Experian Plc Ord

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the experience preliminary results for the year-ended 31st March 2025 webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 and 1 on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press star 1 1 again. please be advised that this conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Mr. Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our FY25 results presentation. I'm joined today by Lloyd, who will run through the financials after my initial overview, and then we'll open up for Q&A. FY25 was a very good year for us, and we ended the year well. We delivered on our full-year guidance and on our medium-term framework. 7% organic revenue growth is a very good result in a year of relatively subdued macro. We also had excellent margin delivery above our target, and cash conversion was also very strong. FY25 was also a year of very good strategic progress across the business. We continued organic investment in new products, a busy year for M&A, and continued investment in our cloud transformation, which remains on track. All this sets us up to sustain our performance into FY26 and beyond. Speaking of FY26, it has started very well and we've not seen any material change in our operating environment or any direct impact from market volatility. Of course, it is very early in our financial year and we continue to watch the economic situation carefully, but we are confident we can navigate through multiple scenarios given our long track record of growth and resilience. And we're also very well positioned to seize opportunities as they arise, given the scale of our market positions and the strength of our balance sheet. We ended FY25 well, with Q4 organic revenue growth of 7% and 7% for the year. When the data breach headwind is excluded, Q4 growth was 9% and FY25 was 8%. As Lloyd's slides will show, margin delivery was excellent, up 90 basis points organically, 70 basis points at constant rates, and up 50 basis points when FX is factored in. Margin expansion is largely the result of consumer services operating leverage and enhanced efficiency while sustaining investment in the business. Benchmark EPS and dividend per share rose by 8% and 7% respectively, and our cash conversion was very strong at 97%. And we've also generated consistently high returns on capital, with ROCE of around 17%, and our net debt to EBITDA is below our target debt range. One of the main strategic highlights of the year is that we've now passed 200 million free consumer members globally, a significant achievement and milestone. Consumer services revenue growth of 7% was 12% when data breaches excluded, and it accelerated as the year progressed. It was also a good year for B2B with 6% organic revenue growth against subdued credit market backdrop. We continued to introduce new products, win new clients, expand our revenue share from existing clients and increase market opportunity in new areas. Our large verticals performed really well with a special call out to health which had record client bookings. Whilst a busy year for M&A, we deployed over 1.6 billion in acquisitions when you include the ClearSale acquisition and we're very pleased with the performance so far and confident in the outlook. There are quite a few operational highlights, the main one being that we're on track with our cloud technology transformation, with dual run costs set to peak in FY26 and trend down from FY27. We also expect to capitalize on a range of productivity measures, as well as to realize acquisition cost synergies. Collectively, we expect these measures to underpin our ability to invest while also driving further margin uplift. Other highlights include the positive progress in client NPS metrics, the external recognition we've had for our products broadly, but specifically also for our progress on Gen AI products. And these have already enhanced many of our existing products and have provided new opportunities to improve productivity. But perhaps the award I'm most proud of is our number 14 ranking in the world's best places to work survey, which highlights the strength of our culture, employee brand, and our ability to attract and retain top talent. Looking at the regions in more detail, in North America, we ended the year with strong momentum, with Q4 growth of 10% to give 8% organic revenue growth for the year. B2B closed the year strongly, driven by strength in core CIBI across core credit profiles, Ascend and Clarity, and strong mortgage revenue. We introduced new products, such as cash for analytics, BNPL data, and new modules to the Ascend platform. The US credit backdrop last year was subdued, with activity levels generally below pre-pandemic levels, but we continue to see good growth in product and new business performance. The year has started well, and as yet, we've not seen much change in behavior from clients as they assess the US economic situation. Across our verticals help deliver a year of record sales bookings and implementations, which will underpin growth into FY26. Also, deliver an outstanding performance, and we expect the breadth of our portfolio and pricing to sustain that good performance. In targeting, the repositioning work we've done, which means more of our growth now arises in the digital advertising industry, which the auditing acquisition will help to expand. And in consumer services, we continue to leverage our approximately 80 million membership into new growth spaces. The headline 5% growth rate was 11%, excluding data breach, and it accelerated as the year progressed. Paid enrollment progress has been strong on the back of new features. It provides a solid base to help consumers find savings and manage their credit, which is a traditionally counter-cyclical activity. Our credit marketplace has seen some recovery, and insurance revenue more than doubled. We continue to evolve our insurance offer and recently signed a new carrier agreement to extend further into home insurance. Latin America organic growth was 6% of the year. The main driver in Brazil was consumer services, supported by free membership growth of 96 million. In B2B, the weaker macro backdrop and uncertainty surrounding Brazil's fiscal policy position suppressed B2B growth. We continue to evolve our business strategy, adding new products and selling more solutions comprising data, analytics, and software. And we're encouraged by the strength of our new business and product pipeline. We've introduced new scores, enriched our data with income and consumer permission sources, and we continue to leverage the Ascend platform. Now with ClearSell, we have a much larger data set to combine fraud and credit assets and bring very differentiated offers to our clients. Strengthening consumer services reflects membership growth and higher membership engagement across more propositions. It was a record year for LIMP and NOME. With 75 million consumers in Brazil and today in some form of delinquency, we are well-placed to help people to resolve their debts through the platform as they navigate Brazil's high interest rate environment. Marketplace, subscriptions, and digital wallet were all positive contributors. The UK and I was up 1% for the year organically, with an improving consumer services trend compensating for more modest B2B revenue progress against a subdued market backdrop. In B2B, we're pleased with progress in new business. A growing number of clients are now going live on the Ascend platform, including several major retail banks. While we have more work to do to drive product adoption, we're confident that we will see widespread adoption of Ascend as a default analytic sandbox solution across the UK market. and that will further strengthen our market position and provide us with new growth opportunities. UK Consumer Services has made very good progress. We've stepped up the rate of new product delivery and introduced more personalized journeys for members. Our marketplace lender panel is also now much stronger as we've created more opportunities for lenders to extend credit efficiently via the Activate platform, and this has helped us to outperform the overall credit market. ILEAN Asia Pacific performed consistently well across this year. Growth was evenly balanced and broad-based across our markets. And importantly, revenue for new product introductions is becoming a more meaningful growth driver. The ILEAN integration is going well. It's ahead of our buy plan, and we're seeing really strong synergy execution. Now, reflecting on our progress over a longer period of time, our revenue growth has now averaged 8% organic since FY20. with good operating leverage into EBIT, cash flow, and EPS performance. And when you consider that this too includes a six-year period where we had a pandemic, a major war in Europe, unprecedented rationing of interest rates globally, and followed by a fairly significant credit downturn. So we've got good confidence in the outlook for the business, irrespective of the macro environment. And just as a reminder, if we go even further back to the financial crisis, we also grew our business in that period too. Our strategy has been to position our business to take advantage of growth opportunities, enabling us to outperform underlying credit conditions. Experian is a fundamentally changed business from what it was even 10 years ago and a very different business since the global financial crisis. Today, we do many more things. Our health, automotive, and targeting businesses, for example, combined are now almost equal in size to our North America CI business. Consumer services address a much greater TAM than it did in the past and have been fundamentally transformed. We're now one of the world's largest consumer financial platforms with trusted relationships with consumers at scale. And we'll continue to become even more relevant to consumers' lives, entering into new areas to provide more ways for people to instantly borrow, save, protect, and spend. We've done this through consistent application of our strategic framework, which should by now be all very familiar to you. It's a constant for us, and it's the lens through which we consider all investments in our business. I want to comment now in more detail on some of the recent strategic accomplishments, starting with B2B financial services, where product and platform momentum is building, and we've introduced some significant new products. As our markets evolve, the requirement for continued improvements in process drives opportunity, and we see this in demand for better data, new data, and better solutions. We also see demand for a more holistic view of risk across credit underwriting, fraud, and compliance risk. It's an accelerating trend, which helps us drive efficiency for our clients and presents us with new growth opportunities, which we are uniquely positioned. And we're addressing these opportunities through expanding our data assets, developing new analytics, as well as the continued evolution expansion and expansion of platforms like the Ascend technology platform. Cashflow analytics is a good example, which can provide a predictive uplift by up to 25% when combined with pure data and give a more comprehensive view of risk. and we are also positioned to be the leader in consumer contributed data. Verification records continue to expand in North America where we also continue to make very good progress adding new client logos. Ascend platform adoption continues to increase. Ascend Sandbox is best in class for model development and it has very strong momentum with a record year for signings in North America and a large number of anchor tenants going live in the UK. We've now developed new modules which are now in proof of concept to help clients take full advantage of the breadth of our capability in an easy-to-consume and seamless way. Fraud is a large market opportunity and we took important steps this year to extend our suite of products. We did this through homegrown capabilities like Fraud Sandbox and by acquiring assets like NeuroID, which we've since incorporated onto the Ascend platform. Our ambition is to have the best fraud assets delivered through the Ascent platform to help us expand across the client lifecycle, and we're making good progress. Some of our best growth opportunities are in our verticals, which now account for around 21% of our revenue. In health, Wave, now called Patient Access Curator, has been a great addition to our product suite, which has driven greater client wallet share. We've also invested in opportunities to extend our collection suite, which is critical to the financial viability of healthcare providers. Our auto business addresses a broad range of industry needs, which include credit, marketing, and fraud. It has a good track record of resilience because of its diversity. For example, our marketing solutions, which help clients stimulate the market when vehicles sell so slow, was one of our fastest growth drivers last year, and demands for vehicle history reports rise when the secondhand car market is strong. In targeting, our business has become progressively more digital. This expands the way advertisers can reach target audiences. The acquisition of Audigent expands this platform. While historically we have had strong relationships with the buy side of the digital ad industry, Audigent's business is more focused on the supply side. And this is the side of the industry that supplies the ad industry and ad inventory, and therefore is a very complementary asset, positioning Experian to be a leader in identity activation technology. Consumer services has become one of our core growth engines. We've expanded membership, built engagement, introduced new offers, and more personalized experiences. In North America, we put more value into premium services, helping members to save money, which drives higher premium enrollment rates. At the same time, we've introduced highly personalized recommendations and more relevant product experiences to drive loyalty and build engagement. Experian Activate has been a key accelerant in both the US and the UK credit marketplaces. We've onboarded more lending partners to our panels through Activate who use it to drive up loan approval rates. We've also introduced consumer-facing propositions like no ding decline in the US and a much improved experience for our UK members. Our insurance marketplace continues to make very good progress. Do it for me solutions find policies for our members through rate monitoring and I mentioned that we're now expanding further into home insurance, the next logical step for our insurance marketplace. We're also evaluating new opportunities where we can leverage our scaled audiences into. In Brazil, we started to explore new opportunities in the insurance market, focused initially on low-cost insurance. Strategic investments like these continue to drive consumer services forward, and we're actively exploring new horizons to further extend our opportunity. Now, we've achieved this at the same time as we've greatly enhanced consumer services EBIT margins. We also completed several acquisitions in FY25, all of which are excellent strategic fits. Three of the larger acquisitions are shown here, and all of them have got off to a very good start. ILION transforms our position in Australia and New Zealand by combining the number two and number three consumer bureaus and gives us a wider and very complementary product footprint. We're very pleased with progress in the first six months, and we're on track to realize material synergies. Audigent is a business we partnered with and held a minority stake in before we acquired it in December 2024. It continues our journey into digital marketing and ad tech, which we view as a foundational capability that spans really the entirety of our client base. Audigent builds on our industry-leading data assets, our modeling capabilities, and on the tap-out acquisition. and it provides us with access to context-based audiences through over 300 publisher integrations. As I mentioned, this strengthens our relationship on the supply side of the digital ad industry, and it further rounds out our portfolio. ClearSale is a highly complimentary acquisition for Sarasa, and it gives us industry-leading fraud capabilities. It's a scaled and comprehensive data asset which, combined with our existing data assets and capabilities, gives us unsurpassed portfolio breadth in Brazil. We're very excited about the opportunity to combine this with credit risk to create superior offers. In summary, we've made very strong strategic progress and we'll continue this direction where more of our revenue is generated from products, from new products now at around 1.8 billion. We drive deeper adoption of Ascend and our other integrated platforms where clients can consume multiple solutions across software analytics fraud, as well as data. And we access a greater set of opportunities across high-growth vertical segments, and we deepen our engagement with a large installed base of consumer members across a wider set of consumer offers. And with that, let me turn to Lloyd for the financial overview.

Thanks, Brian, and morning, everyone. As you've seen, we delivered another strong performance in FY25 with organic revenue growth in line with our growth framework and strong margin expansion. For the full year, total revenue of constant currency grew by 8%, of which 7% was organic. Benchmark EBIT from ongoing activities grew 11% at constant rates and 8% at actual rates. EBIT growth converted well into EPS growth of 11% at constant rates and 8% at actual rates. Operating cash flow was over $2 billion with 97% conversion. We invested $1.9 billion organically and inorganically to grow and strategically enhance the business. And on our growing capital base, we continue to generate very high returns on capital employed of around 17% post-tax for the year. We've announced a full year dividend of 62.5 cents per share, up 7% on the prior year. And finally, we remain strongly financed with our net debt to EBITDA leverage at 1.8 times below our 2 to 2.5 times target range. Over the past five years, despite market backdrops, we've delivered consistently strong results, underlining the increasing strength and breadth of our portfolio and our strategic progress across our growth initiatives. Since FY20, we've grown revenue at an 8% compound annual growth rate. Benchmark EBIT grew 9% compound over this period, with margins expanding by 130 basis points in aggregate. We converted this to a 9% compound growth in benchmark earnings per share, and we've been very cash generative, growing at an 11% compound rate to over $2 billion. So since FY20, we've therefore expanded EPS by around 50%, and operating cash flow by over 65%. Looking at this performance through a segmental lens, on the left, you can see that we've scaled our consumer business considerably since FY20, with revenue nearly doubling. And as we've engaged our growing member base with an increasing breadth of product to help them navigate their financial lives, our membership revenue has grown at a 9% compound rate, and marketplace has grown at over 30%, to over $2 billion for the consumer segment in aggregate. And on the right of the chart, you can see how this scaling has led to a 550 basis points margin uplift to 27.4%, which is now broadly in line with our group margin. In B2B, we've grown consistently over this period, adding $1.5 billion in revenue over five years. Despite the effects of a softer lending environment over the last two years, Our financial services segment has grown consistently and well, with a 6% compound growth since FY20. And at the same time, our growth verticals of health, automotive, targeting, and data quality have performed very well, with 8% compound growth to over $1.5 billion in revenue. And importantly, these verticals are largely uncorrelated with the underlying credit market and have scaled to be margin accretive to the group. On the right, you can see we generated a strong 31% and consistent EBIT margin across these businesses. And this consistent margin is after the investments we've made in our technology transformation, the scaling of our verifications and ascend business, and of course the recent impact of the software lending environment. As our business scales, as dual run costs abate, and at some point we see broad-based lending recovery, we would expect greater financial flexibility for investment and growth. Looking now at more recent trends, as you've heard from Brian, we delivered consistent growth through the year, with the diversification and resilience of our portfolio offsetting a still subdued lending environment. Organic growth in Q4 improved to 7% in our traditionally strong finish to the year, supported by broad-based strengthening in North America B2B and consumer services offsetting modestly lower than expected Latin America revenue. Total revenue growth in Q4 was 10% following the contribution from our acquisitions. Looking at organic revenue growth across the segments, on the left-hand chart, you can see our quarterly trend in B2B, where we saw good momentum across recent quarters, with a traditionally strong finish to the year, with growth increasing from 6% in Q3 to 8% in Q4. North America was the key driver, with growth in the core bureau improving, And as expected, we also saw a step up in North American verticals of health, automotive, and targeting. On the right-hand side, you can see our consumer services segment trends in total and excluding our data breach business. As we've mentioned, in FY24 and early FY25, we secured several large one-off data breach contracts following elevated levels of breach activity in the market. And as you can see, excluding data breach, underlying growth firm through the first three quarters of the year and remained strong in Q4. Turning now to FY24 Q4 regional growth trends. North America grew 10% organically in Q4, with B2B growing 12%. Within B2B, the Bureau delivered mid-teens growth and excluding mortgage profile revenue grew 8% in the quarter. Our Ascend modules continue to perform very well, particularly Ascend marketing. Clarity Services also maintained recent double-digit growth. Overall lending continued to be subdued and was similar to recent quarters. Mortgage profile revenue grew 66% on volumes that were down modestly. Automotive accelerated to 16% where new business wins and expected pricing actions helped deliver strong growth. Targeting strengthened in Q4, to growing 5% as our digital identity and activation offerings continue to scale. Health growth accelerated to 12%, benefiting from good cross-sell progress in areas such as patient access, coverage discovery, and digital front door. And our successful wave acquisition that Brian mentioned has moved into the organic base and continues to perform well. Consumer services grew 5% in Q4, similar to recent quarters. Data breach was a headwind to growth as we lapped contracts in the prior year. Excluding this impact, growth was 14%. Subscription grew high single digits as new financial health features contributed to higher enrollments. Marketplace maintained recent double-digit growth as auto insurance continued to grow very strongly. And in the credit marketplace, the loans vertical increased did well, and credit cards returned to growth. Credit cards benefited in the quarter from the noting decline launch that Brian mentioned and positive partner supply movements. Organic growth in Latin America was 3% in Q4. In Brazil, continued macro uncertainty tempered some client activity, and bureau revenue growth was in line with Q3 at 1%. Targeting revenue reflected a one-off client revenue received in the prior period. And consumer services was up 17% with broad-based growth across our propositions. Lempinomate performed well with good conversion rates. Our payments capabilities benefited from increased volumes and good client acquisition. And our marketplace was strong as we made strides to optimize the customer journey in our ecosystem. The UK&I was consistent through the half with one-half organic revenue growth. Bureau growth was in line with our performance in Q3. We're progressing with our strategic innovations, though are still subdued credit environment-moderated growth, and we signed numerous Ascend sandbox trial contracts and are progressing well towards client conversions. Targeting in automotive was down 9% in the quarter, reflecting the specific client actions to insource some activity we mentioned in previous quarters. Decisioning was up 2%, and we had good growth in experience data quality, driven by our innovative Aperture Data Studio, and our single data quality management platform. Consumer services grew 6%, maintaining recent strength. Marketplace continued its recent good growth. And our leading Activate platform drove strength in our lender panel and continued to contribute to good conversion rates. Subscription revenue grew modestly, driven by increasing enrollments. And in EMEA and Asia Pacific, growth for the quarter was 8%, consistent with the performance in Q3, following strong decision growth in Australia, New Zealand, and Southern Europe, as well as good growth across the Bureau. Turning now to EBIT margin, where we delivered 90 basis points of organic constant currency margin expansion ahead of our guidance. As you'll recall, we communicated that our dual run costs related to our cloud transition are peaking in FY25 and FY26. And despite this headwind, we made strong progress. Our scaling consumer platform and verticals, along with early benefits from our cloud program, drove margin outperformance for the year. Consumer services business continued to drive operating leverage as we further engaged our scaled member base with an expanded product suite. B2B margin was largely stable, with good underlying operating leverage offset by investments in areas such as our cloud transformation, verifications, and fraud propositions. For the year, there was a 20 basis point dilutive impact from acquisitions, along with a 20 basis points headwind from foreign exchange. And we therefore delivered 50 basis points of margin expansion at actual rates. At a regional level, margins in North America, the UK and Ireland, and EMEA and Asia Pacific contributed to group margin, whilst Latin America margins reflected currency changes and acquisitions. Onto benchmark earnings per share, where we delivered double-digit growth of 11% at constant FX and 8% at actual rates. EBIT grew 11% at constant currency following good revenue growth and 70 basis points of EBIT margin expansion at constant rates. Higher acquisition-driven interest expense was offset by a modestly lower tax rate relative to last year. So this translated to an 11% EPS growth at constant currency and 8% at actual rates. Taking a look at our usual statutory reconciliation, our benchmark profit before tax grew 8% at actual FX rates, driven by the revenue performance and good margin progression. Acquisition-related expenses decreased modestly to $37 million. There was little change in the fair value of contingent consideration on prior acquisitions. We incurred $50 million of costs in relation to our technology-enabled restructuring program and recovered $11 million of costs relating to prior legal matters. Statutory PBT before non-cash items was therefore up 6%. Amortization of acquisition intangibles increased to $211 million. And non-cash financing remeasurements were $89 million, driven by remeasurements of Brazilian intragroup funding and interest rate swaps, leaving statutory profit before tax largely flat at $1549 million. Now taking a look at cash flow and return on capital, the left-hand chart here shows shows our long-term operating cash flow and conversion metrics. As you can see from the slide, we've progressively increased our operating cash flow, growing at an 11% compound rate since FY20. In FY25, we generated over $2 billion of operating cash flow at a 97% conversion rate. And a key part of our growth framework is to continue to use our cash generation to invest in high return on capital growth opportunities. And on the right, you can see our disciplined use of capital where we've significantly grown our capital base whilst delivering consistently high post-tax returns. Notwithstanding this investment, we remain below our target leverage range, giving us continued flexibility to invest in value-creating opportunities. As we discussed last year, we've significantly progressed with our cloud transformation program. The chart on the left shows the mix of our capital investments which has materially shifted from infrastructure to development as our cloud program has progressed and is driving widespread innovation across our business. Our CapEx to sales ratio has reduced from 9.5% to 8.7% of revenue. And as our cloud transition completes and we continue to gain scale benefits, we expect this to trend to 7% of revenue. Last year, we outlined that in our largest North American and Brazilian business, we were around 50% processing in the cloud. We've progressed very well this year and are now around 70% and well on the way to our expected position of over 85% by this time next year. In the UK and I and EMEA and Asia Pacific, progress is continuing well and we'll approach 50% in the cloud by this time next year. As we approach the latter stages of the program, we expect to redirect activity into innovation and benefit from reduced dual run costs and lower change-related capital investment. On now to acquisitions. And as you've heard from Brian, we made a number of strategic acquisitions during the year, spending over $1.2 billion in support of our key priorities. And following the end of the year, we completed the previously announced ClearSail acquisition. We expect the aggregate impact of the acquisitions completed in FY25, along with ClearSail, to contribute 3% to revenue growth in FY26. And on that note, onto our modeling considerations for the year ahead. And these relate to our results from ongoing activities. As previously mentioned, we expect 6% to 8% organic revenue growth for the full year and a 3% contribution from completed acquisitions. And whilst we're mindful of the uncertain outlook of the global economy, we've built a diversified and very resilient portfolio which has consistently demonstrated that and grown through different economic cycles and macro effects. We expect revenue growth to continue to come with good margin progression of 30 to 50 basis points at constant currency, including the effects of completed acquisitions. Based on recent FX rates, we expect FX to be neutral to both revenue and EBIT growth. We expect net interest for the year to be around 190 million, which reflects incremental debt associated with acquisitions and higher rates as some of our interest fixing expire. This represents a net interest cost on net debt of around 3.7% and continues to benefit from our historic rate fixing. The benchmark tax rate is expected to be around 26%. The weighted average number of shares is expected to remain 914 million for the year. CapEx is expected to be around 8% to 9% of revenue. We expect cash flow conversion to be over 90% for the year ahead. And we've announced a share buyback program of up to $200 million to be completed for the year as a whole. And finally, as we've discussed over the last couple of years, we've been making excellent progress with our Ascend technology platform and with bundling our unique breadth of services for clients. With that success, the data and decisioning service lines no longer represent how we go to market. Our data, software, fraud, and analytics propositions are increasingly integrated into our SM technology platform. So going forward, we'll therefore now report these together in a single financial services line. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, our automotive health and marketing services businesses continue to scale very well, and these will be reported together as our vertical service line. And we'll report against these service lines from Q1 FY26, and provide comparative information to enable models to be updated. We'll also, of course, continue to provide narrative on growth on service lines within these, such as membership, marketplace, et cetera. And with that, I'll hand you back to Brian for some closing comments.

Great. Thanks, Lloyd. So in closing, we've ended the year very strongly with good momentum. We delivered very well in FY25 on revenue, EBIT, and we deployed capital to sustain and build on our strategic progress. We've also delivered on the medium-term framework we laid out last year, and our confidence in this will grow further as we execute on our technology transformation program. For FY26, we've had a good start to the year, and while there is some broader macro uncertainty around, we are on track for another year of solid growth. And with that, I'm now going to hand back to the operator for your questions. Operator, over to you.

Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 11 on your telephone keypad and wait for a name to be announced. To withdraw a question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by, we'll compile the Q&A roll studies. We'll take a few moments. And now we're going to take our first question. And it comes from Ryan Flight from Jefferies. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Good morning, all. Ryan Flight from Jefferies here. Just free from me, if I may. First one, pretty broad on North America B2C. I wondered if you could give us a guide on the data breach comps going into next year. And with that, perhaps some guidance on the appetite of lenders in the credit marketplace and an update on the run rate of insurance. Number two question, you know, Latam B2B has obviously had a bit of an up and down year with a little bit of softness in Q4. I wonder if you could give us some more color there and perhaps the outlook going into Q1, Q2 next year. And then final question on ANZ post the Illion acquisition. I wanted you to guide us on how we think about growth and margin going forward, please.

Sure. A lot of growth and margin questions there in terms of color. So, Lloyd, do you want to start?

Yeah, sure. So, morning, Ryan. If you go to the slide I presented on consumer, you can see the effects of the data breach drag. So, Q1... fairly similar drag to Q4. So if you think about the outlook for first quarter growth, I think we're likely to start the year pretty similar to where we ended it. So around 7%, the middle of the range, about 9% excluding data breach. And then the data breach drag obviously reduces sequentially then in Q2 onwards. In terms of the marketplace, insurance marketplace continues strong. So We said we thought we'd finish the year with annualized quarterly run rate of about 100 million, and we did. So we did $25 million of revenue in Q4. So really great progress there in opening up that insurance opportunity. And in credit marketplace, we saw, I mentioned in my comments, that we saw the credit card marketplace actually return to growth in the quarter. Loans has been in growth for a number of quarters, but we saw the credit card marketplace return growth, which is, I think, an important step. So I think overall, the consumer growth you can see has been strong. As we look out, I think probably membership growth is maybe a little lighter in the year ahead than the strong growth we saw. Typically, we see that as some of the The marketplace growth is stronger, but continue really good progress. If I go to LATAM B2B, as I mentioned, if you think you stand back from the LATAM macro, you're seeing a rate tightening cycle in Brazil. The interest rate was risen last week. So that's really reflective in the core bureau. It's overall stable from Q3 into Q4. it was really volatility in some of our newer verticals like Agri and our banking as a service vertical that drove some of the volatility in Q4. We clearly enter some easier comps into the new year, so I think Brazil improves from here, but we're probably in a mid to high single digit given the macro in Brazil rather than double digit. I think we'll need to see the economy improve before we get back to those kind of higher levels of growth. And then in ANZ, the alien acquisition is going very well. We've been really pleased with that acquisition and the team that have joined us and really well progressed with a lot of the integration activities, a lot of technology integration there that we've been working on. And you will see sequentially the effect of that on the EMEA Asia Pacific margin as we go through the next couple of years. So good progress expected on the EMEA Asia Pacific margin. Thank you.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Yes, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. So first of all, it's regarding your guidance for fiscal year 2026 organic revenue growth. Can you please provide more color on the underlying assumptions for the bottom and top end of your guided range? And also considering, as you also mentioned, that the headwinds from data bridge solutions annualize at the end of H1. Should we assume potentially an acceleration of organic growth in H2, assuming that all else stays equal? And then another question is on the marketplace, specifically if you can talk about the growth expectations for 2026. and also provide more color on marketplace, specifically for North America. Thank you.

Hi, Sonia. Just, I suppose, a bit of overall color on FY26. You know, we're at the start of the year. There's a long way to go, and so we always start out with a range. I think we were very clear in the comments that we've started this year well, but obviously we're only a month into it. There is a bit more uncertainty around, no surprise, given everything that's been happening. So a bit more difficult kind of to predict what the sort of back end of the year might look like. You know, I think we haven't assumed that there's going to be any sort of significant change in the operating environment. And by that we mean it's a relatively stable environment. We haven't seen any notable change in behavior from clients. I think everybody is looking, watching, waiting, but no deterioration. And, you know, I think that's sort of fed into our performance. So we're not expecting a sort of very strong recovery. We're not expecting a sort of very strong deterioration either. So it's a sort of stable backdrop that we assume going into it. You know, there will obviously be, you know, some lines of business that will improve. You mentioned data breach will have some, you know, will have some easier comps with that as well. But it also has some very high growth rates in some of the business lines, which I think is at this stage in the year, a little difficult to forecast out for a longer period of time. I'll let Lloyd come back on the FY26 guidance in a bit more than a second. Let me just comment on the marketplace. I think we're seeing strong growth in marketplace actually in FY25 and really across all the three marketplaces that we have for slightly different reasons. FY25 was a very strong year in insurance in North America. We're very pleased with that performance, and we think that that's a long-term strategic growth opportunity for us. Some of the growth rates we saw in quarters were very significant. I'm not sure we'll always be able to do that every quarter, but our belief is that that will continue to be a very long-term growth opportunity for us. We certainly saw a pickup in the marketplaces in the last quarter and we saw that really across three different markets. Brazil marketplace performed very well and actually that's quite interesting because I think we've had an interest rate tightening period in Brazil yet we're starting to see the panel build, we're starting to see more utilization of that and I think that's something that we've been building for quite some time and I think when we get into a better interest rate environment we'd expect that business to really And we're very pleased with the UK marketplace, which is actually outperforming the underlying credit market. So, you know, I think we feel good about the outlook for marketplaces in FY26. And, you know, I think it'll probably be a bit more broad-based in terms of growth than it was in FY25, particularly in North America, which was led by insurance. I think we'll have, you know, a bit more growth across all the different pieces there. Lloyd?

Yeah, so I guess a couple of things, Samara. I think if you look at how we've finished the year and this last year overall, I think how that might develop into the year ahead, clearly we think for the year as a whole, this coming year is going to be a bit better in LATAM than the Q4 growth rate that we finished. On the other side, if you exclude data breach, which was the number you were pointing to, North America grew in Q4 over 12%. So I don't think that's a good mid-case forecast for the year ahead overall either. So you take those two together, that's really what frames how we came up with our range. Clearly, we're starting well. I think the longer that we see those trends in the business continue, I think that bodes well for the range of outcomes for the year, but there's always a range of potentials. I think probably the other thing just to say overall is, as Brian mentioned, marketplace is going well. We've clearly had a very strong growth this last year on membership. probably the North American membership number growth rate will be a little lighter in the year ahead as we lap those. So those are all the things in the balance of the six to eight.

Thank you. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from Andrew Ripper from Panamua Liberum. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Yeah, morning, everybody. Well done on the results. I've got three as well, if that's allowed. First of all, just want to cover restructuring. I think it was about 50 million you took this year and you flagged 20 to 30 coming in FY26. Wanda Lloyd, if you can talk about what you expect the benefit from that to be in terms of cost out and will that 20 to 30 million be the last of it? That's question one.

Do you want to give the rest of the questions, Andrew? Give us all three and then we'll answer.

Okay. Then second question. In the presentation, you flagged the improvement in consumer profitability, which I think has been about five percentage points over the last sort of five or six years. I just wonder if you can give us a flavor for that. The difference in profitability across the consumer business by region and a sense of where you expect profitability to go over the medium term is the more to go for on the margin or do you think it'll end up being a few percentage points below B2B? And then the final question really was just about share of wallets, particularly things like Ascend, just wondering if you can bring to life for us where you are in that process of trying to sell more stuff to clients as a platform and bring to life how much further you think there is to go there because my sense is there's a long way to go from sort of tier one banks down. Thanks. Those are the three.

Yeah, thanks, Andrew. Lloyd, do you want to deal with the restructuring one and the consumer profitability question? I'll come back on this end.

Yeah, sure. So as we mentioned last year, we're coming towards the end stages of the technology restructuring and all of the costs associated with the dual running of those programs and the delivery of of technology changes all in our normal P&L. But what you have as you shift from one technology platform to another is a skills mix to implement in terms of the workforce. So we've had restructuring, which is essentially a redundancy program this year as we implement that. And what you see actually is the benefit of that in the organic margin delivery of the group. If you go back a year, We guided to 30 to 50 basis points each year across five years, and we said that the first two years would be the toughest. And what you've seen is that we've outperformed on that basis in the first year, and our guidance organically is to do the same in year two, so the two toughest years. And that's really showing the benefit of, A, the scale in the business, but also the benefit of the restructuring. I think in terms of the technology change, that's likely to be at the end of it, but if we have opportunities to change the business, to deliver better profitability performance, then of course we'll do those whenever we see them. In terms of consumer profitability, I think in any individual year, I think it really depends on what opportunities we're pursuing. you stand back from it. We're only really just getting started with the opportunities to grow into the product breadth that we can help consumers. And everybody knows that as you build an audience in a consumer platform, that's quite expensive. You then get to distribute a real breadth of product to them. So I'm very optimistic if you look out over the very long term for what our consumer business can do. We won't give a target end margin, but I think you can see the trajectory of the business is very positive as it's, as it's scaled.

I think just as an addendum to that, I think, you know, sort of six years or so ago when you sort of started up Brazil, you lost money for a few years. Where are you now in terms of sort of LATAM versus North American margin on the consumer side?

We won't give individual margins, but I would say that all three of our scale businesses have very good margins. The Brazil margin is still a bit below the North American margin, but improving very rapidly as it scales. We've got a lot of innovations at breadth to bring to that audience. As I say, over the long run, that bodes well. In an individual year, of course, you have to invest. So you look back four years, people might not have expected that we would open up an insurance marketplace and think about the addressable market that is available to us there. Well, we've got lots of other ideas in our mind's eye for what we can do with this audience and look forward to talking to you about those in the coming years.

And Andrew, coming back to you on your point, your question about Ascend, I think your presumption is right. There is a long runway to go. It's been a very successful set of product suites that we've introduced, and you really look at the penetration of that. The U.S. has seen the biggest level of success in that, particularly with Ascend Sandbox, but also Ascend Marketing. We're having a lot of traction with it in other markets, but we're still actually at very early stages And those were the individual modules. And we have further products which are coming, which we referred to, things like AscendOps we talked about before. Also on the regulatory front as well, we think there's a big opportunity. As we sort of migrate people onto the Ascend technology platform, that takes two formats, really. It's sort of existing clients sort of moving consumption of products away from legacy to products consumed through the Ascend technology platform. There's actually been a huge amount of work on that. That gives rise to additional upsell opportunities in a way which is much easier than it has been in the past. So I think the runway is still very significant, both in some individual modules, but with respect to the overall technology platform, both in the US and actually across our broader footprint geographically.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from the line of Scott Wurzel from Wolf Research. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

All right. Good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my questions. Just two from me here. First one, just on the North American Bureau side, wondering if you maybe observed any, you know, pull forward on the auto side of the business, given, you know, the potential tariffs that are coming about in the U.S., and then My second question would just be on the consumer services side. I'm wondering if you can maybe share your thoughts on the cyclical sensitivity of that business. I imagine there is some counter cyclical nature to consumers wanting to have more insight on their credit performance during times of macro stress. So maybe any thoughts on cyclical sensitivities that would be helpful. Thanks.

Yeah, thanks for the question. There was a bit of pull forward in auto in our Q4. It was not significant. So, you know, the underlying performance is actually driven by, you know, good actions across the business and new product introductions and also price benefits. So while there was a little bit, I think it helped it. It was a very strong quarter in Q4. We still expect auto to deliver a very good year next year. The second question on the counter cyclicality of credit products.

Yeah, I think if you look back, What we've seen is that the membership product that we have has traditionally been really strong throughout all periods, actually, if you look at the average growth rates, but stronger at times of stress. I think if you look last year, as we started to see, there were some data breaches in the external environment, so people come to us looking to help protect their identity. And also some of the strains in the global macro really help that business. So that's why we're growing high single-digit, and that's our biggest business inside the consumer business in North America. So I think traditionally that has been a counter-cyclical piece to our business. I think the insurance vertical is strong structural growth. I don't think we see that as particularly cyclical, and that's obviously growing quite materially as a share of our platform. Core financial marketplace is a bit more cyclical and obviously we're coming off very depressed levels and we saw the credit card marketplace move into strong double-digit growth actually in the quarter for the first time in a couple of years. So those are some of the moving bits.

Thank you. And now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just to go back to this guidance range of 6% to 8%, please. I know you said you had a good start to 1Q. Does that mean you're closer to the midpoint of this range for the first quarter? Just to clarify that. Second one, on the margin expansion, clearly you've exceeded the margin guidance for FY25, despite the drag from FX and M&A. How do you see the puts and takes from organic and M&A contribution to margins in FY26? And maybe related to that, I think in the B2B slide, the margins in this business have been falling a little bit for the last few years. This is just a reflection of investments or more a question of mix, and how do you see that evolving over the next few years? Thank you.

Okay. The start to the year, I think Q1 will look a lot like Q4 overall. So we're expecting to be in the middle of the 6% to 8% range. We've got a similar drag from data breach. So I think a strong and robust performance expected in Q1. Clearly, as you go out in the year as a whole, we have a broader range. As you would expect, we run lots of different sensitivities and scenarios on macro. But 6% to 8% for the year as a whole, starting in the middle. On margin, yeah, we had a very strong year, as you said. I think that bodes well. This year, last year, and this year ahead are the two toughest years across our five-year plan. So that we're outperforming, I think, is good. In the 30 to 50 basis point, guide for the year ahead. There's about a 30 basis point drag from the acquisitions. So the organic margin development is actually stronger than that, which shows the strength of the portfolio. And of course, the drag that we have from acquisitions, we get back later in the plan as we integrate and are able to take cost out. So that, again, bodes well for our flexibility for investment in the latter part of the plan.

Thank you. And just one on B2B margins, please.

Yes, B2B margins. So as I mentioned, if you look back, B2B margin overall has been flat, but we've had the impact of the buildup of dual run costs for the cloud transformation are in that B2B margin. You've also got the investments in things like verifications and the build of Ascend in there. and the suppressed lending environment. So all of that really is weighing on that B2B margin. And for different reasons, we expect all of those headwinds to turn to tailwinds as we go over the next few years. So, of course, the unknown is what other things we want to invest in, but I think, again, the outlook for the B2B margin is good.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question and it comes from Anne-Lise Vermolen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning, Brian. Good morning, Lloyd. I have three questions as well, please. So on acquisitions, you've clearly already got a decent contribution locked in at 3% for this year. But can we assume you expect to complete further deals in the coming quarters? And perhaps as part of that, can you comment more broadly on the acquisition environment in terms of the assets that you're seeing, valuations, competition, etc. And then equally, if you were to complete further deals, is there any risk to that 30 to 50 bps of margin guidance, given the dilution of those deals initially? Or are you confident in delivering that margin expansion, regardless of any additional acquisitions? And then secondly, just on clear sale, appreciate only closed in early April, I think. But how quickly do you expect to integrate those data assets and realize synergies there? Is that something you expect to do in this financial year? And then lastly, just on mortgage in the U.S., remain strong, but I think it's nearly all pricing, if that's right. What are your expectations for that through the year ahead? Do you expect volumes to remain broadly where they are, given where rates are, macro, et cetera? Thank you.

Great. Thanks. Thank you for the questions. So to deal with the acquisition environment, I'd don't think it's changed that much. I think we always have a very active pipeline, but as you, I think when you look at the acquisitions completed in the last 12 months, I think I've made this point several times, they've actually been in the pipeline for quite some time. And as I referenced, for example, Oligent was a business that we had initially had a minority stake in. So gestation time for these can be quite long and very difficult to know whether they land. The areas that we'll focus on will be the same, building out in line with our strategic priorities. But it's very difficult to say whether we'll sort of, you know, I don't think we'll have as active a year as we did this year, but I think it really depends on, you know, situations as they arise.

I think on the margin point, our guidance is in relation to acquisitions that have already been completed. Obviously, when we make acquisitions, our job is to try and create value by deploying capital. Usually what that means is there's a little bit of a drag in a current year, and then we build to group average margins over time. So any drag you get in a year a bit like my comments earlier, you actually get back in future years. So we obviously can't speculate on acquisitions we haven't seen or announced, but that's usually the effect.

Just coming back to your question on ClearSail, yes, it is very early days, but we're very pleased with what we've seen so far. It's a very strong team there. The business is living up to our expectations in terms of market position. It's actually exceeding our expectations in terms of the quality of the data assets that they have. They're much more extensive than we expected. This is a public company, so whilst we were able to do some diligence, we weren't able to go into great depth on some areas. And actually, we have found that this is a much more comprehensive data asset than than we had planned for, which is terrific news. And I think it gives us great, great confidence that this will materially enhance our propositions across all verticals that we play in, particularly obviously fraud, but also back into credit risk and across the whole portfolio. So we're very pleased with that, and obviously a long way to go on that, but a good start. And then I think you're right in that The mortgage performance this year was largely driven by price. I think next year, you know, the expectation really is linked to the interest rate cycle. And I think while there is sort of latent, I think demand pent up in the mortgage market until we see significant changes in interest rates, I think we're expecting the environment to remain broadly the same. Lloyd, do you want to comment further on that?

Yeah, I think it's sensitive, as Brian said, to the interest rate. If you look back last year, your volumes were a bit higher on reducing expectations for rate in the second quarter, so I think you see a bit of a harder comp on those when we get to the second quarter. Obviously, it's a smallish business for us. I don't think it will continue to get a 60% to 70% pricing benefit. I think that's going to moderate more to 30 to 40% for the year as a whole on flat volume, I think is our base assumption for the year as a whole.

That's great.

Thank you very much. Thanks. Thank you. Now we're going to proceed with our next question. And it comes from Lan of Kelsey Zhu from Autonomous. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I have three questions. So the first one is, You've given us a lot of helpful colors on insurance marketplace and just customer services in general. I was wondering if you can also give us some updates on the other strategic growth drivers, including Ascend power curve and verification services, just the type of growth that you've seen in FY25 and your expectations for FY26. Second question is on Brazil. Just curious to hear your thoughts around that recovery timeline. When do you expect growth to re-accelerate as well as what are some of the key drivers behind that? Is it just macro changes, fiscal policy changes, or are there other drivers that you're looking forward to? And then my last question is on U.S. consumer credits. So obviously we've seen customer confidence fall off the cliff since the start of this year, which historically generally leads to lower customer credit origination activities. And in this context, I was wondering, you know, what are your outlooks for different verticals of customer credits in the U.S. for the next few quarters? Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Okay, let's address these. Let's do the last one first. I think, you know, consumer credit, confidence indexes, you can move around pretty rapidly from quarter to quarter. What we look at more closely is the unemployment rate. It's much more indicative of what the underlying conditions in the market's going to be and how behaviors will play out. They remain strong in the U.S., and I think that also reflects the commentary that you're seeing from major banks and their results, and I think other market players. I think as long as that holds, I think you have a relatively good backdrop. It's interesting that the marketplaces in the US and elsewhere have actually picked up on credit cards and loans in the last quarter. It's almost a sort of surprising thing given the narrative backdrop. So I think that's further evidence that we haven't really seen any impact or any broad impact on that. Obviously, there's a lot of caution and questions and wondering going on, but the conditions on the ground remain broadly as they are, and until something significant changes on that, I think that's the operating environment we're assuming will continue. I think the first question was really on Ascend, PowerCurve, and some of the other verticals. I think broad question on Ascend and PowerCurve as two separate products, or really two groups of products, continue to do very well. You can sort of see that in the commentary in terms of some of the progress we're making in individual markets with things like sandboxes and marketing and others, but also you can see that in the decisioning lines where we've seen growth in lots of different places. So I think that they continue very strongly. Obviously, the big opportunity for us as we go forward is connecting those products, which they are now connected to, send technology platform and get further penetration of that as we go forward. And on the verifications, we continue to make very good progress, both in the US and in the UK. I'll ask Lloyd maybe to give a color on that. So, Lloyd, do you want to pick up on that and then maybe cover off on the Brazil recovery timeline?

Yeah, sure. So, I think, as we've talked about, Kelsey, our strategy is to bring a lot of these products together and to have integrated propositions with clients on the Ascend technology platform. So, We're very much selling these now as integrated propositions. And the progress is really very good. And we've given, I think, quite a bit of color. On verifications, it was a really, really strong year for us. We had really good progress with clients. And we added, most importantly, 8 million unique records. So we were at 54 million this time last year. We're at 62 million. So you can see the progress of continuing to grow our record count, which of course is the real unlock for us in that market. And as Brian said, good progress in the UK as well. On Brazil, I think if you look at where we finished Q4, I think certainly the year ahead is better than that overall. I think the key unlock to getting back to double-digit growth, though, is an improvement in the macro. So you're still in the rate-tightening part of the cycle in Brazil. I think you need to see that come to a different place before you start to see a very strong recovery in the core bureau. But we've got a lot of assets now in Brazil outside of core credit. With ClearSale, we've got a unique fraud asset. Combining our proposition and theirs, we've got Ascend and analytics products that are building out and being distributed. And of course, we've got a unique consumer platform. So I think we feel very good about the breadth of the platform we have in Brazil to be able to continue to grow well. But very elevated levels of growth, I think, require a more positive macro tailwind.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And it comes from the line of Sylvia Barker from JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Thank you. Hi, morning, everyone. Three from me as well, please. Marketing costs as a proportion of sales stepped down maybe 60 basis points, which I presume was a large part of the improvement in the B2C margin. You now have very impressive scale in terms of consumer relationships. So do we expect that that marketing spend as a proportion of sales might continue to decline or what is a normalized level for that going forward? Second question, as you said, the marketplace continues to be stronger, I guess, on the credit side. So now with credit cards at double digits as well. How do we think about, in theory, it should be quite correlated with the credit bureau. So how do we think about, I guess, the trends and the on the credit marketplace side and in the core credit bureau, maybe how much of that growth is demand versus kind of supply-driven. And then final question, it's still early days on the Ascent technology platform, but have you seen any mixed shift away from transactional revenue at this stage? And maybe can you just remind us of the proportion of transactional revenue at the group level today and where you hope that might be in five years' time, let's say? Thanks.

Great. Thank you. So on the consumer services marketing point, you can see that's broadly maintained year on year. It is a sort of strategic asset for us. We take decisions year on year as to what that should be and where we see opportunities to invest behind specific products or specific market events. We do that. And I think we control that very well. I think you would Probably that's at a very good level. It could go up slightly. It could more or less stay the same. So I don't think it's materially different to where it is today as a proportion of revenues. I think on the credit side, I think that one point to say about marketplaces and broader bureaus, they aren't perfectly correlated because, one, they're concentrated on individual product groups. such as cards and loans, which is only a fraction of the market. They're concentrated on one channel in the market and not the broad market. And of course, there's no perfect correlation between the clients across bureau and across marketplace, so you can see different trends. But generally speaking, I think if you see positive trends in marketplace in card and loans, you expect that to be a good indicator that clients are feeling confident about extending credit to certain customer groups at least. And then on the Ascend technology platform, we are on the very early stages of that. We've seen a lot of product migrations across there. Most of those migrations have been on subscription-based products today. So we've seen a lot of cross-core migrations. We've seen a lot of power curve migrations. So no major makeup there. What we have seen and what I think we will see increasingly more of is more and more of what batch-related revenue will move on to Ascend technology platform, particularly Ascend Sandbox. And that will give us a much more recurring revenue stream for that particular activity that we have. And you actually saw a little bit of that in Brazil in the last quarter, actually. So, you know, I think that's a very positive move because it moves into a sort of more away from a one-off and more towards recurring revenue stream. So early days, but I think we, you know, we're optimistic about that. I don't think that to date that's really changed the makeup, the mix of the Lloyds.

No, no, I think, you know, clearly... As we progress with the scaling of Ascend, every year we see more revenue with those clients, and this is our strategic intent. It comes from bundled and platform propositions, and more of it is software and less of it is transactional. But it doesn't change the percentage at a group level of about 50% in any one year. But our intent is clear. to have integrated workflow platforms, and that would be how we increasingly go to market with clients.

Right, thank you.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from Arthur Truslove from Citi. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Thank you very much, and good morning. A couple from me, if I may. The first one was just around the consumer business in the US. Are you able to just say, you know, provide the split of revenue in percentage terms again, so between the subscription business, the marketplace lending business, the marketplace insurance business, data breach, and indeed anything else, and also just give an idea about how each element of that actually grew. The second question was... Your bureau obviously accelerated pretty nicely in Q4 outside of mortgage as it did in the previous year. Is there anything that you'd sort of consider to be sort of somewhat one-off in there or is it all sort of normal run rate type thing? And then third question, are you able to just remind us how much revenue come from Ascend and Verifications again? I know you've sort of disclosed bits and pieces around that in the past, but just wondered if you could say it again. And I don't know if I missed it, but how much did each of those grow in FY25? Thank you.

Thank you. So let's deal with those and Lloyd can jump in. On the consumer business, I don't think we give out the split of revenue, but I think broadly breaking it down through the commentary and the slides, you know, we had a strong year in membership. We had a strong year in insurance. We had a more muted year in cards and loans, although I think we've said that that actually came back fairly strongly in Q4. So, you know, broad-based growth crossed lots of different product lines and skewed in that direction. On the Bureau Q4 acceleration outside of mortgage, no, there weren't any particular one-offs. I think it just reflects the underlying performance of the business. We always have a strong Q4, so that's not unusual. It's not one-off. It's sort of recurring Q4 surge. So I think we're confident about where we stand at the level of business that we have in the Bureau. And then on the revenue breakdown from Ascend and Verification?

Yeah, so obviously, as I just mentioned, increasingly selling bundled platforms. So the individual product revenue is much less relevant. So within that, we've seen very good progress on Ascend, continued penetration with clients. I think in Brian's comments earlier, you can see the progress on that. Experian Verify, again, continued to grow very well. And as I mentioned, the growth in record count, I think, was exceptional this year and well ahead of our plans with 8 million records added. So that, again, shows a lot of progress. But the individual product revenues are less relevant as we sell these as integrated propositions.

Thank you.

Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes from the line of James Rose from Barclays. Your line is open. Please ask the question.

Hi there. I've got two left from myself. The first on margin outlook in FY26. You've already commented that the organic expansion is definitely quite significant. I think from your prior commentary, I sort of assume that it's more skewed towards the consumer side of things. You have perhaps a bigger contribution from maybe LATAM or Marketplace. Is that the case, or is there anything else you particularly call out on, on your margin outlook? And then secondly, touching on your fraud identity business within North America, could you sort of give us an idea of the size of that, and perhaps your specific growth ambitions for that business line, and are you taking share in that space?

So I'll maybe start with margin, and then I'll let Brian talk about fraud. If you go back to the comments I made, so 30 to 50 basis points for the year as a whole, but within that there's about a 30 basis points drag from acquisitions. If you think about where we've made those acquisitions, clearly Brazil is the biggest for a full year with clear sale. So you'll see that I think the B2B margin reflect that in Brazil, so I'll be down a bit. And equally in EMEA Asia Pacific, the B2B margin overall for the group will reflect a slightly lower margin from ILEAN, but that's actually accretive to the margin of EMEA Asia Pacific if you look at it at that level. So I think given the technology transformation costs and the investments and acquisitions landing B2B, I think you'll see a more skewed B2C margin progression in the year ahead and then the drag that we have from those acquisitions and the reversal of the dual run costs start to benefit B2B really from FY27.

And then on the fraud business, I don't think we disclosed the actual size of it, but it is sizable and we're one of the largest players in origination as fraud in North America as we are globally. So it's a big business for us. And we have, I think, a lot of opportunity to grow. And you saw with the Neuro ID acquisition, it's a nice complementary asset to really help build that capability out. We continue to increase the level of organic investment here in new products such as Fraud Sandbox. So it's an area that we've highlighted for continued investment and growth, and we're confident that we'll continue to progress. Obviously, you can see the progression of that very clearly in Brazil over the last few years with the you know, initial acquisition of Bioscan and now ClearSale, which is the first step, really, that we've taken into transaction-related fraud. And so, you know, I think it's an area that we'll continue to really focus on going forward. Great. Thanks so much.

Thank you. Dear speakers, there are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Brian Kassin for any closing remarks.

Great. Well, thank you. That concludes today's session. And thank you, everybody, for joining us. Hope you all have a good day. And we look forward to speaking to you again in July for our Q1 trading update.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Have a nice day.