Experian plc

Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Experience First Quarter Trading Update webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker, Mr. Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 Trading Update call. I'm here as usual, Lloyd, who will take you through the trading performance after my opening remarks. We've had a strong start to FY26. Q1 organic revenue growth was 8%. Continuing our positive trend from Q4, recent acquisitions have added to this to take the total group revenue growth 12% at both constants and actual rates. The acquisitions we completed last year have all performed well in the quarter and we're on track with their integrations. Organic revenue growth was 9% in North America, 5% in Latin America, 1% in the UK and I, and 7% in EMEA Asia Pacific. By segment, B2B organic revenue goes with 8%, with good contributions from both financial services and verticals. Globally, consumer services delivered 6% growth, rising to 13%, excluding the one-off impact of prior year data breach services contribution. Turning to the Q1 regional highlights, starting with North America, where we had a really good first quarter and made a lot of strategic progress. Regional organic revenue growth is 9%, which includes a strong B2B performance of 12%. Across financial services, we saw 15% organic revenue growth. This is broad-based across business lines and included client wins and modest improvement in the underlying market. Clarity services, analytics growth, and further Ascend expansion all contributed positively, as did mortgage. And we expect new products such as cash flow analytics and new modules to descend platforms to support sustained growth. Vertical's growth was 8%. This was led by automotive, which signed a new milestone, new strategic partnership in the quarter, which broadens our auto check vehicle history presence across dealer ecosystem. And by health, in part driven by strong market adoption of patient access curator and our strong new business bookings performance last year. We're also encouraged by underlying performance and marketing services. Audigent has made an excellent start and is expanding the use of Experian audiences across digital marketing channels. We had a strong underlying quarter in consumer services where the 3% headline organic growth number was 11% excluding data breach. Membership, marketplace, and partner solutions excluding breach all contributed favorably. Membership has benefited from our increased focus on financial health And we saw particular strength in Marketplace, supported by broader lender engagement and expanded partnerships, with more lenders onboarded and major lenders now launching custom models on our Activate platform. And our EVA AI chatbot has also helped to serve stronger customer demand with more personalized credit card offers. In Latin America, we delivered mid-single-digit organic revenue growth of 5%. Rising rates and high levels of consumer indebtedness have dampened the operating environment for B2B in Brazil, and year-on-year revenues are flat at constant FX. Q1 saw further progress across fraud prevention, analytics, and B2B software, where we continue to broaden our proposition for clients. We've acted quickly to integrate ClearSale, and we're excited by the prospects to broaden our propositions as we integrate the ClearSale fraud suites and our SME business also performed very well. Our new product execution roadmap also continues to be strong, including new payroll loan applications to take advantage of this emerging market opportunity. Consumer Services delivered another strong quarter with 24% organic revenue growth on expanded membership and increased revenue diversification. We onboarded new lending partners into our credit marketplace, and have introduced new features to support debt consolidation within our LIMP and NOME platform. In an environment where consumer defaults have reached record levels, LIMP and NOME helps us to support consumer financial health, which we'll continue to focus on through our fairs and with new feature introductions. The UK&I delivered organic revenue growth of 1%. B2B was down 2%. The consumer services delivered another strong performance, up 11%. The trend in financial services is still subdued against the soft macroeconomic backdrop, but we continue to make good new business and strategic progress with a number of clients now live on the Ascend platform. UK consumer services made excellent progress with Q1 growth of 11%. We've made very good progress overall with new feature introductions for our membership. marketplace where our panel continues to grow well with increased pre-approved and exclusive offers on our panel, leading us to outperform the overall lending market. In EMEA Asia Pacific, we had another good quarter with organic revenue growth of 7%, and we're making good progress to expand revenue from new product introductions, and the integration of the acquisition of Illion continues to perform well and is on track. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Lloyd.

Thanks, Brian, and morning, everyone. As you've seen, we started the year well and in line with the trends we saw at the end of last year, with organic revenue growth of 8% or 9% excluding data breach services revenue. North America continued its recent momentum, driven by strong double-digit growth in financial services. Excluding the expected headwind from low data breach services activity, North America consumer services also grew double digits, driven by strong marketplace performance. Both the UK and Ireland and Latin America delivered resilient growth against challenging macro conditions, with each showing notable strength in consumer services and, in particular, in marketplace services. For the group, B2B globally grew by 8%, whilst B2C grew very well at 6% or 13%, excluding the data breach services. And recent acquisitions contributed 4% of inorganic growth, while exchange rates were neutral in the quarter, leading to total growth at constant and actual exchange rates of 12% for the quarter. Turning to the performance by region, beginning with North America, where we delivered strong organic revenue growth of 9%, with 12% in B2B and 3% growth in consumer services, or 11% ex data breach. Within B2B, overall, North America financial services grew very strongly, up 15%. And financial services excluding mortgage profiles grew 10% in the quarter, predominantly driven by clarity, our Ascend analytics solutions, positive revenue phasing in the quarter, and some improvement in underlying client activity. Mortgage profile revenue, which represents about 3% of group revenue, grew 46%. on a modest volume decline in the quarter. Elsewhere, verticals grew 8%. Automotive had another strong quarter, growing 13%, driven by credit and our value recovery products. Health continued to grow well, up 8%, with our patient access and claims products progressing well. In consumer services, premium membership grew mid-single digits, and our marketplace continued recent momentum with Very strong growth across both credit cards and personal loans. Partner solutions, excluding the expected breach slowdown, also grew well. Moving on to Latin America, where total revenue was up 17% at constant currency with a strong contribution from annual acquisitions. Organically, as expected, LATAM improved sequentially to grow 5% organically due to great progress in consumer services, which grew 24%. whilst B2B revenue was in line with the prior year. In B2B, growth was consistent with last quarter. We saw good growth in high-priority areas such as SME and our software solutions, though persistently high interest rates continued to impact client activity. Consumer services had another strong quarter supported by new partners, while in PNOME also continued its trend of double-digit growth. Turning to the UK and Ireland, which grew modestly at 1% organically, B2B was 2% lower, with financial services in line with the prior year and a decline in verticals revenue. The flat financial services revenue reflected this ongoing subdued macroeconomic environment. Consumer services delivered a strong 11% revenue growth, driven by strength in our marketplace. And continued new feature enhancements and strength in our lender panel drove acceleration compared to the prior quarter. And finally, in the Near Asia Pacific, which grew 36% in currency thanks to a strong contribution from Illion acquisition, which is progressing very well. Organically, growth was consistent with recent trends at 7%, with good progress across most markets through a combination of strong performance across Australia, New Zealand, India, and the Southern Europe markets. And turning to our full year expectations, which are unchanged from those we discussed just a few weeks ago in May. And with that, I'll hand you back to Brian.