John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Wiley's fourth quarter and fiscal 2022 earnings call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to introduce Wiley's Vice President of Investor Relations, Brian Campbell. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Just a few reminders to start. The call is being recorded and may include forward-looking statements. You shouldn't rely on these statements as actual results may differ materially and are subject to factors discussed in our SEC filings. The company does not undertake any obligations to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent events or circumstances. Also, Wiley provides non-GAAP measures as a supplement to evaluate underlying operating profitability and performance trends. These measures do not have standardized meanings prescribed by U.S. GAAP, and therefore may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies, nor should they be viewed as alternatives to measures under GAAP. Unless otherwise noted, we will refer to non-GAAP metrics on the call, and variances are on a year-over-year basis and will exclude the impact of currency. After the call, a copy of the presentation and playback of the webcast will be available on our Investor Relations webpage at investors.wiley.com. I'll now turn the call over to Wiley's President and CEO, Brian Napak.

Good morning, and thanks for joining us. I'm pleased to report that in fiscal year 22, the Wiley team delivered another year of revenue and earnings growth with continuing strong free cash flow. As a reminder, this year marks Wiley's 215th anniversary, and to mark the occasion, we surpassed $2 billion in annual revenue for the first time. What began in 1807 as a print shop in lower Manhattan is now one of America's oldest public companies, standing out as a global leader in scientific research and career-connected education. Our legacy is more than just a narrative. The Wiley brand is respected worldwide, and our reputation is a unique advantage that helps us to win and retain customers, partners, authors, and great talent across all of our lines of business. Wiley has been unlocking human potential by advancing knowledge for over two centuries, and it has done so through many economic cycles and periods of disruption. In good times and bad, Wiley delivers consistent financial performance by serving the world's researchers and learners. Today, we are growing well based upon our strong competitive position, must-have product, a strong balance sheet, and consistent cash flow. Wiley's revenue is now 83% digital and tech-enabled, and 58% of our revenue is recurring. We have delivered 28 consecutive years of dividend increases. And we've recently been named the most trusted company in media, according to a survey by Newsweek. All this underscores the fact that Wiley is a strong and special company, and I'm proud to be part of it, especially now. As you know, Wiley is a critical player in the global knowledge ecosystem, performing essential roles in scientific research and education. Our strategy remains to lead the market by addressing two very strong trends. The first is the rapid growth of open scientific research. which is creating significant demand for our branded research content and our cutting-edge research platforms and services. The second trend is the global drive to make education more career-connected and vastly more accessible. This economic imperative is increasing demand for our learning programs and our talent development services that directly connect education with employment and that help to fill the global talent gap. In research, Wiley is both a leading publisher with 1,900 valuable respected journal brands and a leading provider of essential platforms and services that help societies, publishers, and corporations to thrive in the complex open knowledge ecosystem. In education, Wiley delivers both powerful learning products in the form of digital content and courseware and tech-enabled services in the form of degree programs, certifications, and on-the-job training. These products and services help universities to deliver career-connected degrees and drive enrollment, help corporations to build the workforces they need to win, and ultimately helps learners and professionals to build the skills they need to achieve long-term career success. In fiscal 22, the complex global environment delivered us some unusual challenges. Most significantly, we saw post-lockdown enrollment softness in universities affect demand for our education programs. We also saw an unusually tight labor market and rising inflation put some pressure on compensation levels. And we saw some geopolitical issues introduce instability into global markets. But despite all this, the Wiley team was able to deliver on our outlook for both revenue and earnings and exceed our outlook for cash flow. We saw an acceleration of organic revenue growth in fiscal 22 into the mid single digits. All three Wiley segments were up over prior year. As noted, we did run into some challenges stemming from some unusual lower university enrollment patterns. But while our university services and education publishing lines were slowed by this, we still delivered on our financial targets thanks to strong organic growth across research and in corporate talent development and professional learning. On the profit side, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS rose 3% and 4%, with revenue performance partially offset by investments in growth and optimization initiatives. Notably, since fiscal 20, Wiley has executed its strategic plans very effectively, allowing us to succeed through the COVID lockdown period. The net result is two-year CAGRs for revenue, EPS, and free cash flow of 7%, 12%, and 14%. That said, as we know, The macroeconomic environment is presenting uncertainty. Wiley and its markets tend to hold up well in economic downturns thanks to the essential nature of research and our role in it, and thanks to the counter-cyclical nature of higher education enrollment. Nonetheless, we are watching conditions very closely, carefully managing risk, and keeping our powder dry to ensure that we can adapt to events as they unfold. Let's take a look at how we executed on our stated plans this past year. At this time last year, we laid out four commitments for research. We said we would publish more, a simple statement, but that's what the world wants, and that's what drives our success. We said we would integrate and drive synergies from Hindawi, the leading OA publisher we acquired in fiscal 21. We said we would scale the platform and service offerings for our partners in the research ecosystem. And finally, we said we would increase the productivity and efficiency of our publishing operations. I'm pleased to report that we executed each of these four imperatives well, and the results speak for themselves. We published more, growing article output by 7%. While organic output was down from last year's 15% COVID-induced surge, the two-year trend line was positive, compounding at 6%. We expect year-over-year organic output growth to resume in fiscal 23. Hindawi performed at a very high level this year. delivering strong double-digit organic revenue growth and 36% article output growth on a pro forma basis, and has achieved this with exceptional margins. We have now completed the integration, and we are benefiting significantly from Hindawi's industry-leading open publishing practices and its highly efficient systems. As planned, we scaled our research solutions business. We signed up 36 new partners, bringing us to over 450,000 society and corporate customers taking advantage of our broad range of essential research platforms and services. We see lots of opportunity for upselling and cross-selling to increase lifetime customer value. Critically, 16% of our solutions customers now subscribe to more than one of our services and 4% to subscribe to more than two. We are now seeing increasing LTV as we continue to expand our longstanding client relationships. Finally, we entered fiscal 22 with the intention of driving automation, intelligence, and efficiency across the research publishing process. We're making good progress across our most critical productivity metrics, such as the referral rate of rejected articles from one Wiley journal to another and the reduction of the article cycle time from acceptance to publication, both of which benefit our researchers while delivering more revenue and profit to Wiley. Notably, over 50% of our rejected authors are now offered another Wiley option to publish. This is up from 33% in fiscal 21. This is facilitated by a highly automated, intelligent process. As you know, Wiley does not publish 70% of the articles we receive, much of it due to improper fit with the journal to which it is first submitted. Capitalizing on this opportunity across our full 1900 journal portfolio will take time, but we're making very good progress. So, we are executing our plans in research and performing very well. Despite the world's uncertainties, Wiley Research remains a very strong business with a good growth trajectory, strategic momentum, and a recession-tolerant profile. Scientific and technical research is driven by an ever-increasing global R&D spend. Since 2000, through multiple recessions, global R&D has more than tripled to $2.4 trillion. Now to the achievement of our fiscal 22 commitments in education. As a reminder, demand for online education and digital courseware was significantly amplified in fiscal 21 as COVID drove record numbers of students into digital settings. In fiscal 22, there was a natural reversion in online enrollment. This snapback was accompanied by an unusually strong labor market that enticed many students to forego school for opportunities in the workforce. The net result was a challenging enrollment cycle across higher education. A recent report showed that total university enrollment was down over 4% this spring after declining 3% in the fall. This variability weighed on our university services and education publishing lines, which saw declines this year of 1% and 4%. Despite the challenge of this moment, Our mid- to long-term outlook for higher education and digital education in particular remains very positive. We study this market very closely, and we see long-term underlying growth in demand for online higher education, digital curriculum, and importantly, corporate talent development, where we are expanding and where enduring skill and talent gaps will continue to drive growth. Wiley is well prepared to capitalize on these significant opportunities due to the consistent execution of our strategic plans. To that end, we made a set of commitments a year ago in education. These were to expand online programs and drive online enrollment, to expand student acquisition capabilities, to scale digital content and courseware, and to expand our corporate talent development relationships. In university services, we signed up five full service partners in fiscal 22. offsetting three non-renewing partners for a total partner count of 68. We also added 81 new degree and certification programs in high-demand fields such as business, healthcare, computer science, and engineering. This is far ahead of the 40-plus programs we signed up in fiscal 21 and is well aligned with our disciplined approach to focusing on high-demand careers and disciplines. And while enrollment slowed across the market, Wiley improved our ability to compete in the market for students by significantly expanding our proprietary student acquisition capabilities. In short, the ability to efficiently attract and enroll students is the defining capability that drives university success, and this is their single biggest challenge. The acquisition of XYZ Media, a clear leader in student marketing, made Wiley a leader in what matters most, driving enrollment. And this proprietary capability is now allowing us to do so at a lower cost per student, thus driving both growth and profitability. In education content and courseware, we saw healthy growth in digital content and XyBooks courseware, although these gains were offset by declines in print course material and courseware on legacy platforms. XyBooks continues to be a very good story for us with adoptions now in over 900 institutions revenue growth of 15%. Wiley's corporate talent development line had a huge year in fiscal 22 with record placements and over 70% revenue growth. We signed 19 new global clients, expanding into new industry verticals such as technology and consumer goods, and launched an upskilling program that will significantly increase the lifetime value of our clients. Corporate talent development has become a major growth driver for Wiley. Note that we recently branded our talent development platform from M3 to Wiley Edge. The name not only leverages the strong Wiley brand, it also says what we do for our partners and for emerging talent everywhere. We give them a meaningful edge in a hyper-competitive world. Wiley continues to drive real-world impact through our core business activities in research and education, and we're always focused on increasing this impact. In January 21, we signed the UN Global Compact, a pledge to drive business action in support of achieving 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. We continue to pursue these critical goals by simply doing what we do best, enabling discovery, powering education, and shaping workforces. Through our leadership and open research, Wiley is delivering more brand new knowledge to the world faster. fulfilling many UN sustainable development goals, including good health and well-being and climate action. In career-connected education, we are actively improving access to high-impact learning and good jobs. In fact, over 50% of our IT placement candidates in Canada, U.S., and the U.K. now come from underrepresented populations. In India, for example, we are delivering impact to at-risk groups such as those from households earning less than $500 a month. Nearly half of our career credential candidates in India are women. In this way, Wiley is working to fulfill UN sustainable development goals for both quality education and reduced inequalities. We continue to make material progress in our corporate ESG efforts. We set out to be a carbon-neutral certified company across our global operations again this year, and we achieved it. More importantly, we are rapidly advancing towards science-based targets, which will provide us with a clear route to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and our carbon footprint. All of this is to say that at Wiley, we take our commitment to positive impact very seriously and that we are making very good progress. With that, I'll pass the call over to Christina to take you through our Q4 results, our segment performance, our financial position, and our outlook for fiscal 23.