Thomson Reuters Corporation

Good day and welcome to the Thomson Reuters first quarter earnings call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the call over to Mr. Gary Bisbee, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Maddie. Good morning and thank you all for joining us today for our first quarter 2024 earnings call. I'm joined today by our CEO, Steve Hasker, and our CFO, Mike Eastwood, each of whom will discuss our results and take your questions following their remarks. To enable us to get to as many questions as possible, we'd appreciate it if you'd limit yourself to one question each when we open the phone lines. 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 to regulatory agencies. You may access these documents on our websites 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. With many of you having spent several hours with us at our investor day in March, we plan to keep our remarks today concise and focused on our first quarter results. 2024 has started out on a strong note with revenue and profits exceeding our expectations. Total company organic revenues rose 9%. with the big three segments growing by 10%. In addition, strong revenue flow through boosted margins driving a healthy profit beat. To incorporate the Q1 upside, we are raising our full year 2024 revenue outlook and now see organic growth in a range of 6% to 6.5%, including 7.5% to 8% for the big three segments. up from our prior outlook of approximately 6% and 7.5% respectively. While we are pleased with the strong start to the year, I would caution that the revenue upside was driven largely by transactional revenue and strength from seasonal offerings, which are unlikely to recur at this level through the remainder of the year. Mike will provide additional detail on our outlook in a few minutes. At our March 12th Investor Day, we discussed our innovation focus and why we are confident in our outlook for future revenue growth acceleration. As part of that discussion, we highlighted two important market dynamics that are providing what we expect to be long-term demand tailwinds for our business. The first is the rising complexity of regulatory compliance. And the second is generative AI. We believe our portfolio is uniquely positioned for these tailwinds, and we continue to invest heavily in innovation and our product roadmap as we seek to play a larger role in the success of our customers. These efforts are contributing to the growing product momentum we see from many areas in our business. Our capital capacity and liquidity remain a key asset that we are focused on deploying to create shareholder value. and we have made good progress on this during the first quarter. In February, we raised our 2024 annual dividend by 10% to $2.16. We successfully acquired Peguero for approximately $800 million, and we repurchased approximately $350 million of our shares. Year to date, we have also sold approximately 11.7 million shares of the London Stock Exchange Group, or LSEG, generating gross proceeds of $1.4 billion. Looking forward, we remain committed to a balanced capital allocation approach and we continue to assess additional inorganic opportunities. Now to the results for the quarter. Our first quarter organic revenues grew 9%, improving from 7% in the fourth quarter of 2023, Organic recurring and transactional revenue grew 9% and 22% respectively, while print revenue declined 10%, in line with our expectations. Reported revenue grew 8%. Adjusted EBITDA increased 19% to $806 million, reflecting a 390 basis point margin improvement to 42.7%. The margin expansion was driven by strong revenue growth and the timing of certain expenses. Adjusted earnings per share grew 30% from the prior year period to $1.11. Turning to the first quarter results by segment, the big three businesses delivered 10% organic revenue growth, an all-time high, and up from 8% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Legal organic revenue grew 7%, driven by continued Gen AI momentum in Westlaw Precision and Co-Counsel. Demand for our key offerings remains healthy, led by Westlaw, Practical Law, Co-Counsel, HiQ, and strong performance in our international markets, partially offset by lower growth at FindLaw. Corporate's organic revenue growth was 12%, up from 7% in the fourth quarter and well ahead of our expectations. Organic recurring and transactional revenue grew 11% and 16% respectively. Very strong seasonal revenues were a key driver with the inclusion of Peguero also boosting growth. Trust, indirect tax, practical law and our international markets were key growth drivers in the first quarter. Tax and accounting organic revenues grew 14%, driven by recurring and transactional growth of 14% and 15% respectively. Strong seasonal demand for tax and audit products and an even comparison boosted growth. And our Latin American operations, UltraTax, SurePrep, and Confirmation were all key contributors. Reuters News organic revenues rose 17%. driven, as expected, by generative AI-related content licensing revenue that was largely transactional in nature. Excluding this, Reuters' revenue grew modestly, driven primarily by the news agreement with the data and analytics business of LSEG. Lastly, global print organic revenues met our expectations, declining 10% year over year, impacted by the migration of customers from a global print product to Westlaw. which we discussed last quarter. And in summary, we're very pleased with the strong start to the year. Let me now hand it over to Mike to review our financial performance.