On the desk today · Wolters Kluwer
Your accountant uses it. Your doctor uses it. Your lawyer uses it. You've never heard of it.
| EURONEXT · WKL |
December 8th
Your deadline to get positioned for Elon's NEXT MOVE
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I've uncovered an FCC filing from Elon Musk that lays out his NEXT MOVE, one he's working hard to keep quiet.
What's buried in this filing could be bigger than PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX combined.
The BIGGEST thing he's ever attempted, and the BIGGEST opportunity he's ever handed the people paying attention.
This won't stay quiet for long.
After that, the window to position yourself early on this opportunity could be gone forever.
I lay it all out in a FREE presentation.
The presentation is completely FREE to watch.
No purchase required. No credit card needed.
Once you see what's inside, you'll understand why he's kept it so quiet.
The Compliance Tax
Nobody Sees
In 1836, a publisher named Aebregt Wolters opened a bookshop in Groningen, in the northern Netherlands. He sold legal texts, government regulations, and academic journals — the kind of material that only professionals needed and only professionals would pay for. Fifty-three years later, in 1889, Allerd Kluwer founded his own publishing house in Deventer, specializing in law, tax, and education. For the next century, the two companies grew separately — each serving the same clientele: the professionals who needed to know the rules.
In 1987, Wolters and Kluwer merged. And the company that emerged — Wolters Kluwer — spent the next four decades doing something most publishers would never attempt. It stopped being a publisher. It became a software company.
I sat in my accountant’s office last April. He pulled up my return on a system called CCH — a tax software platform used by accounting firms across the United States. He checked a deduction rule, flagged a change from the prior year’s tax code, and ran the return through compliance checks — all inside the same system. I asked him if he could switch to different software. He looked at me the way you look at someone who asks if you could drive on the other side of the road. “Everything is in here,” he said. “Fifteen years of client data. Every return I’ve ever filed. I couldn’t leave if I wanted to.”
That is the Wolters Kluwer model. And it runs across every profession that depends on getting the rules right.
When your doctor checks a drug interaction at a patient’s bedside, they pull up UpToDate — a clinical decision support tool used by more than 2 million clinicians worldwide. Wolters Kluwer owns it. When a lawyer researches tax treaty case law across European jurisdictions, they use Kluwer Law Online. Wolters Kluwer publishes it. When a bank’s compliance team needs to verify that a transaction meets anti-money-laundering regulations, they run it through Wolters Kluwer’s financial compliance software. When a corporation files its legal entities in all 50 states, it uses CT Corporation — a Wolters Kluwer subsidiary that has been handling corporate filings for over a century.
In fiscal 2025, Wolters Kluwer reported €6.1 billion in revenue — up 6% organically. It was the fifth consecutive year of exactly 6% organic growth — a consistency that almost no company of this size achieves. Recurring revenues — subscriptions, maintenance fees, and cloud software — accounted for 83% of total revenue and grew 7% organically. The adjusted operating profit margin was 27.5%, up 40 basis points. The company operates in more than 40 countries, serves customers in over 180, and employs approximately 21,000 people from its headquarters in Alphen aan den Rijn, a small Dutch town most people have never visited.
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That 83% recurring revenue tells you what kind of business this has become. Wolters Kluwer is not a publisher that sells books. It is a software company that sells annual subscriptions to compliance tools that professionals cannot work without. The tax code changes every year. Drug databases update every month. Regulations shift with every new law, every new ruling, every new court decision. Wolters Kluwer maintains the systems that track those changes — and charges an annual subscription for access. The professional doesn’t choose to renew. The renewal is the default. Letting the subscription lapse means falling behind on the rules — and in accounting, medicine, and law, falling behind on the rules is not an option.
The pricing power is embedded in the complexity of the rules themselves. Every time a government passes a new regulation, every time a medical board updates a clinical guideline, every time a tax authority revises the code — Wolters Kluwer updates its software, and the subscription becomes more valuable. In fiscal 2025, Tax & Accounting grew 7% organically with a 35.2% operating margin. Cloud software recurring revenue within that segment grew 18%. The more complex the rules get, the more the professionals depend on the system. And the system only gets more complex.
The earnings call captured it plainly: the company delivered “another year of good organic growth and an improvement in our adjusted operating profit margin,” with recurring revenues up 7% and expert solutions — the AI-enhanced, workflow-embedded products at the top of the value chain — growing 7% organically and now accounting for 59% of total revenue.
The flywheel runs on the regulatory environment itself. Accounting rules get more complex. Medical knowledge doubles every few years. Legal jurisdictions multiply across borders. Environmental and social governance requirements expand. Every layer of complexity adds a layer of demand for the tools that track it. Wolters Kluwer doesn’t lobby for more regulation. It just builds the software that helps professionals comply with whatever regulations already exist — and waits for the next ones. In 1995, it acquired CCH Inc. — the dominant U.S. tax and accounting information provider — for $1.9 billion. That single acquisition embedded Wolters Kluwer in the workflow of every accounting firm in America. Three decades later, those firms are still paying.
WHY THIS WORKS
Compliance is mandatory. Accountants must file accurate returns. Doctors must check drug interactions. Lawyers must cite current law. The rules require the tools — and Wolters Kluwer provides the tools. Demand is not discretionary.
83% recurring revenue from embedded workflows. Fifteen years of client data, every return ever filed, every clinical protocol ever referenced — all inside the system. Switching means rebuilding the professional’s entire operating environment.
Five consecutive years of 6% organic growth. Not 4% one year and 8% the next. Six percent. Every year. The consistency reflects a business driven by regulation volume, not economic cycles.
190 years old and still compounding. Founded in 1836. Survived two world wars, the decline of print, and the rise of digital. Transformed from a publisher into a software company. The content changed. The customer — the professional who needs the rules — never did.
Aebregt Wolters opened a bookshop in Groningen in 1836. He sold legal texts to lawyers who needed to know the rules. One hundred and ninety years later, his company’s software runs on the screens of accountants filing your taxes, doctors checking your prescriptions, and lawyers drafting your contracts. The bookshop is gone. The rules are still there — longer, more complex, and more expensive to follow than Wolters ever imagined. And the company that started by printing them now charges a subscription to understand them. The tax code gets longer every year. The drug database grows every month. The regulations never stop. Neither does the revenue.
