We’ve highlighted some of what we think is relevant. Nothing that will really shock anyone eg a desire to build and consolidate the US market, a certain amount of divestment from the European market abd as with the other publishers more and more emphasis on search and tech solutions.
The only thing we’d say is spend an absolute minimum in China if you even bother being there- whatever you spend they’ll just take it without giving you results and then your employees will either take you idea back to a govt sanctioned publisher or create their own business off the back of your ideas.
This in tandem with the new china online content rules we suggest the best way to make money from China is to withdraw completely set up a China office in another Asia location create great online content outside the control of the Chinese govt and with as few mainland employees as possible , triple your prices and brand as luxury information ( that you cannot get in china) and you’ll make money.
Here’s the presentation
Wolters Kluwer’s (WOLTF) CEO Nancy McKinstry on Q4 2015 Results – Earnings Call Transcript
Meg Geldens
Great. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us here in London and on the conference call and webcast. Welcome to Wolters Kluwer 2015 results presentation. Hopefully, you’ve had a chance to look at our earnings release this morning. All materials are available for download on our website. We will start today with the presentation of the results by Nancy McKinstry, our CEO and Kevin Entricken, our CFO. At the end of their presentation, there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions.
As a reminder, some of the statements we make during today’s presentation may be considered forward-looking statements. We caution that actual results may differ materially from what is contemplated in these forward-looking statements, due to a number of risks and uncertainties which you can find detailed in our annual report.
Throughout the presentations, we will refer mainly to organic growth rates and growth rates in constant currencies, which exclude the effect of foreign exchange rate movements. We also refer to adjusted figures. And a reconciliation to IFRS can be found in our release today.
Now, I’d like to hand over to Nancy McKinstry, our Chief Executive.
Nancy McKinstry
Good morning. Thank you all for joining us here in London and on the webcast and thank you, Meg for the introduction. We will have the following agenda today, which is, I’ll provide a very brief overview highlights and then turn it over to Kevin who will talk about our financial results in more detail and then I will come back up and highlight our divisional performance, then give you an overview of our evolving strategy for the next three years and then finish with the outlook for 2016.
I’m very pleased that we achieved 3% organic growth for 2015, despite a tough comparable in the fourth quarter and headwinds that we still have in some of our European markets. Importantly, Digital & Services revenues grew 5% organically and now account for 83% of our total revenues. We met or exceeded our guidance for the year. The adjusted operating margin increased 40 basis points within our guidance range. Adjusted free cash flow increased 7% at constant currencies, which was better than we expected.
ROIC increased to 9.3% and adjusted earnings per share increased 5% at constant currencies, which was in line with our guidance. With our balance sheet strengthened, we’re today proposing a EUR0.04 increase in the total dividend per share to EUR0.75 and we’re announcing a three-year up to EUR600 million share buyback program. In 2016, we expect to deliver a further margin increase and another year of mid-single digit EPS growth in constant currencies.
As many of you know, we operate on a three-year cycle for our strategy and 2015 was the final year in our 2013 to 2015 strategic plan. So I think it’s worth a quick review of our key achievements for the year. Much of our plan focused on devoting capital in to our leading high growth businesses and I’m pleased to say that they delivered again another year of 7% organic growth in 2015 and now, they make up a little bit more than half of our revenues. We extended our portfolio with the addition of Learner’s Digest International, which is a digital medical education business that will help further transform the more traditional part of our Health division. We also made several bolt-on acquisitions in Tax & Accounting.
We successfully completed several divestments of non-core assets, largely within our Legal & Regulatory business. Last year, we also sustained investments in new and enhanced products resulting in such product launches as up to date clinical consulting in China and Cheetah in Law & Regulatory US. In July, we announced the formation of the new Governance, Risk & Compliance division, which brings together our Corporate Legal Services group with our Financial & Compliance Services team and together they will pursue even further opportunities within the GRC markets globally.
Over the past three years, we’ve stepped up our restructuring efforts, executing on many efficiency programs. Many of them in Legal & Regulatory Europe. In Health, we merged our medical journals and books businesses into a new unit called Health Learning Research & Practice and a number of these programs were accelerated in the final months of the year. We made progress in leveraging our platforms and technologies across borders, including such products as up to date iFirm, Kleos and many more. The strategy is working. We’ve seen accelerated organic growth, improved margin and increased return on invested capital in 2015. Later, I’ll update you on our strategic plan for the next three years and that where that will take us.
In the meantime, I’ll turn it back over to Kevin who will talk about our financial results in more detail. Read the rest of the presentation at http://seekingalpha.com/article/3924136-wolters-kluwers-woltf-ceo-nancy-mckinstry-q4-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=2
