Clarivate Plc (NYSE:CLVT) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Jonathan Gear : Great. Thanks, Surinder. It’s great to have you on the call. Just couple comments and we first is, we are facing those macro pressures right now. We faced it for the last few quarters and surfing the case of trademarks since summer time of next year. So in our view, as we talk to clients to get a sense of their spending patterns from a macro impact this is kind of as bad as it gets, is our view. And we see it in a few different areas. So, the – for the most part, I break it down Academia & Government, which as, it’s merely Academia is really largely immune for macro pressures. Is 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 talk before, trademark is the one part of our portfolio, which is a 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 that that contracting of new products being launched and as, as we mentioned on the call today, even things like the screen Actors skills strike impacting new product launches and on, merchandizing, on films impacts us. So, but we’re already feeling that right now. We don’t see it getting worse. And then in healthcare, 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. It was a fewer number of new drugs approved in the pipeline by the FDA, we’re seeing a great number improve this year that shouldn’t improve next year. So we’re certainly feeling it right now and I will say, just maybe to summarize it again it’s half our business A&G first impact from macro pressures and then the other half you’re kind of seeing the downside this year from that. Thank you.

Mark Donohue : Thank you next question, please.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William. Blair Andrew, your line is now open.

Tom Ross: Good morning. This is Tom Ross on for Andrew Nicholas. I wanted to dive into the macro factors you saw last quarter content packing transaction return revenues. I was wondering, I know you saw some improvement in consulting. I was wondering if you talk about maybe those other factors and kind of how that progressed through the quarter and kind of how you are seeing those trend as we head into 2024?

Jonathan Gear : Sure. Yes. we’ll do Tom. So the two things I would really highlight, first in life science and healthcare. Again, it’s really on those commercial budgets and those are commercial spends, so if you think about a pharma company, they have strategy business, they have R&D and then once a 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’ve kind of hoped for improvement, that improvement hasn’t happened in companies’ budgets, as our pharma – the pharma industry in general is being very tight on commercial spend this year. So we just see that continued pressure right now throughout the most of our products.

We do see some positives our consulting business as was mentioned in the call. So a bit of uptick there. Great job by the team there and something we’re scrambling for where we can for every last dollar. But that that’s the impact we are seeing is on the commercial side within life science, and healthcare. And then, in IP, it’s obviously a major and a minor. The major is primarily around the trademarks and it’s as simple as this. If trademarks are tied towards new product launches. If you create new product, if your company consumer or B2B doesn’t matter you are going to trademark that product. If you are launching it into new country, you could 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.