Experian Plc Ord

Hello everybody and welcome to our first half results presentation. I'm joined today by Lloyd who will run through the financials after my initial overview and then as usual we'll open up for Q&A. So we delivered a strong first half performance with organic revenue growth of 7%. This is in line with our expectations with margin progress a little ahead of expectations. And we've also made some great progress on our key strategic and business initiatives. Three of our regions delivered high single-digit organic revenue growth in H1, and we delivered 7% organic revenue growth in each of Q1 and Q2. And this represents good Q2 momentum for our underlying business, since we had a one-off data breach benefit in Q2, which did not repeat in Q2. And when combined with a credit environment that is still subdued, we think this is a very good result. We've made very good progress in North America. We saw strength in consumer information and business information, both excluding mortgage, and both despite unsecured credit volumes, which remain below historical averages. We saw some positive contributions from our vertical markets, and we saw growing momentum in consumer services, again, ex data breach, which contributed favorably in the quarter. In Latin America, Brazil improved to 9% organic revenue growth in Q2 to give 7% for the half, And this is driven mainly by an excellent consumer services performance. And while UK growth is still low single digit, it has been a consistent performer in a still weak UK lending environment. UK consumer services further strengthen Q2, reflecting an improving competitive position. And EMEA Asia Pacific is on a very solid trajectory, following the various actions we've taken to enhance innovation and establish stronger market positions. Overall B2B growth accelerated in Q2 to give 6% for the half. Client expansion, new product contributions, and mortgage were the main drivers of this performance, with key verticals like health, auto, and targeting also contributing positively. 9% growth in consumer services reflects our ongoing actions to grow membership, extract cross-experience synergies, and expand our product ecosystem. Revenue growth translated into 10% concentrate EBIT growth for ongoing activities and 60 basis point EBIT margin progression, which was ahead of the top end of our expectations. Benchmark EPS and dividend per share rose by 8% and 7% respectively. Organically, we continue to invest across a range of initiatives, for example, in B2B, in Ascend platform adoption, and in consumer services in expanding our product ecosystem. and now with over 190 million free members, making us one of the world's largest consumer financial platforms. We also converted some of the larger deals in our M&A pipeline. We deployed over $800 million in acquisitions in key areas like fraud and health. The Ilion acquisition adds scale to our business in Australia, and we've agreed the acquisition of ClearSale to extend our fraud position in Brazil. We've also introduced new generative AI use cases across both B2B and B2C, and all of this positions as well to deliver on our FY25 goals. Our strategy has been very consistent and hopefully by now all familiar to you. We continue to make a lot of progress and we're on track to achieve the objectives we set out in our medium-term framework. Our investment in integrated platforms, our innovation-led approach, And the value exchange we provide to consumers is unique. We're helping to reshape markets, US insurance being a good example, all of which is driving growth across the group. And we're on course to deliver on our technology transformation, introduce generative AI tools, and capitalize on other productivity measures. And we expect this to free up additional resources to invest deeper into our strategy, as well as enhancing future profitability. To give some specifics on our H1 strategic accomplishments, the Ascend platform makes it easier for us to get our products into the hands of our customers. There's significant opportunity to drive more automation, both fraud and credit analytics, and between credit risk and credit marketing. And the Ascend platform helps clients achieve this while also reducing risk and cost, meeting regulatory requirements, and lowering dependence on multiple point solutions to drive cost efficiency. Our primary focus this year is to execute migrations for existing clients, and we use a series of metrics to track our progress. Client solutions and client engagement are all trending in the right direction. And as we go through this process, we're also expanding into new areas of client spend to address. Some of our best growth opportunities are in our verticals. Health is our largest vertical, serving 60% of US hospitals and over 5,500 medical practices. And we're leveraging our broad product portfolio to drive increasing share of wealth on our clients. During the first half, we signed the largest health contract in our company history. We've become a trusted partner for consumers, helping them to manage their financial health. We're driving more personalization and more do-it-for-me solutions. Activate, our lender model deployment tool, has been integrated into our U.S. marketplace and more recently in the U.K. Activate enables real-time decisioning At the point a member engages with a product, it greatly strengthens our panels, helps provide pre-approved and no-risk credit offers, and creates a better, more seamless experience. Activate is a prime example of how we can leverage our B2B products into our consumer ecosystems to create differentiation in the market. Our insurance marketplace has made tremendous progress. New features like insurance rate monitoring mean we can search on behalf of consumers for savings. and we continue to see more carrier engagement. Insurance policy sales have grown rapidly, demonstrating the value of the platform. We've now launched EVA, our virtual agent, which will use Gen-I natural language to deliver more personalized credit education. In Brazil, we're offering more services to help consumers on their financial journey, and we have unique ways to drive engagement. To give two quick examples, we've started to explore new opportunities in the insurance market, following a small investment in this space in Brazil. And our payments capability can instantly reflect the debt payment to help consumers boost their credit scores, which helps drive engagement. As we've made clear in the past, we have a very disciplined approach to deploying capital. Many of the deals that we have announced have been long been in our pipeline, and all of them represent excellent strategic fits for Experian. In fraud and IDE, we've acquired new assets to extend our market position. Our recent acquisition of NeuroID adds fraud behavioral analytics capabilities, which is transferable across all of our regions. We've already added the capability to the Ascend platform. In Brazil, our acquisition of ClearSell marks our entry into the large and growing transaction fraud market in Brazil, and when combined with our existing fraud assets and bureau data, will open up new growth opportunities. In Australia, we're very excited to have completed the acquisition of Ilion, It transforms our position in the Australia and New Zealand market and takes us another step towards our ambition to be number one or two in our chosen EMEA APAC markets. While it's still early days, the integration so far has progressed well. Leon gives us additional scale in data, products, and people. And we've started to engage with clients and we're confident we'll have the expanded client opportunities as a result of this transaction. And this will build on the strong foundations we have already had in that market for decisioning. and we expect opportunities to emerge in many new client segments as well. So those are some of the H1 strategic highlights. Let's turn now to our H1 regional performance, starting with North America. Organic revenue growth of 7% included high single-digit organic growth from the majority of our business lines, including consumer information, business information, auto, health, and consumer services. In consumer information, business information decisioning, we're delivering next generation data, analytics and software to manage credit risk and fraud. And we made very solid underlying progress even when mortgages stripped out and despite still constrained conditions for unsecured credit volumes. Client win rates for Clarity were strong with good momentum too for Ascend, including upgrades, renewals and new wins for key modules such as Sandbox and Ascend Marketing. We also have several trials underway, fraud sandbox, and we enjoyed really good growth in fraud generally, and NeuroID has had a very good start. In income and employment verifications, record count continues to expand, now totaling 61 million records, and we continue to make very good progress adding new client logos. Our other verticals also contributed positively. The auto market still faces headwinds from affordability and uncertainty, We've been helped by the breadth of our product suite, especially around marketing, and there is scope for conditions to improve as rate cuts feed through to consumer affordability. Strong new bookings helped targeting to a good result in H1. We added new logos and secured new business from existing customers, all helped by our enhanced digital identity offers. And there's also some sign of a recovery in the underlying client spend. Health has had a great start to the year with record bookings. Wave HTC has been a very good acquisition for us. This product, which we've integrated into our healthcare suite and now called Patient Access Curator, helps reduce claims denial. That's helped with new business performance through expanded client relationships and new logos. North America consumer services grew 7% organically. Premium services, marketplace, and partner solutions all contributed positively, so a very nice broad-based performance. Strong premium membership enrollments and upsells have been helped by new features to better manage financial health. We'll take this a step further as we roll out EVA, our Gen AI financial assistance, which will offer more personalized financial education. Our credit marketplace is yet to recover with card supplies still weak. Strategically, we've made a lot of progress having onboarded new partners to activate, positioning us favorably for when supply fully returns. and we're scaling up offers like pre-approval and no-risk apply, which are very attractive to our membership. Insurance is going really well. We've added new carriers to our panel, new features like continuous rate monitoring and driving engagement rates, with take-up rates all supported by our new marketing campaigns. Over the past few years in Brazil, we've built out a comprehensive product portfolio, and we saw continued great progress in the half across fraud and ID, software, SME, and particularly in consumer services, which led to H1 organic revenue growth of 7%. B2B organic growth, 2% in the half is lower than we would have liked due to earlier floods in the south of Brazil and a more uncertain macro backdrop. All that said, we've made fantastic progress in Brazil B2B, and we expect to reap benefits from our platform integration strategy going forward. 27% growth in Latin American consumer services and outstanding results. We have steadily expanded this business, again, centered around the concept of financial empowerment, and we continue to grow and diversify our ecosystem. We started with Limpanome, which helps consumers negotiate and resolve outstanding debts, and which continues to perform strongly in a market where consumer indebtedness remains very high. We've linked Limpanome to a payments proposition, which consolidates consumer overdue bills in one place. Contributions from our credit marketplace have grown on the back of an expanded lender panel, and we now have the ability to extend into insurance. These developments position us uniquely in Brazil. Through our fully integrated platform, we can provide end-to-end payment solutions, more personalized consumer experience, and extract strategic synergies across B2B and B2C. The UK delivered 2% organic revenue growth, While it's not fully reflective of performance, our strategic position in the UK B2B continues to strengthen. And while B2B growth is 1%, strategic progress across Ascend, FinCrime, data quality and verifications all build on the superior quality of our bureau data assets and set us up well for when core volume recovery comes. We've entered into a series of Ascend platform proof of values, verifications data coverage has expanded, and we've started to drive usage of that data. Our new business performance has also been strong. In UK consumer services, the results of our investments have become increasingly more visible. We've made great progress across both premium and marketplace. Our products are better, and by introducing Experian Activate, we've enlarged our lender panel to the extent that nearly all card and loan clients will soon be on the Activate platform. And this is driving stronger loan conversion, which has helped us become one of the most meaningful marketplaces in the UK for cards and loans. In Asia Pacific, organic revenue growth of 7% represents another half of solid progress, reflects a growing mix of exclusive data additions, new score introductions, and fraud, which have driven new business wins. We'll continue this focus on new product introductions, where we can leverage our large global solutions to strengthen our competitive position. Ascend is a great example. It gives us potential to lengthen contract terms, drive up contract values, including more analytics and fraud capabilities in solutions. We started this process and there's much more to come. Already it's opened up new opportunities with existing clients and we see good prospects to extend to clients in adjacent sectors such as BNPL. And with that, I'm going to hand over to Lloyd for the financials.

Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As you've seen, we've delivered strong results in the first half of FY25 with revenue in the middle of our guidance range and strong margin expansion. For the half, organic and total revenue was up 7% at constant currency, whilst total revenue growth at actual rates was 6%, reflecting a 1% headwind from FX. We grew EBIT margins by 60 basis points, with benchmark EBIT from ongoing activities up 10% at constant rates and 8% at actual rates. EBIT growth converted well into EPS growth of 9% at constant rates and 8% at actual rates. Operating cash flow was at $707 million at a conversion of 71% in our seasonally week and a half for cash generation. We continue to deliver our growth with high returns on capital employed at 16.6% for the half. We've announced an interim dividend per share of 19.25 cents, up 7% on the prior year. And finally, we remain strongly financed with our net debt to EBITDA leverage of two times, at the bottom of our 2 to 2.5 times target range. As you've heard from Brian, we delivered consistent growth through the half, with the strength of our diverse portfolio and strategy delivery offsetting a still subdued lending environment. Organic growth in Q2 was 7%, supported by strengthening in North America core bureau growth, stronger growth in Latin America, offset by a lower level of one-off data breach deals. Now looking at organic revenue growth across our B2B and consumer segments, on the left-hand chart, you can see our quarterly trends in B2B, where we saw underlying trends in B2B firm in Q2, with growth increasing from 5% in Q1 to 7% in Q2. Growth in the core bureau in North America, excluding mortgage, improved from 2% in Q1 to 6% in Q2, and we saw stronger mortgage revenue growth. Latin America B2B growth also improved in Q2. On the right-hand side, you can see our consumer segment trends in total and excluding our data breach business. As we mentioned through last year, we secured several large one-off data breach contracts following elevated levels of breach activity in the market, with the contribution peaking in Q3 last year. As you can see, excluding data breach, underlying growth was stable last year, but has firmed through the first half with improvements across all regions. In particular, in North America, we've seen subscription and marketplace growth improve as the half progressed. Turning now to FY25 Q2 regional growth trends, North America grew 7% organically in Q2, with B2B growing 9%. Within B2B, the CIBI Bureau delivered double-digit growth and excluding mortgage profile revenue grew by 6% in the quarter, up from 2% in Q1. Mortgage profiles revenue grew 56% on volume growth of 4%. Our Ascend modules continue to scale, delivering double-digit growth following new business wins, growth in volume through the platform, and annualization of wins from the prior year. Clarity Services returned to double-digit growth in the quarter following a weaker Q1, and we continue to see a subdued general lending environment and no broad-based improvement in lending. Our verticals continue to grow well. Automotive grew 5%, whilst targeting growth strengthened in Q2 to 7%, as our digital platforms continue to perform well in market, and we continue to innovate our propositions. Health continued to grow well, had 8%, where we had a strong quarter for product deliveries and made good progress following the integration of our Wave acquisition onto our platform. Consumer services grew 3% in Q2, as you saw on the earlier slide. Data breach was a headwind to growth as we lapped contracts in the prior year. And excluding data breach, consumer services growth was 9%. Subscription grew well at mid-single digit, improving from Q1 as new features continue to improve retention rates. Marketplace grew double digits as auto insurance grew strongly, and the loans vertical in credit marketplace showed good growth despite credit cards remaining weak. As expected, organic growth in Latin America improved to 9% in Q2. B2B improved to 3% growth in Q2 as we made progress with new innovations in software and analytics, against a backdrop of uncertain economic conditions and rising interest rates. Consumer services grew strongly, up 30%, with improved Limpinomi payment conversion, marketplace expansion of new partners, and integration of our platform propositions. The UK NI was consistent through the half with 2% organic growth. Bureau growth of 3% is broadly in line with our performance in Q1. against what remains a soft underlying credit market in the UK. We're making good progress in expanding our Ascend functionality and expanding the number of client trials. Targeting in automotive was down 14% in the quarter due to specific client actions in automotive insourcing some of their activity. Decisioning was down 1% as the environment for new software solutions reflects the lending environment. And consumer services growth improved to 8% as marketplace further strengthened in Q2, following the rapid rollout of our Activate proposition. And subscription continued to grow modestly. In EMEA and Asia Pacific, growth for the quarter was 8%, consistent with the performance in Q1, following strong decision growth in South Africa and Southern Europe, as well as good growth across the bureaus. Turning now to EBIT margin, where we delivered 60 basis points of margin expansion. And as usual, we've restated the prior year margin for the benefit of exited activities with reported margin of 80 basis points in total. Consumer services margin progress was strong, continuing the trends of recent years as we continue to benefit from the growing scale and diversity of the business and engage our free consumer base across a growing set of propositions. B2B margin was slightly lower in the half due to revenue mix and our investments in new growth verticals such as verifications. And at a regional level, margins in North America contributed to group margin, whilst the phasing of investments and revenue mix kept the margins in the other regions broadly stable. Turning now to EPS, where we delivered growth of 9% at constant FX and 8% at actual rates. EBIT from continuing operations grew 9% at constant currency following good revenue growth and 60 basis points of margin expansion. And this translated to 9% EPS growth at constant currency and 8% at actual rates. Now looking at our usual reconciliation of benchmark to statutory results, our benchmark profit before tax grew 8% at actual FX rates, driven by revenue performance and good margin progression. Acquisition-related expenses decreased slightly to $8 million. And there was little change in the fair value of contingent consideration on prior acquisitions. We incurred $24 million of costs in relation to our technology-enabled restructuring program and recovered $11 million of costs related to prior legal matters. And that brings statutory PBT before non-cash items being up 10%. Amortization of acquisition intangibles was flat at $95 million. And non-cash financing remeasurements were $93 million adverse, principally due to movements in our interest rate fixing program, leaving statutory profit before tax down 6%. Now taking a look at cash flow. On the slide, you can see our long-term operating cash flow and conversion metrics, with the first half on the left and the full year on the right. As you can see from the slide, the first halves are weaker half for conversion due to the timing of compensation, payments, and other seasonal factors. And you can also see the effect in FY21 to 23 of certain COVID recovery effects and one-off contracts. And outside of these effects, we have a strong and consistent track record of full-year cash conversion in the 90% plus range. This half, we've delivered $770 million of operating cash flow at a conversion of 71%. Average sales outstanding reduced during the half, whilst payable days expanded, mostly due to the timing of deferred income, including the effects of timing of data breach revenues and cash flow. And we're on track to deliver cash conversion in line with our guidance for the full year of greater than 90%. Now turning to acquisitions. As you've heard from Brian, we made a number of acquisitions during the half, spending over $800 million in support of our key strategic focus areas. When we spoke back in May, we expected the acquisitions we'd made during FY24 to add less than 1% to revenue growth during FY25. With these additional acquisitions, we're increasing that guidance to around 1.5% contribution with run rate revenue of $150 million into FY26 or an additional 1% inorganic growth in FY26. And as recently announced, we signed an agreement to acquire ClearSale in Brazil. Subject to regulator and shareholder approval, we expect this to close in the first half of calendar 2025 and would add a further 85 million or just over 1% to group inorganic revenue in FY26 across a full year. Moving now on to leverage, at the end of the first half and taking into account the investment in Australia, at the end of the half, our net debt to EBITDA ratio was two times, at the bottom of our 2 to 2.5 times leverage range. With our interest rate fixing program, we've kept average interest rates on our net debt constrained, despite the rise in market interest rates, at 3.2% in the half. And we continue to generate very strong post-tax returns on capital employed, with Rocky at close to 17% in the half. So turning now to updated FY25 modeling considerations, which relate to our ongoing activities and does not include any acquisitions that have not yet completed and where timing is uncertain. We continue to expect 6% to 8% organic revenue growth for the full year. We've increased the contribution from acquisitions on revenue to around 1.5%, which reflects the expected performance of businesses acquired during the half. with firm margin guidance to the upper end of our 30 to 50 basis points guidance range, thanks to the strong start to the year. And based on current FX rates, we now expect FX to be around a 2% headwind to both revenue and EBIT growth, principally relating to the weakening of the Brazilian REI against the US dollar. With the investment in acquisitions, we now expect net interest for the year to be around $155 million, The benchmark tax rate is now expected to be 26% at the lower end of the previous guidance range of 26% to 27%. We expect the weighted average number of shares to be in the region of $914 million for the year. There's no change to our CapEx guidance, which is expected to be around 9% of revenue. No change to cash flow conversion to be over 90% for the full year. And no changes to our share buyback program of up to $150 million completed by June 2025. And finally, as you'll recall, we announced our new medium term financial framework in May. And as you can see from our first half results and updated for your outlook, we're delivering on that framework. Organic revenue growth is strong with underlying trends positive. We delivered strong margin progression in the first half and expect to be in the upper end of our guidance for this year. CapEx was stable as we progress well in our technology migration, which unlocks a medium term trend towards CapEx at 7% of revenue, and we've increased our capital deployment, investing in high-quality strategic assets to fuel future growth and returns. So with that, I'll hand you back to Brian.

Thanks, Lloyd. So in closing, we've made a very good start to the year. We delivered well financially, and we've made a lot of strategic progress, both organically and through M&A pipeline conversion. We're on track to deliver on our previous organic revenue growth guidance in FY25, with margin expansion now expected to be at the upper end of our guidance range. We've also progressed well towards the medium-term outlook we shared in May. Our confidence in this is high and will be further enhanced when we get the full benefit of unsecured credit volume recovery and our technology transformation program. Alongside this, we continue to invest successfully behind a range of initiatives to support future growth of the business. And with that, I'm now going to hand back to the operator for your questions. Operator, over to you.

Thank you, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Once again, please press star 1 and 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our first question. The questions come from the line of Ryan Flight from Jefferies. Please ask your question.

Yeah, good morning. Ryan Flight from Jefferies here. Just three from me, if I may. The first one's on Latam B2B, so not quite the rebound I'd expected in Q2. So any comment on outlook and conditions there would be really useful. And then number two and three are slightly more mid-term focused here, but with the margin upgrade this morning. to the upper end of 30 to 50 bps. Is there any reason we shouldn't expect the same in years two and three in the context of your midterm guidance? And then the third and final question is on effectively the prospect of double-digit organic revenue growth. When we think about volume tailwinds that may return, is there any reason we can't get to double digits with particular reference to maybe any counter-cyclical elements in the business? Thank you.

Hi there, thanks for those questions. Let me just first start by saying there's quite a few detailed questions in there. But overall, what we've seen, I think, in Q2 is actually a pickup in performance of the business on an underlying basis. You're always going to get sort of moving parts across the group, but I think when you strip out some of the more variable elements, particularly as Lloyd has highlighted, data breach, you can actually see that momentum from Q1 into Q2. We're very pleased about that. Of course, in Brazil, we've also seen a pickup in growth between Q1 and Q2 driven, as we said, primarily by the consumer services business, but also by a pickup from the lows in the B2B. Certainly, we see some very good performances across B2B, particularly in decisioning and fraud, where we're still seeing some softnesses in the other core underlying credit conditions. But I think that we're pretty confident about the outlook for Brazil as we go into the second half. We still expect to actually have very good momentum going into H2. The second question was on margins. Could they be at the top end of the range in FY26? I think we'll give margin guidance for FY26 when we get there. But obviously, the first half performance is very pleasing. I think Lloyd will kind of talk a little bit more about what some of the constituent parts of that are. Note that we are giving guidance, I think, today that we'll be at the top end of that margin guidance, which is 30 to 50 basis points. Obviously, age one was 60. So it's a little bit different from the four years and a half. But very pleasing, very pleasing progress. And I think on the third question, you know, could you, I think it was could you reach double digital organic revenue growth? What I would say is, you know, I still think that we, you know, we're certainly seeing, we're not seeing any yet, any underlying recovery in the core credit volumes. I think we've seen it's a stabilization. I think we've said that for a few quarters now. And you can see that the performance of business is actually really on an underlying basis sort of in high single digits. So that's really pleasing. You would have thought that if we get a bit of a recovery, we'll hope for that, then obviously that will add to our performance. I think in terms of where we'll be for FY26, again, that's something that we've got a couple of quarters to go left in FY25, so we're not quite finished with that yet. And we'll give you an outlook on where we go from there at that point. Lloyd, do you want to add a bit more?

Yeah, just only a couple of things, actually. I think If you think about the growth of the Group X, the data breach numbers that we talked about growing at 8% without a broad-based recovery in lending volumes, I think that we feel good about that. That shows the resilience and the strength of the group that we have, and particularly some of the underlying trends in the consumer business, which I called out. On the margin guidance, it's great to get off to a good start the first period in that long period. You'll remember that the first two years were the tightest two years of that margin guidance. We see a lot of the benefit of our technology program kick in from years three to five. So to be at the top end of that range, I think, bodes well. We'll always balance investment in the long run growth of the business within that. But certainly it's great to get off to a good start. Thank you.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Andrew Ripper from Liberum. Please ask a question.

Hi, morning, everybody. Well done on the results. Two questions for me, although there's a few sort of sub-questions in there. One on, I just want to come back to LATAM B2B and then go on to cash flow. Just on the B2B, I think when you were discussing the outlook at Q1, you'd referenced the impact of the floods and phasing of contracts. Just wondering in terms of the Q2 performance, were the floods still a disruptive issue for you? And looking ahead to second half guidance, What do you think is achievable for LATAM B2B growth? Do you still have the benefit to come of contract wins?

Thanks, Andrew. I think we obviously saw a pick back up in Q2 as we thought in LATAM overall. Within that, I think consumer was a bit stronger than we thought and B2B was a little bit weaker. You'll have seen the commentary during the last quarter around the uncertainty in the Brazilian economy, particularly around rising inflation, the interest rates being higher, and that creates just a bit more uncertainty than we saw 12 weeks ago. Looking to the second half of the year, I think Brazil overall stays at about these levels, so very high single-digit growth is our core expectation. And obviously, as we get into next year, we lap that very easy. The floods didn't affect the second quarter. They were isolated to the first quarter, and that was one of the reasons why Q2 overall picked up a little bit, particularly with some strength in analytics and software.

Thanks. That's clear. And then, Lloyd, just coming on to cash flow, I appreciate your commentary about seasonality. You skipped over fairly quickly in your remarks the working capital movements and just wondered if you could go back to those and just maybe go a bit slower so I can understand it just in terms of the working capital movement in the first half and then also on cash. Appreciate the CapEx guidance as a percentage of revenue. Absolute CapEx in H1 was down a little bit. What's your sense in terms of absolute capex for the year? And then looking medium term, when do you think the capex relative to revenue will start to fade? And then the final bit on cash flow is just on tax. There seems to be a benefit, I think, in relation to deferred tax or oilium. Just wondering what you can say about cash tax, please, for the full year as well. Thanks.

Okay, I'll start at the end and work back. So cash tax rate, I think for the full years, probably aligned with the benchmark effective tax rate, so about 26%. As you'll recall, there were some movements in over the last few years on various incentives in certain geographies. Those have elevated our cash tax rate and it's now come back more down to the ETR. On CapEx, CapEx's percentage of sales, I think, peaked the year before last. We came down to about 9% last year. I think we'll be about 9% this year. We start to see that more materially reduced as a percentage of sales when we get through the migration program, which really kicks in FY27. So that's when I think you'll see us probably more stepped down from 9% to 8% on that trend towards 7%. And in the cash flow statement, you've got a few things. You've got DSO actually reduced a little during the half on some better collection position. And what you have is a movement in relation to incentive payments, which we make all of our incentive payments in the first half of the year. and also a reduction in deferred income. So this is where we've recognized cash, principally on data breach sales, and you've seen the effect there in revenue. We recognize cash often up front there. We receive that up front and recognize revenue on the curve. So a drawdown in deferred income combined with movements on management and staff and sales commission and incentives, that really was the explanation of the first half cash conversion you can see in the long run trend first half is because of those factors often a little bit more volatile very confident in our 90 plus percent long-term conversion trend for the second half thanks that's very clear lloyd just just to make sure i'm i'm sure that just on the on the di down you're saying that's related to the lower breach income in the quarter versus prior year and related to some of the one-off long-term contracts that we secured in FY21 and FY22 that you can see on the chart, where we received the cash all up front, and you're seeing that balance continue to draw down.

Yeah, understood. Thanks a lot. Very clear.

Thanks, Andrew.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I have a few, please. B2B data in the U.S. did see some nice improvement in the quarter in Q2. How do you see trends for the rest of the year, please? The second one is on the exits of 12 million. How much of these exits were from LATAM, please? And given the tougher comparatives for B2C on data breaches in 3Q, 4Q of this year, can you maybe discuss how you see U.S. B2C growth evolving? Thank you.

Okay. So U.S. B2B trends were good. We saw some improvement in clarity services in the second quarter. They had a slightly weaker first quarter. The Ascend trend A rollout you heard from Brian, great progress. They're really making strong progress with clients on some of the migrations and the rollouts. And we saw general bureau volumes moved from a very slight decline to a very slight growth. Nothing broad-based, but a little improvement. I think as you look at it, we feel positive about the second half of the year. We're not forecasting that broad-based recovery. I think it's clear the interest rate cycle has turned, though. So the question is, when does that feed through? We think it's sometime next year. It's hard to call the quarter. We're not thinking it will be this year, but I think the direction of travel will be clear. On exits, at the end of last year, Q4 last year, we exited a certification business in Brazil. And then another modest exit and close down of a small bureau in EMEA in the first half of the year. And from memory, I think the 12 is about half and half. And as you know, we put that into exited at the point that we are leaving it. We restate our prior year margin. So you can see the effect. We saw 20 basis points benefit. on restating the prior year margin for those exit activities. And then the 60 basis points is a clean progression on top of that.

Maybe, Lloyd, just I think the last question was on the US B2C in terms of what we're seeing. And I think just a couple of points from me. The first thing is, as Lloyd did, if you show the number, excluding the data breach, which is the volatile, kind of hard to predict number, you can see there's actually quite a lot of momentum in the business. And it's very broad based. So we've seen premium membership grow, and that's obviously very strong, very positive for us. We've seen fantastic growth in our insurance marketplace, which is a product we launched just a few years ago. We've also seen some really great progress in our core partner solutions, excluding data breach. So I think once you adjust for that volatile number, you can see the underlying momentum is very strong. The final point would be to add that we haven't actually seen any recovery in the cards and loans marketplace business yet, so that's yet to come. So assuming that we get some recovery there, I think the outlook for that business is very strong. In terms of some of the breach revenues, Lloyd, last year, the strongest quarters were... Yeah, you can see it on the slide.

It contributed a bit over... over 1% in the third quarter. And we expect, we're not forecasting that to really contribute to growth this year. So it'll be a drag through the rest of the year as we lock those comps. So a 7% revenue guide is really 8% underlying, which again, bodes well into lending recovery next year.

Thank you very much.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the question comes from the line of Scott Wetzel from Woolf Research. Please answer your question.

Good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. I wonder if that's on a couple areas of the business, being the verifications business first and the health business. So on the verification side, I mean, it seems like you're making pretty good traction from a client logos ad perspective, you know, 61 million records now. Um, so I'd love to just kind of hear, you know, your view on, you know, where you kind of stand in that journey, how you think you stack up to some of the competitors in this space and where we think growth, uh, can go from here to start. Uh, and I'll ask my followup on health after.

Yeah, sure. Thanks for the question. Um, yeah, I think we've made some good progress. I think you've always said that we're a challenger in this marketplace. Um, We know that Equifax is the biggest player, the most substantial business, but I think we've made great progress over a number of years. We continue to add to the record count. We continue to make really good progress in the employer services side of that. So please, I think over this year and over a number of years, we expect to continue to make progress as we go forward.

No, I think you're really pleased with the record count growth. And in the long run, it's that that helps us really unlock the market. So 61 million records we were very pleased with. I think you had a – Scott, you had a question on health?

Yeah, just the follow-up on the health side. I noticed you said in the presentation you signed your largest health contract in company history. So maybe we'd love to just kind of hear about the nature of

that deal and you know just a broader kind of sentiment check on the uh the health segment overall yeah um so that that contract uh yeah we signed it earlier in the year um actually hasn't kicked in yet so that will benefit really sort of the years that's um you know 26 on i think what you're seeing now is just really good underlying performance strong organic revenue growth good good uptake in the core products really good reception to the wave acquisition You know, we continue to see long runway of growth for our health business. So we're very pleased with progress. Yeah, the contract itself will be one. I mean, you know, it's very sizable, but we'll feed into, I think, 26, 27, 28 numbers.

Yeah, it's great. The health business is a great business. You know, it's going to be well over $600 million of revenue. 40-plus percent EBIT margins has grown super consistently, and we see lots of runway for future growth. So it's a big business for us now, very profitable and very consistent.

Great. Appreciate the call, guys.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Kelsey Zhu from Autonomous. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I have two questions. The first one, just big picture. I think, you know, we've sort of been in this mini consumer credit recession in a number of your key end markets the last few years, including the U.S. and the U.K. And it seems that, you know, the U.S., the U.K., Brazil, India, they're all poised to go through their own evening cycle for the next few years. So just curious to hear your thoughts around if you have sized medium-term upsides from all of these potential consumer credit volume recoveries in these key markets.

Yeah, great question. I think that the specific question, have we sized the upside, I think that not precisely because I think it's difficult to size it precisely. And it will probably be different in every market, and the timing will probably be different in every market. But there's no doubt that it is to come at some stage. And given the fact that we have performed consistently now at the sort of 7%, 8% level for quite a number of years, without that, and actually in many cases where it's been a headwind to us, You know, I think that's a pretty optimistic prospect for the business going forward. I think we probably wait until we get into the rest of FY25. I mean, you know, I think we feel pretty confident that the U.S. is, I mean, it seems a bit tiring to sort of say it hasn't changed, which is what we've said for the last few quarters. Unfortunately, that's the reality. But I think that there is some reason to be fairly optimistic that that actually will start to improve as we get into calendar year 25. And I think maybe in the UK, it might be a little bit longer given some of the market changes that we've seen recently. I think we still feel very optimistic about Brazil, although in the short term, we have seen interest rates tick up there. So that might impact us. in over a six-month period. But I think your basic thesis is correct, that that recovery will come. We're closer to it now than we have been previously, and it is going to be a big benefit to us.

I think I'd just add, Kelsey, you're also seeing the growing power of our consumer business. You're seeing that continue to scale, the broadening of the propositions, and the benefit that that's bringing in in terms of margin trends in that business, which was very clear over the last few years, but particularly in this half. And I think we're very excited about the future of that business as we can continue to broaden the propositions and really build on a very, very significant consumer audience that we've now invested to create.

Got it. This is super helpful. My second question is specifically on income employment verification. I was wondering if you can give us a little bit more colors around, you know, the 300 new logos that you added in the first half, you know, which sector or sectors were they in? And then, you know, previously, I think you've talked about this exciting opportunity to utilize income employment data that you have gathered and customer services to help drive growth and verification as well. So I was just wondering if there's any latest thoughts or progress on that topic.

Yeah, well, the growth across the logos really across every sector, so it's pretty broad-based. Obviously, there's a lot of employers out there, and we provide services to every segment, so I don't think there's any one that's in particular that's dominant. In terms of the opportunity to use consumer-contributed data for income and employment verification, that's something I think we talked about A while back, that is definitely something on our radar. I think it'll take some time before that becomes a reality. But I think given the consumer base that we have, authenticated consumer base in the US, you can see the potential for that. We have actually already started to use some of the consumer-contributed data to develop cash flow attributes, which we're seeing very good traction in markets. So we know that path is there, long way to go on it, but I think we have a number of ways to actually move forward here.

Got it. Thank you so much.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Anne-Lise Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning, Brian. Good morning, Lloyd. I have two questions, please. So firstly, Acquisitions, you've stepped up a little bit in the second quarter and also into the beginning of the third quarter. Do you expect that pace to continue through the second half based on the pipeline that you're seeing? And as an aside to that, previously you've spoken about valuations normalising, but with improved funding availability more broadly in the market, are you seeing competition for these assets start to step up again that you're looking at? And then... Just a follow-up on Brazil as well. Could you perhaps delve into a little bit more what's baked into your expectations of a high single-digit growth for the second half in terms of macro and interest rates? You know, you touched on all of these things, but, you know, is that growth based on status quo or are there sort of more conservative volume assumptions in that number already? Thank you.

Great, Natalie. Thank you for the question. Just on the acquisitions, so A lot of these acquisitions have actually been ones that we've been working on for a very long time. Certainly in the case of Ilion, we have been really closely monitoring that asset for many years. And I think it just so happened that the circumstances for right to reach agreement, and I think we talked about that in one of the last calls. So that completed in this half. We were very pleased that actually it completed as quickly as it did. We went through the first phase of competition and it got clearance. It's a pretty unusual thing these days, but that was obviously a great outcome. The acquisition of ClearSail in Brazil is also a business that we've been tracking for a long time. It went public several years ago. We've had several discussions along business association with them. We've been really kind of looking at that one in depth for probably for the last 18 or so months. And I think the difference is, you know, it just really depends on whether the circumstances are right to get a deal done at a price that both parties agree at any given particular point in time. And then, you know, as always, those of you based in Britain sometimes, you know, recognize that sometimes bosses come at the same time that happened a little bit here and then I think some of the other acquisitions are you know relatively smaller but good sort of strategic bolt-ons which I think are you know very sensible additions and take us into some quite new interesting new areas particularly and you look at verifications and an insurance in Brazil and so on we do have again a very full pipeline we've we have got you know, some opportunities ahead of us. So I wouldn't read too much into the step-up as you phrased it because I think the step-up just actually reflects phasing and that they all seem to, you know, certainly two of the larger ones were announced and one completed in that period. Environment is different. Most of the assets that we want to buy are really good businesses who will all be pleased to hear. So there's always competition for them. And so it's never a case that we have a free run of these companies. We wouldn't expect that. So it's competitive. But I would say that the pricing is more realistic, although still I wouldn't characterize some of them as particularly cheap. I wouldn't expect them to be given the quality of the assets that we have. But more favorable and certainly more conducive to actually getting things across the line. So I think reasonably good prospects from here on in as well.

And then on Brazil, Annalisa, I mean, sadly, there's no algorithmic approach to looking at interest rates and inflation assumptions into what clients decide to do on average across the market in their origination efforts. So I think that there's always a range of outcomes. I think you've seen interest rates go up in Brazil in the last few weeks in response to global inflation expectations and currency movements. So we factored that into our softening of the guide for the full year to high single-digit in Brazil overall. And we think that's realistic. Obviously, as I mentioned, we hit some very easy comps in Q1 as we come into the new year. So we'll see what that brings. Great to see the consumer business continue to power in Brazil, which I think shows the potential benefit from engaging in the Brazilian population as some of these credit markets liberalize.

That's great. Thank you very much.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Rory McKenzie from UBS. Please ask your question.

Good morning all, it's Rory here. Just two questions on consumer, please. Firstly, on the margin increase, can you break that down at all into mix, operating leverage and anything else? Just within the H1, I think the drop through looks nearly 60%. So is that the kind of incremental margin to think about as you keep scaling that business? Or are you planning to increase investment more from here as you expand products, for example? And then secondly, just on the premium subscriptions, It sounds like maybe there's a slight change in tone here. Rather than just seeing it as a counter-signical fact of consumer behavior, it sounds like you're investing more in the product. Can I just check if that subscription number is still around the 2.2 million mark, and have you changed how you think about that evolving over time? Thank you.

Yeah, just maybe just I'll go on the second question, Rory, and then Laurie can give you a breakdown of margin movements. I think that is right. We have been investing in that premium subscription product. We've added a lot of new features to it. And, you know, there's a tremendous amount more value into that. When you think also, you know, things like the Gen-I Assistant we were introducing to that, I think you are seeing more than just a counter-cyclical impact there. You know, I think our confidence that we can continue to grow that business is is increased in any environment. So yes, I think that reflects a successful execution of adding significant value to that premium product over a number of years.

And then I think on the margin... Yeah, just one more on the subscription. I think it's maybe a slight misnomer to think of it as purely counter-cyclical. I think if you look back, it's had its periods of strongest growth perhaps when the environment's a bit weaker. But it's grown throughout. And if you look back over five years, we've seen compound growth rates, I think, and we had this in our full year announcement, of about 8%. So we're going to continue to see that, I think, grow well as we add functionality. And it's a really important part of the mix of products that we have for consumers. And And that kind of comes back to your first question, which is we think of a relationship with a consumer that moves around over time. They want different things at different times in their life. Having a subscription product that they'll enter for a period and then maybe withdraw from for a period means that actually we value the relationship. We don't look at margins from individual sub-businesses. If you look at it on a regional level, the margin of all of the regions in consumer progressed in the half. The strongest progress was actually in Latin America, where we've really been scaling that business. As you remember, Rory, we're investing pretty heavily to acquire that very significant consumer base, and we're now in a really positive stage of scaled deployment of product that's actually very positive for margin. So we saw a benefit of that. in this half, and we expect that to continue.

Thanks, and just to check, even though this goes precisely, but in the U.S., for example, are we talking about an average of 2 million subscriptions out of your user base around 70?

Yeah, it's a bit above that. So it's between 2 and 3 million. And the acquisition growth during this first half has been pretty good, actually. And you saw it takes a little while for that to feed through, so we saw subscription revenue growth tick up from low to mid-single digit to just over mid-single digit in the second quarter. And that probably firms a little as we go into the third quarter on the trends of origination that we've had in the first half. And that's really on some of that new product deployment that Brian mentioned. Also, you see some of the the nature of some of the breaches that are in the environment sometimes brings people towards the subscription product as well. Makes sense. Thank you.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Arthur Trisler from Citi. Please ask your question.

Thank you very much, everyone, and well done on the results today. I guess first question for me just on Brazil. I think you sort of said earlier that you expect Brazil to deliver kind of high single-digit organic growth on a full-year basis. I was having a look back and, you know, the comp looks quite tough in Q3. So just wondered whether you're expecting that to happen in both Q3 and Q4 or one rather than the other. Second question. was just on the Bureau excluding mortgage. So clearly the 6% organic growth that you delivered was significantly better than what you've delivered before. I just wondered how this developed through the quarter. Is it sort of been accelerating through the quarter or indeed has it continued into calendar Q4? And then final question in terms of the comps in the second half. I guess you mentioned that the data breaches are just over 100 bits of organic growth at group level in Q3. I seem to remember you mentioned that there was some tough comps in the Bureau X mortgage as well in the fourth quarter, as well as data breach as well. So I was just wondering if you could just run through in full the challenges in the comps in Q3 and Q4.

Thank you. Let's start with Brazil. So I think we expect a high single-digit growth rate from Brazil overall for the second half. Don't really see any difference between Q3 and Q4, but it'll be in that range. Bureau X mortgage, I think I mentioned in my comments, we saw clarity improve in the second quarter on the first quarter. We also saw good progress on Ascend then. Bureau volumes moved from a very modest decline to a very modest increase. Small movements, but slightly better. We don't comment on months. Months tend to be individual to the calendar month rather than trends within a quarter, so we don't comment on them. We get different effects at different holiday periods and various other things. And then I think... We've been super clear with the data breach comp. You can see it on the slide. Out with that, very confident in the overall guide. So continuing in the middle of the range, but we've got a range for the rest of the year, and that's around 8% excluding data breach. So I think we've probably covered that offer.

All right, thank you.

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Sylvia Barker from JP Morgan. Please ask your question.

Hi, morning, everyone. Two follow-ups on US B2B ex-mortgage, please. First, on clarity, you've picked that out as a contributor to the acceleration, and I suppose that can be a bit lumpier, but could you maybe help out with how much that might have contributed and what's the nature of these contracts. And then secondly, on Ascend in North America, it seems like that's done very well. Is that growth with existing clients or is that growth with new clients? Is it helped by the combined kind of platform? Maybe some color there will be helpful. And then finally, on the margin in B2C, could you maybe just mention what's happen to marketing and customer acquisition costs in the half and whether there's any movement here and there as well. Thank you.

Great. Thanks, Elia. On the send, a straight answer is it's a bit of all of those things. We've seen some increase in usage from existing clients. We've seen some new clients. Not really, I think, a lot driven by a send technology platform yet because that's pretty near in market. I think it's more deeper penetration of different modules such as Ascend Ops, Ascend Marketing, Sandbox, and also, I think, good pipeline building for Ascend Fraud. On Clarity, yeah, I think probably the way to think of it is Clarity actually has been a really good contributor for quite a couple of years now. So we have seen pretty good underlying conditions in that marketplace. There's some new logos which have driven growth as well as some additional volume gains in that segment. So I think business just continues to perform pretty well. And in terms of sizing that, Lloyd, I don't think we've given that.

No, I think the way to think about it, Sylvia, if you look across the long term is as we acquire customers, consumers into the direct-to-consumer platform, we're then able to activate them on new propositions. So the marginal cost of marketing, of acquisition, actually reduces as the platform scales and as you put more propositions on it. And if you look back actually over a four to five year history, you can see that we've been progressing the consumer margin as the platforms have scaled. And that's true across the UK, the US, and Brazil. No real effects there. Individual year phasing and marketing in an individual year can move around based on product launches. So last year in the second quarter, I think we had the big launches around smart money. This year we've been very focused on insurance in the US and the build-out of payments in Brazil. So different campaigns can move it around, but the general thesis is of the scaling and marketing efficiency as the consumer platform holds, you can see in the trend and margin.

We are now going to proceed with our last question. The questions come from the line of Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.

Hi, thank you. I just have a couple of last questions, please. Sorry, just to follow up on Latin America. I just want to clarify that the slowdown that you've seen over there in the CIBI Bureau is entirely market-driven and there's nothing company-specific there. I remember correctly in the 1Q call, you had talked about caps and callers around volume growth that may have constrained the growth. Was that a factor as well? in the second quarter. And the second one, in terms of cloud migration, can you maybe discuss where you are today and if you're on track to achieve what you had planned for by the end of the year? Thank you.

Yeah. Sorry, just on the CIBI, I think actually it has improved in Q2. There's no competitive impact on that. I think that's really a reflection of where the market is. I think your point is correct which is that volume growth happens in the market and our you know revenue tends to lag that largely as some of the bigger clients sort of move up to the volume limitations and we have we have a we have seen that in Brazil and so you know I think that's also you know relatively positive trend and it takes a bit of time to to feed through one of the things I think that's really worth focusing on is actually GDP growth in Brazil has been relatively strong for this year. But you do have a few counter, I think, cyclical indications as well. Inflation has ticked up, interest rates have moved up. So we think that the market is relatively well positioned but cautious. And so even though you see a bit of softness in some of the underlying performance, I think some of the underlying market dynamics are actually giving more positive signals. So we'll wait and see how that plays out in the second half. On the cloud migration, we're progressing to plan. We're pleased with where we are. And nothing really further to report on that. I think Lloyd said it in his opening remarks. We're still on track with all of the guidance and outlines and timings that we outlined at the year end.

Thank you.

Okay, I think that was our last question. So that concludes today's session. Thank you everybody for joining us. Hope you all have a good day and we look forward to speaking to you again in January for our Q3 trading update. Thank you very much.