Championing the Specialist
Read about the Group's latest business developments and financial highlights, and learn more about our markets, brands and colleagues in the Informa 2019 Annual Report, Championing the Specialist.
Chairman's Introduction
Consistency and Performance
It is a great pleasure to address Informa shareholders after another busy and productive year for the Group.
There were many highlights, not least the successful completion of the Accelerated Integration Plan, which saw Informa fully combine the UBM portfolio acquired in 2018 into the Group.
Group Chief Executive Review
Growth and Specialisation
The Knowledge and Information economy is an exciting and, we believe, a potentially rewarding market to be in, and we have a range of powerful brands that provide knowledge to customers in specialist markets.
Since 2014, we have been progressively strengthening the business, enhancing products, championing customers and delivering improving and consistent performance.
Creating Informa Tech
2019 saw the launch of Informa Tech, our first fully market facing Division, created to maximise our depth of specialist Tech brands and better serve a broader range of customers.
Read and watch the conversation between four of Informa Tech’s leaders to hear more about the experience, what customers are saying and our prospects.
2019 Financial Highlights
Over the last six years, we have progressively been building a business capable of delivering consistent growth and predictable performance.
In 2019, we continued to make good progress in this respect, reporting a sixth consecutive year of growth in revenue, adjusted operating profit, adjusted earnings, free cash flow and dividends.
Our focus on costs, along with operating synergies from the Accelerated Integration Plan, lifted adjusted operating profit. Free cash flow exceeded £700m and leverage reduced compared with 2018.
Revenue
Underlying revenue growth
Operating profit
Adjusted operating profit
Free cash flow
Earnings per share
The Heart of Informa
Our colleagues and culture are the real heart of Informa.
Find out about Informa's newly updated purpose and principles, and read more about day-to-day life in the company and the way we work with our customers and partners.
Championing the specialist
Informa Connect
Where shipping drops anchor
In a world where much of what we use, eat, wear or build involves something that has crossed the ocean on a vessel, the maritime industry is the backbone of the world’s economy.
CMA Shipping provides a forum for the North American shipping industry to discuss, share and connect.
Informa Intelligence
Lending to a mortgage specialist
At the heart of any mortgage lender’s competitiveness is product pricing and margin management.
Since early 2019, Guild has been working with Informa Intelligence’s Icon brand to help guide its margin management and retain high performing sales colleagues who can be confident in Guild’s competitiveness.
Informa Markets
Fresh ideas at Natural Products Expo
In the specialist market for natural, organic and healthy products, our Natural Products Expo West team seeks to champion its customers to do more and ultimately to help bring more health to more people.
Informa Tech
Getting real at AI Summit
AI Summit is the largest AI event for business in the world.
In video interviews at AI Summit in New York in 2019, attendees shared their AI business priorities and what they gained from learning and gathering at the event.
Taylor & Francis
The Sustainable Soldier
At Taylor & Francis, there is no such person as a typical researcher, and Colonel Divakaran Padma Kumar Pillay is a case in point.
This officer turned researcher chose Routledge, a Taylor & Francis imprint, to publish his work on food security.
Business Model
Informa works in the growing Knowledge and Information Economy and in a range of specialist customer markets.
Our business model draws on the strengths of our talent, brands and relationships to deliver business growth and benefits for our colleagues, customers, business partners, shareholders and communities.
Risk Management
To support the Company’s growth and culture, we aim to identify and understand business risks as fully as possible, be conscious about the risks we choose to take, develop effective ways to address them and clearly articulate how risk is managed.
Our Board plays an important role in effective risk management and it formally sets out our appetite and tolerance for risk.
Working in specialist markets
Health & Nutrition
Growing like a weed
It’s difficult to have a conversation in today’s health, nutrition and dietary supplement industry without CBD coming up. Simply, this non-high-inducing, cannabis-derived cousin of marijuana is the biggest news our industry has ever seen. And that’s not hyperbole.
Wealth Management
Younger, faster, nimbler
All over the world, the rapid reinvention of wealth management is in the air, fuelled by technology, an operational drive for efficiency and the shifting needs of a new demographic.
Brand Licensing
Brand discovery goes digital
Entertainment brands have always been huge players in licensing, but there are many examples of brands becoming smarter and more creative through product placement, brand extensions, collaborations and experiences.
Mental Health
Helping the world treat the mind
A growing acceptance that ‘it’s ok not to be ok’, and a better understanding amongst employers and policy-makers has sharply increased the profile of mental health in recent years.
Pharmaceuticals
From treatment to cure
After a decade of mixed earnings, pharma companies enter 2020 facing intense pressure from investors for more top line growth. It’s a big ask: to meet even the modest projections sought by investment analysts, top players must grow revenues equivalent to those of a mid-size biotech, every year.
Beauty
Under the skin of beauty
Even in economic slowdowns, some sectors seem to defy gravity and the beauty sector is certainly one. We see key territories being China, the US, India and Indonesia where Gen Z-ers will rapidly become the largest spending groups.