Head of Investor Relations
Wolters Kluwer
As a largely subscription-based publisher, Wolters Kluwer is about as recession-proof as a company can get. The Amsterdam-based outfit, the sell-siders’ choice for Europe’s Best Investor Relations in Media, specializes in journals, software and textbooks for people in the accounting, financial services, health care and legal professions. Roughly 70 percent of the company’s annual revenues, which last year totaled €3.37 billion, comes from professionals who pay for information because they need it — no matter what the economic cycle is doing.
But as the global economy began to tumble, investors became much more interested in the 30 percent of revenues that were more vulnerable to market fluctuations, according to Kevin Entricken, head of investor relations.
“Our business is more defensive by nature than a lot of companies’,” he says. “So we broke out revenue streams from our subscription portfolio versus some of the transactional products, so they understand a little bit better how our business is developing in these times.”
It seems to be holding up fairly well, despite the rapid decline of the global economy. Although sales were flat last year, Wolters Kluwer’s net income rose slightly, to €423 million. Even so, its share price tumbled 37.5 percent in 2008 and slipped 9.8 percent further in the first three months of 2009.
“The company’s operational business is fairly resilient to the economic cycle,” says Simon Wallis, a sell-side analyst with ING Financial Markets in London. “Some areas are more cyclically exposed, and one thing IR has handled well during the crisis is to make clear where these activities are and how significant they are in comparison to the more resilient parts of the business.”
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