Wolters Kluwer S/Adr

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Voltus Kluver half year 2022 results webcast and conference call. At this time all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press star 1 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your host, Meg Gilden, Vice President, Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Sandra. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the VoltusCore half-year 2022 results call. Today's results release and the slides for this presentation are available for download from the investor section of our website, voltuscore.com. On the call today are Nancy McKinstry, our CEO, and Kevin Entrichen, our CFO. We're all dialing in remotely from various locations, so thank you in advance for your understanding in case we experience any delays. Nancy and Kevin will shortly discuss the important features of our half-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, may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the statements. Factors that could affect Multiscore's future financial results are discussed in Note 2 of today's release and in our 2021 annual report. 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 and further information can be found in note four of today's release. At this time, I'd like to hand the call over to our CEO, Nancy McKinstry.

Thank you, Meg. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us on this call. In keeping with our usual practice, I will start by giving you a brief summary of our first half achievements, and Kevin will then take you through the financial results in detail. After that, I will come back to discuss divisional developments, review our recently launched three-year plan with some examples, and finish off with an outlook for the remainder of the year. So let's start with our achievements on slide four. I'm pleased to report that we had a good start to the year with a strong performance across all four divisions. We delivered 7% organic growth, and saw a significant increase in the adjusted operating profit margin, which reached 28.2%. This drove an 11% increase in diluted adjusted EPS in constant currency. Adjusted free cash flow was down slightly in constant currencies, but this was entirely as expected and partly due to timing. Return on invested capital increased to 14.8%. Our balance sheet remains strong, allowing us to increase cash returns to shareholders. We also made progress on our new strategic plan, including several ESG areas. Expert solutions, which are products that deliver a combination of expert content and workflow automation to draw improved outcomes and productivity, performed very well, up 9% organically. A growing proportion of these solutions are cloud-based software, which grew 20% organically. We increased product development spending to 10% of total revenues and have this year been rolling out several exciting AI-based product enhancements. Our HR teams around the world have been very active in their efforts to attract and retain talent while advancing employee belonging and diversity. Last but not least, we have in recent months developed a roadmap to start aligning with the TCFD and they've made progress in assessing our global carbon footprint. Now let me hand it back to Kevin, who will take you through the financials.