You are given a text that consists of multiple sentences. Your task is to perform abstractive summarization on this text. Use your understanding of the content to express the main ideas and crucial details in a shorter, coherent, and natural sounding text. 
Text: I'm joined today by our CEO, Steve Hasker, and our CFO, Mike Eastwood.
We believe this provides the best basis to measure the underlying performance of the business.
Actual results may differ materially due to a number of risks and uncertainties related to the COVID pandemic and other risks discussed in reports and filings that we provide from time to time to regulatory agencies.
You may access these documents on our website or by contacting our investor relations department.
I'm pleased to report the momentum we saw in the first half of the year continued in the third quarter.
Our revenue and sales performance was strong, exceeded our expectations and position us well for Q4 and 2022.
We expect to close out the year on a strong footing and appreciate the efforts of our sales and our go-to-market teams.
This strong performance demonstrates our markets remain healthy and growing.
And our products across legal, tax, corporates and risk, fraud, and compliance fit the needs of our customers.
Our products enable them to effectively equip their professionals to better serve their clients.
We're also seeing improving customer engagement, including 8,000 registrations for our annual Legal, Tax and Corporates SYNERGY conferences around the world.
These conferences are our premier events for professionals who want to understand the future of their professions, learn the latest trends, and experience how tools and data-driven technology can transform their firms, organizations, agencies, and roles.
Our leadership team, including the president of our Corporates business, Sunil Pandita; and the president of our Tax & Accounting Professionals business, Elizabeth Beastrom, will be joining nearly 2,000 of our customers for the upcoming SYNERGY conferences in November in Nashville.
And as I mentioned last quarter, our customers continue to exhibit confidence in both an improving economic environment and in their own prospects.
This potent ecosystem plays to our advantage, and we will continue to capitalize on the opportunities we are seeing to drive growth and expand our positions.
Now to the results.
Our third quarter results reflected a standout performance.
Four of our five business segments recorded organic revenue growth of 6%.
That performance resulted in total company organic revenue growth of 5%, putting us well above the 3.5% to 4% third quarter guidance provided in August.
Our healthy markets are providing us with a tailwind.
That tailwind, coupled with our nine-month results, give us confidence in our prospects for the fourth quarter.
As a result, we've once again raised our full year revenue and free cash flow guidance.
Full year total company organic revenue growth is now forecast to be between 4.5% and 5% and approximately 6% for the Big 3 businesses.
Free cash flow for the year is now forecast to be approximately $1.2 billion.
Turning to our Change Program.
We're making consistent progress as we work through -- as we work toward becoming an integrated operating company.
As of September 30, we recorded run rate savings of about $130 million, putting us on a path to achieve $200 million by year end.
I'll remind you, our aggregate savings target is $600 million by the end of 2023, $200 million of which we plan to reinvest in the business.
Finally, we were active during the quarter executing on the $1.2 billion share buyback program we announced in August.
We've already bought back $1.1 billion of stock, and we expect to complete the program before year end.
So given the progress we're making, we also reaffirmed our guidance for 2022 and 2023.
Now to the results for the quarter.
Contributing to this performance was strong organic growth of more than 20% from our Latin American businesses and nearly 10% growth from our Asia and emerging markets businesses.
Adjusted EBITDA declined 7% to $458 million due to costs related to the Change Program, resulting in a margin of 30%.
Excluding Change Program costs, adjusted EBITDA margin was 33.5%.
Adjusted earnings per share for the quarter was $0.46, compared to $0.39 per share in the prior-year period.
Turning to the results by segment.
The Big 3 businesses achieved organic revenue growth of 6% for the quarter.
Legal's third quarter performance was again strong with organic revenue growth of 6%.
This was Legal's second consecutive quarter of 6% growth, its highest quarterly growth rate in over a decade.
The U.S. legal market continues to be very healthy across the board for small, mid, and large-sized firms, as well as for government and across geographies.
For example, Westlaw Edge continues to achieve strong sales growth and ended the quarter with an annual contract value or ACV penetration of 60%, achieving our full year ACV penetration guidance.
Second, Practical Law, as reported in the Legal segment, continues its strong performance, again growing double digits.
We forecast similar growth in 2022 and continue to invest in this key legal workflow initiative.
Third, our Government business, which is managed within our Legal segment, continues to perform and grew 10% organically.
And fourth, FindLaw grew over 10%, and our Legal businesses in Canada, Europe and Asia all grew mid-single-digit in the quarter.
Legal again achieved strong sales for both the quarter and nine-month periods, recording double-digit recurring sales growth, reflecting customers' willingness and ability to invest in productivity-enhancing products.
Turning to the Corporates business.
Organic revenue growth increased to 6% from 4% in the first half of the year.
This improvement came from increasing demand from customers for our legal, tax, and risk products.
Reuters News organic revenues also increased 6%, the second consecutive quarter of 6% growth.
This was driven by the Professional business, which includes Reuters Events, which grew over 60% and continues to recover from the negative impact of COVID-19 in 2020.
Finally, Global Print organic revenues declined 5%, less than expected, due to a continued gradual return to office by our customers and higher third-party print revenues.
In summary, it was another strong quarter, but we're taking nothing for granted.
We continue to invest in the businesses to enable us to further support our customers and properly position us for 2022 and beyond.
We still have much work to do in executing our Change Program, and we've assembled a talented team over the past 18 months who are working well together and clearly understand our goals and our timelines.
I'm very pleased with our progress to date.
One additional comment regarding growth.
As you can see on this slide, momentum has been building for our Big 3 businesses over the past 11 quarters, which we believe will continue in the fourth quarter and into next year.
I know many investors have historically viewed our markets as slower growing and have perceived our Legal and Tax businesses in particular as low single-digit growers.
We firmly believe that's not the case and, in fact, think that with successful execution of the Change Program, combined with appropriate investments, we can improve growth on a sustainable basis.
Our markets are broad and dynamic and we have strong positions in the right subsegments.
Also, we have numerous levers to pull across our businesses.
And we're investing in our strategic seven initiatives, which are performing well, and we expect they will continue to do so.
This confluence of factors places us in a position where we believe we can grow mid-single digit on a consistent basis over the cycle.
These factors position us well to achieve the upper end of the range of our 2022 revenue guidance of 4% to 5%.
We'll discuss our 2022 guidance further when we report our fourth quarter and full year results in February.
Let me share an example of products that we believe will contribute to sustainable mid-single-digit revenue growth that I just referred to.
First, you'll recall at our investor day, I discussed our goal of becoming a content-driven technology company, which includes excelling at product innovation and successfully integrating our products to provide customers with a seamless offering while delivering an excellent customer experience.
We expect this will further improve the customer loyalty and increase retention as we continually enhance our products, adding to organic growth.
And at investor day, I highlighted seven strategic priorities reflected on this slide.
Those include several of our legal workflow solutions: HighQ, Practical Law and Contract Express.
Last month, we released the latest version of HighQ.
This release features key integrations with Practical Law, Contract Express, Elite 3E and Microsoft Teams and includes more than 50 enhancements and upgrades.
It's an example of an integrated workflow solution that customers are asking for.
It helps legal professionals and other corporate professionals working with the legal team to identify their work and improve client satisfaction.
This leverages Contract Express to automate and improve documents.
It enables lawyers to structure matters with Practical Law.
And it integrates Elite 3E data with HighQ visualization tools to provide greater transparency around client spend and work in progress.
This is truly an integrated legal workflow solution and an example of content-driven technology.
Today, these four legal products are growing double digit, comprising over 10% of total company revenue and are contributing to the improving growth in both our Legal and Corporates segments.
HighQ is just one example of how we're building holistic solutions for our customers through greater product innovation and integration.
I expect to share more such examples of product innovation with you in the coming quarters.
Two weeks ago, we announced the establishment of a $100 million corporate venture capital fund focused on the future of professionals.
Thomson Reuters Ventures will continue -- will concentrate on investments and portfolio support for companies building breakthrough innovations that will allow professionals to operate more productively and with greater insights.
It will focus across the legal, tax and accounting, risk, fraud, and compliance, and news and media markets to identify and support innovative companies to help our customers deliver more to their clients.
The fund will be overseen by our chief strategy officer, Pat Wilburn.
It's an example of how we're thinking about driving more innovation across the company and seeking new opportunities to further strengthen our businesses.
As a reminder, I will talk to revenue growth before currency and on an organic basis.
Let me start by discussing the third quarter revenue performance of our Big 3 segments.
Organic revenues and revenues at constant currency were both up 6% for the quarter.
This marks the fifth consecutive quarter our Big 3 segments have grown at least 5%.
Legal Professionals total and organic revenues increased 6% in the third quarter.
Recurring organic revenue grew 6%.
And transaction revenues increased 10% related to our Elite, FindLaw and Government businesses.
Westlaw Edge added about 100 basis points to Legal's organic growth rate, is maintaining a healthy premium and is expected to continue to contribute at a similar level going forward.
Our Government business, which is reported within Legal and includes much of our risk, fraud, and compliance businesses, had a strong quarter, with total revenue growth of 11% and organic growth of 10%.
In our Corporates segment, total and organic revenues increased 6% due to recurring organic revenue growth of 7% and transactions organic revenue growth of 2%.
Recurring revenue was driven by Practical Law, Indirect Tax and CLEAR, as well as our businesses in Latin America and Asia and emerging markets.
And finally, Tax & Accounting's total and organic revenues grew 6%, driven by 10% recurring organic revenue growth.
Growth was driven by the Latin America businesses and audit solutions, which includes Confirmation.
Transactions organic revenue declined 9%, resulting from the year-over-year timing of individual tax filing deadlines.
I will remind you, last year, paper return revenue shifted from the second quarter to the third quarter.
Normalizing for this timing, organic revenues for Tax & Accounting were up 11% in Q3.
Moving to Reuters News.
Third quarter performance was strong, achieving total and organic revenue growth of 6%, primarily due to the Agency business and Professional business, which includes Reuters Events.
In Global Print, total and organic revenues declined 5%, at the lower end of the range we had forecast of minus 5% to minus 8%.
We expect full year Global Print revenue to decline between 4% and 6%.
On a consolidated basis, third quarter total and organic revenues each increased 5%.
Before turning to profitability, let's look closer at recurring and transaction revenue results for the third quarter.
Starting on the left side, total company organic revenue for the third quarter of 2021 was up 5% compared to 2% in the third quarter of 2020 due to the impact of COVID.
If we look at Q3 2021 performance for the Big 3, you will see organic revenues increased 6% compared to 5% in the same period last year.
Total company recurring organic revenues grew 6% in Q3, 230 basis points above Q3 2020.
And the Big 3 recurring organic revenues grew 7%, which was above last year's third quarter growth of 5%.
Turning to the graph in the bottom right of the slide.
Transaction revenues were up 8%, as the third quarter of 2020 was impacted by COVID, which affected our implementation services and the Reuters Events business.
We continue to remain encouraged by our momentum in 2021, especially for recurring revenues.
This gives us confidence in the trajectory of the business and sustainability beyond 2021.
As previously stated by Steve, we have increased our full year revenue guidance.
Starting with the total TR chart on the top left, we now estimate full year total and organic revenues will grow between 4.5% and 5%.
This is an increase from the previous guidance of 4% to 4.5%.
The Big 3 total and organic revenues are now forecast to grow approximately 6% for the full year, up from the previous guidance of 5.5% to 6%.
Moving to Reuters News.
We forecast full year total and organic revenues to grow between 3% and 5%, driven mainly by our Reuters Professional business.
This is an increase from the previous guidance of 2% to 3%.
Finally, Global Print full year revenues are expected to decline between 4% and 6%, an improvement from our previous guidance of a 4% to 7% decline.
Turning to our profitability performance in the third quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA for the Big 3 segments was $468 million, up 7% from the prior-year period.
The strong EBITDA growth for each of the three businesses was driven by higher revenue growth and a benefit from 2020 cost-savings initiatives, offset by incremental business-as-usual investments in advance of 2022.
As discussed in the second quarter, we are investing more in go-to-market initiatives, enterprise technology, and data and analytics capabilities in the second half of 2021, with a greater concentration of spend in Q4.
I will remind you, the Change Program operating costs are recorded at the corporate level.
Moving to Reuters News.
Adjusted EBITDA was $25 million, $2 million more than the prior-year period, driven by revenue growth.
Global Print adjusted EBITDA was $52 million with a margin of 35%, a decline of about 600 basis points due to the decrease in revenues and the dilutive impact of lower margin third-party print revenue.
So in aggregate, total company adjusted EBITDA was $458 million, a 7% decrease versus Q3 2020.
Excluding costs related to the Change Program, adjusted EBITDA increased 4%.
The third quarter's adjusted EBITDA margin was 30% and was 33.5% on an underlying basis, excluding costs related to the Change Program.
Now let me turn to our earnings per share, free cash flow performance, and Change Program cost.
Starting with earnings per share, adjusted earnings per share was $0.46 per share versus $0.39 per share in the prior-year period, an 18% increase.
The increase was primarily driven by a decrease in depreciation and amortization and lower income taxes, partially offset by lower adjusted EBITDA.
For the full year, we have decreased our tax rate guidance to between 14% and 16% due to favorable results from the settlement of prior tax years in various jurisdictions.
Currency had a $0.01 positive impact on adjusted earnings per share in the quarter.
Let me now turn to our free cash flow performance for the first nine months.
Our reported free cash flow was $1 billion versus $881 million in the prior-year period, an improvement of $120 million.
Consistent with previous quarters, this slide removes the distorting factors impacting free cash flow performance.
Working from the bottom of the slide upwards, the cash outflows from the discontinued operations component of our free cash flow was $59 million more than the prior-year period.
tax authority related to our former Refinitiv business.
In the first nine months, we made $94 million of Change Program payments as compared to Refinitiv-related separation cost of $87 million in the prior-year period.
So if you adjust for these items, comparable free cash flow from continuing operations was just shy of $1.2 billion, $327 million better than the prior-year period.
This increase was primarily due to higher EBITDA, favorable working capital movements, and dividends from our interest in LSEG.
Now an update on our Change Program run rate savings.
In the third quarter, we achieved $42 million of annual run rate operating expense savings.
This brings the cumulative annual run rate operating expense savings up to $132 million for the Change Program.
We are forecasting to achieve $200 million of cumulative annual run rate operating expense savings by the end of this year.
As a reminder, we anticipate operating expense savings of $600 million by 2023 while reinvesting $200 million back into the business or net savings of $400 million.
Achieving $200 million of operating expense savings by the end of 2021 would put us a third of the way toward our goal of $600 million of gross savings by 2023.
We will continue to provide quarterly updates on run rate Change Program savings.
Now an update on our Change Program cost for the third quarter and the rest of 2021.
Spend during the third quarter was $79 million, which included $53 million of opex and $26 million of capex.
Total spend in the first nine months of the year was $170 million.
We now anticipate opex and capex spending between $120 million and $150 million in the fourth quarter.
Spend is forecast to step up related to cloud migration, streamlining internal systems, third-party contractors to support the Change Program and higher capital expenditures.
For the full year, we now expect Change Program opex and capex spend to be between $290 million and $320 million.
This is slightly lower than the previous guidance range of $300 million to $350 million.
We expect the lower spend in 2021 to carry over into 2022 as we are still expecting to incur approximately $600 million over the course of the program.
We will provide formal guidance on Change Program spend for 2022 when we report our fourth quarter results in February.
There is no change in the anticipated split of about 60% opex and 40% capex.
We will continue to provide quarterly updates on our Change Program spend.
And as Steve outlined, today, we increased our full year outlook for total TR and Big 3 revenue growth.
We also increased our full year free cash flow guidance to approximately $1.2 billion.
Additionally, we have slightly lowered our guidance on Change Program spend for both opex and capex for 2021 and carry that underspend over to 2022.
We have also decreased our effective tax rate outlook, both of which are reflected on this slide.
Lastly, we reaffirm the balance of our full year 2021 guidance as well as our 2022 and 2023 guidance previously provided.
And we remain confident in achieving the targets for all metrics.
That concludes our formal remarks on our third quarter results.
So if we could have the first question, operator, please?

user
compname reports q3 adjusted earnings of $0.46/share.
quarterly adjusted earnings per share $0.46.
repurchased $1.1 billion of company shares under $1.2 billion buyback program through october 31%.
quarterly legal professionals revenues increased 6% (all organic) to $682 million at constant currency.
quarterly tax & accounting professionals revenues increased 6% (all organic) to $175 million at constant currency.
quarterly corporates revenues increased 6% (all organic) to $356 million at constant currency.
quarterly reuters news revenues of $164 million increased 6%, all organic, at constant currency.
quarterly global print revenues decreased 5% to $149 million, as expected, at constant currency.
raised full-year 2021 revenue guidance.
raised full-year 2021 free cash flow guidance to approximately $1.2 billion from $1.1 - $1.2 billion.
reaffirmed full-year 2022 and 2023 guidance, with minor adjustments to 2022 change program spend.
reaffirmed and increased part of its full-year outlook for 2021.
sees fy 2021 total revenue growth of 4.5% - 5.0.

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