Wolters Kluwer S/Adr

Hello and welcome to the Walters Kluwer full year 2020 results webcast and conference call. My name is Adam and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Today's conference is being recorded. Please note for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions towards the end. You may press star 1 on your telephone keypad to register a question and star 2 to withdraw. If you require assistance at any point, please press star 0 and you will be connected to a support operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Meg Geldens, Vice President of Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to VoltusCore's full year 2020 results call. Today's results release and the slides for this presentation are available for download on the investor section of our website, VoltusCore.com. On the call with me today are Nancy McKinstry, our CEO, and Kevin Entrykin, our CFO. Due to the lockdowns, we are all dialing into this call remotely from various locations around the world, so we thank you in advance for your understanding in case we experience any delays during the event. Nancy and Kevin will shortly discuss the important features of our full year results. Following their comments, we'll open the call to your questions. Before we start, I'll remind you that some statements we make today may be forward-looking. We caution that these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the statements. Factors that could affect World Square financial results are discussed in Note 2 of today's earnings release. As we said in the release today, we've not been immune to the effects of the pandemic. In Note 2, we cover the main impacts, the measures we took, and what further steps management might take if the situation deteriorates or persists for an extended period of time. We also refer you to the notes of our most recent ANA report for further discussion of risks. As usual in the presentation today, we will refer to adjusted profits, which exclude non-benchmark items. We also refer to growth in constant currencies, which excludes the effect of currency movements. And we refer to organic growth, which excludes both the effect of currency and the effect of acquisitions and disposals. Reconciliations to IFRS numbers and further information can be found in Note 3 of today's release. At this time, I'd like to hand over the call to Nancy McKinstry, our CEO.

Thank you, Meg. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on the call. Before I start, I'd like to express my gratitude to all of our employees around the world for their hard work and dedication during 2020. It's been an extraordinary time that has tested everyone, so thank you. It was a balancing act, but the global team's agile response to the pandemic helped us deliver important financial, strategic, and ESG results. We finished the year with 2% organic growth and improved margin, a 7% increase in diluted adjusted EPS and constant currencies. And we achieved 16% growth in adjusted free cash flow. This performance, along with the strength of our balance sheet, allowed us to provide reliable and consistent returns to our shareholders. On a strategic and ESG front, expert solutions continue to be our fastest growing category of product. And through continued investments, these and our other products delivered new innovations and value to our customers. I'm pleased to say that we registered a record level of employee engagement in this extraordinary year, and we were able to accelerate programs that help reduce our carbon emissions, such as data center consolidations. While the pandemic diverted us from our original financial plan, especially in terms of organic growth. It has fully reinforced and validated elements of our strategy. We are more committed than ever to evolve towards digital and expert solutions. The pandemic has reinforced the trend towards cloud-based software platforms. We recorded 19% organic growth in cloud software revenues last year. We also advanced our domain expertise by continued enhancement of our digital information products particularly embedding AI and analytics to extend our value to customers. And the pandemic also made very clear the importance of strong internal systems, infrastructure, and digital marketing capabilities. I'm pleased with the progress that we made on our strategic priorities while successfully navigating the challenges of COVID-19. I will now turn the call over to Kevin Enterkin, who will provide more detail and insight into our financial performance. After that, I will return to discuss divisional performance, provide an update on our strategy, and finish with an outlook for 2021.