Welcome to the Informa Markets Update Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Stephen Carter. Please go ahead, sir. Thanks, Donna. Good morning, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks very much for coming on the line. Sorry we're starting slightly late, but there were just a few people having a few problems getting in. I hope you can hear me clearly. If for some reason you can't, then please do let either Donna know or email Richard and we'll know. I'm joined by Gareth Wright and by Richard Menzies-Gow. I'm just going to do a little bit of a scene set. I'm gonna try and keep it short and to the point because I suspect people would really rather ask questions. I'm getting the nod from Richard that that's correct. That's what we're gonna do. As hopefully most people on the call will have seen, we made a market announcement this morning. Apologies if that took anyone sort of slightly by surprise because of the technical and indeed formal matter. We will be publishing our full half year results on, I think, the 28th of this month. As we were involved in both an acquisition which we announced today of Industry Dive and of the further disposal in our divestment program, in this case of EPFR, and for reasons to do with timing and signing and disclosure obligations, we just thought it would have been odd for us to have laid those two pieces of news in front of the market without also giving a fuller update. As we were past the half year, we were able to do that. That's the reason why. I hope it's proven to be useful. In summary, where are we? Well, first of all, we are on our results. We're pleased with where the company is tracking to. Our businesses are in headline terms in growth. In Taylor & Francis, we continue to see a steady march of growth improvement in revenue as the business expands and extends its capabilities while protecting its core. In our B2B markets businesses, we're seeing the progressive and at times very well-paced return of live and on-demand events. There's a geographic exception in China, in mainland China, even that is beginning to unwind on a city-by-city, province-by-province basis. While that, we've made, I think, a sensible decision to take a cautious view of likely year-end outcomes in mainland China, we're more than making that up in other parts of the world. That leads us to the conclusion that we remain committed to our performance in the year at the upper end of our guidance. Alongside that, in our B2B business, we are expanding. We're expanding in our service offering, and you see that most visibly today in the addition of Industry Dive, which some on the phone or on the call may know of. Essentially, it's a specialist content business. It's taken a kind of traditional B2B publishing information model, repurposed it with a very effective scalable technology and service delivery stack, and then a pricing model and an approach to both first-party data and market presence, which has really demonstrated its capability to scale, expand, scale, expand, scale, expand. Our mutual judgment, you see that in the nature of the deal structure, is that we can both see the value in combining that business with our own specialist market presence in a whole variety of B2B sub-markets. A natural addition for us, and importantly for us, because as those of you who follow the company well, you'll know this is a key criteria for us. We put a lot of store behind cultural fit, and we see a very, very strong, cultural and performance fit. It's a great business. It's a high energy business, and in its, individual specialisms, it's a high impact business, and that will sit well within our own operating model. Not irrelevantly, as we build out our market position in these digital services, it also sits alongside NetLine, which we bought at the back end of last year, although interestingly, they themselves have looked at it as a possible addition. Both of those businesses sit alongside our first-party data, capability, which we've built organically and are expanding organically, IIRIS. Hopefully by now, it's becoming clear what it is we're trying to, shape shift to, in our offering, our broader offering to the B2B, end market. We're still expanding in the core business by market sector. We've got an example we've laid out today in the beauty market, beauty and personal care market, where frankly, we've come from virtually nothing, four or five years ago, to a business that's probably, in total, if you look across all the brands, a, you know, $80 million-$100 million-dollar revenue end market for us. We're also expanding geographically with further expansion in what's an important market for us in the Middle East through our evolving relationships in Saudi Arabia. Our divestment program continues following on from the disposal of the pharma business. We confirmed today the signed agreement on EPFR, which many on this call may be aware of, which is the fund flow business. A gem of a business, and we're delighted with the agreement we have signed, and we see that as a further addition to our portfolio focus. We've got a little bit more work to do, but we remain confident that we'll get that program completed on a backstop date by the end of the year. We're already above and beyond what were, I think, the market expectations and possibly even some of our own expectations on value after two disposals with some further opportunities for further cash returns. The net of that, the combination of our business returning, our businesses in growth, the cash discipline that Gareth and the team put in the business during COVID, the success of our divestment program, both in timing and multiples paid, means that our cash position is strong, and therefore our balance sheet is very strong. That sees us 12 months on from when we were having this discussion in the summer of 2021, effectively in a net cash position in the year versus a net debt position of nearly GBP 2 billion a year ago. That combination is allowing us to strengthen our balance sheet, make some highly disciplined targeted acquisitions, increase shareholder returns, a higher buyback, and importantly, for some of our investors, return to ordinary dividends. Ordinary dividends we suspended, as people may recall, during the sharp end of the COVID crisis. A sensible decision to make, and one that I have to say that was very broadly supported by our shareholders, for which we were very appreciative. Ordinary dividends have always been part of the mix. We want to get the balance right between being a growth business and a yield business, and we're more focused on the former, but we're alive to the value of dividends as part of the investment return, and I'm really pleased to see us return to a dividend resumption at 40% of earnings. That's where the company is. We're making steady progress. We're pleased to see market reopenings. We've been very reassured by the structural demand for the live and on-demand product. We would say that our live and on-demand product is a better product, perversely, than it was before COVID for a whole variety of reasons. Part of the reason why we're investing further in digital product enhancement in, if you like, the operating fundamentals of delivering that product. We remain committed to delivering a GDP plus growth business in Taylor & Francis, in the program of the GAP 2 time period. Our divestment program is, I think, paying for us and for shareholders, both in making us a more focused business and in strengthening our balance sheet and enhancing our ability to return value to shareholders both in buybacks and dividends. We're pleased with Industry Dive. I think it'll be a very nice addition. Sits very neatly alongside our champion, the specialist strategy. As I say, we are very confident in the leadership of that business and their commitment to its long-term growth. That's where we are in the half year of 2022, and I'll now throw it open to questions. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate when your line is open. Please state your name before posing your question. Again, press star one to ask a question. We will now take our first question. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. It's Adam Berlin from UBS. Just a few questions for me. Firstly, can you just say a little bit more about the revenue synergies in the new acquisition, Industry Dive acquisition you made today? Is that just from cross-selling to Industry Dive's customers, your own products existing today? And how long do you think it would take those synergies to come through? That's the first question. The second question is just to clarify on the guidance. Originally, we were guiding for EBIT for 2022 of GBP 470-490. There's been about GBP 30 million or so, correct me if I'm wrong, tailwind from currency this year as the pound has dropped against the dollar. You're still guiding for kind of top of the range. Generally, would you say underlying things have worked out a bit worse this year than you expected because of China? How much China EBIT was in the original guide that you gave in the full year results, and how much China EBIT are you expecting now? Thanks very much. Thanks, Adam. In the division of labor, I will take the first question, and I will singularly hand the second to Gareth, who's going to answer it with enthusiasm. And clarity, I hope, Adam. But on the first one, well, look, let's unpack it a bit. I mean, I think the first thing we'd say about Industry Dive is that, it's just, it's a very scalable business. The kind of single point technology capability they built in that business will, we believe, allow for a natural extension of their dive product into other markets. Yes to your question. I think today they have 26 dives in market, 27 Industry Dives in market. We've done some work with them, as you would imagine, as to what the expansion of that portfolio could look like on a one-year, two-year, three-year, and beyond basis. We see no limit in the capability of the platform to be able to hold that or indeed, the market's appetite for that. In the plan that we've built with them, we've got a sort of significant expansion of product. And we think that's a relatively straightforward source of revenue synergy. The model really, the revenue model is a function of a multiplication of the number of Dives and the number of subscribers. That gets to the second area of complementarity, which is around market access and speed of market access. That's where their first-party data, because you know, all of their data is first-party, as indeed is our own. That, I think we believe mutually will allow us to bring more accurate, more relevant product to market more quickly and in a more targeted fashion. Kind of longer term, we think there is a real opportunity for product innovation, which they already had in the pipeline, where we could develop further additional products for the specific specialist end markets. The combination of expansion, data sharing, and then product innovation gives us a, I think, a reasonably high degree of confidence in the revenue upside. We're not buying this business for cost synergies, quite the opposite. We're buying it for revenue growth. You can see that a bit also, Adam, in the way in which the deal is constructed. We paid, you know, just south of $400 million at the upfront point. We've constructed between the two of us a value which could be north of $500 million if we hit the growth targets that we can see. If you play that out, then actually the multiple drops. And the deal is constructed, I think, that way 'cause both of us can see the opportunity for growth. That's the way we're thinking about it. On the guidance and the FX and other moving parts, Gareth, can you? Yeah, sure. As you've confirmed, Adam, in the release today, we've reconfirmed the full year guidance at the upper end of the range that we provided previously. Just to confirm and clarify, that does not include the benefit of Industry Dive. The confirmation is on an apples-to-apples basis with what we've said previously. In terms of the moving parts, there is a foreign exchange benefit from the strengthening of the US dollar, which we have accounted for both in the AGM trading statement in mid-June and a further smaller strengthening through into the numbers today, which kind of takes the average for the year from about a $134 average when we initially gave the guidance to what we now expect to be about a $126 average. So there's definitely an improvement in the US dollar position, which benefits the numbers. In terms of trading, we have upside outside in from North America, EMEA, et cetera, across the business that we've brought into the numbers has been a benefit to the guidance. As you've called out, there's also a bit of a drag on the guidance from China. How we've handled that is, at the time of the AGM statement, we said that the business was gonna trade at roughly about 60% of the budgeted revenue. I think we guided you to the fact that budgeted revenue is about GBP 200 million for Mainland China. So that took out about 80% of the original budget. What we've done today to further de-risk the numbers is we are taking China down to about 2/3 of the number that we said previously. That's a further GBP 40 million worth of revenue coming out. You can do the math. What that means is there's about GBP 80 million worth of revenue still in the forecast, for China, as we stand. The de-risking today really is from a variety of factors. It's deferring some events in the calendar, it's moving some events around geographically. There's no kind of one factor that's in there, but it's just a general de-risk that we feel is appropriate looking at, the position in China and based on, you know, the strength of the trading in the rest of the business. We're confident we will run events in China, but we think it, as I say, it's prudent and appropriate to take a little bit more out of the numbers today, while reconfirming the guidance. Is that helpful, Adam? Yeah, that's great. Can I just ask one quick follow-up? Can you share with us what the target growth rates are for the new acquisition Industry Dive to do the additional consideration? The target growth rate for what we're looking to achieve from the business is, I think we describe it as, you know, double digit. We think that's achievable. You'll be able to see from the release that some of the historic numbers actually were in excess of that. In terms of kind of reaching conclusions on what we're targeting with and how we're going to, you know, integrate it, those are the sort of growth rates that we are looking for in the base case. From the earnout that is in place, there's a potential for management to take, you know, greater consideration out of the deal for hitting higher targets. I think we'll sort of guide to those as we operate the business and look at it over time. Our case for today, and in terms of the acquisition, is double-digit growth is really what we're looking for. Thanks very much. We will now take the next question. Afternoon, everyone. I just had a couple of questions, maybe starting with Industry Dive, again. Could you just clarify what the growth rate was in 2022 versus 2021 in terms of revenue? And clarify what the mix of revenue streams was within the business. I think you were kind of alluding to the fact that it was kind of 100% subscription revenue, but if you could just clarify that. And then on the future of Industry Dive, you talked about expanding the verticals. Could you maybe be a bit more specific about how many more you intend to add? So if you've got 27 today, are we talking about, you know, adding, you know, five or 10? Are we talking about doubling it or more, some sort of scale there. If you could also give us a sense of how much you think you might need to invest in the business in order to be able to grow it at the double-digit rate over the next few years. I think it was about half a dozen questions on Industry Dive. Just finally, if I may, on China, could you just clarify, you said I think GBP 80 million of revenue this year, you're putting into or left in the guidance. Which events in Q3, Q4 are kind of important and when do you think to deliver that revenue? When do you think you'll know, you know, definitively whether they will be actually run or not? Thanks a lot. Thanks. Well, let me have a bash and then Gareth will bring clarity where I bring confusion. On Industry Dive, I mean, as you can see from what we disclosed today, you know, the business has been showing strong double-digit growth this year on last year and indeed the previous year on the previous year. It comes from a strong base. A lot of that growth is a function of expansion of the Dive portfolio, you know, how many Dives are there. Their ability to price to demand an audience. I think the kind of central point that we would make and where we see a significant commercial overlap between their business model and our business model is we are both in niche markets married with first party data. That's the kind of central part of the overlap. The strength we've always seen, I think Gareth, Rich and I have said for many years, you know, our strength is in our niches and our ability to be able to mine revenue highly efficiently with attractive margins as a result of providing a product or a service that's really very valuable to an end customer in a very specialized market. In our case, in the main, you know, highly qualified, well-curated, very market relevant trade show. Around that, putting other products and services, professional accreditation services, training services, media and marketing services, and expanding that. The Industry Dive model is very similar. First party data serving up to niche markets. To your question, how many Dives could you see? Well, I'm not gonna put a number on that because, A, everyone will run the math, and B, you know, it's a competitive world out there, and they're not the only people, and now we're not the only people in that game. We don't really see any particular limit to that, and based on the capability of their service offering, and we'll work with them. Suffice to say that, you know, we spent time with them building an operating plan for 2023 and 2024, where you can see significant product expansion. It's really important. This isn't a low cost, you know, eyeball programmatic ad exchange, model. It is about providing highly specialized, well-curated content which people subscribe to. They don't pay to subscribe, but they subscribe to. When they subscribe, they serve up their time, they serve up their audience, they serve up their data, and then that gets monetized through, sponsorship and demand and audience engagement. That's the model. We think that's very relevant to where we are. I don't know if Gareth wants to add anything to that, but on the China question, over to you, Gareth. Yeah, on the China question, really the revenues in China for the live events revenues in mainland China start from September onwards. So September, October, November, December. There's a weighting towards Shanghai, but we have moved one or two events outside of Shanghai just to diversify the geographic risks and exposures there. In terms of visibility, you're starting to see events operate already. Now, not necessarily our events, but other events operate already in China, so there is kind of precedent for operating events. I think we will start to get more clarity as we move through August that the events starting in September can operate. So that's kind of the timing and how we're thinking about the distribution. The weighting is probably towards the back end of the four months. Less in September than in, you know, November, December, which again is a factor of us pushing events back later in the year to give us more room to maneuver in terms of permissions to operate. Hey, was that helpful? That's very helpful. Can I just have one quick follow-up, if I may? Just on other stuff that you might be looking at to buy, because, and I suppose taking a step back, you've done, you know, some very successful divestments. You now, you know, have made a few acquisitions, and this is an interesting one. I just wonder whether there's anything else in the pipeline that you have in mind that you might be able to add to what you've done with Industry Dive? Well, look, I hope we were clear when we laid out our GAP 2 program at the back end of last year, that essentially our strategy was to exit from what was our smallest portfolio, our intelligence portfolio at the time, in round numbers, took GBP 100 million in profit and double down in the two markets, academic markets and B2B markets, where we had position, we had brand, we had some market authority, and we had a license to operate and expand organically and inorganically, in a relevant way, our service offering and improve our digital service capability. That's our strategy. It comes with a kind of disciplined health warning, which is our judgment, which so far, I think, has proven to be more correct than incorrect, was that we could exit that market at multiples that exceeded the carrying value as far as anyone else was concerned. That would allow us to strengthen our balance sheet, pay down a bit of our debt, return money to shareholders, get back to ordinary dividends, as well as a nontrivial buyback program, and still have some cash for measured investment. We're also alive to what's going on in the external world, so we want to stay disciplined on what is our cash position, what is our balance sheet strength. If for no other reason than that, in a sense, makes us a better counterparty as a buyer, where we do choose to buy. Do we have a long list of things that we would talk about publicly? No. In the specific area that we bought in today, what you might broadly describe as audience, first-party data, digital demand in B2B, we have spent the last 18 months to two years getting very knowledgeable about that market. It's predominantly a US market, and we spend a lot of time around the players, the parties, the owners, and we'll stay connected to that market. I think our approach is one step at a time. We built IIRIS first, we then went into lead generation content syndication. We've now expanded into audience with a strong footprint in first-party data to enhance where we are with our organic developments in IIRIS. I think we can build out our service offering. Similarly, in academic markets, we did the same thing first with Dove, then with F1000. We're making some significant investments in our own service and digital capability organically, and we'll keep our eyes open. That's super helpful. Thanks very much. We will now take the next question. Oh, hi there. It's Tom here from Citi. Thanks for taking the questions. Two, if that's okay. One on academic, one on events. On academic, 3% growth is obviously very encouraging, especially if we consider last year would have had a favorable sort of tailwind in terms of print. You know, does that presage an acceleration into year-end? That's the simple question. Then on the event side, on one level, the sort of Industry Dive acquisition feels like a little bit like Back to the Future, sort of plugging trade publications back into events. I'm just wondering whether, you know, with some of the intelligence assets, the remaining intelligence assets, I should say, whether there's still a commitment to 100% clear those out, or whether some of those could be sort of repurposed into something similar, or whether that's, they're completely separate and you're still committed to get rid of them. Thank you. Thanks, Tom. At another time, I wanna show you my photograph of me at a Fan Expo event meeting, the cast of Back to the Future. That's for another time. I sort of know what you mean. I think I alluded to that in the quote today. I mean, there is no doubt that in a way, the Industry Dive model is a repurposing of something that, you know, you and I and others on the call would recognize. And that's okay, I think. The question is, you know, is it fit for the world we now live in, and is it delivering value? The conclusion that we have come to self-evidently, but, you know, others to judge, is that it really has done that. That requires a kind of disciplined mixture of some of the things that are a bit back to the future, which is quality content that's highly relevant. Some of the things that are a bit new, which is you've got to have a rinse and repeat, highly scalable technology capability that allows you to add additional product at effectively zero marginal cost. Then on top of that, you've got to work out a monetization model which fits in the world that we're in today, which is largely, you know, don't get caught in your own knitting by trying to compete on CPM pricing and sell to your audience directly to your customers. Because this is a B2B market, and I think somewhere between 80%-85% of the revenue is sold directly because you need to have a relationship with the customer. And that is what then allows you to be close enough to your market for them to be able to provide you with fully permissioned first-party data. It's that combination that puts you in the sweet spot, and that makes you more future than Back to the Future. That's why we feel good about it. Interesting point actually that you made on our intelligence portfolio. You've obviously been bugging our offices, Tom. There's no doubt that when we went through that decision-making process, we did look at some of our assets inside the intelligence portfolio that were more of a blend of you know, data analytics and other services. You know, and then made the judgment that on balance, the question really to go back to the prior question was that on capital allocation, we really saw the growth opportunities for us and being maximized in the academic markets and the B2B markets. We've got really in effect two remaining assets in what was our Informa Intelligence portfolio, the maritime business, the Lloyd's business, which is a mixture of data, B2B, content, and then we have our wealth management and fixed income and credit businesses, which similarly are a mixture of data, content and insight. We are aiming to complete our view on disposal or retention and investment by the year-end. By the end of the year, we will be in two markets. We will be in academic markets and B2B markets. Either they divest and go, or they stay, but they're aligned to serving an end market that we are focused on. If that's clear. Yeah. Very. Yeah. Perfect. On academic? Oh, on academic. No, we're not gonna give you a guide to what the year-end number is gonna be. I mean, we're pleased with where we are. I think your points on the half year comp are very valid, and that's why I think it gives us real confidence. I think more than that, is also when you sort of look under the bonnet of where that revenue's come from, we also feel, you know, confident about the kind of constituent parts of the revenue. I don't think we would change our guidance for the year-end. That we've you know steered towards a target of 3% growth for the year, which is an improvement over the 2.4% that we delivered for 2021. As you say, Stephen, it's you know growth across a variety of the products, but particularly driven by the pay-to-publish services that are our focus area of the GAP 2 investments in that division. Those growth rates, as I say, for the full year, are kind of consistent with what we reported at the AGM trading statement stage, and will be consistent with what we're gonna report in the half year. I think we're all on track there, making good progress, and continuing to evolve the pay-to-publish side of the business, which I think gives good opportunities for expansion over the next couple of years. Perfect. Thanks. Now looking forward to aligning on the 28th. Thank you. Quite right. Quite right. We will now take the next question. Hi there. Steven Liechti here from Numis. Just to ask on the more precise breakdown on Industry Dive, you talked about the subscriptions and advertising on a targeted basis. If you look at the history of this business, it shifted much more into a content marketing model. Can you break down the revenues between the sort of subscription and then the content marketing bit? Or does it not work like that? That's really the first question. And then the second question is, I know the management changes in the event side, with Charlie stepping back and Patrick coming on. I'm just wondering, given their history and where they're coming from, is that perhaps saying anything in terms of the way you're gonna manage the business and events business from here going forward? Is it more of the same? Thanks. Thanks, Steve. I'll maybe take those in reverse order, if I may, and I might ask Richard to come in on the clarity on the revenue mix if I get it wrong again, which I clearly am. On the management change, I mean, look, thank you for asking the question 'cause it, you know, allows me to just put on record because there'll be, I suspect, quite a few colleagues on this call. You know, Charlie has been and will remain a significant contributor to the company. I mean, I had an exchange with him in the small hours of the morning reflecting on how far we've come as a business in this area, from when he and I first had a cup of coffee, in New York, probably eight, nine years ago, when I think at the time we had an exhibitions business of about GBP 100 million-GBP 150 million of revenue. We decided that we had an ambition to be a player in this market, and I was trying to work out how to do that. I was connected with Charlie. His contribution to the company has been really significant, and he's been a great colleague. He's been a great leader of that business. You know, metaphorically or literally, you know, doing a million air miles a year or whatever it is takes its toll. You know, it's his time, and that's very much been his judgment. He and I have worked on that over a period of time, and that has allowed us actually to do a very thorough process of ascertaining what's the skill set, what's the profile, what's the match, what's the style, of the person that we're looking for to be the leader of that business on a going-forward basis. We did that in a very methodical manner. In Patrick, I think we have somebody who has all of those profile skills that we're looking for. In a sense, we're in a different place as a company because one of the things that I think Charlie has helped us build, and Charlie and I have definitely worked on, is we have a real bench inside that business of deep experience in that market. If I were to go back to go forward, Steve, you know, eight, nine years ago, we really need somebody. I really wanted somebody who really knew their way around that market, knew where the businesses were, the brands were, who owned which assets and why, what were the good brands, what were the bad brands. We have real strength in, you know, leadership in Asia, Margaret Connolly; in North America, Nancy Walsh; Ken McAvoy in Europe, Peter Hall. In specialist submarkets, in beauty, in food ingredients, I could go on. 20, 30, 40 senior colleagues who really know their way around that market. I think what Patrick will bring is a different set of what I believe will be, what we believe will be highly complementary skills that will allow us to continue to be the best of what we can be in that business while adding and expanding our service offering. That's probably the key. As GAP 2 really gains momentum, and we seek to take a position in adjacent markets offering additional services to our B2B customers, I think Patrick's experience will prove to be highly relevant. That's really the thinking behind the management change. Slightly long-winded answer, but I think relevant for people on the call to understand how we've thought about that. It helps a bit that most colleagues inside Informa Markets know Patrick quite well. He's been a prime mover in creating the value and the capabilities we built inside intelligence. What people will have forgotten, he was the person who ran the first major integration, the Penton Information Services integration. He really knows his way around the ins and outs of the U.S. business, and that's really where the main market is for us. For those reasons, that's why we've done it. Charlie's not going anywhere. He's gonna stay in the company. That's not just kind of, let's park him there you know, for now. Not at all. He just doesn't wanna be, you know, the person who has to get up, you know, at God o'clock every day. Therefore, I think we'll end up with the best of all worlds, a smooth leadership change, someone who people know, but who brings a different set of skills and experiences, and we get to retain Charlie's industry expertise, knowledge, and also just his counsel and advice. Your first question, which was around the revenue model. Just to be clear, and I hope I'm not misleading people or we're not misleading people, it's not subscription. It's not paid-for-revenue subscription. It's people subscribe, and in that subscription, they then receive the product, the relevant Dive or Dives, if they're a multi-Dive subscriber, which some are, and then the audience gets monetized. Really, the vast majority of the revenue, not all of the revenue, is the selling of sponsorship and time, which is priced by a mixture of demand and audience engagement. It's done on a direct basis to the customer. That's the revenue model. In addition to that, there's probably 20%-30% of the revenue that comes from pure content marketing and partnerships where the business works with its end customers to produce products. We do this ourselves already, although they do it, I think, more industrially than we do, and I might go so far as to say better than we do, in allowing, you know, B2B customers who are bringing new products to market to be able to showcase their products either in video format or in textual format or in linked format, so that, buyers and users can get a better understanding of a new product. That's the revenue model, and, I hope that's clear. Richard, anything you wanna add? No. Makes sense. Steve, I hope that helps. Yeah, that does. Can I have one follow-up? Just in terms of obviously the different divs there. In the past, I think, Industry Dive was relatively skewed towards retail as a div. My question really is there any disproportionately large divs in there, that maybe can sort of flatten out, across different verticals or is it well spread by Industry Dive? It's very well spread. I mean, of the 27 dives, that's news to me. If there is a bias towards retail, I've never seen that in any of the numbers we've cut. It might have been at some point in their history, so I defer to other people's. If there is a bias, and I don't know what the percentage is, but it's probably north of 50%, there's a bias towards revenue that's sourced from providers of technology, systems, SaaS, software, and other services. In a sense, that's not unusual in B2B markets. We see it ourselves in the, you know, I was one of those people once. You know, that is a market that, a, leans heavily into specialist B2B paid-for marketing products. All those companies are bigger buyers of those products and services. Frankly, that's part of the reason why we are housing this business inside Informa Tech, because we can see a very natural collaborative home, which will fit well. No, there's no, there's not one Industry Dive that's 30% of the revenue or 50% of the revenue. It's very evenly spread. Great. Thank you. We will now take the next question. Hi. Hi. Can you hear me? Yeah, very clearly. You can. Okay, brilliant. Thanks. Thanks for taking the question. I've got two. The first is on the event side. When talking with investors looking at next year, I guess if you look at what people are forecasting is probably from revenue as a percentage of 2019 to go from, say, 75%-90%. Obviously, we've seen a strong recovery, a structural recovery this year of face-to-face, as the restrictions fall away from COVID. What gives you confidence that, you know, we will see that jump in 2023? What are the key drivers behind that? I mean, aside from just China getting better. Given all of the markets are now open, what is gonna provide that additional jump, and what's your level of confidence behind that? Then the second question is on science. You're doing the GAP 2 investment. You used to generate a margin in TNF of about 38-38.5%. Going forward, is it a case of margin coming down because revenue growth goes up because of GAP 2, and then it kind of flatlines at, say, 37% or 36%? Or does it gradually go back up as the extra revenue benefit from GAP 2 starts to tell? I just can't tell at the moment, you know, what your expectation for long-term margins in TNF is. Thanks, Matthew. Let's take the first one. I mean, my own view, and this is a kind of free-form discussion, so Richard and Gareth may choose to put a gloss on this. My own view is, I think we'll have a more detailed conversation about that at the CMD in November, because I think we'll have better forward visibility into 2023 and 2024 at that point. To your very specific geographic point, the situation in China will have played out, I think, both as it relates to location by location relaxation in 2022 and also about, you know, what is a new zero-COVID policy look like for 2023 and beyond. China, as you know, is non-trivial for us. I just put that I think that would be a most sensible point to take a more detailed view of 2023 and 2024. What gives us underlying confidence about the progressive return? I think in no particular order, the way I would build it up, I was thinking about it. I think the first point would be, we have seen no evidence in any geography that we've opened, and we've now opened many, that there has been any structural damage to the demand side of the product. In any sector. We're in a lot of sectors, and we're in a lot of geographies. Secondly, we are investing not, you know, hundreds of millions of GBP, but material product investment in improving our product. Smoother registration, better information flows, more efficient applications and app services, more information on exhibitors, more information for visitors, better product information. We're just making it a better product, Matthew. At a minimum, that will be defensive. At a maximum, I think that will enhance the product. Thirdly, in 2023, excluding China, we will in the main, not everywhere, but in the main, we'll be in a full year sales cycle, which we were not in 2022. Most of our products outside of China will be slotted in a schedule point, which will have allowed for a pretty close to 12-month sales cycle, which was not the case going into 2022. Fourthly, our pricing in 2022 is largely 2019 pricing. A very conscious strategic decision that we made in order to try and deal with the structural demand point. We didn't wanna put any obstacles between our products and our customers. I think going into 2023, it's very legitimate for us to look at our pricing, both in absolute terms, and as we bring more products and services to the offering and we make it better, there's no reason why we shouldn't therefore be able to put some price around that value. I think that's how we're thinking about how we're building the business up into 2023. Structural demand remains very strong. We'll have more visibility on China. We are improving the actual product with an ambition, and we're very clear about this inside the company. We wanna be the provider of the best product in that market, and you can differentiate your product. In that differentiation, at a minimum, there's defense, at a maximum, there's value. Expand our product offering and be able to price accordingly to the value that that delivers, and then you have the fundamentals on price. I think those are the building blocks, but I hope we'll be able to give you more guidance on that as we work our way through the year and get closer to 2023. On TNF and on margins both this year on a midterm, Gareth? Yeah. I think what we'd say in terms of the TNF margin is that in 2022, there's kind of two dynamics that you've got to take into account. One is that we are in the, you know, probably one of the main years of GAP investment for that business. You're seeing your increased costs in terms of people, systems, technology, product development platforms, processes, et cetera, in 2022. You're not really seeing the revenue benefits coming through in full yet. Obviously a bit of a tick up, as I mentioned in a previous answer, but you're not seeing that in full. That investment will be a bit of a drag on the margin in 2022. The other dynamic you're seeing is that we have increased some of the costs in terms of the central functions to support GAP 2 principally around technology. Those allocate out to a division, to the divisions on the basis of revenue. As the B2B Markets businesses are still increasing their revenue following the COVID disruption, Taylor & Francis is getting a slightly overweight impact from those allocations in 2022. The impact of those two factors will be a bit of a drag on the margin in 2022. It doesn't change our view on the sort of medium to long-term margins in that business, which we think will, you know, at the moment, I think as a sort of, you know, longer term guidance, we say might settle at around, you know, 2% below where they were previously. That's the trade-off that we're making for having a business that we think can grow at 2% more than it did previously. If you think before GAP 2, this was probably a 2% business. At the Capital Markets Day, we outlined the fact that we think we can get it to be a 4% growth business. Therefore we need the trade-off of, you know, a slightly lower margin initially, versus a higher growth produces a more valuable business going forward and therefore is worth making. Now, in the longer term, as the higher revenue growth kicks in, you should see a drop through of that into the margin, and that may well then increase the margins further. I don't think we're committing to that at this stage. What we're committing to doing is making a faster growth and sustainable faster growth business out of TNF through the period of GAP 2. Thanks, Gareth. Thank you. You happy with that? Yeah. I'm guessing from your answer, that means if you were generating, say, 38.5%, now medium term, it's more like 36.5% with GAP 2. Yeah, I think in the medium term, in terms of how you define that, but yeah, in the medium term, that would be a, you know, I think a number to model to. In 2022, it'll be lower than that, for the reasons I outlined. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. We still have four questions left. We will take the next one. Yes. Hi, it's Sarah Simon here from Berenberg. Sorry, it's not very interesting question, actually. It was just on FX. When you gave the guidance, it was based on 1.35 and, Stephen, you gave us the kind of new running average. I wasn't clear from Gareth's answer whether you've basically assumed that, whether that currency benefit has now, let's say, shored up the absolute EBITDA guidance, and offset some of China, as has the better trading elsewhere, or whether we're supposed to be thinking that actually the FX is coming on top. Thanks. Sarah, it's a great question. Nice to hear your voice. Gareth? Yeah, I think, I mean, how we would kind of build it up is I think the trading upsides, you know, broadly offsets. I think that the, you know, the China downgrades, de-risking that we've taken in the numbers are certainly at OP level, you know, I think are pretty much offset by the trading upsides that we've seen across the geographies, North America and EMEA, and across all of Informa Markets, Informa Connect and Informa Tech. All three divisions have contributed to that upside, which has been the, you know, the messaging we've made previously is that, you know, where we're back, we're back strong. China has its own localized challenges, which I think we've de-risked, and we've kind of clearly communicated to the markets, both the quantification of it at the start of the year and where we think we are now in terms of what's remaining in the numbers. Overall, I think, yeah, the China de-risking is offset by the trading upside across North America and EMEIA. In terms of the additional FX unit, there's a bit of a benefit in that, but that's, you know, one of the reasons why we'd be at the top end of the guidance. I wouldn't say the FX is kind of, you know, masking or covering the China issues. The trading upsides elsewhere are pretty strong as well. Perfect. Is that helpful, Sarah? That's great. Yep, that's great. Thanks a lot. Pleasure. We will now take our next question. Hi, good afternoon, it's Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs. Most of my question's been answered, but a couple of more queries. Firstly, you paid from the low teens to 11x multiple to Industry Dive for, you know, pretty strongly growing business. Is that the sort of multiples we should be looking for or what you're looking for when assessing future potential acquisitions in the low teens? Or what would be the conditions for you to pay significantly more than that level of multiple? That's the first question. The second one is on China. I appreciate most of your most important events will be occurring late in the year. Can you share, like, how much revenue you have been secured already in China? Is there, you know, a further downside scenario here? And in a potential downside scenario, do you think you can still meet your full year guidance range, especially in operating profit? The last question is, going back to one of the questions that was asked earlier, I appreciate you're gonna give guidance on 2023 later on. But given everything you've said about, you know, the outlook for events, like, you know, still structurally sound and the potential pricing increase next year. Outside of China, do you think is there any reason why we shouldn't be going back to 2019 levels already in 2023 outside of China? That's my question. Thank you. Also, what will happen to the margins in that case? Thanks very much. That's a list, Lisa. Well, I'll try and take them in order and bounce between myself and Gareth. Well, on price paid, I suppose it depends if you've got Goldman on the sell side mandate, what the price ends up being. I think, you know, we judge each acquisition on the merits and on the structure. You're correct to say that here on the, if you like, the cash paid multiple, it's in the 11-11.5x. As we touched on earlier, we've bought this business for revenue growth, both the business itself and the revenue growth potential from the combination. We see real upside there for the reasons that hopefully the earlier conversation has both clarified and crystallized. If that's the case, then the actual purchase price might end up being higher, but by definition, the multiple would then be lower. Really, I think it depends very much on the nature of the business, and I'm not sure it's possible to put down a marker that says, you know, it's in this range. At a more if you like, strategic acquisition to disposal level, again, part of what attracted us to the strategy that we outlined back in December of last year was that we believed then, and thankfully, we've begun to bear that out, that we could exit from one market in what looks like a kind of blended 20x-25x multiple, and we could then redeploy capital at a lower multiple. If we can do that in a way that also enhances our market position and drives our growth rate, then hopefully that'll be an equation that works well for the business and for shareholders. Does that give you a sense around that question, Lisa? Yeah, that's very helpful. Thank you. On B2B events, it's a fair point. I think, you know, I'm not trying to trade, you know, here's what we feel good about and here's what we stay alive to. You know, we have also rationalized our portfolio a bit during COVID. We decided that there were just some smaller brands and market positions we would just not return to in a live form. Some of them we have co-located with others, some of them we're doing purely as an on-demand product, some of them we've warehoused for maybe a market return when the world is a bit different. You know, the portfolio in 2023 will not be identical to the portfolio in 2019. While most of the business will be back to a full sales cycle, not absolutely all of it will be. There are still some geographies outside of China, which we don't talk about so much on these calls, not because they're not important, but because they're just smaller geographies, but they will be coming back at different pace rates. ASEAN was, you know, an important market for us pre-COVID. Now, actually, we're pretty bullish on ASEAN, but I think this year it might end up being about a third of what it was in 2019. You know, you could say the same about, you know, Brazil, Mexico. You could say the same about Turkey. You could say the same about Japan. When you add these up individually, they don't necessarily move the needle. Collectively, when you've got a distributed portfolio, you know, that's all part of what was the, if you like, the fullest expression of the company in 2019. Then you get to China, which is, you know, was another big market. That's really why I say I think we might be better waiting till November. I think we'll have better forward visibility. You know, let's be clear, I think we've been consistent in our view, even in the depths of COVID, that the fundamentals of our product offering are very robust. We have a very high quality portfolio, which is, you know, either a material brand or the material brand in the markets we serve. The end markets we serve and the geographies that we operate in, we think are very well lined up. The evidence we're getting from in-market performance is confirming that, and that is what I think gives us confidence. On China, do you want to speak to that? I'm just gonna start again at the top of the house. We've reconfirmed full year guidance today at the upper end of the range. Within that reconfirmation of the guidance, as I outlined to an earlier question, we've taken a further de-risking of the China revenues down by about a third of what we said previously. About GBP 80 million worth of revenue in the numbers, roughly compared to about GBP 200 million in the budget that we originally set. At those sort of levels, we're confident about reconfirming guidance at the upper end of the range. If you were to then run a further downside scenario on those numbers, you could just take more of that revenue out. If that was to happen, what I think we'd be seeing, what our modeling shows at the moment, is it would still finish within the range of the guidance that we've given, whether it be at the upper end of the range, middle of the range, that really depends on, you know, what scenario you're running for China. It also depends on whether there's further upside in EMEIA and in North America as we operate events in those regions over the autumn period, which is a possibility. I think we would say in a further downside scenario, confident about finishing in the range, but where in the range we finish depends on what we trade in the second half of the year, both in China and elsewhere globally. I think that's kind of the confirmation we give on China. There's also a point around OP margin and the events businesses that you asked about. I think on that, I think again, as we kind of clarified with Taylor & Francis, I think with it being the GAP 2 investment year in 2022, that's a little bit of a drag on the margin, those businesses. You've also got the ongoing recovery from the impact of COVID, which, you know, is leaving revenues below where they were pre-COVID, but at a cost base that is less. You know, we haven't really taken a knife to because we've got to focus very much on the recovery from COVID and how we come back stronger as a business. There will be a lower level of margin in those businesses in 2022 than you might be expecting all things being equal. As you know, GAP 2 plays out and as the revenue returns, you know, I think the margin levels can return to pretty strong levels, you know, say by 2024, 2025 as you recover from COVID. I think there's a structural change that we're aware of in terms of margin expectations in that area, but there will be a little bit of a lag across 2022 and 2023 as the margins continue to recover. Thanks very much, Richard. Okay. Thanks, Lisa. Any further questions, Diana? Yes, we still have two questions. We will take the next one. Thank you very much, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, very clearly. It's Silvia Cuneo from Deutsche Bank. I just had a question related to a prior one about the GAP 2 medium-term objective for events. I understand it is too early to update on your 2024 new normal scenarios, perhaps in a potential macro downturn. Maybe you can just remind us of the business performance during the financial crisis, like how long it took to return to 2008 levels? What do you think are key differences today that could result in a more resilient performance this time? For example, to what extent the fact that you're still recovering to pre-COVID performance can sustain growth despite a recession in a higher inflationary environment. Thank you. Thanks, Silvia. I mean, I'll take that one and Gareth, you may wanna come in. I mean, I confess I was not in this business in the global financial crisis, although I joined the board not long after it as a non-executive. I mean, I would say it is just a fundamentally different business. I mean, back in 2007, the events business was really predominantly a conference business, which was much more exposed to market volatility because it's basically an audience delegate sponsorship revenue model. It was also a volume model rather than the value model. It was, you know, 10, 11, 12 thousand products a year, produced on a kind of knife and fork basis. Our B2B events business today is predominantly a high value branded intellectual property business with its own data. I mean, it's just an incomparably different product. Similarly in academic markets, the business was much more weighted towards what you would call reference learning than it was to research product. There was no open access product at all. There was no open research product. It was geographically also very different. We had virtually no market position in North America to speak of. We were much more exposed to Europe. I mean, it literally is just a different company. On the going forward basis, what would be the... Where you would point to resilience, I mean, we're trying to build more resilience into the business, a deeper commitment to the underlying value of our data, a much more customer-oriented business and a consistent commitment to improving product and service delivery through the deployment of technology and system and process design. We think that will serve us well. The underlying fundamentals of being a business that champions specialists in either the academic market or the B2B market, that lodestar we think will serve us very well. Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think the other thing about that business going into the global financial crisis, it was quite a big performance improvement training business. Which again, very delegate-led and also, you know, was quite affected by discretionary budgets being cut. That was a drive on the numbers. Where we operated, the sort of scale global trade shows that we make up a major part of portfolio now in places like, say, Arab Health, actually, they fully performed pretty resiliently through the global financial crisis. Some of those trade shows grew all the way through it. Back in that time, that was a very small part of the business, because that really predated all our expansion through GAP 1 in that space. Yes, as Stephen said, a very different business at that stage. Is that helpful, Silvia? Yes, very much. Thanks, everyone. Thanks. We will now take our last question. Hi there. This is Hash Rodopolous from Bank of America. Can you hear me? Yeah, can hear you very clearly, Hash. Perfect. Thanks for taking my question. Just a quick one and more of a credit one, if I may. So it is clear that balance sheet has significantly strengthened, reaching net cash by the first half of this year, and less than one times net debt to EBITDA by year-end. My question is more around the long-term financial policy, for example, in terms of leverage or even credit rating. Is there a set target? Great question to end on. Gareth? Yeah, thanks for the question. I think at the moment, how we're really thinking about it is that we would like to see, you know, how the GAP 2 reinvestment program evolves over time and what sort of businesses we're adding to the mix there. As you'll remember, going into COVID, we had a leverage policy of 2-2.5 times going up to 3 for the right acquisition. I mean, could you see a scenario in which that is slightly lower coming out of COVID? The answer to that would be, you could see it, but I think it really depends on what's the nature of the business in 2023, 2024, as the business has recovered from COVID, as we've added more B2B digital services revenues through our organic GAP 2 expansion, and as we've added potentially more businesses through our inorganic expansion. I think really I'd like to see what, you know, the revenue profile of that business looks like in, say, 2024 before you really opine on what the longer term leverage ratio is that you wanna make a target for the business. We've certainly not been back to the board with a proposal yet because I think it's the sort of thing where we would say, you don't make a decision on that in 2020 or 2021 when you're in the middle of COVID. You wait till you've seen your way out of it a bit and then start discussing where you wanna take that and how you wanna take that forward. That's not me dodging the question. It's me saying that basically we'd like to have a, you know, clearer side of the business that we're gonna become, but we're alive to the fact that, you know, maybe it could be a bit lower than it was going into COVID. I think as I've said to, you know, both the equity and the credit markets in the past, I don't think if our target range had been half a turn lower going into COVID, the financial realities from Informa would have been materially different. I just think that at that stage, when about a third of your business goes to zero, your EBITDA is gonna come down considerably and your leverage is gonna go up considerably. I think the, you know, the outcome of COVID wouldn't have mattered, you know, if the leverage range had been half a turn or even a turn lower as a target basis going into it. And therefore it means that in terms of running the balance sheet and optionality going forward, I'm not inclined to advocate that it should be, you know, a full turn or a turn half lower than where it was previously. It just feels like the wrong response to it. As I say, I think need to see where the business is in 2024, and how we begin to evolve out of that. We talk to the credit rating agencies regularly. We're rated by all three of the main agencies, and we take their input and their views about how we should think about this. I think, you know, they are, you know, reasonably consistent understanding of the approach we're taking. They would like to see us and see where we are in 2024 and how we've executed on the investment strategy before they opine on where we want to be. I think they're in a consistent place with our thinking. Is that helpful? Yeah. Yeah, super helpful. Thank you very much. Pleasure. Do I take it that we've got no further questions? Yes, that is correct. Okay. Well, thank you very much, everyone, for the time and the interest. I hope that was useful. Appreciate people coming on the call, and if there are any follow-up questions, then do follow up with Richard or myself or Gareth. You know, for the record, we will be filing our results on July 28th and there may well be some follow-up at that point if people need it or want it. Take care. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.