Earnings Labs

S&P Global Inc. (SPGI)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 29, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to McGraw Hill Financial's Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. I'd like to inform you that this call is being recorded for broadcast. All participants are on a listen-only mode. We will open the conference to question-and-answers after the presentation. And instructions will follow at that time. To access the webcast and slides, go to www.mhfi.com. That's MHFI for McGraw Hill Financial, Inc., dot-com, and click on the link for the third quarter earnings webcast. If you’re listening by telephone, please note that there is a live phone option available to synchronize the timing of the webcast slides to the audio from your telephone. To do so, login to the webcast, after completing the guest book screen you will see two windows in the webcast viewer. Along the bottom of the left hand window click the gear icon and select live phone from the list. A line will appear over the sound icon indicating that sound has been disabled through your computer speakers. (Operator Instructions) And now I would like to introduce Mr. Chip Merritt, Vice President of Investor Relations for McGraw Hill Financial. Sir, you may begin.

Chip Merritt

President

Thank you and good morning. Thanks for joining us for McGraw Hill Financial's third quarter 2014 earnings call. Presenting on this morning's call are Doug Peterson, our President and CEO; and Jack Callahan, our Chief Financial Officer. This morning, we issued a news release with our results. I trust you've all had a chance to read and review the release. If you need a copy of the release and financial schedules, they can be downloaded at www.mhfi.com. In today's earnings release and during the conference call, we'll provide adjusted financial information. This information is provided to enable investors to make meaningful comparisons of the corporation's operating performance between periods and to view the corporation's business from the same perspective as management's. The earnings release contains exhibits that reconcile the difference between the non-GAAP measures and the comparable financial measures calculated in accordance with U.S. GAAP. Before we begin, I need to provide certain cautionary remarks about forward-looking statements. Except for historical information, the matters discussed in the teleconference may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including projections, estimates and descriptions of future events. Any such statements are based on current expectations and current economic conditions and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from results anticipated in these forward-looking statements. In this regard, we direct listeners to the cautionary statements contained in our Form 10-Ks and 10-Qs and other periodic reports filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. I would also like to call your attention to a recent European regulation. Any investor who has or expects to obtain ownership of 5% or more of McGraw Hill Financial should give me a call to better understand the impact of this legislation on the investor and potentially the Company. We're aware that we do have some media representatives with us on the call. However, this call is intended for investors and we would ask that questions from the media be directed to Jason Feuchtwanger in our New York office at 212-512-3151. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Doug Peterson. Doug?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Thank you Chip, good morning everyone and welcome to the call. The Company delivered a terrific quarter with 10% revenue and 32% adjusted EPS growth. And more broadly in creating McGraw Hill Financial, we have made sweeping changes to the Company. In the third quarter of 2014, we continued to take actions designed to position our Company for innovation and profitable growth. Before reviewing our financial performance, I’d like to highlight three matters including in our press release. First, during the quarter we announced the sale of McGraw Hill Construction to Symphony Technology Group for $320 million. The sale positions us as a more growth-oriented and profitable Company. Second, we took a number of restructuring actions in the quarter which impacted almost 400 employees. We remain committed to our growth and performance objectives we outlined at Investor Day, including our productivity goals. Third, Standard & Poor’s rating services is in active discussion to resolve matters pending before the Securities and Exchange Commission, including with respect to the previously disclosed Wells Notice received in July, as well as related to investigations by the Attorneys General of New York and Massachusetts. Although definitive settlements have not been reached, a charged of $60 million related to these matters was recorded in the third quarter. Because we remain in active discussions with these parties I am unable to provide additional information regarding these matters at this time. Separately, I am pleased to report that the SEC recently notified us that it had completed its investigation of Delphinus matter. This was subject to Wells Notice issued in September 2011. The SEC has indicated that no enforcement action will be taken with respect to this matter. Now let’s turn to our results. We’re pleased to report excellent operating performance in the third quarter. Revenues, margins and…

Jack Callahan

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Doug. Good morning to everyone joining us on the call. I want to briefly add a bit more color to several items related to the third quarter performance. First I will discuss the impact to our financial results due to the reclassification of McGraw Hill Construction as a discontinued operation. Second, I will review certain adjustments to earnings that were recorded in the quarter. Third, I will recap key consolidated financial results in the quarter. Fourth, I’ll provide updates on the balance sheet, free cash flow and return of capital, and finally I will review our updated guidance which is directly impacted by the elimination of McGraw Hill Construction. The sale of McGraw Hill Construction to Symphony Technology Group is expected to close in the fourth quarter. With the sale pending, we’ve reclassified the business as a discontinued operation. It is important to understand the impact on our financial results from this change. All of the financial periods presented today, exclude McGraw Hill Construction results from continuing operations. This includes the current quarter results, as well as both year-to-date and prior year results. This change reduced our reported revenue, as well as our earnings per share from continuing operations. This has an impact on 2014 guidance as construction represented approximately $0.10 of earnings per share. I will provide more detail on our updated guidance shortly. Now let me turn to adjustments to earnings to help you better assess underlying performance of the business. In total pre-tax adjustments to earnings from continuing operations totaled $110 million during the quarter. The first of these as Doug already discussed is a $6 million charge related to certain regulatory matters. As we stated in the earnings release, there can be no assurance that this amount will be sufficient to resolve these matters…

Chip Merritt

Operator

Thanks Jack. Just a couple of instructions for our phone participants. (Operator Instructions) I would kindly ask you that you limit yourself to two questions. That is two questions, in order to allow time for other callers during today’s Q&A session. (Operator Instructions) Operator, we’ll now take our first question. Question-and-Answer Session

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our first question comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy with Raymond James. Patrick O'Shaughnessy - Raymond James I was wondering if you could provide a little bit more detail on the go forward impact of your restructuring efforts, if you can talk about what sort of expense reduction implications or operating margin implications that’s going to have in 2015?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Patrick it’s a little early to provide too much detail on 2015, but just going to a few, a little bit more detail. In general the restructuring charge was 46 million, on average for every dollar of structuring we save a dollar, just to kind of to keep it simple. And I think in our current forward look, I think you should expect that about half of that amount, half of that restructuring amount would contribute to margin expansion and profit growth in 2015. The other half we’re selectively reinvesting in growth initiatives to really support longer term top-line performance as we go into next year. Patrick O'Shaughnessy - Raymond James And then for my second question.

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Patrick this is just one part of our ongoing commitment to deliver at least $100 million of productivity by the end of 2016. Patrick O'Shaughnessy - Raymond James And then for my second question, just talking about your capital return strategy, obviously you have been doing the share repurchase this quarter. As you’re thinking about your usage of cash and you talked about it for acquisitions or potentially other matters. For acquisitions specifically, historically I know you guys have been looking to use your outside the U.S. cash for that. Have you changed your thought process there? Are you more inclined to try to reserve some of your U.S. cash at this point for M&A?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Well your point observation is right on. I clearly would love to be able to deploy some of our offshore cash for acquisitions. It is just that not necessarily all of the interesting properties are offshore. So from time-to-time if there is a domestic opportunity, we want to be sure we have the adequate flexibility to consider it.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. You may ask your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Barclays. You may ask your question

This is actually Craig calling on for Manav. I just wanted to ask around the new risk retention rules that have just been formalized. I was wondering if I could get your thoughts on the puts and takes around issuance after these regulations. And how you think the rules will impact the market?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes, this is Doug those are going to be very important rules that are coming out of the financial crisis in Dodd Frank. As you know these rules were required six different agencies to put them in place and so they have a lot of input, they went through two different rounds. The final rule themselves will take two years before they’re going to be implemented. And in particular there is two areas which I think the most questions are going to be coming up around. The first is on mortgage securities and understanding what is going to be in or not in. And what are the rules is going to be around mortgage securities? Exemptions have been given for certain types of retail mortgages which had not been expected which actually might give more impotence to see more active RMBS markets. On the other hand the provisions related to CLOs are something that are new because of the two aspects. One is that, there are rules about the hold back period or they call it skin in the game, I call it eat what you cook. But the new rules on skin in the game applied to arrangers not just necessarily underwriters and originators. So getting that right and how that’s going to be applied to 5% hold back could have some impacts in particular on the CLO market, that’s the one people are watching carefully. But it will take two years for that to go into place. The second aspect also relates to what will be potential differences between European skin in the game rules and the U.S. rules in the case of any in the case of any kind of multi-national or international placement. So anyway short answer, the rules just came out, there are going to be years before they are implemented and we will obviously watch that very closely. No specific impacts that we’ve defined so far.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Barclays. You may ask your question

And then I guess with all the news around falling oil prices, could you talk about how lower prices or decreased production could impact Platts’ revenues?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes, so there is two aspects to that on the first hand, there is because of the drop in oil prices because there are so many new types of oil wells and oil products which are being developed, it actually increases needs for us to have very specific oil well and delivery-related price assessment. So, on the one hand with things like shale oil, shale gas, new fields coming on place this is something that is valuable for us to have the assessments and the information for those types of new services. Where we see some impact is that as you have seen the banks retreating from the commodities markets and in particular oil trading they’ve been selling their businesses and reducing the risk related to that. We have seen some lower levels of trading and so as you saw our growth estimates for the last quarter results in the trading part of our business we’re not as strong as in our information side of the business. So there is some impact depending on where trading is, but usually the higher the volatility, as that goes up there is usually also more trading business. But we don’t see any direct impact on Platts’ revenue just because the prices are going lower in fact with all of the new sources of oil products coming on stream and with some of the uncertainty we expected there will be just as much demand as ever for our oil pricing services.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Barclays. You may ask your question

Okay, thanks for the color.

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Kramm with UBS. You may ask your question. Alex Kramm - UBS Just coming back to the Ratings business, obviously you raised guidance I guess for the whole business, but wondering how kind of the current outlook here impacted that guidance or being more specific like what you see out there because obviously the quarter has been a little bit soft, but might be opening up a little bit now that this volatility has gone away. So, maybe you can just give us a little bit of color what you expect here in the near-term on the Ratings side?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes, so first of all just a little bit of color from the last quarter. Last quarter the issuance in the markets was basically quite strong as you can see from our results, but if you look at the gross numbers you’d actually think that there had been a big drop in activity. There was a lot of impact in the size of the markets and the growth given the prior year there had been a 40 plus billion dollar Verizon issuance that skewed some of the numbers, but really if you go into the numbers there was a big mix shift in prior quarters there had been a lot of issuance of industrials, public finance and in particular of high yield and issuers both in Europe and the U.S. Last quarter industrials, corporates and high yield actually were a little bit lower than they had been in prior quarters and that was made up by financial services. So banks, broker dealers and others in the financial services industry increased their issuance dramatically in order to continue to raise capital in this very low interest rate environment, diversify their funding sources. So we saw a big increase in financial services issuance last quarter. And then in the structured finance market CLOs continued to be very strong, there was a lot of growth there, CMBS was strong, but RMBS continues to be anemic basically in the U.S. it has been a small market and traditional ABS which is things like credit cards and others has chugged along on kind of a normal level. In Europe there was a very large increase in traditional ABS which was receivables and credit cards and some there was a little bit of RMBS growth but based off of a low base. This is the Europeans…

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

As we mentioned before we have cycled through a period of stepped up investment and the business now has generated profit growth now for I think for like five straight quarters and I don’t know if we are going to be at this margin for every quarter over the next two or three, but I think we’ve moved to a little bit of a higher range here and we’re going to look to kind of build on that over the next year or so. So I wouldn’t say it’s going to be straight line from here maybe back and forth a bit. But I do think we’re sort of moving to a little bit of a higher more sustainable level over the medium term.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Andre Benjamin with Goldman Sachs. You may ask your question. Andre Benjamin - Goldman Sachs My first question is maybe if you could talk a bit about what drove the double-digit increase in Capital IQ Desktop? How much of that is volume or is this pricing? And I was wondering are you taking share from others given most other companies that had been reporting are not growing as fast or is it simply narrowing the price gap versus some of the peers with more expensive Desktops?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes so let me take that. On the first part of it, there has been a -- we’ve had double-digit growth in the S&P Capital IQ Desktop for a few quarters now. And it’s driven by a few things. First of all it's driven by a broader sources of customers. So don’t just think about Cap IQ going on the Desktops of investment banks and trading floors. It’s broader going into middle-office and back-office, risk management, different types of users within financial institutions, it’s being used more broadly and widely at asset management firms and insurance companies. So there has been an expansion of the types of users that we’ve been targeting and working with to ensure that our services and solutions meet their needs. And in addition to that, we’ve been able to add some functionality which is valuable for analytics purposes and through that we can also increase some of our pricing. But the main driver of this is actually volume as opposed to pricing. This is the way that we’re looking at it and we’re working with a lot with Imogen Dillon Hatcher who is the Acting President to ensure that we’re very closely focused and targeted on our customer needs and products and service needs. But it’s actually been chugging along quite well with this double-digit revenue growth as we have become much more targeted on the sales. So much more customer and volume driven and price driven so far and later this year and early next year we’ll give you more guidance for 2015 on Capital IQ and all of our businesses.

Jack Callahan

Chief Financial Officer

Andre one thing I would add too, as I think with maybe a modestly let’s just cal it modestly improving environment out there and some of the customer segments that we serve with the product are not only having good sales results, but for the rate of cancellations that we’ve had it sort of dropped down. So our retention has actually improved a bit too, and I think that’s also sort of supporting this nice growth that we’ve seen. Andre Benjamin - Goldman Sachs And for my follow-up I was wondering if you could maybe talk about investment for growth in the Indices business. Maybe talk about how attractive you’re thinking about -- or how attractive you would think it is to build it organically or via M&A, maybe the thoughts around expanded beyond your core equities Indices where you’re strongest, and how comfortable you’d be doing out large deals to expand that business versus a series of small ones?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

When we look at business it’s really driven by taking a step back and thinking about the strategy that’s going to fit, what are the trends. And the big trend that we talk about and we look at and we can see it. This is something you can actually measure is the growth of investible assets around the world from a combination of retirement assets building up in the developed market and investment assets whether they are for savings, for education, for retirement, et cetera as the emerging markets and other markets around the world have growing population. So we look at the broad trend and we know that we have a very strong platform in equities, as well as having very strong platform in commodities. And we also have the ability for custom Indices and strategic Indices that we’re always investing in and growing. So if you look across that we would like to continue to build into that mix both across global expansion, you have heard in the last few quarters that we’ve done business in Africa, we have started doing more African Indices, we’ve done in Taiwan this quarter and Mexico and Peru. So we’re doing expansion globally, these are fill-ins and allow us either through partnerships or acquisitions to fill-in our Indices space. We’re very interested in continuing to expand our fixed income growth. This is an area that for us is quite strategic, so international and fixed income, are both really impotent elements to the business for expansion. We would look very carefully at any sort of property that was available in the market, whether it was large or small, if it was going to fit our strategy and fit our business model, we would look at it. But there is no comments that we can make on any specific transactions or anything that’s going on in the market, but for us right now going back to where I started S&P Dow Jones Indices is a great performer. We have a great team there and it fits very well in our portfolio, especially in light of all of these very significant secular trends that we believe we’re responding to.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Peter Appert with Piper Jaffray. You may ask your question. Peter Appert - Piper Jaffray So tragically I am going to have to waste my question with a point of clarification here is the just the full year guidance meant to imply fourth quarter EPS of $0.85 to $0.90? That’s question one.

Jack Callahan

Chief Financial Officer

I think it’s 10 year is too better than that but I think it is that range Peter kind of get to the accurate, but I think kind of that is based going back to some of the comments that Doug made earlier about this sort of let’s say, it is called mixed start in terms of the issuance in October so that combined we also if you just look at our trends in the last few years we tend to run a little bit heavier in expense in the fourth quarter, there is a bit of pressure in the Ratings business with legal expense and the one other consideration I would point you towards too is we really as yet have not had a full quarter of impact in the Index business of the lost UBS contract that we had and I think this would be the first quarter we’ll see that full impact. So there is a number of considerations that we’re actively positioned kind of given the strong results of the third quarter, and fairly conservative outlook for the fourth quarter right now. Peter Appert - Piper Jaffray And then in terms of the restructuring asset, restructuring efforts at S&P Ratings and very impressive margin upside you saw in the current quarter. What should we expect going forward in terms of either additional restructuring efforts or potential to drive margin improvement there, how big do you think the upside is in terms of the margin leverage at S&P Ratings specifically?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Well, we’ve talked about it in the past and the way we’ve been thinking about it with Neeraj Sahai, who is the new President and there are different categories of expenses that we’re looking at there is some of these that are very clearly ongoing permanent costs that we built into the organization things from compliance from control from a international network, those are we think are very important for us strategically to run our business. We have another set of topics which relate to I call them changes which we’re going to, which will eventually go away very importantly legal expenses I see that as a temporary expense increase as I have said before once they’re normalized that will help significantly with our margins and then there is efficiency opportunities that we’re working on which as an example our recent voluntary retirement program allows us to reposition some of our labor force with different profile with some younger talent and so we’ve got some opportunities to really work on efficiency. So, it’s a combination of some permanent expenses we’re going to absorb and really we can talk to you about those in the future, we’ve got our opportunities for overtime eliminating some of our expenses and then we’ll see those and then we have got some restructuring and efficiency opportunities that we’ll be working on, we will provide more guidance for 2015 early next year and at that time we’ll have more clarity on all of this and give you some more precision. Peter Appert - Piper Jaffray Alright, thank you Doug.

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Craig Huber with Huber Research. You may ask your question. Craig Huber - Huber Research Yes, good morning. My first line of questions just has to do with the lack of share buyback in the quarter and also almost want to ask, was there any I don’t know restricted or material information that prevented you guys from buying back any stock in the quarter obviously first half of the year you bought almost 4.5 million shares but nothing this quarter?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Craig, even f there was I don’t think we could comment on it so well let’s just say we thought it was prudent at this moment in time just to have some more flexibility and the availability of domestic cash and due to some possible corporate development activities combined with other considerations in that. We’ll come back, we’re not -- share repurchases it is part of our financial algorithm and we anticipate that will continue and I think we’ve been pretty aggressive in the past in this area. I just think for now we thought it was just appropriate to take a pause. Craig Huber - Huber Research So is that to say then down the road you would be open to using the flexibility of your balance sheet a very clean balance sheet taking on some leverage to buy back stock down the road? And then my following question if I could sneak one in here is, what is your backlog for breakeven.

Chip Merritt

Operator

Craig, Craig we are keep it to two today, keep it to two. Craig we are keeping two questions today please. Craig Huber - Huber Research Fair enough, Chip.

Chip Merritt

Operator

Thank you.

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

I would just take you back to where we’d like to deploy cash I mean first we’re going to invest back in our businesses to drive organic growth. Secondly, if we think there is value-creating acquisition to help us build our global portfolio that we’d like to, that is our second place we’d like to deploy capital. Third, we want to continue to maintain the growth in our dividend to keep up the wonderful history we have now over four years of sustained dividend growth. That all being said, once we exhaust those opportunities kind of given strong cash flow of this business, we’re quite likely to have some balance sheet flexibility we had and we will continue to look to repurchase shares assuming that we believe that we’re making those decisions at the right time in the market. So, that should be, you should expect that to be part of our go forward plans. Craig Huber - Huber Research Great, thank you.

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Tim McHugh with William Blair. You may ask your question. Tim McHugh - William Blair Yes, thanks. Just on the restructuring program with S&P Ratings, some of the kind of the headlines there in the news articles we’d seen related to it suggest there is basically pretty broad-based for just any one over certain kind of experience level that maybe unfair. But I guess just trying to understand I guess was it broad-based? Was it targeted and in particular spots of the organization where you saw kind of room for more efficiency. I guess just maybe what were you willing to try and cut out as part of that program?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Well this program was designed to maybe as opposed to the first word you used broad it was much more narrowly focused. It was U.S.-based-only and it was targeted to only directors which is a more senior level of management and above. And so this was a targeted reduction, if you think about it, it was a way to help us think more about the organization in a little broader way, more of a pyramid. And so it was more focused, more narrow and it was U.S.-domestic-based. Tim McHugh - William Blair And I guess the reason or the conclusion you came to that you thought there was room for that is or do you feel there is more, there is room for less managerial or I guess as you said a wider pyramid. I guess I am just trying to understand the logic behind that?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes think of it as an opportunity, I used the term when I talked before about how we think about our margin that we have some permanent areas that we’re going to figure out, things that we want to keep, we’ll look at them carefully, we have got these temporary blips in expenses things like legal expenses which eventually would be normalized. And then we’ve got these efficiency in opportunities that we’re looking at whether it’s through technology or in this case looking at our workforce and how we can have the right type of workforce to respond to the markets that we have. And so we looked at this in a way that was really narrowly focused on what kind of workforce do we have and how we can look at the right kind of pyramid and the right resources against our market opportunities. So this was narrow.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Joe Foresi with Janney Capital Markets. You may ask your question. Jeff Rossetti - Janney Capital Markets This is Jeff Rossetti on for Joe. Just a quick question on fourth quarter margin guidance if I could in think year-to-date if I have it correct the margins are up about 160 basis points and I think you’re guiding for about 200 basis point improvement. So I just wanted to see what kind of by the segments what you might be expecting to improve. I think the Index business might have a good comparison. But just wanted to get your thoughts on the fourth quarter margins and how they might be settling out.

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes and the way I want to get to into weaves in terms of by segment, I wish overall I think we were consistent with the guidance now of full year of margin expansion of 200 basis points or better that we’re going to need to exceed that in the fourth quarter to make that work kind of given your observation on the year-to-date results. And obviously part of that will be aided by the overlap that we have in the Index business when we took a write-down last year in the fourth quarter, but beyond that I think we continue to expect solid contributions across the business lines like we have in this quarter.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Vincent Hung with Autonomous. Your line is open. Vincent Hung - Autonomous Just on the increase to the operating margin guidance by 200 basis points. How much of that is just due to moving the construction business to discontinued operations?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

It has a modest impact but it’s trivial relative to the performance of the business. It’s fairly modest. Keep in mind it’s only on a full year basis around the $170 million revenue business and so in the overall mix, it is quite insignificant.

Jack Callahan

Chief Financial Officer

Let me just go back a second and give you a little bit of thoughts about our philosophy on this and when we had our earnings call earlier this year I mean I am sorry our Investor Day earlier this year, we talked about some goals that we have for productivity. And as we think about productivity for the Company it’s a combination of scale and how we’re able to take advantage of the kinds of, if you want to call it punch power that we have in our businesses for sales, for customer focus for innovation and how we can drive higher growth in our top-line. So one of the areas we really want to look at for margin it’s not just about expenses, it’s also about helping drive our growth in the top-line and that’s really one of the most important messages that we want to get across that this is about the top-line. But at the same time we also want to ensure that we’re running the Company in a way that is effective and efficient and so programs like the ones that we’re talking about before in the Ratings business where we’ve done a very selective opportunity for us to look at restructuring of senior employees in a very specific way. Those are the types of things that we’re looking at that we could do across the company. But they’re very selective and it’s not something that we’re doing in a way that is always going to be visible but it’s a mindset about high growth, top-line growth and then very selective approach to ensuring that we’re efficient with the bottom-line and we think that we would like to deliver both of them and get an increase in margin. So, overtime we’re going to try to track both sides that have, higher growth, better sales, better approach to customers and then ensuring that when we use our assets and we deploy our resources that we’re doing in a way that it’s the best way to drive growth and also efficient so that we can be driving our margins. Vincent Hung - Autonomous And just my other question is, so you said half of the restructuring cost is likely to fall to the bottom-line next year, how should I relate that to the 100 million and cost cutting initiatives that you’ve laid out at Investor Day?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

You should view it as part of that overall initiative. Vincent Hung - Autonomous Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Bill Warmington with Wells Fargo Securities. You may ask your question.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. You may ask your question

Hi it’s Johnson on for Bill Warmington. Just a quick question for the pending sale at McGraw Hill Construction, what sort of tax rate should we use on the $320 million in proceeds you’re getting there?

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Unfortunately kind of this was a kind of a business that grew up within McGraw Hill there is not a lot of basis here. I think in your modeling you should probably assume after tax, cash contribution of maybe around 200 million to be conservative.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. You may ask your question

And just to be clear going forward this was I mean the last major change to the portfolio of McGraw Hill Companies?

Jack Callahan

Chief Financial Officer

As Doug mentioned earlier, this really kind of concludes portfolio rationalization that we have stepped out over the last few years. So, at this point in time I think our -- we would like to be able to perhaps now see if we can add to the portfolio moving forward and build on the top-line growth that Doug was just discussing.

Doug Peterson

President and CEO

Yes, let me add to that when we think about this top-line growth and there are a lot of very compelling secular trends that I just talked about one of them before related to the asset management industry and the increase in passive index-oriented investing, we mentioned a little bit earlier about the opportunities in the oil markets, the commodity markets. We highlighted some of these opportunities for you with the wood pellets, the I2 bio-fuel that is starting to grow in Europe. It’s a very important area. So we’re looking across all the different markets where it’s research, it’s data, it’s analytics, it’s benchmarks, it’s all of the different areas which we already play in that we have a strong position in and we have strong brands in that we would look at both organic investment as Jack talked about before and then also selectively, selective acquisitions for us to ensure that we have great positions in these businesses whether it’s through product expansion, it’s capabilities expansion or geographic and international expansion. So right now our focus has shifted to growth and that’s really what for us is exciting about being in this Company is how we’re positioning for the future.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst · Wells Fargo Securities. You may ask your question

Got it, thank you guys.

Operator

Operator

That concludes this morning’s call. A PDF version of the presenter slide is available now for downloading from www.mhfi.com. A replay of this call including the Q&A session will be available in about two hours. The replay will be maintained on the McGraw Hill Financial’s Web site for 12 months from today and for 1 month from today by telephone. On behalf of McGraw Hill Financial, we thank you for participating and wish you, good day.