybe you could help us out with that.
Let let's work backwards. Thanks, Lomo. We'll we'll give you all that help we can because there's no question in 2020, if you step back, it was an amazing year for us, but we did divest some businesses and we added some significant businesses. Richard gave you the $47.53 which is critical for us. He also gave you the 35% of total DRG is fourth quarter.
So we'll give you more help with that, Richard, and then I'll then we'll pick up on pricing. I'll pick the pricing.
Yes. So I think that that's that's that's really it. Yeah. We've given you the revenue profile, and, yeah, we've given you the guide for the full year consistent with that to reaffirm the guidance we gave just before Thanksgiving for 2021, and we're very, very pleased with the progress coming into 2021. And you wanna go to pricing, Jerry?
Please. You go ahead. Start out and close because it's I'll start by saying it's pretty darn good, but you pick up.
Yeah. On pricing, I would we we spent a lot of time internally really training the front office in terms of our expectations around price yield. Jerry and I reviewed all the price yield increases in late summer, which then we lock into our systems and obviously go out with our renewals, which kick off in q four for January 2021 renewals. And, yeah, we're we're we're pleased with progress. It's in line with our expectations, and we are we are very committed to achieving pricing equilibrium at four to 5% annual price increases, going forward.
And thanks, Richard. I just add two quick things with that. One of the upsides we have with CPA is price realization too, especially when we combine that with the offerings in both science and the other parts of IP and bundle offerings, no company in the world has. So you'll see us moving forward more aggressively in 2022, but very pleased with that in 2021. '2 other critical comments.
So for the first time, we mentioned it before, last year, we're now able to provide all of our sales teams with actual usage by product, by customer. Huge difference. And we did the pricing that way, price realization. So we feel very good about that and we'll continue to do the job of putting in place all the automation that we're working so hard on in our back room on lead through cash to provide more time than ever before for our people on the street, so to speak, as well as our inside salespeople to be more productive as hunters. Because you're gonna see us not only do what we said we were gonna do on the organic growth, but you'll see us adding customers.
Last comment I'd make, early indications say that our renewal rates, which I was very pleased with considering everything that went on in 2020, our our renewal rates are up, and we expect that to continue for the the balance of 2021. Great question. Thank you. Next question?
Next question is from Zach Cummins from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi, Zach.
Hi. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. And Jerry has kind of perfectly led into my next question around the retention metric. The 91% that you reported for the full year, I mean, does that include CPA Global?
Because I was under the impression that's a higher renewal percentage business. And I know with standalone Clarivate, a big portion of your renewals came in kind of the first half of the year. Does that change now with CPA Global being on board going into 2021?
So great question. It does not include CPA. Going forward, again, it gets a little interesting because we want to make sure you see us organic. But we will do pro form a on revenue growth from a including all pieces of our company. So we'll report organic growth on the traditional Clarivate, but we'll report pro form a.
So you'll get to see that and that will also reflect on our retention. And you're correct on a historical basis. Gordon could give you a lot of color, but the numbers from CPA were considerably higher. And so you'll see that as we go in. Your other comment, though, is critical.
The confusion that was going on in first half of the year with COVID with customers, etcetera, clearly had an impact, some of which we picked up later in the year. But I think as we what we feel really good about as we've gone into, 2021 is what we're seeing from a retention standpoint across the board, at this point of time. So it's a great question. And if I look backwards, which I try not to spend a lot of time other than learning what we could always do better. If I look backwards, clearly, the impact of COVID had more than we'll ever know, partly because we did so well despite that.
And so the renewal rates, particularly, I think you can see plus all the other changes we've made in the new products offering, we're gonna see, pretty excited about 2021. Thanks. Next question.
There are no more questions in the queue.
So I'll wrap up. You know, you all know I've done this a long time. I'm now in year 40 one of, being privileged to be part of leading public companies. And I have huge respect for the ones I've led in the past. None, however, have done what in my wildest dreams, didn't think I'd ever be able to tell our shareowners we increased our adjusted EBITDA margin nine twenty basis points.
Think about that. If you know any competitor or any other customers or share owners that you companies that you follow that have done that, I'd be happy to hear it because I set tough goals for us, and we'll go beat that one if that's true. I just wanna close with a reminder. One, thank you for everything you've done. But, I said at the November 2020 conference that I would set my own personal goals, which I did.
Back to 2023. If you remember, they were 2.8 to 3,000,000,000 of revenue, 1.4 to 1,450,000,000.00 of adjusted EBITDA, and $1,000,000,000 plus of free cash flow. That's my personal goals. And I got to tell you, I couldn't feel better about us tracking those right now. I am so proud of our team and very proud of what we've accomplished in 2020.
And as I said in the script and Richard did too, and both Mukhtar and Gordon added to it, we're in great shape moving forward into what will continue to be the race for success for all of our constituencies. Thanks very much.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.