$WLY
John Wiley & Sons is a 200-year-old academic and professional publisher that owns publishing rights to approximately 2,500 peer-reviewed scientific journals, 8,000+ book titles across research and professional disciplines, and a portfolio of proprietary scientific instruments and databases. Revenue is generated through institutional journal subscriptions, author-paid open access publication fees, AI content licensing, and professional learning products.
Proprietary data is becoming increasingly important for AI models.
From the recent $ORCL earnings call, “For many enterprises, inferencing against decades of rich operations data is where the benefits of AI compound exponentially.”
$WLY owns one of the largest collections of peer reviewed academic research in the world.
Their data:
Was collected through a slow, expensive, validated process no shortcut can replicate
Is legally protected under IP law, not just practically scarce
Has compounding value as AI applications in specific industries mature
Is already being licensed to AI companies and generating real revenue
The business has two segments:
Research (~64% of revenue) — journals, open access publishing, AI licensing, and research tools. 83% of this is digital. Customer retention above 99%. This is the asset.
Learning (~36% of revenue) — textbooks, professional books, digital courseware. Currently facing headwinds
Why $WLY is interesting:
AI model training licensing. Wiley has signed deals with at least three of the world's largest AI companies, licensing their scientific corpus for model training. Revenue has gone $23M (FY2024) → $40M (FY2025) → tracking $45-50M (FY2026).
Subscription knowledge feeds. R&D-intensive corporations (pharma, biotech, energy, financial services) are building internal AI tools and need continuous access to the latest peer-reviewed research to ground those tools in verified knowledge. Wiley is actively signing these customers on recurring subscriptions. Current customers include the European Space Agency, Novartis, and Regeneron. Management said on the Q3 FY2026 call they now have 10 corporate customers and that recurring AI revenue will triple in FY2027.
The IQVIA partnership. Clinical Outcome Assessments (COAs) are scientifically validated instruments required by the FDA to prove a drug actually works for subjective conditions like pain, depression, fatigue. Wiley owns 100+ of these instruments built over decades through real clinical work with real patients. No AI model can recreate them. IQVIA is now bundling Wiley's COA instruments into their clinical trial packages as a one-stop solution for every major pharma company. This business went from $800K in 2021 to $7M today. With IQVIA's distribution, the ceiling is dramatically higher.
The Emerald Acquisition. On June 2, 2026, Wiley acquired Emerald Publishing, a UK-based scholarly publisher with ~500 journals in economics, business, finance, and social sciences, for $452M, taking the total journal portfolio to 2,500 titles. Wiley's existing content was heavily weighted toward hard sciences, and Emerald plugs that gap as corporate AI demand for business and economics research is accelerating. 92% recurring subscription revenue, mid-single-digit growth, and $30M of annual cost synergies by year three. 85% of Emerald's revenue is currently non-US, and Wiley already has buying relationships with every major university library in North America so adding Emerald content to an existing renewal conversation doesn't require a new sales cycle. The near-term headwind is that leverage spikes from 1.7x to ~3x post-close.
Valuation
The stock trades at 15x PE, 9x Fwd PE, 7x EV/EBITDA.
Chart
Above all moving averages across all timeframes, pushing towards the high of a multi year range.
Earnings Risk
$WLY reports earnings Tuesday June 16, 2026.
-Pierce
Note: This article does not provide investment advice. The stocks mentioned should not be taken as recommendations. Your investments are solely your decisions.