Top vendors bloodied but unbowed
Jinfo Blog

26th February 2009

By Tim Buckley Owen

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Year-end results from top vendors Reed Elsevier and Thomson Reuters present a remarkably uniform picture of life in recession. Published within a week of each other, Reed Elsevier’s announcement talks of LexisNexis being ‘resilient but not immune’ to the economic difficulties (http://digbig.com/4yhrd), while Thomson Reuters says it ‘continued to perform well’ as major economies slid into recession (http://digbig.com/4yhre). However both are exercised about costs. Acceleration of Reuters’ integration into the Thomson family has enabled the much expanded company to significantly increase its expected savings, while Reed Elsevier talks of its restructuring programme being on course to deliver its targeted cash reductions. Significantly, Reed Elsevier uses the same word to describe its cost cutting – ‘aggressive’ – as the third big player, Dow Jones, did in a recent announcement marking a year since its acquisition by News Corporation (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e16216). For Dow Jones the issue was a ‘precipitous decline’ in print advertising revenue, and for Reed Elsevier it’s partly the failure to find a buyer for its trade magazines arm, Reed Business Information (http://www.vivavip.com/go/e4840). As a result, Reed Elsevier has had to bring RBI back onto its books – and it’s now facing exactly the same problems as Dow Jones with declining ad revenue. Thomson Reuters is not immune either; its media division (incorporating the advertising-driven consumer and professional publishing segments) is also seeing ‘marked slowdowns’. However, both companies seem pretty sanguine about their professional online services – so information managers hoping to secure good renewal deals may find the horse trading as tough as ever.

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