Investment Proposition
RWS is a unique world-leading provider of technology-enabled language, content and intellectual property services.
Through content transformation and multilingual data analysis, our combination of AI-enabled technology and human expertise helps our clients to grow by ensuring they are understood anywhere, in any language.
RWS is a profitable, highly cash-generative business with a strong and consistent track record of growth and value creation since its listing in 2003. We operate in attractive growing markets with a combined global size estimated at more than £47bn, where specialist knowledge, reputation and scale are critical.
We have leading positions in our highly fragmented markets, serving a diversified client base. Demand for our products and services is driven by growth in content and automation/AI, globalization, innovation and increasing regulation.
Our purpose is unlocking global understanding and we are guided by our values which shape how we think, act and behave with all our stakeholders – we partner; we pioneer; we progress; and we deliver.
We have a clear strategy to build a long-term sustainable business, delivering financial and social value
- Focused, ambitious and grounded plan.
- Growing organically through:
- Accelerating penetration into existing high growth segments;
- Pivoting into adjacent high growth segments;
- Growing share of wallet through expanding our service range;
- Widening our client portfolio; and
- Re-affirming our technology product leadership.
- Delivering the sector’s most efficient production platform – Language eXperience Delivery – to drive operational leverage.
- Disciplined M&A programme to selectively acquire complementary businesses with the potential to accelerate growth, deliver above-industry average margins, reinforce the Group’s leading positions in its chosen markets or add to our scalable platform.
RWS’s 5-point Growth Model differentiates us in the marketplace and underpins our compelling investment proposition.
- We offer a broad range of AI-enabled services and software products to many of the world’s largest organizations
- We have deep specialist sector expertise in multiple verticals including, automotive, chemical, consumer, retail, financial, government, legal, medical, pharmaceutical, technology and telecommunications.
- Our client base is well-diversified by geography and sector, spanning Europe, Asia Pacific and North and South America. We work with:
- 88 of the world’s top 100 brands by value
- 16 of Fortune's 20 'Most Admired Companies'
- 19 of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies globally
- 18 of the top 20 patent filers worldwide
- 9 of the world's top 10 investment banks
- Many of the major US West Coast technology businesses.
- We support clients through dedicated sector account management teams and enjoy high average levels of tenure – 13 years for our Top 30 clients.
- We offer true global coverage, with a presence in more than 35 countries.
- We have the largest linguist network in the sector, with more than 1,700 internal linguists, complemented by access to more than 30,000 freelance experts in 159 countries.
- We support more than 429 language pairs.
- We are rich in data – with our translation memories and termbases across multiple markets increasingly valuable.
- We invest in future linguistic and technical talent.
- We are machine translation (MT) pioneers via our Language Weaver product, and our neural MT research team is accredited with more than 40 patents.
- Through Trados we offer a range of market-leading cloud-oriented translation management and productivity tools.
- Our content management technologies – Tridion, Propylon, Fonto and Contenta – are used by some of the world’s largest companies to better reach their audiences and make the optimal use of their content.
- Our technology product suite is sold both separately and alongside our service solutions, as well as supporting our internal efficiency and effectiveness.
- We are shifting towards a higher proportion of SaaS revenues in our technology products to enhance recurring revenues and quality of earnings.
- TrainAI offers clients a complete, end-to-end data collection, data annotation and data validation service for all types of AI data – in any language, at any scale.
- Our strong cash generation enables us to invest in service and technical development.
- We are well-diversified, and strongly positioned to take advantage of:
- Ongoing growth in the technology, life sciences, and other end markets, with greater emphasis on higher growth segments such as data annotation and linguistic validation.
- The explosion in data and content that is driving increased outsourcing of localization, language and intellectual property services by multinationals to well-reputed partners of scale
- Continued innovation as our clients seek our support in launching and supporting new products and services
- The trend towards globalization, which brings greater demand for digital content and language services; and
- Growth in AI and automation.
- We continue to take advantage of opportunities to gain market share and consolidate fragmented service provision through adding to our strong track record of value accretive acquisitions.
- Our unique production platform, Language eXperience Delivery (LXD), provides 24 x 7 coverage via a blend of human expertise and technology.
- Our solutions can meet any mix of quality, speed and value required by our clients.
- This platform delivers operational leverage, with potential for sustained efficiency and margin improvement.
- We are investing to establish effective and lean shared services which will support our four operating divisions and facilitate further organic growth, the integration of acquisitions and continued margin development.
We have a sustained track record of revenue, profit and dividend growth
- Sales and dividends have increased every year since RWS's IPO in November 2003, and profit in 17 out of 18 years.
- Our strong reputation for quality, specialist focus, scale and efficiency continue to support above-industry average margins.
- We have a disciplined approach to capital allocation, centred on investing to accelerate organic growth, retaining the capability to make strategic acquisitions and pursuing a progressive dividend policy.
Sustainability is core to the way we operate
Our work for clients gives us a natural global perspective and a deep understanding of the impact of what we do. With operations at 65+ locations in more than 30 countries and clients in more than 111, we are strongly connected to the communities which we serve.
- Being a responsible business is important to us, with a maturing approach to governance that helps to protect us and our stakeholders. We report against the GRI framework and SASB standards and we are a participant in the UN Global Compact’s Communication on Progress Early Adopter Programme.
- We are aware of our environmental impact and ensure our climate-related financial disclosures are consistent with the requirements of the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures, reporting these annually. We are developing our carbon emissions reduction plan, which will use science-based targets aligned with SBTi.
- We deliver significant social value through the work that we do, connecting clients to their customers and users, wherever they are, and whatever their needs. In parallel, we deliver critical insights through the data we generate and our technology and AI solutions often support clients’ innovation programmes. In sectors such as pharmaceutical, medical device, aviation and defence, our work often makes an important contribution to life safety, helping to protect patients and users.
- We benefit from a rich natural diversity across our teams, and our RWS Campus programme, a partnership with more than 700 universities around the world, helps to develop the next generation of linguists alongside nurturing immature languages. The RWS Foundation supports a range of philanthropic initiatives including CLEAR Global, a nonprofit organization that helps marginalized communities to access vital information in their own language, and the sponsorship of 50 language students at the UK’s University of Manchester.
We have an experienced management team and Board
- An executive management team and Board with long standing experience and successful track records of achieving growth in the Group’s specialist areas of expertise.
- Guided by strong and experienced Non-Executive Directors.