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Investor Day 2021

Nov 9, 2021

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Hello, and welcome to the Clarivate 2021 Virtual Investor Day. I'm Mark Donohue, Vice President of Investor Relations. Today, we'll hear from members of our executive leadership team. We'll wrap up the day with a live Q&A session following the conclusion of the presentations. The presentations at today's Investor Day include forward-looking statements. 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. Additional information regarding these factors in this presentation are included on the slide entitled Forward-Looking Statements and Other Notices and under Risk Factors in our Form 10-K and 10-Qs. Our discussion will include non-GAAP measures or adjusted numbers.

Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP measures are available in today's presentation, which will be available on our website. Turning to our agenda, Jerre Stead, our Executive Chairman and CEO, will lead us off in a moment with a high-level view of our business. Kerri Nelson, our Chief Operations Officer, will talk about our evolution in delighting our customers. Following Kerri's presentation, we will take a five-minute break. Returning from the break, you will hear from Steen Lomholt-Thomsen, who joined us in early August as our new Chief Revenue Officer. He will provide a deeper understanding of our One Clarivate strategy. Mukhtar Ahmed, President of our Science Group, Gordon Samson, President of our IP Group, and Stefano Maestri, Chief Technology Officer, will participate in a fireside chat to discuss and provide real-life examples of how we are building solutions for our customers.

At the conclusion of their presentation, we'll take our second five-minute break. Returning from the break, Richard Hanks, Chief Financial Officer, will walk through some financial and investment highlights. Then we'll host a live Q&A session with all the presenters. For today's Q&A session, questions can be submitted anytime throughout the presentation through the Q&A tab located on the right side of your screen. Please include your name and company information when submitting your question. We'll read the question aloud and direct it to the appropriate individual. With that, it's a pleasure to turn this Investor Day over to Jerre Stead.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Good day to each of you, and thank you so much for joining us on our third annual Investor Day. It's been a very exciting time since we went public in May of 2019. The progress we've made, I'm very proud of, and you're gonna hear a lot about that today. I'm delighted with the team that I'm fortunate enough to support. We've made amazing changes to each year of improvement, and we'll continue to do that for years to come. As you all should know and remember, I always start with a quote. This quote, as we get into the meat of the presentation, is, "A dream doesn't become reality through magic. A dream is turned into a vision. The vision becomes reality by and it takes focus, determination, and hard work." We've done that, and we will continue to do that.

If you think about what we've gone after in our company is solving some of the most complex challenges in the world, and making us a really critical part of many customers' information, many customers' insights, and many customers, and will continue to add many for years to come to help them create, protect, and advance innovation. It's a joy to be able to share the four innovative, intensive customer segments. We talked about this last year in November. We told you that we would be moving to One Clarivate. Just as a reminder for everybody, when we took over in May 2019, we had seven relatively small businesses, and they had operated independently. In September 2019, we moved to two groups, the Science Group and the IP Group. That started our transformation of becoming outside in versus products out.

We've made great progress. You're gonna hear a lot about that today. These four market segments, customer segments are, and you're gonna hear a lot about numbers with this, represent our huge opportunity. You'll get us to play through that, including actual examples later today. Those four are government and academic, life science and healthcare, professional services, manufacturing, technology and consumer products. Down the road, when we have more scale, we'll split out the consumer products from the manufacturing technology. Right now, we're focused. Two other quick comments. We put this in place. Gordon did a great job for six- months in our Asia Pac region testing this, and it was in place on July one of this year. Now we evolve to this, taking our entire company in a reorganization that I couldn't be more proud of.

We'll talk more about scale, but just remember, these markets together represent $102 billion of annual potential for us. Great start, and let's talk about how we're gonna get there. We started last year. In fact, I wanna go back just for a minute. At 2018, if you take out the companies that we divested of, we were about $800 million of revenue. At the end of 2020, despite COVID, we were a $1.3 billion company. We won't go through all these numbers now, but the important thing was that we were a 38% EBITDA margin company who had increased the margins by 900 basis points between 2020 and 2019. Cash is one of the things that you're gonna hear a lot about.

You know that's what I've always tried to do, is lead companies based on free cash flow. Organic growth that we all wanna see. That was 1.2% actual in 2020. Let's look at where we're at for 2021. This is what makes me very proud of our organization. We've moved to the current guidance. If you take the midpoint, it'd be $1.82 billion, up well over $500 million of revenue for the year. You can see we've moved from a loss of $106 million to a guidance right now of $117 million-147 million. You'll see adjusted EBITDA, think about this, almost doubling in 2021 and more to come on that.

We've given that guidance, just so you know, for the year on revenue, adjusted EBITDA margin, and free cash flow. We've given that each quarter. We actually raised the bottom of the revenue and the EBITDA twice during the year. We're up $20 million from where we started with revenue and up $10 million with EBITDA. We're going to exit. I'm so proud of our team. Exit at 44%-45% EBITDA margin. We've talked for a long time about our ability to deliver 50% margins with this great company that we're creating. You'll see us hit that 50% adjusted EBITDA margin, or right at it, in this exact Q4 that we're now part of. Net cash operating activities almost double in 2021 over 2020.

Adjusted cash flow, we'll talk more about that later, free cash flow. That's the driver. I've always tried to lead companies by providing cash per share, and we're making great progress with that. One thing I'm tremendously proud of is that we expect to close the year at 6%-6.5% organic revenue growth for the year, and very excited to do that. If you think about that as background, let's move on to talking about what we've laid out at the very beginning. We've shared this in every company I've ever built. There's been a purpose, vision, mission, and values. This is the one I get excited talking about, saying, We believe human ingenuity can transform the world and improve our future. That's what our future is the world's future. That's what we're working on.

Vision is always something that is a beacon to the future, should stand the test of time. It must be customer-focused, and it must be measurable. We will improve, that's the measure we're using, the way the world creates, protects, advances innovation. Mission is the tools I ask all of our team, our 8,000+ colleagues around the world, to focus on when they're making priority decisions. The values, I'm so proud of these. Nine words: Aim for greatness, value every voice, own your own action. One thing you should know, the way we lead, I hold our leadership team 50% accountable for being role models of living the values and 50% on performance. That's the way, that's what really creates great teams. I work with a situation where we treat every person with equal dignity and respect.

Our entire company is focused on that. Where we do our very best to trust every person to be able to make the decisions they're capable of making to move us forward. Great vision, mission, values. This is the circle I've used for years. I'm gonna talk about it at length, and then you're actually gonna see us tie this into our ESG sustainability in a little while. Colleague engagement. I believe that every company, to be successful, has to be the very best at colleague engagement. We just finished our second survey last week. More details of that to come, but I'm so proud of what we're focused on.

At the end of the day, the only sustainable competitive advantage any organization has is its people, and I'm so excited to be part of this organization where we bring great colleagues the opportunity to be ever more successful. Customer delight, you're gonna hear about that after I finish, from Kerri Nelson, who's been a great leader for us of making customer delight a reality. I'm very excited about where we're at. At the end of the day, this weekend, I read every one of the customer delight write-ins from thousands of customers, so we know what we need to do to become an ever-better customer-focused company, outside in. Strong growth, top and bottom line growth. We'll cover that in more detail. Then investor returns.

Investor returns for me is the end of the day the one thing I wanna do better than any company does is focus on cash per share, and we're working at it hard. We'll talk about sustainability in just a couple of minutes. Culture is the way I've led companies always. Culture, culture, our focus for 2022. 'Cause at the end of the day, I start when we make acquisitions trying to understand what the culture is of the company, like DRG, like CPA, Darts-ip, the other acquisitions we've made, 'cause it's such an important part. Outside in, first of all, critical, everything we do, I ask everybody how do we help our customers help their customers. How do we make sure we're in the work streams of our customers, letting them be more successful? Teamwork is critical for me. This is a team sport.

We have great individuals, but this is a team sport. I think the most important thing we can do, and I use these words with all of our leaders: collaborate, listen, learn, and celebrate. Listening is, I think, an art that's been lost. I try to spend at least half of my time, as does all of our leadership team and our whole company, in listening and learning from each other. I operate, and we all do, with focus, simplify and execute. Huge job. We've made great progress. We've got farther to go. Our life has to be: how do we focus, how do we simplify and then execute better than anybody else?

Simplify is the toughest thing to do, and we've worked hard on getting rid of bureaucracy and listening to our customers when they tell us what they want from us, an easy to do business with company. Culture guides our action and our focus for 2022. Here's, as I said a minute ago, this is the May survey we're just finishing, and we'll share those results with you on our February 28 Q4 announcement of results, how we did in the fall survey. We had 88% response rate, which I'm delighted with. Think about having 95% of our people working out of their homes since March 2020. I couldn't be more pleased with what they've done, our colleagues, and what they are doing.

Feedback, communication, action-taking, those are strengths, really great ones that we'll continue to work on. We always take our top three opportunities to improve, those being decision-making, growth and belonging. Belonging's a critical one because as we shifted away from offices around the world to equipping everybody working from home, which is just something I never imagined, but something that I couldn't be prouder that we've accomplished. Belonging is an important part. As we bring our company back together with new platforms and new footprints of property, you'll see us working hard at making sure we have that belonging in place. Decision-making and that feedback's critical. We have to continue to operate with a sense of urgency to make our decisions quicker. We can fix anything once we've made the decision, if we make a mistake.

What we can't do is take too long to make decisions. That's where a sense of urgency plays so important. The growth here is two points. One, our colleagues wanna see a company like we're delivering the 6%-6.5% organic growth, complemented by acquisitions in the years to come, and the growth that they are given, the opportunity for career path growth. That's what we got feedback in May. I'll give you the report in February or sooner of the response from this fall. Customer delight. This is as good as it gets for us. We set a goal this year of 76, sorry, which was 2020's score. Because of the uncertainty we had, we delivered 78, which is incredible improvement. I couldn't be happier, and I'm so proud of what we did.

Best practice, which we'll get to in the next couple of years, I'll talk about what we have to do to get there, is critical for us. Just as a reminder, we're the only company today I know of, public company, that provides shares if and when we meet the board-approved, outside measured customer delight, which we've actually exceeded. We set the goal at 76, and we've maxed out at 78 for this year. Something I'm very proud of. I've done this for a long, long time. All of our leadership team has. The quality of products and services, information and insights are the highest scores I've ever seen, and they continue to be the highest scores. The place we have to and continue to do massive changes of improvement is being more responsive and becoming the easy to do business with company.

We are making progress, and we'll continue to. It's our biggest opportunity as we move to the three centers of excellence worldwide, 24/7 coverage, much improved responsiveness. You'll see that we make that happen better than any company's ever done before. We're on that path. We listen to our colleagues when they tell us what they need from us to make sure we do what the customer wants. I feel great about it, but I didn't know, I don't think any of us knew in 2021 what would happen. This was just an amazing step forward for 2021, and we'll make it even better in 2022. As I said, with ESG, we've set up similar pillars that we are using for our focus and actions.

Colleagues, colleague engagement, and I'll talk a little bit about each of these of what we've done. Governance, community, and environment. Think about those matching the world that we live in. Here's what we've done since we began, actually in the Q2 of 2020. Here's what we've accomplished thus far. Not gonna read all those, but we're on point to meet the targets that we laid out to be in the preferred group in the world. I was delighted last week to receive from one of our larger investors their measure, and we measured quite well for first year compared to some of other measurements, so I felt very good about that. Under governance, we've been working this hard before we even started ESG, and we'll continue to.

I always try to build a very diverse board that really represents the very best, representing our shareowners, representing each of you. If we go to the next slide, you'll see the next pieces, environment and community. Like I talked about that virtual circle. Think about a community. First volunteer, this we did this year. I was proud to be able to give hundreds of my hours on as an annual goal, and we went out, really great progress on volunteer recognition programs. Much more of that to come. Environment will be an area that we're working hard on. We will become a leader. We're using all of the power of our own insight to make that happen going forward. What we'll do for 2022 is the following. Colleagues, you can see submit Global Workplace Equality Index. That we're gonna make happen.

The governance, you can see. Environment, you can see. Community, you can see. Those are critical for us 'cause we want to be the world leader, and will be as we know each of our investors expect us to from ESG. Great progress there. We'll report on that like we do our other measurements each quarter. Let's move to what's the most exciting thing that I've been working on now for the last two and a half years, as a privileged leader, as a CEO of the great group of colleagues, One Clarivate. As I reminded you, we started with seven independent businesses. We moved to two groups, and now we're moving to One Clarivate, being outside in, customer-centric and focusing, and I'm gonna talk about those in just a minute, on the four customer segments.

With this strategy, I'm actually gonna read this 'cause I normally don't ever read slides, but I want you to hear. We put our customers at the center and move from product focus to customer solution focus. A huge step for us. You'll hear a lot about that today, including examples of live, successful examples of solutions we've provided that are changing customers' ways. Here's where we're at. This is what's so exciting to me 'cause it'll even change the way we're making acquisitions. We're going to those four global markets. Here's the addressable market and the growth they're in. Healthcare, academic, and government markets are growing at 11% compounded per year. Global patent and trademarks are compounded growth of 10% on global basis. The consumer manufacturing and technology segment that we pulled together are also growing at 10% per year.

I feel very good about where we're at. By the way, one misnomer is that when people read academic, they assume that it's a very tight market without increase. We look at academic and government markets together 'cause there's tremendous overlap between the two, and that market is one that we're ripe to move forward on, and we'll make sure it happens. It's got great organic internal growth, if you will, on a worldwide basis. You'll hear a lot more about that today. Why are we so well set up? We tackle and deliver answers for complex problems. Our customers need us to provide end-to-end solutions. As I just said, you're going to see real live examples from our team. Our ability to move, we talked a lot about cross-sell.

I talked about it when we went public in 2019. We put measurements in 2020, and now we're moving to where we're providing solutions that include all of our products. Example only, when we're in the academic world, that now our total offering includes, obviously, Web of Science and all of its great benefits, but also for research universities, it includes all of our healthcare opportunities, which we didn't use historically. It also provides us the opportunity to manage for universities and academic environments the patents and trademark applications. So it will use all of our products as we move forward. You'll hear from Steen later about how we reorganized our field sales organization. We announced two- years ago that we were going to three global centers of excellence with inside sales. That's up and running.

I couldn't be prouder of the products, and Steen will lay out how critical that was. That was the first step we had to make to get where we're at today. If we move on, here's the things I wanna share with you. Starting with government and academic, our current revenue numbers, you'll see the $460 million. Those are estimates for 2021. That's a $26 billion market. You'll see pharma, which is healthcare medical devices, $17 billion, fastest-growing market. You'll see consulting, where we're very strong with the addition of CPA, $16 billion, growing 9%-10%. And then that combination where we have huge upside of $47 billion market with manufacturing, tech, and consumer products. Think about this.

Think about us making strategic, tuck-in and strategic larger acquisitions that will complement us on a global basis in these, in these markets. Very exciting with more to come. Operational efficiency is one I've never been more proud of than what we've accomplished at Clarivate. You'll see as we exit, $235 million we have saved. FACTS is our friend done and in place. You'll see it across the board. I'm very pleased of the efforts we've made, and we'll continue to make that for years to come. As we simplify things, as we make sure that we give our people more people power to move quicker, you'll see us get productivity and continue to get better year after year. Couldn't be happier. You're gonna see much more of these savings, as we give guidance for 2022.

This is my favorite slide because I've been fortunate. I'm now leading my 10th public company, and I'm in my 42nd year. This model that I was privileged to be part of and create at IHS, then IHS Markit, and now Clarivate, is a wonderful model. Because the more recurring revenue we create, the more profitable the incremental growth, and I mean high 70% plus incremental growth, which means there's more cash flow we provide, therefore, the more opportunities to invest and reinvest, one, with new products, two, with tuck-ins, two, with major acquisitions like we've made, two of now. Very proud of what we did with DRG.

I'm very proud of what we've done with CPA, and I look forward to closing with ProQuest after we meet and complete all the requirements that we're doing working with the Federal Trade Commission, and we're hopeful that we'll close that by year-end. Here's my way of describing what we've done. Think about this. This is a machine that we've now created. The numbers you see here are the ones that I gave as my personal goals in November of last year, and I said, we hope to exit in 2023 at $3 billion of revenue, $1.4 billion of adjusted EBITDA. I'll come back to those two numbers, and then what it does for free cash flow and how we'll use that.

Just think about, as I said, $800 million revenue in 2018, $3 billion revenue in 2023. EBITDA $1.4 billion with upside. Again, my personal goal is $1.4 billion upside. As I said a few minutes ago, I think we'll be at or very close to 50% EBITDA in this year's 2021 Q4. Here's the way to think about it. $1.4 billion generated of EBITDA in my personal goal of $3 billion of revenue. Our CapEx spend will continue to be about $165 million. A simple way to think about that is 90% of that CapEx, 90% of that, is for product development. We're doing that today, and it's about 5.5% all in of CapEx of revenue.

Our cash tax is $65 million. If you look at that, what that does is generate $1.2 billion of free cash flow, where we'll make the best decisions for the highest return to our shareowners. That's share buyback, reduced debt, acquisitions, and a combination of those that gives our shareowners the very best benefits that they deserve and we will provide. Of course, what that does is if you do math, you'll see that my personal goal is we move towards a $1.50 of cash per share, a $1.50 of cash per share as we go out of 2023 into 2024. That's the excitement about this business model that we've created and will continue to grow with.

In conclusion, I'll do the 2021 guidance and then wrap up with a few words of why I'm so excited about where we're at. This is the current that we're reaffirming. Guidance $1.8 billion-1.84 billion revenue, adjusted revenue. 6%-6.5% exiting 2021 into 2022 for all-in organic growth. Remember, 1.2%-1.3% in 2020, 6%-6.5% for the year of organic growth as we exit 2021. Couldn't be prouder. Adjusted EBITDA $795 million-825 million. As I said earlier, we've moved up the bottom of the adjusted revenue by $20 million, sorry, during the year, and we moved up the bottom by $10 million on EBITDA.

We're almost going to double EBITDA from 2020 into 2021. Adjusted EBITDA margin, again, I just couldn't be more proud. 44%-45% with much upside left in the years to come. Adjusted diluted EPS $0.70-0.74. By the way, that will include our commitment that we get at least 10% adjusted EPS at the end of the first year of each of our major acquisitions. We're on point, having delivered that with the DRG and clearly on point delivering that with CPA. Finally, adjusted free cash flow. That's levered free cash flow. You'll see where we're at and I'm excited to wrap this up and provide a guidance of 2022 soon. Summary.

I've been like I said, I've been blessed to lead 10 great companies with wonderful people. This one does more together than any place I've been, largely because of our ability to help change the world, to help inventors and creators do things faster, to provide all the things that every customer of ours so deserves for years to come. Strong financial attributes, like I said, 70%+ incremental margin, just couldn't be happier. We've got many levers to drive our growth, our profit and our cash flow. We'll use all those as we move forward. We'll continue to increase our revenue growth on an organic and an acquisitive basis. We'll continue to drive profitability and therefore, as the last couple charts I showed you, create cash flow, a machine that will allow us to give ever better returns, and we will do that.

Like I said at the beginning, products that we're creating today are so critical inside of our customers' work streams to help them manage their workflows, to help them help their customers. You've seen what we laid out to do, where we started, this race for success in May 2019 and where we're going now with One Clarivate, with huge white space to create internal new products, to acquire products, and to provide solutions that make an amazing and magnificent difference for our customers. Finally, we'll continue to be purpose-driven, purpose-based culture in place today and make it an ever better one with great leadership team that I'm privileged to be able to support. With that, I'm going to turn it over to Kerri Nelson.

I look forward to coming back at the end of our session today, and we'll be live with Q&A. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Very proud of our team and very excited about where we're going in the future.

Kerri Nelson
COO, Clarivate Plc

Hi, my name is Kerri Nelson, and I am Clarivate's Chief Operations Officer. My team focuses on making it easy for our customers and our colleagues every day across 2 million interactions. Making it easy is a top priority in delighting our customers. Over the past 25 years, I've gathered many learnings and best practices, all with the lens on how to be the very best. One of my basic beliefs is that the only reality that matters is our perceptions from our customers. That is what drives me and my team every day. My team is 100% focused on measuring the most impactful touch points we have with our customers based on their feedback. Let me share with you how we approach making it easy.

We do this by simplifying our processes from an outside-in lens, also by connecting our end-to-end systems to be easy to use, and lastly, responding to each other quickly across these 2 million interactions that include our customer care and sales support interactions via phone, email, and chat, as well as ensuring our orders and invoices are correct and timely. We measure everything we do, how fast we answer the phones with a best practice goal of 10 seconds, how quickly we get orders to our customers within 24 hours, and reducing handoffs in approval processes by 75%. Our centers of excellence are critical to how we deliver these outcomes with 4,600 colleagues in our centers today and ramping up to over 6,000 colleagues by the end of 2022.

The operations we have in our centers of excellence are customer care, content operations, IT, product, and inside sales. We cover over 12 languages and continue to grow and invest in moving more of our customer accounts to our centers of excellence to better serve our customers and connect with them on a more frequent basis. All of our operational rigor is then applied to our integration end-to-end process. We integrate our acquisitions in a consistent manner based on learnings and colleague feedback. Over the past 15 years, I've personally integrated over 40 acquisitions and continue to learn what works and what can be better with each one. We have a very detailed playbook across 14 work streams that helps us prioritize our actions from a people, a process, and a system perspective.

All of this feeds into our 365-day plan to ensure we deliver our business outcomes. A great example of this is CPA Global, where we just celebrated our one-year anniversary together and delivered $100 million in cost synergies. A great proof point of our ability to integrate and improve our colleagues' experience is our connected workplace strategy, which has resulted in $27 million of cost savings. Prior to the pandemic, we had over 121 dedicated sites. We had the opportunity to step back and re-look at our footprint. We now have a more flexible and cost-effective model to bring our colleagues together anywhere in the world. We have 43 Clarivate sites today with over 3,500 third-party sites available, so our colleagues can connect during onboarding, training, and celebration activities. Our sites and connections are now much more purpose-driven.

Most important to having space available for our colleagues is ensuring safety with clear protocols. Some of these protocols include six feet social distancing and desk spacing, using a contact tracing app when you go into one of our sites, and vaccines are highly recommended and now required in the U.S. Core to our ability to scale and increase productivity is our constant engagement with our colleagues around the world. We are listening to our colleagues via roundtables and networking sessions. We also have a Make It Easy program to get ideas directly from our colleagues. They are our best source of ideas with over 105 submitted to date and 91% of those we've implemented. We also ensure that we're having fun together.

This is so important to make sure that we're each inspiring and motivating each other because this ultimately helps our recruiting and retention efforts. Lastly, how do we know this is all working? We have a world-class customer delight program that has three main components. The first one is listen. We listen when a customer joins us, the first 90 days in onboarding. We listen while our customers use our products and get their feedback. We also talk to customers that leave us. We learn a lot that way in order to keep improving our customers' experience. The second thing we do that's very important is we act on this feedback, and we have a very clear scorecard in place that really measures the progress in areas that matter most to our customers, such as timeliness of our content, user-friendly products, and responsiveness via customer care.

Lastly, we communicate. It is really important to communicate back to our customers what we heard and what we're doing based on their feedback. We do that very frequently. We also, as part of this program, reward 100% of our colleagues with Clarivate restricted stock units based on our customer delight performance. We do this because we know our customers' feedback matters to their spending behaviors. We know that when our customers attend a webinar, read a newsletter, or we respond to their question via customer care the first time they contact us, this all leads to higher levels of customer delight, which then leads to higher levels of usage and spend. In October, we received feedback from over 18,000 customers and had a 2-point improvement in our customer delight score. We know many of the actions we are taking are working.

It is great to see our progress to date. However, we do have more to do, especially in the area of Make It Easy for our customers. As Jerre mentioned, we have five company goals that are tightly connected. From colleague engagement lens, we are ensuring the safety of our 8,700 colleagues while being productive and having fun. We know that driving responsiveness across Clarivate, processing customer orders faster, and scaling our centers of excellence will continue to improve our customers' delight and our financial performance. Finally, at the heart of everything is making sure sustainability is core to how we operate globally. Thank you for letting me share our focus on Make It Easy, delighting our customers. We are now going to take a short break, and when we return, you'll be hearing from our Chief Revenue Officer, Steen Lomholt-Thomsen.

Steen Lomholt-Thomsen
Chief Revenue Officer, Clarivate Plc

Hello, everybody. I am excited to be talking to all of you today, and I'm really delighted to be part of the Clarivate family. My name is Steen Lomholt-Thomsen, and I recently joined as the Chief Revenue Officer, being responsible for the customer-facing organization in Clarivate. I've all my life been helping businesses grow and scale, and I look forward to doing that in Clarivate as well. I'm really impressed with the market opportunity that Clarivate has ahead of it, and I'm also very excited about the incredible talent and colleagues we have in Clarivate. Today, I would like to talk to you about what we call One Clarivate, and this is really our customer-centric strategy that we wanna bring to market next year. This is really all about driving fast organic growth for the company and for Clarivate.

It's really centered around how do we drive higher penetration of our solutions and our product into our install base? How do we get closer to our customers so we better understand their strategic and end-to-end needs, and how do we match that with our best-in-class solutions? Overall, how do we ensure that that delivers strong organic growth for the company? Now, Clarivate has been on an amazing and fantastic journey over the last number of years since it went public in 2019. Fantastic acquisitions and a lot of important strategic decisions has been made as well. Now, clearly, Clarivate has been rearchitected as a business, but even under those circumstances, this year, we will deliver more than 6% organic growth, which I think is pretty impressive.

Clarivate has also made a lot of important decision that has really enabled us to move to the One Clarivate, our customer-centric organization, coming into FY 2022. What we're looking to achieve strategically through this strategy is really to unlock our sales potential. It's really to build deeper customer relationship, and it is clearly to drive more strategically and more systematically cross and upsell of the Clarivate portfolio into our customer base. Now, Clarivate will go to market and will operate based on four key customer segments. They all very innovation-intensive, and they are really, really strategic and a great match to the value proposition that we have within our portfolio. They all represent high to double-digit growth, for the business. As you can see on this slide, we have a pretty good distribution of our revenue across our four segments.

Most interesting is we have an amazing customer base here, and most compellingly, we have an incredible white space that we're looking to pursue. The addressable market for our business is more than $100 billion, and we're looking to capture more of that as we look for faster growth. Now, we built a solution map because we wanted to understand what are the most successful products that we so far have succeeded with. From a go-to-market perspective and from a customer segmentation perspective, you can see by customer segment the top three solutions and our top growers that we have. More importantly, what we find really compelling is the opportunity for the second tier of solutions across our four customer segments and the growth potential that they have in each of the segments.

This is really part of the cross-sell and the upsell strategy that we want to execute. We now have a clear path, and we have a clear plan on how we look to expand our presence in our different customer segments, and we know exactly the solution that has the highest growth potential. What we plan to do is that for the top products that you see, we will have our account managers with our customer success organization really drive a continuous expansion and growth. Then we wanna deploy dedicated sales specialists, a dedicated sales team, really focus on these next tier solutions to make sure that we can drive faster growth into our different customer segments.

The reason we are so confident on that strategy is that we have a number of references, a number of accounts where we've been able to deliver that kind of growth. One example is a life science and a healthcare client, where we basically, over the last number of years, grown that account more than double-digit on an annual basis and actually increased our growth with $3.5 million. Or said in a different way, we've gone from three product to seven products. Or said differently, we've grown 38% on an annual basis. Organically, we've grown 81%. Now we have another great example where we've done the same. We've basically gone from three products to five products, and we've been able to increase our install base with another $2 million over the last number of years.

That is an annual growth percent of 23% on organic growth of 58%. The strategy is clear. We wanna take these great references where we've driven double-digit growth in these type of accounts, and we wanna replicate that across not one, not 10, but across hundreds of accounts that we have within our portfolio. Now, the other thing we've done, we looked at our 26,000 accounts, and we've asked the following question: where is the biggest opportunity? The second question we ask ourselves is how do we capture that growth and how do we capture that as fast as possible? How we have segmented our accounts is really around four tiers. At the top, we have our global accounts, which is typically where we have our global top brands that clearly are very strategically important for us.

We know within this customer segment, we still have very attractive up- and cross-sell opportunities. Our strategic account segment is about 25% of our total revenue. Here we know, based on the analysis we've done, that we have a very compelling and a significant cross-sell opportunities that we need to go and pursue. Then we have our field accounts that are typically more regional-based or maybe even country-based, where we typically will have one or two solutions installed. We also know based on our analysis, that we have high potential to drive further cross-sell into these accounts as well. Then last but certainly not least, we have 24,000 accounts that sits in our inside sales function. We have completed the transition of all these accounts to inside sales.

Our strategic priority for our inside sales function and for this segment is two things. One is to improve the retention rate, and two, to continue to expand new business, including new logos. Hopefully, you can see by this segmentation, we can configure our sales force to be as effective and as efficient in terms of how they serve our clients. What we're gonna do for the top three tiers is that we're gonna deploy a dedicated Clarivate account manager that's gonna be the quarterback to make sure that we serve the client the best possible way and we find the best possible opportunities to drive growth for the company and for the business.

The way that we have quantified these opportunities and the way we think about how we can execute this is really looking at our four customer segments and really thinking about what is the tactical short-term opportunities that we want to go and pursue. We have quantified that as more than $1 billion in potential that we are very focused on executing and capturing. As you look at the four customer segments, you can see that we envision significant growth both in government, academic, and also in life science and healthcare. You can also see that professional services and consumer manufacturing and tech also have significant and very compelling growth opportunities. The way we think about driving growth is looking at our key commercial levers, and they are naturally looking at how do we improve retention.

We think we're gonna improve retention by getting closer to our customers, building deeper relationships, and getting more embedded into their workflows, so they can see more value from our solutions. We also think that through the cross-sell and the upsell strategy that I've already laid out, that we can, with laser focus, make sure that we map the right solution to the right customer to the right segment. Then last, but certainly not least, we understand the importance of keep expanding our customer base, and we are very keen to do that as well to expand from the 26,000 that we have today. Clearly, we'll have a strategic focus as well on expanding new logos, and that we're gonna do across our four segments as well.

The One Clarivate or our customer-centric strategy is really all about putting the customer at the center of everything that we do, and it's making sure that we operate outside in. We think there are really unique benefits for our customers by working with us and through this strategy that we are deploying. Clearly, we think that this will help build deeper and more strategic partnerships with our clients, and be sure that we can show and we can commit to the long-term strategy of our clients and of their business and how they work with their clients. We think we can create more value, and we think we can create more value by actually understanding our customers' end-to-end needs and requirements better, and by mapping that with our best-in-class solutions.

Last, but certainly not least, we are a company that is committed, and we have a mission that is to improve the way that the world creates, protects, and advances innovation. We think that that would drive further benefit for our clients as well. Clearly, for Clarivate, there are also significant benefits. We believe that this go-to-market strategy and this model will clearly empower the organization. It will improve speed of execution, and it will ensure that we can faster capture the growth opportunities we have ahead of us. We believe it's gonna accelerate product innovation as we get closer to our clients, as we listen more to our clients, as we understand better exactly what we need to do with our portfolio, so we can be a better partner for them.

We think it's gonna help us prioritize both how we do development and also the investment decisions that we make. Clearly, the team-setting approach with an account manager and a team around them to maximize how we serve and delight our customers will improve our retention rate. We know it's gonna drive account expansion, and fundamentally, of course, it will increase customer delight. We are convinced with this go-to-market model that we will strategically drive the right type and level of up and cross-sell within our different customer segments, and fundamentally deliver what we're all looking for, which is increased organic growth for the business. As I close, the path forward is the following. The One Clarivate will be put in place by January 1, and it will ensure, and it will guarantee that we operate outside in.

Strategically, this go-to-market model will ensure that we can scale our different customer segments. Tactically, we have clear commercial levels. We have clear commercial programs that will drive the up and cross-sell we're looking to achieve next year, that enables us to expand our 26,000 account base by finding new logos and by improving our retention rate through the focus on our clients within the model. Fundamentally, we are sure that that's gonna unlock organic growth for the company. In summary, we have a clear strategy. We have identified our opportunities. We have our growth ambition set, and we are convinced that our One Clarivate, our customer-centric go-to-market model will realize this. Thank you very much for your attention today. I appreciate you listening to me.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Welcome. My name is Julia Mair. I'm the Chief Marketing and Communications Officer, and I'm the Head of Sustainability. I'm here today with my colleagues, Gordon Samson, President of the IP Group, Mukhtar Ahmed, President of the Science Group, and Stefano Maestri, who is our Chief Technology Officer. Earlier today, we heard Jerre talking about how we're really helping our customers to solve some of the world's most complex problems. For today's session, we're gonna talk about product and technology and the investments that we're making to really improve customer experience, drive customer delight, how we're working with our product portfolios, bringing new products to market, really to drive cross-selling and retention.

Before we dive in today, I'd like to hear from each of you about what are the customer challenges that you're really seeing out there when you're talking to your customers, and I'll start with you, Gordon.

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Thank you, Julia. First of all, it's great to share the podium, if this can be a podium, with Mukhtar and Stef, and hopefully it'll give the listeners a bit of an insight into how we work together across the IP and science portfolio to build solutions, but you can be the judge of that later. To answer your question, what I see in the marketplace is the pace of both innovation and globalization, and they both support and drive each other. Customers are under what looks like ever-increasing pressure for ROI on research, on investment, innovation, and on realizing value from their IP assets. We have a great role to play in supporting that, but again, perhaps that'll come out of the conversation.

Finally, you know, we need to think like our customers and be part of their industry vertical, not part of our world. Looking forward to hear what Mukhtar and Stef have to say.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. Well, Mukhtar-

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Sure.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

What are the challenges you're seeing?

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, happy to pick up. You know, if we look at this in the context of the post-pandemic era in particular here, Julia, what we're seeing is a lot of our customers really are seeking a lot of help to just navigate through a lot of the economic and industry challenges that they face, in some cases regulatory, some cases financial. Ultimately it revolves around using data. If anything, you know, the volume and velocity of data continues to increase. In that, lots of challenges are posed for our customers in that they need to navigate through that data really to draw and extract insights. They want to be empowered, those self-service analytics, being able to go off and use that data to derive actionable outcomes.

Therein, I think, also lies an opportunity for ourselves here to work with those customers to really address those challenges and to solve those in a rapid timeframe.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. That's great. Stef, what about you?

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

I would say really complementing both Gordon and Mukhtar's commentary really. As a technologist, there's three things that I worry about every day. One is how do we actually manage this data explosion from a system perspective, and how do we do that, and how do our customers do that, and how do we help one another? The second one is actually the pace of technology change. There's always more and more new solutions that we can adopt and really help us grow. The problem is which one are the right ones to pick and at what time. The last thing I guess I would really talk about is, you know, our customers rightfully expect seamless interoperability of our services and products.

That's, I guess, the third challenge that, you know, hopefully we'll give you some insight in today in the conversation.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Great. Well, we've heard some of the challenges, so let's talk about how we're helping to solve those. Gordon, last year we've been talking about building end-to-end solutions, integrating our products into our customers' environments. How's that going in the IP Group? Are there things that you're working on that you can share with us now?

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Well, a few examples. Let me think of one that I think is really, really interesting. First of all, when we talk about these examples today, and I'm sure that Mukhtar and Stef will do so, we're gonna talk about outcomes, but not product details. This is a story that starts from 2019 with a Fortune 100 global customer. Super interesting story. The IP industry has a challenge in the filing and prosecution space. That space is largely a semi-automated or manual process, which is therefore full of challenges and opportunities for error as well as success. We had an idea in 2019, and we approached this customer who'd been a product partner customer before. The idea was essentially simple. What was the answer?

Well, Connect, and I could stop there, and if you listened to the demo day, you would know a bit about this. But let me explain that a bit more. We developed a digital workflow platform which fundamentally addresses two things. One is a real pain point in the customer's workflow and their IP operation. It also addresses a real pain point in the industry, which has been a challenge for many years, in fact, for decades. This digital workflow platform that we brought to market addresses the need for their operational teams to make quality decisions and send clear instructions with accurate data from our data and content sources. I'm sure we'll talk a bit about that, and using IP asset management software that they sit on every day. A proper integration with a workflow tool.

Really exciting and solves both their issue and an industry issue. We started by delivering a trademark solution at the beginning of 2021, and in January 2022 we'll launch the patent solution, which we're super excited about. It will give them access to much richer data, real-time information to make better, faster decisions. There are many other examples, but I think that's a really terrific one, and it's about bringing a new product to market. Frankly, to complement Stef and the team, it's all about those fundamental building blocks that technology's been working on for some time, perhaps behind the scenes, so we can now deliver these integrated solutions.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. This kind of customer-centric example, does it pose problems for you on the technology side, and how do you solve those?

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

That's a good question. Look, I think it poses problems, but also that we have this present solutions that you can adopt. Gordon mentioned Agile, and I'll start there, and I actually talked about Agile last year to some degree. You know, as a company, we've really evolved our agility and also the way we operate in terms of, delivering software and solutions. That was like a great foundation block for us, to sort of help our customers. I think the evolution we've made in the last 12- months are really twofold that really helped complement this customer use case, but also more broadly, other customers, is we've adopted a design thinking philosophy, which is really thinking about the motivations and the outcomes customers really need and trying to really empathize with them to understand what's actually driving those things.

Often the case is people talk about requirements rather than what's actually driving those requirements and really trying to get into the nub of those aspects of the combination. The second thing we've done, which I think has been another big driver and hopefully Gordon and Mukhtar will agree with their support, in fact, they were wholeheartedly behind this transformation, was to start to bring together our user experience and user interface teams as one. Number one, of course, to help, you know, help us drive the One Clarivate vision, but more importantly, to enable some of the things I opened with, which is how do you start to get seamless integration? How do you start to get the feeling of you're using one product rather than many?

I think they're the three pillars we use to help drive that support for our customers and, you know, again, I'm very pleased with the outcomes, and hopefully in quarter Mukhtar will agree.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Well, I'm sure they're creating some pretty powerful customer experiences as well.

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

Absolutely.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Mukhtar, back to you. You know, we've all been through a pandemic for the past two- years that has put a lot of focus on the pharmaceutical and life sciences industry. You've talked in the past about some of the challenges they face, particularly in the regulatory and drug areas. Is there anything we're doing there to help our customers manage those rather complex landscapes?

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. Let me perhaps just draw on one particular example here, 'cause you know, I think examples and case studies are always useful ways to actually understand you know, customers' problems and how we help to solve those problems. But before I do so, let me just roll back here just as a reminder on our business model, 'cause this is quite important. You know, our business model is underpinned really by three core tenets. You know, we offer software as a service, and this is really all of our analytics suite across the enterprise, both science and IP. Remember, we're talking about integration here and interoperability across the enterprise. Having access to our subscription software is you know, absolutely critical. The second component is access to the underlying data.

Remember, we've invested heavily in building that data architecture, building that data together so that we can serve it through our applications. There are a slew of customers that want access to that data as a service, and we're enabling that through our cloud, and I'm sure Stef will, you know, talk more about the cloud, and I'm sure Gordon will also have examples. So that's the second tenet. The third one, which is really important here, is consulting. You know, our consulting organization. This is deep domain specialization in the industries that we operate. Remember, we've moved to five industries, and we're focused on those from a go-to-market and solution perspective. Then intertwining that with and complementing it with data sciences expertise, and that's really understanding data sciences technology and being able to apply those.

It's really that third tenet in this particular example. It's a top 10 biopharmaceutical organization, you know, global span, wonderful drug portfolio. In this particular instance, the customer had an issue with really optimizing their regulatory processes. Remember, in drug development, you know, huge amount of investment in discovery, developing the drug, but the key focus is to get the approval and obviously in the pandemic, we've seen that accelerated with all the vaccines. In this case, the real problem was optimization of those regulatory workflows using data to drive decision-making and really to streamline the entire process of R&D. Our consulting team, in this first instance, engaged with that customer to really understand what are the issues and how can we assemble the right information here to drive decision-making.

Very much working at the C-level in this biopharmaceutical organization. You know, over the course of what are almost three years now, we've built a fantastic relationship from the executive level all the way through to the operational and delivery teams in on this particular customer. What we've done here is help them assemble solutions, advise on how to make the data actionable, but also a fair amount of business transformation and change around using those insights. Now, the beauty of this is that through that process, this customer has been able to really leverage not just our regulatory data, but have been able to leverage all of our products and data across the enterprise. Cortellis, our academic suite into intellectual property. It's a fantastic example of working with a customer and helping them to adopt our solutions and offerings.

The key thing here is a wonderful template that we can reuse over and over again with large customers. You know, very excited about this one.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. It's a very powerful story. Stef, back to you, because what he's talking about obviously has implications on the technology side. This is data as a service. You gave a nod to you to talk about cloud, but what else behind the scenes do you have to do to be able to deliver on this?

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

I think the first thing is, you know, we were, as a company, I think very progressive and, you know, we already had about 80% of our assets hosted in the cloud, so that's a great foundation to build on. We spent a lot of time over the last two-three years starting to, number one, become a cloud-first company. Any new products and services we build are built in a cloud-native way. But beyond that, we've also been looking at our broader portfolio and picking and re-engineering products over time. I think you mentioned Cortellis, Mukhtar, and I always use Cortellis as the sort of shining light for the whole team and for the company in so far as it's achieved something that I think is quite transformational actually from a cloud perspective.

You know, we've got Cortellis to the point now where it's able to release at will. Now, you might ask, "Well, is that actually absolutely necessary?" I would say, well, in many cases, not all, not really. But what I would say is what release at will actually gives you two things. Number one, first of all, just to explain what it is, it's the ability to release software without customers really knowing it's happening at any point in the day. In order to do that, the things that enable that are three things. Number one, you have to have a very good automation suite of testing and making sure the product is engineered in the right way. Number two, you need to be able to deploy change without interrupting service.

Number three, you need to be able to do that in a fully automated, repeatable fashion. They're really the three tenets we're building on in the company around making us as cloud-native as possible. You know, I think Cortellis is the shining light for the rest of the company that we're aspiring to. Again, I think if we do that right and continue to grow our assets in the same way, interoperability and cross-selling and all these things will become much more easy over time. I think you know, that's really what I would add there is our journey to become more cloud-native.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. That's great.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

If I can just maybe add something, if you don't mind, Stef and Julia. Just, you know, with the infrastructure that Stef has just talked about, there's an important point around our customers. With our applications in particular, we've focused on, you know, what we call the practitioners of information, the decision makers. We've done that really well. You know, you heard from Gordon, of course. I've given you an example. The other area of focus is our customers' customers. Really focusing on the end users. Because ultimately, that's who we're trying to influence, you know. 'Cause they're the real consumers of, you know, of the value that we create. You know, mobility, of course, is important.

You know, if we think about our users, you know, we're not just designing for the users of today, we're also designing for the users of tomorrow. We've invested heavily into, you know, the human-centered design and the whole UX experience. We've released a number of applications. You know, MIRA, which is the My Research Assistant that gives the gateway, for example, to Web of Science. We've done something similar in the regulatory arena as well, and we'll continue to do so. That mobility capability, and that's native mobility, I think is something that's strategically important for us, that we can truly connect with all of our end user communities. I don't know, Stef, if you wanna add to that as well.

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

No. I think it's a great call out, actually, MIRA being a great example of that innovation where, you know, the engineering discipline required to build mobile apps that function on the go and are able to recover and release at will, et cetera, is something that we've evolved over the last two- years. I think, again, it's about upskilling and growing our capabilities as a technology group to support the business imperatives. I think MIRA is a great call out. Actually, I'm sure the team will be kicking me virtually under the table for not mentioning it. Thank you for bringing it up.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

It's one of many.

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

Yes.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

One of many.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

It is one of many.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

One of many.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yes.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Gordon, I'll turn back to you. You were talking about customer challenges at the very start of this session. You mentioned the time, the energy, the complexity of managing intellectual property, especially around trademarks, and especially when it comes to litigation, of those. What are we doing to help our customers really manage those and move beyond them? Do you have an example?

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Well, we're doing quite a lot. Before I give you an example, just Mukhtar commented about the business process change that happens when we provide solutions to customers. That actually is a big impact on them. The comment about getting closer to our customers is really important because it's not what we do with them, it's the impact on their organizations that we need to help with as well. It's a great comment. Nothing I'm gonna talk about is possible without my friend Stef. This is my plea for more support from Stef. I'm now in pole position for next year's support. Let me talk a bit about something that I'm really excited about, which is, in 2019, Clarivate acquired a business called Darts-ip.

Try not to use too many products or entity names, but it is important. They're a leading business in the IP litigation data space. The acquisition of that data set and a terrific team resulted in some really interesting integrations that were all part of the strategy. The story is about how we use data to help get customers to make better decisions. The amount of money wasted in the innovation, research, and IP life cycle that doesn't have an ROI is quite a scary discussion, but probably too big a topic for today. Back to the story. Immediately after the acquisition of the Darts-ip business, the team set about integrating Darts-ip litigation data, first with our trademark business. Many people will know our trademark platform as CompuMark, the world-leading platform.

By combining the data, litigation data and the trademark case data, it enriches the decision-making and the risk profiling tremendously. Really important to the practitioners that are making those decisions in the front line, as Mukhtar has explained. We did that really quickly, I mean, within the Q1 after acquisition. 2020 was very, very busy. In quarters two to four of 2020, the business then integrated the Darts-ip litigation data into two of our three patent intelligence suite products. That's really exciting from a customer perspective because you're trying to get a deeper understanding of the concentration of where litigation happens and why, and the likely outcome. Much better due diligence on patent investigation.

That combination of litigation data and the world's leading patent data set, again, back to Stef, technology and content team, has made a real difference to customers that are now adopting that combined data set. The journey's not over there because that's sort of the IP side of the story. The integration of Darts-ip data, litigation data is an end-to-end research, innovation IP lifecycle all the way through. Perhaps, Mukhtar, you might wanna comment on what that's meant for the science group, because I think it shows we don't generally talk about science and IP internally. We talk about Clarivate. That's something that Mukhtar might wanna pick up on.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. Thanks, Gordon. I mean, you're absolutely right. I mean, we talk about solutions across the enterprise and some of the things that Stef just mentioned around, you know, interoperability, the fact that we've invested heavily in our data architecture, which of course we call Singularity. We also have to call out the efforts of, you know, uncertain, our Chief Data Officer. With his vision, we've been able to realize this, but it allows us to master our data, ingest it, and then use that across the enterprise. This is a terrific example of that, you know, with the Darts-IP data, because we've been using it in Cortellis here, specifically in the generic space. It really provides some fantastic predictive analytics around challenges to particular patents.

What that really means for generics and biosimilars companies is they can look at the market, they can look at their supply chains, they can look at sourcing, and they can really define those strategies all the way through to whatever their market access and commercialization strategies may be. It's extremely powerful.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

This is a great example of how we're using our content, you know, across the company. We're getting so much new content into the company as we go through acquisitions. What kind of technology solutions or opportunities do you see to really pick up our content and reuse it in all of our different product portfolios?

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

Well, I'd start with, I think Gordon's use case and Mukhtar's, you know, joint use case is a great one because the Darts-ip data was actually redistributed across the company using Singularity. You know, that's the backbone of redistribution. An opportunity we had beyond that was really to look at, okay, but how do we then distribute out to our customers? You may recall some of the commentary last year. I think, you know, Mukhtar may have spoke about the Research Intelligence Cloud and we also spoke about the IP Cloud.

I think I mentioned this last year actually, which there was an opportunity there to bring the technology sets together and reimagine how we do that in a consistent way, and more importantly, in a scalable way that we can continue to delight our customers. What we did there was we started an initiative which I labeled C3, the C3 platform, which is really the underpinnings of those services our customers consume today. We've built common architecture now to deliver consistent APIs for customers to consume, but also to authenticate in the same way and to really build a foundation block that we continue to build up on top of. I almost think of it as building a Lego tower.

We've got the base done really well now, and it's just picking bits of Lego as new use cases and opportunities come through to allow us to continue to innovate. That's what I would say.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Oh, I love a Lego analogy. That's really good. Gordon, I'm gonna pick on something that actually my team worked a little bit on. You're looking very confused at me.

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

I'm worried now.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. It's a press release. That's the part my team contributed. We did recently put out a press release with HP. It seems like a really interesting story, where we almost co-created together. Can you tell us a little bit more about the details? 'Cause the press release didn't get too deep into it.

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Sure. I'd be delighted to. I should start by saying thank you to HP for allowing us to use their name in the press release and hopefully also to discuss that today. I should however say that I should have mentioned that the APIs that customers are consuming the Darts-ip data on are a great example of what Stef was saying. You know, it's how customers want to consume the data, not necessarily how we use the data. So just a great link. So back to the question. HP have got a very clear intent, and they've stated to the marketplace that their role is to bring apps and innovation to market faster.

The key word there for us is faster because clearly, Clarivate's intent is out there to use our data, our platforms, and our expertise, and we shouldn't forget our expert people. They play a huge role in both our science and our IP solutions across the business, and which I talked about consulting, which is a terrific example of that. They want to move faster, they want to move with surety and have a number of important objectives in that surety. One is to identify licensing opportunities when they're developing IP. It's a very big part of the IP world that is often not spoken about very much. It's not just about bringing product to market. They also want to make sure that when they bring IP to market, that it's got real strategic value.

Looking to make sure it's got patents have got what they call essentiality, which means it's got much deeper reach in the market than just a traditional patent would have. A number of different corporate drivers that HP have, and they sit extremely well with Clarivate's intent and stated approach to the marketplace. Knowing what HP's objective was, and again, an existing customer, but a product-based customer, we set about integrating. I was gonna use the phrase deep integration, so I've said it now and Stef can explain it later, which is a good way of me not having to explain it myself. That deep integration means that we brought our data and our content sets, and you've got a bit of an idea of how deep those content sets are from what you've heard from Mukhtar and Stef.

We combined those, and we brought them together with our leading IP analytics software and asset management so that Hewlett-Packard's team can make faster decisions, but importantly, with accurate data and timely accurate data. These decisions have, you know, long-reaching consequences, not a few months, but, you know, a decade or two in some cases in terms of potential longevity. Super important. We're very excited about working with HP on this. I think rather than me try and tell you how good it is from our perspective, I should probably share what Choon Koh said from HP.

I'll slightly paraphrase, but rather than guess what he said, I did write this down, so out of respect for his quote, but he talks about a couple of things in his quote in our press release. He says that the deep integration of IPfolio, which is our SaaS leading asset management software product in the IP space, with the products and services across Clarivate's portfolio, was a key decision in partnering and extending the relationship with Clarivate, our breadth of services across both the IP and science. He also mentions the API suite, which I think again is an indicator of a customer's view of what we're doing. He closes by talking about allowing them to, you know, have cutting-edge applications brought faster to market to drive innovation.

If you don't listen to what we've been saying, then perhaps listen to what Choon Koh said as a customer, which is the best summary of all. It's a great story and one that we're proud of and to be associated with HP in this journey has been terrific.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

It's been great hearing all of these customer stories today. As we wrap up, I think I wanna hear a little bit about what you're excited about for the year ahead. I'm gonna start with you, Mukhtar, because I know that you're working on a project, that's really interesting. Your team is just getting started. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about that.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Sure, Julia, I think you're referring to our recent press release on our BARDA-

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

I am

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

initiative, and BARDA standing for, of course, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. This one's really exciting for us, primarily because we're partnering with them to really apply cutting-edge bioinformatics and data sciences to really look at the exposure of chemicals across a number of therapeutic areas. It's innovative, it's one of a kind, and it's so exciting here because we're taking our tools, our data, our deep expertise in bioinformatics, drug discovery, and we're applying that all together in a solution here to really help them drive predictive analytics and outcomes in that particular space. You know, very, very exciting.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Gordon, what about you? What are you excited about for the year ahead with the IP Group?

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Well, many things. I think the thing that is most interesting from my perspective is getting really deeply into our customer segments. What I mean by that, you've heard us talk about One Clarivate, talk about being aligned to our customer verticals or segments. If we're providing solutions, and you heard a bit about that today and a lot yesterday, then we need to understand how our customer's business operates. Being experts in what we do is a given, but giving confidence to customers that our solutions drive real outcomes for them, and to Mukhtar's point, to their customer's end user, is what it's really all about. You heard Gerry and Steve talk about One Clarivate, about reorganizing to be in line with the market. The whole organization's doing that, but the outside world doesn't see it all.

That probably is the most exciting thing for me in 2022.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

I think something for all of us to be looking forward to. Stef, why don't you close it out for us? What's ahead for the technology group in 2022?

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

I'm gonna be greedy, Julie, and talk about two things. One is security. Something that's close to both our hearts and we partner on quite closely because in 2021, we achieved ISO 27001 certification to Clarivate, which is a big achievement. Lots of investment from the team, but also more broadly from product partners and everybody really rallying behind making sure we're as secure as we can be. Most importantly, that underpins our ESG aspirations as a company. I know we talk about that a lot and certainly close to all our hearts. That's the first thing I would mention. The second one, which I think, you know, something we should talk about is our people.

In technology, we talked a lot about last year on cultural transformation of technology, and really, I can really see that happening now, in the group. We've reduced our contractor dependency to pretty much single digits, which is a very healthy place to be. We've grown our strategic centers significantly in the last year. What that's really resulted in is a shift in culture, of the group. You know, really three things I would point out. There's more collaboration, and there's more curiosity across the group, which I think is the other very important piece of the puzzle. Last but not least is there's definitely commitment on what we're doing as a company and where we wanna go in the future. I think it's very exciting.

I'm very happy with the way we're progressing and look forward to 2022.

Julia Mair
Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Clarivate Plc

Thank you all so much for your time today. We're gonna end it here. It's been some great stories that you've shared, the progress that we've made over the course of 2021. Stef, I loved that you ended on our colleagues. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the panel discussion. We're gonna take a short break right now, and we'll come back to hear from Richard Hanks, our CFO.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Good morning and good afternoon. I'm Richard Hanks, Chief Financial Officer for Clarivate. Thank you once again for joining us today. You've heard from a number of different presenters today, and the common theme that links all of these presentations together is our unerring focus on top-line growth. We have some important market dynamics that are working in our favor, and I'll cover those in my presentation. Today, I will cover revenue growth, margin expansion, free cash flow, and adjusted EPS. With that, let's look at some of our core investment highlights. These are some of the investment highlights that I'd like to focus on that really are the core drivers of value for our shareholders. We operate in attractive industries. Steen covered this in his presentation. Four customer segments with a target addressable market of $100 billion.

These market opportunities are very, very significant, and these markets are all growing. In terms of our individual segments, we have certain segments growing in the mid- to high-single digits, and others, such as life sciences and healthcare, which have nice mid-teen annual growth rates. With a very balanced and diversified portfolio, we have a business that is resilient both through the ups and the down cycles, due principally to the fact that we have such a large percentage of our revenue concentrated in subscriptions and recurring revenues. 26,000 customers, limited customer concentration, half of our revenue stemming from the Americas, half EMEA and Asia Pacific. We have an attractive business model. We have near-term optics into revenue and free cash flow because 80% of our revenue is recurring and subscription in nature.

We have constructed some significant platform capabilities that enables significant margin and cash flow through as the top line expands, either organically or through M&A, and a very consistent cash generation profile. We've been very consistent in our competitive positioning from a solution set point of view. We have stated we need to provide end-to-end solutions to the clients that we serve. We have proprietary data at the core, we have 91% renewal rates with more upside, and we're deeply embedded into our clients' workflow. We are disciplined financial operators. We've managed the business extremely well in the last three years. We've integrated transformational acquisitions. We have over-delivered in terms of our cost-saving targets, and we set ourselves a medium-term leverage ratio of 3x EBITDA. Let's now look at our recent evolution since we became a public company in May 2019.

We look at this through two lenses, an organizational evolution and a financial evolution. Looking at our organizational evolution first. We started with seven relatively independent siloed business units, limited cross-pollination of content and capabilities from one business to the next. We made the needed transformation to two product groups to ensure that we were absolutely focused on building out those end-to-end capabilities through a combination of acquisitions, DRG in the life sciences space, and CPA Global, both last year, as well as a series of tuck-ins. We now have real scale in the two product groups. Now is the time to make the final shift to the customer and segment model that Steen described in his presentation. That will be a propellant of growth, significant growth for us as we go forward.

In terms of our financial evolution, revenues in the last two- years have doubled to $1.8 billion-1.84 billion, which is our guidance for 2021. EBITDA has nearly tripled to our guidance for this year of $795 million-825 million. Adjusted EBITDA margins have increased from 30% in 2019 to the mid-40s, which is our goal for this year, and upside opportunity available for us in the medium- term. Adjusted free cash flow has more than quadrupled from $100 million in 2019 to $450 million-500 million, which is our guidance for 2021. Let's now look at the value creation drivers supporting our business. I'll deal with each of these in turn. Organic revenue growth, margin expansion, free cash flow.

Let's start with organic revenue first. These are the three components of revenue that we report to the market each quarter. Subscription revenues, recurring revenues, transactional, and professional services revenues. Starting with subscription revenues. Subscription revenues represent 55% of our total revenue base. The top chart here in purple shows our growth in our subscription book of business for the trailing 12-month period ending September 2021 on an organic basis. This excludes any contributions from acquisitions in that 12-month period, in particular, CPA Global. That business will anniversary into our organic growth in Q4 of this year. You can see in the trailing 12-month period, we enjoyed renewal rates of 91%. The contribution from product upgrades and price was 6%, and the contribution from new sales i.e., selling existing solution sets to new logos was 6%.

We enjoyed a 3% expansion of our subscription book of business last 12- months. Now, as we look ahead to our near-term outlook, we see our renewal rates increasing to between 92% and 93%. At least 100 basis points improvement in the renewal rates that we've enjoyed in the trailing 12-month period. That stems from the continued investment we've made in products, the reorganization of the front office, and in particular, the investment in inside sales, which broadens our interface with the client, with the customers that we serve, as well as the investment in regional customer care that Kerri also covered. In terms of contribution from upgrades and price, this is customer upgrades that's selling existing solution sets to the same client base, but more volume, as well as price yield. We see 6%-7% contribution from this category of the business.

Management has real conviction at delivering price realization of at least 4% on our subscription book in 2022. We've made significant investments in product, significant investments in capabilities, and that is what we expect to deliver. In the near term, medium- term, we expect price equilibrium of between 4% and 5% realized each year. The final element is the contribution from new sales. We see at least 100 basis points improvement in here, again, due primarily from investment we've made and continue to make in our front office. In the near term, we see our subscription book increasing and expanding at between 5% and 7%. Let's look at the next element of revenue, which is recurring. This represents 25% of our total base.

It is a highly resilient business, and this revenue stream essentially came to Clarivate with the CPA Global acquisition. It is the patent management, trademark management, patent renewal, trademark renewal component of our business. We are the premium provider category leader in this space. In the case of patents, each patent that we manage on behalf of our clients pretty much has to be renewed in each jurisdiction every year, and we get a margin on each of those renewals. Essentially, it's an annuity business. In terms of growth, we see 5%-7% annual growth year in, year out from this revenue stream. 4%-5% from volume coming from natural growth in the patent books that we manage for our clients, as well as some market share take. 1%-2% from price yield.

If we look at some recent data points that support our volume growth assumptions. This is information we collected from the World Intellectual Property Organization based in Geneva, Switzerland. On the left-hand side, you can see that the annual compound growth rate in patent grants each year, 6.5% over that 15-year period. On the right-hand side, you can see the most recent data point being the growth in the annual patents in force, 5.8%. Nearly 6%. These data points are very consistent. Market growth between 6% and 6.5% per annum based upon patent grants and patents in force. This absolutely supports the 4%-5% volume assumptions that we have made for the near-term growth of this segment of our business.

Let's look at the final revenue stream, which is transactional, and this represents 20% of our total book of business. Here we provide critical value-added services across the research, innovation, and IP life cycle. We see our transactional revenue streams in the near term growing well into the double digits, 10%-15% growth. I've set out here the four main drivers of transactional revenue. These are not to scale, but suffice it to say that professional services on the left-hand side is a larger revenue stream than data sales on the right-hand side. In the case of professional services, we are selling to the top 50 life sciences and healthcare companies globally. These are repeat buys. We have real opportunity in government and academia. We have such heritage in that space, as well as selling to major corporate clients. These are repeat buy engagements.

What's really important is these professional services engagements oftentimes result in product pull-through, subscription sales, as well as custom data sales as well. They are a catalyst for other parts of growth within the business. EP filings, recordals, patent search, and trademark search. We've got a nice book of business. We've got real momentum in this category of transactional revenue, and this part of the transactional revenue stream benefits from the macro tailwinds I described on the previous slides around patent volume growth and trademark volume growth. The fourth and final element of transactional revenue stems from data sales. These can be customized data sales in the case of life sciences and healthcare, as well as the continued mining of backfile and custom data sales that we position with our academic and government clients.

From a strategic perspective, we have also assembled our content assets and data assets around two important data clouds. Mukhtar has built and invested in the Research Intelligence Cloud, which contains all of our scientific data assets, and Gordon has invested in the IP Data Hub containing all of our IP data. There can be cross-pollination of these data sets from one cloud to the other. That's really important because this enables our clients to access all of our rich data and to ingest that data into the environments in which they want to use those data sets. Really important transformation here in the way in which we are assembling our data assets and delivering them out to our clients. Looking at the sum of the parts in terms of near-term organic growth. Subscription, recurring, and transactional.

We see near-term growth from the sum of the parts of between 6.5% and 7.5% per annum, with a lot more to come beyond. Turning now to expenses, margins, and free cash flow. Building out our platform capabilities has been a very important strategy to enable us to drive ever higher levels of margin and free cash flow. We have a build once, leverage many times model. In the case of product, as Stef covered in his presentation, we now have real scale in our product cloud infrastructure, and we are able to release product at will. We have true scale in application development in our application development centers. If I go back four or five years, we had over 50% of our application development performed by third parties.

That's now down to 8%, and we have that 8% availability essentially for burst capacity reasons. For those of you who had the opportunity to attend the demo day yesterday, Armughan covered what we refer to as Project Singularity, which is the investment we have made in our content ingestion layer. Machine learning and artificial intelligence to increase the velocity with which we generate content and enable that to be absorbed within our products. But also, really importantly, a re-architecting of the content layer, so we're able to dexterously share our different content sets across our product solution sets. That enables us to bring product to market much more rapidly. We have real scale in best cost locations, India and Serbia, for example.

We've constructed an impressive inside sales and regional care capability, all focused on serving our clients, improving retention rates, and driving new business in the case of inside sales. Mukhtar has assembled an impressive professional service delivery center in India to support the growth in that part of our business. In terms of the management of the business from an expense perspective, over the last three years, we have been managing four separate cost savings programs, in the aggregate total savings generated of at least $210 million. Three of these programs are now complete. The fourth, CPA Global, is still in flight, but is nearing completion. When we acquired CPA, we committed to the market savings of $75 million per annum that we would generate over an eighteen-month period.

Because we have made such great progress with that integration, we actually increased our cost savings targets at the half year to $100 million to be executed over a 15-month period, so much faster. As you can see from this chart, our run rate savings at the end of Q3 were $97 million. We are very close to delivering our full commitment of $100 million. Suffice to say, there is a bit more still to come. We have an integration project management office which is very experienced in managing these acquisitions and tuck-ins. They have a repeatable playbook, and we have demonstrated consistently that we can meet and beat the savings targets that we commit to.

Looking at the sum of the parts in terms of margin accretion, top line growth, leveraging our platform capabilities, appropriate expense management, we're delivering margins this year in the mid-40%. In the near term, we see margins in the high 40s%, and in the medium- term, margins north of 50% on a sustained basis. In terms of free cash flow, $450 million-500 million is our commitment for this year. As I mentioned earlier, more than fourth times the free cash flow we generated in 2019. We see adjusted EBITDA to levered free cash flow conversion in the near term of +60%. As the business continues to scale, that will of course move upwards towards 70% mark.

In conclusion, pulling all of these threads together into the generation of sustainable value creation for our shareholders. Starting with revenue first. Near-term revenue growth, 6.5%-7.5%, and in the medium- term, well north of that. In terms of margins, we will deliver mid-40% margins in 2021. Near term, we see margins in the high 40%s. As I referenced earlier, in the medium- term, north of 50% on a sustained basis. In terms of EPS accretion, our commitment to at least double-digit growth in EPS each year. Our goal is to continue the transformation of Clarivate into the leading business information service provider across the markets we serve. That is how we will all win, and above all, provide sustained and superior returns to our shareholders.

Thank you very much for your time, and we look forward to your questions. With that, I'll pass it back to Jerre for some closing remarks. Thank you very much.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Welcome to the live part of our program today. Thank you all very much for joining. I'm going to cover a couple of things up front as we promised as we did at the Q3 announcement. Then we'll move into Q&A, and I'll wrap up with a few comments at the end. Thank you very much. As we promised, we are going to provide guidance for 2022. First, I wanna make sure the slide's up in front of you all, that I'll read it just so you can see it. We are cooperating fully with the FTC staff and their review of the Clarivate ProQuest transaction. We continue to remain hopeful that we will close the acquisition before the end of 2021.

While the acquisition is not closed, we are providing guidance for 2022 that assumes a 2021 closing of the transaction, and therefore includes the anticipated performance of ProQuest for the entirety of 2022. If the timing of closing were to shift into 2022, our guidance would need to be adjusted accordingly to exclude ProQuest anticipated performance for any of the months that precede. With that, and I will go slow, I will give you the guidance for 2022, including all in for the full year of Clarivate and ProQuest. We already reaffirmed the guidance for 2021.

Just as a reminder, adjusted revenue for 2021 is $1.8 billion-1.84 billion. Revenue guidance for 2022, including both is $2.875 billion-2.935 billion. In other words, a growth at the low end of 5.1% and a growth at the top end of 7.3%. Adjusted EBITDA for 2021 is $795 million-825 million. Adjusted EBITDA for 2022 is $1.21 billion and a high of $1.26 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margins for 2021 are 44%-45%. Adjusted EBITDA margins for 2022 are 42%-43%. 47% all-in margins when we finish the run rate cost savings.

That is 42%-43% once we finish the over $100 million rate of cost savings, 47%. Adjusted diluted EPS, $0.70-0.74 in 2021, $0.90-0.96 in 2022 and actually $1.02 per share with all run rate cost savings. Feel great about that. Finally, we've got two kinds of adjusted free cash flow. Unlevered adjusted free cash flow is $950 million-1 billion. Levered is $700 million-750 million, and 2021 is $450 million-500 million. If you remember the guidance my own personal goals that we said we hope to exit 2023 in, is very close to what we said here. This is exciting. More to come.

We, as I said, we hope to close by before or at year-end, and we look forward to reaffirming that. One more slide I wanna use to just wrap up what we talked about before we move into Q&A, and it's one I'm very proud of. We've built a business model. It's the most wonderful kind of financial attributes we're ever gonna get. Great free cash flow, EBITDA that drives towards the 50% adjusted EBITDA and revenue growth that will increase each year as we drive towards ever faster organic growth. We've got lots of multiple levers to drive growth, profit and cash flow, and we will do that. Products are critical.

They're in the work streams of our customers with more to come as we move, and you should have seen Steen and everybody else today as we move to that solution providing that we'll do with that pyramid in 2022 that Steen laid out. The great examples that Stef, Mukhtar, and Gordon gave are true solutions where we no longer worry about which part of the business it was in, but provide solutions that our customers want to help their customers do better. Finally, we get to an ever stronger base culture that was in place with a great leadership team, one I'm very proud of to represent. With that, Mark, we're ready to start questions.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. Thanks, Jerre, and welcome everyone to our Investor Day. I'm joined by all the executives that presented today. Before we get started, a question just came in, and I think it'll be important. Jerre, could you reiterate the guidance for 2022, please?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Okay.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Just one more time.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

One more time. Let me do that, for sure. Very slowly. 2022 adjusted revenue, $2.875 billion-2.935 billion, which is 5.1%-7.3% bottom to top of pro forma growth. Adjusted EBITDA, $1.21 billion-1.26 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margins, 42%-43%. After we take the over $100 million of cost out, it will be a run rate of 47% pro forma margin with the cost savings in place. Right, spot on with what we expected. Adjusted diluted EPS, $0.90-0.96. Again, once we get the full run rate cost savings in, $1.02. We passed the magic number of $1.02. Adjusted free cash flow.

Unlevered free cash flow, $950 million-1 billion, and levered, $700 million-750 million. Sorry about putting water on you, Richard. Okay.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. Thanks, Jerre, and thanks everyone who have submitted questions so far. Really appreciate it. Let's start with Jerre, your goal of $1.50 a share in free cash flow. Which share count were you using, and is that levered or unlevered?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

That's unlevered $749 million. 750 million shares.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. Our next question, can you please clarify if near term goal means 2022? Are you saying that you expect to hit 47%-48% EBITDA margins in 2022 and 2023?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Richard, that's a great question for you to start with.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Well, that's on a run rate basis coming out of 2022, including all of the integration and synergy savings from ProQuest. We classify near term as meaning 2022, but that's specifically on the run rate.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Next question. Would it be nice to know what is explicit for 2022 guidance. Do all the targets assume ProQuest closes by the end of 2021?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

The great question. The answer is yes. 2021 closed January, and we assume, so that's full year 2022, and pretty straightforward from there.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. We have a question on customer delay. Have you seen any pushback on price increases in the customer delight survey now that you are implementing higher price increases than you were historically?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I'm gonna have Kerri answer that in just a second, but I must tell you how we benchmark. Historically, at IHS and then IHS Markit, we would go up to as high as 19%-20% of the total comments on pricing. That was kind of an idea of how high, maybe too high, was. FACTS are our friends. Kerri, on where we're at now.

Kerri Nelson
COO, Clarivate Plc

Yes. You know, as I shared with all of you, we had 18,000 customers take our survey in October, and we had over 9,000 comments. Of those 9,000 comments, less than 2% were about pricing. No, we're not seeing a negative with pricing. What we're seeing in pricing comments, the very few we get, is just, you know, trying to be a little bit more clear and transparent and flexible with how we just share it, but otherwise, nothing that's a high impact. The last thing I would just share is we do see such great scores around information, insights and products. Again, some of the highest scores I've seen in the last, you know, 25 years.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Kerri and I've done this together for a long time, and that was by far the first survey we did and the most exciting one for us, and it's continued to improve. Very, very good scores. Thanks.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. Our next question. Given the regulatory environment where deals are getting scrutinized and delayed like ProQuest, how does this impact your M&A strategy going forward?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

It's a great question. Let me just start with a reminder that as we now move into those four global- markets focus and everything that our team talked about today and Steen's charts talked about today, that opens up an entirely new market. We're gonna be focused on the opportunities to help our customers help their customers straight pass-through. We won't be looking at whether it was patent information or whether it was science, et cetera. We'll be looking at solutions that give our customers in those four markets great answers. I would say two things. Right now, we're plenty busy getting ready to do the ProQuest integration. Our pipeline for tuck-ins is very strong. We'll continue to buy.

The one comment I wanna make on that, after we went public years ago at IHS, about 80% of every acquisition we made was because customers told us they wanted us to make those acquisitions. That's where we'll go, that's where we're at, and that's where we'll continue to grow with time. We will consider, in fact, we will assume that if we were to do any large acquisitions based on the current Federal Trade Commission rules, we'll assume that it's gonna be a second request, and we'll assume that we've got to take that into account with large ones on time and on cost. Plenty to do in the meantime. Great pipeline of tuck-ins to complement all the businesses. Good question.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Thanks, Jerre. Can you talk about why DRG slowed in the Q3 and why you expect it to re-accelerate in the Q4?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, great question. Mukhtar, you pick it up. I just wanna remind everybody, since we were fortunate enough to acquire DRG, they grow historically. 36% of their total revenue is Q4 revenue. Mukhtar give reason why and then what we expect Q4 versus Q3, please.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, no, there's nothing abnormal in terms of you know, the DRG business and the markets that we serve. Typically, the latter half of the year is where you know, there's typically a pickup. It's a hockey stick effect here in terms of deals coming through and conversion into revenue. We expect that to continue, particularly in you know, the healthcare commercialization and data space.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

One quick thing, Mukhtar, just pick up on it. We've gotten a lot of questions over time of what we're gonna do to try to smooth that out, 'cause right now, a very large percent of that business is, like I said, 36% Q4. When you add in CPAs, that's always their largest quarter, too. To take out, quote, the hockey stick, what are you looking at in the life science business, Mukhtar?

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

I think it reflects our customers and how they use our data and our product. Our investment into, you know, data as a service, in particular through our cloud capabilities. The fact that we have rolled out a number of analytical products that our customers can use, you know, on a SaaS and subscription basis. This will allow those customers that have typically, you know, procured the data and procured those assets in the manner that we've just described. It allowed them to smooth that out through the year through a subscription process. As more of those tools are adopted by our customers, we'll see that even out through the course of the year.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks, Mukhtar. Next question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Will the global tax changes, minimum tax 15%, affect your cash taxes? Excluding your NOLs and carry-forwards, what is your underlying tax rate?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Great question. We're very current. Please, Richard.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Our forecast for 2022, including ProQuest's cash tax expense of $60 million. Under the Build Back Better Act, there's a 15% alternative minimum tax for organizations that have $1 billion or more of taxable income. We are not in that category.

We don't expect there to be any impact from the recent legislative changes which would take effect from tax years ending after the 31st of December 2022.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks. Next question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. For the 7%-8% of subscription revenue not retained each year, are these customers no longer using the products or switching to a competitor?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, let's get Richard to start with that and have our team pick up on it.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, it's a combination of the two. Some of it is just, you know, they're dialing down the usage of the product, and some of it will be competitor loss, but to the margin.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

As Steen pick up on that, if you would, because you've got a lot of focus to improve that cancellation percentage.

Steen Lomholt-Thomsen
Chief Revenue Officer, Clarivate Plc

No, absolutely, Jerre. As I mentioned in my presentation, the strategic focus on the inside sales is really helping us improve our retention rates. We expect that we'll see that retention rate increase in next year. Even we hope that we can increase that the year after. I also talked about the investment we are making in inside sales so that we can ensure that one of the areas where we know we have attractive upside to improve retention rates is especially the long tail of renewals that we have. With that investment, we have in inside sales that I described. We will see the retention rate increase for next year, definitely.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I think I'm hopeful we deliver 92%-93% next year and then go forward. Because as we get better and we give our sales force better tools, and as we sell into solutions, a critical number to remember for every customer that we sell more than one product to, that is two, as we move forward with solutions, it's about 98.7% renewal. That's where you'll see us go with time. Next question. Thanks, Steen. Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. The next question comes out of Gordon Samson's presentation today. In an example like Darts-ip's data being integrated into CompuMark and Cortellis, do customers have to pay more to get the new data, or how do you monetize it?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

All yours, Gordon.

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Thank you for the question. We're really excited about the use of Darts-ip's IP data, as you can tell from the presentation, and also from some of the conversations in the marketplace. There are a number of ways that we approach customers on that. Primarily, we look at the value that we deliver to each of those customer segments. We have a charging mechanism that is relevant to both the customer segment, the scale of that customer interaction with us as a partner, and also what use they make of the data. Those interactions are very much focused around each individual client and how they intend to use that value within their organization for their end customers. That's how we approach that.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I'd just add one thing to that, which is it's a perfect example of the kind of tuck-ins we wanna make, where it's strategically advantaged, where it's a great opportunity to spread really good proprietary information around the world, and it allows us to take advantage of our scale. Thanks, Gordon. Next question.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

What are your expectations for revenue retention rates in 2022?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I gave my warm-up on 22%-23%.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Retention rates?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I'm kidding. No. If you were listening, I said we expected to see 92%-93% in 2022. Then moving forward, we expect, you know, like I said, if you think about getting more than one product sold to that customer, that'll drive us well north of the 97%-98%. Only 30% of our customers today buy more than one product from us. I must say that if Richard were saying, he would say, our traditional Web of Science is well north of 95%, and that's exactly what we'll do in the future. Great question. Thanks.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

The next question, we talked about a $100 billion addressable market in our presentations. Where do you see the greatest opportunities?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I'll say this. Way back when, actually Mukhtar and I sat in the basement of a hotel in London in September of 2019 and laid out what those markets would be. The reason we picked those is it gave us the greatest base potential strength for each of those markets on a worldwide basis. I could go through, and I won't today. Each of those, for different reasons, have equally large opportunities. Suffice it to say, we're gonna go where the customers want us to go, where we can build into their work streams, our products, and where we can make sure that we continue to help their, our customers help their customers. More to come on that, later. Thanks.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. Our next question. What's driving the transaction and professional services revenue growth assumption of 10% in light of the fact that core organic transaction revenues haven't shown much improvement post the 2020 fall off?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Let's get Mukhtar to start on that. That's a great question.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, I think the way to look at our professional services is that we moved from traditionally and historically, you know, implementation and delivery services to high-value consulting services. Those consulting services really help our customers to not only to extract the insights from our wonderful content and, you know, through the software, but to make those insights actionable for our customers. That's the key word, actionable, to drive that decision-making, to be embedded into the workflows, as Jerre has just said, within our customers and our customers' customers, which are the end users. Consulting is really important for us because it's a means for driving what we deem as adoption of our product. You know, we look at our services for every dollar of standalone consulting services that we pull in.

We look at pulling through 20 in our subscription products and data, so that one-20 ratio is what we operate in. Now because it's high value consulting, because it's about transformation and change in deep data sciences, then naturally one can, you know, associate, you know, higher rates and obviously profitability that's associated with those types of services.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks, Mukhtar. I'm gonna ask Richard to just give some color on actually the scale of that, 'cause what you're going to see, and, all of us would agree on this, in the years ahead, more and more of the transaction business will be what Mukhtar just described. Gordon and Mukhtar are working very well with Steve today on how we put that same system in place for what was the old IP business. Give them some flavor, Richard, please.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. I think just in terms of the metrics, so transactional growth through the first nine- months is 9%, and our objective is to get into double digits in 2022, as I described in my presentation. I think that Mukhtar's covered professional services, but we have real scale across our practice areas, particularly in life sciences. When we think about the academic and government professional services segment, we have real heritage in that space. But we haven't invested historically in terms of our professional services capabilities there, and I think there's a really terrific opportunity, terrific market opportunity there.

If we come across the spectrum from professional services through to data sales, when we think about our data assets and all of the wonderful scientific assets we have within the Research Intelligence Cloud and the terrific IP assets within the IP Data Hub and our ability to cross-pollinate across those two clouds, to meet client needs, I think that in terms of the commercialization of our data assets, that's gonna be a significant driver of growth for us, not just next year, but strategically, well beyond that.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Great question. Thanks. Next, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

The next one is around CPA Global. How much price pressure do you face from low priced new entrants and patent offices themselves becoming more user-friendly? How do you migrate?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Couldn't be that happier about that. Great question, Gordon, 'cause I think clear up the misnomer first, and then answer the rest of the question. Huh?

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Sure thing. Happy to. We see no real change in price in the market, certainly in the last five years, and there are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, we're offering an assurance service at Clarivate through the legacy CPA business. We're managing people's portfolios, we're providing law updates and giving guidance around what customers decide to do with those portfolios, and we're making annuity payments. The competitors largely are not operating across that spectrum. They're more of a payment service, and we respect our competition, but it's not exactly the same thing.

The second thing is, this speaks to Kerri's comments about the customer delight feedback, because we're adding value to the service, both as a standalone service, but increasingly as an integrated play with our software, our workflow, and our data assets, we're adding value on a quarterly and annual basis. Our service is increasing its value while maintaining a competitive price. We don't really see a change in that. If anything, we see a gap appearing in terms of our service proposition to the competition.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks, Gordon. Next question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

In which end markets customer segments does M&A make the most sense, particularly in terms of larger transactions, where are the most obvious product gaps?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, let me go back again. Each of those markets for different reasons give us huge opportunities. Again, we're going to do it just as a reminder. We'll never do a large acquisition unless it meets two minimum goalposts, if you will. On one side is we expect to deliver at least 10% adjusted EPS at the end of the first year and mid-teens at the end of the second year. On the other side, we will not go above, from a debt ratio standpoint, a number that would be uncomfortable for us in the future. That's the balance. Which means a couple things. One, it means that we must see significant synergies just like we did with DRG, just like we've done with CPA, and like we will do with ProQuest that allows us to meet those criteria.

Every one of those markets for different reasons give us great upside opportunities for years to come. Again, as a reminder, we don't do auctions. With those large one, it's gotta be an exclusive agreement, so we'll see how that all plays out. Our whole team spends a lot of time on this, and we could pick any one of those depending on what becomes available. We have to be the preferred acquirer. We have to be patient, and we have to be persistent with those larger ones. Again, what's so exciting for all of us is that we are and will have our customers telling us what acquisitions that would help them the most. Thanks. Next question.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Thanks, Jerre. How do the margins on transactional professional services revenue compare to margins on subscription and recurring revenues?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Mukhtar, you start. Richard, you pick up. Huh?

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. I think we pretty much covered this before. You know, naturally subscription software is always gonna command higher than professional services. Remember, our professional services are high value consulting. You know, we've got deep domain experts, you know, really, you know, fantastic experts in data science and technology. You know, these are very unique and, you know, our customers obviously will pay for the value that, you know, that we create through those services. I don't know if Richard wants to add to that.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Please. I mean, the marginal yields on additional subscription sales and additional data sales are, you know, very, very high. In the case of professional services, and Mukhtar's covered it, I mean, we look at our yields across our practice areas very closely, and we're very, very pleased with the returns we're enjoying.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks much. Mark?

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Yep. Our next question, please talk about the critical success factors to deliver revenue growth in 2022.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Great one for you, Steen.

Steen Lomholt-Thomsen
Chief Revenue Officer, Clarivate Plc

Great question. Thanks for the question. I'll cover three things. First of all, the One Clarivate model is really the way that we're gonna be the best strategic partner for our clients. That's gonna enable us to make the switch from being more product-centric in how we sell to our client to being more solution-centric. We think that's gonna help us increase the number of deals and also the number of solutions that we can succeed with into our client base. I talked a lot about the pyramid, so that's the second key driver. The way we're gonna segment our client base and how we're gonna align our resources to make sure that we're gonna be the best strategic partner for our clients across the four different customer segments that we have.

Last but not least, I've also talked a lot about the continuous investment we are making in sales. We're investing in strategic learning for our sales force. We are helping our sales force get better aids on how they execute and drive sales and opportunities. Then certainly last but not least, we are deploying more people really focused on new sales and new business so that a bigger percentage of our sales force is really dedicated to finding new business and new sales opportunities, both within the top of the pyramid and also for inside sales. I believe all those strategic focus areas will help drive the growth we're looking for for next year.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Great, Steen. I would just add, and you'll see that same effort continue in 2023, 2024, and 2025 as we continue to invest. Actually, everything we thought we could do back in 2018 when we looked at making this reverse merger is coming to reality. I just couldn't be happier about where we're at with everybody. Next question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. What is the organic revenue growth embedded in the 2022 guidance?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Simple way to think about that, we'll split that out better after we close, or because you'll see it, obviously, after we close with ProQuest. Each quarter, you'll see it from the actual presentation financially. It would be on a standalone basis at the level that we are operating plus some for the year in 2021. Next question.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Can you clarify what is revenue and EBITDA contribution from ProQuest in 2022 outlook? What is the organic growth outlook of existing businesses and ProQuest?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I'll just leave it.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Yep.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

as I just said.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Yep.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

We're happy to give much more detail after we get closed and after we're off to the races. Thanks.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Can you talk about the ProQuest software platform and if there's an opportunity to expand the platform outside of academic and government?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

A great question. Mukhtar will pick that up. Great question.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in the context of our four core markets, we see the potential to take that portfolio into all of those four markets. Now, naturally, academia, there's still significant, you know, addressable opportunity there. You know, for example, we take our Web of Science portfolio into that K-12 market and go deep there. We're really excited because we can take all of those wonderful assets and go deep into all of our core markets.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Stef, just add to that with what you see with the talent software development that we're picking up, please.

Stefano Maestri
CTO, Clarivate Plc

Yes. Thanks, Jerre. I mean, I think I'd raise a couple of things. One is, for sure great engineering discipline and great products that they've built over the years, and again, with a very cloud-centric approach to how they deliver software and solutions. I think that's gonna be very exciting to bring that combination together with the broader technology group at Clarivate. I'm definitely excited by that opportunity in the go-forward basis.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Great. Richard, wrap up this question.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

No, I think that, you know, personally speaking, the work that ProQuest have done around their software assets is absolutely fantastic. I mean, the Alma product, the Primo product, and then I think that the software modules that the team have constructed around those core anchor product lines as being really impressive. The sort of a deep domain understanding of the go-to-market opportunities within the software product portfolio is, I think, really impressive. We're really excited about having those assets within the portfolio and really driving growth, of course, initially in the academic and government sector, but then, you know, move across horizontally into the other segments as well, where appropriate.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks. Next question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Sure. The next question is about transactional revenue growth, which we've somewhat addressed, but it's obviously a very important topic. Q3 2021 transactional revenue grew 2.7% versus a -16 comp. You provided outlook to grow 10%-15%. How are you confident in such a big inflection?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Just summarize because we've covered most of it, Richard, but good question.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Sure. I mean, yeah, we were double-digit transactional growth through the half year.

13% for H1, and then we grew, as you said, 3% in Q3, 9% year to date, September. You know, July and August is naturally a bit slower in terms of, you know, certain transactional revenue streams in particular, you know, the CompuMark search business. But, as we've said, we're very confident in terms of hitting those double-digit growth rates in 2022, given the optics we see in the marketplace and, you know, the product capabilities that we have. We're holding to that guidance.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Can I just add two quick things, what Mukhtar talked about and Gordon talked about. Remember Q4, 36% of total DRG revenue comes into Q4, and always CPA is their highest quarter, almost all of that, in both cases, heavy transactional. Thanks. Next question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Sure. Next question. Can you please explain how you calculate the total addressable market again, and who owns the total addressable market that Clarivate is not a part of today?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

That's a great question. That's about a two-hour answer, by the way, 'cause we've done a lot of work on that. By the way, we've had BCG do most of it as fact-finding. The addressable market is defined as that product that is either or will be available to us in the next two years. A very large piece of that was split out with solutions as we're going forward. The addressable market, just put it in perspective, it is $100 billion and will be, make the number easy, $3 billion in 2022. Nobody crosses into those markets with the total product offering that we have. Nobody does. As we turn it into much more solution selling, like you've heard and seen, that puts us in just a better step for being.

Mukhtar, Gordon, quickly add to that, please.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. I mean, we know naturally we have, you know, a pretty experienced strategy team that's completely in tune to the markets that we operate in. You know, through those, we're able to size those markets to determine what our routes to entry and growth are. You know, as you heard from the team here, we're very confident on being able to execute on our various go-to-market plans, with our products, with our, you know, commercial teams, and so that we can be successful in those markets. The addressable opportunity that, you know, that we've shared is directly addressable and not to be confused with, you know, strategic addressable markets. Those are something different. This is all about white space, customers, segments, and, you know, go-to-market execution.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks. Wrap it up, Gordon, please.

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Sure thing. Really happy to. I'll drop it down a level, something really practical that you may have heard about yesterday. There are parts of the IP life cycle that simply no one's had solutions to address, and one of those is the filing and prosecution phase. To give you a sense of scale, it's about five times larger than the annuity maintenance or payments area. With our Connect workflow product that is integrating our data, our asset management platforms, as well as the insights that our tools bring, we're really solving a puzzle for the ecosystem of the IP industry, and there's a real science in IP data play there and effectively creating a brand-new solution, which didn't exist before. The problem existed, but the solution didn't.

That gives you a sense of scale of just that one example there, and that's absolutely addressable, and we're doing that now, and 2022 looks exciting in that space.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thank you. Next question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Next questions are out, and ProQuest. How has ProQuest performed in the Q3, which I think we'll probably get into, but how has the acquisition being in limbo for a while impacted their momentum and performance?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

A great question. I'll pick that up. Then Kerri will make quick comment as she's done the work as we prepare for integration, and Mukhtar will close it. I couldn't be more pleased with their performance. We'll provide details of the day after we announce and close. Their cooperation without crossing the line has been just great. Kerri.

Kerri Nelson
COO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. Absolutely agree. I mean, we started this summer and, you know, have joint teams working together across, as I talked about earlier, you know, really all work streams, finance, HR, communications. Then, you know, but most importantly, we're both focused on closing the year. As we go through the end of the year, we're all focused on, you know, taking care of our customers, close the year strong, and then really focus on the things about engaging and onboarding colleagues is the number one focus as we get into the new year. Yeah, it's going very well.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Wrap it up, Mukhtar. Great question.

Mukhtar Ahmed
President, Science Group, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. I mean, I think Kerri's pretty much touched it. I mean, it's focus and continued execution by both companies and, you know, with the right amount of collaboration and touchpoints, you know, where appropriate. But apart from that, no, we're very confident and excited about this one.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

As are they. It's just a great feeling, and we'll be off to the races once we get it closed. Thanks. Next question.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. What is the share count assumed in the 2022 guidance, and then, also interest expense?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Go ahead, Richard. That's a good question.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

741 million shares, in terms of the share count and interest expense, $237 million.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Thank you. Our next question. Customers love the products and data, but there is a fall down in ease of use. When does that ease of use category cease to become a barrier to growth?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

It's a great question. I'll start. Kerri will pick it up. With the tools we use, we know exactly what it takes to grow organic growth, actually by product and by customer. We see what we've done. We know exactly where we are. Out of the 8,000, was it 8,100 comments? 80%, 70%-80% were on this question. Kerri, FACTS as our friends, please.

Kerri Nelson
COO, Clarivate Plc

What we see in the survey, so again, we use a five-question index for two reasons. You know, we have a question on information quality and product and value, ease of doing business with. Pointed right to this question, and then we get comments, and those comments, as we talked about, we had 9,000 comments. For every question, we can look and say, for Make It Easy, the bottom two box, what did our customers talk about? Here's what's really exciting, and we saw this with all the effort that Mukhtar and Gordon's teams are making, is that the easiness of our products to use, actually, we had more positives this survey, less negatives. Actually, the areas that we could see come up is like features and functionality, some basic stuff that we can do.

Again, we see the comments as very helpful. We are making great progress on that Make It Easy. It is our biggest opportunity, but it is around timeliness of the content and, you know, really the products and just continuing to make them better and better.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Once we get through that, there's a magic number that we won't talk about today, but when we get north of that, which I think we will late 2022, early 2023, that's worth 1.5%-2% FACTS as our friends, organic growth for years to come. I felt really good with the numbers this time, especially the write-ins, 'cause they are noticing. If you think back when we talked about setting up the centers of excellence, inside sales, improving customer care, everything we said we were going to do, we're doing. It's the slowest one to move, though, by the way, because you've got to be on top of your game every minute all the way. I'm really excited about the progress and look forward to it. It's a very good question.

That's worth probably actually 2% organic growth for many years to come. Thanks.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Great. Thanks, Jerre. A question, now they don't specify the year if there's 2021 or 2022. Can you highlight organic growth in the legacy business?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

About 2022?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. I guess we mean not including DRG CPA.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Yeah.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah, go ahead, Gordon.

Richard Hanks
EVP and CFO, Clarivate Plc

Well, I mean, in my presentation, we've spoken about the sum of the parts. You know, I'm not gonna differentiate between the legacy Clarivate business and the DRG and CPA assets that we've acquired. They've been in the portfolio for one-two years now, and you can see from the product demonstrations the degree of integration that we've done across the entire portfolio. You know, we're looking at, you know, you've got the guidance from the near term for the Clarivate standalone business from my deck, and those are the numbers that we're focused on.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Yeah. Great, Richard. The other thing, just to be clear, when we laid this out, actually in 2019 we announced in January of 2019.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Mm-hmm.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

We had very clearly in mind actually all three acquisitions, and we expected those to play in. What I'm most proud of is not only are we there with them, but most importantly is 60 new products or product improvements this year. That was done by a great team of people. You're gonna see us do that year after year after year, and I couldn't be prouder of that. Thanks, Mark. Next question.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Yep. There's a follow-up here for Gordon Samson on CPA. Clearly, CPA is differentiated from competition with large high-end customers. How large is your small customer segment, and how do you defend there?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

What are reps, Gordon?

Gordon Samson
President, IP Group, Clarivate Plc

Sure. Just to dispel a myth that CPA has that profile. Actually, we have a large number of medium-size and in fact a very large number of small customers, both direct and what we describe as indirect, which means that we partner with those customers with our law firm partners. The IP industry is very much an ecosystem. How we defend there is the same way that we defend with any customer. In fact, defend is the wrong word. How we sell our value there is on two things. One is continual investments in the service, integrating the service with our other products, including data and our workflow and asset management tools, and making sure that we're listening to what customers want to do with that service.

It's back to the solution thinking, and thinking from the customer backwards. We don't differentiate how we do that. We speak to those customers in the segments and in their scale appropriately, but the approach is the same.

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

Thanks, Gordon. Last question, Mark.

Mark Donohue
VP of Investor Relations, Clarivate

Last question. Thanks, Gordon. Given high incremental margins, approximately 70%, what is the theoretical maximum margin you think the current set of assets can achieve without starving the business?

Jerre Stead
Executive Chairman and CEO, Clarivate Plc

I get the honor of doing that one 'cause I've done this forever. The way to think about that. By the way, they're higher than 70%. The way to think about that is you build it once, you keep it current, and you sell it over and over and over. When you keep your costs, there's a, I think we need to publish that again, Mark, that scale on both sides.

If you look at organic growth on the top and you look at cost control on the left, if we keep our cost control, which we'll do for many years, at 2% or less, 2.5%, because of all the opportunities we still have to integrate and improve, and as technology takes over more and more of what we were able to do historically are able to do much quicker now. Let's just say, Make It Easy, at 3% growth a year and at 6% organic growth on the top line, that will increase margins 150 basis points every year for as far as we go. The facts are, just think we've come from 22-23% EBITDA to exiting close to 50% adjusted EBITDA in 2021.

What you should be thinking about for the Q4, that model. That model will drop 150 basis points a year to the bottom line for years to come. I thank you all very, very much for participating. I'm very proud to have this team in place. We've done a great job of getting to the points we said we're gonna do. I look forward to delivering for our colleagues, our customers, and most importantly today, for our shareowners. Thank you all very, very much.

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