Informa PLC (INF) said it was not providing financial guidance for 2020 as the coronavirus has led to it pushing back 45 large events and 70 smaller ones to later in 2020, representing budgeted revenue of around £400mln.
The FTSE 100 group has also ‘localised or virtualised’ several events as well as cancelling some and re-phasing 13 others, representing budgeted revenue of another £25mln and taking the total postponed, cancelled or rephased to 128.
READ: Informa hit by Deutsche downgrade on events postponement concerns
This is expected to lead to Informa incurring some extra costs on venues, marketing and other duplicated or extra expenses.
Chief executive Stephen Carter said the group’s subscriptions-related businesses, which account for around 35% of revenue, “continue to grow consistently” with most seeing “minimal impact” from Covid-19, unlike the events and exhibitions arm, 65% of group revenue.
He said, “we have used our strong customer and supplier relationships to swiftly deploy a material postponement programme, shifting our events calendar to later dates in 2020”.
This comes after a strong year for the group, with 2019 revenue up 22% to £2.89bn to reflect a full year’s contribution from the takeover of UBM, or 3.5% growth on an underlying basis.
Adjusted operating profits increased 27.5% to £933.1mln, or 6.5% underlying.
Free cash flow of £722.1mln was up from £503.2mln, enabling debt to be trimmed 1% to £2.7bn and a 7% increase to the final dividend to 15.95p to deliver a total of 23.5p versus 21.9p last time.
Shares in Informa, having plunged 34% since the start of the year, were up more than 4% to 588.8p by lunchtime on Tuesday.
Analysts at UBS, which maintained their 950p price target on the shares, said the 2019 underlying profits were better than expected.
"Lack of guidance for events businesses reflects uncertainty on whether H220 shows will also be impacted," the analysts added.
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