Wolters Kluwer S/Adr

Hello all and thank you for joining us for Wolters Kluwer's full year 2023 results call. My name is Lydia and I'll be your operator today. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. Please note, for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only and after the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. If you'd like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand you over to your host, Meg Gowden. Vice President of Investor Relations, to begin. Thank you, Lydia.

Welcome, everyone, to the VultrSchooler full year 2023 results call. Today's earnings release and the slides for this presentation are available for download from the investor section of our website, vultrschooler.com. With us on the call today are Nancy McKinstry, our CEO, and Kevin Entrykin, our CFO, who will discuss our 2023 results and take your questions at the end. Before we start, I'll remind you that some statements we make today may be forward-looking. We caution these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in these statements. Factors that could affect our future financial results are discussed in Note 2 of today's release and in our annual reports. As usual in the presentation today, we will refer to adjusted profit, which excludes non-benchmark items. We refer to growth in constant currency, 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 divestments. Reconciliations to IFRS numbers and further information can be found in our release. Following the organizational change implemented in March of 2023, we will present the results for the new five-division structure and compare to pro forma figures for 2022. And at this time, I'd like to hand the call over to our CEO, Nancy McKinstry.

Thank you, Meg. And hello, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us on this call. I will start by giving you the key highlights from last year, and then Kevin Entrykin, our CFO, will talk you through the financials in more detail. After that, I'll return to discuss divisional developments and the progress that we are making against our current strategic plan. And then I'll finish with an outlook for the year ahead. So let's begin with the highlights of 2023. We delivered organic growth of 6% and an increase in our adjusted operating profit margin for the full year, despite macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds faced in a few areas. Diluted adjusted earnings per share increased 12% in constant currencies, while adjusted free cash flow was approximately 1.2 billion euros in line with our guidance. ROIC improved significantly and the balance sheet remains very strong. It was another year of substantial returns for our shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks. With regard to our strategic and sustainability goals, I'm pleased to say that we made significant progress. Expert solutions grew 8% and now represent 58% of total revenues. We are investing in product development at record levels and in recent months have launched several important new solutions or product features to support our customers. Last year, we made several organizational changes, which will bring benefits in the future years. We formed the new corporate performance and ESG software division and made significant progress in centralizing key functions. With respect to our own sustainability performance, we are pleased to report increases in both our employee engagement and employee belonging scores. And as previously reported, our near-term admissions reduction targets were validated by SBTI last year. I will come back on these strategic and divisional developments, but first, Kevin will present the financials.