Thomson Reuters Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 1, 2025
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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
Gary Bisbee
Head of Investor Relations at Thomson Reuters

Thank you, Ruth. Good morning, and thank you all for joining us today for our first quarter twenty twenty five 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.

Gary Bisbee
Gary Bisbee
Head of Investor Relations at Thomson Reuters

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.

Gary Bisbee
Gary Bisbee
Head of Investor Relations at Thomson Reuters

I'll now

Gary Bisbee
Gary Bisbee
Head of Investor Relations at Thomson Reuters

turn it over to Steve Hasser.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Thank you, Gary, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. 2025 has 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%.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Good momentum continues from many areas in our portfolio. This includes double digit growth from key products, including Co Council, Shore Prep, Pagero, Indirect Tax, SafeSend, Co Council Drafting, and our international businesses. We continue to invest heavily in innovation, and we remain focused on delivering against robust product roadmaps. In the first quarter, we launched co counsel 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.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

In April, we launched the co counsel 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, the co counsel, 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 $600,000,000 and SafeSend is off to a strong start with the integration going smoothly. In February, we raised our twenty twenty five annual dividend by 10% for the fourth consecutive year to $2.38 per share.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

We remain committed to a balanced capital allocation approach, and we continue to assess additional inorganic opportunities. With our estimated $10,000,000,000 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 that Reuters impacted growth rates.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Adjusted EBITDA was essentially unchanged year over year at $8.00 $9,000,000 reflecting a 40 basis point margin decline to 42.3%. Turning to the first quarter results by segment. The big three segments' 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 Co Council and stronger government growth. Corporates organic revenues grew nine percent, driven by offerings from our legal, tax and risk portfolios, and the segment's international businesses.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Tax and 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.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

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 confidence in our ability to continue our improved growth trajectory into the future.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

To shed a bit more light on this topic, we've updated a slide from our twenty twenty four 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.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

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.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Our stable of double digit growth offerings spans the big three segments and includes firstly co counsel and high Q professionals, practical law, indirect tax, and Paguero at corporates, and thirdly, Diminio, confirmation, Shore Prep, 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 for continued strong revenue growth going forward. I'll now turn it

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

over to Mike to review our financial performance.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Organic revenues grew 9% for the first quarter, accelerating from 8% in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four. Legal Professionals organic revenues grew 8%, a new high watermark for the segment. Key drivers from a product perspective remain Westlaw, co counsel, practical law, our international businesses and government, which grew 9% in the quarter. The Fine Law 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 U.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

S. 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, TIGERO and our international businesses were key contributors.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Tax and Accounting had a strong quarter, with organic revenue growth of 11%. Recurring and transactional revenues grew 815% 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 $25,000,000 of generative AI related transactional content licensing revenue. Adjusting for this, Reuters organic revenues increased approximately 5%.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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 twenty twenty four 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 seven fifty nine million dollars up 6% from the prior year period with a 47.3% margin.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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 $39,000,000 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's adjusted EBITDA was $44,000,000 with a margin of 37.8%. In aggregate, total company adjusted EBITDA was essentially unchanged at $8.00 $9,000,000 reflecting a 40 basis point margin decline to 42.3%.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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 twenty twenty four. 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Reported free cash flow was $277,000,000 up 3% from $271,000,000 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

And we expect free cash flow of approximately $1,900,000,000 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 and 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 $1,000,000,000 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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 or 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Let me now turn it back to Gary for questions.

Gary Bisbee
Gary Bisbee
Head of Investor Relations at Thomson Reuters

Thank you, Ruth. We're happy to begin the Q and A session.

Operator

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

Scott Fletcher
Director - Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets

Hi, good morning. I 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
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, 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 80 plus percent of our revenues recurring with a highly diversified customer base and largely nondiscretionary products in the content driven technology space.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Having said that, I think most of our customers across the spectrum are wondering what the sort of 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?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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, they remain very consistent. So we're not seeing any changes, Scott.

Scott Fletcher
Director - Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets

Okay, that's good to hear. And then if I think about if you think about historically, are there any of the segments, be it legal, tax, or corporates that you think would be more impacted in a scenario where buying does slow down?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Well, we don't think so, Scott. I'll focus in 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, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks, over 50% of that is what we refer to as repeat.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

If you look at the tax and accounting professional business, that's over 80%. So that 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, what Jen Prescott refers to as library maintenance agreement that gives us comfort. And then the third area of focus would be Reuters News, specifically digital advertising and Reuters Events.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Those two business areas are only about 1.5% of our total revenue. So in a software economy, Scott, those are the three areas that we would focus on and provide you with continuous updates.

Scott Fletcher
Director - Equity Research at CIBC Capital Markets

Okay, that's really helpful. Thank you.

Operator

We'll go next to Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

Manav Patnaik
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Investment Bank

Thank you. Good morning. The first question, just to focus on that growth slide, the 68%, 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?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Sure. One data point 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 rate. Hopefully that segmentation is helpful, Manav.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

And I think, Manav,

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

the second part of your question is to sort of how we shift those. I think we're at the start of that playbook. 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.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

And the addition of GenAI, for example, over time to Westlaw and Westlaw Precision has enabled us to get in 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 Gen AI into more and more parts of our portfolio and more and more of these content sets, we think that that ought to shift the dial in healthy ways in terms of the underlying growth rate.

Manav Patnaik
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Investment Bank

Got it. Thank you. Mike, I think your comments around government, just curious, like any updates you can give us on the exposure there, you know, to Doge website?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Sure.

Manav Patnaik
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Investment Bank

Obviously, there's a lot of contracts here and there.

Manav Patnaik
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Investment Bank

That would be helpful.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Right. Yeah, we're certainly familiar with the Doge site, 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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,

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

60%

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

to 65% are legal products, including Westlaw. 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: efficiency opportunities, national security, fraud prevention. Take nothing for granted, Manav, but no material impacts today.

Manav Patnaik
Managing Director, Equity Research Analyst at Barclays Investment Bank

Got it. Thank you. Super helpful.

Operator

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

Aravinda Galappatthige
Managing Director - Institutional Equity Research at Canaccord Genuity Inc

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 sort of the co counsel drafting product last year. Maybe just remind us of sort of the TAM there and the progress you've been able to make and the outlook that you see in the near term.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, sure, Aravinda. So there's a point of view that suggests that drafting is one of the most important tasks that a legal professional undertakes, and therefore the opportunity to sort of automate that to varying degrees and introduce a step change in terms of the efficiency and the accuracy of a first draft is a big opportunity. I don't have a TAM for you because I think we can throw around some big numbers on the basis of the headcount and the time spent today. We're very happy with the start that we've made, and it's a credit to Emily Colbert and Kriti Sharma, our product executives who sit across the co counsel Westlaw and Practical Law products. And we think our differentiation there is our unique and proprietary content sets.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

So the opportunity to lean into Westlaw and practical law and as the basis of sort of creating the most accurate draft, we think positions us very well in a new and emerging space, but nevertheless pretty exciting one.

Aravinda Galappatthige
Managing Director - Institutional Equity Research at Canaccord Genuity Inc

Thank you. And and just a quick follow-up. I I think, on the last call, you mentioned that, to the AI related investments were sort of at the $200,000,000 level through, 02/2024. I was wondering, has there been an uptick as we look at 2025? Or is it pretty much the same run rate?

Aravinda Galappatthige
Managing Director - Institutional Equity Research at Canaccord Genuity Inc

Thank you.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Just a slight uptick, Aravinda, for calendar year 2025. We remain committed. Just as a reminder, that roughly $200,000,000 plus investment is split roughly fifty-fifty between operating expenses and capital expenditures. That $200,000,000 investment is reflected in our results and full year guidance.

Aravinda Galappatthige
Managing Director - Institutional Equity Research at Canaccord Genuity Inc

Thank you.

Operator

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

Vince Valentini
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Hey, thanks very much. Two questions I'll throw at you, and you can take whatever order you want. The margin impact from foreign currency, you mentioned that was a tailwind in Q1. Can you just remind us what the main drivers of that are? Is it simply that you have less of your cost in U.

Vince Valentini
Managing Director at TD Cowen

S. Dollars versus the percentage of revenue? Are there any key currency exposures we should keep our eye on for Q2 and Q3 margin impacts? Second question, going back to your good slide number nine that's already been referenced here, that 25% bucket that's growing 10% or more, can you identify what percentage of that 25% bucket are businesses that you did not own in 2019, so you've been able to augment the growth through acquisition? And I'm thinking of that as a way of, you you have a huge amount of cash you can use for acquisitions, perhaps things are gonna get cheaper if the macro environment is choppy.

Vince Valentini
Managing Director at TD Cowen

Can we think about that 25% bucket getting to 50% in the next five years and partially by using your acquisition funds in a savvy way? Thanks.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, let me try to attack each of those questions, Vince, I'll ask Steve to supplement. First, in regards to your question on Q1 in regards to FX, that's about 40 basis points, Vince, for Q1. If you think about currencies that have the biggest impact on us, that's the British pound, Argentine peso and the Brazil real, there's 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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 that's 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 at 2019 so you have additional visibility.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, and it's a great question, Vince. I would say a couple of things. The first is the sort of growth improvement and the improvement in that trajectory has been driven both by organic product investments, so investments in existing franchises. I talked in my prepared remarks about Westlaw enduring its highest growth rate in a decade. In addition to sort of the portfolio moves that we've made.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

And I share your view in terms of the M and A pipeline. We've got a rock solid balance sheet and therefore can afford to be opportunistic. And we're somewhat optimistic that we'll start to see some pretty interesting opportunities through the back end of this year. But you may remember, we said the same coming out of the pandemic and as the interest rate environment changed. And the best assets continued to be fully priced.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

So I think we've got some optimism, but we're not going to promise anything today in terms of what we might see come into view from an M and A perspective.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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

Gary Bisbee
Gary Bisbee
Head of Investor Relations at Thomson Reuters

Thank you.

Operator

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

Toni Kaplan
Toni Kaplan
Executive Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley

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 the in demand and the pipeline, would you pull back on investment? Or because of the resiliency 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, I think, Tony, 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 that we have the confidence there and the resiliency of our business with the recurring revenue, but also if you look at that, the transactional revenue that I mentioned earlier, such a large portion of that being repeat gives confidence.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

So I would not see any significant impact in our investment strategy.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, and just to add to that, Tony, I think one of the principal value propositions of our content driven technology is efficiency. And so whether that's within a government agency or whether that's in overcoming talent shortages in the tax accounting and audit spaces or in the sort of broader transformation of the legal profession, these are tools and software that can and do create significant efficiencies within our customer base. And so to the extent that the environment gets difficult, we actually see that the medium to longer term demand, let alone the shorter term demand, will increase. So we would, to Mark's point, envisage sort of investing through that in a sensible way.

Toni Kaplan
Toni Kaplan
Executive Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Yep. Wanted to ask my follow-up on Pigaro. I wanted to it sounds like that is in your higher growth bucket and and wanted to just get a sense on the additional demand that you're seeing there and the integration and if all the uncertainty and things that are going on are actually a big help in that area, just what's the opportunity you're seeing there? Thanks.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, so Tony, as you know, Paguro has the leading sort of singular e invoicing platform that applies to multiple jurisdictions. So for any company that operates across multiple geographies, multiple countries, Figaro has a pretty unique value proposition relative to its competitors. And so the tailwind here is the rollout of e invoicing mandates which is particularly prevalent in Europe, but we're increasingly starting to see movement from governments and tax authorities in Southeast Asia and Latin America. And so that tailwind we think continues to prevail. Having said that, the dates do move around a little bit.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

So there may be a 'twenty six mandate that gets pushed into 'twenty seven or brought back. But by and large, the demand characteristics are exactly what we envisaged when we bought that business and perhaps even a little bit better. The integration is on track. I think we've got lots of lessons learned from the integration. Acquiring a public company resident in Gothenburg, Sweden is not something we've done before.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

So lessons learned from that and things we've done well and things we've done not so well. But it's on track and we're very excited about the future of that business, both in terms of its application to the core markets in Europe, but also extending into Latin America and maybe most excitingly Southeast Asia as we go forward over the next few years.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, Tony, I'll just confirm that Figaro is in our high growth category, and then also our OneSource indirect tax product is also continuing to perform well.

Toni Kaplan
Toni Kaplan
Executive Director, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Morgan Stanley

Thank you.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Thanks, Tony.

Operator

We'll go next to Drew McReynolds with RBC.

Drew McReynolds
Drew McReynolds
Managing Director - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital Markets

Yeah, thanks very much. Good morning. Vince stole my question on the now famous Slide nine, which is great. Another question on that slide, just and Mike, may have addressed this, I may have missed it, but the 68%, I guess, slice of the pie, are there products in there that are underperforming from your perspective in the lens you put on these businesses? And then just with respect to kind of lower growth businesses, what's the latest and greatest thoughts on just the strategic importance of Global Print and Reuters News?

Drew McReynolds
Drew McReynolds
Managing Director - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital Markets

And then a second question, Steve, just for you on your comments on a slowdown and the importance of efficiency for your customers. Just taking it one step further with respect to AI and Adjunctica AI and Gen AI, do you see the scenario and I'm not saying we're going down this path, but a scenario of a recession that does lead to more structural change in your customers, is that potentially an accelerant to get them to change and shift more quickly to kind of automation kind of driving more of your advanced products and services? Thank you.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Vince, I think there are at least three questions there. I'll take the first two. In regards to the infamous Slide nine now, our position in regards to portfolio optimization, we do not foresee any significant divestitures like we had in 2023 with the LEAD or fine law in 2024. With that said, will we continue to refine our portfolio as we move forward? We will.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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 twenty twenty four. And we also had a few other smaller ones in 'twenty two, 'twenty three. So any refinements to the portfolio would be small in nature. Second question was related to Global Print and Borders. No change in our position from prior calls that we have there.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

As a reminder, Global Print will generate about $165,000,000 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 that last question was for you.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, I'd say that portfolio, before I get to the last question, all parts of our business have to perform, and they have to contribute across the portfolio. And Global Print and Reuters News are no different than any other part of the portfolio. And as Mike said, we don't envisage any significant divestitures, but the bar is high, as you'd expect it to be true. In terms of a potential recession leading to an acceleration and and a structural change in terms of the adoption of AI and particularly AgenTiC? The answer to that, Drew, is we do not see that yet.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

But certainly, if we look back through all of our careers, it's been in the sort of the moments of economic stress that things have changed the fastest. We're certainly looking at that and making sure that our product roadmaps and our sales pitches really bring to life the efficiency based ROI of our tools such that if we start to see that accelerated structural change, we'll be well positioned. But I think at the moment it's too early to call.

Drew McReynolds
Drew McReynolds
Managing Director - Global Research, Telecommunications & Media at RBC Capital Markets

Okay, thank you.

Operator

We'll go next to Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan.

Andrew Steinerman
Andrew Steinerman
Equity Research Analyst - Business & Info Services at JP Morgan

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 second quarter?

Andrew Steinerman
Andrew Steinerman
Equity Research Analyst - Business & Info Services at JP Morgan

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?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Andrew, I'll start on your first question. 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 regards between 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, Q1 together, 42%, thirty six %.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

If you balance those out, it's roughly 39%, which is consistent with our full year. So that's how I would look at it. Focus on the full year, there's going to be some variation by quarter, especially with the impact of our tax and 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
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

And then Andrew, with regard to the adoption of our tools in the in house legal environment, as you know, this is 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 legal department. Having said that, we are seeing healthy adoption of co counsel and good demand for co counsel, 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.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

And we like the look of those trends and we're supporting that with some pretty big investments in customer success, which is not entirely new to us as a company, but certainly Prabhu Ramanathan who runs Legal and Laura Clayton McDonald who runs Corporates. Raghu came from SAP and Laura from ServiceNow, as you know. They've really bought that DNA with them and have been very forceful in terms of getting those customer success investments up and running and having impact within the customer base.

Andrew Steinerman
Andrew Steinerman
Equity Research Analyst - Business & Info Services at JP Morgan

Makes sense. Thank you.

Operator

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

Jason Haas
Jason Haas
Director & Senior Equity Research Analyst - Business & Information Services at Wells Fargo

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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

As a reminder, Jason, for 2026, we had committed for Legal 8% to 9% organic growth corporates 9% to 11% in 2026 and tax and accounting professionals eleven percent 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
Jason Haas
Director & Senior Equity Research Analyst - Business & Information Services at Wells Fargo

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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

There's a 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 eighteen 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?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Possibly. But I do not have any visibility on specific timing that I could share today. We'll keep you updated.

Jason Haas
Jason Haas
Director & Senior Equity Research Analyst - Business & Information Services at Wells Fargo

Great. Thank you.

Operator

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

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yes.

Douglas Arthur
Managing Director at Huber Research Partners

Mike, can you take me, take us through the, organic dynamics of legal in the first quarter? Not so much organic because that obviously was very strong, but the divestiture looks to be about 11% impact. Is that likely to linger for a couple of quarters until you annualize? It was a little larger than I expected.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Sure. Make sure I address each of the points there, Doug. For legal professional, it was 8% organic growth, which was the high watermark, as I mentioned in the prepared remarks. Let me take the fine law divestiture there. Did that provide a tailwind?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Yes. But it was fully offset, Doug, by headwind from the recent product sunsets that I mentioned last quarter. So for clarity, fine law 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 second quarter, do we expect that 8% to continue?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

We do. And we expect it to continue for the full year 2025, Doug.

Douglas Arthur
Managing Director at Huber Research Partners

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

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Yes, that would be a reasonable directional estimate, Doug, for the remainder of the year, given that that divestiture closed in December of twenty '20 That's a reasonable estimate, Doug. Okay. Helpful. Thank you. Indeed.

Operator

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

George Tong
George Tong
Sr. Research Analyst - Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Hi, thanks. Good morning. You're seeing good adoption of Gen AI products across the business. Can you broadly talk about your strategy of Gen AI monetization if you're deploying different strategies across different segments or experimenting with different monetization strategies?

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah, 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 is 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.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

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
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Think that's Got it. The only thing I'd add to this is as best we can, price to value. And that is to the extent that the tools are driving a reduction in hours to perform specific tasks or a reduction in hours over the course of a week for a professional, we try as best we can to sort of match that pricing up to that value. It's still pretty early days to sort of get an accurate read on that, but we're monitoring it closely And I think it built in enough flexibility that we can move things around as we see the impact improve.

George Tong
George Tong
Sr. Research Analyst - Equity Research at Goldman Sachs

Makes sense. And then for my follow-up, I wanted to focus on the tax and 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 and accounting to surpass all the other segments in growth?

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Yeah. So, look, it's a sort of combination of a couple of things, George. I think the most important is something we've talked about a little bit, which is a pretty chronic talent shortage across the tax and accounting and audit industries, coupled with continual increases in the complexity of returns and the complexity of audits both in The United States and in Brazil, which is where our two biggest business. So when you put those two things together, we've got a highly diversified and robust customer base who have a talent shortage problem. And the technology needs to and must step into that void over the next couple of years.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

So that's driving, I think, the underlying demand. In addition to that, we have invested heavily in this business over the last couple of years and I'll give you a couple of examples. First and foremost, we've invested in the sort of underlying health and stability of the product and the support. A number of years ago we had a few outages and we had some issues. We have invested heavily to sort of get ourselves into a very strong position as it pertains to serving our valued customers.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

The second is we've made a number of highly targeted acquisitions, jaw prep and safe sand and bacteria amongst others, well as some much smaller bolt ons in Brazil. And those have been, I think, and every one of them have added to both the product set and the roadmap going forward. And on top of that, we have what we think is an exciting roadmap in terms of ready to review and ready to advise going forward, which we think will take the industry into new territory in terms of efficiency. So that's what's driving both our recent performance and our optimism going forward, and it's really over to us to execute that roadmap and deliver against it. Very helpful.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Thank you.

Operator

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

Joshua Dennerlein
Joshua Dennerlein
Head of Business & Information Services equity research at Bank of America

Yes. Hey, guys. Thanks for the time. I just wanted to go back to Slide nine. That product growing 10% or more segment, is there do you have any color on how long like once product starts growing 10%, how long it typically stays in there?

Joshua Dennerlein
Joshua Dennerlein
Head of Business & Information Services equity research at Bank of America

I'm very focused on like duration of growth.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

Yes, it certainly is going to vary, Josh, with it. If you look at these products that have been with, if you go back to Vince's question, I think it was Vince who asked for additional color in regards to maturity longevity there. If you look at Practical Law, for example, Practical Law within our corporate segment, we acquired it in 2013. It continues to grow in excess of 10%, would be a great example. If you look at our direct tax business that we part of OneSource that we've had for many years, decades, that is growing more than 10%.

Michael Eastwood
Michael Eastwood
CFO at Thomson Reuters

I mentioned indirect tax, our portion of OneSource there. I'm just giving you a few examples. Domenio, we acquired in 2014, continues to be a very high growth now, a 20% plus CAGR for 11. That's just a few examples, Josh, of products that have been with us over a decade.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Okay, I appreciate that color. Josh, I'd add just to that. I think my read is that these sort of growth trends are on the more durable side relative to that which you monitor and follow elsewhere. And I talked about the talent shortage in tax and accounting. That is not something that's going to disappear quickly.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

I think the broader transformation in legal, both on the in house counsel side of the law firm, the court systems, the judiciary, so forth, I think that's going to be a multi year or even decades long kind of transition. So, we feel like these trends are durable. And I'll come back to my point to the earlier question, is it's up to us to execute. I think the early signs on execution are giving us pause for some optimism, but we've got the work ahead of us.

Joshua Dennerlein
Joshua Dennerlein
Head of Business & Information Services equity research at Bank of America

Awesome.

Joshua Dennerlein
Joshua Dennerlein
Head of Business & Information Services equity research at Bank of America

I'll leave it there. Thanks guys.

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Thanks, Josh. Good to hear from you.

Gary Bisbee
Gary Bisbee
Head of Investor Relations at Thomson Reuters

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

Steve Hasker
Steve Hasker
President & CEO at Thomson Reuters

Thanks, Ruth.

Operator

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

Executives
    • Gary Bisbee
      Gary Bisbee
      Head of Investor Relations
    • Steve Hasker
      Steve Hasker
      President & CEO
    • Michael Eastwood
      Michael Eastwood
      CFO
Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • Thomson Reuters delivered 6% organic revenue growth in Q1, with its “Big Three” segments up 9%, margins boosted by healthy flow-through and expense timing, and reaffirmed full-year 2025 outlook of 7–7.5% organic growth and a margin increase of 75 bps to ~39%.
  • The company is accelerating its AI innovation with launches of CoCounsel Tax, Audit & Accounting (powered by the Materia acquisition) and CoCounsel chat in Westlaw and Practical Law, aiming to integrate expert-guided workflows across its legal and tax offerings.
  • Since 2019, the share of revenue from products growing at double-digit rates has risen from 11% to 25%, driven by targeted resource allocation, increased AI-focused investment, and portfolio optimization through strategic acquisitions and divestitures.
  • In Q1, Thomson Reuters completed the acquisition of SafeSend for $600 million, raised its annual dividend by 10% to $2.38 per share, and highlighted $10 billion of capital capacity through 2027 for further opportunistic M&A.
  • With over 80% recurring revenues, 12% transactional revenues (half repeat), $277 million in Q1 free cash flow, net leverage of 0.6x, and diversified contracts, management emphasized the resilience of its business model in varied economic environments.
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Earnings Conference Call
Thomson Reuters Q1 2025
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