Rahul Arora
Chairman and CEO
FY24 was an excellent year for executing our growth strategy toward Vision 2027, which
we termed "Going Gestalt" and set in motion in 2022. The final scorecard, which
showed a total revenue and EPS growth of approximately 9.5 percent, did not do justice to
what we achieved in FY24 and the phenomenal follow-through we expect in FY25. In my letter
this year, I will reflect on the various achievements of FY24 through the lens of our
growth strategy and take a moment to articulate why FY25 is so meaningful for all of us at
MPS.
Reflecting on FY24 through the Gestalt Lens established in 2022
Our five-pronged approach, "Going Gestalt" toward growth, is simple in
design. At its core, we relentlessly ensure that the whole of MPS is greater than the sum
of its parts. In FY24, our mission was to supercharge the strategy, and we did so with
much success.
Market-based approach
Our revised Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy focuses on representing firm-wide capabilities
to the marketplace rather than our previous product-based approach. The three markets that
we service include Research, Education, and Corporate. In FY24, we unlocked this strategy
in the best way possible in the Research business, where we placed customer problems as a
core focus and leveraged our capabilities as a toolkit to address their challenges. As a
result, we saw a lift in revenue and profitability. Some key growth highlights in the
Research practice included a 19 percent growth in the Journals Content Solutions
portfolio, a modest growth in the platforms business in the previous context of a
three-year decline, and an overall 10% percent growth in the Research practice.
SCALING GLOBAL
FY25 will be an inflection year. By the end of FY25, we aspire to reach the halfway
mark on
Vision 2027.
Emphasis on STAR accounts
A customer partnership is classified as a STAR account based on its growth potential,
scale, and strategic positioning. An Executive Sponsor from the Senior Management team
steered Client Services and Operations toward the growing market share and broadened the
scope across our firm-wide capabilities. We saw several strategic benefits in FY24 via
this strategy, including improvement in the quality of revenue, expansion in volumes, and
a steady increase in the lines of business with STAR accounts.
Investment and launch of new capabilities
In FY24, we officially launched THINK365, a concept for DigiCorePro, and acquired the
Curie platform. Each of these initiatives piqued much interest from our customer base and
the marketplace in general, and several explorations are already underway. Additionally,
MPSLabs made significant progress in enabling AI in our workflows. We expect a healthy
portion of our organic growth story toward Vision 2027 to be attached directly or
indirectly to this workstream.
Tailored strategy to acquire new customers
Our tailored strategies for Corporate, Education, and Research markets allowed us to
cross 750 customers in FY24. A focus on corporates that spend heavily on learning and
development, a step-up in partnerships with industry associations, and geographic
expansion led the growth agenda in the corporate marketplace. In Education, we unlocked
synergies to deliver higher-end digital learning experiences and stepped up our efforts to
move forward in the B2B value chain to work with universities and learning companies. Our
price warriorship and product bundling allowed us to secure new logos in the Research
marketplace.
Revised acquisition playbook
We completed two acquisitions in FY24 per our new playbook. We completed the
acquisition of Liberate Learning in August 2023, which shaped our entry into Australia.
Liberate was our second acquisition of a growing business, and the experience has been a
refreshing change in our modus operandi. Since the acquisition, we have learned much about
what it takes to operate and drive a Corporate Learning business, and these learnings will
result in massive gains for the overall eLearning business as we march toward Vision 2027.
In February 2024, we completed the acquisition of AJE. Although AJE was in our portfolio
for only a month in FY24, we have much confidence that AJE will significantly contribute
toward Vision 2027 as we unlock its strategic levers, including moving more upstream in
the value chain closer to the funders and working directly with authors; entering new
markets, including China, Brazil, and South Korea; and scaling up our partnership with
Springer Nature, who are one of our more premier STAR accounts in terms of scale and
potential.
To wrap up FY24, all business segments and lines of business developed a growth
momentum as we headed into FY25. The positive developments in operating cash flow allowed
our Board to recommend a generous distribution even in a year when we completed two
acquisitions through internal accruals.
Quick View of FY25
We will build on the success achieved with our market-based approach in our Research
business and apply the lessons learned to the Education and Corporate sectors. Our goal is
to increase our STAR accounts to 100 by the end of FY25, which will bring significant
progress in terms of our organic growth and margins. We anticipate seeing returns from our
investments in new capabilities in 2022 and 2023. Additionally, we plan to launch an
enhanced version of DigiCorePro, AI-powered solutions for Accessibility and Translation,
and a SaaS platform for Immersive Learning. We remain committed to our updated acquisition
strategy and will continue to prudently allocate capital that should further our growth
agenda in FY25 beyond what we see today. FY25 will be an inflection year. By the end of
FY25, we aspire to reach the halfway mark on Vision 2027.
| Regards |
| Rahul Arora |
| Chairman and CEO |