CLARIVATE PLC
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CLARIVATE PLC
Earnings Call Analysis
Q3-2023 Analysis
CLARIVATE PLC
The company has placed a strong emphasis on commercialization to expedite growth, harnessing real-world data to provide invaluable insights to healthcare stakeholders. This includes analyzing claims and datasets to enhance impact and planning for product launches. A significant advancement in their offerings is the addition of German hospital prescription data, bolstering their position in the European real-world data solutions market. Furthermore, they have launched an AI-powered software platform, 'Enhanced Sourced', to allow teams to interact with complex datasets more intuitively. This product, currently in beta, is expected to see a general release later in the year.
The third quarter saw the company generating $647 million in revenue, marking a 2% increase from the previous year, primarily driven by organic growth. This performance offset the impact of prior divestitures and was complemented by favorable foreign exchange movements. Adjusted EBITDA margins saw an uptick of 80 basis points, landing at 43.5%, which can be attributed to disciplined cost management and synergies realized from the ProQuest acquisition. The net loss for the quarter improved significantly due to a reduction in non-cash goodwill impairment charges from last year's acquisitions. Adjusted diluted EPS increased marginally to $0.21, reflecting higher adjusted EBITDA.
The capital conversion from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow was characterized by a quarter-on-quarter decrease to $102 million, which was affected by higher working capital demands, primarily due to the intra-annual timing of payments in their IP renewals business. Despite the variance, the company continues to prioritize investment in product innovation with a consistent $62 million capital expenditure. Additionally, they have strategically reinvested a portion of the free cash flow to repurchase shares, investing in their own stock at an attractive average price of $7.20.
For the remainder of the year, the expectations are set to hover around the midpoint of the provided ranges. Organic growth is anticipated to be near 1% for Q4, with full-year growth estimated at 0.5%. The anticipated revenue figure stands at approximately $2.635 billion, and adjusted EBITDA is projected to reach $1.115 billion. These forecasts take into account minor setbacks such as contract delays and softer than expected year-end spending in certain segments. Adjusted diluted EPS is projected to be around $0.80, and free cash flow is expected to approximate $475 million.
The company's financial outlook for the year remains steady with prior guidance. Organic growth is projected to contribute $15 million to revenue, counterbalancing similar levels of incremental cost. The Analytics & Global (A&G) segment is slated for enhanced growth, while the Intellectual Property (IP) and Life Sciences & Healthcare (LS&H) segments may face slight declines due to prevailing macroeconomic conditions. The ProQuest acquisition completion is seen as a fundamental driver for margin expansion, providing $40 million in cost synergies. Moreover, revenue is expected to benefit from a $25 million boost from foreign exchange tailwinds, although this may slightly dampen bottom-line results when compared to previous transaction gains.
The anticipated conversion from the expected adjusted EBITDA of over $1.1 billion will lead to a near $0.5 billion free cash flow, reflecting efficient cost control and working capital management. Heading into the fourth quarter, the organization will focus on allocating the available capital, maintaining a balance between investment in growth and shareholder returns.
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Good morning. Thank you for attending today's Clarivate Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. My name is Fora, and I will be your moderator for today's call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to pass the conference over to our host, Mark Donohue, Head of Investor Relations. Mr. Donahue, please proceed.
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the third quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. With me today are Jonathan Gear, Chief Executive Officer; and Jonathan Collins, Chief Financial Officer. Both will be available to take your questions at the conclusion of the call. As a reminder, this conference 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 is prohibited. And the companying earnings call presentation is available in the Investor Relations section of the company's website, clarivate.com. .
During our call, we may make certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the 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 industry 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 these non-GAAP results are useful in order to enhance an understanding of our ongoing operating performance, but they are supplement to and should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to GAAP measures are available in our earnings release and supplemental presentation on our website.
After prepared remarks, we'll open the call up to your questions. And with that, it's a pleasure to turn the call over to Jonathan Gear.
Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Before I begin, I would like to share some thoughts about the situation in Israel. Clarivate has over 500 colleagues in our Jerusalem office and the recent terrorist attack changed their lives. While we were fortunate not to lose any colleagues that day, everyone in the office knows someone who has been impacted by a loss, casualty or the ongoing hostage crisis. Our colleagues are our #1 priority, and we have established a fund of $200,000 for the local team to use to support quality connections and community outreach.
We have arrangements in place for operational continuity at all levels, and do not expect any disruptions. All of us at Clarivate, hope for peace in the region. Now let me turn to our third quarter results. I'm pleased with the progress of our business this quarter, which demonstrated sequential improvement in 2 of our 3 operating segments, while also achieving our company's highest organic growth on a consolidated basis since I joined Clarivate a year ago. We are moving in the right direction. Despite the ongoing challenges in the macro backdrop, which are having a greater impact on our transactional businesses, we delivered several key wins highlighting the resilience of our business and the mission-critical nature of our data and products.
We continue to innovate our products and establish new generative AI solutions in our IP and life sciences and health care segments. As discussed at our Investor Day in March, driving value enhancements to our mission-critical data through product innovation is core to our long-term strategy. We remain focused on accelerating organic growth to industry growth rates and continue to see generative AI as a very large untapped opportunity for our company.
Revenue in the quarter was $647 million, an increase of $11 million on an organic basis or 2% growth. This was in line with our expectations. Our performance was driven by strong momentum in Academia & Government and a return to positive organic growth in Life Sciences & Healthcare. We continue to face temporary headwinds in IP, such as a delayed contract start date with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and modest impact to the ongoing U.S. Actors strike, both of which I will elaborate on momentarily. Adjusted EBITDA of $281 million and EPS of $0.21 were both up from last year, and we continue to make progress towards our long-term EBITDA margin targets of 43%.
Jonathan Collins will discuss this in more detail. Now turning to our segments. Beginning with Academia & Government, last quarter, you heard me discuss improved performance in A&G as our investments are helping drive new subscription business, account updates and higher retention. This quarter, I'm happy to report we were able to build on that momentum with organic revenue growth accelerating to 3%. This is our strongest growth quarter since last year's second quarter. We believe this is confirmation that our strategy is paying off. In the quarter, growth was strong across content aggregation transactional sales, which has historically been a strength for us, but we also recorded wins with 3 major universities for workflow solutions.
Accelerating adoption of our workflow solutions through our Ex Libris cataloger products has been an important area of focus for us and is a prerequisite to bridging our gap to industry growth. I'm confident we will get there and this quarter is just the beginning. In October, we were selected by Yale University to provide library services and discovery platform. By implementing Alma and Primo, Yale will unify its workflows and data onto a single platform, elevating the user experience and enhancing services within its library ecosystem. As a reminder, Alma is our cloud-based library management platform, which unifies print, electronic and digital collections, while Primo provides fast access to scholarly materials in intuitive ways to discover new content. Yale will implement these services in both its main and law libraries workflows and data, combining the benefits of generative AI with trusted content sources will enable users to find new insights fast and at scale.
Another win in the quarter was OhioLINK, which is the entire state of Ohio's academic library consortium of 117 member libraries. OhioLINK chose Alma for its cloud-based shared library services platform as it bolsters its investment in higher education technology infrastructure. A key factor behind our win was the investments we have been making in the Alma platform and our road map, which best meets the consortium's current and future expected needs.
In addition to Alma, OhioLINK will implement Primo and a wider suite of Ex Libris products that will enhance services for users, staff and administration. Lastly, we established the Academia & Government innovation incubator late in the quarter. We expect this will further accelerate our strategy to advance knowledge through research and education, by introducing novel solutions for our customers and academic users. As part of the incubators' first program, we made a small but important acquisition of Alethea, an AI Power student engagement platform. Alethea facilitates meaningful engagement with academic techs, class readings and assignments through personalized and adaptive guidance, which helps to realize better learning outcomes and student success.
As you can tell, we're seeing strong momentum in our A&D business, and I was very pleased with the performance this quarter. We remain confident that we are well on our way to bridging the gap to market growth rate. Moving to IP. In the quarter, organic revenue growth of incremental pressure from the ongoing U.S. Actor strike, which began in mid-July and impact on our trademark business. Trademarks are a critical part of the movie industry, where film studios use trademarks to protect movie titles and register other elements related to films which can pave the way to potential licensing and merchandising agreements. We also saw a delay in the start date of a new contract with the United States Patent and Trade Office, which was awarded to Clarivate earlier this year. This enhanced contract was delayed by the client, and we recently received word that contract will start in early first quarter next year. The delay will have a modest impact in Q4. We I am pleased to share with you that we secured a multiyear deal with a large Indian telecommunications provider to deliver patent services.
On the product side, we launched Forecast in September. Forecast is an AI-powered tool that delivers powerful capabilities for predictive budgeting and is fully integrated with leading IP management systems. The rising cost of managing IP as a strategic asset is an issue of increasing importance for customers and Forecast enables IP professionals to create budget scenarios to make smarter filing and maintenance decisions while collaborating more seamlessly across our organizations. Net of all this, the view of our IP business remains the same. I remain confident that the slight pullback in organic growth for IP is only a short-term event, and we continue to expect return to normal growth next year.
Turning to Life Sciences & Healthcare. I am pleased to report improved performance with positive organic growth for the first time in 4 quarters [ to 2% ] year-over-year. Though we remain cautious on the macro and are still seeing pressures on parts of our transactional business as a result of the lower drug approval pipeline last year and a still challenging funding environment in biotech, we did see some pockets of relief in the quarter. Our Consulting business delivered 7% growth in the quarter, and we secured a large engagement with a global top 20 pharma to extend our partnership in epidemiology analytics supporting market access and clinical trials. We also signed a strategic agreement with a leading U.S. biotech to accelerate commercial and market strategies for their lead drug candidate.
Lastly, in a regulatory and safety portfolio, we continue to demonstrate consistent growth, which is up 5% from last year. As I shared with you at our Investor Day, commercialization is a key area of focus for us to accelerate our vision to market growth rates. Real world data offers our customers a wealth of information around the activities and outcomes of key health care providers, patients and payers stakeholders. Analyzing medical and pharma claims and other specialty data sets enables manufacturers to maximize their impact on launch planning by understanding the diagnosis, referral treatment and reimbursement dynamics among stakeholders in their target markets.
We continue to add to our existing data sets to drive further value to our customers. In the quarter, we enhanced our real-world data business with additional German hospital prescription data that will reinforce our position as a leading provider of [ durable ] data solutions in Europe. We are also making progress on our software platform. In August, we launched enhanced search powered by generative AI as part of the latest iteration of our patent pending platform. The new capabilities enable clinical, regulatory affairs and strategy teams to interact with complex data sets using natural language to obtain immediate and in-depth insights.
The beta version of the Enhanced Search platform is now available to select customers and general availabilities anticipated later this year. As part of the commercial launch, we will further extend the platform by integrating additional data sets across our Cortellis line, including clinical trials, deals, drug discovery and more. This is all part of our long-term strategy to enhance the value of our critical data through more analytics and insights while shifting an even greater mix of our business to subscription.
In closing, we have a great business with an unparalleled suite of mission-critical products, world-class customers and our long-term strategy is intact. Like everyone in the industry, we wish we knew when the macro pressure would ease nonetheless, we made financial progress in 2 of our 3 operating segments. And more importantly, we're not standing still, our company is accelerating its innovative efforts and we're seeing positive early signs of our strategy based on our customer conversations and highlighted wins to understand we still have much work to do.
I'd like to thank my colleagues for their continued dedication, collaboration and hard work. I look forward to sharing our progress with you all again in 3 months' time. With that, let me turn the call over to Jonathan Collins to walk you through our financials.
Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning, everyone. Slide 11 is an overview of our third quarter results compared with the same period last year. Q3 revenue was $647 million, an increase of $11 million or 2% versus 2022 driven entirely by organic growth as the impact of the MarkMonitor divestiture was offset by foreign exchange. Adjusted EBITDA margins expanded 80 basis points [Audio Gap] cash, goodwill impairment charges associated with the CPA Global and ProQuest acquisitions recorded in the same period last year. Adjusted diluted EPS, which excludes the impact of onetime items like the impairment, was $0.21 in Q3, a $0.01 improvement over the same period last year, primarily due to higher adjusted EBITDA. .
Operating cash flow was $163 million in the quarter, a decrease of $44 million due entirely to higher working capital requirements, primarily stemming from the intra-annual timing of payments in our IP renewals business. Please turn me now to Page 12 for a closer look at the drivers of third quarter top and bottom line changes from the same period last year. Our third quarter revenue and profit results are right in line with our expectations and were driven by 4 key factors. First, revenue was up $11 million on organic growth of 1.7%. As Jonathan highlighted, the organic growth in the A&G segment is the best it's been in over a year as we continue to see the benefits of accelerated growth in the research and analytics subsegment due to the investments in the Web of Science product.
Our LS&H segment grew on a transactional basis due to soft comps from last year, despite the pressure in the prescription file we forewarned on, stemming from the soft real-world data sales from the past few quarters. These segments more than offset the headwinds we continue to see in our IP business due to macro pressures. The profit conversion on the organic growth was particularly strong as a result of the cost discipline we're exercising over the business. Second, inorganic activity, namely the divestiture of the MarkMonitor business last year lowered revenues $19 million and profit $11 million this year.
Third, cost synergies from the ProQuest acquisition contributed $10 million of incremental profit. And finally, the translation impact of subsidiaries denominated in foreign currencies increased revenue by $20 million as the U.S. dollar remains weaker than a basket of foreign currencies compared to the same time last year. The profit increase was negligible as transaction gains incurred in the third quarter of last year did not recur this year.
Please turn with me now to Page 13 to step through the conversion from adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow and how we allocated this capital in Q3. Free cash flow was $102 million in the quarter, a decrease of $39 million over the same period last year, bringing the year-to-date conversion on adjusted EBITDA to 46% and the cumulative improvement so far this year to $159 million. Interest payments were $40 million in the quarter, nearly flat over the prior year, as the impact of base rate increases were offset by the lower debt quantum due to the deleveraging in the fourth quarter of last year and the first half of this year. Cash taxes were $14 million lower than the same period last year as we recognized the benefit of planning initiatives. Working capital was a use of cash of $64 million in Q3 when it was a source of $12 million in the same period last year.
This change was driven primarily by the timing of payments within our patent renewal business in the IP segment. Year-to-date, working capital is essentially flat, and we expect it to be for the full year. Capital expenditures were $62 million in the quarter, in line with the prior quarter and last year's third quarter as we continue to invest in product innovation. We used our third quarter free cash flow to repurchase 13.8 million shares of our stock at an average price of about [ $7.20 ].
Please move with me now to Slide 14 for our current view on the remainder of 2023. Our third quarter results place us on track to deliver full year results near the midpoint of the ranges we provided in August. We expect organic growth will approach 1% in the fourth quarter, resulting in full year growth of about 0.5%. This is slightly below the midpoint of the range as during the quarter, we received word from the U.S. PTO that a large contract we were awarded earlier this year has been delayed from Q4 until Q1 of next year. Additionally, we'll experience the aforementioned effect of the Actor strike on trademark transactions and anticipate tepid year-end spend in life sciences. We continue to expect revenue near the midpoint of the range at [ $2.635 billion ] as the modest organic growth effects are offset by a later closing of the small divestiture in our IP segment and a slightly weaker U.S. dollar. We anticipate adjusted EBITDA near $1.115 billion, yielding a profit margin of about 42.25% at the midpoint of the ranges. We continue to expect adjusted diluted EPS at about $0.80. And finally, we anticipate free cash flow near the midpoint of the range at about $475 million.
Please turn me now to Page 15 for a closer look at the full year top and bottom line outlook, which is unchanged from our prior guidance. Similar to the third quarter results, our full year outlook for revenue and adjusted EBITDA is driven by 4 key factors: First, organic growth will add about $15 million to the top line, funding a comparable amount of incremental cost, leaving the profit impact for this component to be flat. From a segment perspective, we anticipate A&G will continue accelerating their growth from historical performance to the market rate we outlined at the Investor Day in March. IP will decline slightly, and LS&H will decline this year due to the macro pressures we highlighted.
Second, the divestiture of MarkMonitor last year will deduct about $65 million of revenue and about $30 million of profit this year. Third, we've completed the integration of the ProQuest acquisition, enabling us to deliver the remaining $40 million of cost synergies this year accounting for all of this year's expected margin expansion. And finally, we anticipate a $25 million foreign exchange tailwind on the top line as the U.S. dollar has weakened slightly compared to a basket of foreign currencies. The small headwind to the bottom line is caused by the transaction gains realized late last year that we do not expect to recur this year.
Please turn turn now to Page 16 to walk through how we expect the more than $1.1 billion of adjusted EBITDA will convert to nearly $0.5 billion of free cash flow and our plans for allocating the remainder of this capital in Q4. Nearly all of the $170 million improvement in free cash flow projected for the full year, which is largely due to lower onetime costs and augmented by improved working capital has been delivered in the first 3 quarters of the year as we anticipate fourth quarter free cash flow will be roughly in line with the same period last year.
As a reminder, last year, we incurred more than $200 million in cash outflows associated with onetime costs related to the acquisitions and expect an improvement of about $155 million this year as we incur about $60 million largely to complete the ProQuest integration. We do expect a cash interest increase of about $25 million as base rates were up considerably over last year. Our working capital requirements have leveled off this year and will yield an improvement [ of about ] $65 million. We remain on track to increase capital spending by about $40 million to accelerate organic growth.
The impact of all of these changes is about $170 million improvement in free cash flow to approximately $475 million at the midpoint of the range, which is an increase in the conversion on adjusted EBITDA of 15 percentage points. We expect to use all of our fourth quarter free cash flow and an additional $50 million of cash on the balance sheet to prepay another $150 million of our term loan bringing the full year total to $300 million and our net leverage to just below 4x.
Please turn me now to Page 17 for a look at how we're tracking to our long-term financial objectives. You'll recall that when we outline the financial objectives for our business at our Investor Day in March, our primary aim was to accelerate our organic growth. The first area we committed to improve was the research and analytics subsegment within A&G and this segment [indiscernible] remains on track to achieve its growth plans with continued momentum, delivering organic growth in the third quarter in excess of 3%. However, the economy related end market softness facing our LS&H and IP segments leave us behind the pace we expected. But we remain laser-focused on the product innovation that will help us to lift these segments to their market growth rates over the next few years.
But despite tracking behind on the first objective, we've made solid progress towards the other 3 we outlined. Our second goal is to maintain durable profit margins as we invest to accelerate our growth. We executed on this objective in the third quarter as our margins expanded by 80 basis points even as we increased our operating and capital expenditures to drive product innovation. The third objective we outlined was to slightly improve our free cash flow, significantly improve our free cash flow, which we delivered in the first 9 months of the year with an increase of 73% on lower onetime cost and improved working capital.
And finally, we committed to allocate our capital in a disciplined manner. We've demonstrated balance in this area by repurchasing $100 million of stock in Q3 and remain committed to deliver our year-end leverage target through continued debt repayments in Q4. The entire Clarivate team remains completely focused on the solid execution that will deliver all of these financial objectives. I want to thank all of you for listening in this morning. I'm now going to turn the call back over to Fora to take your questions. And as a reminder, please limit yourself to 1 question and then return to the queue for any additional. Fora, please go ahead.
[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. .
Just in light of a few additional 13D filings during the quarter, can you just give us your latest thoughts on whether you think the 3 businesses are more valuable together and what synergies you generate from having them together? And if there are any assets that you view as sort of not as core to the portfolio?
Toni, thanks for the question. Yes. I mean first, obviously, we feel great about the investor set that we have and the kind of renewed interest and renewed commitment from some of those that you mentioned are just fantastic. And so we feel very honored and lucky to have a part of our investment community. In terms of portfolio, really, as I highlighted in my remarks, Toni, nothing has changed. We're still very focused on executing against the plan that we have right now. One of our 3 segments, we're getting very close to market growth rates. We made improvement in life science and health care. And again, we have some short-term market headwinds in IP, which we're focused on improving, and we think we'll turn around next year. So really, Toni, nothing has changed in our remarks. We're always, of course, looking at where we should -- at our portfolio and putting that we can make, but we feel very good about the collection we have right now.
Our next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays.
I just -- apologies if I missed it, but if you could break out the subscription growth and the nonsubscriber growth on the Academia & Government side and just talk about how these new contracts you highlighted and the momentum you talked about directionally help that subscription run rate perhaps?
Sure. Thanks for the question, Manav. So throughout our A&G business, we've highlighted -- in the first 3 quarters, we've seen an improvement in our renewal rates in that segment, and we've seen some new business growth largely driven by the Web of Science product. So we made a pretty meaningful investment in that product late in 2021. In 2022, we saw significant increases in monthly active usage and then we follow that up with some really nice augments or enhancements to the product in 2022. You'll recall, we significantly increased the number of journals that receive a [ Journal impact ] factor, and we started to do some very thoughtful integrations with some of the ProQuest products such as the Dissertations & Theses collection. That's put us in a place where we've seen nice improvements in the renewal rates that have helped to improve the subscription growth rates in the A&G segment. As Jonathan highlighted in his comments, we did have a nice quarter in Q3 on a transactional basis within A&G. So that business can be a little bit lumpy from quarter-to-quarter, wasn't great in Q2 but we saw a really nice growth rate in the third quarter. The fourth quarter is important for that business from a transactional perspective. So the team [indiscernible] team remains heavily focused on delivering a strong year-end on the transactional side to augment the improvements we've seen in subscriptions.
Our next question comes from the line of Surinder Thind with Jefferies.
Just a big picture question here. When we think about the cyclical exposure that you have in the business and the commentary that was last quarter to some of the onetime items. And then we kind of look ahead -- how would you characterize the upside or the downside that's kind of left in that part of the business as we move through the current economic cycle if things were to maintain either current levels or if perhaps things were to get a little tougher from a macro perspective.
Great. Thanks, Surinder. It's great to have you on the call. Just a couple of comments. I mean we -- first, we are facing those macro pressures right now. We faced it for the last few quarters, and certainly in the case of trademark since summertime of next year. So in our view, as we talk to clients and get a sense of their spending patterns from a macro impact, this is kind of as bad as it gets, is our view. .
And you see it in a few different areas. So the -- for the most part, if I break it down, Academia & Government, which, as you know, is primarily academia is really largely immune from macro pressures. It's very government budget driven and tends to be very, very solid. So half our business, I would say, heavily, heavily insulated. On the other parts of our business, largely insulated but not completely immune. So within IP, the greatest impact we're seeing is in our trademark business. And as we talked before, trademark is, the one part of our portfolio, which is the most sensitive, it actually will -- we will see a negative impact on our business through an economic cycle. And we've seen that since late summer or mid summer of last year.
We've seen the contracting of new products being launched. And as we mentioned on the call today, even things like the Screen Actors Guild strike, impacting new product launches and on merchandising on films impacts us. But we are already feeling that right now. We don't see it getting worse. And then in health care, we've seen the impact, particularly on the commercial side of our business as pharma has cut back on spend on new launches. Part of that is macro, part of that was last year was a fewer number of new drugs approved in the pipeline by the FDA. We're seeing [indiscernible] this year. That should improve next year. So we're certainly feeling good right now. And I will say just maybe to summarize it again, is half our business, A&G virtually no impact from macro pressures. And then the other half, you're kind of seeing the downside this year from that.
Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair.
This is Tom Roesch on for Andrew Nicholas. I want to dive into the macro factors you saw last quarter [indiscernible] transaction recurring revenues. I was wondering -- I know you saw some improvement in consulting. I was wondering if you could talk about maybe those other factors and kind of how they progressed through the quarter and kind of how you're seeing those trends as we head into 2024?
Sure. Yes. We'll do, Tom. So the 2 things I would really highlight. First, in Life Sciences & Healthcare care, Again, it's really about those commercial budgets. And those are commercial spend. If you think about a pharma company, they have strategy business, they have R&D. And then once the product gets approved and they get market access, it goes into launch. What we're seeing, and we've seen it really throughout the year. And since entering the year, we kind of hope for an improvement. That improvement hasn't happen in company's budgets. As is -- the pharma industry in general is being very tight on commercial spend this year. So we do see that continued pressure right now throughout most of our products. We do see some positive, our consulting business, as was mentioned in the call, saw a bit of an uptick there, great job by the team there and certainly we're scrambling for where we can for every last dollar. .
But that impact we're seeing is on the commercial side within Life Sciences & Healthcare. And then in IP, is obviously a major and minor. the major is primarily around the trademarks. And it's as simple as this, as trademarks are tied towards new product launches. If you create a new product, if you're a company, consumer or B2B doesn't matter, you're going to trademark that product if you're launching it into new countries, you can do multiple registrations. And those registrations are different from patents and that they're a 10-year cycle instead of an annual cycle for the most part.
So they're much more susceptible to economic pressures. And what we've seen starting from last year, again, is just fewer product launches across our customer portfolio. And I think this is very similar to what we're hearing in the industry. So that's a major part. And then we are seeing a bit of the minor part in terms on the patent side of customers. Just taking a hard look at the patents that they are renewing, we highlighted that in the Q2 call, and that has played out, frankly, exactly as we expected coming out of the Q2 call.
Our next question comes from the line of John Mazzoni with Wells Fargo.
I'm on for Seth this morning. And I just wanted to get a quick one in on the kind of OCC subscription growth really around just what your expectations are for 4Q as well as any initial thoughts into '24?
Sure. So you'll recall at the August call on Q2's results, we indicated we expected to see some headwinds in Q3 on the subscription file and we did. That's almost entirely from our Life Sciences business where we see a pullback on the updates for real-world data based on what the sales pattern had been in the preceding 3 to 4 quarters. So that played out as we expected. We do expect a sequential improvement in our subscription growth from Q3 to Q4. And then obviously, January is a very important month in our renewal cycle. A lot of work going on this month and next month. So we'll have a much better line of sight into the subscription growth across the business when we're together in early March for the year-end results.
Our next question comes from the line of Owen Lau with Oppenheimer.
So you talked about Yale has selected Clarivate for AI [ link ] data and also Ohio leveraging cloud. Could you please broadly talk about the progress of any more capabilities such as AI to your products? And what are some of the key product launches in the near term to increase the engagement with existing and potential customers?
Thank you for the question. So I'll go -- so we'll go ahead and cover a few. I mean as we've discussed before and as I discussed in my prepared comments, we see -- we've used AI for 15-plus years. But this year and the technologies coming out in GenAI are, I think, a game changer for business information and tech-enabled content companies like ourselves. And we're really seeing in a couple of 3 ways generically and I'll be specific. First, in terms of enhanced search capabilities, the ability to use GenAI to find the right content, the right curated content faster drives incredible efficiencies for our customers. And that is true across all 3 segments. .
And as we roll out our products and as we're testing right now with our clients, we are leveraging and expect to see rolled out of enhanced curated search across all of our segments. I think that is going to be table stakes. And then you get that combination of incredibly strong efficiency tool on top of our curated proprietary content is a game changer of enhancement of efficiency for our clients. That certainly is one area. And then secondarily, in terms of -- as a generic example, is just using it as a way to unlock additional content and insights to help our clients in their workflow. And they're a little more targeted.
I did comment on one in my remarks about Forecast within IP, and Owen, [indiscernible] dive in deep on this one. if you're managing a large IP portfolio at one of our clients, is a multi-multi multimillion dollar spend. And the challenge has always been where is the best value in terms of that portfolio of patents that you've managed, and it's been a challenge for decades on how to best manage that. We've been reacting to our clients' needs to help them think about workflow tools to assist with that what historically has been a very manual process, and the Forecasting tool is something we have launched, which will work with the [ IPMS ] systems to do just that and really enhance the value and increase the workflow tools we're providing to that important customer base.
So we're doing it there. We talked about the acquisition we made in A&G. It's a great tool. It's a small acquisition, but a great technology that we bought that allows guided discovery and educational tools to help professors and their content as they reach out to their students. And I have 2 college students, so I can really imagine, Owen how this works it's going to help students as a test their knowledge, answer question and the way the answer will then lead to further bespoke question is to really test that student's knowledge. I think it's going to be the wave of education and the way of the future. We're investing heavily in those areas. So those are just a few examples. Lots more to come. We'll be sharing that in future calls.
Our next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadara with RBC.
thanks for providing more detailed Q4 organic growth guidance. question there was just focused on one of the headwinds called out was the commercial budget and the fourth quarter is seasonally strong quarter for commercialization revenue, my understanding, particularly the [ RWD and the TRG ] business. I was just wondering what's assumed from that business perspective. And how is the transition -- the progress on the platform to deliver these therapeutic RWD solutions directly to the end users? How is that progressing?
Yes. Thank you for the question, Ashish. And you're spot on, the fourth quarter is a seasonally higher quarter for our Life Sciences Transactional Business, certainly includes the commercialization products and services that we described, but even on the R&D side, we're usually looking to capture year-end spending. As we've talked about earlier in the year, particularly on commercialization, drug approvals last year were down which puts us in a position where commercialization budgets are lower this year. We've seen that play out through the year.
We have better line of sight into what we think the year-end availability of funds will be and we trimmed the expectation there just modestly. We're only talking a couple few million dollars as a part of the change in the organic outlook or the current indication for Q4. So that's really what the driver is there. To your second point, we've been very focused from a product development standpoint this year on building out better content, higher quality information with tools that will be relevant for our life sciences customers. We've made really good progress. We've got the launch of the first module on track to go out in the fourth quarter of this year, and there'll be more to come next year. I expect that we'll be in a position at year-end earnings in early March to talk more about the plans for 2024. So stay tuned for that. But thank you for the question.
[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Peter Christiansen with Citi.
I just wanted to follow up on the previous question. As we think about the setup for discretionary revenue -- discretionary spending from your clients, perhaps maybe outside of life science. I was just wondering if you can frame that in terms of maybe what you're seeing maybe on the A&Gside as we get into the fourth quarter? And should we be mindful of any year-over-year comparisons for our fourth quarter.
Yes. Thank you for that, Pete. I'll touch on the other 2 segments. So on A&G, it is the largest transactional quarter of the year. So it's an important quarter. The signs there within that market are good from a calender -- or a school year budgeting standpoint, particularly in the U.S., we're seeing good signs there, and that helped them led to a solid performance in Q3, but there's plenty of work left to do in the next couple of months to make sure that we get our share or more than our fair share of that funding between now and the end of the year.
But I would say the overall forces in that area are positive. On the Life Sciences side, you raised a good point on coms. We had a pretty good performance in real-world data in the fourth quarter of last year. Q3 of last year was very soft. That's why we saw transactional growth in Q3 of this year. So we are expecting real-world data sales to be down in the fourth quarter, which will pressure the Life Sciences transactional business. Certainly, some of that is the economic forces we just talked about. But in addition to that, we're really focused on building out a solution set that we're going to sell directly into the customers and being a bit more selective as we've talked about with where we sell our data. So I think both of those are going to have an impact in Q4. And then on the commercialization side, there are a number of other transaction products that we offer to aid in commercialization, and we expect there's going to be some year-over-year pressure on those due to the drug approvals that we saw last year. We'll talk more about it in a few months. But as we look into next year, that's an area that we think will be a modest tailwind for us. So drug approvals in the U.S. are up over the prior year. So we should see some improvement in commercial budgets going into 2024, but we'll give some more color on that in a few months.
Our next question comes from the line of Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel.
Jonathan, I want to ask a little bit about some of the contract movements that we're seeing. There's commentary about on the LS&H H business impact of midterm cancellations and timing of renewals, like what does that mean exactly? And why are you getting cancellations? And then maybe you could just give us a little bit more color as to why the USPTO contract? Why did that get delayed? Or is there any concerns or anything over there? I would assume that's a pretty big contract with the marquee customers. So any just color on what's going on amongst all these different contract movements would be helpful.
I'll answer your USPTO, I'll then pass on to Mr. Collins for your question on LS&H. On the USPTO happy talk about this because obviously, the government contract was public. And so all this in the public domain. But they've been a long-term partner and customer of ours, a great relationship with the USPTO and [ Alexandria ]. They awarded -- we've been -- with a particular contract, they awarded us an enhanced contract to us and another provider earlier in the year. So it was a consolidation of partners to support them. someone who did not win that contested it as that then went through a process, a government review process. And we just received word that on the back of that, there's a confidence with their process and they have awarded us the original enhanced contracts.
So we were never concerned someone who's losing it. It was a larger contract that was just delayed because an appropriate government review is on the process. We feel very good on the outcome. It has delayed by a little over quarter the benefit of that. So we'll see it coming in early next year, but that has not been confirmed.
Jonathan, I'll pass to you on the LS&H.
Sure. On the Life Sciences side, Shlomo, we highlighted that most of the pressure in Q3 on the subscription file came from the real-world data business. So that's a business where we've seen declining sales over the past few quarters. We knew it was going to impact the subscription file. We also have a small group of products in that group that have the ability to stop the feeds, and we did see a little bit of pressure on renewal rates when we spoke with customers, we got some feedback around budgetary pressures and that's part of what is informing our outlook on the fourth quarter.
But as I mentioned, we've got pretty good line of sight in the other areas, and this is well too on the subscription file. I do expect that subscription growth is going to improve in Q4, and then we'll be very carefully managing the really important Q1 renewal cycle for next year. That will have a big impact on 2024 performance.
Our final question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs.
In Life Sciences & Healthcare, you saw negative subscription revenue growth because of lower real-world data sales and some cancellations. Can you elaborate on your broader strategy for managing your real-world data product to drive improved growth?
Sure. Yes, so let me go ahead and cover that. So this is a key strategy shift that we made in the middle of the year post Henry Levy joining the business. And just as a reminder, prior to the -- last 2 or 3 years since the after some DRG, we've been heavily focused on selling data as a product. So we've taken our Real World Data platform sold it as data and sold out to other providers who have then enhanced to provide analytical tools to the end customer, which is the pharma companies. We have made a decision to really to focus on creating that analytic platform ourselves and migrating away from these large lumpy deals and adding the value ourselves because we believe we're best positioned to go ahead and do that and begin selling more and more directly to pharma. That is a -- we started to make that investment this late last year and then we really enhanced it this year. And so what that means from a revenue profile, it means shifting away in a near-term hit on revenue of both transaction and then a little bit of a subscription pull on that comes when you make a transactional sale. What you do is you sell a transaction sale, you get a dump, if you will, if the client gets a dump of content there.
And then if it's [indiscernible] 3-year contract, we're updating that content throughout and so a bit of a subscription pull along there. And so what you'll see in terms of our financial results is a pullback on transactions in the near term, an impact on subscription within Life Sciences & Healthcare that's tied to those large transactions. But as we build out the platform, we will build over time a much more sustainable, higher growth, higher value product, which is primarily subscription going forward, and that you'll see coming next year and in years to come.
thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session for today's call. I will now pass back for any final remarks.
Thank you. Sure. Thank you so much. I'll just go and wrap again. Thank you, everyone, for joining the call. We feel, again, very good about the overall results in the quarter, good progress. Obviously, still work to do, but we're seeing the progress we expected to see. So thanks, everyone. Have a great week, and look forward to talking with you soon. Goodbye.
This concludes today's third quarter 2023 earnings call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.