Clarivate Plc

Hello, and welcome to the Clarivate Q1 2021 Earnings Release Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal your conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note, today's event is being recorded. And now I'd like to turn the call over to your host today, Mark Donahue. Mr. Donahue, please go ahead.

Thank you, Keith, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Clarivate First Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Jerry Stead, Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Richard Hanks, Chief Financial Officer, Mukta Ahmed, President, Science Group, Jeff Foy, President, IP Group, and Gordon Sampson, Head of APAC Strategy and Growth. All will be available to take your questions at the conclusion of the prepared remarks. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and webcast and is copyrighted property of Clarivate. Any rebroadcast of this information, in whole or in part, without prior written consent of Clarivate is prohibited. This morning, Clarivate issued a press release announcing our financial results for the period ended March 31, 2021. The release, as well as an accompanying supplemental presentation, is available in the investor relations section of the company's website, clarivate.com, under events and presentations. During our call, we may make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements of the business or developments in Clarivate's industry to differ materially from the anticipated results, performance achievements, or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results or performance can be found in Clarivate's files at the SEC and on the company's website. Our discussion will include non-GAAP measures or adjusted numbers, including adjusted revenue and adjusted EBITDA. Clarivate believes non-GAAP results are useful in order to enhance an understanding of our ongoing operating performance, but they are a supplement to and should not be considered in isolation from or substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP measures are available in earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website. After I prepare, Mark, we'll open the call to your questions. And with that, it's a pleasure to turn the call over to Jerry.

Thank you, Mark, and thanks to all of you for joining us this morning. We're off to a very, very good start in 2021. As expected, our organic revenue growth is improving following last year's challenges due to the pandemic. We're also benefiting from the many operational enhancements that we've been implementing across Clarivate and our acquired companies in the last two years. We reported adjusted revenue for the first quarter of $432 million, an increase of 75% on a constant currency basis, driven by the acquisitions of DRG and CPA Global. Adjusted organic revenue at constant currency grew 7%, with subscription revenue increasing 6% and transactional revenue up 10%. This represents our best organic growth quarter since going public two years ago. While we do expect some timing impacts on our quarterly organic revenue growth this year, our first quarter results demonstrate that we are absolutely on the pathway to achieving 6% to 8% organic growth exiting 2021. Adjusted EBITDA was $165 million, up 111%. And our adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 600 basis points, to 38% compared to last year's first quarter. Today, we issued a Form 8K and discussed in our earnings release the recent SEC position on accounting for warrants. The unfortunate timing of events made it impractical to finalize our full set of financial statements to meet our April 29th earnings date. We expect to issue our first quarter financial statements and file our Form 10Q by May 10th. which will show the non-cash impact of the SEC's position on warrants. Importantly, and very, very importantly, the changes have no impact on our quarterly revenues, adjusted EBITDA, or cash flow in this year's first quarter or in any prior period. I'm very proud of the significant progress our team has made on the many operational improvement initiatives that are underway or have been completed. For example, We're well ahead of our schedule to integrate DRG, which is now complete. We're running four months ahead of plan with the more complex CPA global integration. The accelerated progress has allowed us to capture cost synergies quicker and to get a jump start on mapping out revenue synergy opportunities as we begin to realize these sooner than originally expected. Our ability to accomplish such work following our move to a connected workplace whereby our colleagues are largely working remotely, gives me great confidence that we have the internal resources in place to continue to pursue small and large-scale M&A opportunities. Last year, we made the decision to permanently move a large percentage of our colleagues to a connected workplace following the success we experienced working in a virtual world. With this move comes cost savings but also environmental benefits that we have covered in our recently released sustainability report. Our connected workplace initiative has already led to the closing and downsizing of 35% of our global real estate footprint out of our total target reduction of 60%. Since opening our three global business centers, the commercial teams have been successfully moving customers to inside sales, Our goal is to migrate 80% of our customers that generate approximately 20% of our revenue into these three centers. This frees up our outside sales team to focus their attention on the larger customers who are the engine room for our future growth as we increase our penetration in those accounts. We're on target to move 20% of our revenues into these three centers by the end of the second quarter. The change to our commercial operations will make it easier to do business with us, drive better experiences, and help us delight our customers. By simplifying processes and approvals, we're even more efficient and quicker to respond to customer needs. At Clarivate, we're building a world-leading organization centered around our core purpose. That is, we believe human ingenuity can transform the world. Our essential products and services play a very big and very important role in helping our customers discover, protect, and commercialize innovation. The world's innovators need us like never before, and accelerating ideas and innovation is not just our opportunity, but it's our responsibility. We will meet this responsibility when we bring all of our resources, talent, and focus together as one clarivate. We recently launched, one quarter of eight, a critical shift in our strategy. We're transforming from being a collection of distinct market-leading products and services to becoming a key partner to our customers by delivering the critical data, insights, and workflow solutions coupled with deep, deep domain expertise that they need to drive their innovations and their businesses to help their customers with confidence. This new approach means we're changing from product-centric organization to a customer-centric organization, starting with our commercial approach. We will be industry-focused rather than product-focused and approach these industries from the outside in. We're now focusing our customer-facing activities on five global industries or customer segments. Life science and healthcare, professional services, academic and government, manufacturing and technology and consumer products. We look forward to sharing more information with you as we take the next step and building the world leading information services company serving these very attractive in markets. In 2020, we made great progress on improving how customers view us and we received actionable feedback. We exceeded our customer delight score in 2020. In two weeks, we will be launching our first Customer Delight survey of 2021. The survey is being sent to 50% of our customer contacts, which includes both end users and decision makers. As part of our progress towards one clarity, we are including all of our acquisitions in this survey for the very first time. Our Customer Delight goal for this year is 77. We're very much looking forward to sharing the results of this year's surveys with you and future earnings calls. Two weeks ago, we issued our first annual sustainability report. I'm very pleased with the work our entire team did. This was a significant undertaking, and our team produced an extensive report on our 2020 progress and our 2021 and future goals. In the report, you'll find information covering what we've done, what we are doing, and what we will do for our environment, government, governance, colleagues, and community. We hope you'll take the time to visit our website and read through the report. Sustainability is at the very center of our goals. We look forward to sharing that progress with you in the years ahead. Now, turning to our 2021 outlook, We're tightening our revenue and adjusted EBITDA guidance because of our strong start. Adjusted revenue guidance is now $1.79 billion to $1.84 billion. And adjusted EBITDA is now $790 million to $825 million. There's no change to adjusted pre-cash flow of $450 million to $500 million. Once we file our Form 10-Q for the first quarter, we will reissue our adjusted EPS guidance for 2021. I'll now turn the call over to Richard.

Thank you, Jerry. We are very pleased to see the economic recovery playing out as evidenced by our strong first quarter. I will review many of the key financial metrics that won't cover net income, earnings per share, debt ratios, or standalone adjusted EBITDA as I would normally do so as a result of the pending non-cash adjustments relating to the accounting for warrants, which, as Gerry mentioned earlier, has no impact on the operational performance of the company. For the first quarter of 2021, adjusted revenues were $432 million, an increase of $189 million, or 75% at constant currency, compared to last year's same period. Excluding TechStreet, which we divested in early November 2020, adjusted revenue increased 81% at constant currency. The drivers of the growth were last year's acquisitions of DRG and CPA Global and an increase in organic revenue partially offset by the TechStreet disposal. The foreign exchange impact on first quarter revenue was a positive 3.3% due to dollar weakness compared to last year's first quarter. And as Jerry mentioned, the strong start to the year has allowed us to bring up the low end of both our 2021 revenue outlook by $10 million and our adjusted EBITDA outlook by $5 million. Adjusted organic revenue growth was 7% at constant currency. Subscription revenue was $235 million, an increase of 19% at constant currency, driven by acquisitions and organic growth, partly offset by divested products. Organic subscription revenue growth was 6%, or $12 million at constant currency, due to a favorable subscription entry rate, pricing, and timing benefits from tighter operating procedures, enabling us to reduce overdue renewals by 85% compared to last year's first quarter. The subscription revenue renewal rate at the end of the first quarter was 93%, in line with the 93% for the prior year period, but importantly, we have renewed a larger percentage of the book at the end of this year's first quarter as compared to prior year. Transactional revenue was $84 million, an increase of 68% year-on-year at constant currency, primarily driven by acquisitions and organic growth. Organic transactional revenues increased by $6 million or 10% at constant currency due to strengthen our professional services businesses, including strong performances from DRG and an increase in trademark search volumes in CompuMark. We continue to see a nice recovery in this segment of our business following the impact from COVID last year. Reoccurring revenue, which is derived from the CPA global patent renewals business, was $112 million in the first quarter, with no figure for the comparative period. Subscription plus reoccurring revenue accounted for 80% of adjusted revenues in the first quarter, demonstrating our highly predictable revenue model. ACV growth at constant currency was 11% for the first quarter as compared to the same prior year period, which includes acquisitions. Excluding divestitures, ACV growth was up 16%, while on an ongoing basis, ACV increased by 6% period to period, consistent with the 6% growth in organic subscription revenue growth, all on a constant currency basis. Turning to the business segments, Organic revenue growth within the science group increased by 10% driven by new business, growth at DRG, which annualized into organic growth from March 2021, and tight operating procedures resulting in lower overdue renewals, which added to organic subscription revenue growth. The IP group organic revenue increased by 2% on a constant currency basis, primarily due to an increase in subscription revenue driven by content upgrades and better price realization, as well as growth in transactional revenue due to improved transactional volumes. Geographically, organic revenue growth was 7% at constant currency across each individual region, the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. This reflects nicely the balanced recovery of our businesses following the challenges in 2020. We delivered strong adjusted EBITDA growth in the first quarter, increasing by $87 million to $165 million, more than doubling as compared to the prior year period. This was driven by contributions from acquisitions and organic top line growth, strong margin flow through, and the benefit of the cost savings initiatives. Adjusted EBITDA margin improved by 600 basis points to 38% from the same period prior year. Per our 2021 outlook, we expect to see a sequential improvement in our margins throughout the year as we progress towards a 44% to 45% full-year margin for 2021. Cash taxes in the first quarter were $3 million compared to $5 million in the prior year period. Capital expenditures in the first quarter were $33 million an increase of $14 million over last year's first quarter, primarily due to the addition of DRG and CPA Global. For the first quarter, adjusted free cash flow was $163 million, an increase of $85 million, more than doubling as compared to the prior year period, driven by the strong operating results and an improvement in working capital. We ended the March 31st Q1 2021 period with $399 million in cash and cash equivalents, an increase of $141 million from the year end 2020. This was due to contributions from earnings and ever tighter working capital management. Our total debt is $3.5 billion and decreased by $7 million from year end 2020. With that, I'll now turn the call back to Jerry.

Thanks very much, Richard. Before we open up the line for questions, I want to thank all of our colleagues around the world who continue to go above and beyond every day. The COVID pandemic is still prevalent. We continue to monitor all of our colleagues and locations around the world. Our colleagues in India have been experiencing a strong resurgence of the virus and we're supporting them in all ways possible. We're now ready to take your questions. As a reminder, please limit yourself to one question and then return to the queue. Operator?

Yes, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To try your question, please press star then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble the roster. And the first question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

Hi, thanks. Good morning. Organic constant currency revenue growth. Hi, Jerry. Organic constant currency revenue growth accelerated to 7% in the quarter from 2.4% in 4Q. Can you elaborate on what drove the significant acceleration in growth and if there were any unusual one-time benefits to organic growth?

No, I'll be happy to. Great question, George. I'll start. Richard will pick up. As I said in my script, we're enjoying the results of an enormous amount of hard work across the board with our teams. When we went public two years ago, we had a ton of defects. Much of that's been fixed with more to come. We focused on cost savings and In fact, we've taken out almost $200 million from where we were at, including our acquisitions. So we got that, if you just go back and look, up significantly on the EBITDA standpoint. And that'll continue, as Richard said, as we go through 2021, closing at 44% to 45% total adjusted EBITDA in 2021. At the same time, we're rebuilding everything. Just a quick reminder, in early 2019 was the first time we put the teams, sales teams, together inside of the two businesses that Jeff and Votar do such a great job of leading. We also started in 2020 what I talked about in the move to inside Salesforce. With much more of that to come in the months and years ahead, we went after an enormous amount of things. We changed commission programs. We did an enormous amount of training. We refocused our field sales organization. We helped those not performing well to find positions elsewhere. And we've been working on pricing realization. So it's a combination of a lot of great work. And a lot of that process improvement is in place and will continue to be in 2021. Richard, just pick up on the piece. Was there any one time? Simple answer, please.

Yeah, nothing one time. We executed very well in the first quarter, particularly with subscription renewals and 93% renewal rate, but we renewed more of the book as compared to, as I said in my script last year. And transactional growth, you know, 10% in Q1 as compared to 6% in Q4 last year. So we're seeing sequential quarterly improvements in transactional volumes. And I think that bodes well for Q2 and Q3 and Q4 rest of the year.

I'd just add one more thing. It's so important that we do a good job of communicating this. As we flow through the year, it's important to look at our organic growth first half, second half. As I said in my script, we expect the high degree of confidence to exit with organic growth in the 68%, which will include our acquisitions in the fourth quarter and have a high degree of confidence of that happening. At the same time, as we look through first half, second half, we gave the guidance on our last call of about 48% revenue first half, 52% second half. So I just couldn't feel better about where we're at. The things we've laid out, we're executing. The things that we laid out in the two slides saying that they're actually available now on our website that says here's all the things we're going to do to become much more productive and and much better on the EBITDA and free cash flow standpoint. And then we said, here's all the things up to the right, which is how we're going to get the organic growth and total revenue. So I feel really good about it. Thanks for the question, George. Next question, please.

Yes, thank you. And that comes from Tony Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

Thanks so much. Wanted to ask about if you could give us an update on how fast DRG and CPA grew in the quarter last I know DRG was a little bit lighter last year, so I wanted to understand if it's making progress towards the low double-digit that you're expecting for this year and just how those are coming.

No, great question, Toni. Richard picked it up, separate DRG and also CPA. I'll just preface it with Toni, that the facts are it hit exactly where we expected it to, both of them, in Q1. only one month March of Q1, uh, uh, was included for organic growth with DRG, but just couldn't be happier with both Richard.

Yeah. We're in terms of, uh, the DRG acquisition end of February last year, we're, we're, we're frankly delighted, um, with the performance of the business in the first quarter, but more importantly, uh, the outlook for the rest of the year, uh, the market is growing at 12% per annum and, um, You know, our expectations are that we will grow at the, you know, double digit rates this year, which the company delivered in 2019 pre-acquisition. Obviously, there was some impacts from COVID last year, but the business is performing very well. And importantly, our optics into the rest of the year are favorable. In the case of CPA, performing in accordance with plan. As we have said in previous disclosures, this business will grow 67% per annum due to natural tailwinds from patent renewal book increases. And we're delighted with the integration of the business into Clarivate. We're ahead of plan on our cost savings program, and the business is tracking well. Thank you.

Thanks, Tony. Next question.

Sorry. Thank you. And that comes from Manifest NIAC from Barclays.

Good morning. Let me ask the first question a different way. You know, the 10% growth in science, you know, was clearly above what we thought and I think what you had guided us to. So, you know, maybe one time is not the right way to ask the question, but perhaps it's timing. And, you know, if you could just help us, you know, what the cadence for the growth in the next quarter should be. Otherwise, you know, like, I don't think we should be modeling 10% for the rest of the year. So maybe you can just help us there.

I'll start with that, and then I'll have Mukhtar pick up on it. Great question, and then Richard will close off on it. When I said that we would think about organic growth first half, second half, that's a great way to think about it. I'm delighted with what Mukhtar and team have done. And Mukhtar, just give him color, and then Richard will close it off, because it's a very appropriate question. Just as a reminder... We said we'd do 6% to 6.5% all in organic for all of 2021. We're a bit ahead of that. That's why we raised the guidance from the bottom a bit on revenue, but pick it up, please, Montero.

Yes, of course, Jerry. In summary, we've executed on all of our product plans a lot of precision around in a commercial focus and go to market. And those are the reasons why we've enjoyed the growth that we've reported today. And the bulk of that is in subscription and reoccurring revenue. And we very much expect that to continue.

Thanks. And Richard, close this off because it's a critical question.

Yes. As Jerry said, I think what's really important is the revenue profile. 48% H1, 52% H2. So I think that's what, in terms of the models, that's what you should be using. And in terms of subscription revenues, firstly, definitely great execution in the first quarter as we renewed the book. And most importantly, overdue renewals were ground down significantly in the first quarter compared to last year. Last year was definitely affected by COVID. We just couldn't get some contracts over the line and rev rec in Q1. We picked those up in Q2 last year. So businesses tracking well, transactional growth, as I said, sequential quarterly improvements, Q4 coming into Q1. And when we look across the different transactional revenue streams, whether that's professional services, particularly in the sciences group and IP search volumes in Jeff's segment, our prognosis is that the markets continue to thaw and improve and We're confident in execution the rest of the year.

And I'd just add two quick things, Manav. Thank you. As we said, 93%, a 2% increase in retention with more to come, particularly as we see us executing on inside sales in the quarters ahead. And then the price realization, as a reminder to everybody, just over 50%. of our annual subscription base comes up in Q1. Another 20% plus in Q2. So stay tuned with us. But a great start. As Richard said, Apple's first half, you'll see the pieces that we didn't get done in Q1 last year shows up in Q2. And so, Mannhoff, it's a great question. I wish I could tell everybody that we'll continue to grow at 10% organic in science, and Luke Charles will do his best to do that. But think about it as part of an all-in six to six and a half organic growth for the year and a strong expectation to execute for, which will be the first quarter that CPA is also organic at the 68%. Thanks. Next question.

Thank you. And that comes from Andrew Nicholas from William Blair.

Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just wanted to ask, you know, a higher level question on the sales environment and the pipeline broadly. Obviously, last year presented a unique challenge. So I'm wondering how you'd characterize clients' receptiveness to the product lineup right now, appetite for upsell, client budgets, things of that nature, and compare that to pre-pandemic levels to the extent that's possible. Are we back to a a more normalized environment in your view? And if not, how are you thinking about the recovery timeline in that sense? I know Richard, in response to one of the earlier questions, mentioned a little bit of a thawing of the end market. So any more color there would be really helpful. Thanks.

Yeah, great. I'll start, Jeff will pick up, and then Mukhtar. I think we're moving towards a more normal, making great progress in the world markets. Certainly, life science is an example, and Richard said growing at 12% to 13% worldwide. So I think we're closer by far than we were even in the Q4. I think we'll see Q3 and Q4, assuming no new surprises in the pandemic, increase to an even more bullish global market. But pick up, Jeff, and then Mukhtar on the backlog and And the quote question, et cetera, a really good one.

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Jerry. I think the sales, the appetite for upsell and the budget constraints from customers really hasn't been there. I mean, I think we've put together compelling packages since bringing these businesses together last year. I think customers have reacted incredibly well to that. I mean, we've always planned for recovery in the IP market to really start to show up later in the second half. So we feel like we're on track. and the market's performing exactly the way we expected.

Thanks. Mukhtar.

Yeah, maybe just to start with a perspective on the industry. If we look at the industries we operate in post-pandemic, it's probably true to say that the rate of digitized information um the impact that um information has to to research in particular i mean that that demand we expect that to grow um we already have very long-standing relationships with with our customers and you know naturally what we worked hard to do last year was to deliver on those commitments and we'll continue to do so and and that allows us to enjoy long-term relationships with our existing customers but you know as that post pandemic world unfolds here, certainly in the industries that we're deep in, I think we're really strongly poised here to serve them just by virtue of our wonderful assets, the evolution of our products to meet the needs of our customers, and also just to engage in our customers in a different way with high touch through our inside sales approach. I think all of that will lend well certainly to to certainly our growth plans.

Thanks, Mukhtar. Gordon, I'm going to ask you to just add a little color on the Asia-Pacific region, which is historically our fastest growing, particular focus on China, Japan, and Korea.

Sure. Thanks, Sherry. Just a couple of quick comments to add to Jeff and Mukhtar's summary. I think we've had an opportunity to look at the white space that exists across the product portfolio in a deeper way since bringing CPA and obviously DRG just before that into the family. What we're seeing is that, to Jeff's point, the appetite to cross and upsell and the ability to explain solutions for customers. So taking that customer-centric approach is beginning to demonstrate that there is appetite in the markets. One final comment. We also see particularly in China and in South Korea, industry being focused on. So governments and institutions not promoting innovation, but being very specific around which industry verticals and which subsegments in those they're putting their dollars behind, which plays nicely into our move into the one kind of industry vertical model. So we're seeing the opportunity coming forward.

And stay tuned for more of that to come. Thanks, team. Next question, please.

Thank you, and that comes from Hamza Mazari from Jefferies.

Hi, this is Mario Cordolacci filling in for Hamza. My question is around your 2023 targets. I think aside from the tuck-in that you're going to do, it also contemplates two chunkier deals. I just wanted to know what your line of sight is to those larger deals this year or next year, and then are you the buyer of choice for these companies?

A great question. What we always tried to do is patience, persistence, and prefer. I would say that the line of sight to larger acquisitions is pretty clear. Again, patience and persistence. I mentioned in my script how good I feel the whole team does about our ability to execute integration. We get better with that every day, including the internal integration that we continue to operate on from a process standpoint. So that feels good. Tuck-ins are there. We'll continue to work on those, and we'll stay, as I said, patient and persistent. But when we exit 2023 with the $2.8 to $3 billion personal goal I laid out and the appropriate EBITDA and free cash flow that would complement that, we'll be able to look back, I think, and say, Yep, we were preferred, we did deliver, and those goals become a reality. Thanks for the question.

Thank you. Thank you. And the next question comes from Ashwin Srivakar from Citi.

Thank you. Good to hear from you all. It's a good quarter versus expectations. I wanted to ask, if I can, about expenses and cash flow issues. which also did well. Could you provide a framework? Is the same first half, second half framework a good one to follow for expenses and cash flow? And then the phasing in of expense normalization coming out of COVID, if you could provide what the assumption was for non-permanent savings in any one?

Yeah, no, Richard, you pick this up in just a second. A couple of comments on it. As I said, I'm really pleased with the effort underway that continues to execute well ahead of plan at both DRG and CPA. We'll exit 2021 with something over $200 million in savings. As we go into 2022, we'll realize all of that savings because of what we're doing in 2021. But it's a great question. An enormous amount of operational improvement every place, including and tightening the way we operate with our customers on cash collection. Richard, please.

So what you should expect, what you will see in the remaining quarters of the year is the benefit from the opportunity continued integration of CPA global into Clarivate and the cost removal, whereby we gave the commitment at the time of the transaction to execute $75 million of savings on a run rate basis by the end of this year. So you'll start to see the benefit of those programs coming through our actual expenses quarter over quarter. So you'll see continued good expense management Q2 through Q4. In terms of cash flow, I would say this. I'd bifurcate the business between the legacy Clarivate business, including DRG, and the CPA global business. With respect to the former legacy Clarivate and DRG business, we do have our cash flow historically has been stronger in Q1 and strongest in Q4, with Q2 and Q3 being a bit lighter than Q1. In the case of CPA, it's a more even distribution of cash flow quarter to quarter, and particularly the H1 to H2. So $163 million of adjusted free cash flow in Q1, enjoying receipts from the renewal of the book, during Q1, and then we see that pickup in the fourth quarter as well associated with renewals. So that's the general pattern, but we're nicely on track to executing and delivering against the guidance of $450 million to $500 million of just free cash flow for the year.

Thank you. Next question, please.

Yes, and that comes from Sean Rosenbaum with Stifel.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Jerry, if you don't mind, I want to ask you a question and then ask kind of a guidance clarification. So I'm going to ask you to let me squeeze in two, even though it's against your rules. If you don't mind. Okay. The question I have really is I'm looking at like 10% transactional growth year over year on an organic basis, which is really strong. I usually think of the transactional growth for coming more in the IP segment. And IP really grew more at the low single digits of strength in the science segment. I was just wondering if you can just kind of explain what drove the transactional business. Is there any change in how that's coming about and how we should think about it? And then afterwards, I'd like to just go for a clarification for everyone's benefit in terms of the guidance.

Happy to. We'll start with Jeff and then Mukhtar. Actually, there's a lot of... growth going on and professional services in the science area that is, of course, transactional. And some of DRG's rapidly growing businesses there, too. But I'll start with Jeff because you'll see the best leading indicator of an economic worldwide is some of Jeff's transactional business.

Yeah, thanks, Jerry. Hey, Shlomo. I would say that, you know, on the IP services side, which is where the transactional revenue sits within IPG, we've seen pretty solid growth, particularly around trademark and patent searching. And we've seen it across the globe. I would say in North America, on a year-over-year basis, we had a really strong quarter in 2020. So on a year-over-year basis, you don't see the same growth that we've seen in Asia PAC and in the European regions. That was offset a little bit by European patent validation volumes. And what you have to understand is there was a backlog with the EPO from roughly 2016 through the end of 2020. This is in the CPA business. And that is normalizing right now in Q1, and we expect it to normalize in Q2. So that does impact a number. But the strength in services, it's tremendous. There's been an uptake across the board, like I said, in patents and trademarks in our analytics business. So we're very encouraged by what we expect the rest of the year to look like.

Thanks, Jeff. Luke Tarrant?

Yes. So starting off with our consulting professional services, we did see some tremendous growth there in Q1, which has certainly contributed to the numbers you've seen. One thing I do want to point out, though, with our consulting services, remember they're positioned – ultimately to pull through our products and our solutions over time. So, you know, there's a causal effect there where eventually over time we drive more traction in the accounts that we operate in and ultimately customers then consume more of our products and our data solutions. So, you know, that's how we position, you know, our consulting services and we've seen really, really good traction there. The second area is really around some of the products that we launched last year, what we're starting to see signs of a greater rate of customer adoption and product adoption in the markets that we operate in. That's starting to come through right across, you know, right across all of our product lines, and in particular within, you know, within our DRG business.

Thanks, Mukhtar. Just couldn't be better. Someday I'll have you give... Mukhtar, your history of what you do do over time with pull-through of subscription-based and protectory life science. But part 1B, Shlomo, please.

Yeah, so thank you. Just with the strong growth in organic growth and some of the commentary about 1Q20, there was some slippage in terms of renewals that went to 2Q20 and Is it fair to assume that we should see the organic growth take a step down from a tougher comp in 2Q? And just if you can help us with kind of the cadence and how to think about that.

Hello? Hello? Sorry, can you hear me?

Okay. Great question. Richard, pick it up. It's a great question, Soma. I'd just say again, you know, the leading light for our future is what Richard said on what we reported with the 6% increase. But Richard, please.

Sure. You're right, Shlomo. There were definitely some lift in the first quarter compared to prior year comps because, as I said earlier, there were some contracts that we just weren't able to get over the line at the end of Q1 last year because we were in the teeth of COVID and everybody was adapting to this changing environment. And those were picked up in Q2. So we will be up against a slightly tougher comp on subscription revenue in the second quarter. I think what's key there is looking at the half year, our overall subscription growth I think that will give a more normalized number. So obviously, we'll be concentrating on that in our Q2 earnings call. On transactional organic growth, as I said, 6% growth Q4 last year, a recovery from Q2 and Q3, where we saw 13% and 16% organic declines because of COVID, 10% growth in Q1, and as we're sort of demonstrating, you know, the markets are thawing. We're seeing improvements across the product lines, whether it's professional services, trademark search volumes, IP professional services, all within organic growth, custom data sales. So, you know, that will obviously help us in our overall organic growth number for Q2.

Yeah, and I think great questions, Svomal. Thank you. Next question.

Thank you. That comes from Zach Cummins with B Riley Securities.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Jerry, can you talk about the migration that's currently undergoing with your customer accounts to your inside sales teams? I'm just wondering how you're tracking versus your internal expectations and if that could potentially have any kind of positive impact to retention rates in this year, or is that more of a 2022 initiative?

Yeah, no, it's a great question. We're on track to be at the end of Q2, have at least 20% of our total revenue, which would include DRG and Clarivate, as well as CPA on the inside sales. Feel good about that. Early indications, it's not a trend yet because it's too early, but the renewals after transfer of the smaller customers today inside sales is very positive. So I feel good about that. It's a great question because what I'd be thinking about is we do expect to see, particularly in fourth quarter, a pickup because of that because a lot of the transfers of those customers with annual subscription basis, smaller ones, will be coming up due in Q1. So we'll see a pretty good test, I think, with the Q4 inside sales. We've been really pleased with the talents that we've hired and the training that's going on. So feel really good about it despite the pandemic. And we look forward to going into 2022 with even more of our total customers on inside sales. So thanks. Great question. Next question, please.

Yes, thank you. And once again, to ask a question, please press star then one on your touchstone phone. And the next question comes from Pete Christensen with Citi.

Thank you. Good morning, and thanks for the question. Jerry, it might be a little early to ask this question, but after closing with CPA last quarter, or the quarter before, but is there any sense that, at least on the IT side, that your competitive win rate is improving. Any sense of market share gains now that you've built a much larger IP solution set?

That's a great question. I'll start. Thanks. Jeff will pick up. The answer is we went after scale. We now have scale. We're about a billion dollar business. Next closest competitor is about 250 million. I will say there's more activity going on with competitors trying to figure out how to partner with each other to compete with us, which is about what we expected. In fact, Jeff and I had talked about that way back when. But give some color because it's a great question.

Yeah, thanks, Jerry. Thanks, Pete. So we're feeling pretty good that we've been able to integrate the business very, very quickly, both on the product side and on the sales organization. They've come together very, very nicely. what we are seeing in the market is pretty wide acceptance to the broader base solution set that we have we've spent the first quarter of the year here really working on creating packages that like i said before are very compelling to our customers they've reacted very well to those we have a hybrid cloud solution that we're leveraging to protect customers investments that they've made previously in some of the software solutions that they bought from cpa and this is enabling us to more quickly bring data and applications and even some of our services together into an integrated offering and what that's allowing us to do which no one else can do in the market is really allow customers to start to be able to configure their life cycle their innovation life cycle in a way that works for their business within their market segment so we've seen really good market acceptance um you know i don't have numbers that i would be willing to talk about here but i mean really nice market acceptance overall and and we feel pretty good about the year and what's coming into this year next

Jeff, just give a tiny preview on some of the new opportunities we see in expanding our existing market and some of the work you're doing on that as we close.

Yeah, thanks, Jerry. And some of the things we've been working on, you know, last year we talked a little bit about decontainerizing some of the data that was locked up within the legacy platforms within Clarivate. We spent the last year really decoupling the content from those legacy applications. And this has created what we call internally IP cloud. And this gives us the ability to bring data together to help our customers find answers to questions much more quickly without having to work through some of the platforms. We're focusing on two sort of areas. some areas around bringing solutions and data lakes around specific technologies like 5G. We're also focusing on specific industries and roles like polymer chemists, for example. We can get answers to our questions much, much faster by bringing more data together in a more integrated fashion without asking non-traditional users to leverage an application that was designed for an IP practitioner. So We feel really good about what we're doing. I'd always love it to go faster than it has been. But to Jerry's point, data solutions that we're putting together and the ability to allow our customers to access our solutions more seamlessly are the two focus areas for the IP group this year.

Thanks, Jeff. And I'm going to close just thanking everybody. If you think about what Mukhtar was delivering last year in Q3, 18, 19 new products. Jeff's doing the same, plus some. I just couldn't be happier, couldn't be more proud or more pleased of our team. We're on track to do what we said we were going to do, and we look forward to doing our best to provide great returns to our shareholders for years to come. Thank you all very much, and with that, operator, we're done.

All right, thank you. The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. I mean, I'll disconnect your lines.