RWS AR 23 Final Single pages - Flipbook - Page 21
We continue to participate in the Critical Path Institute's
eCOA Consortium to help drive the science, best
practice and adoption of eCOA within clinical trials. An
eCOA replaces the traditional paper-based approach to
collecting patient results and feedback in clinical trials
and studies.
The growth in patient recruitment services has also
contributed to progress in the clinical space with
signi昀椀cant new wins. We expect this will be an area
of continued expansion going forward and we have
continued to leverage our relationships with major
global pharmaceutical clients to expand in the APAC
region, an area with high growth potential.
We have secured a major programme awarded for
pharmacovigilance at a leading CRO as well as a top
German pharma company. We also secured a worldrenowned hospital systems provider as a new major
client, re昀氀ecting our continued leadership in the
healthcare space.
In the 昀椀nancial and legal services vertical, we saw solid
revenues driven by Packaged Retail Investment and
Insurance Products ("PRIIPS") regulatory requirements.
We won several new clients, including a major European
retail bank and a key investment banking client. We also
saw expansion with some existing clients, including a
large programme with a European general insurance
provider. We are extending our technology o昀昀ering in
昀椀nancial services to expand our footprint and increase
client retention in the vertical.
The division's adjusted operating pro昀椀t 3 decreased
27.5% to £22.9m (FY22: £31.6m) on a reported basis.
This re昀氀ected the reduction in top-line revenue and the
impact of the loss of the CRO client, partially mitigated by
cost actions through the year.
Language and Content
Technology
Encouraging new client wins across
portfolio, proportion of annual technology
licences revenue continues to grow
The Language and Content Technology ("L&CT") division
accounted for 19% of Group revenues in the year (FY22:
17%). Revenues of £136.7m were 7.7% higher year on
year on a reported basis (FY22: £126.9m) and saw a 1%
decrease on an organic constant currency basis.
In FY22 we appointed general managers to have full
ownership and accountability for four principal product
areas – Language Weaver, Trados, Tridion/Fonto and
Contenta – which drove a more focused approach. The
division’s growth plan resulted in a re昀椀ned go-to-market
model for each product, and we are pleased with the
progress made across all product areas.
We have had some encouraging new client wins, with
Language Weaver continuing to make good progress with
strong second half bookings, including its largest ever
Cloud SaaS contract, worth more than a million dollars
over three years. Overall, SaaS revenues as a proportion of
annual technology licences revenue continued to grow. The
cumulative bene昀椀t from this transition over recent years
is now a tailwind and is delivering, as intended, a more
predictable revenue pro昀椀le for the division in the future.
We are also pleased to have launched a new version of
Trados in July, alongside a number of new features and
functionality to help language specialists and localisation
teams be more productive. We saw encouraging
momentum for SaaS versions of Trados with bookings
signi昀椀cantly increasing year-on-year. We experienced
triple digit growth in the principal activity indicators of
Trados – number of projects, 昀椀les and words translated.
In July 2023 we announced the acquisition of Dublin-based
Propylon, a provider of content creation, management and
publishing solutions for the government, legal, assurance,
audit and publishing industries. The integration of Propylon
is progressing well and its platform joins RWS’s portfolio of
dedicated solutions for aerospace and defence (Contenta),
manufacturing, high-tech and life sciences (Tridion Docs)
and the market-leading XML editor (Fonto).
In the second half, new Tridion releases (both the Sites
and the Docs versions of the product) contributed
to further progress in the division. Contenta also
announced the launch of LiveContent 6.0 (the latest
version of its LiveContent solution), a highly 昀氀exible
cloud-ready architecture for distribution management of
technical publications, technician feedback and analytical
data insights.
At the end of the period, we delivered a signi昀椀cant upsell of two of our content technology products (Tridion
and Fonto) to an existing major client in life sciences
and we continue to win new logos across a range of end
markets, including defence, government, software and
infrastructure.
The division’s adjusted operating pro昀椀t 3 was broadly
昀氀at at £37.0m (FY22: £37.6m) on a reported basis,
the higher proportion of SaaS revenues and ongoing
planned investments o昀昀setting the impact of higher
top-line revenues.
3 Adjusted operating pro昀椀t is stated before amortisation and impairment of acquired intangibles,
acquisition costs, share-based payments expense and exceptional items. See Note 4
STRATEGIC REPORT
RWS Holdings plc — Annual Report 2023
21
