Earnings Call Transcript - RELX Q2 2025

Erik Engstrom, CEO

Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. As you may have seen from our press release this morning, we delivered strong financial results in the first half, and we made further operational and strategic progress. Underlying revenue growth was 7%. Underlying adjusted operating profit growth was 9%. Adjusted earnings per share growth was 10% at constant currency, and we have announced a 7% increase in the pound sterling interim dividend. Group underlying revenue growth of 7% was in line with full year 2024, but with a higher quality growth profile. Risk with continued strong growth, STM with continued good growth and developing momentum, Legal with a further step-up in growth and Exhibitions now established at strong ongoing growth. On this chart, you can see the first half growth rate for each business area as well as the relative sizes of the segments within each of them. You can also see that we're showing print and print-related revenue separately here. I'll come back to that later. In Risk, underlying revenue growth was 8%, in line with full year 2024 and underlying adjusted operating profit growth was 9%. Strong growth continues to be driven across segments by the development and rollout of higher value-add, deeply embedded AI-enabled analytics and decision tools with over 90% of divisional revenues coming from machine-to-machine interactions. Business Services continues to be driven by financial crime compliance and digital fraud and identity solutions and strong new sales. Insurance continues to be driven by further expansion of solution sets, positive market factors and strong new sales. For the full year, we expect continued strong underlying revenue growth with underlying adjusted operating profit growth slightly exceeding underlying revenue growth. In STM, now excluding print and print related, underlying revenue growth was 5%, in line with full year 2024, but with developing momentum supported by the increasing pace of new product introductions and renewals and new sales ahead of prior year across segments. Underlying adjusted operating profit growth was 7%. Data business and tools growth continues to be driven by higher value-add analytics and decision tools. Generative AI capability is now being extended across the majority of the revenue base. Primary research continues to be driven by very strong volume growth with article submissions growing by over 20% and articles published growing by 10%. During the first half, we launched ScienceDirect AI, adding generative AI to our primary research platform. For the full year, we expect continued good underlying revenue growth with underlying adjusted operating profit growth slightly exceeding underlying revenue growth. In Legal, also now excluding print and print related, underlying revenue growth improved further to 9%, driven by the continued shift in business mix towards higher growth, higher-value legal analytics. Underlying adjusted operating profit growth was ahead of underlying revenue growth at 11% as we continue to manage cost growth below revenue growth. Lexis+ AI, our integrated platform leveraging generative AI has continued on its successful growth trajectory in the U.S. and international markets. Protégé, our next-generation AI legal assistant, which was launched earlier this year, is progressing well and is being expanded across products and geographies. For the full year, we expect continued strong underlying revenue growth with underlying adjusted operating profit growth exceeding underlying revenue growth. Exhibitions delivered underlying revenue growth of 8% with strong ongoing growth now established above pre-pandemic levels. Underlying adjusted operating profit growth of 9% was ahead of underlying revenue growth with margins now significantly above pre-pandemic levels. We continue to make good progress with our growing range of value-enhancing digital tools. For the full year, we expect continued strong underlying revenue growth with an improvement in adjusted operating margin over the prior full year. Over the past 25 years, one of our key strategic themes was the print to electronic format transition. Over that period, print has gone from 64% of our revenue to 4%, and we believe that this strategic transition is now behind us. We'll continue to provide print versions of our content as a service to those customers who still prefer to receive our content in this format. But we're now managing and reporting our remaining print separately, focusing only on customer service and value. We believe that this removes the management distraction and improves transparency. Our strategic direction is unchanged. Our improving long-term growth trajectory continues to be driven by the ongoing shift in business mix towards higher growth analytics and decision tools that deliver enhanced value to our customers. Our growth objectives remain for Risk to sustain strong long-term growth in the current range, for STM and Legal to continue on their improving growth trajectories and for Exhibitions, to sustain strong long-term growth at the newly established level. When combined with our strategy of driving continuous process innovation to manage cost growth below revenue growth, the result is a higher growth profile with improving returns. I will now hand over to Nick Luff, our CFO, who will talk you through our results in more detail. I'll be back afterwards for a quick wrap-up and Q&A.

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

Thank you, Erik. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by providing more detail on the group financials. As Erik said, underlying revenue growth was 7% with underlying adjusted operating profit growth ahead of that at 9%. As a result, the adjusted operating margin improved to 34.8%. The strong operating results flowed through to adjusted earnings per share, which at constant currency increased by 10%. Cash conversion was also very strong at 100%, and leverage was 2.2x, up from the year-end, reflecting the first half bias of dividend payments and the buyback. Given the strong financial performance, we are increasing the interim dividend by 7% to 19.5p per share. We spent GBP 262 million on 3 acquisitions in the first half, and we deployed GBP 1 billion after the planned GBP 1.5 billion for share buybacks for this year. Looking at revenue, you can see here how all 4 business areas contributed to the overall 7% underlying growth. As you've heard from Erik, we are now managing the distribution of print versions of our content separately. Consistent with this, we have separated out the reporting of print and print-related revenues and profits, as you see here. Prior period revenue and profit splits have been restated, and you'll find reconciliations to the prior half year and full year numbers in the press release. We've been proactively reducing our involvement in all print-related activities for many years, and we've stepped this up in the past 18 months through outsourcing, joint ventures and targeted asset disposals. As a result of these actions, we reduced our remaining exposure to print by another step in the first half of 2025. Total group revenue growth at constant currency was 4%. After portfolio effects in Risk, Legal and Exhibitions and after the step-down in print exposure that I just mentioned. In addition, there were cycling and timing effects in Exhibitions with 2025 being an odd and hence, a cycling out year. In sterling, total revenue growth was 2%, impacted by the comparative strength of sterling against the U.S. dollar relative to H1 last year. Here, you can see the 9% underlying growth in group adjusted operating profit. We continue to manage cost growth below revenue growth in each business area. As a result, all 4 delivered underlying growth in AOP ahead of underlying revenue growth. The profit contribution from print and print-related activities declined in the first half, but at a lower rate than in revenues. Going forward, we expect profit from print and print-related activities to continue to decline in the high single digits each year, in line with historical trends. Revenue could sometimes come down in larger steps depending on the actions we take, such as outsourcing and joint ventures where a partner would record the revenue, but we would retain the majority of the associated profit. Total AOP growth in constant currency after portfolio changes and the impact of print and print-related was 7%. There was a similar currency effect on profit as on revenue, giving AOP growth in sterling of 4%. With profit growth ahead of revenue growth, margins improved across the board, driving the overall improvement of 70 basis points to 34.8%. Margins are up by 30 and 40 basis points, respectively, in STM and Legal and up by 50 basis points in Risk, where there was also a benefit from portfolio effects. Exhibitions margins saw a further significant improvement, helped by prior year disposals with the 40.3% for this period, also reflecting the normal bias to higher margins in the first half of the year. Print and print-related margins are not meaningful given the dynamics of outsourcing and joint venture revenue and profit recognition that I mentioned earlier. Turning to the group adjusted income statement. You can again see the underlying growth of 7% in revenue and 9% in operating profit. The interest expense was largely unchanged with the same average effective interest rate of 4.1%, resulting in profit before tax up 7% at constant currency. The effective tax rate in the first half was 22.5%, in line with the prior full year. Net profit was up 8% at constant currency and up 5% in sterling to just under GBP 1.2 billion. With a lower share count as a result of the share buyback program, adjusted earnings per share were up 10% at constant currency and up 7% in sterling to 63.5p. Turning to cash flow. Cash conversion was again very strong at 100%. EBITDA was GBP 1.9 billion, and CapEx was just over GBP 250 million, equating to 5% of revenue. After interest and tax, total free cash flow for the first half was over GBP 1.1 billion. And here's how we deployed that free cash flow. In the first half, we completed 3 small acquisitions for total consideration of GBP 262 million and 2 small disposals. The acquisition of IDVerse, an ID document verification platform for business services in Risk was announced in December, completed in the first quarter of this year. Dividend payments in the first half at GBP 124 million being last year's final dividend. As I said earlier, in the first half, we completed GBP 1 billion of the 2025 share buyback program. We deployed a further GBP 75 million on the buyback already in July. That leaves GBP 425 million of the program to be completed in the remainder of the year. Net debt at 30 June 2025 was just under GBP 7.5 billion. Including pensions, the ratio of net debt to EBITDA calculated in U.S. dollars was 2.2x, close to the middle of our typical range of 2 to 2.5x. With that, I will hand you back to Erik.

Erik Engstrom, CEO

Thank you, Nick. Just to summarize what we have covered this morning. In the first half, we delivered strong financial results, and we made further operational and strategic progress. We continue to see positive momentum across the group, and we expect another year of strong underlying growth in revenue and adjusted operating profit as well as strong growth in adjusted earnings per share on a constant currency basis. With that, I think we're ready to go to questions.

Operator, Operator

Your first question today comes from Adam Berlin from UBS.

Adam Ian Berlin, Analyst

I've got three, if that's okay. My first question is there's been a lot of press around the U.S. changes and the National Institute of Health, in particular, over the last few months. And people have been focused on the negative of that. But I wanted to ask a more positive question, which is on the 1st of July, the NIH changed their open access policy. So any research they fund has to be published open access, and they were willing to fund APCs in order to make that a reality. And they're the first U.S. funding body to do this. Have you seen through July any additional revenues from APCs as that policy changed? And can that be a positive source of momentum in STM? That's my first question. The second question is also over the last few months, you made the decision to partner with Harvey in the Legal side to let them access your legal databases. Can you talk a little bit about the rationale for that decision and what you're hoping to achieve through that partnership? And then thirdly, you noted the better free cash flow conversion, which was, I think, related to a better working capital in the first half than last year. Is that connected at all with the change in the print segmentation? Or is that just a one-off effect and there's no kind of structural change to working capital and cash flow conversion?

Erik Engstrom, CEO

Okay. I'm going to hand the third one to Nick, but let me start with the first two. As you know, we've been in this primary research publishing business, parts of our company, for over 200 years. And we've seen many changes in policies and announcements from different bodies around the world, and we will continue to see them going forward. When it comes to how the research publication model is funded and how people pay for it, we are here to be a service provider, and we're perfectly happy to provide any of our services and any payment model that our customers would like. And in this case, like most other changes, any one institution, any one location changing it slightly is not likely to have any impact on the trajectory that we are seeing. I mean we are seeing very strong article submissions across the board in Elsevier at the moment. We're continuing to see strong new sales and strong renewals. And I think this business has very positive momentum, but I don't think it's directly related to any one of these announcements of the one you mentioned being one. On the second question on our partnership with Harvey. The way we see everything we do in this company is tying it back to our #1 strategic objective, which is the organic development of increasingly sophisticated analytics and decision tools that add more value to our customers. That's what we try to do. But the main focus is on the issue of value to the customers. So if we see that something we are doing well and organic development we are doing that adds real value to the customer, if we see that the customer can actually get more value from those, if we have a slightly different embedding our distribution partnership with any other provider of services to those customer sets, that's something we would explore and consider. And in this situation, it's clear that Harvey has started to go after certain types of use cases in the legal environment that is where we have not traditionally been focused and that those use cases would benefit from having a fairly seamless interaction with our tools when you're operating in those tools. So that's why we thought if this can add value to the customer and that puts us in a place that would add value that make it more seamless to interact with our tools, that would be a good thing for us to explore and to try to partner just like we do with other types of technology providers in other areas. That's what we're trying to do. If you ask them, which you can do directly, but I assume that they would say that they have a lot of tools, but it's very important that their users can actually anchor their outcomes or their results into true and trusted and verified content that can be cited and attached and so on, which is where our traditional strength comes. And also, we have a multitude of use cases that relate to the accuracy, the quality of the content and the history we have of serving many tens of thousands of law firms in doing that on a daily basis for decades. So we believe it adds value for the customer, first and foremost. We think it's a good thing for us to explore, and we think it's a good thing for our partner to explore. I'll hand the third one to Nick.

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

Yes, Adam, no material impact from what we're doing with print or print related as far as working capital is concerned. As you say, the cash conversion in the first half was strong at 100%, in the high 90s is perhaps more normal, but it's just because of the exact timing of receipts and payments around the 30th of June. It's just the normal ebbs and flows.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from George Webb from Morgan Stanley.

George W Webb, Analyst

I have three, please, and a couple of semi follow-ups to that. Just back on to the Harvey topic and digging into one of the parts there to the extent you can. As part of that announcement, there was a note that you'd kind of co-collaborate on some new workflow tools together. Could you kind of help us understand how you think about monetizing co-created products with someone like Harvey? Whose platform would that sit on? Would that sit within Lexis+ AI or Harvey? I wasn't too clear on that. Secondly, just given the resegmentation of print, could you add any color as to whether the magnitude of the print decline was similar across both STM and Legal? Or was one materially larger than the other? And then just lastly, with regards to where you're selling solutions to the U.S. government or the agencies across the entire business, whether that's Risk or subscriptions in STM and Legal. Have you seen anything notable in the first half in terms of shifting demand patterns? Or has that all been quite consistent with last year?

Erik Engstrom, CEO

Again, I'll take the first, and then I'll hand the second over to Nick here. On Harvey, we are going to explore many different ways to figure out how to add value to our customers. And as you might already know, we have hundreds of different specific use cases that we're developing today organically. We picked a couple to work collaboratively as a pilot to see how we could do it if we work together. The concept is that we would share in it, we work in it, we come up with the best technological way to do it as we go along and see how that works for us and for them relative to all the other hundreds of use cases that we are working on. So I would see it pretty much as exploring a pilot way of co-developing solutions for specific use cases. And we will see how that goes and how we can do that going forward if we can then form a model. We're not trying to now declare the answer or declare a model, but we're exploring this in a couple of very specific use cases that we think we can both bring knowledge to add value to the customer. And a second one...

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

Yes. So George, I mean, it is both STM and Legal seeing the reduction of the step down in print. I think for this particular period, the proactive steps we've taken perhaps have a little bit more effect in STM than Legal, but I mean, it is across both of them. And of course, our focus is really on the retention of the profit, you can expect that to decline, as I said earlier, over time as print declines, but the revenue could step down more quickly as we take these proactive steps, but it is across both.

Erik Engstrom, CEO

And on government, as I think we all know, there is a lot of media coverage coming about government initiatives or changes or potential changes in U.S. federal spending and initiatives. For us, what actually has happened on the ground has not been materially different so far this year from previous years. That might change, of course. But at the moment, your question was, have we seen it? Has it happened in the first half? No, it's been very similar.

George W Webb, Analyst

That's really helpful. Can I just ask one final question just on the Exhibitions margin. It was clearly very strong in the first half, and I think the release called out a little bit of seasonality. Just when we think to the full year margin, is there any guidance you can give around either how you'd expect the cost base to be growing year-over-year or with regards to maybe potential like rough magnitude of margin expansion? Anything around that would be quite helpful.

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

Yes, George, you're absolutely right. The full year margins in Exhibitions are typically anything up to 5 points lower than for the first half, and that is just the seasonality. So for the full year, we would expect a decent improvement in margin, perhaps not quite as much as we had in the first half, but there'll still be benefit from those disposals as well as the underlying performance. So something of a similar order of magnitude.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs.

Lisa Yang, Analyst

I have a few questions as well. In Legal, we noticed an increase in growth compared to last year. Do you believe that with printing being excluded, we could see growth accelerate to potentially 10% by year-end? Could you provide more details on the revenue share coming from analytics and how it has improved compared to last year? What percentage of customers upgrade to analytics at contract renewal, especially due to the new AI products? For STM, you mentioned growth momentum in that division. Do you think we might see an acceleration towards 6% by year-end? What is the current uptake of AI products among your customers? I understand it's still early days. Lastly, regarding Exhibitions, you mentioned that this new level represents 8% growth. Should we expect this as a new standard going forward? You also mentioned this seems to be a new level, so I wanted to confirm that. How much of this growth is driven by pricing versus volume? Any insights on the latest demand, rebooking trends, or bookings would be appreciated.

Erik Engstrom, CEO

Yes, I'll address the first two points, and then I'll hand the third to Nick. The growth rate in Legal has now picked up to 9% on the new basis, which is a true indication of ongoing progress. Regarding whether it will reach 10% by the end of the year, we are experiencing positive momentum in Legal due to new product introductions and strong customer reception. The value we provide is evident, and we are rolling out these products both in the U.S. and internationally. We are seeing robust new sales, but it's essential to note that Legal is now over 80% subscription-based, with an average subscription length of three years. Even law firms with a commercial focus are seriously considering and trialing our offerings. Therefore, we expect this positive momentum to continue, and while the objective is to increase the growth rate in the coming years, we don't anticipate a significant rise this year. While it's possible to see improvement soon, the focus remains on long-term growth rather than year-over-year increases. Last year, we mentioned that when we transitioned to higher value platforms, we saw significant penetration over time. For instance, Lexis+ achieved 80% penetration after four years, and Lexis+ AI is following a similar trajectory. This discussion pertains to contract value, and we are currently maintaining that growth rate. Most new sales are choosing the AI-integrated platform, Lexis+ AI, and renewals are predominantly directed towards it as well. While the relative proportions can vary month to month, the overall trend is upward, and the early rollout of Protégé is also expected to contribute, though it’s too early to provide specific data on that. Regarding pricing, we are observing an uplift in spending, which reflects the desire to utilize various tools for different purposes, resulting in a double-digit uplift, similar to what we reported last year. In STM, we are witnessing comparable opportunities with AI tools, but the market is more fragmented, leading to longer sales cycles. This gradual development is influenced by product, platform, customer type, and geography. For instance, Lexis+ AI accounts for about 50% of the Legal division's revenue, while Scopus AI represents less than 5% of STM's revenue base. Due to these longer sales cycles, the uptake curves resemble those in Legal but occur at a slower pace. In Legal, we reached a 20% uptake after about a year, while Scopus took roughly 18 months to achieve a similar level. Nonetheless, both sectors are experiencing double-digit spending uplifts. We see significant long-term potential in STM and have launched many tools this year, with plans to accelerate throughout the remainder of the year and into next year. We've also expanded the role of Chief Product Officers from Legal to ensure that we are using consistent tools, processes, and technologies across both divisions, making their similarities more pronounced in the next few years.

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

And Lisa, regarding your last question on Exhibitions, we've now experienced two full half-years without any impact from the COVID recovery. If we look at the last 12 months, we've seen growth of about 7% to 8% during that time. Since this isn't a subscription-based business, we will encounter some variability, but that reflects our ongoing strong growth level, which is clearly higher than pre-pandemic levels. The main factor driving this growth is the value we provide to our customers. We are expanding events whenever possible, attracting new exhibitors, and enhancing our offerings for existing exhibitors, particularly through digital channels, and that is what is fueling our growth.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from Nick Dempsey from Barclays.

Nicholas Michael Edward Dempsey, Analyst

I have three questions left. So first of all, if we look at the absolute numbers for the new print line, that was down 21%. Can you at least indicate how much of that fall year-on-year related to disposals? I understand that of the rest, we've now got to think about perhaps an underlying amount and then chunks that are going into JVs, and I can see why you want to strip that out of organic. But can you at least say how much related to disposals? Second question, in risk, when you look at the shopping events data that LexisNexis publishes, the comps become a lot tougher from right about here. So will that have a negative impact on the insurance growth in the second half? And if so, do you have other factors in the division that can balance that out? And then the third question, in terms of the potential cost and funding pressures on U.S. universities, I know you won't have started renewal conversations for 2026 probably yet. But have you had any conversations with U.S. universities where they are already suggesting that when they do come to renew, they will have to reduce their spend one way or another?

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

So Nick, I'll address the first question regarding print. Our primary focus is on delivering value to our customers by meeting their needs for print products, while ensuring profitability for ourselves. It's not purely about revenue. As we look into outsourcing, it's not about getting rid of anything, but you may notice significant drops in revenue, particularly in the first half of this year. However, if you concentrate on profit and value, which is our approach, this better reflects our strategy moving forward. As mentioned in the presentation, if we continue to see the usual decline rate in print that we've experienced historically, we're looking at a high single-digit decline. For profit modeling, I recommend keeping that in mind. Revenue might experience larger fluctuations, but predicting it can be challenging.

Erik Engstrom, CEO

I will address the topic of Risk. The primary factor driving the long-term growth in Risk is the creation and introduction of new higher value products. We develop, test, and confirm their value, which usually takes up to five years for full implementation in the market. This gives us significant visibility into the core factors of this business related to product development and rollout. While there are additional factors affecting the marketplace, the key element remains the higher value products and their deployment. Currently, both major segments in Risk, Business Services and Insurance, are experiencing strong growth at their present pace. Their product pipelines are robust, and rollouts are progressing well, resulting in significant new sales compared to the previous year in both sectors. Last year's shopping trends were notably high, particularly during the summer and fall months. However, this does not directly drive the business; it serves as a minor positive market influence. Positive elements such as changes in insurance pricing and claims costs also play a role in how insurance companies operate, potentially affecting customer switching behavior, which can occasionally relate to shopping volume. We anticipate that market conditions will remain favorable, although not as robust in shopping activity growth compared to last year. Nonetheless, growth continues, and we expect both Insurance and Business Services within Risk to perform well and align with historical growth patterns this year. Regarding the STM sector, historically, there are always regions where institutions encounter challenging budget circumstances, which can vary year by year. However, we don’t believe that any specific year has had a notable effect on the overall outlook or growth rate of our STM division. We consistently collaborate with our clients, ensuring they derive value from our services within their budget limitations. Historically, budget challenges have not significantly impacted our growth in that division, and we do not foresee a different outcome this time around.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from Henry Hayden with Rothschild & Co Redburn.

Henry Hayden, Analyst

Three questions, if I may. So the first is in Legal. I was curious as to what you're hearing from clients in terms of the state of demand. I mean, from where we sit, demand growth in legal industry seems to have been strong into the end of the year and particularly through H1. But wondering if you're picking up on more caution around that being tariff-related pull forward or if there's an expectation of that tempering. The second question is on Exhibitions. I was hoping you could offer some color on the incremental growth and margin contribution as you kind of increasingly ramp up the digital tools mix in the business? And how should we think about the adoption curve for those? And then finally, on the balance sheet, I was wondering how you're thinking about leverage vis-a-vis future M&A? Are you open to larger transactions at this stage given capacity? Or are you focusing on bolt-ons? And in the event of the former, would you be willing to go above the top end of that target leverage range kind of as you did with ChoicePoint in 2008?

Erik Engstrom, CEO

I'll cover the first part, and then I'll ask Nick to discuss the next two points. I believe your observations about the legal industry are likely correct. However, considering the current situation in our legal sector, which presents a significant opportunity to provide added value to our customers in new ways, we are concentrating all our efforts on enhancing our customer offerings through new tools, their rollout, further development, and creating additional use cases more rapidly. I think this potential increase in value for our customers is far more critical for us as a service provider than any actual changes in the industry's growth rate. Therefore, our focus is on this area, and I am confident that you will witness greater penetration and adoption of our higher value-added tools and platforms, regardless of the specific trends within the industry.

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

Henry, your question about the growth in Exhibitions highlights the value we provide to clients by expanding our event portfolio, attracting new exhibitors, and supporting existing ones. Our digital offerings play a significant role in this value, contributing to our overall growth as they are often included in our services without separate pricing. This integral aspect is what encourages exhibitors to return and expand their presence. Regarding leverage and acquisitions, our main focus remains on organic business development, with numerous opportunities ahead. While we are open to acquisitions that can enhance our growth, they need to align with our organic development approach. The timing and size of acquisitions can fluctuate, which influences our cash flows. Our typical leverage range is between 2 to 2.5 times, although we can adjust it based on acquisition activity, thanks to our strong cash generation. Should we identify several larger acquisitions at once, we have the capacity to pursue them while maintaining our focus on organic growth.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from Steve Liechti from Deutsche Bank.

Steven Craig Thomas Liechti, Analyst

I've got three as well, please. Just first one, event forward booking trends in Exhibitions. Just obviously what's going on in the world right now. Any changes that you're seeing by region or kind of vertical that you can call out? That's the first question. The second two questions, just checking my math. So on your group like-for-like, it's 7% on an ex print basis. If I take the delta in print, which is sort of the difference between the 2 first half figures, that's GBP 50 million of fall. And if I do that as a percentage of last year's revenue, that's 1 percentage point. So my question really is, why is your group like-for-like on the new basis, not 8%? Why is it 7%? And then the second question, just on Legal and Academic specifically like-for-likes, what would those like-for-likes have been on the old basis? I'm getting about just trying to work backwards about 1 percentage point. Is that about the right call for those 2 figures?

Nicholas Lawrence Luff, CFO

So Steve, as you mentioned, the forward bookings for Exhibitions vary across sectors and geographies, but we maintain a diverse portfolio, and there's nothing specific I'd highlight. We're experiencing similar trends overall, so there's no particular detail to share. The business remains in good condition, focusing more on the value we provide rather than the broader economic environment. Regarding your question about the impact of print and the 7% figure, it’s important to note that the first half revenue drop is partly due to currency effects and asset disposals. Not all of this drop would be in underlying figures, which is why we state that if we had managed and reported the group using the same basis as last year, the total decrease would be 7%, including print, and also 7% when excluding print, as these figures illustrate. If we apply the same reasoning to STM and Legal specifically, managing and reporting on the same basis as last time, STM would show a 4% change for this period, consistent with our full-year projection for 2024, while Legal would be at 8%. This indicates an increase to 9%, which reflects a 1% improvement for Legal on a like-for-like basis and 2% on a reported basis. Your calculations are quite accurate.

Operator, Operator

That does conclude our question-and-answer session. I'd now like to turn the conference back over for any closing remarks.

Erik Engstrom, CEO

Well, thank you for taking the time to join us this morning. I look forward to talking to you again soon. Thank you.