Wolters Kluwer S/Adr

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Waters Cluwer Fall Year 2024 results webcast and conference call. My name is Lauren and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note for the duration of the call your lines will be on listen only. You will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. To ask a question press star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your question. At any time if you require assistance at any point please press star 0 and you'll be connected to an operator. Please be advised that today's call is being recorded. I'll now hand you over to your host, Meg Gowden, Vice President, Investor Relations, to begin today's conference. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Lauren. Good morning and welcome to the VultrSchooler full year 2024 results call. Today's earnings release and the accompanying slides are available for download from the investor section of our website, vultrschooler.com. With me on the call today are Nancy McKinstry, our CEO, and Kevin Entrichen, our CFO. Nancy and Kevin will discuss the important aspects of our 2024 results, and we'll 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 that these statements are subject to risk and uncertainty, and that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the statements. Factors that could affect future financial results are discussed in note two of today's earnings release and in our annual reports. As usual in the presentation today, we will refer to adjusted profits, which exclude non-benchmark items. We also refer to growth in constant currency, which excludes the effect of exchange rate movements. And we refer to organic growth, which excludes both the effect of currency and the effect of acquisitions and divestments. Reconciliations can be found in note three of today's release. At this time, I would like to hand the call over to our CEO, Nancy McKinstry.

Thanks, Meg. Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining the call. I will start with a brief introduction summarizing the highlights of 2024, then hand off to Kevin, who will go through our financial results in more detail. I'll then return and talk about our divisional performance and give you an update on our expert solution strategy, and then finish up with an outlook for 2025. So turning now to the next slide, We delivered another year of 6% organic growth and an improvement in our adjusted operating profit margin. Diluted adjusted earnings per share increased 11% in constant currencies. Adjusted free cash flow increased 9% in constant currencies ahead of our expectation. Return on invested capital increased to 18.1%. With a leverage ratio of 1.6 times, our balance sheet remains very strong. It was another year of significant returns to our shareholders with increased dividends and a €1 billion share buyback. We also made further progress on our strategic objectives. Expert Solutions grew 7% organically and reached 59% of the group's revenues. Recurring cloud software revenues grew 16% organically and now make up 42% of all the software revenues, exceeding our on-premise software revenues for the first time. We sustained product investment at 11% of revenues, launching several new products and introducing GenAI-enabled features to existing platforms. We completed the centralization of core functions, enabling central teams to better support the business in the future. We also advanced our ESG performance. Employee engagement and belonging scores were maintained at high level and employee turnover improved. We reduced our direct admissions, raised our short-term ambitions, and submitted our long-term net zero targets to the science-based target initiative. So all in all, a good year. So with that, I'd like to now turn it over to Kevin to cover the financials.