This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk01: Good day and welcome to the Equifax Third Quarter 2020 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Dorian Hare. Please go ahead.
spk10: Thanks and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. I am Dorian Hare. With me today are Mark Begor, Chief Executive Officer, and John Gamble, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded. An archive of the recording will be available later today in the investor relations section in the About Equifax tab of our website at www.equifax.com. During the call today, we will be making reference to certain materials that can also be found in the investor relations section of our website under Events and Presentations. These materials are labeled Q3 2020 Fairings Release Presentations. During this call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements to help you understand Equifax and its business environment. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Certain risk factors inherent in our business are set forth in filings with the SEC, including our 2019 Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Also, we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EPS attributable to ECOFAC and adjusted EBITDA, which will be adjusted for certain items that affect the comparability of our underlying operational performance. Certain revenue variances referred to on this call are based on adjusted revenue from the third quarter of 2019. These non-GAAP measures are detailed in reconciliation tables, which are included with our earnings relief and are also posted on our website. Now I'd like to turn it over to Mark. Thanks, Doreen, and good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining our third quarter earnings call. Businesses and consumers around the world continue to face challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. I hope you and your families are continuing to be safe in managing this unprecedented environment. At Equifax, we continue to make the health and safety of our 11,000 employees a top priority, Turning first to the slide deck on page number four, before I cover our very strong third quarter performance, I wanted to recap our focus over the past three years to transform Equifax to drive revenue growth, margins, and cash in the future. Today we solve unique industry and vertical customer and consumer challenges through our differentiated data assets and best-in-class analytics. Most of our differentiated and most valuable data assets are twin income and employment data. We are building an industry-leading global cloud-native technology footprint enabled by best-in-class cloud-native tools that will leverage our new cloud-based single data fabric. We've taken an industry leadership position in data security by changing our culture, our technology solutions, and governance to ensure customer and consumer data is safer than it has ever been before. We're relentlessly focused on a customer-first mentality, and we have a market-leading position in 25 countries. In building a new Equifax, we are executing on our $1.5 billion cloud data and technology transformation that will move our data to a single cloud-native data fabric and move our legacy applications to the Google Cloud. We're ramping up our investments in innovation and product resources to drive new product acceleration by leveraging our cloud investments. We're strengthening our differentiated data portfolio with new unique data assets that complement our view of consumers. We're leveraging advanced analytics, our patented AI technology, and cloud data technology to deliver multi-data solutions. And we're differentiating our business portfolio by acquiring new capabilities and entering new areas of growth. Turning now to slide number five, the COVID pandemic has accelerated key market macros that are positive for Equifax and for the industry. First, in our... data-driven economy, it's clear that both deeper insights from comprehensive data sources like the U.S. Consumer Credit Database at Equifax and the use of multiple and alternative data types are critical for risk management, customer prospecting, employment verification, and an array of other activities engaged by our customers. More differentiated data was a positive macro prior to COVID-19. These economic impacts of the pandemic have only accelerated this trend around differentiated data. Differentiated data and analytics are more valuable than ever to our customers. Second, providers of credit are increasingly delivering real-time and advanced analytics that utilize artificial intelligence and machine learning to deliver incremental insights beyond core data. This trend has been accelerated during COVID, including instances where fraudsters have expanded efforts around fraud, account takeover, or activities such as loan stacking, such as loan stacking. Identity and fraud solutions are increasingly valuable. Third, consumers, especially those from the digital age, have expectations that their financial and workplace interactions function digitally. We've seen this trend towards digital accelerate in the current COVID environment as face-to-face interactions have become increasingly rare. And last, fintechs and alternative lenders are nimbly taking share of wallets from traditional financial institutions. We've seen this trend challenge somewhat in the near term due to economic pressures, including disruptions in capital flows, but we expect it will reaccelerate as we move into 2021. The Equifax team is laser-focused on delivering solutions to help our customers meet the challenging economic demands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Our new cloud-native data and applications are delivering integrated data solutions that we were unable to execute on in our legacy environment with unprecedented data currency and speed. We're applying advanced analytics and alternative data assets toward the creation of trended insights that can better help our customers manage in this COVID environment where the consumer credit profiles are complicated by unemployment, salary reduction, furloughs, and load accommodations. Our new cloud-based Illuminate identity and fraud platform that uses these advanced analytics, along with machine learning and data orchestration, is providing risk managers with greater insights to better manage fraud. And our solutions enable organizations across industries to adopt new realities using digital solutions to interact with their customers. Whether it's an automotive dealership looking to convert online browsers to online purchasers without stepping foot in a dealership or a credit union looking for ways to support members while operating with a reduced branch footprint, Equifax solutions help organization of all types to drive new digital interactions. The COVID recession has accelerated key market macros around the value of broader data assets and real-time decisioning that will benefit Equifax in the future. Turning to slide six, it highlights how Equifax goes beyond the standard credit report to give lenders, employers, marketers, and other service providers a fuller, more complete, 360-degree picture of a consumer's financial life to enhance decisioning. We are working with our customers to leverage the traditional credit file that lenders already rely on to understand the financial profile of candidates for loans and services. Instead of focusing only on financial activity or delinquency over the past three to six months, our trended data and analytics allow lenders to look at delinquencies over an extended period while closely monitoring indicators of financial distress, such as utilization increases and loan accommodations. We estimate that this deeper view of traditional credit records may allow nearly 4 million consumers who were recently moved down from prime and super prime credit categories due to credit policy tightening to move back up. Consumers that may be good candidates for cards or personal loans who may otherwise be overlooked as lenders execute their traditional recession playbook. Even more importantly, alternative data in the form of Equifax's unique twin income and employment information has become increasingly critical as uncertain job markets impacts underwriting, and the ability of a consumer to repay their loan. Unique data we provide helps lenders and consumers together to verify that a borrower is employed when a credit decision is made. The do-it-yourself alternative requesting hard copy employment and income verifications can lengthen process workflows and cannot be verified. We estimate that the addition of twin income and employment data into credit decisioning can move more than 7 million consumers up into prime and super prime categories so they can receive larger loans and other services with renewed lender confidence. Telco, utility, bank transaction, and commercial data are further examples of Equifax's unique and differentiated data sets. Our cloud technology transformation is delivering a single data fabric that combines our multiple databases into one environment to enable more nimble innovation, insights, and analytics, while at the same time enhancing regulatory compliance. We have an incredible appetite for new and differentiated data and we believe that more data delivers better decisions for our customers. I hope this gives you a strong sense of our broad range of strategic initiatives as we are transforming Equifax for the future. Turning now to slide seven in our third quarter financial results, Equifax continued with very strong performance again in the third quarter. I'm very encouraged by the resiliency and strength of Equifax and how our teams around the world are meeting the challenges of COVID to help our customers, partners, and consumers. We are operating more effectively and efficiently with more energy and momentum than I've seen since I joined Equifax, and I believe we'll be a stronger, more resilient organization when this global pandemic is over. During the third quarter, we saw very strong revenue performance, particularly at Workforce Solutions and USIS, with broad-based improving revenue trends resulting in strong cash generation and EBITDA margins, while we continue to make incremental investments in technology, new product innovation, and security. Revenue growth of 19% is the highest quarterly growth in our history, and we eclipsed $1 billion of quarterly revenue for the first time in Equifax's history, both huge milestones. I'll talk more in a minute about our financial results. We continue to make proactive customer collaboration a key priority in order to drive engagement, deal pipelines, and new product innovations. During the quarter and past several weeks, I've been engaged with our key customers. This is the most challenging environment they've ever faced. Broadly, data is more valuable today than ever, and our unique data assets like Twin and Advanced Analytics are critical to helping our customers navigate through this pandemic. We continue to take advantage of our strong cash generation to accelerate our cloud data technology transformation investments. Under Bryson Keller's leadership, and with the support of thousands of technology team members, we are making continued strong progress on our $1.5 billion technology transformation, and we are seeing new customers accessing our cloud-native solutions each week as our migrations accelerate. We're also continuing to expand our investments and resources around innovation and new products that are helping our customers manage today's challenging environment, but also with an eye on beyond the pandemic. Our transformation into a product-led organization focused on innovation and enabled by best-in-class cloud-native data assets and world-class technology is becoming more real every day and will power our business in 2021 and beyond. Our team's strong execution and outperformance in the third quarter is another very positive step forward for Equifax. Turning to slide eight, our financial results for the third quarter were strong and broad-based. Revenue of $1.07 billion was up 19% on a reported and local currency basis, which is well above our expectations in the framework of 10% to 12% that we shared with you in early September. M&A contributed less than 1% in the quarter. Our growth was again powered by our U.S. B2B businesses, USIS and Workforce Solutions, which had a combined revenue of up a very strong 32.5%. combined adjusted EBITDA margins of over 50%. Workforce Solutions continued their exceptional performance driven by the value of the twin database with revenues up 57% in the quarter while generating EBITDA margins of 58%. This marked Workforce Solutions' second consecutive quarter of 50% plus revenue growth, and USIS also exhibited strong revenue growth of 15%. Our strong U.S. B2B business performance continues to be powered by our focus on growth and our differentiated data assets. U.S. mortgage revenue was up almost 90% compared to the third quarter of 2019. U.S. mortgage market inquiries, our proxy for the overall mortgage market growth, were up 51% in the third quarter, driven by strength in both the new purchase and refinancing mortgage volumes. The driver of our U.S. B2B business's substantial outperformance versus the market continues to be Workforce Solutions. for the second consecutive quarter in a row. This is driven by the value that our customers place on our unique twin income and employment data, the rollout of new products, the addition of new customers, improved customer penetration, and expansion of our twin data records. U.S. mortgage revenue growth of 57% also outpaced the market by 600 basis points. Our unemployment insurance claims business grew over 70% in the quarter with revenue of $50 million. In the third quarter, Workforce Solutions processed about 3.4 million initial unemployment claims, which is down from 7.5 million initial claims in the second quarter. Workforce Solutions continues to process roughly one in five U.S. initial unemployment claims. We expect unemployment claims to continue above 2019 levels in the fourth quarter, but at a reduced level compared to the third quarter. Including the growth from unemployment claims, which we would not expect to record in 2021, Equifax revenue growth was up a very strong 17% in the third quarter and is up over 12% year-to-date. Revenue growth drove adjusted EBITDA to $391 million, up 29%, with a 270 basis point expansion in our margins to 36.6%. We prudently balanced cost controls while making targeted investments in our cloud transformation, new products, and data and analytics. Adjusted EPS at $1.87 a share was up a strong 26% despite incurring increased depreciation and amortization and incremental flag costs of $0.15 a share and increased interest expense of $0.06 per share from our second quarter bond offering. This exceeded our expectations in the framework of $1.50 to $1.60 we shared with you in September. USIS revenue of $386 million was up a very strong 15% in the third quarter, with the M&A contribution less than half a percent. Total USIS mortgage revenue of $179 million was up 57% in the quarter, as both purchase and refi transactions remained strong throughout the quarter, and better than our expectations of up about 45% from our call last month. Non-mortgage revenue also strengthened USIS sequentially in the quarter, Importantly, we saw substantial improvement in non-mortgage online revenue, which was down only 5% as compared to almost 10% decline we saw in the second quarter. We saw very good sequential improvement in banking, insurance, rental, and direct-to-consumer, with insurance turning from down double digits to up double digits in the quarter. We are starting to see signs of customers restarting origination efforts with several major FIs revenue, up versus 2019 for the first time in a pandemic, which is a positive sign for the future. In September, we saw positive growth in both insurance and direct-to-consumer, which, although still negative, we saw improvements in banking and auto, both of which had only single-digit declines. Financial marketing services revenue, which is, broadly speaking, our offline or batch business of $46 million, was down 9%, consistent with our expectations. Marketing-related revenue, which represents just under 40% of FMS, continued to be down significantly but did show some improvement as we moved through the third quarter. Risk decisioning, which includes portfolio review activities and represents about 40% of MFS revenue, was down slightly due to a large one-time project last year. And identity and fraud-related revenue, which represents about 20% of FMS, was flat. I'm very encouraged by the progress that Sid Singh and the USIS teams continue to make, especially during these challenging economic times. They are competitive commercially and on offense. We continue to see very strong new deal pipeline growth at USIS, with total pipeline value up over 30% versus last year, driven by growth in the volume and average size of our USIS pipeline opportunities. Larger deal opportunities are a very positive sign as we look to accelerate USIS revenue growth. USIS adjusted EBIT job margins of 46% were up 160 basis points from last year and up 180 basis points sequentially. The improvements both year-to-year and sequentially were driven principally by the significant growth in high-margin online revenue. Turning now to Workforce Solutions, they had another exceptional quarter with revenue of $377 million, up a very strong 57%. Year-to-date revenue is already over $1 billion. and workforce solutions. Rudy Porter and the EWS team continue to leverage broad structural growth drivers, including new products, penetration, pricing, new verticals, and record additions to fuel their above-market growth. EWS remains our most differentiated business, particularly in this unprecedented consumer environment where our twin income and employment data is immensely valuable. Verification service revenues at $301 million was up 63% versus 2019. Verification services mortgage revenue more than doubled for the second quarter in a row, growing more than 80 percentage points faster than the 51% growth we saw in the mortgage market credit inquiries in the third quarter. Verification services non-mortgage revenue was up about 4% in the quarter and slightly outperformed our expectations. Similar to the second quarter, we continue to see growth in government and health care as well as in the auto vertical as we increase penetration of twins. During the third quarter, we saw significant recovery in talent solutions, reflecting both increased U.S. hiring and the rollout of new products. Consistent with second quarter, debt management continues to be very soft. Employer services revenue of $76 million increased 37% in the quarter, driven by our unemployment claims business, which had revenue of $50 million and was up 70% compared to last year. Adjusting for the $20 million of incremental UC claims revenue in the quarter, Employer services was flat with revenue growth in I-9 and onboarding services that was driven by the acceleration of I-9 Anywhere solutions, offset by declines in our tax credit business. Transaction activity in our I-9 and onboarding products improved through the third quarter and sequentially versus the second quarter, driven by new hiring activity with our customers. Many of the large retail, shipping, and e-commerce companies utilize our I-9 onboarding products, In addition, we're seeing a positive shift to our new remote I-9 product suite with new customer wins. Strong EWS verifier revenue growth resulted in adjusted EBITDA margins in workforce solutions of 57.8%, a 900 basis point expansion from the prior year. Turning now to international, their revenue of $218 million was down 5% on a constant currency basis, a substantial improvement from the down 15% in second quarter, and better than our expectations as shelter-in-place orders were lifted in many markets and economic activity resumed. Asia Pacific, which is principally our Australia business, had a very good performance in the quarter with revenue of $80 million, about flat in local currency versus last year, and better than the down 5% we expected earlier in September. Australia consumer online revenue was down 5% versus last year, a significant improvement from the down double digits we saw in second quarter. Our Australian commercial business combined online and offline revenue was up 1% in the quarter, again, a nice improvement from the prior period. Fraud identity was also up over 15% in the third quarter versus the down 12% in second quarter. These areas of improvement offset declines in consumer marketing services, our consumer offline business, and HR solutions. Consistent with second quarter, they continue to be down versus last year. New Zealand revenue was down just over 10% in the quarter, a significant improvement from the down 25% in the second quarter. European revenues of $59 million were down 13% in local currency in the third quarter. Our European credit business was down about 7%, with Spain performing slightly better than the U.K. In the U.K., consumer online revenue was down just over 10%, a significant improvement from the down 20% we saw in the second quarter. Analytical and decision solutions revenue was almost flat in the quarter, a significant improvement from down about 20% in second quarter. Combined consumer online and analytical decision solutions represent about 75% of our UK CRA business. Similar to the U.S., our consumer offline business continues to show significant declines due to reductions in economic activity and credit originations. Banking revenue driven by new wins with top five U.K. banks was up over 25% in the quarter. Our U.K. banking team is seeing real momentum. Our European debt management business declined 20% in local currency in line with our expectations, principally driven by government-enacted policies that continued to temporarily halt debt collections due to COVID-19. U.K. government debt placement activities restarted in August. We expect fourth quarter debt management revenue to improve meaningfully as September debt placements were up 5x versus pre-COVID levels. Turning to Latin America, their revenue of $40 million decreased 6% in local currency in the third quarter, better than the down 9% we expected earlier in the quarter. Importantly, our Latin American revenues were much better than the down 14% we saw in the second quarter. In the quarter, Chile, our largest country in Latin America, delivered positive revenue growth. And our Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay businesses showed significant improvements from second quarter, down about 4% in the quarter versus 2019. These markets continue to benefit from the resumption of economic activity, expansion of Ignite, the migration of customers to our global cloud-based interconnect SaaS decisioning platforms. We're also seeing the benefit of the strong new product introductions over the past three years in the region. Canada revenue of $39 million was flat to mobile currency in the third quarter, a significant improvement from the down 13% in second quarter, and in line with our expectations from our September call. Consumer online and commercial were both down about 5% in the third quarter, and both were a substantial improvement from almost 20% declines in the second quarter. Analytical and decision solutions were about flat in the quarter, again, substantial improvement from the second quarter. We delivered nice growth in Canada in our ID and fraud business and property service businesses. It combined with the improved performance of the other segments allowed us to improve to flat in the third quarter. International adjusted EBITDA margins at 32.3% were up 130 basis points from last year despite the decline in revenue. principally reflecting benefits from cost actions taken in 2019 and strong expense management this year. Turning now to global solutions revenue, which was down 2% on a reported and local currency basis in the quarter. Our global consumer direct business was up 6%, their highest growth since 2017. Our North American consumer direct business revenue was up a solid 6% versus 2019, while the UK consumer direct revenue was about flat. Importantly, we continue to see sequential subscriber growth in the U.S. and Canada, our two largest markets. Based on a continuation of these trends, we expect our consumer direct business to show positive revenue growth in the fourth quarter. Bev Anderson and the GCS team have done a good job returning our global direct business to a growth mode. Our remaining GCS business channel and event-based businesses decreased about 10% in the quarter in line with our expectations. We delivered 11% growth in our benefits channel and event-based businesses, but this growth was more than offset by declines in our U.S. lead gen partner business as originations continue to be soft in the third quarter. DCS adjusted even job margins of 24.8% decreased 10 basis points compared to the prior year period due to increased marketing spend to drive future direct revenue and lower lead generation revenue offset by one-time setup costs incurred during the third quarter of 2019 related to a new multi-year contract. Slide 9 highlights the acceleration of revenue growth over the last several years and quarters, broken down between the growth drivers from the extraordinary UC claims revenue in 2020 from high unemployment and the strong U.S. mortgage revenue market, to help you look through the impact of these strong market factors to the underlying Equifax core growth. As we discussed earlier in the third quarter, Equifax grew 19% overall with 200 basis points of that growth from UC claim revenue and 11 points of Equifax revenue growth from the strong U.S. mortgage market. We were very pleased with the 6% core growth with strong sequential growth versus the minus 2% in second quarter. particularly with the headwinds from the COVID recession. Equifax is clearly outperforming our and your expectations in the COVID recession. The impact of the strong U.S. mortgage market is highlighted in purple and reflects growth driven directly by the strong underlying U.S. mortgage market. To be clear, this is not the growth of Equifax U.S. mortgage revenue, but it's instead only growth directly attributable to the U.S. mortgage market itself, that we estimate based on mortgage market credit inquiries. During the third quarter, 11 points of Equifax's 19% growth was from the strong U.S. mortgage market. The impact of the extraordinary UC claims growth in 2020 is highlighted in blue. We are providing this given the dramatic, unusual growth in the year we are seeing in 2020 that we expect to normalize over time. Equifax core growth is in green and reflects the resiliency and breadth of our business performance in the COVID recession. Essentially, this is the sum of the growth in our U.S. non-mortgage businesses, our international businesses and GCS, and growth in our U.S. mortgage businesses above underlying mortgage market growth. Excluding the impact of the U.S. mortgage market and UC claims, Equifax core growth has expanded from 2% to 3% in 2018 and 2019 during the global financial crisis to 5% in the first quarter and now 6% in the third quarter while we're still in the middle of the COVID pandemic. This performance reflects the resiliency and breadth of the Equifax portfolio. As I will cover on the next slide, it's important to recognize that in the third quarter, mortgage vertical powered by Workforce Solutions core growth, which was a strong 30%, and USIS, which was only down 1% on a core growth basis. This ability to substantially outgrow the underlying market is core to our business model and a substantial strength that should continue to provide significant benefits through the balance of 2020 and into 2021. Equifax is dramatically stronger in 2020 versus the 2008-2009 during the global financial crisis, again reflecting the strength of today's Equifax portfolio. A continued strategic focus and strength of Equifax is our deep and broad array of products and solutions for the U.S. mortgage market and ability to consistently outgrow the underlying market. Slide 10 highlights this for our U.S. B2B businesses, Workforce Solutions and USIS. Both Workforce Solutions and USIS have consistently outgrown outgrown the underlying U.S. mortgage market. The driver of the acceleration of this outperformance over the past several years has been the tremendous growth in Workforce Solutions mortgage revenue, which exceeded mortgage market growth rates by over 20 points in 2019, accelerating to about 80 points of outperformance this year. The key drivers of this strong Workforce Solutions performance includes increased market penetration, which by this we mean both an increase in the percentage of mortgage applications for which the underwriter requests an income and employment verification from Equifax, and an increase in the number of times a mortgage underwriter requests an income or employment verification during the application process. Both of these drive increased twin inquiries. As we view U.S. mortgage inquiries as a proxy for the overall market, an important metric we track is twin inquiries as a percent of USIS credit inquiries. In third quarter, this metric for the first time exceeded 50%, where we had one twin mortgage market inquiry for every two U.S. I.S. credit mortgage market inquiries. This metric has been growing substantially over the past three years and has more than doubled since early 2018. However, at only 50%, it shows that we have a lot of runway ahead of us to reach the same utilization for twin as the credit file. We are actively working with our customers to continue to drive penetration through both expanded selling efforts across our customer ecosystem and increasing customer system-to-system integrations. Second is increased fulfillment rate. This is the percentage of times we receive a mortgage inquiry that we can't fulfill and is driven by growth in the twin database. While we have real scale at over 50% of the non-farm payroll in our database, we only fulfill roughly 50% of our inquiries. As we add records, we are immediately monetized, which provides real leverage for Workforce Solutions. Adding new twin contributors and records is a priority for the EWS team. And third is new products. We continue to introduce new Workforce Solutions products that provide greater value to our customers in terms of depth of data, and frequency of polls with higher price points and margins. We expect NPIs to accelerate in workforce solutions from the addition of new product resources and leverage from the cloud transformation. Workforce solutions is clearly our most powerful business. Slide 11 shows their above-market strong performance, which is highly accretive to Equifax revenue growth, margins, and cash flow. Through third quarter, overall workforce performance revenue growth of $332 million, or 48%, drove 13 points of Equifax revenue growth, and workforce core revenue growth of $163 million contributed six points of Equifax core revenue growth versus last year. The impact on Equifax EBITDA was even more powerful, with workforce dilutions delivering $572 million of Equifax EBITDA business and an important driver of Equifax results in 2020 and in the future. As shown inside slide 12, you can see the continuing growth in our twin database, which has been a significant driver of its value to our customers and the growth of Workforce Solutions. In the third quarter, we continued to add twin records and delivered new twin record growth of 6 million active records in the quarter, even in the high unemployment environment, which drove the twin database to over 111 million records, up from the 105 million we had at the end of both first quarter and second quarter. Twin records are up a strong 20% versus 2019. We also hit a significant milestone in the third quarter with contributors surpassing the 1 million level. This is a million companies in the United States that are contributing their payroll records to Equifax, up from 64,000 a year ago, which has moved the twin database deeply into small and mid-market companies. With the twin database now providing information on over 88 million unique individuals, firmly over half of the U.S. non-farm payroll, we view this as a catalyst for workforce solutions given the increasing hit rates and the uniqueness of the data. As we discussed previously, the workforce solutions team is expanding their focus on records beyond just W-2 payroll into areas like 1099 employees, the gig economy, and pension income. The increasing depth of the twin database, with now over 450 million total records, has the additional benefit of increasing the completeness of an individual's job history that we have in the database. This also significantly increases the value of the unique twin data for both credit decisioning as well as in talent solutions and other applications. As a reminder, we generate almost 20% of our verification services revenue from inactive records that we have built up over the past decade, which helps provide a full picture of an individual's employment history. This also expands the uniqueness and value of TWIN versus other sources of income or employment data. In what has been the most challenging economic and health environment we've faced in our lifetimes, Equifax delivered exceptionally strong performance again in the third quarter, while investing in our cloud transformation and new products. We are focused on finishing 2020 strong while investing for 2021 and beyond. I'll now turn the discussion over to John to discuss recent trends in revenue in our underlying markets, as well as review some other financial items. After John's discussion, I'll come back and review our progress on the tech transformation and new products.
spk09: Thanks, Mark. I'll generally be referring to the financial results from continuing operations represented on a GAAP basis, but will refer to non-GAAP results as well. In the third quarter, general corporate expense was $155 million. Excluding non-recurring costs, adjusted general corporate expense for the quarter was $109 million, up $38 million from 3Q19. Corporate function expenses such as finance, HR, and legal were down year to year, reflecting the cost containment activities we outlined in April. The increase in total general corporate expense is primarily due to higher incentive compensation costs in 2020 due to our strong and improving financial performance. We continue to exercise disciplined cost management across the business while also continuing to invest in our technology transformation, data and analytics, new products, and security. We will accelerate investments in these areas in 2020 if we believe this will deliver accelerated benefits. Outside of these areas, headcount additions remain at levels below attrition, and discretionary spending has been reduced. Across the company, business travel remains at very low levels. For 3Q20, the effective tax rate used in calculating adjusted EPS was 21.2% and in line with our expectations. We expect a 4Q20 tax rate and a full-year effective tax rate used in calculating adjusted EPS be around 24%. In 3Q20 and year-to-date, operating cash flow of $367 million and $645 million were up $532 million and $566 million respectively from 2019. The increases reflect the substantial improvements in operating performance in 2020 as well as lower payments for litigation settlements in 3Q20 and year-to-date of $341 million and $246 million respectively. The timing of payment of the remaining $347 million to the U.S. Consumer Restitution Fund is principally dependent on the resolution of the appeals filed related to this case. At this time, we do not expect to fund the remainder of the settlement until early 2021. Our liquidity and balance sheet remain very strong. At September 30th, we had $1.5 billion in cash and available borrowing capacity on our bank credit facility of $1.1 billion. As Mark mentioned, our 3Q results were substantially stronger than the implication of the trends through August that we discussed in our September 8th investor call. The improved results were predominantly in our U.S. B2B business. Importantly, the improvement was in our U.S. online revenue, with significant improvement in non-mortgage revenue as well as in mortgage. We also had stronger results in international in Australia and Canada. The strength in adjusted EPS reflects the margin impact from the stronger revenue in September. Slides 13 through 15 show details of revenue trends on a local currency basis that we saw in 2Q and 3Q, as well as monthly data for July, August, and September. We are also providing a view of the trends so far during the month of October and their implications on 4Q20 if they were to continue throughout the quarter. For line items for which daily trends are not available or not relevant, we did not provide monthly actuals, but did provide 2Q20 and 3Q20 data for as well as an estimate for 4Q20. The monthly actuals data provided should be viewed as directional. Looking at slide 13, starting at the bottom of the slide, U.S. B2B revenue growth trended very positively in September relative to August and in 3Q20 relative to 2Q20, with U.S. B2B revenue up 32% in 3Q20 year-to-year as compared to the 28% year-to-year growth we saw in 2Q20. This was driven by improved year-to-year growth in U.S. B2B online revenue. Mortgage year-to-year revenue growth strengthened significantly in September versus August and in 3Q20 year-to-year in both USIS and EWS. This stronger growth was in the context of the stronger mortgage market we saw in 3Q19, which grew 20% from 3Q18. Importantly, online non-mortgage revenue growth trends also improved meaningfully in both September and 3Q20. USIS non-mortgage revenue was down only 3% in September and 5% in 3Q20 year-to-year, and EWS saw year-to-year growth in online non-mortgage revenue in both September and third quarter 20. Workforce Solutions unemployment insurance claims business grew substantially year-to-year again in the third quarter of 20. We expect strong growth in UC again in 4Q20, up about 30% year-to-year. The column on the far right of slide 13 provides a view on year-to-year revenue growth trends through mid-October and the implications on 4Q20 revenue if those trends should continue. A few reminders as we look at those trends. Fourth quarter is seasonally the lowest quarter for mortgage revenue, reducing the relative mix of mortgage revenue and overall Equifax revenue. 4Q19 saw very strong growth in U.S. B2B online at about 18%, driven by very strong 4Q19 online mortgage revenue growth of 34%. Again, starting at the bottom of the slide 13, should the implication of the revenue trends through mid-October continue throughout 4Q20, U.S. B2B online year-to-year revenue should continue to be extremely strong with growth rates just under 30%. Both USIS online and EWS online verification services growth rates will be very strong, but at levels slightly below what we saw in 3Q20. Mortgage revenue growth rates would be slightly weaker than in 3Q20, reflecting the strength in 4Q19 mortgage revenue, particularly in EWS. USIS non-mortgage year-to-year growth rates would be about flat with 3Q20, and workforce non-mortgage is expected to decline slightly versus the slight growth we saw in 3Q20. Workforce Solutions employer services year-to-year revenue would be up under 15% as the unemployment insurance claims business continues with good growth, but at levels lower than 3-2-20. Financial marketing services revenue would be down consistent with the levels we saw in the third quarter. Turning to slide 14, as Mark discussed earlier, international saw significant improvements in all regions in 3-2-20, but constant currency year-to-year revenue down only 5%. Trends through mid-October and international continue to improve. And should the implication of the revenue trends through mid-October continue throughout 4Q20, we expect international revenue to be down only slightly in the fourth quarter. GCS October trends reflect the continuation of those that Mark discussed earlier. In consumer direct, growing total subscribers are expected to lead to a second consecutive quarter of global direct revenue growth in 4Q20. As we referenced last quarter, the decline in partner revenue we saw in 3Q20 is expected to increase significantly in 4Q due to declines in the lead gen-related partner business. We expect the weakness in partner revenue to continue into the first half of 2021. As with our prior two earnings calls and due to the continuing uncertainties in forecasting the direction, depth, and duration of the recession related to the actions to combat COVID-19, we are not going to provide four-quarter guidance. However, for perspective on total Equifax 4Q20 performance, we will again provide an illustrative fourth quarter framework to help you think about our performance. Please turn to slide 15. To the extent total Equifax revenue continues at the pace I described earlier, 4Q20 revenue would be up about 9.5% to 11.5% or $84 to $104 million year-to-year, resulting in 4Q20 revenue of $990 million to $1.01 billion. Adjusted EPS and 4Q20 at these revenue levels could be in the range of $1.40 to $1.50 a share, down slightly from 4Q19. Slide 15 also provides a walkthrough explaining the translation versus 4Q19 of the revenue increase to the increase in pre-tax income and adjusted EPS. Importantly, at these adjusted EPS levels, Equifax should deliver over $350 million in adjusted EBITDA on the quarter. This is not guidance, as there is still much uncertainty as to what impact the pandemic will have on the economy, our customers' business activities, and therefore our revenue and earnings. This range provided reflects current variability and trends, not a view of potential quarter outcomes. As I referenced earlier, trends in Equifax mortgage inquiry volume remain at record levels in the third quarter, consistent with a very strong market data on originations. In addition to very strong refinancing activity, new purchase volume has been at record levels in the June through August period, up 20% from last year. And as we referenced last quarter, for Black Knight estimates, approximately 18 million households still benefit from refinancing at current average 30-year mortgage rates of under 2.9%. For perspective, current estimates of refinance originations in 2Q20 are at under $1 million per month. As Mark referenced earlier, we continue to look to accelerate the completion of our tech transformation, including increasing investment levels in 2020. At present, we expect 2021 time costs related to the Equifax 2020 technology and data security transformation to be above $340 million. We expect capital spending to be about $410 million for the full year. As a reminder, in 2021, we will no longer be adjusting our financial results for one-time costs related to the cloud technology transformation. These one-time technology transformation costs are expected to decline substantially in 2021 and will likely be largest in 1 through 21, decreasing throughout the remainder of 2021. Those one-time technology transformation costs will impact development expense, G&A, and COGS. We will continue to disclose these one-time tech transformation costs to allow you to have comparability with our financial results from 2017 to 2020. And with that, I'll turn it back over to Mark.
spk10: Thanks, John. I'll wrap up with an update on our cloud technology data transformation and our accelerating focus on new products. meaningful progress on our cloud data technology transformation. We're energized by the revenue, cost, margin, and cash benefits we expect from our cloud investments. Through our single cloud-native data fabric and common global cloud-based infrastructure, we'll be able to innovate to develop more robust product solutions and multi-data insights that are portable around the world, enabled by our differentiated cloud data technology. We'll be able to unlock new use cases and verticals with our solutions for new and existing customers. Our cloud-based infrastructure will also enable us to accelerate the velocity at which we can develop new products from months to weeks, accelerating the benefits our customers receive from these products and driving our revenue growth. We're already starting to see increased system availability as we move from our legacy technology into the cloud, and we expect this trend to continue. Always-on capabilities are table-stakes, as a global technology company, and we believe that as more customers move to the cloud, that cloud-to-cloud operability will deliver best-in-class systems availability and make customer interaction seamless and faster. And lastly, we're continuing on our path to be an industry leader in data security. While security is core to everything we do, led by advancements in data governance, we know that data security is a battle that we must fight alongside our industry peers and our customers every day. Turning to slide 17, we moved into the final phase of our North America technology transformation with a focus on customer migrations. We're continuing our progress to migrate our customers into our new cloud-based systems, including our interconnect, ignite, and API capabilities. As a reminder, this is the common set of services on which we are working to migrate all US, IS, EWS, and international customers. At the end of the third quarter, USIS has migrated over 4,800 U.S. customers, and internationals completed migrations of about 6,500 customers. For USIS, this is up about 4x from the about 1,200 customers migrated at the end of June. We continue to expect this pace of migration to accelerate in the fourth quarter, with over 10,000 U.S. customer migrations expected by year-end, with the remaining U.S. customer migrations completed during 2021. We continue to adjust our development priorities to add platform capabilities to ease our customers' ability to easily migrate to our new platforms. Our progress on the transformation since our last earnings call in July is positive. Initial migration to GCP of our major North American exchange data, the U.S. and Canadian consumer accro risk exchanges, the work number, and NCTUE is principally complete. And we expect to have completed full migration, including all by year-end. This is a big milestone with these exchanges generating about 70% of North America online revenue. We're also making very good progress in the full migration to GCP of our secondary U.S. exchanges, the U.S. and Canadian commercial risk exchanges, property, and data X exchanges. These exchanges are expected to complete full migration as we move through 2021. Investments in Europe, LATAM, and Australia in deploying cloud-native Data Fabric and our Knight Interconnect API analytical decisioning framework are also progressing well. Data Fabric is live in six global cloud regions globally. We completed the initial migration of our EID identity validation system in the third quarter and have started customer migrations, which we expect to complete by year-end. And our Luminate cloud identity and fraud suite is now available to customers in the US and Canada. And a new EID cloud native service is also available for the US as part of our newly transformed cloud Luminate offering. Additional data sources will continue to be integrated on a regular basis as we move forward. We still have plenty of work in front of us. We are making strong progress in our cloud data and technology transformation. And we remain energized about the future top and bottom line benefits. Our cloud-native data and infrastructure will differentiate Equifax in the marketplace today and will be even more valuable as we complete the transformation. Slide 18 highlights our expanded new product innovation focus, which is a key component of our EFX 2020 strategy and the next chapter at Equifax. As I mentioned earlier, we are focused on transforming our company to a product-led organization empowered by best-in-class cloud-native data and technologies fuel growth. As we progress through 2020, we continue to make strong progress on our goal to expand our NPI rollouts and are on track to deliver about 110 new products in 2020. Through September, we launched about 85 new products, and we have an active pipeline at various stages of the funnel. In the third quarter, we continued our strong focus on recession-based product launches, including our response recovery product offerings. which provides lenders and service providers the data and analytics they need to both care for their customers and ensure the long-term health of their portfolios. Response Recovery, enabled by our Ignite Market Intelligence Sandbox, provides lenders access to point-in-time and trended consumer insights in order to make better underwriting decisions during a period of economic instability, as well as get the information they need to reach out and support their existing customers already in accommodation situations at other institutions. In USIS, we continue to build on our strengthening commercial business. In the third quarter, USIS launched B2B Connect, designed to help enterprises better prospect, segment, and retain key business clients with intelligence on more than 150 million global companies, including 53 million U.S. businesses and 80 million B2B contacts. B2B Connect is providing an extended omni-channel view of businesses businesses' companies need to better qualify commercial prospects and improve engagement with existing customers. The commercial B2B product will be further enhanced by data from our recent acquisition of Ensonia, which brings unique commercial leasing data to our already robust set of commercial assets. At Workforce Solutions, we continue to focus on the hiring process as a significant growth opportunity for our business, as there are more than 70 million new hires per year in the United States. In the third quarter, Workforce Solutions launched the industry's first I9 management service designed specifically as an e-commerce platform and with small and mid-sized business owners in mind. For years, large enterprise businesses have put their trust in the market-leading I9 management solution from Equifax. Now with the e-commerce launches of our I9 Starter and our I9 Standard packages, Equifax makes it easier than ever for businesses of any size to to manage their I-9 requirements. With an automated I-9 platform, organizations can have more confidence in their onboarding and I-9 compliance and deliver a better onboarding experience for their new hires. Workforce Solutions also continue to innovate on new solutions to support their financial and mortgage verticals in 2020, including our new mortgage-trended income, employment, and multi-borrower products. NPIs continue to be an important lever for Equifax growth and a priority for me and the team. We've expanded our focus and resources on driving NPI rollouts in 2020, and more recently with a global focus on products that support our customers during the COVID recession. We will continue to prioritize new products and innovation as we move into 2021 to leverage our cloud data and technology transformation for future growth. Wrapping up on slide 19, as John outlined earlier, we're still unable to provide guidance for the fourth quarter. We still see meaningful uncertainty from the impacts from the COVID pandemic as cases rise in many markets impacting shelter-in-place orders, consumer confidence, and economic activity. There's also real risk of a second COVID wave and potential increased lockdowns. We also expect further impacts from unemployment, furloughs, and salary reductions. But even in this challenging COVID environment, Equifax is operating exceptionally well. Our strong business model is resilient and delivering while investing in the future. As we look forward to the rest of 2020 and towards 2021 and beyond, we are confident in the drivers of our business model and our growth strategy. Our strong 19% growth in the third quarter reflects the breadth and resiliency of the Equifax business model. The strong U.S. mortgage market and UC claims revenue is delivering incremental revenue, margin, and cash that allows Equifax to continue to be aggressive about investing in our cloud transformation while expanding new investments in innovation, new products, and DNA. Our strong results also strengthen our balance sheet to allow us to focus on accretive M&A. In our third quarter core 6% revenue growth, excluding the impact of the U.S. mortgage market and UC claims revenue, is very strong performance in the COVID environment with our non-mortgage and international business still pressured from the COVID recession. We expect those markets to recover in the future with the rollout of a broad-based COVID vaccine and as markets recover and economic activity improves. Workforce Solutions is clearly a franchise Equifax business that is strongly outperforming with multiple structural growth levers from new records, new products, improving product mix, new verticals, and incremental pulls driven by the growth in system-to-system integrations. While the mortgage market is a positive tailwind this year for Workforce Solutions, their underlying 27% core growth year-to-date, excluding the impact of UC claims and the mortgage market, reflects the power and breadth of the Workforce Solutions business model. Their multiple structural growth levers give us confidence in our ability to drive future incremental value for our customers and future revenue growth for Equifax. And the addition of 6 million twin records in the third quarter will drive revenue growth in the future. Our new SSA contract, Social Security Administration contract, that will begin generating 40 to 50 million of annualized revenue starting next year is another future workforce solution growth driver. We're also seeing enhanced and broadened value of the unique twin income and employment data given the scale and depth of the database. Turning to USIS, they also had a strong quarter led by growth in mortgage. The USIS team is on offense and winning in the marketplace. USIS revenue is outperforming in the COVID recession, with total third quarter growth improving to down 1%, excluding growth from the US mortgage market. The USIS mortgage business continues to outgrow the market with nine points of core growth in the third quarter, up from six points in the second quarter. Importantly, USIS pipelines remain at their highest levels since 2017 from a renewed commercial focus and rollout of new products. As we look out beyond the impacts of the COVID pandemic, we believe that our non-mortgage revenues, which historically represent about 70% of USIS revenue, are poised for growth. USIS is competitive and winning in the marketplace. Our international business has a well-balanced portfolio of global businesses representing over 20% of Equifax revenues that have historically driven top-line revenue growth through new products and analytics. Unlike our U.S. B2B businesses, most of our international markets do not have mortgage businesses and therefore have seen a larger decline in revenue growth in 2020 from the deeper COVID recessions and more severe GDP declines that have also impacted growth. We began to see a recovery in our international markets in the third quarter with Australia and Canada flat versus last year and expect to see continued improvements as economic activity resumes globally. And last, our GCS direct business is poised for continued growth behind our disciplined investments. Our D2C businesses are improving as we invest in new products and marketing, and we surpassed 7 million MyEquifax members in the quarter, which is a sizable base to cross-sell financial products. As I summarized, we're making very good progress on our cloud transformation and data transformation, with significant milestones being achieved while customer migrations accelerate. We are energized about the significant top-line cost and cash benefits that will come from this transformation, including always-on stability, speed to market, ability to rapidly move products around the globe, which we expect will help us improve our position in the marketplace. And last, our balance sheet is strengthened in 2020 from our strong performance, allowing us to be aggressive about investing in our EFX 2020 cloud data and technology transformation, new products, and data security, while looking for a creative bolt on acquisitions that will add to our strategy. As we continue to deliver above-market results in the COVID recession and focus on investing for future growth, I'm more excited than ever about our future as a market-leading data, analytics, and technology company. With that, operator, let me open it up for questions.
spk01: Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, press star 1 to ask a question. We will take our first question from Kyle Peterson with Needham.
spk03: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to start on the margins. They looked really strong this quarter, especially within EWS. I know those have been kind of marking up over time. Do you think what we saw on the margin side could be sustainable in a more normalized environment, or is there anything, you know, like one time that we should be thinking about for this quarter?
spk10: Yeah, it's a great question. You've seen over the last several years and certainly in 2020 strong top-line performance from workforce solutions, and that's certainly translated into margin growth. As you know, in our industry and in that business in particular, but in all our businesses, you know, incremental revenue growth drives, you know, You know, we've seen very strong performance in 2020. We expect, you know, that business to continue to perform in the future. I don't think we're prepared to give any guidance around margins, you know, for the future because we can't do that broadly. But we've got a lot of confidence in the workforce solutions business given the multiple levers that they have to drive future growth.
spk03: Got it. That's helpful. And then just one follow-up. I know you mentioned the TWN inquiries now that you have about one inquiry and twin for every two mortgage origination inquiries. What do you guys find is the biggest gating factor to moving that ratio higher? Is that more like lender awareness of database, or is it just that you just need to keep pushing the snowball down the hill and adding more employers and records onto the network?
spk10: Yeah, I think it's less about the employers and records. It's really what you pointed out. It's really getting in front of our customers and showing them the value of the product. It's also driven by new products. We talked about in the last couple solutions is rolling out new products that provide multiple poles in a package for a mortgage application as one purchase from Equifax. And we see that driving some of the poles. We also see the system-to-system integrations being a real driver where we're getting embedded in our customer workflows. And we've got a dedicated team that works on that with our customers to show them the value of the income and employment data. And then, as you pointed out, just getting in front of customers so they understand the lift they get in predictability. If you're a mortgage originator and you're going to spend, call it $4,000 on a mortgage application, when you start that application process, you want to make sure that you're working with a customer that is going to be able to be approved. Part of that is historically pulling the credit file up front to understand what the credit profile is of that customer, and that's kind of a common practice today. Increasingly, the more sophisticated mortgage originators are starting to pull up front the income and employment data, particularly in this environment, understanding where are people still employed and then pulling it multiple times. So those are just multiple opportunities that the team has in using mortgage as an example. And, of course... The same holds in other verticals where we're seeing, you know, particularly as the database becomes almost a catalyst at well over 50% of the non-farm payroll, it's becoming an asset that the hit rates are very valuable in multiple verticals beyond mortgage.
spk01: We will take our next question from Manav Patnik with Barclays.
spk08: Good morning. Maybe I can just follow up there. You know, the mortgage digitalization, I guess, is a big team out there. And you're seeing a lot of, you know, acquisitions from ICE, Blackmagic. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on out there. And I guess besides, you know, trying to get more penetration the way you just described it, like how do you look at the opportunity with that team? And, you know, do you have, you know, plans with other solutions? And maybe just some thoughts there would be helpful.
spk10: Man, I apologize. I missed the first portion of the question. Can you just give a quick rephrase?
spk08: Sure. It was tied to the theme around mortgage digitization, I guess, and there's a lot of opportunity striving from that. And I was just wondering if you had broader plans, you know, for your mortgage business outside of just kind of, you know, a little bit more penetration than you just talked about.
spk10: Yeah, you know, so obviously we have a large mortgage business and we're benefiting from the market tailwinds. You know, we've got a real focus on rolling out new products, you know, and particularly in workforce solutions, but also in USIS. Our UDM products, you know, are another growth area for us. I think what we're pleased with is the fact that both USIS and Workforce Solutions are outgrowing the mortgage market. How do you do that? Well, you do that with new products, new solutions, driving more usage of your products. In particular, that's around the twin income and employment data being pulled more frequently. And then just the system-to-system integrations where we still have a lot of runway to work with our customers to convert them from dialing in and keying into the system on an individual applicant basis to pull the income and employment data to going to system-to-system integrations, which is as you know, is more of a norm in the credit file side, but is one that's an opportunity on the income and employment side. And that really, we've seen big lifts in utilization when we are embedded in the workflows on the income and employment data. And we've had great progress in adding those in the third quarter and in 2020.
spk08: Got it. And then just on the tech transformation, you know, when you started the program, You talked about $1.25 billion is the number, and, you know, it's a pretty big number, and we thought maybe you left some buffer room in there. But, you know, last time you said $1.4 billion, and I think today you said it was a $1.5 billion program. So I was just curious, that incremental $250 million, like, you know, I guess where did you go with the budget, or where is that extra strength being required today?
spk10: Yeah, and that's been an area that we've been clear that we're going to invest more if we see opportunities to do that to accelerate the transformation. And just to be clear here, Manav, I know you know this, but the billion five we now talk about is the incremental spend in 2018, 19, and 20. So that's going to be behind us, and that's how much we're going to spend through the end of the year. We'll obviously be spending money on our technology as we go into 2021 and beyond. That's going to be in our run rate spend versus the incremental spend that we talk about. And with our strong financial performance in the second half of 2019, we started investing more in the tech transformation. And as we continued in 2020 and performed so strongly during the COVID recession, you know, we've made strategic decisions to accelerate our spend in order to drive it, you know, more rapidly. We think that's the right thing to do because of the sizable benefits that we expect to get from the transformation.
spk01: Our next question comes from Andrew Steinerman with J.P. Morgan.
spk12: Good morning. Just two questions. They're quick. First one, I didn't catch if you gave the total Equifax third quarter revenues related to mortgage, so I'd like that if you could. And then looking at slide 13 under EWS non-mortgage September stood out to me, how it jumped forward and then sort of October kind of normalized back to July-August rates. Could you just talk a little bit about that September jump forward?
spk09: Sure. So in terms of total mortgage revenue, total mortgage revenue is a little over a third of Equifax total revenue, so that's the best way to estimate that. In terms of September non-mortgage for EWS, we have substantial business with government and other participants, and so it can just be a little choppy, and obviously the underlying revenue base isn't that large. So just movements between months. can result in different growth rates between the months. Quite honestly, that's why we indicate that when you're looking at those numbers, you should consider them indicative, and that's why we focus a lot more on the quarterly numbers.
spk11: Thank you.
spk01: We'll take our next question from Tony Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.
spk00: Thanks so much for taking my question. I just wanted to ask broadly about how you're thinking about the trends in consumer credit On one hand, we've heard some lenders talking about more borrowers exiting forbearance and defaulting, which could impact the appetite for lending. But on the other hand, you have recovery trends taking hold in the economy with things opening up. So I wanted to hear broadly about that and specifically also just wanted to ask about the sort of better September non-mortgage number within USIS. and then October getting a little bit more in between like where September and the other months of the third quarter were.
spk10: Thanks. The first half of the question, Tony, is obviously complicated. You know, it's an economic event, a health event like we've never seen before. You know, kind of broadly, the consumer – is still fairly strong. Obviously, there's high unemployment, but some of the stimulus benefits have helped the consumer. When we talk to our customers, their delinquencies are not increasing yet because they're making minimum payments and they're not behind in credit card payments, et cetera. I'm talking broadly. So I think that's kind of what's happening so far. I think what we're all watching is what happens – You know, has stimulus dollars run out? You know, are there going to be new stimulus dollars, you know, either pre or post the election in a few weeks? It's tough to see. You know, where's unemployment going to go? Yeah, and on top of that, what's the timing of vaccine? You know, and how quickly will it be deployed, you know, across the population, which obviously will drive economic activity. It's just a lot of, you know, challenging messages there to try to work through. What's underlying that from our perspective is that data is more valuable than ever for our customers, and that's what we're seeing. Obviously, our performance is quite strong. Data is being used to try to look through to who are the customers, the consumers that are still working. You know, who are the consumers that, you know, can take a line increase or, you know, have a mortgage refi or, you know, what is the data? So I think that's a positive for our industry. But you point out, which is why, you know, we struggle providing guidance for the fourth quarter of 2021. You know, at this stage, you know, it's still quite uncertain, you know, about where that consumer is going.
spk09: In terms of your question on September at minus 3 and then the quarter minus 5 and our discussion around mid-October at about minus 5, Again, the about minus five and about minus three to us are very similar numbers, right, in September's monthly data. So I think the important fact is we are seeing an improving trend. We expect that we're seeing our business improve in non-mortgage, and we're very happy with that trend. But as we look through the rest of the fourth quarter, you know, about 5%, you know, can be a little bit on either side of 5%.
spk01: Our next question comes from David Hogan with Evercore ISI.
spk08: Thank you. Good morning, and appreciate all the helpful disclosure in the deck. The number one investor question I receive on Equifax is whether revenue and earnings growth is peaking given this extraordinary mortgage market expansion, which clearly benefits both USIS and UWS, along with the increased appetite for TWU unemployment and income growth. data during the COVID pandemic. And, you know, clearly there are a number of positives that will sustain, you know, the 20% growth in TWN records, the growth at NPI, the growth in the pipeline. But as you start to think about a 2021 framework, do you want people to start with that 6% core growth from the third quarter? You know, what are some of the parameters, you know, that you're starting to think about as you frame your own views on 2021? Yeah.
spk10: David, I think we're going to try to avoid getting into 2021 guidance, but we were quite intentional because we're getting the same questions you're getting about, you know, how do we look through Equifax's very strong performance in the year, particularly, you know, from the incremental UC claims revenue, which is meaningful, that, you know, we've highlighted will likely normalize in 2021. with unemployment presumably coming down or unemployment claims not continuing. And then, of course, the U.S. mortgage market. For the U.S. mortgage market, that's one that is difficult for us to handicap. John talked a little bit about that one. We can't forecast what's going to happen in 2021 on the mortgage market, but the fundamentals are still quite positive for 2021 on the U.S. mortgage market with the Fed saying, you know, stating pretty strongly that they're going to keep interest rates at the record lows, you know, through 2021. You know, that's a positive, you know, for refinancings and for purchase volume. You know, we've seen purchase volume really accelerate in the last 90 days in the United States as, you know, consumers are going out to buy homes or upgrade to get larger homes or move to the suburbs. And, you know, again, we're not forecasting, but it feels like there's some legs on that macro. And then, of course, the refinance side, you know, there's still a very sizable population, as John pointed out, of consumers that have not refinanced their mortgages yet that is, you know, multiple quarters, you know, of that benefit. With regards to 2021, you know, you highlight some of the positives, you know, for Equifax. You know, you can start with a lot of our businesses are still challenged by the COVID pandemic, you know, and You know, we're not forecasting 2021, but, you know, if you believe that there's going to be a vaccine and the vaccine is going to result in, you know, a more normal, you know, recovery of some sort, you know, that's going to be good news for Equifax and international or, you know, non-mortgage businesses in the United States, our GCS businesses. So that's a positive as we go forward. You point out the power of workforce solutions. As we entered the pandemic, USIS was in a recovery mode following the cyber event. We believe USIS is performing quite strongly on a mortgage and non-mortgage basis during the pandemic. But as we get into more of an economic recovery, we expect that to accelerate as exhibited by the deal pipelines that are growing and increased commercial activity. And, of course, workforce solutions, we attempted to really highlight, you know, how important that business is, how important its performance is. You know, they've got a long list of structural levers that they're been pulling and will continue to pull. And you pointed out records. The $6 million addition in the quarter is going to serve them well, you know, with higher hit rates and which drives higher revenue in the fourth quarter and into 2021. and then, of course, the other elements of the business. And so our attempt in providing the additional disclosures this quarter was to help you and our investors, you know, see through the underlying, you know, performance in the COVID recession. And, again, we're still in a COVID recession. You know, with Equifax delivering, you know, 6% core growth is really quite strong. And, you know, the tailwinds in the ad on top of that, the benefits from the tech transformation that, as we've talked about, you know, we've been very clear we'll begin – you know, really kicking in in 2021, which will be another positive for us on both our top line margins and cash generation.
spk08: Appreciate that. Just a quick follow-up on capital return. Will you be in a position to do more in terms of capital return as we approach 2021 in terms of dividend growth, buyback, you know, more M&As?
spk10: Yeah, we've been clear that, again, I don't want to give guidance. As you know, we don't have a financial framework in place, but we've been pretty clear that it's our goal to get back to that. We've been investing heavily in our tech transformation, and we're getting the big spend in our tech transformation certainly behind us in 2020 in our three-year plan. And we believe that our – Cash generation will accelerate as we go through 21, 22, 23, which is going to provide free cash flow for us to invest in M&A, which we talked about earlier in the call. It's our intention to have more focus there. And we don't want to give any guidance around our intent to do a buyback or reinstate dividend growth, but we've had that framework in place before. And, you know, we'll certainly consider it at the right time, you know, when we put our financial framework and capital allocation plan back in place in the future.
spk01: Next question comes from Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse.
spk08: Great. Thank you. Hey, I just want to spend a minute on the progression of the clients in EWS. If I did my math, it looks like the average client size was about 4,000 back in 2008, and that number is closer to 110 based on just the simple math kind of client versus records in the work number. Do the needs of the smaller clients kind of increase, and is there any way to frame what the opportunity is as you kind of triangulate from a dollar perspective, kind of the work number with the core USIS businesses you look at a little bit. So just trying to get a sense of, again, the market opportunities, you go more down market, and then what that can mean to the enterprise overall.
spk10: Yeah, you know, first off, you know, more records is more valuable, right? And more contributors is too. And, you know, moving – Moving up 6 million records this quarter we think is a big milestone, where we were flat in the second quarter. But there's some bumpiness to when records come in, and we had a very strong quarter of execution there. But we're up 20% in records year over year, and as you know, that's going to drive hit rates and revenue growth going forward. And then to your point, really the addition of more companies, there's all kinds of numbers out there on how many companies there are in the United States, whether it's three or four or five million. But going from 69,000 a year ago to a million companies really does increase the breadth and depth of the database. So that's very, very positive for Equifax and for our customers. And as you know, one area where the database is used is what I would call you know, the more near prime or subprime customers. And, you know, you see those customers in all kinds of companies. But adding, you know, more companies, going to a million companies, just brings more value to the database. And, you know, we're really intently focused on continuing to grow the database. We also mentioned earlier in the comments that, you know, getting to this level of scale, having 88 million uniques or 110 million active as well as inactives, you know, really takes the database almost as a catalyst to being, you know, very, very valuable just because the hit rates go up. And the other thing I commented on is that the team is expanding their focus. You know, we've had a W-2 focus on non-farm payroll for a long, long time. And in the last year, we started to expand that focus around the gig economy, 1099. We're actually ingesting now into our database 1099 data. income data, pension data is another one that we've got our sights set on. So there's a, you know, we're going to head towards non-farm payroll. That's going to take time. But we've expanded our focus to go well beyond that to get all levels of employment or other income that consumers are having. So we've become really a one-stop shop for all that data. Got it.
spk08: And then just to follow up on that real quick, You know, I know obviously the focus has been on the mortgage side, but it seems like there's the opportunity to flex that out across other credit instruments as well. Is that fair?
spk10: It is. That's a big focus for us, and we talked on prior calls that, you know, the value has always been there, and we shared with you and others that if you take credit data and add income and employment data to it, the predictability or the KS score from that decision goes up dramatically. So that's always been the fact. It's one that we've been sharing with our customers for years. The COVID crisis has created a catalyst for that. We talked about in the last call, on the second quarter call, that we're seeing, for example, credit card customers. We've got a couple of major credit card customers that are now embedding the work number data into their origination workflows, so adding it to the credit file. That's a big deal for us to get into that space. In the auto space, You know, historically it's been used in closing for subprime customers, and now we're seeing it used more broadly because it increases the predictability of that underwriting decision. And, you know, it's really around our focus on differentiated data, but, of course, the twin income and employment data is just very, very unique in its scale, which provides real value. And, of course, you know, we didn't talk about it in this call, but government – for us. I talked about the new Social Security Administration contract that kicks in in 2021. That's an example of how we're expanding the use cases of the twin data. And then, of course, another growth area for us around the data is in employment decisions. When you're hiring someone, we call it talent solutions. So that's another area that we see future growth. So there's just a lot of levers for growth in that business.
spk01: Our next question comes from Ashish Chabad with Deutsche Bank.
spk08: Thanks for taking my question. And thanks for the clarification on the FMS. My question, a follow-up question there was, when does that difficult come from a big client when last year anniversary and when do we start seeing FMS get back to a more normalized group profile? Thanks.
spk10: Sorry, you were breaking up a little bit. Could you repeat that question?
spk08: Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. My question was on FMS. There was a difficult comp there. I was just wondering when does that difficult comp anniversary and when do we get back to a more normalized growth in the FMS business?
spk10: Yeah. So your question is about the FMS business. First off, we're still in the COVID recession. And, you know, that business provides data, you know, for both portfolio management and marketing. And as I pointed out in my comments, I think John did too, you know, a lot of our customers have curtailed or slowed down new account originations, which impacts that business. And, you know, so when you talk about normalized growth, you know, the first thing or the biggest factor that's going to drive that will be a resumption of originations, which we started to see. We commented that, you know, we had a couple of customers in the quarter and in September that started to, started originations and actually had originations volumes with us or revenue with us that were above last year. So we're starting to see signs of those originations. John pointed out we also had, you know, a couple of larger deals, if you will, in 2019. I would attribute that to part of the USIS recovery that haven't repeated in 2020. I would characterize most of that as driven by the COVID recession and the There's some sort of originations, but we all know that our customers will start originating again once their confidence grows. They have to. If that's a part of your business, you have to continue to add new customers, so it's just a matter of when they start doing that and we would expect the business to grow there. On the portfolio management side, that's one where we've seen some increased activity. You know, as customers are focused on managing their back book, we would expect that to continue to be a positive, you know, tailwind as we move into the fourth quarter of 2021. You know, it's typical as you're coming out of a recession or in a recession, there's a lot of focus around, you know, managing your existing portfolio.
spk08: That's very helpful, Kalar. And maybe just a quick follow-up on the cost savings. Thanks for those details. I was wondering, do you have a timeline by which we should start seeing those savings flow to the bottom line and any incremental thoughts on how should we think about the investments going forward? Thanks.
spk10: Yeah, that's one that we're not ready to give 2021 guidance. We're not giving guidance. It is our plan to provide some visibility in the future, in the near future, around what we expect some of the benefits to be in 2021 as we have some level of framework for 2021. We're not sure we're going to be able to provide guidance, but we'll definitely do that. We're just not ready to do that today. That said, we have been quite clear around what we expect the benefits to be, you know, the sizing of the cost benefits, you know, that we're going to get from the cloud transformation, the cash benefits that we expect to generate, which we believe are sizable. And, you know, we haven't framed yet what we expect the revenue benefits to be. You know, those will all be, you know, firmly embedded in our long-term framework when we put it back in place.
spk01: Our next question comes from George Mahanos with Cowen.
spk08: Great. Good morning, guys, and thanks for taking my questions. I guess first to kick things off, Mark, I think you said that about 20% of verification revenue is coming from inactive accounts, and I'm just curious, how long can an inactive account be monetized, meaning what sort of a lifespan of an inactive account, and then does that really skew to one vertical with an EWS more than any other? So, for example, you know, mortgage where you're bundling services or something like that?
spk10: That's a great question. It's one we haven't talked a lot about. You know, 20% is a big percentage of our revenue. It's really every vertical has different use cases where having a multi-year period, multi-year history of someone's employment is quite valuable. You know, there's a use case where is someone working today and how much do they make? And then there's other use cases of, well, have they been working for the last 12 months? Have they been working for the last two years? And as you know, people change jobs. So having a multi-year or a multi-job work history for someone is quite valuable. We have something like an average of 4.5 jobs per unique individual in the database, which makes sense. There's a lot of people that change more often over a five-year period, six-year period, two-year period. and others and then some that are in the same job. But that history of data is incredibly valuable. And there's some use cases where you have to have the history. So not only having what someone is doing today is less valuable, which really goes down the path of like if someone is going to provide a pay stub, that might work in some situations. Most of our customers don't take those anymore. But when you have a use case of someone wants to know where did you work for the last two years, The only way to really prove that and get it quickly and completely and accurately is to come to Workforce Solutions. So that's why the data is used. And if you go around verticals, it's really in every vertical. Mortgage has got a lot of use cases where it's very, very important to have a real history of work and employment and income. Auto has it. Um, cards less so, although there's use cases where some card issuers are looking at that, um, in the government space, you know, it's valuable, uh, both today as well as, uh, history. And it just, uh, you know, reflects the value of the business. You know, it's taken us a decade to build up that 450 million records, you know, on individuals. Uh, you know, it's just a very, very valuable.
spk08: Okay. That's, that's, uh, that's super helpful color really, uh, Really appreciate it. And then just as a quick follow-up, I think obviously within GCS, partner is under increased pressure. And I think if I caught the comment, you were suggesting that it will stay weak through the first half of next year. I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about the visibility that you have in that channel of the business going forward.
spk10: Yeah, I didn't say through the first half of last year. I think we said we expected it to stay soft through the fourth quarter. We don't have visibility, just to be clear. But in our discussions with, you know, customers in that space, you know, which is really in the lead generation space, it goes back to the origination point I had earlier around our USIS FMS business. You know, customers, you know, originators, whether you're a bank card or a personal loan, you know, clearly curtailed in the COVID recession their origination. So that impacts our FMS business and also impacts some of our partners that use our data in the lead gen space. You know, that will come back over time. We don't know when it is. It's hard to forecast. As we look out to the fourth quarter, we expect it still to be, you know, weak in the fourth quarter on the lead gen side just because we don't see signs. We see signs of improvement, but not to where it was a year ago.
spk11: Okay, great. Thank you. I misheard that one.
spk01: Our next question comes from Hamza Mazzari with Jefferies.
spk06: Hey, good morning. Thank you. My first question is just on the tech transformation timeline. Any way to think about the risk that that timeline bleeds into sort of 2022 with COVID?
spk10: Yeah, we've been pretty clear on all of our calls, you know, during the COVID recession that, you know, we've been meeting our milestones. We've had no change in, you know, our plans. And, you know, we talked a bunch on the call already this morning around, you know, Acro, Twin, et cetera, you know, being in the cloud. So, you know, we're very pleased with our milestones, and we're also very pleased with our migrations. Remember, there's two, you know, pieces to tech transformation. One is getting the technology right and getting our data assets and, you applications into the cloud, and then second is migrating our customers to it. And, you know, you saw that we're making good progress in the third quarter, and we expect to make good progress in the fourth quarter. So, you know, we're pleased with our progress. There's still a lot of work to do, but, you know, we're meeting our internal milestones that we're trying to share with you transparently.
spk09: And we've been clear that the focus is on North America, which is like 80% of the revenue, and we have indicated that some smaller properties or smaller businesses would trail out further into the future, but that would just become normal spend.
spk06: Great. That's very helpful. And just my follow-up on the mortgage market specifically, just on Fannie and Freddie, any potential changes there under either administration, either more autonomy, new capital rules, privatization, just any chatter on Fannie and Freddie and how that may impact you or is that not really a big deal? Thank you so much.
spk10: Yeah, we don't, you know, there's a lot in that question. You know, you got into the what could happen, you know, in the elections and, you know, versus Democratic versus Republican, and then you got to get into, you know, who holds the Senate, et cetera. I think that's probably a longer question, but I would say more broadly, specifically to Fannie and Freddie, we don't see any change in impacting Equifax, you know, if an administration changes or not with Fannie or Freddie, and Frankly, more broadly, we don't see that in how Equifax operates. We provide a very valuable service to U.S. consumers and to our customers, and we don't expect that to change whatever happens in November.
spk01: We'll take our next question from Bill Warrington with Wells Fargo.
spk08: Good morning, everyone. So this New I-9 product you guys introduced last week that takes the I-9 management suite down market to the small and midsize businesses. I realize that's part of the employer services and not verification services, but is the strategy to use the I-9 product as a source of new leads for the work number?
spk10: As you know, we like our talent solutions and employer services business as a complement to our verification services business. And for us, the idea of having more connections and services with the HR manager who is making the decision to provide us their payroll records for the verification side of the business, we think is positive. So there's no question we want to continue to expand our the services and products that we provide. On the I-9 side, we've introduced a number of I-9 products that we're really pleased with in their performance. An I-9 Anywhere that allows a prospective employee to complete that process remotely using a digital solution and then some of the smaller company products that we've introduced our focus on innovation and new products, both to drive the business but to expand our relationship, as I would characterize it, with the HR manager so we have more connections for the broader ecosystem of workforce solutions.
spk08: Got it. And as a follow-up question, I just wanted to ask on the Social Security contract that's starting up next year, the $40 million to $50 million in revenue, Any additional color on the timing of the start of that revenue, beginning of the year, middle of the year, something?
spk10: Yeah, too early on that one. You know, we certainly expect revenue in 2020, which is why we've talked about it that way. You know, a full run rate is going to be the $40 to $50 million. You know, it likely won't be full run rate for sure in 2021. But we're actively working on the technology element with our customer and driving it forward. We talk about this contract just because of the size of it. You know, it's unusual to have a contract of that size, you know, get landed. But it's just a reflection, you know, of the value of the workforce solutions, you know, data in so many different verticals and use cases, in this case in the government space with the Social Security Administration.
spk11: Our next question comes from Andrew Jeffrey with Tris Securities.
spk01: Andrew, you may have us on mute.
spk08: I apologize. I appreciate you taking the question. It's been a long call full of good information. Mark, I just wonder if you could address Equifax's position in FinTech. I know it's one of the areas in COVID that's maybe been a little bit weaker than some of the structural growth areas that you enumerated, but maybe a cyclical outlook there and also market share plans and outlook would be helpful.
spk10: Yeah, I think we've been clear it's a space that we refocused on and started building out resources in the latter part of 2018. We added resources in 2019. I think from Commercial resources were probably between 2 and 3x what we had two years ago. So it's a space we want to be bigger in. We think we're well positioned to be bigger in it. We have pretty strong market position with most of the fintechs with our twin data, you know, where it's used and, of course, it's expanding usage during COVID. and we're working to take advantage of that relationship to move some of our credit data in. We've had some positive wins. It's a, I don't know, $250 million market in the United States. I think you know our competitors are much stronger than we are, but we think there's room for Equifax to grow. Many of those are single-sourced in the fintech from starting out that way, and they're getting to scale where they could be dual-sourced, which prevents an opportunity for Equifax particularly to you know, when we're already in the door with our twin data. They have been more impacted than we characterize in FIs, particularly because of their funding requirements. They typically aren't balance sheet funded, so they've been more impacted on originations, but we stayed supporting them, and we're continuing to, you know, have some commercial wins during the last, you know, couple of quarters in that space, and it's an area that you know, Sid Singh and the USIS team are focused on, you know, for growth in the future. You know, we see it as a strategic, you know, market for us going forward.
spk11: Thank you. Appreciate it.
spk01: We'll take our next question from Andrew Nicholas with William Blair.
spk02: Hi, good morning. Can you speak to the potential for competitors to replicate certain aspects of the work number database in the U.S. over a longer time frame. It would certainly seem unlikely that they'd have the same level of integration with employers and the same number of employers. But are there other ways to gather some of the same data aspects, whether it be through, you know, some of the payroll processors or analyzing demand deposit accounts? I guess I'm just wondering if how you protect your moat there and whether alternative approaches to gathering income and employment data could result in alternatives for your customers down the road.
spk10: Yeah, we think we have real scale in the business, which provides a competitive advantage for us with workforce solutions. We've owned this business for over a decade now, You know, we've invested between the acquisition of the business and, you know, what we've invested in technology and resources, you know, a couple billion dollars, you know, over the last 10 years. And, you know, the scale of the business we think provides, you know, some real strength from a competitive advantage. You know, we talked about the history of the data, you know, which is really hard to get, you know, on an individual. You know, where did Mark Begor work the last two years? Well, here at Equifax, where did he work the two years before that or the two years before that? You know, collecting that data is quite challenging. You know, we're participating in some of the other ways to collect data. You pointed out, you know, bank transaction data and trying to impute in, you know, the net pay in someone's, you know, bank account. You know, that's a data source, but very difficult to get. The consumer has to consent to give the data. So we think that's, you know, quite challenging. So we think there's just a lot of, you know, strengths around the business. You know, we're always, you know, looking at who our competitors are in every business. But this is one where we think we have some real market strength given the scale of it. As you point out, you know, the network of connections we have with so many customers. And then, of course, you know, now having a billion companies involved. deliver data to us on a pay period basis, that makes this data set very, very valuable and tough to replicate. And if you're a company you're likely not going to give the data to two companies. You're going to give it to the company that's been in it for a long time, and we think that's another important element for Equifax. Our strength of the business, our proprietary and security around it, the fact that we authenticate anyone who uses the data before they're able to use it, there's just a lot of security and protection around it, which is very important to those that actually own the data and contribute it to us.
spk02: Got it. Yep, that makes sense. Thank you. And then switching gears a little bit for my follow-up, I was hoping you could speak to the margin performance in the international business in the third quarter. Margins expanded quite nicely year over year despite the revenue decline. So I was just wondering if there's anything you'd point to specifically on the cost front in that segment and how permanent some of those savings could potentially be.
spk10: Yeah, we did some cost work in international in 2019 that we're getting benefits from. And then there's been some tightening during 2020 during the COVID, you know, pandemic. And as you point out, you know, pretty strong performance on margins, you know, given the revenue declines, which are still quite substantial, you know, in international because of the COVID pandemic. So, you know, we would expect – you know, as the COVID pandemic gets behind us and economic activity improves, then obviously revenue should go with that and improve that, you know, should be positive for the margins of that business going forward.
spk01: We'll take our next question from Jeff Mueller with Baird.
spk08: Yeah, thank you. Good morning. So, John, I think you tried to preempt this question with the bridge you gave us in the slides, but just – On the Q4 illustrative framework, EPS being down slightly on low double-digit revenue growth, it looks like a lot of the headwind factors you're calling out in your bridge have been with you kind of all year, yet you've had good EPS growth year-over-year the first three quarters. So anything else to call out on Q4 EPS in the framework?
spk09: Now, the only other thing you see is the other is a little bigger than it's been in some of the other quarters, right? And that's really driven by the fact that the comment I made around corporate expenses, you're seeing a significant increase in incentive compensation because of the fact that the business has performed so incredibly well over the past two quarters. Our expected performance has improved quite significantly, and you're seeing that across different areas of incentives, including sales comp, et cetera, and that's affecting business. fourth quarter because of the very, very strong performance. We continue to be spending related to the tech transformation, and some of that's flowing through on tech expense, but those are the biggest drivers. The other thing that you'll see, and it's a footnote on the chart, right, is tax rates actually higher in the fourth quarter, right, year on year, so that negatively affects the comparison as well by three or four cents a share. So those factors Okay.
spk08: And then I'm struggling to understand the magnitude of the change in trend in the Q4 outlook for the GCS partner channel. Is this all about kind of activity at the lead gens and member count not being backfilled yet on the churn side? Or were there any loss of partners or any changes of terms recently? with sizable partners pricing or how they use you?
spk10: Yeah, there's a number of things in there, Jeff. And, you know, there certainly is, we're always working with our customers to help support them in tough economic events. So I think you can attribute that to, you know, changes in perhaps pricing and things like that. But then there's also the underlying, you know, volume is quite challenging, which is also a contributor as, that has business still or not anywhere near pre-COVID levels with regards to originations.
spk08: Okay. Thank you.
spk01: We'll take our next question from George Tong with Goldman Sachs.
spk07: Hi, thanks. Good morning. Mark, you mentioned that core revenue growth was 6% in the quarter, excluding benefits from unemployment claims in the mortgage market. Can you talk a little bit about what may be driving the difference between the 6% core revenue growth and non-mortgage B2B revenue performance in the quarter that was roughly flattened down?
spk10: I think if I follow your question, You know, it's really going to be the outperformance of our mortgage businesses, which is where Workforce Solutions is growing. Obviously, the mortgage market is up, as we highlighted on a couple of slides in our comments. You know, they've got core growth in the mortgage business. So, you know, that's going to drive that. And the same with USIS at 600 basis points of growth in mortgage performance. core versus the mortgage market and workforce solutions with multiples of that from new records and new products and everything else. So, you know, that's really, you know, what's driving it now, which we think is very positive in a COVID recession. And of course, you know, the rest of the non-mortgage businesses at Equifax that, you know, are still negative in many markets and verticals because of the COVID recession, you know, those should and will recover as economic activity comes back. And in the future, you know, as we get to,
spk09: As Mark indicated, and you're right, George, it's our strategic focus to try to make sure we dramatically outgrow the mortgage market, and what that's showing is that we're achieving that very successfully, even though the non-mortgage businesses are weaker because of COVID.
spk07: Got it. And looking at monthly trends specifically in the non-mortgage business, USIS revenue has been largely consistent at down roughly 5% year-over-year moving through the quarter, and and then non-mortgage EWS also consistently down about low single digits if you exclude that jump that we saw in September. So can you talk about some of the puts and takes around non-mortgage revenue performance in 3Q that didn't seem to improve moving through the quarter, that the trend seemed relatively stable? So just some puts and takes around that.
spk10: I think it's really all those verticals are really still not recovering, and we expect they will. I think our competitors are seeing similar challenges, whether it's card originations or personal loan volume. The financial institutions are being quite conservative, as they should be, until they have some clarity around where the economy is going. When they do, they're going to start originating again, and that'll be, you know, positive for us as we go forward in our non-mortgage businesses.
spk09: But to be clear, we did see improvement in September in USIS non-mortgage relative to what we saw over the July-August period, right? It certainly did get better, right? And we saw that improvement. We talked a bit about that in the script. And the same is true in EWS, right? It did get better, right? When asked the question, I was simply trying to indicate don't expect 16% to continue, right? But the... But we did see an improving trend both in USIS non-mortgage and EWS non-mortgage during the period.
spk01: We will take our next question from Gary Bisbee with Bank of America Securities.
spk05: Hi. Good morning. Thanks. So I guess a two-parter on innovation, you know, if I could. You've obviously talked about the beginning of the tech transformation about the opportunity to accelerate innovation. I'd love to just get a sense of where you are with that. Have you made enough progress that that's happening? And if it's more of a future opportunity, what's the timeline? And I guess the second part of that, you know, pre-Bury Chekhovac talked a lot about the concept of vitality and even used to talk about annual classes of new products and sort of how the three-year cycle company forecast for revenue on those was doing. Can you just help us think through that as well? Obviously, it went down post-breach. Is that growing again? How meaningful can this acceleration of innovation be of that vitality going forward? Thank you.
spk10: It's a big priority of ours, as you know, and For the last couple of quarters, you've heard me talk about it because I really view it as the next chapter at Equifax to really accelerate our new product innovation, to really leverage the cloud investments that we're making. We believe that this is going to be a real catalyst for us to drive top-line growth. You asked about the timing. It's really happening. In 2019, as on the chart we put in the earnings slides, we did 90 new products up from 60 in 2018. And that's up from, you know, in the 70, 80 range, you know, kind of pre-cyber event. So in 2019, we were operating at a higher level. And, of course, we've gone from 90 last year to around 110 in 2020. So there's clearly a renewed focus on it. You saw a few months ago we brought in a new chief product officer. We're adding new product talent and resources to really, you know, scale up our ability to bring new products to market. And remember – You know, one of the reasons we're making this cloud investment that we've talked so much about is because we've got to put all our data assets into a single data fabric, and we believe that's going to accelerate our ability to do data combinations and bring new solutions to the marketplace. So that's what this new product team is going to be focused on is really leveraging you know, the cloud investments that we're making. So, you know, when are you going to see benefits of it? You're seeing it today. You saw it this quarter, and we talked about some of the new products we're rolling out into the marketplace. You know, that gives our commercial team more things to sell and more solutions to bring to our customers. So, you know, going from 90 last year to 110, and, you know, my goal is to grow beyond 110, you know, in 2021 as we continue to, you know, invest in resources and really leverage the cloud transformation. With regards to the vitality index, that's something that we've talked about before, I guess, pre the cyber event. I think it's likely something we'll bring back as a dialogue with our investors. We already have plenty to talk about, but if there's interest in that, we'll certainly bring that back. But new products are a key priority of ours, and as I characterize it, it's the next chapter at Equifax that's really going to drive our top-line growth.
spk09: And we've mentioned this before, right, but there absolutely are products that are launched on the new infrastructure that are benefiting us already. Mark talked about Luminate in his script and other fraud products. That's certainly the case. EID we talked about. So kind of the broadened fraud suite is running on new infrastructure. And then we also talked about the fact that there were COVID response products that were built specifically on the new infrastructure and that we couldn't have done otherwise. So those are some examples. There are certainly more. And, yeah, we are seeing benefits from it. We expect it to dramatically accelerate as we get into the first quarter.
spk02: Thank you. Thanks.
spk01: Our next question comes from Brett Huff with Stevens.
spk08: Hey, thanks. This is a long call, so I'll just be quick. You talked a little bit about analytics as one strategy and then unique data as another strategy, and I think we talked a lot about the unique data today with DWS. Can you give us an update on sort of the next major phase of the analytics development you guys are thinking about as we, you know, think about the economic recovery and how to position Equifax for that next phase of growth?
spk10: You know, there's a number of levers there, Brett, that we've talked about over the past couple of quarters. You know, it starts with our Ignite analytics sandbox. I think you know we've invested heavily in that and we're rolling that out in the marketplace. You know, that's a tool for our customers to access our data as well as their own and really leverage you know, drive analytics and solutions that will result in use of more of our data. So that's very positive for us. And, of course, we have a large DNA team that is focused on creating new solutions, and we talked about some of those that, you know, really are from our analytics about combining data assets that increase the predictability in some of our COVID response products to help our customers look at using trended data to understand how our customer performed in the past, to use that to create predictability about how they're going to perform in the future, adding income and employment data. Those are all a part of our analytics to deliver those solutions, and those result in more usage of our data or specific revenue opportunities and new scores or other ways that we deliver those analytics to drive the predictability of the decision for our customers. And we believe the cloud, you know, investments are really going to advantage us in just more opportunities to bring new solutions, you know, from our DNA team to the marketplace.
spk11: Great. Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stiefel.
spk08: Hi, guys. Thank you for squeezing me in over here. Mark, can you talk a little bit about the competitive environment, how you guys are doing outside of the mortgage market in terms of like win rates and pipeline? I know John made a comment about the pipeline being strong. Is that kind of white space where you're able to go in with like unique data, like the work number and into credit card? Or, you know, straight out head-to-head competition, are you guys kind of winning more outside of mortgage? If you could just kind of comment on that, and if there's anything quantitative you can share.
spk10: Yeah, I think John shared some comments around our deal pipeline at USIS, which is your focus and ours, you know, this. EWS pipeline is quite rich, as you might imagine, and it is international in GCS, but there's a lot of focus by our investors and on Equifax, which is why we talk about the USIS deal pipeline in particular. You know, but that's up dramatically over what it was last year and the year before. We're seeing increasing wind rates, you know, and I've used the term that, you know, because you've got the pressures of the economic impacts from our customers, you know, on Equifax and on USIS. But, you know, we see the deal wins. Coming into the COVID recession, you saw the, you know, kind of strength of USIS revenue, not mortgage numbers, using that in particular in the second half of 2019 and coming into the first quarter of 2020. And we've seen competitively, you know, during the – you know, the recession, COVID recession impacts of the second quarter and third quarter, USIS is performing, you know, quite well. So we've still got a lot of confidence in that business and its recovery.
spk08: Okay, thank you.
spk01: And that concludes today's question and answer session. I would like to now turn the conference back to Mr. Herr for any additional or closing remarks.
spk10: I just want to thank everybody for joining the call and for their interest in Equifax.
spk09: I just also wanted to let everybody know that we will be around today and in the days and weeks ahead to answer any follow-up questions that you may have. So once again, thanks for joining, and this does conclude the
Disclaimer