Informa PLC on Thursday raised its guidance for profit and revenue in 2023, following ‘accelerating growth’ in the last five months, and said it expects revenue this year to be higher than before Covid.
The London-based publishing and events firm said that due to ‘strong underlying performances combined with portfolio additions’, it has increased revenue guidance for 2023 by £200 million or 7% to between £2.95 billion and £3.05 billion. This would represent an increase of between 30% and 35% from £2.26 billion in 2022.
Informa said it expects revenue to surpass that of 2019, before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, despite the divestment in 2022 of its Informa Intelligence business for about £2.5 billion. The Intelligence division had accounted for approximately 12% of group revenue.
For the first five months of 2023, Informa reported underlying revenue growth of 25%. It attributed this to ‘consistent growth’ of 3.0% in Academic Markets and ‘further strong growth’ of 31% in B2B Markets. All of its B2B businesses performed strongly with revenue up 44% in Informa Markets, 19% in Informa Connect and 8.3% in Informa Tech.
‘The Informa group is delivering accelerating growth in revenues, profits, earnings and cashflows, with a strong balance sheet and increasing shareholder returns,’ commented Chief Executive Officer Stephen Carter. ‘This enables us to increase our guidance for 2023 and create further opportunities for growth and acceleration in 2024 and beyond.’
Informa also increased its forecast adjusted operating profit by £70 million or 10% to between £750 million and £790 million. This would represent an increase of between 51% and 59% from £496.3 million in 2022.
The company said it has so far returned £785 million at 607 pence per share from an ongoing buyback programme which it increased in March to £1 billion. It expects to return over £650 million total in cash to shareholders this year, up from over £550 million in 2022, including through further buybacks and ‘strong double-digit growth’ in ordinary dividends.
Shares in Informa were up 3.3% at 727.60p each in London on Thursday morning.
Informa said its acquisitions this year of Tarsus Group and Winsight LLC have expanded its presence in key regions including the Middle East and Asia, and ‘strengthened our position’ in ‘attractive’ business to business areas such as healthcare, food service and aviation.
The company also plans to combine IGM and Zephyr, its specialist data and content businesses, to help it gain ‘further strength’ in the finance vertical.
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