NEW YORK — Thomson Reuters reported higher fourth-quarter (Q4) revenue on Thursday, boosted by its legal, tax and accounting, and corporate businesses, as investors assess the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) companies moving into its key markets.
The Toronto-based content and technology company also forecast its full-year 2026 revenue would rise by between 7.5 percent and 8 percent. Wall Street is forecasting revenue growth of 7.7 percent for the year, LSEG data shows.
“We are seeing tangible benefits from our continued investments in AI,” said Thomson Reuters CEO Steve Hasker.
“We will continue to scale our agentic capabilities to deliver greater speed, clarity and confidence for our customers, further demonstrating the value of professional-grade tools built on quality content and deep subject-matter expertise,” Hasker added.
Shares in Thomson Reuters opened as much as 7 percent higher before later falling around 5 percent on Nasdaq, continuing a decline from this week’s wider software and services selloff. The stock is down nearly 30 percent so far this year, underperforming the S&P 500, which was up 0.54 percent by Wednesday.
Adam Sarhan, chief executive of 50 Park Investments in New York, said: “The quarter shows a resilient franchise, but the market is clearly telling Thomson Reuters that the old playbook is not enough in an AI-first world. The numbers buy them time; what they do with that time is critical.”
Thomson Reuters raised its annualized dividend by 10 percent to $2.62 per common share and said fourth-quarter revenue rose 5 percent to $2 billion, matching expectations in LSEG estimates.
Share prices have been hit by fears over the challenge that AI newcomers, including Anthropic, present to companies like Thomson Reuters, which tumbled nearly 18 percent on Tuesday amid a broad software, data and professional services sector selloff.
Anthropic, maker of the Claude chatbot, launched a legal plug-in for its Claude Cowork coding tool on Jan. 30 that helps carry out tasks including reviewing legal documents and generating briefings.
Hasker said in an interview after the results that recent market reaction reflected “anxiety and not fundamentals.”
“The medium- to long-term winners in legal AI will be those that have trusted content domain expertise and the infrastructure to support verifiable, accountable, professional-grade work,” Hasker added.
Hundreds of years
of legal papers
Anthropic’s new legal product represents a challenge in what is still a fairly new market for Thomson Reuters, company executives said. As a result, the potential threat it poses is to a relatively small part of the overall business, they added.
The products are backed by the creation, curation and analysis undertaken by some 2,700 trained legal professionals employed by Thomson Reuters. They have also helped train Westlaw Advantage, an agentic AI product launched last year that automates legal research, document analysis and prediction of litigation outcomes.
“We’re serving professionals, and professionals require professional-grade AI,” Hasker said, adding: “They cannot afford to be wrong.”
Chief Financial Officer Michael Eastwood said in an interview that generative AI was responsible for about 28 percent of Thomson Reuters’ underlying contract value, which breaks down a contract’s total value, in the fourth quarter compared with 24 percent in the third.
$11 billion of capital capacity earmarked for deals
Earnings per share were $1.07, slightly ahead of Wall Street expectations of $1.06 per share excluding items, while revenue in the “Big 3” Thomson Reuters segments of legal, tax and accounting, and corporates rose 9 percent on an organic basis.
The Reuters news division’s organic revenue increased by 5 percent, boosted by content licensing revenue deals.
Over the next three years to 2028, Thomson Reuters has earmarked $11 billion of capital capacity for deals, focused mainly on its Big 3 segments, executives said.
