Thomson Reuters Corporation

Good day and welcome everyone to the Thomson Reuters first quarter 2022 earnings call. My name is Matt and I will be your operator today. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. If you require assistance at any time, please press star zero on your telephone and the coordinator will be happy to assist you. I'd like to advise all parties that this conference is being recorded. And with that, let me hand it over to Gary Bisbee, head of investor relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our first quarter 2022 earnings call. I'm joined by our CEO, Steve Hasker, and our CFO, Mike Eastwood, each of whom will report our results and take your questions following their remarks. To enable us to get through as many questions as possible, we'd appreciate it if you'd limit yourself to one question and one follow-up when we open those phone lines later. Throughout today's presentation, when we compare performance period on period, we discuss revenue growth rates before currency as well as on an organic basis. We believe this provides the best basis to measure the underlying performance of our business. Today's presentation contains forward-looking statements and non-IFRS financial measures. Actual results may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties discussed in reports and filings that we provide from time to time to regulatory agencies. You may access these documents on our website or by contacting our investor relations department. Let me now turn it over to Steve Hasker.

Thank you, Gary, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. Before I begin with a review of our Q1 results, I must recognize our Reuters News colleagues and express our great appreciation for the difficult but important work that they are doing on the ground in Ukraine to provide us all with unbiased and reliable news, video, and imagery. Their efforts, which come at significant personal risk, exemplify the best of our company purpose, which, as you know, is to inform the way forward, and the principles of trust and transparency that all of us at Thomson Reuters aspire to achieve. Now onto our Q1 highlights. I'm pleased to report that the momentum that built throughout 2021 continued in the first quarter of 2022, with both sales and revenue exceeding our expectations. Four of our five business segments again recorded organic revenue growth of 6% or greater, and the total company organic revenues grow 7%. our big three business segments also grew 7% organically. We have growing conviction that our businesses are benefiting from a significant prevailing tailwind driven by a step change in the complexity of regulation and compliance in our legal, tax, and risk-related markets. The resulting need for trusted, accurate, and actionable content and technology plays to our strength. as to the accelerating trends of digitization and changing ways of working. When combined with our change program progress to date and an increased focus on innovation, these tailwinds position us well to continue our recent momentum. Due to the Q1 Revenue Strength and Healthy Book of Business, or ACV, growth, we are raising our full-year revenue outlook. We now see total revenue rising by 5.5%, and big free revenue by 6.5%, up from our prior views of 5% and 6% to 6.5% respectively. We maintain our margin outlook as we continue to invest in our businesses and customer success, and also absorb heightened inflationary pressures. Overall, the strong start to the year provides confidence that we're on the right path to achieve our 2022 goals. and 2023 targets. Turning to our change program, we continue to make steady progress on key initiatives. As of March 31st, we've achieved annualized operating expense run rate savings of $305 million and we're on a path to achieve $500 million per year end and the full targeted $600 million by year end 2023. And lastly, remain in a strong position, ample capital capacity. We continue to assess inorganic opportunities to strengthen our big three customer markets. And share repurposes remain another option based on the timing of these inorganic opportunities.