Partnership Agreement

Ingenta PLC 16 July 2001 Date: Embargoed until 07.00hrs, Monday 16th July 2001 Contacts: ingenta Website:www.ingenta.com Martyn Rose, Chairman Tel: 020 7796 4133 Mark Rowse, Chief Executive Tel: 01865 314810 David Callcott, Finance Director Tel: 01225 361020 Hudson Sandler Alistair Mackinnon-Musson Tel: 020 7796 4133 Philip Dennis Email:ingenta@hspr.co.uk ingenta plc Major New Partnership Agreement Signed 9 of the world's top 10 publishers now represented by ingenta ingenta plc, global market leader in the online distribution of published scientific, professional and academic research, is pleased to announce it has signed a significant new partnership agreement with another of the world's major publishers. This brings the number of academic and professional publishers now represented by ingenta to 9 of the world's top 10. The new partnership agreement has been signed with Kluwer Academic Publishers, a full subsidiary of Wolters Kluwer nv, the Dutch based professional publisher with sales of EUR 3.7billion. Under the agreement, ingenta's users will gain access to over 720 specialist journal publications produced by Wolters Kluwer. This brings the total number of publications available via ingenta's online services to over 5200, representing some 75% of all the publications available via the web in this market. In addition, over the past three months ingenta has signed a further 23 partnership agreements with niche publishers of academic and professional journals. This includes agreements with publishers in Australia, Spain and Singapore for the first time as well as a number of agreements to create new e-communities. Demand for ingenta's end user services continues to rise dramatically with the number of articles accessed and delivered in May increasing to over 670,000, 400% up on the same period last year. Trading continues to be encouraging with new business wins at record levels and a substantial forward order book for 2002 already achieved. Moving into the 4th quarter, the board remains comfortable that trading will be in line with expectations and the business will move into profitability on schedule in the last quarter of calendar 2001. Commenting on the developments, Martyn Rose, Chairman, said: 'Ingenta continues to be the leading supplier of online services to the $6bn industry in which it operates. The continued realisation of the company's strategy means that management is confident the business is on schedule to move into profit later this year.' Mark Rowse, Chief Executive, added: 'We are extremely pleased with this partnership agreement and are very much looking forward to working with Wolters Kluwer. With around three quarters of the world's online research journals now available through ingenta we can provide our clients with a service that is unrivalled.' Notes to editors ingenta is the global market leader in the online distribution of published scientific, professional and academic research. It provides an online search service of published content from reliable research sources not freely searchable elsewhere on the web and is one of the UK's top five web service operators, serving over three million visitors a month. For publishers of scientific, professional and academic periodicals, journals and reference works, it provides a suite of services including data conversion, secure online hosting, subscription authentication, marketing and e-commerce services. As well as providing web users with a broad-based article search and delivery service through www.ingenta.com, ingenta also develops subject-focused e-communities, built in conjunction with societies and publishers, and enterprise portal solutions for libraries. ingenta's revenue streams derive both from fees paid by publishers, such as Reed Elsevier Educational Publishing, Nature Publishing Group and Taylor & Francis Group, and from a share of pay per view and subscription revenues from users paying to download articles or subscribing to e-communities it operates such as www.animalscience.com or www.nutritiongate.com. e25, the definitive index of the UK's top 25 Internet businesses from leading business magazine Management Today and business consultancy Bain & Company, placed ingenta in the number 3 spot in its March 2001 edition, and US-based InfoWorld has named ingenta as one of its top 100 e-businesses to watch. Websites: www.ingenta.com www.wkap.nl www.wolters-kluwer.com

Companies

Ingenta (ING)
UK 100