科睿唯安 (CLVT) 2026年第三季度业绩电话会议：经常性增长改善

核心要点

• 2026财年第三季度来自持续经营业务的营收为4.82亿美元。 经常性内生营收增长1.3%，而受交易性营收下滑拖累，内生总营收仅增长0.4%。
• 内生年化合同价值（ACV）增长率达到1.8%，同比上升30个基点。 科睿唯安表示，这一前瞻性指标主要得益于价格提升，同时业务量趋势也在持续改善。
• 调整后摊薄每股收益（EPS）同比增长0.03美元至0.21美元。自由现金流为1.10亿美元，今年迄今的减债规模已达2.93亿美元。
• 科睿唯安已完成生命科学与医疗健康业务板块的出售，目前专注于学术与政府以及知识产权两大业务板块。这两大板块合计创造约20亿美元的营收，且经常性内生营收占比达93%。
• 知识产权业务经常性内生营收增长近1%，同时知识产权ACV三年来首次恢复正增长。
• 管理层预计第四季度经常性内生营收增速将超过2%，创下公司三年多来的最高季度增速。公司还预计2027财年自由现金流将增长10%至15%。

核心财务数据

经常性内生营收为第三季度带来600万美元的增长。成本优化与营收增长带来了1300万美元的内生利润贡献。战略剥离使季度营收减少了4800万美元，但对利润的影响较小，因为被剥离业务的利润率相对较低。

调整后EBITDA利润率在第三季度同比扩大超300个基点，并在2026财年前九个月累计扩大200个基点。

业务与经营业绩

科睿唯安的持续经营业务包含两大具规模效应的板块。学术与政府板块产生约12亿美元的营收，经常性内生营收占比达95%；知识产权板块产生约8亿美元的营收，经常性内生营收占比达90%。

在学术与政府板块，Web of Science Research Intelligence自5月推出以来，已在25个国家和地区获得了超过100家机构客户。科睿唯安报告称，2026–2027财年处于活跃状态的销售管道约为2000万美元。公司还在法国入选了一项多年期项目，将使用其Alma云平台来推进国家学术图书馆系统的现代化。

在知识产权板块，经常性内生营收增长近1%，ACV恢复正增长。科睿唯安将这一改善归功于更具针对性的销售组织、稳定的管理层以及新产品开发。

在11月IP-1推出早期体验版本之前，科睿唯安正与来自25个国家和地区的40多家开发合作伙伴展开合作，其中包括15多家《财富》世界500强企业。活跃的销售管道包含151家客户。首发版本预计将包含5个专用AI智能体，由超过10亿个相互连接的数据点提供支持。

在全公司范围内，科睿唯安已拥有80多个已上市的AI智能体、助手和功能。管理层表示，其平台上的AI使用量是去年同期记录水平的2.5倍以上。

管理层业绩指引

科睿唯安更新了其2026财年业绩指引，将生命科学与医疗健康业务从所有时期中剔除，因为剥离的业务板块现已被归类为已终止经营业务。

管理层预计2026财年内生总营收增长约为50个基点，调整后EBITDA利润率将扩大超250个基点。成本优化预计将带来约4000万美元的内生利润增长。

对于2027财年，科睿唯安目前的标包括提高内生ACV和经常性营收增长率、自由现金流增长10%至15%以及降低净杠杆率。完整的2027财年指引计划于2月发布。

风险与关注点

交易性营收的下滑继续抵消了经常性营收的部分改善。科睿唯安还决定逐步淘汰若干规模较小、低利润率的交易性产品（主要集中在知识产权领域），这些产品约占总营收的1%。预计淘汰过程将持续一至两年。

外汇波动对营收的影响有限，但由于美元兑一篮子货币走弱以及已实现交易损失，给利润带来了较大的阻力。

第三季度现金流受到税收增加以及与应收和付款时间相关的营运资金需求增加的影响。科睿唯安还预计2026财年营运资金占用约为3500万美元，主要用于支付激励性薪酬。

分析师问答亮点

针对ACV增长，管理层表示定价是第三季度实现1.8%增长的主要驱动因素。科睿唯安将定价目标设在3%左右或以上，同时业务量持续改善。公司的目标是在2026财年底实现约2%的ACV增长，并在2027财年进一步提升。

针对知识产权业务的复苏，管理层强调了更紧密的业务管理、更聚焦的销售组织以及计划推出的IP-1。科睿唯安预计IP-1将同时助力新ACV增长和订阅续约率，不过在电话会议期间，该平台仍处于早期体验版本推出之前。

针对减债，管理层表示科睿唯安计划利用剥离生命科学与医疗健康业务所得资金，回购部分2028年和2029年到期的票据。分配额度将取决于可获得的折价、到期时间、现金收益和自由现金流。公司预计2026财年总减债规模约为8.75亿美元。

业绩电话会议完整文字记录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Clarivate Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

I will now hand the conference over to Mark Donohue, Vice President, Investor Relations. Mark, please go ahead.

Mark Donohue

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Clarivate's Third Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call.

As a reminder, this conference is call is being recorded and webcast and is copyrighted property of Clarivate. Any rebroadcast of this information in whole or in part without prior written consent of Clarivate prohibited. The accompanying earnings call presentation is available on the Investor Relations section of the company's website.

During our call, we may make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Such forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the business or developments in Clarivate's business to differ materially from the anticipated results performance, achievements or developments expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Information about the factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results or performance can be found in Clarivate's filings with the SEC and on the company's website.

Our discussion will include non-GAAP measures or adjusted numbers. Clarivate believes non-GAAP results are useful in order to enhance the understanding of our ongoing operating performance, but they are a supplement to and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliation of these measures to GAAP measures are available in our earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website.

With me today are Matti Shem Tov, Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Easton, Chief Financial Officer. After our prepared remarks, we'll open up the call to your questions.

And with that, it's a pleasure to turn the call over to Matti.

Matti Shem Tov

Thank you, Mark, and thank you, everyone, for joining us. The third quarter marks a major milestone in Clarivate's continued transformation. We completed the strategic sale of Life Science and Healthcare segment ahead of schedule. This positions Clarivate as a more focused, higher quality recurring business center on two scaled market-leading segments, academia and government and IP.

Both segments are driving commercial traction and customer validation from our AI-led innovation. Webscience Research Intelligence and IP-1 are strong examples of that innovation in practice. I will discuss this in more detail later. In Q2, we said that we had a building blocks in place to accelerate organic growth. The progress we made this quarter is a proof that we delivered on our commitments.

Today's message is straightforward. We have a clear path to accelerating sustained organic growth expanding free cash flow and reducing leverage, all of which will continue to create long-term value for shareholders.

Q3 results reflect improving recurring revenue strong profitability and cash generation, continued debt reduction and meaningful customer validation of our technology and AI capabilities. Organic ACV growth was 1.8%, up 30 basis points year-over-year.

As a reminder, this KPI is our leading indicator for future organic revenue growth. Recurring organic revenue improved to 1.3%, an increase of 110 basis points year-over-year. Within AMG, organic ACV and subscription revenue growth was approximately 12%. We are excited that in France, our best selected climate to modernize its national academic average system. This multiyear agreement will replace legacy systems with a unified Alma cloud-based platform that combines AI-powered discovery and library services across thousands of academic varies and institutions.

This is a powerful validation of both the scale of our platform and the critical role target plays in the global research ecosystem. In IP, reoccurring organic revenue grew nearly 1% and ACV return to positive growth for the first time in over 3 years.

In terms of IP wins, the U.S. PTO, selected Clarivate to power image search across the U.S. trademark register placing our image recognition capabilities within a core trademark workflow. This reinforces the value of combining truster proprietary data, deeply embedded workflow solution and AI to solve the mission critical needs of our customers.

Clarivate is now a scaled focused and highly recurring business with $2 billion of revenue and 93% recurring organic revenue mix. Our solutions span 3 complementary models. Intelligent Solutions representing 50% of revenue, workflow solution representing 25% and technology-enabled services representing 25%. This combination provides trusted decision support, embedded software and expert-led services that customers rely on to execute critical work globally.

AI is enhancing the value across these offerings. We now have more than 80 in-market AI agents, assistance and capabilities supporting our customers at an increasing pace. Our platform has handled more than $465 million AI API costs, which is more than 2.5x the volume compared to this time last year.

This demonstrates the scale at which AI is already deployed across Clarivate, but scale of deployment is only part of the story. Clarivate's ability to apply AI to trusted content and establish workflows while still maintaining trust, governance and quality is what matters to customers. This is further evidence of why we believe AI is strongly positive for our business.

Let me turn to our 2 segments, starting with academia and government and the strength of our position across the global research ecosystem. ANG is approximately $1.2 billion franchise with 95% recurring organic revenue and a deeply embedded position across the global research ecosystem.

Our reach is significant. 99% of the world's top 400 universities use our solutions. More than 120 million students and researcher rely on our products to enhance the outcomes and our data powers 75% of national and regional research assessments.

Our solutions are deeply embedded across research, [which can be] learning, funding decision and Lavie operations. Our advantage comes from bringing together scholarly content and institutional workflows as well as research intelligence in a proprietary ecosystem. These assets support a resilient recurring revenue stream and creates the opportunity to build new AI-enabled products.

Web of Science Research Intelligence is a good example of what I just outlined. Following its launch in May, the platform has now secured more than 100 institutional wills across 25 countries. Importantly, we have developed an active sales pipeline for 2026 to 2027 of approximately $20 million, which we expect to continue to grow.

The platform uses agentic AI, 12 institutions address complex questions around Clarivate's strategy impact and funding with output grounded in Clarivate created totted data. This matter because the decisions being made using our platform requires the highest level of provenance expendability and trust.

Early global customer traction support our confidence in market adoption. So the next step is clear: convert that customer interest and pipeline into recurring revenue at scale. We believe these revenue opportunities are both incremental and support even stronger retention for webcams.

Turning to intellectual property. IP is our other scale segment with $800 million of revenues and 90% recurring organic revenues supporting the global IP ecosystem. 90% of the top 100 R&D investors use our solutions. More than 15,000 IP customers well on Clarivate to manage and protect their portfolios and 40 patent and trademark offices, including the 5 largest in the world use our solutions.

The work we support is nondiscretionary and no deferrable. Customers depend Clarivate to create, protect, manage and commercialize intellectual property globally and to save down billions of dollars of intangible value with certainty and continuity. Importantly, the fundamentals of this business are improving. Reoccurring organic revenue grew nearly 1% in Q3 and ACV returned to positive growth.

This represents continued progress and true that we are delivering on our commitments. Our competitive advantage comes from the combination of our IP management software creative patents and trade bank data life cycle services and one of the largest teams of IT specialists in the industry. It also gives us a stronger foundation to introduce the next generation of AI agented platform.

IP-1 brings that strategy to life. IP-1 is becoming an AI-native intelligence layer across the IP life cycle, combining specialized agent, Clarivate proprietary data and trusted intelligence. It is granted in customers' proprietary IP data helped within Clarivate software and inaccessible to general-purpose AI.

We believe that IP-1 can become the intelligence and agenting foundation across the IP life cycle. Ahead of the November early adopter launch, we are working with more than 40 development partners, it was 25 countries, including more than 15 Fortune Global 500 companies. We have established an active sales pipeline of 151 customers, which we expect to increase in the coming months.

The initial release is expected to include 5 purpose-built AI agents and a growing library of agentic workflow skills. They are grounded in more than 1 billion interconnected data points that Clarivate has developed and enriched over decades, supported by our IP domain experts.

Through the IP-1 introduction, we expect to create new revenue streams and improved subscription retention. Let me bring this together. We have taken deliberate actions to improve the quality and performance of Clarivate. Our strategy is working.

We have increased the recurring revenue mix of the business, improved our commercial execution, accelerated product innovation, simplified the portfolio and reduce debt. And increasingly, we are seeing these actions reflected in our KPIs.

Recurring revenue growth is improving IP/ACV has returned to growth, and our new AI-led platforms are tracking customers and building commercial pipelines. Given the sale of life science and health care, we wanted to provide an early look at 2027. The current target is to achieve higher organic ACV and recurring revenue growth alongside increasing free cash flow and lowering net leverage.

We look forward to providing full 2027 guidance in February. I want to leave you with one point. Clarivate today is a different company from the one that began this transformation when I joined as CEO 2 years ago.

With that, Michael will review our financial results in more detail.

Michael Easton

Thank you, Matti. We continue to drive progress towards growth while focusing our portfolio on scaled recurring revenue products. We are excited that IP has returned to positive recurring organic revenue growth in the quarter, and we continue to see organic subscription revenue growth in A&G.

Slide 14 is an overview of our third quarter and year-to-date results compared with the same periods last year. As a reminder, the third quarter and year-to-date financial results were impacted by the sale of the LSM segment in October 2026. And the resulting presentation of the ESN results as discontinued operations for all periods presented.

On the waterfall schedules in the earnings presentation, we have shown the discontinued operations separately to provide visibility of our continuing operations performance and comparability to previously reported numbers. Q3 revenue from continuing operations was $482 million bringing year-to-date to nearly $1.5 billion. The change in the quarter over the prior year was due to inorganic disposals, and the year-to-date over prior year decline of 5% was due entirely to inorganic disposals, specifically the A&G Books business.

As a reminder, this wind down was completed in the second quarter this year, so we will anniversary this impact in the back half of 2027. The third quarter loss from continuing operations was $26 million, essentially flat year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA was flat for the year-to-date and nearly flat for the quarter despite impact from the disposals.

Adjusted diluted EPS in the third quarter was up $0.03 over the prior year to $0.21, bringing the year-to-date to $0.59, which is a 20% increase over the same period last year. Operating cash flow was $166 million in the quarter. The change compared to last year was driven by lower adjusted EBITDA from disposals, higher taxes and working capital requirements due to timing of receipts and disbursements partially offset by lower interest expense.

Please turn you now to Page 15 for a closer look at the drivers of the third quarter comp and bottom line changes from the prior year term. The continuing operations changes over the prior year were driven by 3 primary factors. First, recurring organic revenues grew by $6 million or 1.3%. Offset by decline in transactional revenues, resulting in total organic revenue growth of $2 million or 0.4%. This is our highest recurring revenue growth in over a year, and keeps us on track to improve this metric by 100 basis points from H1 to H2.

The revenue growth, along with cost efficiencies resulted in organic flow through to profit of $13 million. Second, the businesses we are disposing decreased revenue by $48 million with a 25% impact on profit, almost entirely from the wide not A&T books business.

In Q3, we also decided to wind down a couple of smaller, low-margin transactional products, mostly in the IP segment, approximating 1% of total revenues with a negligible amount of profit, which wind down will occur over the next 1 to 2 years.

And finally, while the top line was only nominally impacted due to foreign exchange, we experienced more profit impact due to the weakening in the U.S. dollar against a basket of foreign currencies and realized transaction loss. In summary, a return to organic revenue growth, strategic disposals and disciplined cost management allowed us to expand our adjusted EBITDA margin over 300 basis points versus the same period last year.

Please turn with me now to Page 16 for the same analysis for the first 3 quarters of the year. While year-to-date recurring organic revenue growth of $12 million or nearly 1% has been mostly offset by transactional revenue performance as discipline has completely mitigated this impact, resulting in organic contribution of $23 million of adjusted EBITDA.

The disposals have lowered revenue by $85 million, but due to the low margin results in only a $13 million reduction in adjusted EBITDA. For the comparable period in the prior year, the U.S. dollar was weaker against the basket of foreign currencies, which caused a foreign exchange benefit to revenue but resulted in a profit headwind from foreign currency fluctuations on costs and transaction gains last year that did not recur this year.

Overall, the recurring revenue growth strategic disposals and disciplined cost management drove margin expansion of 200 basis points in the first 3 quarters of the year, an improving trend we expect to continue in the fourth quarter of the year.

Please turn with me now to Page 17 to see how our adjusted EBITDA converted to free cash flow and how we continue to out hit our capital in a disciplined manner to further strengthen the balance sheet. Free cash flow was $110 million in third quarter which was $5 million lower than the same period last year. The change was due to higher taxes and working capital, largely due to the timing of collections and payments, partially offset by lower interest in capital spending.

We used the free cash flow to repurchase another $75 million of notes due in 2028 at a discount of about 2%, bringing the debt reduction year-to-date to $293 million.

Please turn with me now to Page 18 for a look at our full year financial guidance ranges. As discussed in the second quarter of exposing the divestiture, we are updating guidance to account for LS&H no longer being included in our financial results. Our updated guidance ranges for revenue and adjusted EBITDA and related indicators no longer include LS&H's results for any periods this year as they are now treated as discontinued operations.

As a reminder, when we announced the agreement to sell Ellison Agent early July 2026, we provided full year 2026 estimates for this segment of $370 million of revenue and $120 million of adjusted EBITDA, which similar to prior years was seasonally weighted to the fourth quarter. We are also narrowing the full year guidance ranges as 3 quarters of the year are now complete.

Additionally, to more clearly present the ongoing business we have provided guidance ranges for the fourth quarter of the year in the earnings release. We expect our organic ACV to range from 1.75% to 2.25% and note that our IP segment ACV has now returned a positive organic rate.

We expect recurring organic revenue growth to range from 1% to 1.5% for the full year, and importantly, for Q4 to exceed 2%. Our Revenue range is now expected to be $1.965 billion to $1.985 billion, down from the prior year due entirely from the strategic wind-down of A&G Books business.

With that wind down completed in the second quarter of 2026, entering 2020 27, we anticipate favorable year-over-year comparisons in the back half of the year on total revenue. Importantly, our organic revenue mix we now be in a range of 92% to 94%. We now expect that adjusted EBITDA will show positive growth for the full year in the range of $865 million to $885 million. This profit growth will all come in the fourth quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA margin is expected to be about 44% half the midpoint of the range. We still expect adjusted EPS will grow about 9% at the midpoint of the range to $0.75.

Finally, free cash flow guidance is updated to a range of $320 million to $340 million as we have now incurred all transaction costs approximately $30 million to close the divestiture and will not have a seasonally stronger line free cash flow in the fourth quarter. Our 2027 perspective on free cash flow anticipates growth of 10% to 15%.

Please turn with me now to Page 19 for a review of the full year top and bottom line changes we are expecting compared to last year. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin will expand over 250 basis points, driven by a return to organic growth continued cost discipline and completion of the strategic disposals. We anticipate total organic revenue growth of about 50 basis points, led by subscription revenue growth from continued ACV acceleration.

We have executed on plan to achieve cost efficiencies resulting in $40 million of organic growth. This will account for a majority of the margin expansion. The Intermac disposals are expected to lower revenue this year by approximately $110 million, and we are reducing operating expenses by about $90 million, which yield a profit impact of about $20 million with the remainder of the full year revenue and profit impact being driven by changes in foreign currency exchange rates.

Please turn with me now to Page 20 to step through the expected improvement of our revenue and margin this year, which we have updated based on our year-to-date results. Our quarterly performance continues to build momentum and as discussed in our second quarter earnings we still expect recurring organic revenue growth in H2 to see an improvement from H1 of 100 basis points.

Our expectation for recurring organic growth is above 2% in Q4. This will be the highest quarterly performance in over 3 years and positions us well into 2027. The organic growth implemented cost efficiencies and the benefit of the strategic disposals should maintain profit margins above 45% in Q4, and total revenue will be higher in Q4 due to the normal cadence of patent and trademark renewals and improving organic ACV and recurring revenue growth.

Please turn with me now to Page 21 to review how we expect the adjusted EBITDA will convert to free cash flow and how we plan to allocate this capital along with the proceeds from the divestiture to reduce our debt this year by about $875 million. We now expect free cash flow to approximate $33 million this year as we have now incurred all transaction costs to close divestiture, and we will not have the seasonally stronger LSA free cash flow for the fourth quarter.

The vast majority of the onetime cost of about $70 million will not recur next year. We now expect cash interest will be lower by about $25 million compared to last year due to the debt repaid last year and this year. We anticipate the change in working capital this year, this will be a use of approximately $35 million, primarily due to incentive compensation payments. And while we remain committed to investing in product innovation, the divestiture of SNH October 26, the disposals and cost efficiencies will improve capital spending by about $35 million.

From a capital allocation perspective, we planned use of proceeds from the SNA divestiture to repurchase at a discount, a portion of the notes 2 in 2028 and 2029. Q3 was a significant quarter for us as we completed an important step to focus on our 2 scaled segments and continue to make progress on our BCP plan, driving growth, improving cash flow, strengthening our capital structure and creating value for our shareholders.

Operator, we will now move to Q&A.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

分析师问答

Manav Patnaik

This is Brandon Cohen on for Manav Patnaik. On ACV, you've called out pricing as a primary driver of the 1.8% growth this quarter. would you be able to please unpack the price versus volume dynamic a bit? And what exactly needs to happen for retention and new subscription sales to become a bigger driver of the acceleration into 4Q and into 2027?

Michael Easton

Yes. Thanks, Brandon, for the question. We're pleased with the performance of the ACV this quarter raising 1.8%, and one of the primary drivers of that is our pricing. Our pricing talked about that in the past that we strive to get above or around 3% pricing, but pricing has been consistent and strong this year and then volumes are continuing to see improvement there on an overall basis.

We are now timing to exit the year at 2% ACV growth. So another improvement from Q3 into Q4 and then further to improve as we move to 2027, as Matti said.

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

.

Unknown Analyst

This is Alex Blacker on for George Tom. ACV returned to positive growth for the first time in more than 3 years, while total segment organic revenue declined 0.4%. But can you discuss what's driving the ACV improvement and how you see that translating into organic revenue growth from here?

Matti Shem Tov

So first of all, just remind ourselves about the strength of the IP business. We are supporting nondiscussion nondeferrable work. This is -- we are part of larger IP ecosystem. We've gone through a lot in IP. We now have stabilized the management much more focused sales organization in reoccurring revenue growth we return to ACV positive growth.

We have Simon, which is now running the business in a tighter way and we are very, very pleased also with our positioning around IP-1, a very confident that IP 1 is the right new aria agentic AI level will help us not only converting having new ACV, but also helping us to -- on the retention side for the recurring revenue side.

So we're very -- we learned a lot in IP to go with transition of the management, we are introducing new products and the type of sales organization, very positive to believe IP is coming by.

Operator

[Operator Instructions] We have now reached the end of the Q&A session. I will turn the call back to Matti Shem Tov, CEO, for closing remarks.

Oh, we do have one more question from 1 -- with Bank of America, I will take this question now. Your line is open, Avega.

Unknown Analyst

You kind of mentioned that you were going to use the LSNH proceeds to repay the '28 to '29 at a discount. Could you maybe describe how you're going to go about doing that?

Matti Shem Tov

Yes, thanks for the question. tothe course of this year, as you disclose we bought back about $290 million of debt so far year-to-date, that has been in a range of 2% to 3% discount in the second quarter and the third quarter. in our plan for the fourth quarter review to approach it to seeing that we've done the buybacks in the third quarter and the second quarter. So really no change from that, and we'll look for the right opportunity to start the process and to compete on a relatively short order here in the after quarter.

Unknown Analyst

I guess, how do you weigh buying back the 28 versus the 29s just given the timing difference of when they come due? And maybe how do you think about longer term your capital structure?

Matti Shem Tov

Yes. No, you're right. There's good delineation between the 2 to the 2 near-term notes. And so you really just balance the opportunity there with when those notes are coming due, what we think is the right approach for a capital allocation between the 2 and obviously, look to our cash proceeds and the free cash flow to be able to pay those off in due course before they arrive or become current.

Operator

We have now reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Matti Shem Tov, CEO, for closing remarks.

Matti Shem Tov

And let me just close by saying that we are proud of the progress and confidence in the future. Our focus is now execution, translating that foundation into accelerating and sustaining organic growth at spending free cash flow and reducing our leverage, and thank you for joining us today.

Operator

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.