23rd Jul 2025 08:39
(Alliance News) - Informa PLC on Wednesday raised its full-year outlook and added to its share buyback after reporting 20% growth in half-year sales and adjusted profit.
The London-based international events, digital services, and academic publishing business reported a pretax loss of GBP254.2 million in the six months to June 30, swung from a profit of GBP237.4 million a year prior.
The bottom line was hurt by goodwill impairments of GBP484.2 million in the half-year based on the current US public market valuation of Informa TechTarget and its US trading performance, and a GBP51.9 million fair value loss on an investment compared to zero a year ago.
On an adjusted basis, pretax profit rose 17% to GBP515.9 million from GBP441.2 million a year ago and adjusted operating profit jumped 24% to GBP578.9 million from GBP466.9 million.
Adjusted operating margin increased to 28.4% from 27.5% a year ago, underpinned by further underlying profit growth and ongoing AI data licencing agreements.
Diluted loss per share were 5.9 pence compared to EPS of 10.8p a year ago. Adjusted EPS increased 25% to 29.8p from 23.8p.
Revenue grew 20% to GBP2.04 billion from GBP1.70 billion a year ago, reflecting further strong growth in live business-to-business events and academic markets.
Informa said GBP3.1 billion, around 80% of 2025 revenue, is "committed or visible" through subscriptions, forward bookings and contracts, up from GBP2.7 billion a year ago, with a further GBP500 million plus booked and committed for 2026, up 15% year-on-year.
Free cash flow improved 25% to GBP356.9 million from GBP285.5 million.
Chief Executive Stephen Carter said: "Informa is further increasing the pace of performance, delivering 20%+ growth in our four key performance measures: revenues, profits, earnings and free cash flow."
In response, shares in Informa climbed 4.8% to 865.40 pence each in London on Wednesday morning. The wider FTSE 100 was up 0.4%.
Reflecting the strong performance, Informa increased full-year underlying revenue growth guidance to at least 6% from at least 5%, including 8% plus in Live B2B Events.
In 2024, Informa reported underlying revenue growth of 11.6%.
Academic Markets is targeting underlying growth of 3% to 4% and Informa TechTarget is guiding to broadly flat revenues for the full year, implying an improvement in run rate through the second half.
The company's reported revenue guidance was maintained at at least GBP4 billion and adjusted earnings growth increased to 10% plus from 10% previously, despite a further weakening of US dollar.
Informa explained that every cent movement in the USD impacts revenue by GBP18 million and adjusted operating profit by GBP7 million on a full year basis.
The dividend was increased by 9.4% to 7.0p from 6.4p.
In addition, Informa said it would buy back a further GBP150 million of shares through the second half of 2025, taking the total commitment to GBP350 million in 2025.
"Excess capital is balanced between inorganic investment and share buybacks, whilst maintaining leverage within our target range of 1.5x to 2.5x net debt to adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation," the company added.
By Jeremy Cutler, Alliance News reporter
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