Informa H1 2025 Earnings Report

Informa EPS Results

• Actual EPS: GBX 30.10
• Consensus EPS: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• One Year Ago EPS: N/A

Informa Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: N/A
• Expected Revenue: N/A
• Beat/Miss: N/A
• YoY Revenue Growth: N/A

Informa Announcement Details

• Quarter: H1 2025
• Date: 7/23/2025
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Wednesday, July 23, 2025
• Conference Call Time: 4:00AM ET

Our events, digital products and academic research services connect specialists with knowledge, helping them learn more, know more and do more. We do this in dozens of specialist markets and subject matter categories, including in Healthcare & Pharma, Technology, Finance, Education, Marketing, Health & Nutrition, Foodservice, and many more. And we do this through a range of products and services, including major live events, specialist media and content, expert research articles, books and open research platforms, accredited training, buyer discovery services, and digital demand and lead-generation services. Learn more at Informa (LON:INF).com

Informa H1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Positive Sentiment: Informa reported an underlying like-for-like revenue increase of 8%, profit growth slightly ahead, net debt reduction to 2.5× EBITDA, and achieved its eighteenth consecutive growth quarter with an interim £25 million dividend in line with profits.
• Positive Sentiment: The group raised full-year revenue guidance from 5% to 6%± and expanded its share buyback program by a further £150 million, supported by strong cash conversion and forward visibility.
• Positive Sentiment: B2B events revenue grew just over 8% in H1, powered by marquee brands delivering double-digit growth, enhanced yield management, new exhibitor and attendee pricing, and solid 2026 forward bookings.
• Positive Sentiment: Taylor & Francis posted 12% H1 growth, including a £15 million non-recurring data licensing deal, while underlying subscription revenue rose ~3–4% and Open Research showed double-digit expansion.
• Neutral Sentiment: TechTarget integration is ahead of plan on cost synergies but trailing on revenue synergies in its first year, with management targeting stabilization by end-2025 and growth resumption in 2026.

Presentation

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Okay. We'll get started shall we? Well, very nice to see everybody. Thanks very much. For those who've joined in person, thanks for finding the time.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

I know this is a busy time of year for half year results presentations And for the few 100 people we've got on the webcast, I'm going to try and stay glued to this podium not because I'm feeling nervous, but because I've been told it's easier for my friend the camera man at the back there. So let's see. Is this working? Yes. Back one, back one, back one, back one.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Okay. So welcome to our half year results. It's that time of year 2025. We're halfway through the year, but past halfway through the year. A good number of you may well have seen a release.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So I'll try and make this reasonably quick and to the point and then we can get to Q and A. Here's a simple summary. The way I think to look at this is the top line numbers tell you some slightly different things from the bottom line numbers. So the top line numbers give you a sense of our reported performance in revenue and profit and earnings and cash. So therefore, looking at the absolute company, how have we done in the first six months?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And obviously that includes the businesses that we added to the portfolio last year. And what do the headlines say beyond the obvious, which is growth, growth, growth and growth is that the businesses that added that were added to the company have generally landed well. The brands that came into the portfolio have generally landed well and that the underlying growth in the overall group is strong. Below that you see the more like for like sales comparisons underlying revenue growth. And on like for like sales you see us delivering 8% growth in revenue slightly better in our profits.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We've confirmed the first payment, the interim payment for the 25,000,000 dividend in line with our profit growth. And you see our debt, which went up a bit last year because of the acquisitions we did, come down to about 2.5 times, so touching the range. So I would say on any measure and it's clearly unbiased, I'm selling my own book here or our own book. These are very good numbers. And they're very good numbers on good numbers.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

I think I'm correct in saying this is pretty close to our eighteenth quarter of consecutive growth since the depths of COVID. And that speaks I think to the fundamental strengths in the portfolio and in the business. And on that point, that's really where I thought I'd start today, which is to come out of Informa and just look at the markets in which we work in, categories that we're in, specialist knowledge and live events. Both of those categories are demonstrating some fundamental strengths from which we are benefiting. We are benefiting on top of that, which you can see in our performance numbers, I think because of our geographic spread, because of our brands, because of the categories and the subject areas we've chosen.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So there are some conscious choices, which are allowing us to over deliver on performance. But the neighborhoods that we've chosen to operate in, live and specialist knowledge, really are very strong. In a world of supercomputing capability, data analytics and increasing artificial intelligence and artificial capability intelligence, specialist information, verified specialist information, authentic specialist information is becoming more valuable, not less valuable. Similarly, in a world of remote working, growing populations, much travel, digitization, workplace technology, live is becoming more valuable, whether it's in music or in sports or indeed in B2B events. I was looking for a comp.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And the best comp I could find was the COP events, for those of you who follow the journey of the world on coming to agreements, intergovernmental agreements that will make for a better world that we all live in today and hopefully tomorrow. The first COP was in Berlin. And the attendance of the first COP, which I think was in 1998, were 4,000 attendees. The last COP was in Dubai, where the attendees were 120,000. The growth of live events, whether it's commercial events, consumer events, intergovernmental events, been exponential over the period, and we are seeing that in our portfolio.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And it's one of the reasons why we chose to invest a significant amount of our capital and shareholders' capital in those two markets. How does that look in absolute numbers in the first half of the year? Our group underlying revenues just below 8%. Our B2B events business just over 8%. And actually, our academic business touching 12% combination of an underlying growth in the fundamental long standing business and the kind of reasonably predictable drumbeat of data licensing agreements, which in and of themselves individually don't necessarily recur and repeat.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

But we're now in, I think, our third year of finding them in the year, but they're non individually recurring. The right hand side of the slide gives you a sense of the shape of the company, the scale of Informa Markets, the specialisms that are Connect and festivals and what that means for the scale of our B2B event portfolio, the size of Taylor and Francis, the academic business proportionately and then the arrival of TechTarget into the portfolio. Two things to pick out on this slide, Slide five. In addition to the absolute numbers, you will see therefore that we have upped our guidance for the year from 5% growth to 6% plusminus growth. You can that's partly on the back of what we've delivered already in the first half of the year.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

It's also partly on the back of what we can see with confidence in forward visibility. Secondly, we've increased the buyback. We've been running a share buyback program since the beginning of the year. We're going to repeat that into the back end of the year with another £150,000,000 of our excess capital applied to buying back our shares through to the year end 2025. And then finally, the confirmation of the dividend.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

How are the brands doing inside the portfolio? The market, as we've said before, is migrating towards scale. The major brand, the signature brand, the primary brand doesn't necessarily need to be the number one brand as in the single biggest, although size does help. We think of brands in categories, marquee brands, power brands. And the growth rates in those larger brands, those more signature brands is generally higher.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And now you don't very few brands get born at that scale. So you have to kind of start somewhere and then grow into it and we have some examples of that. But across that scale side of our B2B portfolio, you really are seeing hyper growth, double digit growth and beyond in some instances. Geographically, in most locations, we're growing comfortably ahead of GDP growth rates. And in some locations, we really are doing extremely strongly, of which probably the most notable for us has been EMEA, which for those of us who've been around the company for a longer time is really where the story of our adventure in the B2B event tradeshow market really started.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

That was where the kernel of Informa's historical tradeshow business came from. I think we are on track. I think I'm correct in saying that we're pretty close to being on track next year if the joint venture that we are currently piecing together with our partners at DWTC in Dubai UAE comes together. In that region, we may end up with more revenue out of that region than we had as a company when I joined the Board of Informa. It really has proven to be a powerhouse market both for the world and also for our own business.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So the geographic spread has really helped us. We've become an international business. America is by far and away our largest market or The Americas geographically is by far and away our largest market. EMEA, I've touched on. Europe remains strong, large brands.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

ASEAN, smaller market, but very high growth and very dynamic markets and some countries and locations within there, which are growing extremely strongly. Hong Kong, we look at differently from Mainland China for obvious reasons. And the Chinese market, whilst we would say it's below our tracking average growth rate, it's still circa 5% growth, which will serve our overall performance very well. Coming out of geographies and into categories, our category choices are serving as well Healthcare, Food, Pharma and Finance being the kind of example high performers, but others too. And we are doubling down on these markets.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

In most of them, we have significant market access, relationships with key customers. Our data is strong. Our understanding of the market trends and therefore our ability to be able to shape and create products that serve that market is doing well. So what's allowing us to build growth on top of simple GDP growth is a mixture of things. We are pricing for value much more forensically than we used to.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We are focusing on improving our market penetration, absolute share of activity by sector, by industry, by customer grouping. We're very focused on using our geographic spread to expand, syndicate, distribute and further extend our larger brands into multiple markets. In a good number of markets, there's supply coming on and that increase of supply in most of those locations we can fill. Now not all square meters are born equal. There's a range, a price range depending upon where you are in the world and indeed where you are at a very prosaic level in the hall or in the show.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

But nevertheless that net is a capacity gain for the overall market. And in the major high growth cities like Dubai, Riyadh, Bangkok and Jakarta, we have a high degree of confidence that more capacity is just more sales as opposed to more capacity ends up diluting your pricing capability. We're experimenting on attendee value as well as exhibitor value. Traditionally in trade shows, the revenues came from exhibitors rather than from attendees. So we're experimenting on that actually with quite some success around straightforward attendee pricing, hosted buyers, specialist content, some product specification for some customers, major exhibitors.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And then on top of that, you've got additional services you can wrap around the activity, whether that be straightforward product directories or some slightly more sophisticated content marketing or lead gen work. Each of those allows us to build value into the proposition for our captured participating customers. In academic, as I said, the underlying growth there tracking to 3% to 4%, so in line with our guidance. The absolute performance is stronger, function of that consistent underlying growth and the recurring at a generic level data licensing agreements, but not necessarily at a specific level. Our renewals in the subscription business have remained remarkably strong.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

They've become more individualistic. We have many now dozens of individual transition agreements. Some of them are still straightforward pay to read. Some of them are hybrid. Some of them are a complete mix.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Some of them are very bespoke. But nevertheless, the role of that as a provision and service mechanism within that market remains. Alongside that, the Open Research business is growing at pace both in absolute submissions in and in number of dedicated open journals or hybrid journals and in the value that you can deliver to your researcher audience. And then on top of that, you have the data licensing agreement. We're targeting increased growth in line with our guidance through to the end of the year.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We see confidence in our forward bookings on Open Research and we see continuing demand for further licensing arrangements. On forward visibility and predictability, this is an area where we've really tried to focus the business on what you might call quality of revenue, what can we see, what can we predict, what can we recur. And we have high confidence and high visibility through to the end of 2025 and indeed into 2026. And comparatively, if you look at that level of visibility and level of revenue quality 2025 on 2024 or 2024 on 2023, it's again progressively improving. And that I think speaks to the stability in the market as well as the value of the market.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Come inside the company a little bit. We've been very focused. We did a few acquisitions when we came out of COVID, take advantage of the fact that we had some available funds because of the transaction we did with Informa Intelligence to further scale our position in B2B. Since then, we've been focused on integration, execution, development and improving some of the foundation operational foundation layers with inside Informa. And this is a program being led by my colleague Alex Roth working in conjunction with Joel Dugan, who runs our marketing and Jeremy Davis, runs our technology operations and Iain Branch, who runs our service delivery for our customers.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

In all of those areas, in marketing, in technology and in service support, there is we would say, constantly there is room for improvement. And actually that's not a bad thing. We'd rather it was perfect today. But the advantage of having room for improvement is it can get better for our customers. And as it gets better for our customers, we can be more effective.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We can deliver better services. We can make the event experience more frictionless and that will enable us to be an overall higher quality experience, a superior performer and have a unique platform, which only we and we alone can benefit from. The balance sheet is in good repair. We're concentrating on our capital allocation in a pretty rigorous way. We've done a progressively good job or Gareth and the team have done a progressively good job on absolute free cash flow, cash conversion and then what do we do with that cash.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We have a progressive dividend policy. You see that again demonstrated today. We have available funds for inorganic investment, although that's not been a priority for 2025. We have added share buybacks as a recurring part of our capital allocation approach alongside dividends and that I think has served us very well. If you look at the effective average buying rate of our shares over the last six months, it's really been very efficient.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And that's part of the reason why we've committed a further £150,000,000 to this year's buyback program. Our debt structure is very comfortable and competitively priced and we are now back within the range of our targeted leverage. So we feel good about where the company is from a financial perspective. This is the group as it is. The B2B events business, markets, the scale trade show and international business Connect, our content rich business and festivals, our experience led business, our newest business and having its kind of first full year in the sun.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Our second biggest business Academic Markets fundamentally strong has made the transition to being a significant player in open, is focusing on developing further capability of the corporate market and is experimenting in the embedded value in our data, in our content data and what that means in a world of AI. And then our newest business Informa TechTarget in a formation year, the foundation year, there's work going on in that business, a lot of work going on in that business to create a single entity to have a go to market structure that enables to take the three, four, five product service offerings for Enterprise Technology customers to market in an efficient way. That's meaning some product configurations and technology configuration and some work on customer service delivery. We're ahead of our target on cost synergy. We're behind our target on revenue delivery.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

For the former, we feel good. For the latter, some of that is the external market. Some of that I think is some distraction around the creation of the company. Some of that is some technical issues. But all of that gives us confidence that there's an opportunity for us to see that level out at the back end of 2025 and get back into growth in 2026.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So as we look into 2026, we see a strong position for the group as a whole. We've tried to invite more people inside the company and in particular the B2B business in 2025 by opening up capital market events or shareholder engagement. We've done two already. We had a good number of people who attended Super Return and then a larger number of people who attended Cannes Lion in June. The next one off the calendar is the Dubai Air Show where we will actually formally run a Capital Markets Day where those who attend I think we've got about forty, forty five plus registrations.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So if anyone is interested please who hasn't registered please do. The actual event itself, Dubai Air Show is a really outstanding showcase. It is the most significant commercial transaction air show in the kind of calendar portfolio. It's a great time of year to be in that part of the world. We have a major market presence in that part of the world and we'll be really very significantly further down the path in our partnership joint venture with the city of Dubai.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And so it will be a good time to join us at the Dubai Air Show and then to see out the year who doesn't want to be in Paris for some Christmas shopping in December. And along the way, you can come to our fantastic food show. So hopefully, that's allowing more people to get a sense of actually what we do, how we do and what it means for very different end markets: private capital, global creativity, advertising and media, aviation and food and food ingredients. These are all very, very different markets, specialist markets. And if you've had a chance to see all four of them, you get a very clear sense of why we believe the fundamental category truth of where the Informa company is operating is strong.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Live Events and Specialist Knowledge, these are very powerful places to be. We have built a very strong geographic and sectoral position, and we're really pleased with the way the company has performed to date. We'll now turn it over to questions. I think there are mics.

[William Larwood, Equity Research Analyst - Technology and Media at Berenberg]

For the presentation Will Loward from Berenberg. Just firstly on Taylor and Francis. Obviously, you reported sort of good visibility into 2026 and renewal cycles to subscription. But what are you hearing in terms of any changes in behavior? Obviously, spoke about those transformative agreements.

[William Larwood, Equity Research Analyst - Technology and Media at Berenberg]

A little bit more detail would be helpful there. And then just into the B2B Events division, just if you could share some color on the margin for the remainder of the year. I think consensus has got sort of 27.5% for that division. So and obviously you delivered 30% in H1. So just a little bit more color there would be helpful.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Sorry. I don't want to be a poor person's politician to answer your question with a question. But when you say change of circumstance on your first question, what exactly are you saying?

[William Larwood, Equity Research Analyst - Technology and Media at Berenberg]

I'm referring to the NIH cuts.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Just any cuts? Let me take the first one then if I understand it. And then maybe Gareth you might want to come in on the B2B margin and margin more generally.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

Yes.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Okay.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

I mean the short answer is it's a fact. But for our business it's maybe less of a potential fact than one might imagine from the outside. I mean if you look at our academic business overall round numbers it's about $900,000,000 turnover business. Probably about one third of that is U. S.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Revenue, so maybe 300,000,000 $350,000,000 Of that $350,000,000 maybe less than half of that is journals or what we would call academic research. Of that maybe less than half of that half is maybe only one third of that half is medical or STM, which is where the NIH cuts are really going to bite because our business pivots more towards humanities. And of that, we think maybe less than 5% is direct government funding. So I'm not saying it's not relevant, but proportionally for us it's less relevant partly because of where government funding directly goes. Now the truth of the matter is people generally don't know and I would say we don't actually know as accurately as maybe we should whether or not any research money that gets gathered sort of a bit like raising capital anywhere, you get $1 here and that then enables you to raise another $4 if you know what I mean.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So will the corresponding fundraising go down or go up? And that's really unknown. So if the NIH cuts and other similar funding really continues to go down, will there be less money available from other sources? I have a view on that, which is if you look at the input supply in academic, the input supply is up. The world doesn't want any less knowledge.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We're not seeing any decline in submission volumes. We're not seeing any decline in alternatively funded research activity. We're not seeing any decline in new subject area expansion. And there's no lack of curiosity around the world for further research in new areas. So I think there's a specific issue which is it's a fact, but it's not a major fact for us partly because of the mix of our business.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And I think it's entirely possible that there might be alternative sources of funding that get sourced because the underlying demand remains strong. That's kind of how we think about it. Does that answer your question? Margin? Gareth?

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

Yes. On margins, you've seen a tick up in the margin in the 2025 compared to the first half of twenty twenty four. It's gone up about 80 basis points year on year. This really reflects primarily the trading performance and operating leverage of the business in terms of the growth year on year. And in terms of kind of the outlook for the full year, we'd say what we've delivered in the first half will be broadly comparable into the second half.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

So we think we can maintain that level of trading and therefore that level of operating leverage drop through into the full year operating profit margin for the group. Within that to the point of your question around B2B markets, I'd say it's consistent again that we think we can do in the second half or for the full year what we've done for the first half of B2B markets. But as I say that applies at a group level as well as just B2B markets.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Question three along here. You choose Kelly.

[Adam Berlin, Executive Director - European Media Equity Research at UBS Group]

Hi. Good morning. It's Adam Berlin from UBS. I've got a few questions if I can. I suppose my first question is can you make a comment on why Europe is so strong at the moment?

[Adam Berlin, Executive Director - European Media Equity Research at UBS Group]

You said over 10% plus growth and growing much faster than The Americas. Just interested to know what the dynamics are there why that's happening? Secondly in the note this morning you talked about bookings for 2026 being up 15% year on year. Is that because of the acquisitions? Or is that a like for like number?

[Adam Berlin, Executive Director - European Media Equity Research at UBS Group]

I mean are we seeing that level of like for like growth in 2026 bookings? Because that would be really interesting if that were true. And I'll just pick one more. Yes. How much of the 8.5% growth in B2B events in H1 would you say is price?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Should we tag team on this? Where would you like to start? Let me deal with Europe and then maybe you come in on bookings and the 8,500,000 and then On I might add a Europe, it's a function of size as in the size of the events. It's not Europe. I mean, we don't really have unlike in North America or Southeast Asia or EMEA or China, we don't have a what's the word?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

I don't want to say long tail, but we don't have a distributed portfolio of events. We have major brands that trade in the European geography. Those major brands are doing disproportionately well to the point that we made in the presentation. So therefore, it's more of a brand point that happens in Europe rather than a European point if that makes sense. And indeed there are as you know very well Adam, there are two or three categories in a good way where the event that happens in Europe has actually become the global event for our sector.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And one of what is now ours, CanLINE is a good example of that And one of which actually used to be ours but isn't anymore Mobile World Congress is an example of that. The event happens in Europe. It's really a global event that happens to be located in Europe. I would say super return falls into that category. So hence our European numbers look very strong. That's really what's driving Europe. Raju?

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

On the pricevolume question, I think if you just kind of come up a level from just pure pricevolume because I'll answer the question. But I think it's important that we don't just look at it in that sort of black and white way. As outlined on slide 10, there's lots of different areas where we're pushing for revenue growth, new revenue sources, revenue expansion, trying new things in terms of revenue and then rolling them out across the B2B markets more widely. So yes, get pricevolume is the left hand side of that sort of six column chart, but there's a lot also to go for. So I want to make sure that we're not just thinking it purely in terms of those levels.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

But definitely price and volume are opportunities for us. We continue to we have centralized pricing to a much greater extent than it was a couple of years ago and that's paid dividends and it continues to pay dividends. And also volume growth kind of organically in the existing businesses through expansion, through launches is also helping. But if you want to kind of headline on, so I'd probably say it's kind of sixty-forty, 60% sort of yield and sort of 40% volume. But as I say there's quite a lot more in the mix and more to go for going forward I think crucially than just that pure sort of price volume point.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

In terms of the revenue visibility, yes you're right that's an absolute number. It's not a like for like number. So it does benefit from the increasing scale of the group. Really what we were trying to say there is even at the halfway point of 2025, we're getting good visibility into 2026, getting good re books at shows as they run and beginning to build up that volume of 2026 revenue. So alongside the £3,000,000,000 plus number for 2025, we're beginning to get some confidence around 2026.

[Adam Berlin, Executive Director - European Media Equity Research at UBS Group]

Do you know what the like for like number would be for bookings for 2020?

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

It'd be up. It'd it's certainly growing. But at this stage it's quite early to be kind of giving like for like comparisons or reading too much into that. I think the key message is there are £05,000,000,000 worth of revenues booked for next year already.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Okay. This is the questioning row.

[George Webb, Equity Research Analyst - Technology - Software, IT Services, Information Services at Morgan Stanley]

Good morning, Stephen. Good Gareth. It's George Webb at Morgan Stanley. I've got two questions please. Firstly, Stephen, I think we've discussed in the past the theory that supply chain disruption isn't necessarily a bad thing for Informa.

[George Webb, Equity Research Analyst - Technology - Software, IT Services, Information Services at Morgan Stanley]

Maybe even it could be a good thing as companies need to stay closer to their suppliers and customers. From what you've seen in the first half this year with tariffs and everything have you seen that now? Are you confident enough to say that's a real thing maybe not just a theory? That's the first question. Then secondly on Taylor and Francis with regards to the data licensing agreements.

[George Webb, Equity Research Analyst - Technology - Software, IT Services, Information Services at Morgan Stanley]

One obviously signed during the first five months. So you mentioned that the AGM updates. Can you add any color around what the nature of that deal was? Was it with a new or an existing LLM partner that you'd already signed with? Was it a traditional book backlist content deal?

[George Webb, Equity Research Analyst - Technology - Software, IT Services, Information Services at Morgan Stanley]

Was it slightly different? And kind of what does that pipeline look like? Thank you.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Sure. I'll take the first one. Do you want to comment on the second? Trade disruption, I like the way you frame it. I don't know if we've got I'm never really entirely comfortable using our business as a sort of prognosticator for what's happening in the global world either way actually which rather suits our argument because as you and I have discussed many times the great strength of our business is we operate in the niche. We don't really operate in the macro. We're not oblivious to the macro, but we don't we're not buffeted by it in the way that I think many people often believe we kind of should be or would be.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

What we have not seen is any decline in attendance, any decline in participation, any decline in exhibitor numbers, any decline in forward booking, any decline in rebooking, any decline in forward commitments. So there is a significant amount of trade disruption and we haven't seen that. In fact what we've seen is growth. I'm not sure how I draw a kind of causal connection between those two to convert a theory into reality. But I think it speaks it exemplifies the fundamental truth of the trade show value proposition, which is for another typical customer, you can spend with us pick a number $20,000 $70,000 You might then double that to do build.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

You might spend a bit more to do customer entertainment. Customer, you might spend a bit more to do a product launch. You might spend a bit more to do some marketing. But the value return for you for that investment is extremely high, is extremely high. And if other ways of you getting to market are facing challenges that remains robust and actually has got a high return.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So I'm not sure it's a causal connection, but it puts a spotlight on the value proposition. That I think is. Having said all of that, at a macro level, the only thing I would say with some degree of I think certainty is that the geopolitical tension between The U. S. And China on tariffs is unhelpful for our business.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And would we rather our Chinese business was at 6%, 78% growth than 5% growth? For sure we would. And do we think there's some connection between those two? We do. But having said that, at our EMEA business.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Our EMEA business is in hyper growth. And why is that in part? Well, because the world is meeting there. And it so happens that we own probably seven of the major meeting brands in that part of the world. That's a big advantage.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

So quite how it all would trade off, I'm not sure I know enough to know. But when you add it all up, it looks pretty good right now. On data licensing?

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

Yes. On Taylor Francis, you're seeing half year growth circa 12% year on year. As we said within that the core is kind of 3% to 4% and that's important because we do want to secure the data licensing opportunities. We want to do that alongside progressive performance in the core business at the same time. So they're both kind of equally important to us.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

In terms of the maths, there's about a £15,000,000 incremental nonrecurring data licensing revenue number in that in the first half, which is what helps you get to that 12 growth overall. I think that will normalize out a bit as you go across the rest of the year. And I think consensus there for underlying for the full year is kind of about minus 1% minus 2% around there once you've taken out the or allowed for the comparative number in 2024 for those revenues. In terms of the nature of the contracts, there's not a lot we can say about the new 2025 contract. It's kind of fairly under wraps, both in terms of the customer and the deal we're doing.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

It's the nature of the deals in that space. They generally don't want us to talk about it because they want to exactly what they're doing is part of their competitive advantage around what they're trying to do. So kind of we respect that. But that's hopefully the shape of the numbers at least on our side are clear.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

But we can say it was a different customer. We can say that. That's true. Next question.

[Steve Liechti, Media Analyst at Numis Securities Ltd]

Yeah. Morning. Steve Isti from Deutsche Numis. I hear what you're saying on second half visibility, which sounds great. Can you just give us some more detail in terms of where the big SKUs are in events in the second half?

[Steve Liechti, Media Analyst at Numis Securities Ltd]

I know China clearly tends to be bigger and that's growing slower. So kind of what are the puts and takes there to get us to a sort of decent growth rate towards the sort of full year guidance there? That's the first question. Second question, just on TechTarget. I mean, we've talked about the cyclical issues in The U.

[Steve Liechti, Media Analyst at Numis Securities Ltd]

S. Enterprise tech market. Are there any structural issues that you're concerned about? I'm thinking of technology, AI and stuff like that, which might be disrupting that space that perhaps we haven't really focused in on or talked about currently? Is it an opportunity?

[Steve Liechti, Media Analyst at Numis Securities Ltd]

Just some color there please. And then can you just give us in academic a split in terms of I don't know revenue submissions whatever between subs and OA? Just to try and get the differential there if you can. Thanks. Well both if possible. I'll take whatever I can get.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Okay. Gareth do you want to come in on that? On TechTarget, I'll take that. And then your first question was what are the puts and takes in the back half of the year in B2B events beyond China? Yes, please.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

On your first question, I mean the back half of the year is I'm looking at Patrick here as I answer this is look it's important for the entire portfolio. It's particularly important for China because China doesn't really trade in the first half of the year. Equally there are significant brands in the markets portfolio that trade probably weighted more for Informa Connect than for Informa Markets if you look at back half to front half. And then there were some signature significant events in festivals not least the launch of Money twenty twenty in Riyadh in September, which is important for multiple reasons. A, because it's important B, because it was a big part of the acquisition case and C, because we are we're very keen to see that be a very successful launch for the market and the category because fintech is an important sector for the economy there.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And we're feeling very good about how that's going to trade. But there's no I mean that's the kind of mix. There's nothing I would particularly call out that we're concerned about. And as you can see from the forward visibility numbers we've given, we've got really quite a good window on most of how those are going to trade. On tech target, short answer, no.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

I don't think we're looking at the future thinking, oops, there's some structural change that we should worry about that we hadn't anticipated. Clearly, there's a big shift in audience volumes on search and that is relevant if you own a media portfolio. We own a media portfolio, 25 brands in that portfolio. So it's not like we're not in that market. We're firmly in that market.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We actually take the view that in specialist market this goes back to my opening point Steve around the value of specialist knowledge. In specialist markets, actually having primary relationships with your audience rather than intermediated relationship with your audience, I don't think it's a bad thing. It's a good thing, if you can do it at value which we can. The issues that our businesses are facing is a combination in order in our analysis of diversion of funds from product support, marketing support, sales support into AI investment or AI prioritization by the big enterprise technology players, some diminution of trading, end trading for many of the vendors and therefore they've got a keen eye on costs. And then to George's earlier question, just some inside The U.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

S. Macro disturbance. Then on top of that there were some local issues for us. It's a foundation year. There's always a bit of distraction when you put together four or five different businesses.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

And then specifically the lead gen business has had a tough time. And that has partly been a function of price and commoditization and that's not our route. We're not in that business to be a price business. We're in that business to be a value business. And do we think there is a sector for a high value lead gen product?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

We definitely do. And do we have the capability to serve that up? We definitely do. So we remain very comfortable with the decision we've made. Would we be more comfortable if it was a 5% plus growth than a revenue declining business?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

For sure we would. But as I said to the management team, look on the bright side, the comps will be easy for you for next year. On subs and OA, do you want to comment on that?

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

Yes. So if you look at the core business in Taylor and Francis that splits roughly sixty-forty, 60 what we call Research and Services and about 40% Advanced Learning. And within the 60% is Research and Services about onefour of that is OA and about threefour of that in the core Research and Service business.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Happy with that Steve?

[Steve Liechti, Media Analyst at Numis Securities Ltd]

I was hoping you could give me a growth rate relative between the two between the subs and

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

the Entirely, yes. And Open Research remains sort of double digit organic growth rate for that business Research Services kind of low single digit.

[Steve Liechti, Media Analyst at Numis Securities Ltd]

Okay. Thanks.

[Nick Dempsey, Director - Media Equity Research at Barclays Capital]

Yes. Hi. It's Nick Dempsey.

[Nick Dempsey, Director - Media Equity Research at Barclays Capital]

I've got two left please. So first of all within the good growth in B2B events, are you seeing a measurable benefit at this point from adding data to the offerings? Or is that really still something that's getting started? Is it moving the needle yet for your growth? And the second question regarding One Informa, guess we'll hear a bit more about that at the CMD in November.

[Nick Dempsey, Director - Media Equity Research at Barclays Capital]

But are we going to find that your plans require some incremental investment? Or is that all self funded so it won't lead to any NOx to margin in 2026?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

On the second question, it's fully funded in our guidance. So I mean we are making an investment, but it's fully funded in our guidance both on margin and as it flows through. So no you shouldn't see any knocks to guidance as a result of that. On data, I'm looking at Patrick at the end of the room. Do you want to come in on that Patrick?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Have we got another microphone that we could give Patrick? Are we seeing measurable benefits from our use of first party data and iris and customer understanding?

[Patrick Martell, Group COO & CEO - Informa Markets at Informa]

Yes. Think for sure you can hear me. As far as targeting audiences, it's providing us with significant benefit. And also so that's our ability to drive higher volume audiences and better quality audiences to our events. And also it's giving us much better opportunity for matchmaking both before during and after the event. So we're seeing real measurable benefits there.

[Nick Dempsey, Director - Media Equity Research at Barclays Capital]

So just a follow-up. In terms of actually people paying more for it as part of what they spend on their stand etcetera is that something that's measurable?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Well you can see that in the numbers. I mean, Paul I mean that was if you if I flip back to this slide, mean are we going to break it out in a price per customer or revenue line? No, we're not going to do that. But that's exactly what was behind this slide. I mean, one of the things that's fundamentally happening in this business is if you went back fifteen years ago, this was a space business.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

It was a media business. Buy space, sell it. Ideally buy it for a lower price than you sell it and then you make a margin. That was the model. Actually the model now is you buy the space and then you create something and then you create value. And from that value you price for it. That's yield. So it's not simply a matter of here's a kind of menu. Do you want to pay £5 for the milk and £10 for the steak? It's here's the total price.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Here's the total value proposition. That might include customer information. It might include specialist access. It might include data analytics. It might include in real time activity.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

It might include customized meeting scheduling or meeting management. We do various versions of that in multiple brands across the portfolio. And all of that leads to yield. And all of that allows you to price in a different way. And in that pricing you get growth ahead of GDP.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

But it's not a menu of prices, it's yield management. And fundamentally that's what's allowing us to build a superior platform in this market. That's a large part. To go back to your second question Nick of what one Informa is all about.

[Nick Dempsey, Director - Media Equity Research at Barclays Capital]

Thanks.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Any final questions in the room? Are there any questions online Richard?

[Richard Menzies-Gow, Director - IR, Corporate Communications & Brand at Informa]

Yes. I've got a couple actually. There's a couple of modeling questions to follow-up on, but a couple. One follow on on TNF. Just on can you give any sense on confidence in subs renewals just as you start to have conversations where are you on that?

[Richard Menzies-Gow, Director - IR, Corporate Communications & Brand at Informa]

Do you feel given everything going on it might be a more modest performance around that going into 2026? So just some commentary around that. And then a second question on the B2B events side, given the uncertainty around The Middle East, have you seen any impact on attendance at any of the events in that region?

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

Okay. I'll take the second. Do want to take the first?

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

Yes. I mean, I think I understand on the first one I understand where that question is coming from. There's quite a lot of noise at the moment particularly in The U. S. Space.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

The librarian community in particular is quite chatty and therefore you do get both news flow commentary etcetera around it. And so that I think is behind the question. In terms of numbers, no, we're not seeing anything at this stage that gives us a different view about the outlook. 2025 is basically sold in the research services subscription space. So that's kind of done.

[Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors at Informa]

And in terms of 2026, as I say, early days, but not seeing anything particularly that will cause us to talk about a different outcome from what we're seeing. But I'd say I appreciate where the question is coming from.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

On the second one, again short answer not at all. In fact our forward pacing and booking in Dubai, in Abu Dhabi, in Riyadh are all tracking at or ahead of both plan and guidance. And we have a slightly to go back to the earlier question from Steve, we have a significant portfolio of events that trade in the next six months sorry, in the next five months in 2025. And then in January and February, there's significant new capacity coming into the market, particularly in Dubai and in The UAE, which we are already in market selling. And we're seeing no lessening of demand, in fact quite the opposite.

[Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director at Informa]

There are no further questions in the room and I think no further questions online. I just thank everybody again for their attendance and to people on the webcast who took time to watch and listen. I hope you got something out of it. And for those of you who are having a summer break then have a good one. Thanks very much.

Participants

Executives

• Stephen Carter, Group CEO & Director
• Gareth Wright, Group Finance Director & Member of the Board of Directors
• Patrick Martell, Group COO & CEO - Informa Markets
• Richard Menzies-Gow, Director - IR, Corporate Communications & Brand

Analysts

• William Larwood, Equity Research Analyst - Technology and Media at Berenberg
• Adam Berlin, Executive Director - European Media Equity Research at UBS Group
• George Webb, Equity Research Analyst - Technology - Software, IT Services, Information Services at Morgan Stanley
• Steve Liechti, Media Analyst at Numis Securities Ltd
• Nick Dempsey, Director - Media Equity Research at Barclays Capital