All right, our next section is with Clarivate. First of all, thank you everyone for joining this section. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Owen Lau. I cover information services, exchanges, and blockchain at Oppenheimer. Clarivate is a global information and workflow solutions company serving customers in the university, pharmaceutical, and also legal area. Today, we're excited to have CEO Matti Shem Tov and also CFO Jonathan Collins joining us. Thank you both of you for spending time with us today. Let's get started with our first question. This is the question we got a lot recently, which is about the divestiture. There was a news article that Clarivate is thinking about selling the IP business. Could you please give us an update on your plan, like on this divestiture plan, or of this plan?
Thank you for attending the conference and thank you for the question. At the end of the first quarter, we shared that we were evaluating multiple options to sell a segment or a business unit. We've made progress, and we have narrowed the option we are currently evaluating. We anticipate that we will complete the review and communicate the outcome with our year-end results in February. We announced at the same time we've announced that Maroun Mourad will join Clarivate as President of the IP segment effective September 8. He's joining us from Verisk Analytics, where he is the President of a Claims Solution Division. We are pretty confident that with his leadership and our ability to expedite our business leadership and his abilities, experience, we will be further able to drive the IP business.
We are committed to fostering innovation and growth in the IP business like we do in all the three different segments we have. I'm not going to give you any more here. Jonathan, do you want to add anything here?
No, I think those are the key points. We have a lot of work to do, and we are working very hard to complete this in the coming months. We gave ourselves some time to be able to announce it by the end of the year as we pursue this option that we're currently evaluating. Rest assured, we're very eager to complete the work here and come to a conclusion as soon as possible.
Got it. That's good. Maybe this is also part of your value creation plan. There are some other things going on other than divestiture. Could you please give us an update on your overall value creation plan? How does it fare so far compared to your initial expectations? Is it on track, and where are the remaining works?
First of all, we're very pleased with the progress and with the plan. We have launched the plan in the fall of 2024. We are on track and we are making some concrete, specific, measurable progress across all the key initiatives. We launched the major business optimization program to increase core subscription and recurring revenue, which is enhancing the scale and the sales predictability. As we announced at the end of the second quarter, we're making progress. ACV is going up, renewal rate is going up. The number of, also the percentage, the mix is getting better. 88% is now subscription and recurring. We are on track on the business optimization. We also completed some major changes within our sales organization within the three segments, changing some setup, bringing in some new management team as well, improvement on customer engagement and retention.
We are on track and we have completed most of the operational changes within the sales organization. We're also super proud of the fact that we have delivered 10 cutting-edge products, AI-powered with AI-powered capabilities. I'm a product person. This is my roots and I'm so pleased with the pace of the constant innovation, both going into the existing customer base or existing product base, AI enablement of existing product. At the same time, we are also being pretty aggressive in introducing AI-born new products across the three segments. As we talked also, we are making progress on the strategic review. We are very pleased with the progress of the VCP so far, on track, and continue to implement more and more products over the next year and obviously for years to come as well. That's the progress on the VCP.
Got it. Yeah, got it. Martin, you just talked about the 88% organic revenue mix in the first half of this year. It was up from 80% last year. I think you only expect the full year to be 84%. Is that right? What is driving that?
Jonathan, can you take this one?
Sure. They're just two different metrics. The organic recurring revenue mix excludes the disposals. Even though we still have revenue with those, if you take those out or assume they're already gone, we're at 88%. As of right now, we still have some of those revenues and they'll be bleeding off this year and into early next year. If you still include those, we're at 84%. Once those get to zero, we'll be at 88%. We just added that metric of organic recurring revenue mix to show what it looks like without the disposals.
Got it. We shouldn't compare that 88% versus 84% number, right?
Yeah, the 84% is heading to the 80%, and if you exclude those now today, it would be at 88%. As Matti indicated, the real emphasis here is continuing to invest behind the products that are subscription or recurring in nature. We're referring to those as our recurring revenues. That's where we're getting a lot of the investment. The transactional business will stay behind the roughly 12%. That business is the types of services and products that help enable the growth of the recurring revenue. Think some consulting services, implementation services of software. We feel like those are good business to be in going forward. The emphasis is we're becoming more predictable, and the revenue quality improves as that recurring revenue mix inches towards 90%.
Got it. Okay, 90%. Okay, so that's a pretty good number. Thank you for that clarification. When I look at the other metrics, which is the recurring organic growth, I think it was 0.6%, 60 basis points in the first quarter, 80 basis points in the second quarter of this year. I think you guided to the upper end of the guidance range, which some people interpret as 0.5% or 50 basis points, but that means it is below what you had in the first half of this year. Does it mean this is a deceleration of recurring organic growth in the second half? Is that what you meant?
No, I don't think we intend to be that precise. What we were looking to illustrate on the page is that we expect to be in the upper half of the range. The midpoint of the upper half of the range would be approximately 50 basis points. To the substance of your question, our aim from here on out is to continue to make progress every quarter. That's what we're really targeting. That's what we expect on the ACV. As an example, we can have some timing issues quarter- to- quarter. There may be some ups and downs as we go. Broadly speaking, the intent is to continue to accelerate the ACV, which will drive improved subscription revenue growth. We were really encouraged by what we saw in the first half of the year.
There was some lumpiness quarter to quarter, but our annuity business, our patent and trademark renewals that we do around the world for our customers, returned to growth in the first half of the year. We believe that's largely driven by the market improvement. Coming out of COVID, there were a couple of years where, excluding domestic China patent filings, the rest of the world was relatively flat for a couple of years. We really didn't see volume growth for the couple of years following that period. We think we're in the early innings of starting to see a nice recovery in patent renewal volumes. We would expect that to continue to help us in the second half of the year and beyond. That's a business that historically has grown at a nice, healthy rate in the 3%, 4%, or 5% range.
We've got some room to run before we're back to that level. We saw a nice move in that direction in the first half of the year and are anticipating that continuing as we move into next year.
Got it. That's helpful. Maybe we can dive into each business one by one. Let's talk about ANG first. Matti and Jonathan, there has been a lot of focus on how university funding cut could impact ANG. I know you have been answering this question for quite some time, but could you please still give us an update on what you have seen so far this year on ANG contract discussion?
We remain optimistic about the ANG for the rest of the year. Let's look again a little bit at the details. We've made a decision to dispose of certain ANG transactional products. It was a wise decision. Now 93% of the ANG business is recurring and it has a 96% renewal rate. This is one. Second, I want to reiterate that as of the end of July, we have 75% of the ANG renewals already booked, very similar to what we had last year. No changes there. Let's talk a little bit about the products that we carry on ANG. Those products specifically, let's talk about Web of Science. Web of Science is critical for research in universities. It is also critical for faculty. We continue to sell new licenses for Web of Science, both in the prime market and secondary market as well.
Alma is also very essential to run the library. People cannot do without an Alma. These two products are a big part of the ANG business. The Web of Science and the Alma are must-have products in any university. We are a market leader in both of them. The third part of ANG is the content side of the house. In fact, the introduction of some of our economic subscription-based product lines, like ProQuest ebooks and digital collections that are changing the way we used to sell on a one-time basis, is actually helping universities and faculty in this difficult time. People find it much more attractive to buy relatively economically priced e-books subscriptions as opposed to buying the e-books by themselves.
This gives us a lot of confidence that we will continue to see solid growth within the ANG subscription business as we move forward through the remainder of the year. We're pretty optimistic about the rest of the year for ANG.
Got it. I think Clarivate has just signed a multi-year partnership contract with the Canadian Research Knowledge Network. Could you please talk about the opportunities for Clarivate outside the U.S.? How do you think about the TAM of these new local opportunities?
We do have opportunities both in North America, Europe, and the secondary market. We have this phenomenon that we're still selling. We're still selling our prime product into the main market. Just a good, let's take a good example. We just closed over a $1 million deal with the British Library selling Alma. We are, and we saw we're constantly selling Web of Science in North America as well. On top of that, we have secondary markets like Asia, Latin America, some countries in Europe are still selling those prime products of us. On top of that, we're not staying still and we have a constant influx of new products that we introduce: Web of Science, Research Intelligence, whether it's Alma Spector, Alma Spector, whether it's going to be new ProQuest ebooks.
There's a constant flow of new products as well, which we sell both in developed countries and in developing countries as well. It's a mix. They're all fueled by constant innovation, a lot of AI releases and changes to all of our AI products. Constantly increasing the growing AI is certainly something we will see in years going forward. Let's go to the next point.
Yeah. When we combine all these together, how should investors think about the long-term growth algorithm for ANG? I know you had the math before, but can you still drive mid-single-digit organic growth longer term?
I believe ANG's market is growing 3% or 4%, and I believe we should get our fair share of this. It'll take a few more years, but we are certainly going back to 3% or 4% growth rate on ANG, which is the market growth. We are not going to tell you when, but we are definitely, the fact that we have eliminated a lot of the complexities with ANG, like the one-time business, the fact that we are constantly fueling the market with more and more products and protecting the existing products with AI innovation, makes us believe that we can do the 3% or 4% ANG market growth in the coming years.
That's good. Like 3% to 4%, it's a good number. I guess the question is, I think maybe Matti, you mentioned that, you mentioned AI. I guess the question is still, what does it take to take market shares away from your competitors and sign new clients going forward? I think both locally and also internationally.
No, this is what we've been doing. You know, as you know, I've been in the ANG environment for over 20 years. We have a unique DNA, which is coming from the CB side, ProQuest side, and Clarivate side. We are innovative. We are disruptors. We disrupted the market with Alma. We disrupted them. We are now disrupting the market with AI innovation. We are recognized. ANG was recognized as a leader in agentic AI. What we have introduced, the literature review functionality in Web of Science. It is a combination of constant innovation, pushing the envelope, thinking out of the box, maybe thinking like there is no box at all, paired with a lot of energy and sales execution.
We are winning new customers even for the product that has been with us for many, many years, including Web of Science and Alma, and then the new product offering as well, selling. It is all of the above that helps us, that makes us very confident that we will continue to grow ANG to the 3% or 4% number.
Got it. I do want to touch on AI in specific, maybe later after we cover all these individual business. Let's move on to the IP business. Can you please give us an update on that? It looks like some of the transactional revenue came back in the first quarter. I think Jonathan mentioned about China, but it reversed in the second quarter. What are the drivers of that volatility? Also, what's the outlook for that?
Jonathan?
Yeah, so this is in reference to our recurring revenue type, which is our patent and trademark annuity business, where we renew patents and trademarks for our customers around the world. We're truly a global provider with a very high-quality service that can be relied upon in this area. It pairs very importantly with our IPMS or our intellectual property management systems, where we help to manage that same workflow from taking an idea through to being patented and then continuing that protection through the renewal process. In the first half of this year, that revenue type, which we call out specifically and is entirely the IP business, had about 1.5% growth in the first half of the year. Oh, and as you noted, you know, it was around 5% in the first quarter and it was negative 2% in Q2.
The primary timing item there was just the lumpiness of renewing some of the patents in the U.S., given the price increases that came in in Q1. Some of those were renewed in Q1 that were renewed in the second quarter of the prior year. If you adjust for that, Q1 would have been a few percent in growth and Q2 would have been about flat in that. You know, we don't expect that the annual growth rate will be identical by quarter. There's a little bit of lumpiness between jurisdictions and customers quarter to quarter. We think the first half growth between 1%-2 % is a good indication of where we started to see recovery in that market. As I noted, in the past, under Clarivate's ownership, this part of the business has grown mid-single digits.
Over the longer term, it's definitely, you know, somewhere in the 3%, 4%, 5% range very durably. That's why we made the point at earnings that it's really encouraging to see the impact that AI is having on broader innovation. Not just how we're adopting AI in our products or in our middle and back office to become more efficient, but we see companies around the world innovating around AI, whether it's the models themselves or the computing that's required to operate these models. We see a lot of inventions that are now seeking protection. We're looking at that very closely. Matti drew attention to this in earnings. This is a great secular growth trend, we believe, for our patent renewals business in the long run.
If you look over the number of decades in the past, when you see a boom in innovation, whether it was the dot-com era, you see patent filings increase and the amount of patents available to renew goes up in the following decades. We think this is a really good trend that we're keeping a close eye on. The upshot here is we're getting some good progress, starting to see recovery in patent and trademark renewals. We think the overall signals for the longer-term growth trend for this business are good. We think AI is going to be a nice contributor to that.
Yeah, can I dive into that point, Jonathan? Because when we talk about AI, we always think, oh, you add AI capabilities into your product. What you just said is there's an AI adoption trend around the world that can support your IP business. Can you, like you explained a little bit already, maybe give us some examples, like why that can benefit your IP when we see faster AI adoption?
Yeah, I mean, there are some great third-party sources for this data. One that we often look to is WIPO, or the World Intellectual Property Organization, that publishes patents in force. This is data that we look at. You know, we saw coming out of COVID, there was a period of time where, in the primary markets we operate, those are relatively flat. In 2023, they returned to a healthy growth level. A few years later, that'll translate into, you know, growth in patent renewals. That's the overall trend that we see that's encouraging.
The other point is when we look out into the future and try to project what we think will happen, with respect to patents in force, we're encouraged by, as of late, in the last year or so, the number of IP discoveries, inventions that, or AI inventions and discoveries where they're seeking protection via patent has gone up. That is encouraging. We think that could be a nice, a nice growth trend for our IP business. As you noted, the IP or the AI adoption is great for ANG businesses. In example, Matti talked about the researcher assistant that we've put on our platforms and now the agentic capabilities in the literature review that we've put onto the Web of Science platform. A lot of companies are doing this, and that's good for patent protection, which is a big piece of what we do in our IP sector.
Got it. More AI innovation, they need the protection. That's why they will need more of your product to get the patent or maybe do the renewal. Got it. Another one for AI, I think you will also release some new AI features for Derwent, right? I think the name is Derwent AI Patent Watch Solution. Could you please talk more about the revenue model for these new products? Can you sell them separately or does it mainly help you from a price increase standpoint?
Yeah, I'd be happy to. There are two things here. The first is we are leveraging AI capabilities to improve the core Derwent capabilities on the Derwent Innovation platform, which is search. We launched AI-powered search late last year, and we've seen really good receptivity from the core users of that platform in the form of higher usage and more searches being conducted, which is a great indicator in reviving the value proposition of the platform. We think that underlying Derwent World Patent Index data, which can be accessed via a number of sources, is a great data set, and with great tools on our search platform, Derwent Innovation, we expect that to help that product improve as we move into next year. I think that generally falls into the bucket of AI innovation that will be a part of the overall value proposition of that tool.
Derwent Patent Watch is a new workflow service that helps our customers navigate the process of evaluating and investigating potential infringements. When there's a flag that's raised, we've now built a tool that helps to automate the workflow to get that through to the right people in the organization to figure out if there's some type of enforcement action that might be required to protect the patent. This falls in the bucket of a tool where we're leveraging AI, where this will be a new offering. We will charge for it discreetly. We're really excited about that. We've got some more announcements that'll come on that product at some trade events in the second half of this year. Those are two great examples of leveraging AI to enhance our value prop. One will help improve renewal rates, help shore up price increases because we're providing more value to customers.
The second is an entirely new offering that solves a problem that's currently being done in emails and SharePoint sites that we can now automate on a platform.
Got it. That's very helpful. Maybe we can move on to another segment, which is the life sciences and healthcare segment. Could you please talk about your traction in LS&H? I think you just expanded a long-term multimillion-dollar partnership with a top 15 global pharmaceutical company. How do you see the outlook for this segment in the second half of this year?
Yeah, I'd be happy to touch on LS&H. We did highlight one of our major customers that we're getting traction with. What we've seen in life science is our view is stability in spending in R&D with our major customer base. That's been pretty decent the last couple of years. I think the pressure that we saw within R&D in our business was the demand from the market for more innovation. That's why we're so encouraged that this part of our business has improved in the first half of this year. We highlighted the fact in Q1 and Q2 earnings that our Cortellis suite of products have seen really nice improvements in their renewal rates in 2025. We're starting to get more upselling, like this customer where we had an example at earnings. That's a sign of investments that we've made in the product.
We took those same researcher assistant capabilities that we developed and put into the products in A&G, and those have now come to the R&D segment within life sciences and healthcare. We're seeing better usage, more value, fewer cancellations and downgrades, and an inflection in the new subscription sales. Really encouraged by what we're doing there. We think the market's good. We're making the right investments, and there's some good traction there. I would say the other part of our life science business, commercialization, is okay. It hasn't been a good couple of years in our view. I think we may see some early signs that it's getting a bit better there. We're making some of those same investments in innovation there. We're really excited to start delivering some traction on our new Fusion platform in the second half of this year.
We stepped away from effectively brokering or reselling real-world data, and we're getting back to our roots in this part of the business where we take that data and we turn it into insights and analytics, and we're leveraging new AI capabilities to do that. The market there, we think, is okay. We see some potential signs of improvement, but we're really encouraged by early indications of how the new products and solutions are performing. We also talked about our new MedTech 360 offering that's coming into market, and we're starting to see some traction there for med device companies. A couple of examples where that investment in the early days appears like it's headed in the right direction.
Got it. Let's go back to AI. Like you mentioned that you have launched some AI new product, and then you will also launch more AI products for the rest of this year. I think my first question is, what is the feedback so far? Like what have you heard from your customers? Are they ready for this product?
Owen, yes, I certainly, but with your permission, I want to mention something that one of the better, one of the great surprises that I had coming back to Clarivate is this notion that A&G has built an AI Center of Excellence. We have a group of people who are helping us to deploy AI innovation across A&G. What I've done coming in, I've looked at this and how well those guys are, this team is actually implementing AI innovation in a structured way, very smart way in each and every one of the A&G products. We actually then have implemented the same methodologies, the same technology in life sciences as well. We will be looking to implement some of these technologies in IP as well. There is quite a significant Center of Excellence within the company implementing AI capabilities, adopting and implementing and pushing the envelope.
Just take A&G for an example. As of today, we have almost 5,400 and 8,400 academic institutions that use our AI solution. This is an amazing number. We get people who are very enthusiastic about it. We have a history and a culture at Clarivate that we work with our customers to develop innovation, and AI is no different. We're working with our customers. Obviously, we have some ongoing requests from companies, and some of the pharma customers are, we're working with the pharma customers and with some of the leading, you know, corporates to develop AI around the IP as well. Very well received, very well distributed. Thousands of our customers are already using AI solutions.
As I mentioned before, Outsell, a leading research and advisory firm in B2B technology, data and information services, recognized Clarivate as AI leadership among the major scholarly research organizations, underscoring our position as the forefront of developing user-facing AI, but not just AI, agentic AI. This is a huge recognition to what we're doing, and this momentum is all over the segment. It's kind of leading it. Life Sciences and IP are also implementing it. Pretty satisfied how we turned over this two years ago. Everybody also said this is a threat. In fact, this is a huge opportunity for us to continue to innovate and strengthen the base of our company.
Got it. I want to get your number right. You said around 5,400 academic institutions. Is that the number?
4,800, sorry.
4,800. Got it.
At least 4,800 academic institutions are currently using our AI-powered solution. I'm sure the number is even greater, but this is our official number. We have a lot of customers on the Derwent Innovation, some on Life Science as well. We are going to issue a press release soon about releasing CRI AI Innovation as well. There is a lot of momentum coming in the company, which is derived from this AI Center of Excellence within the company. We're pretty upbeat and confident that we will see more and more AI in the forms of GenAI, but more and more agentic AI features. By the way, not only on the product side, also some internal processes. We're now looking at some opportunities to rationalize some of the internal costs with some AI capabilities. This is early days. No guarantees here, but this is another avenue that we will be pursuing.
You mentioned agentic AI a couple of times. I think people are still catching up the curve. Any quick example you can give us what Agentic AI solutions or capabilities do you have?
Jonathan, we can talk a bit about what we're doing in the web, specifically on Web of Science, Jonathan?
Yeah, I think the two examples that we've cited that are in the market are the researcher assistant, which now exists on multiple platforms within A&G. We started with the Web of Science, but this is that fundamental or basic capability that we've now all become accustomed to with GPT and other like tools where you can ask a question, you can get prompts, you can go deeper in an area. It takes that initial discovery experience from putting in terms and going through links to a more conversational. That's so important in our business as we're not a casual search business. These are serious scholarly researchers, people that are doing drug development, and people that are protecting very valuable IP. The adoption of this tool is important to do in a measured and careful way.
I think, as Matti mentioned, the teams have done a really nice job in building those capabilities in. I think the second example is the agentic capability that we just outlined on the platform, which is the researcher assistance. The ability to do, or excuse me, the literature review, the ability to now take information, synthesize, distill, something that took humans hours and hours. The tools give us the ability to do it almost instantaneously. That capability is now available on that platform. Some of the greatest scholarly researchers on the planet use our tool to evaluate where to go to get information around where they're researching and how they have the ability to have these agents help accelerate the pace of research, which ultimately leads to innovation. Really encouraged by both of those examples. As Matti said, it's great to hear it from our customers.
It's also nice to hear it from publications in the industry that compare these side by side. We really think we're off to a really good start in adopting the technology in a value-enhancing and careful way.
Got it. Clarivate generates lots of cash. Could you please give us an update on your capital allocation strategy? How much cash will be allocated to debt repayment, probably M&A, and also buyback? How should we think about that?
Yeah, as you noted, we'll generate in the mid-$300 million of free cash flow that'll be available to either repurchase stock, repay debt, or if we wanted to do some M&A. I think what we've highlighted is right now in the midst of the strategic review, we're really not focused on M&A. We've really been focused on putting our capital in other places. Last year, we were pretty equally balanced between share repurchases and reducing debt. So far this year, we've done a bit more on share repurchases. We will continue to have the flexibility as we move through the second half of the year. We've acknowledged over time we want to bring our leverage down. There's nothing urgent or uncomfortable at these levels, but over time we'd like to bring that down. Right now we obviously think that our stock represents a very attractive value.
We did a bit more in buybacks in the first half of the year. I would note we've just got that flexibility. As you noted, we've got an attractive cash flow, which puts us at a pretty attractive cash flow yield based on where the stock price is, right?
Got it. Maybe longer term, my last question is, like without getting any specific numbers, how should we think about the organic ASV growth and recurring organic growth longer term? Do you expect it can accelerate further from here to more like the industry growth rate?
Maybe I'll start and Jonathan can answer this. We believe, you know, as I mentioned, A&G can grow 3%- 4%. This is the market, and we certainly can do this as well. We believe IP is growing and the market is growing 4%- 5%. We believe it can get there as well. Life science is growing at an even faster pace. I believe we can just go there as well over time. Cannot give you, you know, exact date. Jonathan, you want to add?
I think that's right. Spot on. I think as you noted in the question, Owen, it's really going to be driving that subscription growth to those levels as that now makes up a larger proportion of the business. As we see our recurring revenue via the patent and trademark renewal business, the market recovery on that, we think that's going to help as well in the coming years. The combination of those things, which make up almost 90% of our business now, are really going to help get us to a more healthy growth rate. As Matti noted, we don't have a commitment on the timeframe yet, but we do believe that we're making the right steps to return to healthy organic growth. We think we're in healthy growth markets and we'll continue on that path.
Got it. That's super helpful. I think we are about time. Thank you again, Matti and Jonathan, for your time. I really appreciate you participating in this conference.
Thank you for inviting us.
Thanks a lot.
All right. Have a good day. See you. Bye-bye.