Thomson Corporation is set for a cash windfall this year, and a possible acquisition spree, after it finalises the sale of the Learning division in Q2. The full-year financials released yesterday illuminated once again a company grappling with momentous changes in the information industry.
Is Thomson in good shape? You'd think so. The headline numbers stated revenues up 8% in 2006, to $6.6 billion, while operating profit increased 7%, to $1.3 billion. Those are US dollars, by the way, not Canadian.
CEO Dick Harrington said he'd continued to "reap benefits" from the "efficiency" programme, dubbed ThomsonPlus, which aims to maximise infrastructure usage and best practice crossover to get more out of the whole organisation.
The organic growth was driven by its workflow solutions and services in the professional sectors – such as Westlaw Litigator in US legal markets, Thomson ONE in financial markets and Checkpoint in the tax and accounting markets.
Digging deeper into the figures, organic growth isn't necessarily in utterly rude health. Take the Scientific & Healthcare division, which saw revenues grow 13% in Q4 – but that was made up of 10% growth through acquisitions, just 2% in organic growth, and 1% from foreign exchange. Yes, the weakening US dollar contributed around $3.26 million "growth" to the division in the last three months.
Harrington was buoyantly optimistic for the year ahead (well, that's his job really) - mainly because the sale of the Learning division should release a lot of value for further investment. That will continue to transform the company as it accommodates the internet and the decline of the print market.
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