Wolters Kluwer S/Adr

Hello and welcome to the Walters Kluwer Half Year Results for 2021. My name is Jess and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. For the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, there will be the opportunity to ask questions. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question at any time. If at any point you require assistance, please press star zero on your telephone keypad and you will be connected to an operator. I will now hand you over to your host, Meg Geldens, Vice President of Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you, Jess. Hello everyone and welcome to the Volderscoeur Half Year 2021 results call. Today's earnings release and the slides for this presentation are available for download on the investor section of our website. On the call today are Nancy McKinstry, our CEO, and Kevin Entrichen, our CFO. Due to the continued restrictions on travel, we are all dialing in remotely from various locations. So we thank you in advance for your understanding in case we experience any disruptions or delays during this event. Nancy and Kevin will shortly discuss the key features of our first half results. Following their comments, we will open the call to your questions. Before we start, I'll just remind you that some statements that 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 these statements. Factors that could affect Wolters Kuehler financial results are discussed in the notes of today's release and of course in our annual report. As usual in today's presentation, we 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 and further information can be found in note four of today's release. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to our CEO, Nancy McKinstry.

Thank you, Meg, and welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us on the call. In keeping with our usual practice, I'll start by giving you some of the highlights of our first half achievements, then turn it over to Kevin Enterkin, our CFO, who will take you through the financial results in more detail. And then I'll return to talk about divisional developments as well as a brief update on our strategic progress. So let's start with slide four and the highlights. I'm pleased to report that we had a good start to the year with a better than expected recovery from the pandemic. We delivered 5% organic growth following a strong second quarter and a significant increase in our adjusted operating profit margin. We saw a double-digit increase in diluted adjusted EPS and constant currency, and our adjusted free cash flow increased significantly due to working capital movements. Our balance sheet remains strong, allowing us to increase cash returns to shareholders while continuing to invest in the business. We also made progress on a number of our ESG and operational goals, advancing key programs that reduce carbon emissions, launching our first diversity equity and inclusion survey, and embedding ESG metrics and targets into management compensation and into our credit facility. Turning now to slide five. While the pandemic challenged us all and altered our financial trajectory, we have remained very focused on our three strategic priorities. So let me recap these. First, we are focused on growing our expert solutions. Expert solutions now make up 55% of our first half 2021 results. We've been scaling these solutions by extending the offerings and broadening our distribution. Second, we are working to advance our deep domain expertise, investing to transform our information products and services by enriching them with advanced technologies to create more value for our customers. And third, we are focused on driving operational agility, improving the organization's ability to respond quickly to opportunities and challenges by modernizing and enhancing the efficiencies of our systems and operations. The past year and a half has reinforced and validated many aspects of our strategy. the evolution towards digital and expert solutions, the transition to cloud-based software platforms, and the investment to upgrade our internal systems and our digital marketing capabilities. I'm very proud of our team and the progress we've made while continuing to navigate the challenges of the pandemic. We are not through it yet, as all of you know, but we are confident that the path that we are on will continue to create value. So with that, I'd now like to turn it over to Kevin, who will take us through our financials in more detail.