
Thomson Reuters Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2020 Results
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While Thomson Reuters expects that the LSEG transaction will be predominantly tax deferred, approximately $700 million of tax became payable when the deal closed. As permitted under a transaction agreement, Thomson Reuters plans to sell approximately $1 billion of its LSEG shares to generate approximately $750 million of total net proceeds, but the company does not plan to sell any LSEG shares prior to LSEG’s announcement of its full-year 2020 results on March 5, 2021. Subject to certain exceptions, Thomson Reuters and Blackstone’s consortium have otherwise agreed to be subject to a lock-up for their LSEG shares until January 29, 2023. In each of the three and four years following the closing (starting on January 30, 2023 and January 30, 2024, respectively), Thomson Reuters and Blackstone’s consortium will become entitled to sell in aggregate one-third of the LSEG shares issued to them. The lock-up arrangement will terminate on January 29, 2025.
Reuters News’ 30-year agreement to supply news and editorial content to Refinitiv continues under the same terms and conditions after the closing and is scheduled to run to 2048.
Thomson Reuters financial results for the fourth quarter and full-year 2020 (which reflect periods prior to the closing of the sale of Refinitiv to LSEG) include its share of post-tax losses from its previous 45% interest in Refinitiv, which was then considered an equity method investment, in its net earnings. For purposes of those financial results, Thomson Reuters removed these amounts from its non-IFRS calculation of adjusted EPS.
Refinitiv achieved its targeted run-rate cost savings of $650 million as of December 31, 2020. Additional information regarding Refinitiv’s financial results is provided in the appendix to this news release.
Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is a leading provider of business information services. Our products include highly specialized information-enabled software and tools for legal, tax, accounting and compliance professionals combined with the world’s most global news service – Reuters. For more information on Thomson Reuters, visit tr.com and for the latest world news, reuters.com.
NON-IFRS FINANCIAL MEASURES
Thomson Reuters prepares its financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).
This news release includes certain non-IFRS financial measures, such as adjusted EBITDA and the related margin (other than at the customer segment level), net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage ratio, free cash flow, adjusted EPS, selected measures excluding the impact of foreign currency, and changes in revenues computed on an organic basis. Thomson Reuters uses these non-IFRS financial measures as supplemental indicators of its operating performance and financial position. These measures do not have any standardized meanings prescribed by IFRS and therefore are unlikely to be comparable to the calculation of similar measures used by other companies, and should not be viewed as alternatives to measures of financial performance calculated in accordance with IFRS. Non-IFRS financial measures are defined and reconciled to the most directly comparable IFRS measures in the appended tables.
The company’s outlook contains various non-IFRS financial measures. The company believes that providing reconciliations of forward-looking non-IFRS financial measures in its outlook would be potentially misleading and not practical due to the difficulty of projecting items that are not reflective of ongoing operations in any future period. The magnitude of these items may be significant. Consequently, for outlook purposes only, the company is unable to reconcile these non-IFRS measures to the most comparable IFRS measures because it cannot predict, with reasonable certainty, the 2021, 2022 and 2023 impacts of changes in foreign exchange rates which impact (i) the translation of its results reported at average foreign currency rates for the year, and (ii) other finance income or expense related to intercompany financing arrangements. Additionally, the company cannot reasonably predict the occurrence or amount of other operating gains and losses, that generally arise from business transactions that the company does not currently anticipate.
ROUNDING
Other than EPS, the company reports its results in millions of U.S. dollars, but computes percentage changes and margins using whole dollars to be more precise. As a result, percentages and margins calculated from reported amounts may differ from those presented, and growth components may not total due to rounding.