Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
[Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Peter Appert with Goldman Sachs. Please proceed with your question.
Peter Appert - Goldman Sachs
Thank you and congrats on another great quarter Jerre. The... I am wondering in the context of the consistent out performance you've enjoyed this year in terms of margins. If you are rethinking longer term, what the margin targets for these businesses should be?
Jerre L. Stead - Chief Executive Officer and Chairman
Thanks for the comments Peter. We said as you remember that we are comparing ourselves to the peer group, we've got ourselves what the target that we shared with our every colleague throughout IHS moving to the mid point of 30% adjusted EBITDA as a percent of revenue sometime in the future. We also will be presenting our strategic plans in a couple of weeks to our Board of Directors and the question you asked is one that you could expect them asking too.
We feel very good about our progress. We will continue to move forward and I think you can be resting in comfort that our target gets closer to reality and at that point of time, we for sure will review our next steps, Peter.
Peter Appert - Goldman Sachs
Okay, well still have a ways to go I guess to get to the mid 30% level. If I've done this arithmetic, I am right, may be this, a question for Mike, in terms of the 37% call it, EBITDA growth. It would imply, I think, backing into the fourth quarter that the margin would be sort of flattish with the third quarter. Is there any specific reason for that?
Michael Sullivan - Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Well Peter, you build the model all year, where we will have less year-over-year margin expansion in Q4 than in the prior three quarters, and then very much is what our guidance calls for. When you look at it sequentially, it's the same trend we've been seeing in the business for three years where the seasonality is being taken out of the business to a large degree based on some of the non-recurring streams of the early part of the year, a rough and share week is a good example in Q1.
If you look back at the relative contribution in Q4 over the last three years, we've gone from that representing about a third or more of our full year profit to embedded in this year's numbers is something probably just over a quarter. So, I think it's more of the unseasonling of our company's economic model, brought about in some part by the acquisitions as well.
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