Informa PLC
Full Year Results 2023 | Analyst meetingand live webcast
8 March 2024
Transcript

Disclaimer
This transcript is derived from a recording of the event. Every possible effort has been made totranscribe accurately. However, neither Informa nor BRR Media Limited shall be liable for any
inaccuracies, errors, or omissions.

Stephen Carter:

Good morning everyone who's here in person. We were having a bit of a book
as to how many people would turn up in person given it's A) we've actually
announced our results before in the pre-close, and B) it's Friday. So we thought
we would do our results on a Friday to see if we could stimulate less working
from home. So well done for everyone who's turned up. And to those who areon the webcast, which does slightly outnumber the people in the room, I hope
you can follow very clearly.
Usual format, myself and Gareth, and then we'll throw it open to questions.
We'll try and do this at a bit of a click because some of it will be familiar, but
we've also tried in the second half of the presentation to give a little bit morecolour on how we're thinking about the future of the business. So hopefully thatwill be useful and interesting for everyone.
We've themed today's presentation ‘Momentum and Growth’. We feel that's apretty fair and objectively accurate summary of where the business is. We've
been recovering through COVID, building momentum and we step into '24 from'23 with a real sense of momentum in all parts of the business. And as you cansee in the hard numbers, a clear path to continuing growth.
The backdrop for us is no different than it is for everybody else. We're all living
in an increasingly uncertain world, whether it's uncertainty over the cost ofcapital, whether it's uncertainty about the horror of military conflicts in someparts of the world, whether it's the fact that half the world is deciding whoshould be responsible for governing them in 2024. So there's a lot of changethat we're facing into.
I think one of the strengths of our business is that over the last decade we've
built a very strong geographical platform in the five major geographies of theworld. And I'll talk a little bit about that later on in the presentation.
But net we feel that despite that geopolitical nervousness, we are well-balanced
and well set to be able to continue to deliver what we've set out to do. Our
business operates in what we've called for many years now, the Knowledge andInformation economy, a place where having original content, proprietary data,
intellectual property, and a unique value add, whether that's in the academic
markets business or the B2B markets business, gives you a moat of defence, notin perpetuity, but it gives you a starting place, which gives you real strength.
The two sweet spots of our business are live and specialist. We have a view,which I think is being borne out that as the world becomes progressively moredigital, that the only thing more valuable than digital is live. You see that mostevidently probably in sports and music, but we are definitely seeing it in our B2B
business.
And in the Knowledge market, being a generalist is a tough spot to be. You seethat in many businesses, but being a specialist, that's a strong spot to be. And2

we have pursued a path of specialism as a means of differentiating our various
products and services.
And you can see the value of specialisation in each of our markets, whether it'sin live and on demand in the B2B market, whether it's in the emerging market
for digital demand, lead generation and buyer intent that we're stepping into
through the partnership or proposed partnership with TechTarget, or whether
it's in the academic markets area, where the increasing investment in original
research by countries and institutions around the world is providing primary
growth in that market. And then the question is how do we convert an unfair
share of that?
So we think our mission statement as a company, ‘Championing the Specialist’,
is a very powerful place to be. It resonates across all of our markets. I think it
resonates well for colleagues in the company, and it speaks to our customers
who rightly regard themselves as operating in very specific areas that require ahigh degree of market knowledge to be a partner for them.
And alongside that, you need brands. You need to build a position that's
distinctive and original. There's a difference between a name and a brand.
There's a difference between identity and a brand. And we are trying to further
enhance our brands, whether it is in the academic markets or the B2B business,
and we'll talk about that in the second half of the presentation.
To get to the numbers for 2023, we don't say these often. I think I canaccurately say that in what passes for a constructive and effective working
relationship between myself and Richard, I'm the one who's normally saying,"Don't be so boastful." But I think we can say unequivocally that 2023 was astandout year for this company on pretty much any measure. In January 2023, if
someone had said, "Here are the numbers for the year, would you take those?"
We would've questioned whether that was possible.
The business came back at a pace and rate that was impressive, and our ability
to be able to meet that demand was equally impressive. The growth rates speak
for themselves. We saw the margin tick up to pretty much where we wanted it
to be and give us a platform for further margin growth going into 2024. And we
saw the return of our cash flows. And importantly, we did all of that whilst
maintaining both an opportunistic approach and effective approach to spot
acquisitions, whilst retaining a very strong balance sheet. And that allowed us toreturn quite a significant amount of capital to shareholders in both rising
dividends and buybacks.
So net, a strong performance for '23, but as everyone on the webcast and in theroom knows, that was yesterday. And the real question is what is there to comein 2024? What are the drivers of momentum and growth in 2024? This is, if you
like, the building blocks of how we think you could think about where thecompany is and where there is an opportunity to believe the growth story.

3

The first is in our international reach. We are having this conversation here in
London. We're listed here, we're domiciled here, but we are a truly
international business. And our expansion internationally is really serving us
extremely well. Our biggest market is the United States, but we have place
positions in Europe, in what we call IMEA now -- India, Middle East and Africa, in
ASEAN, in mainland China, in Hong, Kong, and indeed here in the United
Kingdom. That is allowing us to take a maximum opportunity of our increasingly
large brand portfolio to be able to further expand our revenues in thosegeographies.
The markets that we serve are by and large markets that we have chosen, andwe chose them because we believe those were markets that had the long-termfeatures of structural growth, international, high margin, extended supply chain,subject areas of interest, new subjects, growth areas for R&D investment. And
so we are both geographically, and by sector or subject area, facing into market
growth opportunities.
Sitting here in March, we've got pretty good revenue visibility in this business.
We've traded nearly half a billion of our revenues. We can see another billion in
our bookings. So nearly 45% of our revenue we can already see. And our pacing
numbers, which are the numbers that we track to give ourselves confidence on
our forecasts are significantly ahead of where they were for our top brands thisyear versus last year. And our balance sheet remains robust, and we'll comeback to that when we talk about our capital allocation framework.
So that combination of what we've traded already in 2024, of which mostrecently the highlight was this week in Riyadh where we saw the third edition of
our new event, new brand LEAP, which we created in partnership with ourpartners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I'll give you a little bit of colour on thatevent later in the presentation. But it really has gone from a standing start to bea leading brand in the market in a very short period of time.
Subscription revenues across the portfolio, whether it's Omdia, or in Taylor &Francis, or in Curinos or IGM, give us an underpinning of revenue repetition, andour annual contract values are performing strongly and at the levels that wewould want them to be. And our forward pacing numbers, as I say in live and on
demand are strong.
So net we go into 2024 with growth and momentum, and I'm just going to passover to Gareth to take you through the details of the outcomes in '23 and what
we're guiding to in 2024; Gareth…
Gareth Wright:

Thank you Stephen. Good morning everyone, and good morning to everyone in
the room here for the live event and good morning to everyone on the webinar
or watching live or on demand.

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I'm going to talk you through a couple of slides on the 2023 full year results, andthen move on into the 2024 trading that we're seeing. And I'm also going to talkabout how our effective capital management continues to deliver strong
shareholder returns across '23 and into 2024.
I'll start by outlining some of the financial headlines. In the full year results, ourrevenue was £3.19 billion, which the eagle-eyed amongst you will note is exactly£300 million more than we delivered in 2019 before we started any of theInforma Intelligence disposal process.
We delivered another year of strong underlying revenue growth, a second
consecutive year of 30% year-on-year underlying revenue growth, and reported
OP increased by 72% to £854 million, which in turn drove up the earnings 86%
to 45.3 pence per share.
We delivered a strong cash flow performance in the year, free cash flow of £632
million, up 51%. And that cash flow performance together with our balance
sheet strength enabled us to deliver over £700 million worth of shareholder
returns across a combination of our progressive dividend policy and our sharebuyback programme.
We finished the year with leverage of 1.4 times, which together with our free
cash flows increasing in 2024, gives us considerable opportunity and optionality
around capital allocation going into the new year.
As Stephen talked about in his piece just now, 2023 was really a standout year interms of the trading performance of the business. And as you can see outlinedon this slide, what that enabled us to do is to regularly and consistently upgrade
our view of what the full year out turn was going to be for the financial year,
driven by the strength of the live and on demand commercial model in our B2B
markets, but supported by good performance from Taylor & Francis in terms of
its trading.
These upgrades, as you can see, were across revenue, OP, and operating profit
margin across the year, as all three metrics increased, driven by the revenue
performance and our strong operating leverage in the business, dropping
through to the bottom line, increasing the margin by almost five percentage
points year-on-year. And this momentum is continuing in 2024, which I'll talkabout in a bit more detail on a later slide.
Focusing on the income statement, we delivered reported revenue growth of
41%, and underlying revenue growth of 30%, delivered, as I said, by the returnof the live and on-demand B2B event commercial model in all regions and all
markets. So we're now trading fully in all markets and regions, and we're trading
at strength and scale in all markets and regions through 2023 and into 2024.

5

We delivered OP growth, reported growth of 72%, and underlying growth of
59%, driven by strong operating leverage in the business and disciplined costmanagement as we scale operations.
The net finance cost was £19 million for the year, which is obviously a very low
result for us in terms of comparison to recent years, driven by a combination of
the high cash balances we started the year with, and the higher interest rates
that we were earning on those cash balances. And we'll see a bit of an increase,
I think, in that finance cost line in 2024.
The effective tax rate was 18.7%, a bit lower than the 19% that we guided to at
the half year. And in the medium term we still would expect that to tickupwards to 21% to 22% over time, driven primarily by the OECD minimum tax
proposals, and a little bit of an impact of the higher UK corporation tax rates.
The non-controlling interests increased year-on-year, but the number that's
come out is pretty much in line with our guidance, that's been driven by thehigher profitability in areas like the Chinese JVs that we operate in B2B markets,
Curinos, and the Tahaluf entity in Saudi Arabia. And the weighted average
shares finished the year at around 1.4 billion, benefiting from the share buyback
programme, under which we have bought back and canceled around about 180
million shares since that programme started, which together with the trading
results, produced an 86% year-on-year growth in earnings.
So, turning to the divisional numbers, we'll unpick these on a division-bydivision basis in a bit more detail. But the headline is that if you look across all
the divisions, we've delivered strong underlying revenue growth and OP growthacross the businesses in 2023.
Informa Markets has now seen a full return of live and on-demand B2B events,
really the last places to reopen in 2023 were in China, and Hong Kong; China
trading above 2019 levels in the year, and Hong Kong pretty close to it in its firstyear of operating since 2019. And that trading result, together with value-based
pricing that we're seeing in that business and the operating leverage produced
an almost 10 percentage point increase in the margin for that division year-onyear.
Informa Connect is benefiting from strong demand for content rich live
experiences, and again, the operating leverage there increased the margin inthat division by about four percentage points year-on-year, and also we'reseeing an improving mix in the quality and strength of that business, which
Stephen's going to expand on a bit more in the second half of his presentation.
Whilst talking about Informa Markets, Informa Connect, we should just touch on
Tarsus, which is now fully integrated in terms those divisions, around 70% of it
into Informa Markets and around about 30% into Informa Connect. Tarsus
delivered a very strong result in 2023, delivering around about 55% underlying

6revenue growth, and delivering an outright revenue number ahead of ourguidance at the time of completing the acquisition.
Informa Tech was definitely the business that traded into the toughest end
market in 2023, but despite that, we managed to deliver 6% underlying revenue
growth, and a percentage point increase in the operating profit margin in theyear. But we're excited about the opportunities for that business in the medium
term, as you've seen by the announcement of the TechTarget deal and ourcommercial rationale for that transaction.
IIRIS is really a story about execution at the moment, about continued
operational progress and expansion across our B2B markets businesses, andabout onboarding our new acquisitions and additions to the portfolio as quickly
as possible. Permissioned B2B audience increased to over 20 million people inthe year, and in terms of what we're seeing in the business, we're definitely
seeing an improvement in the operational effectiveness of our marketing to ourexisting customers through IIRIS. And we're also seeing a beginning ofenhancements to the B2B customer experience in areas like lead insights, thatagain, Stephen will expand on a bit more in the second half of his speech.
Taylor & Francis in 2023 delivered revenue growth of 3%, underpinned by arobust performance in the pay-to-read business and also by further expansion involumes in open research. The operating profit margin of that business wasconsistent year-on-year, at 35%, and we're excited about further opportunities
for acceleration in the growth in that business in 2024.
So overall at a group level, this added up to 30% underlying revenue growth,almost 60% underlying operating profit growth, all of which we thinkdemonstrates the value of our products to our customers in an increasingly
digital world.
So this is a bridge from our underlying growth to our reported growth in 2023,
showing why in both revenue and OP terms, the reported growth was higher
than the underlying growth. And before we start walking across that bridge, I
think it's worth just focusing on the left-hand column there and the underlying
growth for the business. So the reported growth really isn't a factor of things
like acquisitions in the year, it really is driven by the underlying performance,
30% revenue growth and 60% profit growth in the business year-on-year.
The phasing adjustment is entirely due to biennials, although 2023 is a biennial
up year, so you'd normally expect the bridging item here to be positive. The
drag effect of COVID on the 2021 comparative for those biennials means that in
actual fact, the bridging item from underlying to reported is a negative number.
The portfolio expansion is the additions that we've made to the portfolio in theyear, which is really 75% Tarsus and Winsight supported by some other smaller
additions.

7And finally, the currency movement is minimal as the main currency that wetrade in, the U.S. dollar, was very stable across 2023 at around about 1.25
exchange rate. The outcome of that is very strong reported growth, 41% growth
in revenue, and 72% in growth in OP margins.
The next slide outlines how the margin has increased from 22% to 27% acrossthe full year. The largest block as you can see there, is performance, and this isbasically the operating leverage from our 30% underlying revenue growth.
We've continued to have tight cost management around the business, but wealso continue to balance that up with the opportunity for investment, in linewith the areas we've talked about in terms of our GAP 2 strategy to fuel andaccelerate future revenue growth in the business.
The phasing in biennials arises from 2023 being an up year in terms of thebiennial business, and those up year biennials are a bit more profitable.
Portfolio expansion benefits from the acquisition of higher OP businesses like
Tarsus and Winsight. As I said just now, the currency effect is minimal because
the dollar has been pretty much unchanged across the year.
A continuing OP margin improvement is something that we will be targeting in
2024, but as we say consistently, we value repeatable, sustainable underlying
revenue growth just as highly as we value increases in the margin. So whilst
targeting an increase in the margin, we will also be looking to make continued
targeted investments in our business to accelerate future growth.
Looking at the balance sheet, our first maturity is in October 2025, which is our€700 million tranche EMTN. And after that, the next maturities are in February
2026 for the RCF, and then the summer of 2026 for the next EMTN tranche. We
have no group level financial covenants. So the constraining factor really on our
finances is our liquidity. And we finished 2023 with £1.5 billion of liquidity.
Our debt is secured on fixed interest rates about 3.2%. That means in 2023, we
benefited from having fixed interest rate borrowings in an environment that
saw higher interest rates in the market, whilst we benefited in our interest
receivable line from having floating interest rate deposits on the higher cash
balances that we were running, benefiting our interest income receivable. Our
year-end pension surplus is over £40 million, which is pretty small really in theoverall scale of our business.
So in summary, we finish 2023with leverage at 1.4 times, we have £1.5 billion
worth of liquidity, and we have strong and growing free cash flow generation
heading into 2024, all of which provides opportunity and optionality around ourcapital allocation.
So that was the story behind the strong trading performance in 2023 and theoptionality we have in the year-end balance sheet; we're now going to focus on

8the momentum of trading into 2024 and what we intend to do around capital
allocation going forward.
So to start this slide, one thing you've got to do is start by looking at theplatform we've built as a business, and that is a platform that is highly cash
generative in terms of our ability to turn operating profits into cash through ouroperating cash conversion. We generate scale amounts of operating cash flow,
and that's dropping through into the free cash flow line with our guidance of£720 million-plus for 2024. And that cash flow strength is what gives us theoptionality and opportunity around our capital allocation.
The first capital allocation opportunity is the organic investment into ourbusiness through CapEx to drive organic growth. And we have a continued focus
on appropriate and targeted CapEx investment to drive growth. And thatinvestment is somewhere around about 3% to 4% per annum of revenue. We
have a progressive approach to dividends, which will see us grow our dividends
over time as our earnings grow in the business, and we will then make inorganic
investment in the businesses, through targeted portfolio additions, exercising
our M&A discipline that we think we've shown over recent years, and leveraging
our management experience over a number of years of delivering acquisitionsand value creation in this space. And the areas we'll be targeting are allconsistent with our GAP 2 strategy that we've outlined to you previously.
Share buybacks are a core part of the capital allocation policy but will flex withthe outcome of the inorganic investment decisions that we make. We'recontinuing share buybacks into 2024. We've done about £90 million year-todate up until the announcement, and we're announcing a further £250 millionof share buybacks in today's announcement, taking you to a total basecommitment for 2024 of £340 million as we stand. Target leverage is in therange 1.5 to 2.5, which gives you a sense of the triangulation of the capacity
available for us in terms of inorganic investment and share buybacks in 2024.
And we think that target leverage is consistent with maintaining ourinvestment-grade credit rating, which is something that we have targeted overtime.
You also need to remember when looking at that capital allocation approach
there, the future sources of acceleration that exist from our portfolio ofretained investments are outlined there on the right-hand side of the slide.
These investments allow the opportunity for future value creation andcrystallisation in the business, and therefore future cash generation andincremental capital allocation opportunities for us going forward outside of thefree cashflow that we're guiding to and that the business can generate. So that's
our approach to capital allocation, and we're confident that will deliver
increasing shareholder returns over 2024 and beyond.
Then finally, just coming back to the guidance, as you have seen in theannouncement, we're increasing the guidance ahead of what we said in our
10th of January trading update by £25 million worth of revenue and £5 million9

of OP. That really is driven by the trading we've seen year-to-date in Q1, and ouroutlook and visibility forward into the first half of the year. As well as theincrease in the guidance, it's worth just reflecting on what the guidance says inoutright terms. In revenue growth, we're guiding to high single-digit. In OP
growth, we're guiding to double-digit growth. In free cashflow, we're guiding to£720 million worth of cashflow. Which, depending on what assumptions you
make about the share price, is a free cashflow yield north of 6% for 2024. As I
look back across the earning season, there are not many groups you're seeing
guiding to a set of guidance numbers for 2024 of that strength and of that size.
And to confirm, back to the previous slide, any inorganic growth opportunities
from our capital allocation are on top of that guidance.
So as I wrap up and hand back to Stephen, just to recap that. Strong trading
performance. A standout performance in 2023 from the business, but
importantly, with the momentum and continuing into 2024. And alongside theeffective capital management, we think that is really delivering the opportunity
to maximise shareholder returns heading into 2024. Stephen…

Stephen Carter:

Thank you very much. Right. Just before we head into questions, I thought what
we'd do in this section is maybe just put a little bit more colour around thebusiness, and the way in which we're thinking about it, and how we're growing
and developing it. The first is just to talk a bit about the power of live. I suspect
none of this will be new to people, but it gives you a flavour of theconversations that we find ourselves having with many of our partners aroundthe world. Whether that be cities, or governments, or venue operators, or citystate, or state-based governments. Or indeed, trade association and othercommercial partners.
MICE is the term of jargon for that industry. Meetings, Incentives, Conferences,and exhibitions. And in many parts of the world, MICE is a strategic vertical forthe country. We're seeing that particularly in our IMEA business, in our ASEAN
business, and in our Chinese business, and in some parts of North America,
where locations are making strategic investment decisions on airport capacity,
convention capacity, infrastructure capacity, hotel builds at all tiers. Therefore,
if you can have a counterparty conversation where you have a brand portfolio
and an ability to bring the sort of community that they're interested in bringing
to that location, that creates a really very mutually-beneficial discussion.
Because whilst it's attractive for us, and Gareth talked about what that produces
for us in numbers in '23 and what we believe it might produce in '24, actually,
for the counterparty, they're interested in what they would call the multipliereffect. And in the market, the view generally is that the multiplier effect can be
anywhere from 7 to 10 times. So whatever we may look to achievecommercially, the knock-on effect, the multiplier effect in the location issignificant. And as I said in my opening comment, one of the maybe slightly
perverse consequences of both digitalisation, and indeed, post-COVID return, is10that the value of live has gone up. The participation levels have gone up if you're
operating in the area of the market where there is distinctiveness and brandvalue.
So then, if you take that sector view of the value of live, what have we built andbought over the last 10, 15 years to give us a market position to be able to havecounterparty conversations that allow us to develop at the growth rates that
we're talking about? Here, we've taken our brands and we've used some roughmetrics to divide them into more manageable chunks. Marquee brands, powerbrands, market brands, national brands. That really, these are just businesses
and brands operating in certain locations or certain sectors, which gives you areal sense of the depth of the portfolio.
In marquee brands, we've used 30 million-plus as a threshold, because many ofthem exist above it. And I know a number of you will say, "Well, that's reallyinteresting. So can you tell me exactly what's the revenue number for a superreturn?" So just before you ask the question, the answer is no. But what we're
giving you here is an indication of the scale of these franchises. The growth ratesof these franchises are also very attractive. Now, we are a buyer in the market
for these brands and these products. So we have a very developed
understanding of the value of these assets, both to us, and indeed what theirlong-term annuity value is in the way in which you can own them. More
importantly, we have a much more developed understanding of how you can
expand services and attractive benefits for the customers and the users of thosebrands so you can expand the revenue, and indeed, the margin profile.
Similarly, to expand my earlier points geographically, this is the geographic
spread of the company. Now, for those of you who've been around the Informa
company for a long time, you will remember when, if we'd presented that chart,
we would have had one pillar, and it would have been in the Middle East. So,
we've built a platform. So when we talk about a platform, we talk about amarket position. The company really is at a different stage of development andmarket opportunity. Whether it's in the Americas, which is our biggest market,
and is, in fact, 55% of the global trade-show business. So, it's no surprise that
that's our biggest market. It's also the highest-margin market, because they
have a very developed set of infrastructure. Therefore, the key input price inthat business, which is real estate, is generally lower square-meter-per-squaremeter in the US than it is anywhere else in the world.
ASEAN, which is a significant trading block, and expanding in multiple countries,
and the trading relationships between themselves, and becoming an
increasingly important manufacturing center, which is particularly critical to thetrade-show community. We are the market leader. We are in every one of the
major economies. And in all four or five of the major countries in the ASEAN
block, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia in particular, you're seeing significant
investment in new convention capacity, airport capacity, hoteling, and accesscapability.

11Europe, you probably know about, as well as I do. We're actually lessrepresented in Europe. Largely because Germany, in particular, is, in effect, ahome market. It is largely ... not dominated, but certainly the significant players
in the German market are the German messes. So in the main, we have slightly
removed ourselves from the market, beyond taking the occasional brand into it
for location purposes. But nevertheless, we have some strong positions in acouple of areas, and we've developed an increasingly attractive joint-venture
relationship through our partnership with BolognaFiera to expand our positionin the European market that way. China, mainland China, and Hong Kong. Hong
Kong is probably the last geographical area in the world where we will see postCOVID return in '24, because in 2023, the international travel patterns hadn't
really fully rectified and reset in 2023.
And then you get to IMEA, which is a new construct for us in the last 12 months.
Previously, we used to have India as part of Asia Pacific, and the Middle East andAfrica was combined with Europe. We split that out to create a new geography,
IMEA, because those locations, for us, have a series of very similar features.
Most notably, they're all very high-growth markets, and we are the market
leader in every single one of them. In Turkey, in Egypt, in India, in Saudi Arabia,
and in the United Arab Emirates. All of them similarly investing in capacity, andvenues, and airports, and access, and infrastructure. And in some cases,
liberalising their economies as a result of social change and policy change inorder to significantly accelerate international foreign direct investment. Which,of course, is catnip to our product portfolio and our brand portfolio. We arereally doubling down both our time, and our presence, and our participation in
those markets, and we call that out in today's announcement.
So I thought I'd double down even further and just give you a couple ofexamples. Here are a couple of brands that really do stand out. I've chosen
these two, or we've chosen these two, because they are the yin to each other'syang. If you've been around the live and on-demand business for a long time,
Arab Health is what I would call trade-show royalty. It's been around for nearly
50 years. If you imagine that's easy to say, 50 years ago, coming up with the idea
to create a global healthcare manufacturing meeting and convention point in
Dubai. It might be obvious now, but 50 years ago that was a lot less obvious. It's
grown from that entrepreneurial idea into the leading healthcare show in theworld. In fact, we have developed out of that a sub-brand called Medlab, which
specializes in medical laboratory technology deployed in hospitals andhealthcare institutions around the world. Because, of course, technology is ahorizontal. And in the healthcare community, it's the biggest feature of capital
expenditure for many healthcare providers and operators.
The combination of Arab Health and Medlab is, for us, a north-of-$90 million
franchise, growing at significantly high double digits. It's rich in content. It's richin professional accreditation. It's rich in customer data. It's growing in capacity.
And indeed, in the location in which it operates in Dubai, they are expanding.
And not next year, but the year after, the venue capacity grows again in '26
onwards as a result of World Expo, which brought new capacity into that12

market. And for any of you who've been to Dubai, you will know that they've
also invested significantly in any tiered level of hoteling accommodation. So, it isa place where you can bring 100,000 people and all the necessary contractors
you need to be able to scale and stage a large-scale event.
By contrast, in technology innovation, this is the brand that I referred to earlier.
LEAP was our entry brand into the Saudi Arabian market in our joint venture,
Tahaluf. They had identified future technology innovation and AI as an area
where they wanted to be a standout, distinctive point of difference versus therest of the market. And we invented this notion of LEAP for future technologies,
new technologies, innovative technologies. Whether it be from big tech, midtech, small-tech, investors, entrepreneurs, startups. LEAP's in its third year, andlook at some of these data points. 1,800 exhibitors, over 50% of which areinternational. 170,000-plus attendees. Over 4.9 trillion in money undermanagement for investors attending. We had over 650 startups in the startup
event that was running simultaneous with a large-scale trade show.
Much like Arab Health and Medlab, it's actually a double act. The mothership is
LEAP and the innovative technology accompaniment is DeepFest, a standalone
event focused on AI. Possibly, I think by next year, might be the largest AI eventin the world. So you've got a 50-year-old mega brand, marquee brand, which isinnovating and still growing at double digits. You've got a brand-new brand in a
new market that's equally growing at double digits, both of which are being
driven by market demand and incremental capacity. Those are the ingredientsof how you continue to drive growth and expansion across the business. And it's
only two brands out of a portfolio at the marquee level of 20-plus, and anational brand, or a power brand, or a market brand where you can do themaths and you can do the valuation maths of what those might individually beworth. And then you could read that across to our valuation, and you can all
make those judgements quicker than I can.
Underpinning those, what do you also need to do? These days, you also need to
be underpinned by data. Like in all businesses, particularly in the Knowledge andInformation market, being a generalist doesn't work. If you want to be a
specialist to a specialist, you need to know the what, the who, the why, and the
how of what they're interested in, what they're doing, where they're doing it,
where they're repeating, where they're spending dwell time. Where's theirbuyer intent? What's their subject matter of interest? What do they want moreof, and in real time? That's what led us to our investment in IIRIS. That's what
led us to start generating products like Lead Insight that enabled us to provide
some real-time access to our customers and our users so that the event wasn't
just a kind of random, "I got back with 60 new business cards in my pocket." I'mactually getting validated data that allows me to create real return for theinvestment of my time and my money.
Much talk about AI in every business around the world, and quite rightly. I spent
two days this week hanging out with the AI community in Riyadh. The pace ofinnovation and new product, what's happening with language processing, unit

13

capacity, speed, it's startling. For our business, AI is already significantly
embedded in what we do. Whether it's at a very simple and practical matter,
doing live speech translation, or authentication, or plagiarism tests, ormanuscript discovery in Taylor & Francis, or whether we're using it to do
profiling analysis or in degenerative AI in our many digital media brands. But
there is much more that we can do. And for our business, it's actually abeneficial both on cost, and also on speed and accuracy. And all three of those
things speak to our ability to stay relevant to our customers.
In our annual report this year, when it gets published, what we've done is, we've
done a little graphic which brings to life, "Here's how we're using AI at apractical level." So rather than talking about it just conceptually, "What does it
mean? Is it a major change?" We've just broken it down into, really, very simple
case point examples of, "How can you make this transaction or human activity
more efficient, more effective, more accurate, and faster?" Similarly, I'll show
you the same in our academic publishing business in a second.
And then alongside that, so you build a geographic franchise everywhere in theworld. You become the market leader. You develop your marquee brands. You
bring new brands to market. You work with partners to grow capacity andvolume. You use data to make your business more relevant. You do it with new
products and services that they can buy, which allows you to price and create
more revenue growth. And then you underpin that by the deployment ofpractical AI and digital enablement. But in addition to that, as we built thatfranchise, we identified that there was another market that was emerging.
Cookies were disappearing. Buyer intent was becoming much more a part of theB2B transaction service. And we saw these various players emerging, offering
multiplicity of different services. So we created Informa Tech, and we went
looking. That's what led us to the announcement we made in January about the
combination, proposed combination, between the assets inside Informa Tech
and TechTarget to create New TechTarget.
There's no particular new news today, other than there's a lot of work going on,
believe you me. We've appointed a Combination Director who's working withthe management team. We're doing all the work necessary on the historicalfinancial information filings that are needed for the US clearance. The
shareholder vote prep is underway. You will see the proxy statements of thebusiness plan in that when it comes out. But at the moment, if you want atiming structure for the model about how it's working, we're working on theassumption that the new company will go live on the 1st of October. So in
effect, we will trade Informa Tech as it is for the first three quarters of 2024.
And then, in the back half ... or the back quarter of the year. I beg your pardon.
The back quarter of the year, we will then have the new company, which is New
TechTarget, which we will be the 57% majority shareholder in. And then 2025
will be the first trading year of that business.
What are we seeking to do? We're seeking to do exactly the same as we've
done in live and on-demand, which is to build a market leader in digital demand14

services for the B2B community. We believe we have the product suite, frommarket intelligence all the way through to buyer intent and discovery services.
We believe we have a unique digital media real estate platform and content
position, and we have a market-leading position in proprietary data absolutely
coincident with the demise of cookies. We have a high degree of confidence
that we can create something really quite distinctive, and over the next three tofive years we'll lay out clearly what the commercial ambitions are in thatmarket.
As a consequence of that, but also as a consequence of their own success ... andI can say this because Andy Mullins, who's been the leader of that success, ishiding in the cheap seats at the back, Informa Connect has moved from being abusiness that, many years ago, was seen as the last redoubt of the old IIR
conference businesses, for those who have been around the company for a longtime, and actually has morphed into a business clearly-focused on six markets,of which the latest category is technology. Managing and operating brands andfranchises, offering higher content-rich experiences with a high degree ofprofessional accreditation services embedded in the offering. A much morediverse range of revenue sources than the trade-show business today. Delegate
revenue, exhibitor revenue, sponsor revenue, and then professional services
and other revenue.
A technology stack that actually is quite unified across those different sectors.
So we've developed a digitally-enabled set of platform services for Informa
Connect, and a deep level of market specialism. Whether it's in biotech and life
sciences, food service, finance, cybersecurity, anti-aging and aesthetics, andentertainment. Again, we've chosen these markets for very particular reasons.
Because we believe they have the long-term features of structural growth.
Particularly the anti-aging and aesthetics market, if you're me.
So that's where we are in the B2B market. We feel confident about the market
position we've built and bought, we feel ambitious about what we can do indigital services, and we have a real depth of understanding of the power of ourbrand portfolio. And we are still energised and excited about the fact that, as
you move around the geographies of the world, actually, industrially, the sector
where we have chosen to build and operate is seen as a major driver of
economic activity in geographies around the world. And when you find acounterparty that sees your product as a market enabler, that is a road toopportunity, and we're taking maximum advantage of that.
In academic services, this is a business which sometimes is quite difficult topenetrate, because one could be forgiven for thinking that it's a rather dry
subject matter of academic interest. Actually, underneath the cover, this is abusiness that has similarly metamorphized over a decade from being, really, a
product and format business in physical books and physical journals, into a very
diversified range of service activity for a much broader community of users. Yes,
education institutions. But yes, also funders. Yes, also governments. Also,transnational R&D bodies. Also individuals, either self-funding or raising the15

funding from some of those prior bodies to self-fund. As a consequence, it's
demanded that we develop a range of different services to enable us to stay
relevant, and also to follow the money. Because in some cases, the money has
moved from being solely channeled through libraries into a series of othermarkets. We don't see this ever being a high single digit growth market. There
aren't the macro features that there are in the B2B markets business, but wehave long believed we can get this to a 4%, 4% plus grower. So what do you
have to believe that we need to do to in this business to enable us to achieve
that? Well, this is a step point bridge chart that gives you a sense of what are
the building blocks of the growth that we're building into this business.
The first is where you start in a business like this, which is make sure yoursubscription engine is working at the pacing rate that you want because thatgives you forward visibility and stability in your customer relationships. In the
United States in particular, we've long held the view and for colleagues on thiswebcast or in the room from Taylor & Francis, you will have heard me say thismany times, we're under indexing in the US market for reasons of history.
It doesn't really matter why. So we're investing in go-to-market capability in the
US. We believe there's more share we can take from our market position, ourbacklist and our archive and our intellectual property in the US. And the US isthe biggest market in this area, much as it is in B2B markets. We've played thatmovie in B2B markets very effectively. We have some confidence we can do thesame thing in this market.
Read and publish. This is the world we're now living in. We resisted it for awhile. We then started to learn how to do it. We then acquired somebusinesses. We've now built some industrial capability. We've become much
more contractually and commercially adept about how do you sit across thetable from your customer and provide them with a set of commercial andcontractual freedoms that enable them to read and publish in the way in which
they want and make yourself much more accessible to the author.
The volumes in open are growing significantly and so you have to have ahandling capacity to be able to handle that volume. It's very different from pay
to read, and we are doing that in real time. That speaks to workflow. Take you
back to AI. It speaks to AI on screening and submission speed and it also speaks
to the way in which you price and how you engage with the originating author.
There is also at the other end, an expansion in premium titles and that speaks toquality impact factor, verification and to a degree marketing. eBooks are
growing at speed and there's an opportunity there to increase our ebook
penetration. We're a big reference advanced learning publisher. We publish
eight, 9,000 new titles a year. We have a significant backlist in 10 subject areas
which we could talk about. We are the market leader in those areas. So there's
much we can do in E and in eAccess and then eAccess and audio
accompaniment to allow us to expand our market position.

16

And that's before you get to AI's ability to enable you to bring new products. If
only running a business was as simple as PowerPoint, we'd have this done
already. But what I'm trying to do is give you a sense of what the art of thepossible is and similarly what does AI enable us to do? This is the part of thebusiness where AI is probably most deployed already. It's inherent in the model.
If you just think about the volume of submissions and articles and if it becomesbooks that we produce in a year that can't be done by human labor and it isn't.
And therefore this is an area where AI becomes an absolute enabler of ourambitions. Put that all in the blender. What does it produce? It produces abusiness called Informa, operating in the Knowledge and Information economy
with a market leading position in B2B events, transaction events, content rich
events, building a partnership leadership position in B2B digital services and inthat case that business housed in America, listed in America, domiciled in
America, managed in America because that's where 80, 85, 90% of the revenue
and profit pool is for those products and services.
Today, a leadership position in academic markets with more to come both indiversification of services and in AI enablement of service offering. And as
Gareth alluded to on the side, a range of place position investments, some ofthem for reasons of history, some of them for reasons of innovative investments
such as in Curinos and some of them for reasons of enablement. BolognaFiere
to my earlier comments on Europe, Bridge Events to my earlier comments on
Andy and Informa Connect's platform capabilities inside Informa Connect.
It's a platform position in three markets and that is the foundation for where we
see growth coming. And that's really where I started. I've tried to bring to life
the international expansion opportunities. It's where I spend most of my life
these days and when you go to those markets, you really do see thoseopportunities right in front of your nose. We've chosen well, I would say.
Now I'm selling my own book here, but I think we have. Some of that waslearned discovery. Some of that was judgment and a fair smattering of it wasluck, but nevertheless, we've ended up serving very, very robust high growthmarkets with a significant degree of customer interest. Academic remains acentral part of our group and despite the multiple questions we've had over theyears, it has served the company shareholders, colleagues, and mostimportantly our customers extremely well.
We've changed that business from what it was to what it is, and we will change
it again to what it will be and that will continue to serve the group well.
Revenue visibility is always a big plus. That and the cash generation and thebalance sheet strength is allowing us to speak to growth and momentum in
2024. So that's where we are as a company. Thank you very much for listening
and we will throw it open to questions.
And we'll start in the room and then come to the webcast just to give those in
the webcast some time. So I'll take maybe two or three questions in the room17and then go to the webcast. So why don't we start on my left if we may. If
people could, whilst we know who most people are, if they could name andidentify themselves and no more than three questions at a time.

Fiona Orford-Williams: Understood. It's Fiona Orford-Williams, Edison. Firstly, I mean you are talking
about very strong growth fundamentals. Do you want to just run through how
you view the limitations and pinch points particularly across Connect andMarkets and Tech? So that's actually a sort of multiple question. My otherquestion was just on the investment portfolio, would you as things stand, see
the portfolio looking the same at the end of this year?
Stephen Carter:

Great questions. I think, look, I'll take both of those. On the investment portfolio
in the main, yes. I mean, in the case of Norstella, we kept a position in thatbusiness at the point of the transaction partly because the buyer wanted it
because that spoke to stability and management and domain expertise andpartly in truth because what that business became in short order after we hadsold it was pretty much what we would've done with that business had we
owned it and we were allocating that sort of capital.
So we could see the value and so we were happy to ride that. I don't think
there's been any change in the underlying value. If anything, those businesses
have become potentially more valuable. So I think we feel good about where it
is. Our colleague Alex Roth sits on the board of that joint venture. I think we area happy traveler at the moment is how I would describe us. I think that's where
we are.
Curinos is a different thing because we are the majority owner of Curinos. That
in a sense was we found a partner, we knew what we wanted to do and we
found a partner both to enable us to run it separately and also we didn't want touse our capital at that time for the acquisition we did. We think Curinos isturning into a really first class and distinctive business in its field and similarly I
think we're a focus traveler.
The rest I think are different. They're place positions for reasons of history. I likeyour question on pain and pinch points because that's an operational questionand yeah, sure, of course there are some inside the machine. It isn't all as
seamless as it is at these beautifully orchestrated sunkissed resultspresentations. But nevertheless, we, I think have got increasing confidence on
the foundation pillars.
On the core aspects of the business, we really know how to do what we do. I
think we've become, and here I'm slightly boasting, Fiona, hope you'll forgive
me. I think we've become a skilled partner, which sounds like a statement, an
odd statement, but I think we've become a very skilled partner and you see thatin our business model. In beauty, we're deep in partnership with BolognaFiere

18

who are the owners of the Cosmoprof brand that's allowed us to build a global
franchise in a market we weren't in five years ago.
Saudi Arabia, our partners in Saudi Arabia, we weren't in that market five years
ago. Now, we really are the primary player. I could give you another 10
examples and that's before you get to our partnerships with trade associations.
And in our academic business, the innate nature of that business is you have to
be a skill partner with your authors, with your researchers, with yourinstitutions.
So I think it's a core operating, cultural and operational skill of the business.
Some of our technology platforms have got some scaling issues on your pain
pinch point and we're trying to iron those out. That's again, to go back to yourfirst question, that's part of what lies behind the partnership with Totem. We
have got some critical counterparty relationships, some with the big enterprisevendors, the hyperscalers. Amazon who are our cloud partner. But there's
nothing I think that's flashing red on the dashboard.
But are there some things that are amber? Are they all green? No. But we are an
ambitious company for growth, so I think if you took a straw poll of the Informa
colleagues in the room, let alone those on the webcast, they'd say it feels like
we're running, not strolling. But that's what you would want I think as ashareholder.
Carl Murdock-Smith:Thank you very much. Carl Murdock-Smith from Berenberg. Three questions
please. Firstly on slide 20, when you've talked about the dividends, you've
talked about being progressive. You've not mentioned the 40% peg to EPS. I wasjust wondering is that overt? Are you loosening that connection going forwards?
Secondly, in terms of the buyback language, you've talked about the potential toincrease buybacks if attractive inorganic investments or opportunities do notmaterialise. I was just wondering, are you able to hint at when you would havemade that decision to communicate to us? So would it be at the H1 stage orlater?
And then thirdly, this is more for Gareth. You talked about your expectations for
effective tax rates. I was wondering if you could comment on interest costs andalso minority interest cost expectations for the year, which obviously one ofthose stepped down this year and one of those stepped up. So any comments
on 2024 would be great, and sorry that those were all financial and notoperational.

Stephen Carter:

No apologies. They're very important questions. I'll hand them over to Gareth toanswer all because they're jolly tricky. And I for one will be very interested inwhat the definition of progressive is. Perhaps Gareth and Richard could
comment on that. On the buyback question, I will throw in by the end of theyear, I think we'll know is the answer to your question. But anyway, Gareth…

19Gareth Wright:

Yeah. I think exactly as you go through the year, I mean depending on what rate
you spend the £250 million we've announced today at, it's likely that would bearound about six months worth of share buyback. So yeah, certainly by theautumn we would know whether we've found inorganic opportunities tosupplement that or whether we might be increasing the share buybacks. And interms of the interest and NCI, so interest I said was particularly low in 2023
because of the cash balances and the higher interest rates we were receiving
our income at.
Both of those have gone the other way over the course of the year into 2024, so
we'd be expecting interest somewhere in the region of sort of £50 to £60
million, maybe the lower end of that in 2024 depending on what we do on
inorganic acquisitions, et cetera. But definitely that will be an increase year on
year versus where it was in 2023. NCI will continue to tick up because as I said
it's driven by trading performance in areas like China, Curinos, Tahaluf, they're
all growing and growing quite quickly.
So in actual fact, we'd expect the NCI to tick up probably closer to 60 or with asix on the front of it in 2024. So that will increase again year on year.

Stephen Carter:

Happy with that, Carl?

Carl Murdock-Smith:That was great.

Stephen Carter:

Yep. Okay, one more question then we'll go to the webcast. Cameron, youchoose because if I choose, I'll offend someone.

James Tate:

Thank you. It's James Tate from Goldman Sachs. I've got two questions please. I
think firstly, you've reiterated your high single digit growth guidance for 2024
for the group, but could you provide some colour by division and I guess
particularly for Markets where you actually helpfully gave some colour on theperformance of some of your large marquee brands for 2024 with LEAP
revenues up 30%, Arab Health, 20 plus percent. Does this suggest Informa
Markets should be growing at least double digits organically? And secondly,
looking at your target leverage of 1.5 to 2.5 times, it's quite a wide range. Is it
the aim to be at the midpoint and then use the excess cash for ongoingbuybacks. Thank you.

Stephen Carter:Do you want to comment and then I'll come in after you?

Gareth Wright:

Yeah, in terms of the second one, it's a wide range, but I think we want to give
us a bit of flexibility. As I said, the top end of the range is consistent withmaintaining the investment grade credit rating, which is kind of one peg point if
you like for where we want to be. One and a half is the other end of the range. I
think that's pretty low. I mean I know we're at 1.4 at the moment, but there's a
lot of inorganic opportunities out there and therefore I think we'll be in therange, mid-point of the range or thereabouts going through 2024.

20

So I think it's an appropriate range to talk about and it helps you triangulate.
When we talk about capital allocation, what do we mean in terms of the size ofthe opportunities, particularly in the share buyback and inorganic investmentareas.
On the underlying revenue growth, by division, you're right, we're guiding tohigh single digit. Underlying growth for the business. And if you look at theguidance, that's where the midpoint of the guidance takes you in terms of thenumbers. You'd expect Markets perhaps to be slightly above the average there.
As you say, it's got some strong trading brands like Arab Health in it. Tech andConnect though I think will show good growth. I think Connect particularly iswell placed for 2024. Tech, the end market was a bit tough in 2023 and we're
not guiding to an immediate sort of bounce back of that market in 2024.
We're going to see how it evolves. As I said in my speech, medium term wise,
we think there's a lot of opportunity there, but we're not expecting a bounceback immediately. And then Taylor & Francis, as Stephen just outlined on thebridge, we are looking to aim for 4% growth in 2024 from that business. So thatkind of gives you a sense in the mix of how you get to the component parts bydivision.
Stephen Carter:

And just a small point, James, just to your question, LEAP is a technology eventand so for now we're going to have to make some changes post the creation of
New TechTarget. Those numbers would sit inside the tech business not inside
Informa Markets. If you're trying to reverse engineer division by divisionperformance it's just... I'm sure you know that. Should we take a question fromthe webcast and then come back to the room?

Richard Menzies-Gow: I think I've got them. They come in online so I can choose the most difficult ones
for you, Stephen.
Stephen Carter:

Thank you, Richard.

Richard Menzies-Gow: Just a couple. The first one is from Sami Kassab. Had to be a margin question.
Specifically on Informa Markets, do you expect Informa Markets margins togradually get back to the mid-30s reported in ‘19 and over what sort of time
horizon? And then the other question that's coming online is from Adam Berlin
at UBS who's asking about pricing in the mix in terms of the growth in live
events, what sort of mix is coming from pricing versus volume?
Stephen Carter:

Okay. I mean, I'll take Adam's question and I'll leave... If Sami will forgive me, I'll
leave Gareth to answer the margin question on Informa Markets. I mean pricing
is definitely in the mix. I mean, as we've said before, we took I think a sensible
approach, possibly even a cautious approach to pricing through COVID andthrough the post return from COVID. Easy to forget now in March 2024. But inMarch 2021 and '22 and even '23, it wasn't so evident that the world would
return physically in the same way that it has.

21

So we deliberately took a cautious approach to pricing. The advantage of that isthat effectively in 2024 for the majority of our businesses, we entered 2024
really at a 2019 price point. And that I think has allowed us to bring some resetof our prices. In terms of percentages, if Adam's question is how much of thegrowth is price and how much of the growth is growth, I'd say it's probably
third, third, third. Maybe a third is price, a third is growth, and a third isnewness in various different ways, new products, new services, varies frombrand to brand.
The other thing obviously to remember about particularly the trade showbusiness, but also to a degree the more content rich events, once you're set for
the following year, you're set. So it's very difficult to intervene and do a pricereset once you are in flow for the following year. So you tend to set your prices
in the main at the end of the event that's running. And if you can, you'll
maximise your rebooking for the following year.
So you have to be quite ahead of the pricing curve. What does that mean? I
think it means it gives us some forward pricing headroom from '24 into '25 aswell. So I don't think we've used up our opportunities there. On margins,
Gareth, anything you want to add?
Gareth Wright:

On the margin question, yes, we would see the Informa Markets margin
continue to tick up over time. As you said, a good increase in 2023, 10
percentage point increase in the margin in year. And we look to see it continue
to increase. We are, however, investing in that business. We're investing
particularly in the customer experience and making sure that the systems andprocesses are there to back up an improved customer experience over time.
We've made some progress in that through COVID around things likeregistration systems and digitally enabled registration, but I think there's more
we can do there to improve the customer experience over time and therefore
drive future volumes in that business.
I'd also say that the Saudi Arabian startup opportunity through Tahaluf is afantastic opportunity for future growth. But in the initial years, that will be a bit
lower margin overall, both because of the investment we're putting into theshows to grow them and start them up. And also just because a bit of theinfrastructure is still being put in place around the exhibition facilities, et cetera,in Saudi Arabia. So you've got more things like temporary tents and temporary
accommodation, et cetera. So a bit lower margin in the initial stages.
Still a great opportunity though and a real value creator and we think thosemargin headwinds at the moment will again correct over the medium term. So
going forward to the nub of the question, we see no particular reason why
Markets can't be back at the level of margins it was at in 2019 pre-COVID.

Stephen Carter:

Another quick fire one, Richard, before we go to the room?

22

Richard Menzies-Gow: No, they're pretty much done online.
Stephen Carter:

Okay, great. Over here, Cameron, is your...

Nick Dempsey:

Yeah. It's Nick Dempsey from Barclays. I've got two left. So first of all, we heard
from RELX a couple of weeks ago whenever it was. They think exhibitions canachieve growth beyond 2024. They're sustainably higher than pre-pandemic. I
think at your half year results last year you talked about 5% plus as yourmidterm kind of ambition for Markets. So is there any reason why you guys
would be lower than them or do you think that there's quite a lot of opportunity
in the plus for Markets midterm?
And then, yeah, in terms of the new gearing target of one and a half to two anda half, I know we had a question on that before, but in terms of your M&A
pipeline, you're looking at the moment, are you more weighted to events or doyou have things lined up in the data tech space that you might spend some ofthe headroom on?

Stephen Carter:

Thanks, Nick. Good questions. I think that you've given us a new variation on
guidance. We can have different size pluses or minuses. I like that actually. I
think you're right. I think it is a big plus. But for now, let's just keep it at 5% plus.
I think the underlying and as we've tried to lay out today and even for you,hopefully there's some new, what's the word, texture in what we have beentalking about today in that business. We think the underlying fundamentals ofthat business are really very strong. It's incumbent upon major operators andyou speak to one, and we are one, that you renovate that product, you innovatethat product, you add value to that product. It does become more data rich.
You are much more connected to your customers. The customer experiences
Gareth just spoke to has to improve and can improve. And indeed that's helped
a bit by some of the infrastructure investments that's been made in locations
because they're building locations which have got much more embedded
technology, which are very relevant to the exhibitors. So you put all thattogether, yes, I think the fundamentals of that business are very strong and ourjob as a brand owner and a brand operator is to make sure that we really lean
into that and surprise and delight our customers. Do that, I think, yeah, that's
maybe a bigger plus than it was when we were thinking about it in 21 and 22.
On the M&A pipeline. Yes, I would say quite distributed is the answer in termsof opportunities. There are opportunities in live and on demand, bothtransaction events and also some more content rich events, but there are
equally opportunities in the digital services market, the academic market and insome of the data markets where we play. So we're not in a rush. We don't needit to build a platform, so we'll continue to be a very choiceful buyer. Cameron?

23

Steve Liechti:

Yeah, morning. Steve Liechti from Numis. Can I have three? One, you sort oftalked about it, but in terms of the tech market currently, back in January wetalked about some stabilisation in the market there and there was somecomment about the backlog looking better. Are you okay to or happy to call
growth in the current year, sort of decent growth in the current year? Anything
you can give us there? Secondly, anything you can give us on forward bookingsfor the events in terms of, you talk about visibility, any hard numbers you cangive us there? And I'm particularly interested in China given the macro and stuff
there. And then the third one is on Connect. You talked about how well that's
doing and the content-led offering. The margin is relatively low against Markets.
Some of your competitors who are in more content-led businesses are doing
well above 20%, probably well above 30%. Can you comment on the sort ofmargin aspiration for Connect and why it can't get to 30% if it can't? Thanks.

Stephen Carter:

Okay, well why don't I take some of those and Gareth chip in and Andy if you
feel the overwhelming urge to argue your corner, now's the time, so don't beembarrassed or backward about coming forward. I don't think we know enoughyet about the end market in tech. I think we definitely would call... We're past
the bottom and we're seeing that in a number of metrics, bookings, budgets,budget confirmation and just pipeline in actually most of our service andproduct areas in our portfolio. I don't know if you followed it Steve, but
TechTarget did their numbers and I think they would say it's no worse, but
they're not calling better. I think I'm summarizing their market statements
pretty accurately.
So I'm not sure we're calling growth in ‘24 or return to the growth levels in ‘24
that we would want in ‘25 and ‘26 and ‘27. So I think we stand by what I think
we also said in January when we announced that much in life is timing and we
think our timing is good because we can use ‘24 to hold performance to a levelthat does not deteriorate, do the work around combination and then come backto the market with a new brand, a new product and service offering, combined
service offering for customers and anticipate, you never know, that there's
more market return in ‘25 and then ‘26. So that's, I think, where we are on thatquestion. On forward pacing. Our forward pacing numbers are strong, I mean
properly strong. I mean if you look at our top... I'm just actually trying to find thedata points…if you look at our top events, Q1, Q2, Q3, Q4, we're significantly up
on pacing on previous years.
Now to the earlier question from the webcast, some of that is price, but asignificant portion of that is just absolute volume and interest. So yes, I thinkthat's part of what underlines our forward visibility confidence. On Connect,
why can't the margins get to 30%? That's a damn good question. Look, it's a
different business. I mean, you know this very well. The cost of goods sold ishigher in that business. You are generating much more original content andinterestingly, particularly in the more delegate-based areas, because we're notin the high volume, low margin business anymore, we're in high delegate rates.
If you're paying 2, 3, 4, 5, $10,000 a delegate, you've got to have very, very highquality content. We're using technology I think to take out cost and we're doing24

that well. The margins will go this year from last from what to what, Andy?
Remind me.
Andrew Mullins:

From my side?

Stephen Carter:

Yeah.

Andrew Mullins:

Before you put on the central overhead, about 24 to 27.

Stephen Carter:

Yeah, so in operating terms that's a significant margin uptick. Will that businessever get back to 30, 30 plus? I don't know, but we're definitely in margin
progression and I think if we do that, we use our technology well and we dobetter at customer experience, I think there's definitely more revenue and thenyou get into, can you get the operational leverage you want on the newrevenue? Does that answer your questions?

Steve Liechti:

China?

Stephen Carter:

Just one sec. What was the China? Remind me.

Steve Liechti:

Just anything that you can give us on China given the macros.

Stephen Carter:

Look, I mean at the moment, touch wood, are China... I mean you saw in theregional chart that we put up there, I mean China is looking to grow for us thisyear. That is nearer the 5% small plus than the 5% big plus, to go back to Nick'squestion, but we're not seeing, in our niche markets, some of the grumbles that
one is picking up at the macro. But as you know better than anybody, one of thegreat strengths of our business, we're not oblivious to the macro, no one's
oblivious to the macro, I mean we're certainly not oblivious in the cost ofcapital, but the strength of being a specialist business is you can perform
extremely well in the niche and in the micro, even if there's a choppy macro.
And we have a double benefit in what we report as China. As I said in myremarks, that for us that includes Hong Kong and last year Hong Kong did not
return in full. So I don't know what the year to year comparison is in Hong Kong,
but that will be north of 5% for sure.

Steve Liechti:

In 24?

Stephen Carter:

In 24. So that's kind of our China, but that may not be China if you see what I
mean.

Gareth Wright:

Just to add on. The China business doesn't really trade in Q1, it really only picks
up from Q2. So we haven't traded in the year to date, but the forward bookingsand confirmations that we have are consistent with the sort of growth rates that
we're talking about overall. On Informa Connect, in the kind of growth algorithm
that I think Nick referred to in his question that we put out about a year ago, I
mean that said clearly that we thought Informa Connect is a 20% plus OP margin25

business in that algorithm. We would, I think, stick to that. I know it's more like
17, high teens in the ‘23 results, but we still think there's more to come there interms of both scaling the business and efficiencies. So 20% plus is definitely still
our ambition for that business.
Stephen Carter:Andy, anything you want to add?

Andy Mullins:

I was just going to say that where we're growing strongest or in the higher
margin areas, so the mix effects over time, will benefit Connect over time as
well.

Stephen Carter:

Yep, that's a good point. Right. Some rapid-fire questions. We've got two here.
Cameron, one in the back, one there. George, you're trying to come in?

George Webb:

Yeah.

Stephen Carter:

You can be the last question in the room.

Rahul Chopra :Rahul from HSBC. I have two questions.

Stephen Carter:

Sorry.

Raul Chopra :Hello? Yes, I have two questions. In terms of your upgrade to guidance thismorning, £25 million upgrade to guidance at the midpoint. Obviously you had
Q1, £500 million of revenue and then you have £1 billion of revenue visibility. So
my question here is that the upgrade to guidance, how much of that reflects thecurrent trading environment in Q1 given that you have 45% revenue visibility,and from the rest of 55%, is there anything you are probably penciling in? Justwant to understand if there are any potential upgrades for the rest 55, which is
not in your pipeline at this stage. Second, in terms of your path to pure play
events and digital business, where do you want to see academic markets? Is it
that once it goes to 4% plus organic growth, is that your thinking in terms ofInforma as a pure play events business at that stage? Just want to understandyour thoughts on academic markets given lack of synergies.

Stephen Carter:

Okay. Well let me take both of those and then Gareth come in again on the firstone or indeed the second if he wants. I hope I was clear. The answer to yoursecond question is no, and I would also say your comment is inaccurate, if you
don't mind me saying so. There are significant operational synergies, but that
doesn't mean that they're not in completely different businesses. They're both
specialist content businesses. One is servicing academics institutions and one isservicing businesses. They're different products, different services, but theunderlying truth of what they both do, the underlying operational reality is
pretty similar and they culturally and practically sit very well in the same
company, and you see that in the performance. If we can get that business to a
4% plus growth business with consistent margins, that's a market-leading26

performance in that market. In colloquial terms, there's not a lot not to like
about that.
On your first question, I mean, I personally hesitate to use the word upgrade. I
mean we're restating our guidance for a number of reasons. One, because wefinished ‘23 more strongly than we thought, so therefore we come in at a higher
start point, if you see what I mean, and the first quarter has started strongly.
Sure, we've got revenue visibility and that gives us confidence and we can seethat both in booked revenue, paid revenue, and indeed in pacing revenue, but I
think let's get to the half year and see where we are and how the year's trading.
But for now, we've restated the guidance that we put out in January against the
backdrop of the close at the end of ‘23 and the opening to ‘24, and that seems
proportionate at this stage, if that answers your question. Anything you want to
add?
Gareth Wright:

I think I'd say the source of the increase of the guidance is our confidence in thebusiness. That's really what the source is. And how you piece-part about that interms of what we've actually delivered or what we're going to deliver, you cancut and dice that, but ultimately it's about our confidence of the business going
into 2024.

Tom Singlehurst:

Yeah. Thank you. It's Tom here from Citi. The first one actually is on that
guidance, so I appreciate it's a restatement, not technically an upgrade.
Obviously through last year, you did upgrade it, and if we piece together thenumbers relative to your original guidance, I think you did revenue 350 million
odd better than the midpoint and profit about 140, so about a 40% drop
through. I don't know, that kind of number. I suppose, is that the way we should
think about incremental revenue relative to the guide you are issuing today? I.e,
will we see 40, 50% drop through on positive revenue surprise or is there areason why that will be different going forward? That was the first question.
Second question was on Taylor and Francis, which, I mean, I suppose it's small
numbers, but it technically did see a bit of a slowdown in the second half with
3% on the nose and you were expecting that appreciation in growth into 2024.
Was that just something to do with book sales or something quite temporary or
what were the factors behind that slow down and why should we be that
confident that it will re-accelerate? And then very finally, you had an absolute
mega June last year with China events kicking in quite hard, and I think that was
unusual in terms of timing. Can you just confirm that? I mean, obviously thatmight have a growth rate implication in the first half, but is the phasing of what
we expect to come from China skew to the second half?

Stephen Carter:

Okay. Gareth, do you want to have a go at some of these then I'll come in at theend?

Gareth Wright:

Okay. In terms of the OP drop through, yeah, I mean you're right. I think therecent upgrades have been at about a kind of 40% level for the drop through. I
think that's a good assumption to make going forward. I don't think it's a cap or27

a limit on the number, I think it could be higher than that, but I think if you'remodeling it out, that's probably a good place to start in terms of the drop
through. In terms of Taylor and Francis, we just saw a bit of phasing and someslightly weaker revenues at the end of the year. We are not particularly
concerned about that at a high level as we talked about in this presentation.
We're still confident about the outlook for that business into 2024 and theability to accelerate the growth using steps that Stephen outlined in his part ofthe presentation. So a bit of phasing and a bit of timing around year end, but nochange to the 2024 or indeed the medium term ambition for that business.
And in terms of the comparative issue, we did have a very strong June last year
between the AGM and the half a year results. Bit of that, there was phasing of
events and particularly the China reopening. So in our underlying calculations
this year, we'll be moving whenever the event was in 2023, we'll match it to themonth that it is in 2024 to basically get the underlying onto a proper basis. So
that shouldn't be a phasing factor in our underlying revenue growth numbers.
What you will see in the business, and you've seen this over a number of years,
is generally we're a bit more profitable in the second half of the year. So themargin performance is often not quite so strong relative to the prior year in thefirst half of the year, and the growth comes in the second half of the year. I'd
expect you'll see that again in 2024.
Stephen Carter:

Just on T and F. My memory is, the first half we were about 3.3. Is that right? So
it's a 0.3% difference. I mean 0.3%, what's that? Million and change? In the backquarter of the year, which is the big quarter. There was an archive sale we didn't
land, not because we're not going to land it, but it just didn't land. There's a bitof phasing. There was some book volumes that changed on direct rather than
through wholesalers. But no, there's nothing structural there, Tom. Okay,
George, make it a good one.

George Webb:

Hi, yes, George Webb from Morgan Stanley. Thanks for the presentation,
Stephen and Gareth. I mean the last question I had was just maybe an updateon Tahaluf and the progress you're making there this year? Maybe the amountof launches and what the potential upside there could be if the Saudi
government did want to accelerate things? Thank you.

Stephen Carter:

Well actually that's a bit relevant to Tom's questions as well on the dropthrough because as Gareth alluded to in an answer to an earlier question, we're
trying to take a market position there, and so, not that we're actively trading
revenue for profit, but we are definitely focused on market position. This year, I
think we have in the potential schedule, I'm going to say 12, I think I'm right, it
could be 10, but 10 to 12 brands and profiles. And in the way in which thesemarkets develop, and you will understand this well, themes and profiles get
allocated, so you want to get the allocation and the theme and then you candevelop from there. So we are in market development stage.
We are both creating new brands, of which LEAP is a standout example. I mean,
I've now been in this business for quite a while. I've never seen anything like it

28

anywhere in the world, by anybody, including us. But equally, we're bringing in,
we're geo-cloning or transferring brands. And last year, we did that very
successfully with our Cityscape franchise. We took that to the Saudi market andI think that's given us a clear position in commercial real estate. The otherprofiles we're looking at, pharmaceuticals, bioscience, food, agri-tech, FinTech.
And to go back to the portfolio, we have a very attractive portfolio of brands.
And the third one that's already there is cyber security. Black Hat is, I think,would this year be in its third year. So in its fullest expression, we could end up
with 12 this year. It's possible.
There's a new venue. LEAP was in the new venue for the first time, the Malham
venue, which if you know Riyadh at all is outside of Riyadh, it's not in the center.
They've got one venue in Riyadh and the Malham venue is outside Riyadh. It'smuch, much bigger. But there's expansion coming to that. There's a new airport
coming, there's a new airline coming. So there's a lot of infrastructure going in
there. Just to be clear, our partners in Tahaluf are not the Saudi government,
but are two Saudi entities. We are the majority owner. We own 51% of it. We
run it as a separate entity. I, in fact, am the Chairman of Tahaluf and it's a very
effective collaborative partnership. The management and operating team areours. We've put, I think to date, 65 people on the ground in Riyadh. By the endof the year, we think we'll have 200. That's the scale of it. It's quite something.
Thank you very much for your questions and for your interest in the company.
Nothing further on the webcast. It's time. You're welcome to stay, but nice to
see everybody.
ENDS

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