Earnings Call Transcript - TRI Q1 2025

Operator, Operator

Good day, and welcome to the Thomson Reuters First Quarter Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Gary Bisbee, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Gary Bisbee, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Ruth. Good morning and thank you all for joining us today for our first quarter 2025 earnings call. I'm joined by our CEO, Steve Hasker; and our CFO, Mike Eastwood, each of whom will discuss our results, and take your questions following their remarks. To enable us to get to as many questions as possible, we would appreciate it if you'd limit yourself to one question and one follow-up each when we open the phone lines. Throughout today's presentation, when we compare performance period-on-period, we discuss revenue growth before currency, as well as on an organic basis. We believe this provides the best basis to measure the underlying performance of our business. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements and non-IFRS and other supplementary financial measures, which are discussed on this special note slide. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties discussed in reports and filings that we provide to regulatory agencies. You may access these documents on our website or by contacting our Investor Relations department. Now, I'll turn it over to Steve Hasker.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Thank you, Gary, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. 2025 started out on a positive note, with revenue at the high end of our outlook and profits exceeding expectations. Total company organic revenues rose 6% with the Big Three segments growing by 9%. In addition, healthy revenue flow-through and favorable expense timing boosted margins, driving profit ahead of expectations. We are reaffirming our full-year 2025 outlook, calling for organic growth in a range of 7% to 7.5%, including approximately 9% for the Big Three segments and for our margins to rise by 75 basis points year-over-year to approximately 39%. Good momentum continues for many areas in our portfolio. This includes double-digit growth from key products including CoCounsel, SurePrep, Pagero, Indirect Tax, SafeSend, CoCounsel Drafting, and our international businesses. We continue to invest heavily in innovation and we remain focused on delivering against a robust product roadmap. In the first quarter, we launched CoCounsel Tax, Audit, and Accounting, an agentic AI assistant powered by the 2024 acquisition of Materia. This new solution automates critical workflows and brings an enhanced user experience for our Checkpoint authoritative content. In April, we launched the CoCounsel Chat experience within both Westlaw and Practical Law, enhancing capability and user experience through a more connected suite of legal offerings. Looking forward to the remainder of 2025, we're focused on delivering new agentic expert-guided workflows, grounded in our trusted authoritative content and subject matter expertise for CoCounsel, Westlaw, Practical Law, and other offerings. Our capital capacity and liquidity remain a key asset we're focused on deploying to create shareholder value, and we made solid progress on this during the first quarter. In January, we completed the acquisition of SafeSend for $600 million and SafeSend is off to a strong start with the integration going smoothly. In February, we raised our 2025 annual dividend by 10% for the fourth consecutive year to $2.38 per share. We remain committed to a balanced capital allocation approach and we continue to assess additional inorganic opportunities. With our estimated $10 billion of capital capacity through 2027, we are positioned to be opportunistic in a volatile environment. Now, to the results for the quarter. First-quarter organic revenues grew 6%, organic recurring revenues grew 9% and transaction revenues grew 1%, while print revenues declined 5% in line with expectations, a tough comparison at Reuters impacted growth rates. Adjusted EBITDA was essentially unchanged year-over-year at $809 million, reflecting a 40 basis point margin decline to 42.3%. Turning to the first-quarter results by segment. The Big Three segment's organic revenue growth accelerated sequentially from 8% to 9%. Legal organic revenues grew 8%, up from 7% in recent quarters, driven by continued momentum from Westlaw Precision and CoCounsel and stronger Government growth. Corporates organic revenues grew 9%, driven by offerings from our Legal, Tax and Risk portfolios and the segment's international businesses. Tax & Accounting organic revenues grew 11% and our Latin American business and tax compliance offerings were key contributors. Reuters News organic revenues declined 7% driven by a difficult comparison from significant transactional generative AI licensing revenue in the prior year period. And lastly, Global Print organic revenues met our expectations declining 5% year-on-year. And in summary, we're pleased with our Q1 results. Now, let me discuss our improving revenue mix, which is contributing to the revenue growth acceleration that we have delivered. Over the past five years, we have been on a journey to become a more innovative and faster growth company. We have made significant strides toward this goal, as our current outlook for 7% to 7.5% organic revenue growth illustrates. In meeting with investors, we are frequently asked two questions about our revenue growth. First, what has driven our organic revenue growth acceleration in recent years? And second, what provides us with the confidence in our ability to continue our improved growth trajectory into the future? To shed a bit more light on this topic, we've updated a slide from our 2024 Investor Day, which illustrates the improvement in our revenue mix since 2019. The proportion of our revenue from products growing at double-digit rates has more than doubled from 11% in 2019 to 25% in 2024, on a much larger revenue base. At the same time, the mix from our declining Global Print business has fallen. We have taken many actions in the last five years to deliver this improving revenue mix, but I'll briefly mention the three most important. First, we have prioritized resource allocation behind our best businesses and opportunities. For example, our heavy investment in Westlaw has resulted in this key franchise growing at the fastest rate in more than a decade. Second, we have meaningfully increased our investment and focus on innovation, especially with AI. In combination, these efforts have organically increased the number of our existing products growing at double digits. And third, our portfolio optimization efforts have paid dividends. This includes both the acquisition of strategic and complementary growth businesses, as well as select divestitures of non-core and typically lower growth assets. Our stable of double-digit growth offerings spans the Big Three segments and includes, firstly, CoCounsel and HighQ with Professionals; Practical Law, Indirect Tax and Pagero with Corporates; and thirdly, Dominio, Confirmation, SurePrep, Cloud Audit Suite and more recently SafeSend for tax and accounting professionals. As these products continue to scale and our print mix declines, our improving revenue mix positions us well with continued strong revenue growth going forward. I'll now turn it over to Mike to review our financial performance.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Thanks, Steve. Thanks again for joining us today. As a reminder, I will talk to revenue growth before currency and on an organic basis. Let me start by discussing the first quarter revenue performance for our Big Three segments. Organic revenues grew 9% for the first quarter, accelerating from 8% in the fourth quarter of 2024. Legal Professionals organic revenues grew 8%, a new high watermark for the segment. Key drivers from a product perspective remain, Westlaw, CoCounsel, Practical Law, our international businesses, and Government, which grew 9% in the quarter. The FindLaw divestiture also contributed modestly, though this benefit was offset by the impact of several small product sunsets I mentioned last quarter. As it relates to the US government, we remain focused on helping our government customers in areas including efficiency, national security, and fraud prevention. Our Corporate segment organic revenues increased 9%, recurring revenues grew 11%, while transactions rose 5%, despite a tough comparison in the year-ago period. Practical Law, Direct and Indirect Tax, Pagero, and our international businesses were key contributors. Tax & Accounting had a strong quarter with organic revenue growth of 11%. Recurring and transactional revenues grew 8% and 15%, respectively. Our Latin American business, SurePrep, SafeSend, and UltraTax were key drivers. Moving to Reuters News. Organic revenues decreased 7% for the quarter, driven by a difficult comparison to the prior year period, which included $25 million of generative AI-related transactional content licensing revenue. Adjusting for this, Reuters organic revenues increased approximately 5%. Lastly, Global Print organic revenues declined 5%, which was in line with our expectations. On a consolidated basis, first quarter organic revenues increased 6%. At the end of Q1, the percent of our annualized contract value or ACV from products that are GenAI-enabled was 20%, up from 18% last quarter. As a reminder, we began to provide this metric with our Q3 2024 results as a way to help you assess our success at bringing GenAI capabilities to our portfolio. Turning to our profitability. Adjusted EBITDA for the Big Three segments was $759 million, up 6% from the prior year period with a 47.3% margin. Segment margins rose across all Big Three segments, driven by healthy revenue growth and the timing of expenses. Moving to Reuters News, adjusted EBITDA was $39 million with a margin of 20%. The year-over-year profit decrease at Reuters was due to the same difficult comparison I mentioned earlier. Global Print adjusted EBITDA was $44 million with a margin of 37.8%. In aggregate, total company adjusted EBITDA was essentially unchanged at $809 million, reflecting a 40 basis point margin decline to 42.3%. So this was nicely ahead of our prior expectations. Excluding the impact of the Reuters transactional AI licensing revenue in the prior year period, margins would have risen versus the first quarter of 2024. Turning to earnings per share. Adjusted EPS was $1.12 for the quarter versus $1.11 in the prior year period. Currency had no impact on adjusted EPS in the quarter. Let me now turn to our free cash flow performance for the first quarter. Reported free cash flow was $277 million, up 3% from $271 million in the prior year period. I will conclude with our 2025 outlook and several other updates. As Steve outlined, we are reaffirming our full-year 2025 guidance. We continue to expect organic revenue growth of 7% to 7.5% with the Big Three growing approximately 9%. We see 2025 adjusted EBITDA margins of approximately 39%, up 75 basis points versus 2024. And we expect free cash flow of approximately $1.9 billion. Turning to the second quarter. We expect organic revenue growth of approximately 7% and our adjusted EBITDA margin to be approximately 36%. As a reminder, the sequential decline in our margin into Q2 is due to the normal seasonality of our Tax & Accounting Professionals business segment and to a lesser extent to the timing of certain expenses. Let me close with a few final thoughts. First for your models, we plan to pay down the approximately $1 billion bond that matures later this month with cash on hand. Second, and in light of recent questions around the potential for weaker economic activity, I want to remind you we have a highly recurring and resilient business with more than 80% recurring revenues, a healthy mix of multi-year contracts and relatively non-discretionary offerings. Transaction revenues are 12% of our mix. A bit more than half of this is what we internally refer to as repeat transactions revenue, which are recognized on a transactional basis, but where customer volumes tend to recur over time based on the cadence of tax filing per audit cycles. This includes revenues from Confirmation, SurePrep, and SafeSend among others. In combination with our recurring revenues, this highly quality repeat transactional revenue provides a resilient and predictable revenue mix. Add in our strong capitalization with net leverage of 0.6 times and healthy cash flow, we believe we are well positioned to weather a range of market environments. Let me now turn it back to Gary for questions.

Gary Bisbee, Head of Investor Relations

Thank you. Ruth, we're happy to begin the Q&A session.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We'll go first to Scott Fletcher with CIBC.

Scott Fletcher, Analyst

Hi. Good morning. Wanted to ask a question on the demand environment, and if you've seen any changes to buying patterns or willingness to spend or close deals since obviously the trade war heated up over the course of this year.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Yes. Scott. It's Steve. I'll start and I'm sure Mike will add. I mean we're doubling down our efforts to meet and exceed our customers' needs. As you've seen from our results, we have not yet seen a change in the demand environment. And as you know, our business is very resilient with over 80% of our revenues recurring, with a highly diversified customer base and largely non-discretionary products in the content-driven technology space. Having said that, I think most of our customers across the spectrum are wondering what the economic backdrop for the rest of this year will be, wondering what the tariff picture when it settles, if it settles, will look like and what the implications would be. So I think there's a level of nervousness, but we haven't yet seen that play through. Mike?

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yeah. I'll supplement, Scott. If you look at our new sales pipeline, our renewal pipeline, no changes there. Both the new sales and renewal pipelines remain encouraging. Just looking at April, velocity and average order value remain very consistent. So we're not seeing any changes, Scott.

Scott Fletcher, Analyst

That's good to hear. Historically, are there any segments, such as Legal, Tax, or Corporate, that you believe would be more affected if there is a slowdown in buying?

Mike Eastwood, CFO

We don't think so, Scott. I'll focus on the scenario of a softer economy. Certainly, given 80% of our revenue recurring, the resilience that I talked about in the prepared remarks, there are three areas that we would focus on Scott in a softer environment. Number one, the transactional revenue, which as I mentioned is 12% of our total, but remember over 50% of that is what we refer to as repeat. If you look at the Tax & Accounting Professional business, that's over 80%. So it gives us comfort within the transactional area. The second area to focus on is Global Print. Within Global Print, which is roughly 7% of our total revenue, 45% of that revenue is governed by multi-year contracts that Jen Prescott refers to as library maintenance agreements that give us comfort. And the third area of focus would be Reuters News, specifically Digital Advertising and Reuters Events. Those two business areas are only about 1.5% of our total revenue. So in a softer economy, Scott, those are the three areas that we would focus on and provide you with continuous updates.

Scott Fletcher, Analyst

Okay. That's really helpful. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

Manav Patnaik, Analyst

Thank you. Good morning. The first question, just to focus on that growth slide. The 68% of the other products, I was just hoping you could help us with kind of the average growth there and the opportunity to accelerate those into that high-growth bucket.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Sure. One data point, Manav, there would be about a little 20% to 25% would be below 5% for us in case that's helpful for us. And that leaves about 40% to 42% that are in that 5% to 10% growth range. Hopefully, that segmentation is helpful, Manav.

Steve Hasker, CEO

And I think, Manav, the second part of your question is how we shift those. I think we're at the start of that playbook and the answer to every question is not generative AI. But to the extent that we can add more generative AI capabilities to our content sets, it expands the role we play in the success of our customers. And what I mean by that is not all, but typically those slower growth products are more static content sets. And the addition of GenAI, for example, over time to Westlaw and Westlaw Precision has enabled us to get into the business of a first draft of a research memo. And as we move through to expert-guided workflows, it really expands the role we play in the life of a legal professional. So as we think about injecting GenAI into more and more parts of our portfolio and more and more of these content sets, we think that that order shifts the dial in healthy ways in terms of the underlying growth rate.

Manav Patnaik, Analyst

Got it. Thank you. And Mike, I think your comments around government, I'm just curious like any updates you can give us on the exposure there to those websites? Obviously, there are lots of contracts here and there. That would be helpful.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Right. Yeah, we're certainly familiar with the DOGE website, Manav. Overall, we've had no material impacts to our government business as reflected in the 9% organic growth in Q1. A few data points if helpful for you and others, Manav. Government represents about 8% of our total TR revenue. That revenue is reported in Legal Professionals externally. If you break that 8% down further, 60% is state and local, 40% is US federal government. If you look at it by product or offering perspective, 60% to 65% are legal products, including Westlaw. And then if you look at the remainder, 35% to 40% would be risk and for all products including CLEAR and other TRSS products. I would just emphasize. As I mentioned in the prepared remarks, the opportunities that we see in supporting our government customers are in three vectors; the efficiency opportunities, national security, and fraud prevention. Take nothing for granted, Manav, but no material impacts to date.

Manav Patnaik, Analyst

Got it. Thank you. Super helpful.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Aravinda Galappatthige with Canaccord Genuity.

Aravinda Galappatthige, Analyst

Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I was wondering whether you could maybe just revisit the drafting side of the opportunity. I know that you launched the CoCounsel Drafting product last year. Maybe just remind us of the TAM there and the progress you've been able to make in the outlook that you see in the near term?

Steve Hasker, CEO

Yes, Aravinda. Drafting is considered one of the most crucial tasks for legal professionals, and automating this process presents a significant opportunity to enhance both efficiency and accuracy in creating initial drafts. I don't have a total addressable market figure for you, as it’s difficult to pinpoint precise numbers based on headcount and time invested. However, we’re pleased with the progress we've made, thanks to Emily Colbert and Kriti Sharma, our product executives overseeing CoCounsel, Westlaw, and Practical Law. Our unique content sets give us a competitive edge. By integrating Westlaw and Practical Law to create the most accurate drafts, we believe we are well-positioned in this emerging field, which is quite exciting.

Aravinda Galappatthige, Analyst

Thank you. And just a quick follow-up. I think on the last call, you mentioned that the AI-related investments sort of at the $200 million level through 2024, I was wondering if there has been an uptick as we look at 2025. Or is it pretty much the same run rate? Thank you.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Just a slight uptick, Aravinda. And for calendar year 2025, we remain committed. Just as a reminder, that roughly $200 million-plus investment is split roughly 50-50 between operating expenses and capital expenditures. That $200 million investment is reflected in our results and full-year guidance.

Aravinda Galappatthige, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Vince Valentini with TD Cowen.

Vince Valentini, Analyst

Thank you for having me. I have two questions for you, and feel free to address them in any order. First, regarding the margin impact from foreign currency, you mentioned it was beneficial in Q1. Could you remind us of the main factors contributing to that? Is it primarily due to having a lower proportion of costs in US dollars compared to revenue? Are there any significant currency risks we should monitor that could affect margins in Q2 and Q3? My second question relates to your Slide 9, which has already been mentioned. Within the 25% segment that is growing by 10% or more, could you specify how much of that 25% comes from businesses not owned in 2019, indicating that you've driven growth through acquisitions? Given your substantial cash reserves for acquisitions, especially if market conditions allow for lower prices, could this 25% segment potentially reach 50% in the next five years through strategic acquisition funding? Thank you.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yeah. Let me try to attack each of those questions, Vince, and I'll ask Steve to supplement. First, in regards to your question on Q1 in regards to FX, that's about 40 basis points for Q1. If you think about currencies that have the biggest impact on us, it's the British pound, Argentine peso, and the Brazilian real. There are others that have less significant impact, but those are the three that would have the larger impact in a given period. We would expect a smaller FX impact in Q2 assuming stable FX rates. So hopefully, that addresses your questions on FX. Then if you go into the questions on the revenue mix, Gary that's probably one that we can follow up in the analyst calls later today, if it's okay, Gary. So Vince, we'll take that as an action item when Gary speaks with each of you later today. He'll share that breakdown in regards to products that we did not have in 2019, so you have additional visibility.

Steve Hasker, CEO

It's a great question, Vince. I would say a couple of things. The improvement in growth has been driven by organic product investments. I mentioned that Westlaw is experiencing its highest growth rate in a decade, along with the portfolio moves we've made. I agree with your perspective on the M&A pipeline. We have a strong balance sheet, allowing us to be opportunistic, and we're somewhat optimistic about interesting opportunities that may arise towards the end of this year. However, we mentioned similar expectations coming out of the pandemic and as the interest rate environment changed, noting that the best assets are still fully priced. So, while we have some optimism, we won't make any promises regarding M&A opportunities at this time.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yes. I'll just add a couple of tidbits, and Gary will be more fulsome later today. We acquired Confirmation and HighQ in July of 2019. Those two are included on the higher growth. Likewise, we acquired SurePrep, Casetext in 2023, they're included. And Pagero acquisition in 2024, SafeSend in 2025, they're all included in the list. But Gary will go into more detail, Vince.

Vince Valentini, Analyst

Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

Toni Kaplan, Analyst

Thanks so much. I was hoping to ask maybe a broad question on your investment spend strategy. So, if you did start to see a slowdown, which it sounds like you have not so far, but if you saw a slowdown in demand and the pipeline, would you pull back on investment? Or because of the resiliency of your business and focus on future growth does it make sense to sort of spend through that? So, just wanted to get sort of your head on where you are with regard to that strategy?

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yes, I think Toni just given the resiliency of our business I would not anticipate much change in regards to our strategic investments. Certainly we always have to be prudent in the discretionary areas. So, would we be more rigorous there? Yes. But if you look at our overall strategic investments and our priorities, we would continue those both organically and inorganically. And we have the confidence there and the resiliency of our business with the recurring revenue, but also if you look at the transactional revenue that I mentioned earlier, such a large portion of that being repeat gives us confidence. So I would not see any significant impact in our investment strategy.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Yes, and to add to that, one of the main value propositions of our content-driven technology is efficiency. Whether it's in a government agency, addressing talent shortages in tax, accounting, and audit, or in the broader transformation of the legal profession, our tools and software create significant efficiencies for our customers. As the environment becomes more challenging, we believe that both medium- to long-term demand, as well as shorter-term demand, will actually increase. Therefore, in line with Mike's point, we plan to invest sensibly during this time.

Toni Kaplan, Analyst

Yes, I wanted to follow up on Pagero. It sounds like it falls into your higher growth category, and I would like to understand the additional demand you're experiencing there and how the integration is going. Also, considering the current uncertainties, do you see them actually benefiting this area? What opportunities are emerging for you? Thanks.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Yes. Toni, as you know, Pagero has a leading e-invoicing platform that operates across multiple jurisdictions. For companies working in various regions, Pagero offers a unique value proposition compared to its competitors. The increasing rollout of e-invoicing mandates, especially in Europe, is beneficial, and we are also starting to observe government movement in Southeast Asia and Latin America. We believe this trend will continue. However, implementation dates may shift; for instance, a 2026 mandate might be delayed to 2027 or adjusted earlier. Overall, the demand characteristics align with our expectations from when we acquired the business, possibly even exceeding them. The integration process is on schedule, and we have learned valuable lessons. Acquiring a public company based in Gothenburg, Sweden is a new experience for us, and we have identified both successful and less effective strategies. We are excited about the future of this business, not just in Europe but also as we expand into Latin America and, more excitingly, Southeast Asia in the coming years.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yes. Toni, I'll just confirm that Pagero is in our high-growth category, and then also our ONESOURCE Indirect Tax product is also continuing to perform well.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Drew McReynolds with RBC.

Drew McReynolds, Analyst

Thank you very much. Good morning. Vince already asked my question about Slide 9, which is great. I have another inquiry regarding that slide. Mike, you may have touched on this, but regarding the 68% segment, do you identify any products in that area that you consider underperforming? Additionally, concerning lower growth businesses, what are your current thoughts on the strategic significance of Global Print and Reuters News? Steve, I have a question for you regarding your comments on the slowdown and the importance of efficiency for your customers. If we consider the impact of AI, Agentic AI, and GenAI, do you foresee a potential scenario, not that I'm suggesting we’re heading this way, but where a recession might drive more structural changes among your customers? Could this potentially accelerate their shift towards automation and increase the demand for your advanced products and services? Thank you.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Vince, I think there are at least three questions there. I'll take the first two. In regards to the infamous Slide 9 now, our position in regards to portfolio optimization, we do not foresee any significant divestitures like we had in 2023 with Elite or FindLaw in 2024. With that said, will we continue to refine our portfolio? As we move forward, we will. There's nothing specific to report on today. But any continued refinement would be small in nature, consistent with the two divestitures that we completed in Q4 of 2024. And we also had a few other smaller ones in 2022 and 2023. So any refinements to the portfolio would be small in nature. Second question was related to Global Print and Reuters. No change in our position from prior calls that we have there. As a reminder, Global Print will generate about $165 million of free cash flow in full-year calendar 2025, which is certainly important for us. And then the Reuters business, no change there. Steve, I think the last question was for you.

Steve Hasker, CEO

I would say regarding that portfolio, all areas of our business need to perform and contribute overall. Global Print and Reuters News are just as important as any other segment. As Mike mentioned, we do not anticipate any major divestitures, but the standards remain high, and as you would expect, Drew. Concerning the possibility of a recession leading to faster adoption of AI, particularly Agentic, we do not see that happening yet. However, looking back on our experiences, we know that periods of economic stress often lead to rapid changes. We are closely monitoring the situation and ensuring that our product strategies and sales approaches effectively highlight the efficiency-driven ROI of our tools so that we are well-prepared if we start to observe significant changes. That said, I think it is still too early to make a definitive judgment.

Drew McReynolds, Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan.

Andrew Steinerman, Analyst

Hi. It's Andrew, a couple of questions. First Mike, you talked about expense timing maybe lower expenses in the first quarter getting shifted. So if you could tell us, how much expenses shifted from the first quarter, and is that what's going to land in the second quarter? Any other comments around the second-quarter guided margin? And then Steve, one for you. When you look at law firms and in-house legal clients that are already paying for Thomson Reuters AI products, so that's legal products, how has end-user adoption been so far?

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Andrew, I'll start on your first question. I'll emphasize that we reaffirm today our EBITDA margin guidance for the full year of approximately 39%. Our confidence remains very high in delivering on it. Your specific question in regards to Q1, Q2, certainly there were some expense items that we had originally planned to incur in Q1 that shifted into Q2. If you look at the first semester, Q1 and Q1 together 42%, 36%, if you balance those out, it's roughly 39%, which is consistent with our full year. So that's how I would look at our focus on the full year. There's going to be some variation by quarter, especially with the impact of our Tax & Accounting Professionals business, with the seasonality. But if you shift those items into Q2 that did not occur in Q1, Andrew, I think you're pretty close to what you would have expected for Q2.

Steve Hasker, CEO

And then Andrew with regard to the adoption of our tools in the in-house legal environment, as you know this is the sort of an opportunity for us. We have not typically been focused on in-house relative to outside counsel. And therefore, I think we see more greenfield opportunity and upside in the Corporate and Legal departments. Having said that, we are seeing a healthy adoption of CoCounsel and good demand for CoCounsel both in terms of the accuracy of the product built on our content and also its potential to drive efficiency. And to your question, the end-user adoption is healthy. One of the things we watch very carefully is post-sale, what sort of usage are we seeing how many people how frequently and what specific use cases. And we like to look at those trends. And we are supporting that with some pretty big investments in customer success, which is not entirely new to us as a company. But certainly, Raghu Ramanathan who runs Legal and Laura Clayton McDonnell, who runs Corporate, Raghu came from S&P, and Laura from ServiceNow as you know, they've really brought that DNA with them and have been very forceful in terms of getting those customer success investments up and running and having an impact within the customer base.

Andrew Steinerman, Analyst

Make sense. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Jason Haas with Wells Fargo.

Jason Haas, Analyst

Hi. Good morning and thanks for taking my questions. I'm curious, if you could talk about what drives the implied acceleration in organic growth through the remainder of the year. Thanks.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Sure. Jason, I'll start there. If you look at our underlying book of business today Q1, we had very good net sales and bookings. So that's the starting point in regards to our acceleration into the remainder of the year. That really is across each of our Big Three segments. As a reminder, Jason for 2026, we had committed for Legal 8% to 9% organic growth; Corporates 9% to 11% in 2026; and Tax & Accounting Professionals 11% to 13%. So, if you look at our current performance, our bookings coupled with our product roadmap and the recent acquisitions that we've made, we'll continue to scale those acquisitions and we'll continue to get tailwinds from our product portfolio.

Jason Haas, Analyst

Got it. Thank you. And then as a follow-up can you talk about if there's any more opportunity for GenAI licensing revenue in the Reuters News segment? Thanks.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

There's possible, Jason. We certainly do not have any in our forecast. We do not have any in our guidance. The approach that we have taken over the last 18 months is when we have those opportunities we'll provide updates on these calls. But hand on heart today we do not have any additional ones in the bag. But could additional ones materialize? Possibly. But I do not have any visibility on specific timing that I could share today. We'll keep you updated.

Jason Haas, Analyst

Great. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to Doug Arthur with Huber Research.

Doug Arthur, Analyst

Yes. Mike, can you walk us through the organic dynamics of legal in the first quarter? While the organic performance was very strong, the divestiture appears to have around an 11% impact. Is that likely to persist for a couple of quarters until you annualize? It was a bit larger than I anticipated.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Sure. I'll make sure I address each of the points there, Doug. For Legal Professionals, 8% organic growth, which was a high watermark, as I mentioned, in the prepared remarks. Let me take the FindLaw divestiture there. Did that provide a tailwind? Yes, but it was fully offset by a headwind from the recent product sunsets that I mentioned last quarter. So for clarity, FindLaw provided a tailwind, but that was completely offset with headwinds from the product sunsets that I mentioned last quarter. If you look at the acceleration in Legal Professional from 7% up to 8%, two key factors. One was the Government business performance at 9% and the second was the continuing scaling of our AI offerings to our Legal Professional customers. If I take it one step further into the second quarter, do we expect that 8% to continue? We do and we expect it to continue for the full year 2025, Doug.

Doug Arthur, Analyst

And in terms of the impact of FindLaw, is that likely to linger in the magnitude it was in Q1 for the next couple of quarters?

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yes. That would be a reasonable directional estimate, Doug, for the remainder of the year. Given that that divestiture closed in December of 2024, that's a reasonable estimate, Doug.

Doug Arthur, Analyst

Okay. Helpful. Thank you.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Thanks, Dave.

Operator, Operator

We'll go next to George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

George Tong, Analyst

Hi. Thanks. Good morning. You're seeing a good adoption of GenAI product across the business. Can you broadly talk about your strategy of GenAI monetization if you're deploying different strategies across different segments or experimenting with different monetization strategies?

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yes. Happy to start, George, and then I'll ask Steve to supplement. Consistent with prior conversations, first and foremost, our overall mantra is to price to value. We are continuing with our enterprise-wide pricing versus the per seat. So enterprise-wide has continued to be our focus. As we look at the pricing, we're certainly very focused on all of the variable costs including costs associated with the large language models. So we're always prudent as we look at each offering, each use case, each customer base, but fairly consistent with our conversations previously. And pleased with the overall pricing, George.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Yes, I think the only thing I'd add is that we aim to price according to value. This means that if our tools help reduce the time needed to complete specific tasks or decrease work hours over the week for professionals, we try to align our pricing with that value. It's still early to fully assess this, but we're closely monitoring the situation. I believe we have enough flexibility built in to adjust as we notice improvements in impact.

George Tong, Analyst

Thanks. Makes sense. And then for my follow-up, I wanted to focus on the Tax & Accounting business. That segment grew the fastest this quarter for the 2026 framework. It's also guided to grow the fastest. Can you talk about what secular trends you're seeing that's fueling that kind of growth that allows Tax & Accounting to surpass all the other segments in growth?

Steve Hasker, CEO

Yes. It's a combination of several factors. Most importantly, there's a significant talent shortage in the Tax & Accounting and audit sectors. This shortage coincides with increasing complexities in tax returns and audits in both the United States and Brazil, which are our two largest markets. When you consider these factors, we find ourselves with a diverse and strong customer base facing talent shortages. Technology must step in to address this issue in the coming years, which is driving the underlying demand. Furthermore, we have heavily invested in this business recently. For example, we've focused on improving the health and stability of our products and support, as we previously experienced some outages and issues. We've made substantial investments to solidify our position in serving our customers. Additionally, we've made targeted acquisitions, such as SurePrep, SafeSend, and Materia, along with a few smaller ones in Brazil. Each of these has contributed to enhancing our product offerings and our future plans. We also have a promising roadmap for our "ready-to-review" and "ready-to-advise" capabilities, which we believe will enhance industry efficiency. This is what underpins our recent success and our positive outlook moving forward. Now, it’s up to us to execute this roadmap effectively.

George Tong, Analyst

Very helpful. Thank you.

Operator, Operator

We'll take our last question from Joshua Dennerlein with Bank of America.

Joshua Dennerlein, Analyst

Hey, everyone. Thanks for your time. I wanted to revisit slide 9. Regarding the product that is growing by 10% or more, can you provide any insight on how long it typically maintains that growth once it reaches that point? I'm particularly interested in the duration of the growth.

Mike Eastwood, CFO

Yes, it will definitely vary. Looking at the products that we've had for a while, if we refer back to the question about maturity longevity, Practical Law in our Corporate segment, which we acquired in 2013, continues to grow over 10%, serving as a great example. Similarly, our Direct Tax business, part of ONESOURCE that we've had for many years, is also growing more than 10%. I mentioned Indirect Tax, another segment of ONESOURCE. These are just a few examples of products that have been with us for over a decade.

Joshua Dennerlein, Analyst

Okay. I appreciate that color.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Yes, I would like to add that my perspective is that these growth trends appear to be more sustainable compared to others in the market. I previously mentioned the talent shortage in tax and accounting, which is a challenge that won't be resolved quickly. Additionally, the transformation in the legal sector, affecting in-house counsel, law firms, court systems, and the judiciary, seems to be a long-term process that could take years or even decades. We believe these trends are resilient. Returning to the earlier question, it's our responsibility to execute effectively. The initial signs of our execution provide us with optimism, but we have work ahead of us.

Joshua Dennerlein, Analyst

Awesome. I’ll leave it there. Thanks guys.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Thanks, Josh. Good day from us.

Gary Bisbee, Head of Investor Relations

All right. I think that was the end of the queue. So thanks everybody for tuning in and reach out to me and the IR team any time if we can help with follow-ups. Have a good day.

Steve Hasker, CEO

Thanks, Ruth.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.