Equifax Inc Q3 FY2021 Earnings Call

Greetings, and welcome to the Equifax Third Quarter 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Operator provided instructions. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Dorian Hare, Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thanks, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. I'm Dorian Hare. With me today are Mark Begor, Chief Executive Officer; and John Gamble, Chief Financial Officer. Today's call is being recorded. An archive of the recording will be available later today in the IR Calendar section of the News & Events tab on our IR website, www.investor.equifax.com. During the call today, we will be making reference to certain materials that can be also found in the Presentations section of the News & Events tab at our IR website. These materials are labeled Q3 2021 Earnings Conference Call. Also, we will be making certain forward-looking statements, including fourth quarter and full year 2021 guidance as well as a framework for 2022, to help you understand Equifax and its business environment. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Certain risk factors that may impact our business are set forth in our filings with the SEC, including our 2020 Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Also, we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EPS attributable to Equifax and adjusted EBITDA, which will be adjusted for certain items that affect the comparability of our underlying operational performance. These non-GAAP measures are detailed in reconciliation tables, which are included with our earnings release and also posted on our website. Now I'd like to turn it over to Mark.

Thanks, Dorian, and good morning. We had a very strong third quarter and first 9 months of 2021, a continuation of our strong outperformance last year with record revenue in the quarter of $1.223 billion, which was up over 14%, with core non-mortgage market and non-UC, ERC claims revenue growth of 20%. We are executing extremely well against the critical priorities of our EFX2023 strategy, as we highlighted on Slide 4. Our focus on leveraging the new Equifax cloud for innovation, new products and growth is clearly driving our strong financial results. Our revenue growth has accelerated from 3% in 2019, as we were recovering from the 2017 cyber event and investing heavily in our EFX Cloud transformation to 17% last year. We are on track to deliver 19% core growth this year at the midpoint of our revised 2021 guidance. More importantly, our core growth, which excludes the impact of the mortgage market, unemployment claims and ERC-related revenues is expected to accelerate to 21% this year, a powerful figure that reflects the strength of our underlying business model and EFX2023 growth strategy. Not only is our core growth accelerating above historical levels during 2020 and 2021 in challenging COVID markets, and more recently in a declining mortgage market, we are also expanding Equifax beyond our traditional credit bureau routes to a more diverse data analytics and technology company with our investments in the Equifax cloud, new data assets and NPIs, along with reinvesting our outperformance in bolt-on M&A in areas such as talent, government and ID and fraud. We are quickly pivoting from building the Equifax cloud to leveraging it for innovation of new products that will position the new Equifax for stronger and more diversified growth in the future. Our EFX2023 growth strategy remains our compass for the future and drives all of our top and bottom line growth initiatives as we move towards 2022 and beyond. Turning to Slide 5. Equifax had a very strong quarter. Revenue at $1.22 billion was up 14.5%, with organic constant currency growth up a strong 12%. The almost 15% top line growth was off a strong 19% growth last year in a much stronger mortgage market. This was our seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue growth. More importantly, our core growth was up a strong 20%. Our U.S. B2B businesses of Workforce Solutions and USIS, which together represent almost 75% of Equifax revenue, again drove our growth, delivering 17% revenue growth despite the 21% decline in the U.S. mortgage market in the quarter. Non-mortgage revenue was up over 30%, and organic non-mortgage revenue was up 24%, strengthening sequentially from the 16% and 20% we saw in the first two quarters of the year. Third quarter Equifax adjusted EBITDA totaled $404 million, up slightly from third quarter last year with margins of 33%. As expected, margins were down versus 2020 due to the inclusion of cloud technology transformation costs of $45 million in our adjusted results in the quarter, which were excluded last year, and redundant cloud transformation systems cost of $15 million. These costs related to cloud tech transformation negatively impacted EBITDA margins by almost 500 basis points. Adjusted EPS of $1.85 a share was down slightly from last year. Adjusting for the cloud transformation costs of $45 million or $0.27 a share, adjusted EPS would have been up a strong 11%. We continue to make significant progress executing the EFX Cloud data and technology transformation. In the quarter, we completed 4,000 B2B customer migrations for a total of 15,400 migrations completed so far this year. In September alone, USIS completed over 900 customer migrations. Since the beginning of the transformation, we've completed almost 97,000 B2B migrations, 3.5 million consumer migrations and 1 million data contributor migrations. We remain on track and confident in our plan. We continue to expect the North American transformation to be principally complete in early 2022, with the remaining customer migrations broadly completing by the end of next year. International transformation will follow, being principally completed by the end of 2023, with some customer migrations continuing into 2024. We're still in the early days of leveraging the cloud but remain confident that will differentiate us commercially, expand our NPI capabilities, accelerate our top line and expand our margins and the growth in cost savings in 2022 and beyond. Our NPI performance also continues to accelerate. In the quarter, we released 30 new products. And we still expect our Vitality Index to accelerate from 5% last year to over 8% in 2021. Given our very strong third quarter performance, we are increasing our full year revenue guidance by approximately 320 basis points or $131 million at the midpoint of a range between $4.9 billion to $4.921 billion, up 19% from last year, and increasing our full year adjusted EPS guidance by $0.22 per share to a midpoint of $7.57 per share, which adjusting for technology transformation cost implies a 23% growth in EPS. This includes our expectation that the U.S. mortgage market as measured by credit inquiries will decline just over 7% this year with the bulk of the return to normalization in the second half, which we expect to be down around 20%. Roughly two-thirds of the 320 basis point increase in our revenue growth framework to 19% is from organic business performance, with the balance from the acquisition of Appriss, Health e(fx) and Teletrack, which we expect to add about $45 million to revenue in the fourth quarter. In the third quarter, Equifax core revenue growth, the green sections of the bars on Slide 6, grew a very strong 20%, a third consecutive quarter of core growth at or above 20%. Non-mortgage growth in EWS and USIS and growth in International drove about 900 basis points to the core revenue growth, excluding acquisitions and FX, with mortgage outperformance primarily in Workforce Solutions driving about 800 basis points of organic core growth in the quarter. As we move through 2022 and 2023, we expect to continue to see strong and balanced core growth, reflecting the benefits of the new EFX Cloud, accelerated NPIs, continued strong non-mortgage growth, both from organic growth and acquisitions, as well as continued strong outperformance from Workforce Solutions. Turning to Slide 7. Workforce Solutions had another exceptional quarter, delivering revenue of $508 million, which was up 35%. This is the first quarter Workforce Solutions has delivered over $0.5 billion of revenue in a single quarter, a big milestone. This was against a very strong 57% growth last year. Adjusted EBITDA margins were 54%. Non-mortgage revenue at Workforce Solutions was up over 48%, with organic non-mortgage revenue up 41%. The strength of Workforce Solutions and uniqueness of their TWN income and employment data set was clear again in the third quarter. Workforce's Verification Services revenue of $403 million was up a strong 34%. Verification Services mortgage revenue grew 22% in the quarter despite the 21% decline in the mortgage market, with the EWS outperformance driven by increased records, penetration and new products. Importantly, Verification Services non-mortgage revenue was up 55% in the quarter, consistent with the very strong growth we saw last quarter. Our government vertical, which provides solutions to federal and state governments in support of assistance programs, including food and rental support, grew over 20% in the quarter. Government remains one of our largest non-mortgage segments with attractive growth potential in the future and represents about one-third of non-mortgage verification revenue. Our new SSA contract went live this quarter at relatively low start-up volumes, and we expect to see it ramp as we move through 2022. We expect new products, the addition of Appriss and expanded federal and state social services to fuel growth in our government vertical in the future. Talent solutions, which provides income and employment verifications as well as other information for the hiring and onboarding processes through our EWS data hub, had another outstanding quarter from customer expansion and NPIs growing over 100%. Talent solutions now represents almost 30% of non-mortgage verification revenue. And as you know, over 75 million people change jobs in the U.S. annually, with the vast majority having some level of screening as a part of the hiring process. The addition of Appriss Insights and our new partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse will fuel growth and new products in this important vertical. The non-mortgage consumer lending business, principally in banking and auto, showed strong growth as well of about 90% in the quarter, both from deepening penetration with lenders and from some recovery in these markets, although auto has been impacted by inventory shortages. Employer Services revenue of $105 million was up $30 million in the quarter. This is an important growth engine for Workforce Solutions that also delivers records. Combined, our unemployment claims and employee retention credit businesses had revenue of about $65 million, up about $14 million from last year. Substantial declines in the UC revenue in the quarter were more than offset by ERC, which grew substantially sequentially as we support the businesses in obtaining federal employee retention credit payments. Employer Services non-UC and ERC businesses had revenue of about $40 million, up 60%, with organic growth of about 35%. Our I-9 business, driven by our new I-9 Anywhere product, continued to show very strong growth, up about 80%. Our I-9 business is now almost half of Employer Services non-UC and ERC revenue. Reflecting the growth in I-9 and the return to growth of Workforce Analytics, we expect Employer Services non-UC and ERC businesses to deliver total growth of about 40% and organic growth of about 25% in the year. Reflecting the uniqueness of the TWN data, strong verifier revenue growth and operating leverage resulted in adjusted Workforce Solutions EBITDA margins of 54.3%. The decline versus last year is driven by investments in the tech transformation as well as redundant systems costs and significant investments in data onboarding, sales and marketing to continue to drive Workforce Solutions growth. Rudy Ploder and the Workforce Solutions team delivered another outstanding quarter and are positioned to deliver a very strong 2021, 2022 and beyond. Turning now to USIS. Their revenue of $380 million was up slightly from last year. Total USIS mortgage revenue of $148 million was down 17%, while mortgage credit inquiries were down 21%, slightly better than the down 23% we expected in July. USIS outperformance versus the overall market was driven by growth in marketing and debt monitoring products. Importantly, non-mortgage revenue of $240 million grew 16% with organic growth of over 9%. Year-to-date, non-mortgage revenue was up a strong 17%, and organic non-mortgage revenue growth is over 10%. Banking, insurance, commercial and direct-to-consumer were all up over 10% in the quarter. Fraud was up almost 10% organically and up over 75% in total, with the inclusion of our Kount acquisition. Auto was up mid-single digits despite supply pressures, and telco was down just over 5%. Financial Marketing Services revenue, which is broadly speaking our off-line or batch business, was $55 million in the quarter and up about 20%. The strong performance was driven by marketing-related revenue, which was up over 20%; and ID and fraud revenue, which grew over 15%. In 2021, marketing-related revenue is expected to represent about 40% of FMS revenue; identity and fraud, above 20%; and risk decisioning, about 35%. The USIS sales team delivered record wins up over 20% versus last year and 40% sequentially in the quarter. The new deal pipeline in USIS remains very strong. During the quarter, USIS acquired Teletrack, a U.S. leader in alternative credit data. Teletrack is being consolidated with DataX, our specialty finance credit reporting agency that we acquired in 2018, to expand our capabilities in the fast-growing alternative data space serving unbanked and underbanked U.S. consumers. The USIS adjusted EBITDA margins were 40% in the quarter, flat sequentially with second quarter. Similar to second quarter, the decline in margins in the quarter versus last year was due to both costs related to the cloud transformation, which include the cost of redundant systems and inclusion of our adjusted results of the technology transformation costs which are being excluded in 2020, and the expansion of our investments in sales and marketing as well as new products to leverage both the strengthening U.S. market and accelerate new product introductions to drive revenue growth in 2022 and beyond. Turning to International. Their revenue of $245 million was up 10% on a local currency basis and up 100 basis points sequentially. This was the fourth consecutive quarter of growth in our global markets following the COVID pandemic impacts. Asia Pacific, which is principally our Australia business, performed well in the quarter with revenue of $89 million, up about 7% in local currency. Australia delivered this growth despite the extended COVID lockdowns in many portions of that country. Australia consumer revenue continued to recover, up 3% versus last year and about flat sequentially. Our Commercial businesses combined online and off-line revenue was up 8% in the quarter. Fraud and identity was up 13%, following 22% growth in the first half. European revenues of $68 million were up 9% in local currency in the quarter and flat sequentially. Our European credit reporting business was up about 5% with continued growth in both the U.K. and Spain. Our European debt management business revenue increased by about 21% in local currency, off the lows we saw last year during the COVID recession. Canada delivered revenue of $44 million in the quarter, up over 8% in local currency despite a weakening Canadian mortgage market that was down 15%. Canada experienced strong growth in fintech, while supply issues continue to impact our auto business. Latin American revenues of $45 million grew 16% in the quarter in local currency, which was the third consecutive quarter of growth coming out of COVID. We continue to see the benefit in Latin America of the strong new product introductions introduced over the past three years. International adjusted EBITDA margins at 26.7% were down slightly from 27.3% in the second quarter. The sequential decline was driven by incremental technology costs in Australia and Canada as they accelerate their cloud transformation programs. The decline in the quarter was principally due to costs related to the cloud transformation, both the cost of redundant systems and inclusion in our adjusted results of the technology transformation costs, which were being excluded last year. Margins were also negatively impacted in the quarter by our increased investments in sales and marketing and new products. Global Consumer Solutions revenue of $82 million was down 6% on a reported basis and 7% on a local currency basis in the quarter, slightly above our expectations. We saw growth of about 2% in our global consumer direct business, which sells directly to consumers through equifax.com and represents a little over half of GCS revenue. The decline in GCS revenue in the quarter was again driven by our U.S. lead generation partner business. We expect the GCS partner business and GCS business overall to return to growth in the fourth quarter. GCS adjusted EBITDA margins of 23.4% were up sequentially, reflecting lower operating costs. The decline versus last year was principally driven by revenue declines. Turning now to Slide 8. Workforce Solutions continues to power Equifax as it's clearly our strongest, fastest-growing and most valuable business, with strong 35% growth in the quarter, up 57% growth a year ago. Core revenue growth was 42%, driven by the uniqueness of the TWN income and employment data, scale of the TWN database and consistent execution by Rudy and his team. EWS' ability to consistently and substantially outgrow their underlying markets is driven by three factors. First, growing the work number database. At the end of the third quarter, TWN reached 125 million active records, an increase of 12% or 13 million records from a year ago and included 97 million unique records. At 97 million uniques, we now have over 60% of nonfarm payroll, which makes our TWN data set more valuable to our customers with higher hit rates. We are now receiving records every pay period from 1.9 million companies, up from 1 million when we started the year and 27,000 contributors a short two years ago. The exclusive agreement with a major payroll processor that we announced on our February call went live in the third quarter and contributed to this growth. Our strong momentum continues as we signed another large payroll processor last week on an exclusive basis that will come online in the coming months. We also expect to add further payroll processors in the coming months. As a reminder, almost 60% of our records are contributed directly by employers to which EWS provides comprehensive Employer Services like UC claims, W-2 management, I-9, WOTC, ERC, HSA and other HR and compliance solutions. Our acquisitions of HIREtech, i2verify and Health e(fx) this year strengthened our ability to deliver these unique HR services, particularly through relationships with payroll processors and HR software companies. These partnerships have been built up over the past decade by the Workforce Solutions team. The remaining 40% of our records are contributed through partnerships with payroll providers and HR software companies, most of which are exclusive. We still have substantial room to grow our income and employment database and expect to continue to add new data contributors as well as reach agreements with several additional payroll processors in the fourth quarter to add their records on an exclusive basis to TWN in 2022. Beyond the over 50 million nonfarm payroll records not yet in the TWN database, we're focused on data records from the 40 million to 50 million gig workers and around 30 million pension recipients in the U.S. marketplace to further broaden the TWN database. We have plenty of room to grow TWN. Second, increasing our average revenue per transaction through new products and pricing on our existing products to capture value, recognizing the depth of information TWN allows us to deliver to customers. Workforce Solutions' new product pipeline is rapidly expanding as our teams leverage the power of our new Equifax Cloud capabilities. And third, by increasing our penetration in the markets we serve and expanding into new markets. For example, we continue to increase our penetration in the mortgage market. At the end of 2020, Workforce Solutions received an inquiry in almost 60% of completed mortgages, up from 55% in 2019. This 500 basis point increase is a big step forward, but we still have plenty of runway to expand the customers using TWN mortgage. We're also seeing substantial growth in TWN in other credit markets, including card and auto as these verticals take advantage of the unique lift from TWN income and employment data in the 60% hit rates with our database. Growing system-to-system integrations is another key lever in driving both increased penetration and increasing the number of polls per transaction. During the quarter, about 75% of TWN mortgage transactions were fulfilled system-to-system, up over 2x from 32% in 2019. And again, we still have plenty of growth potential here. Workforce Solutions is performing exceptionally well with attractive above-market and above Equifax growth rates and margins that we expect to continue in the future. Slide 9 highlights the core growth performance of our U.S. B2B mortgage businesses, Workforce Solutions and USIS. Our combined U.S. B2B businesses delivered 3% revenue growth in mortgage in the third quarter, outperforming the mortgage market by 24 basis points, with the market down 21%. This strong outperformance was again driven by Workforce Solutions with core mortgage growth of 43%, enabled by the multiple drivers that I just discussed. Slide 10 provides an update on new product innovation, leveraging the Equifax Cloud and our differentiated data, a key driver of our current and future growth. In the quarter, we delivered 30 new products with 150 new products in the market so far this year, which is up 18% from the 96 we delivered in the same time frame last year. We continue to expect our 2021 Vitality Index defined as a percent of revenue delivered from NPIs launched in the past 3 years to be over 8%. In the third quarter, we launched significant new products we expect to continue to drive growth in 2022 and beyond. The SSA payroll exchange went live as an EWS product that supports verifications of SSI and SSDI social services delivering critical income and employment status based on program requirements. OneView with DataX is a new integrated consumer credit report that redefines how we deliver, display and provide insights to our customers. It also sets the stage for integrating nontraditional credit data in a single view solution for our customers. Alternative data from DataX, Teletrack, NC+, rental payments and other sources are a critical priority for Equifax, and we expect to continue to drive NPIs in this space in the future. Digital Identity Trust 2.0 product provides businesses with a comprehensive, passive identity verification service that delivers a trust/do not trust recommendation across both physical and digital identity vectors. This product will leverage Kount data by year-end. MarketMix Premier solution enables the ability for FIs to access market share and size of liquidity across geographies. This provides quick identification of targeted growth markets to deploy spend across branch sales and marketing efforts. And lastly, the new Equifax Affordability product in Australia uses bank transaction data and sophisticated categorization to provide an affordability view to customers while removing friction for the consumer. We're clearly focused on leveraging our new Equifax Cloud capabilities to drive our NPI rollouts and new product revenue in 2021 and beyond. Growing the NPI is central to our EFX2023 growth strategy. As detailed on Slide 11, in 2021, we reinvest our strong outperformance in strategic and accretive bolt-on acquisitions that strengthen our position in existing growth markets and allow us to enter new markets with new capabilities. Our 2021 acquisitions add $300 million plus synergies to our run rate revenue. We are focused on executing acquisitions that are accretive to our long-term revenue growth and margins and deliver attractive shareholder returns. Our priorities for M&A are clear and aligned around, number one, expanding our differentiated data, which is at the core of Equifax. We have scale and unique data sets that we want to expand and leverage with new data elements to drive enhanced decisioning for our customers. All of our acquisitions deliver new and differentiated data, and more data drive better decisions. Second, expanding and widening our largest and fastest-growing business, Workforce Solutions, is a priority for our M&A. The Appriss Insights, HIREtech, Health e(fx) and i2verify acquisitions strengthen Workforce and position EWS for future outperformance. And last, broadening our ID and fraud capabilities in the fast-growing digital and e-commerce space is another M&A priority. Kount strongly advanced our capabilities in this fast-growing space. We closed the Appriss acquisition on October 1 and are focused on integration, new solutions and growth. Appriss Insights and our new partnership with the National Student Clearinghouse are a big step forward in our strategy to build out an EWS Data Hub centered off our almost 500 million historical TWN data records to address the fast-growing talent and government markets. As detailed on Slide 12, combining our scale TWN data with Appriss Insights criminal and healthcare credentialing and sanctions data, along with other partner data assets, including the exclusive partnership for college and university data we entered into in the third quarter with the National Student Clearinghouse, allows Workforce Solutions to deliver the most complete, real-time, 360-degree view of the prospective employee or applicant for government benefits available in the market. The talent solutions and government verticals offer large and growing markets for our Workforce Solutions business through the EWS Data Hub. We estimate an addressable market of $5 billion in the U.S. hiring space and onboarding process, with around 75 million new employees onboarded annually in the U.S. Workforce Solutions government vertical is focused on delivering data and solutions to support federal and state benefit programs as well as law enforcement agencies. This is a substantial and growing sector that we estimate to have an addressable market of about $2 billion. Appriss Insights strongly accelerates our ability to penetrate these large and fast-growing TAMs. Insights is anticipated to generate $150 million of run rate revenue during 2021 and to grow on a stand-alone basis at over 15% annually. We also anticipate building towards approximately $75 million in revenue synergies by 2025, leveraging the EFX Cloud to integrate Appriss Insights' rich people-based risk intelligence data in the EWS Data Hub to form new multi-data solutions and through cross-selling efforts. Acquiring Appriss Insights and partnering with the National Student Clearinghouse provide strong pillars for Workforce Solutions growth and fast-growing markets going forward. Slide 13 highlights our focus on adding alternative data to our database focused on the 60 million unbanked or underbanked population in the United States. According to a Federal Reserve study, 6% of U.S. adults do not have a checking, savings or money market account, although two-fifths use some form of alternative financial service. Moreover, 16% of adults have a bank account but also use an alternative financial service product generally at much higher costs. Providing services that help bring these underserved populations into the financial mainstream is core to our purpose of helping people live their financial best and is an important priority for our customers. Our acquisition of Teletrack in September, which we are combining with our DataX business, creates a leading U.S. specialty consumer reporting agency with data on more than 80 million thin-file, unbanked and underbanked and credit rebuilding consumers. Our National Consumer Telecom & Utilities Exchange partnership is another unique data set focused on this space that has more than 420 million records and 250 million consumers, helping our customers to expand underwriting to no hit or thin-file customers. We are focused on expanding our unique alternative data from sources, including specialty finance companies, alternative lenders, telco companies, cable and satellite TV providers, municipalities and utilities to drive growth in the fast-growing alternative data markets. And we'll continue to look for opportunities to strengthen our alternative databases through partnerships and M&A. And now I'd like to turn it over to John to discuss our outlook for the rest of the year, our increase in guidance for 2021 as well as our early read on 2022 assumptions and our financial framework for 2022.

Thanks, Mark. As Mark discussed, our 3Q results were very strong and much stronger than we discussed with you in July, with revenue about $50 million higher than the midpoint of the expectation we shared. For perspective, the strength was driven by our U.S. B2B businesses, principally Workforce Solutions and also USIS. Workforce Solutions Verification Services was stronger than discussed in July, principally in non-mortgage and talent solutions, card and auto as well as, to a lesser extent, in mortgage. Workforce Solutions employee retention credit and unemployment claims revenue was stronger than we discussed in July. We expect the strength in ERC to continue in the fourth quarter. USIS was also somewhat stronger than we discussed in July. The strength in mortgage relative to our discussion in July was partially a reflection of the mortgage market being down 21% versus the down 23% we discussed in July. Workforce Solutions' outperformance relative to the mortgage market was also stronger than we expected. This strong revenue drove upside in adjusted EPS relative to the expectations that we shared in July. Before discussing our increased guidance for 2021 and providing a framework for you to consider for 2022, let's briefly discuss our assumptions for the U.S. mortgage market. As shown on Slide 14, we are expecting the 21% year-to-year decline in U.S. mortgage credit inquiries that we saw in the third quarter to continue in the fourth quarter, with the fourth quarter down about 20%. This results in 2021 U.S. mortgage market credit inquiries being down just over 7% from 2020, slightly better than the down somewhat under 8% we discussed with you in July. For 2022, based on trends we are seeing in new purchase and refinance that I will discuss shortly, our 2022 framework assumes the U.S. mortgage market as measured by total credit market inquiries will decline about 15% from 2021. The 15% decline versus 2021 is most substantial in the first half of 2022, given the significant slowing we have seen in the U.S. mortgage market already in the second half of 2021. Our assumed level of 2022 U.S. mortgage market credit inquiries remains over 10% above the average levels we saw over the 2015 to 2019 period. The left side of Slide 15 provides perspective on the number of homes that would benefit by 75 basis points or more from refinancing their mortgage at current rates. Despite the substantial refinancing activity that's occurred over the past year and current increases in U.S. treasuries, the number of U.S. mortgages that could benefit from a refinancing remains at a relatively strong level of about 12 million. Home prices have appreciated significantly over the past 18 months, which has provided many homeowners with cash-out refinancing opportunities, which in past cycles has led to increased refinancing activity from borrowers. For perspective, based upon our most recent data in April, mortgage refinancings remain at just under 1 million a month. As shown on the right side of Slide 15, the pace of existing home purchases continues at historically very high levels. This strong new purchase market is expected to continue throughout 2021 and 2022. Our 2022 assumption for our U.S. mortgage credit inquiries assumes that we see purchase mortgage financings at levels above the levels we saw in 2020, with refinancings declining significantly from the levels we saw in both 2020 and 2021. Slide 16 provides our guidance for 4Q 2021. We expect revenue in the range of $1.23 billion to $1.25 billion, reflecting revenue growth of about 10% to 11.8%, including a 0.1% benefit from FX. Acquisitions are expected to positively impact revenue by 5.4%. We're expecting adjusted EPS in 4Q 2021 to be $1.72 to $1.82 per share compared to 4Q 2020 adjusted EPS of $2 per share. In 4Q 2021, technology transformation costs are expected to be around $45 million or $0.27 per share. Excluding these costs, which were excluded from 4Q 2020 adjusted EPS, 4Q 2021 adjusted EPS would be $1.99 to $2.09 per share. Slide 17 provides the specifics on our 2021 full year guidance. We are increasing guidance substantially, reflecting our very strong 3Q 2021 performance. The acquisitions of Appriss, Health e(fx) and Teletrack are expected to add about $45 million of revenue in the quarter. 2021 revenue of between $4.901 billion and $4.921 billion reflects growth of about 18.7% to 19.2% versus 2020, including a 1.4% benefit from FX. Acquisitions are expected to positively impact revenue by about 3.1%. EWS is expected to deliver over 38% revenue growth with continued very strong growth in Verification Services. USIS revenue is expected to be up mid- to high-single digits, driven by growth in non-mortgage. Combined, EWS and USIS mortgage revenue is expected to be up over 18% in 2021, about 25 percentage points stronger than the overall market decline of just over 7%. International revenue is expected to deliver constant currency growth of about 10%. And GCS revenue is expected to be down mid-single digits in 2021. GCS revenue is expected to be up over 5% in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, in 2021, Equifax is including all cloud technology transformation costs in adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS. These one-time costs were excluded from adjusted operating income, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS in 2017 through 2020. In 2021, Equifax expects to incur one-time cloud technology transformation costs of approximately $165 million, a reduction of over 50% from the $358 million incurred in 2020. The inclusion in 2021 of these one-time costs would reduce adjusted EPS by about $1.01 per share. 2021 adjusted EPS of $7.52 to $7.62 per share, which includes these tech transformation costs, is up 7.8% to 9.3% from 2020. Excluding the impact of tech transformation cost of $1.01 per share, adjusted EPS in 2021 would show growth of about 22% to 24% versus 2020. 2021 is also negatively impacted by redundant system costs of about $80 million relative to 2020. These redundant system costs are expected to negatively impact adjusted EPS by approximately $0.50 per share and negatively impact adjusted EPS growth by about 7 percentage points in 2021. We remain confident in our cloud transformation plan and the savings in 2022 and beyond that we have discussed previously with you. Now let's turn to a discussion of an early framework for 2022. Slide 18 provides the macro assumptions behind our 2022 framework. Given the continued significant uncertainties in the overall U.S. and global economy as well as in the U.S. mortgage market, we wanted to provide you with the assumptions we've been using at this stage in developing our framework for 2022. As I discussed previously, we expect the U.S. mortgage market, our proxy for which is U.S. mortgage credit inquiries, to decline about 15% in 2022 relative to 2021. Equifax's U.S. B2B mortgage revenue is expected to continue to significantly outperform the overall mortgage market and show growth in 2022 relative to 2021. Our overall framework is based on a continued U.S. economic recovery that is 2022 GDP growth of about 4% for the full year. We expect our USIS and Workforce Solutions non-mortgage businesses to outperform their underlying markets. We expect Workforce Solutions' UC and ERC businesses to decline by almost 30% in 2022. We also expect that International economies will continue to recover in 2022. Our International businesses are also expected to outperform their underlying markets. Slide 19 provides a view of Equifax's total and core revenue growth from 2017 through the 2022 framework. In 4Q 2021, Equifax core revenue growth is expected to be a strong 17%, with core organic revenue growth of about 12%. Almost two-thirds of that core organic growth is driven by non-mortgage growth across all four business units. In 2022, based on the assumptions I just shared, Equifax's total revenue is expected to be up about 8%. We anticipate delivering strong core revenue growth of 14%, reflecting organic core growth of 11% and a 3% benefit from acquisitions completed in 2021, which will more than offset the significant headwinds from the assumed declines in the U.S. mortgage market and the UC and ERC businesses. Slide 20 provides a revenue walk detailing the drivers of the 8% revenue growth in 2022 from the midpoint of our 2021 revenue guidance to the midpoint of our 2022 revenue framework, 2022 revenue of $5.3 billion. The 15% decline in the U.S. mortgage market and the expected declines in the Workforce Solutions unemployment claims and ERC businesses are expected to negatively impact revenue in 2022 by 5.75 percentage points. Core organic revenue growth is anticipated to be over 11%. Non-mortgage core organic growth is expected to drive about two-thirds of the growth. The largest contributor is Workforce Solutions with strong organic growth in talent solutions, government and employee onboarding solutions, including I-9. USIS non-mortgage, International and GCS are also expected to drive core growth. Mortgage revenue outperformance relative to the overall mortgage market is expected to drive the remaining about one-third of the organic core growth. This is driven by strong outperformance in Workforce Solutions. The acquisitions completed in 2021 are expected to contribute about 3 percentage points of growth to 2022. Slide 21 provides an adjusted EPS walk, detailing the drivers of the expected 14% growth from the midpoint of the 2021 guidance of $7.57 per share to the midpoint of our 2022 framework of $8.65 per share. Revenue growth of 8% at our 2021 EBITDA margins of about 33.8% would deliver 11% growth in adjusted EPS. In 2022, we expect to deliver EBITDA margin expansion of about 200 basis points. This margin expansion is expected to drive 9% growth in adjusted EPS. This margin expansion is expected to be delivered by the actions we have discussed with you throughout 2021. Our transformation investments will be reduced by about $100 million in 2022, with about half of this reduction or about $50 million being reinvested in new product and other development. We will begin to see net cloud cost savings in 2022 defined as the savings from improving production costs, driven by the decommissioning of our legacy on-prem systems and other improvements in our operations exceeding the cost of running our new cloud-native systems. Margins will also be enhanced by leverage on corporate and G&A. Partly offsetting these benefits to EBITDA are cost increases, particularly in salaries and contracted services as the tight labor market drives cost higher as well as lower EBITDA margins in 2022 from the 2021 acquisitions as we will just be ramping synergies during 2022. Depreciation and amortization is expected to increase by about $45 million in 2022, which will negatively impact adjusted EPS by about 4%. D&A is increasing in 2022 as we accelerate putting cloud-native systems into production. The combined increase in interest expense and tax expense in 2022 is expected to negatively impact adjusted EPS by about 2 percentage points. The increase in interest expense reflects the increased debt from our 2021 acquisitions. Our estimated tax rate used in this framework of 24.5% does not assume any changes in the U.S. federal tax rate. Should that occur, we will let you know the estimated impact on our 2022 results. As there remains significant uncertainty in underlying market drivers, including the pace of normalization of the U.S. mortgage market and the pace of economic growth worldwide, what we provided today for 2022 is a framework for you to consider. We'll provide formal guidance for 2022 in connection with our 4Q 2021 earnings release early next year. Now I would like to turn it back over to Mark.

Thanks, John. We hope this early view of our framework for 2022 is helpful and reinforces the power of the new Equifax to deliver 14% growth and 8% total growth at the midpoint of our range of thinking, assuming the mortgage market and UC and ERC declines impact our revenue growth by almost 6% in 2022. Stepping back and reviewing the macro trends outlined on Slide 22. These macros have been driving information services for the last decade. Over the last 24 months, we believe most of the macro factors have substantially accelerated. And through our 2021 acquisitions of Appriss, Kount and Teletrack and our EFX Cloud investments, Equifax is advantaged to benefit from these macro trends. We believe we also have unique levers at Equifax to deliver strong future growth, including Workforce Solutions above market and EFX growth and margins and our expanded focus on new data assets like Appriss Insights, the USIS recovery and non-mortgage growth and Kount ID and fraud growth; the new Equifax Cloud, which is driving our competitiveness, NPIs, top line and cost savings; NPIs leveraging Equifax Cloud and our expanded resources and focus on new products; and then, of course, M&A to broaden strength in Equifax. These attractive market macros along with the broad Equifax growth levers and our strong core outperformance in the past few years give us the confidence in our ability to deliver above-market growth in the future. Wrapping up on Slide 23. Equifax delivered another strong and broad-based quarter. We had strong momentum as we move into the fourth quarter to 2022. We now delivered seven consecutive quarters of strong, above-market, double-digit growth, reflecting the power of the new Equifax business model and our execution against our EFX2023 strategic priorities. Equifax is on offense. We remain confident in our outlook for 2021 and raised our full year midpoint revenue growth rate by approximately 300 basis points to 19% growth for the year. And we also raised our midpoint EPS by $0.22 to $7.57 per share. Workforce Solutions had another outstanding quarter, powering our results, delivering 35% revenue growth and 54% EBITDA margins. EWS is our largest, fastest-growing and most valuable business, and Rudy and his team remain focused on delivering outsized growth. USIS also delivered a strong quarter with 16% non-mortgage growth and 9% organic non-mortgage growth, offsetting the impact of a sharp over 20% decline in the mortgage market. Sid Singh and his USIS team remain competitive and are winning in the marketplace. International grew for the fourth consecutive quarter with 10% growth in local currency as economies reopen and business activity resumes outside the United States. We have high expectations for International as we move into 2022. We spent the past three years building the Equifax Cloud and are now in the early days of leveraging the new and uniquely Equifax Cloud capabilities. As we move into 2022 and beyond, we will increasingly realize the top line, cost and cash benefits from these new Equifax Cloud capabilities. As I mentioned earlier, our 2021 M&A has added $300 million of run rate revenue to Equifax. Reinvesting our strong cash flow in accretive and strategic bolt-on M&A is central to our EFX2023 growth strategy. We're now focused on integrating these acquisitions and executing our synergy and growth plans in order to leverage our new data products and capabilities. Our early look at a 2022 financial framework calls for 8% revenue growth and adjusted EPS growth of 14%, assuming a 15% decline in the mortgage market. More importantly, the framework includes strong 14% core EFX growth. 2022 will be a pivotal year for Equifax as we shift towards leveraging the Equifax Cloud for innovation, new products and growth. And lastly, turning to Slide 24. Many of you have been closely following Equifax for many years and know we've been speaking to you for some time about our plan to have our first Investor Day, which will be our first Investor Day since 2012 and the cyber event. It's been a long time. Let me now turn it over to Dorian, who will give you the details on our November 10 meeting focused on the new Equifax, and then we'll take some questions.

Thanks, Mark. I'm energized to announce that our Investor Day will take place on November 10 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern Time and will be held virtually. We've opened up online registration as of today, and the link to do so on Slide 24 is live. We are very excited to have the opportunity to update you on the progress we have made in making and executing our EFX2023 growth strategy; share with you our long-term financial framework and also our capital allocation plan; speak with you about how we are and will continue to leverage our EFX Cloud capabilities, including by continuing to accelerate our new product innovations; and provide you with overviews of the state of affairs of our business units relayed by their respective leaders. Investor Day will be an important day for our company and stakeholders, and we look forward to speaking with you then. With that, operator, let me open it up for questions.

Operator provided instructions. Our first questions come from the line of David Togut with Evercore.

I appreciate the helpful detail in the initial 2022 framework. It appears that you're guiding above consensus for fourth quarter 2021 revenue and for 2022 revenue but somewhat below consensus on earnings per share for both the fourth quarter and for next year. John, you walked through some of the sources of pressure on margin for 2022. But I'm wondering if you could talk more broadly about headwinds and tailwinds so we can understand the variance. Is it really the $50 million, for example, of tech transformation savings that you're reinvesting in the business next year?

Yes. Happy to. So again, as a reminder, we're talking about increasing EBITDA margins by on the order of 200 basis points, so a substantial increase in 2022 versus 2021. And I think the drivers are what we've been talking about all year, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks. We are reducing substantially tech transformation costs, but we are taking a significant amount of that in the order of $50 million and reinvesting it in NPI and other initiatives to drive growth and to deliver the higher revenue growth that you referenced in your question. Also, we do expect now to start seeing benefits, so net reductions in costs from decommissionings exceeding our cloud costs, and that will ramp as we go through 2022. And then we are seeing some increased costs related to our cost of goods sold, as you would normally expect, related to increased costs for people and increased cost for some systems costs that are reducing 2021 EBITDA margins to a degree. That's not unusual. Generally speaking, we see increased cost every year that we manage through high growth. Next year, part of what's happening is we're seeing substantial negative impacts on our revenue from the weaker mortgage market as well as the reductions in the UC and ERC markets. So that negative drive in revenue is also somewhat negatively impacting our margin expansion. But overall, 200 basis points of margin expansion next year, we think, is really an outstanding performance, especially given the fact that we're seeing such large declines in the mortgage market and then also the declines in the UC and ERC revenue that we talked about on the order of 30%.

Just as a quick follow-up. In your initial 2022 financial framework, you're guiding to 11.3% core organic revenue growth. Within that number, what is your expectation for EWS organic growth? And how do you think about headwinds and tailwinds for EWS next year?

So I think in terms of the details around how the business units are going to perform next year, we're going to have to ask you to wait until November 10. But obviously, we expect EWS to continue to perform extremely well.

You should obviously think about Workforce Solutions growing above the rest of Equifax. We've been clear that we expect Workforce Solutions to grow above the rest of Equifax. I went through many times the multiple levers that Workforce has as they finish up the year and go into 2022, and records starts at the top of that list. Adding substantial records in the third quarter, those become a benefit through the next year, their new product introductions, continued penetration. There's a lot of levers in that business. USIS, their new deal pipeline is a positive lever going forward. But Workforce is clearly going to be above the rest of Equifax from a growth rate standpoint.

Our next questions come from the line of Kevin McVeigh with Crédit Suisse.

Great. Mark, you talked about the vitality index up over 8%. Any sense of where you think that can go to? I mean, obviously, there's been a really significant step-up in the new product innovation. And what that can mean to the organic growth longer term?

It's clearly a priority. Since I joined almost four years ago and really in the last 24 months, we've really stepped up our focus on new products. We've expanded the team. John and I both talked about it in our comments this morning about continuing to invest there. And of course, the cloud transformation is central to that. We did it to change our competitiveness. The big piece of that is the ability to bring new products to market that we couldn't do before through multi-data solutions. We're in the early days of really leveraging that. We see real opportunities going forward. We'll certainly talk in depth at our Investor Day on a longer-term outlook for new products. But it's an area that we've invested heavily, foundationally in the cloud. Add to that our existing differentiated data assets, which we've expanded substantially this year with the addition of new data solutions from Appriss, from Kount, from Teletrack, and our focus on new products. We believe it's an important lever for delivering strong future growth going forward, and we'll give you much more detail during our Investor Day.

And then just real quick on the customer migrations, it seems like you made a lot of progress on that. Where are you in that process? And then are you seeing any incremental step-up in revenue as these customers have cut over? Is there any way to think about what the revenue impact has been? I know it's a hard question, but what percentage step-up you're seeing as these customers have converted?

This is a big undertaking. We try to be quite transparent about the efforts. 2018, 2019 and parts of 2020 were building the technology. In 2020 and 2021, we've been heavily focused on implementing that with our customers, the migration. You've seen the great progress. We still got more to do. We expect North America, which is Canada, U.S. and EWS and USIS and TCS to be substantially complete as we get in 2022 and really complete the migrations next year. So we can see the finish line, but there's still plenty of work to do in the coming months to complete that. With regards to our impact commercially, there's a number of layers on that. We'll provide substantial detail at Investor Day. But you're starting to see some of the early benefits. The strong core growth, the ability to roll out new products are driving our competitiveness and driving our ability to drive our core growth. When we sit down with customers, we believe we're advantaged having a new tech stack that's in the cloud that can deliver very high stability, deliver data more quickly to our customers, and deliver new products to them more quickly. It changes who we are as a company, and it allows us to be a different company. It's central to how we think about the new Equifax going forward, and it will be central to our long-term growth framework that we'll share with you in a couple of weeks.

Our next questions come from the line of Kyle Peterson with Needham & Company.

Just wanted to touch on the U.S. auto market. I know there's been a lot of concerns over chip shortages and supply constraints potentially impacting auto credit. What are you seeing in the U.S., particularly in the USIS segment for auto credit?

Yes, similar to Canada, there is no question that the supply shortages are impacting the ability for consumers to get cars, new and used, and the financing that comes with that and the business we get from that. What's been offsetting that to some degree, not fully, is our continued penetration of new products and new solutions, like Workforce Solutions continuing to grow the use of TWN data in the auto space, which has been positive. We continue to grow in USIS and auto on an organic basis even in the headwinds of the difficult market, although it isn't at the pace that we expected when we started the year.

Got it. That's helpful. And then a follow-up on EWS. Good to see strong record growth in TWN and continued share gains. Moving forward, how should we think about records growth? I know you mentioned a few additional payroll processing partnerships in the pipeline. How should we think about records and the greenfield opportunities between gig workers and pension versus traditional W-2 records as prospects?

It's an important focus of Rudy and the Workforce Solutions team. We have two levers for growth. First, our Employer Services business, which is large and comprehensive as we've delivered new solutions to HR managers around I-9 or HSA or W-2 or WOTC, all the other services. We access payroll records. That's a powerful engine for us to obtain records. We have momentum in adding payroll processors and going after traditional nonfarm payroll. There's still 60 million-plus individuals not in our data set that are inside that, so that's a primary focus. Another area is HR software partnerships where they have access to records because of the software being embedded in an individual company. And then we are expanding into gig and pension. Some payroll processors have contractor payroll and self-employed solutions where we can pick up data. For pension recipients, some companies process their own pension income or use third-party providers. We have a multifaceted approach. The point is our lens is wider now, and there's still a long runway to grow records, which monetizes quickly because high hit rates convert to revenue. We also plan to expand internationally leveraging the same core tech. When you think about records, we think we're in the middle innings with substantial opportunity ahead. These partnership agreements can take time, but there's real momentum and room to grow.

Our next questions come from the line of George Mihalos with Cowen and Company.

I appreciate you're willing to go out to 2022 in this environment. Very helpful as always. First question: on margins for 2022. I think you had said previously savings from redundancies and the tech transformation will be about $100 million. You're reinvesting $50 million of that now, is that the reason margins aren't higher? Is that roughly correct, and is the rest offset by M&A dilution and inflation-related expenses?

Yes. We indicated we would improve our cost structure by about $100 million by taking down transformation costs, and we also indicated we'd improve our cost structure as decommissioning and other savings exceeded cloud costs. We're still committed to delivering these savings. We are reinvesting a substantial portion of that $50 million in new development and related activities. Given the weaker mortgage market and UC/ERC declines, that negative revenue mix also impacts margin expansion. Acquisitions add growth but in their first year typically have lower EBITDA margins than our organic incremental sales. Also, we face cost increases due to a tighter labor market and general annual cost increases. When you line all these items up, about 200 basis points of margin expansion is where we're comfortable. It's a substantial improvement given the headwinds.

I'll add that we'll discuss the long-term framework for revenue and margins at Investor Day. We've been clear that we expect to grow margins over the long term while investing in the business. The tech transformation has high leverage in driving the top line, and we'll balance margin expansion with investing in the future of Equifax.

Our next questions come from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley.

I wanted to start with Appriss. At the time of the acquisition, you had talked about strong accretion in 2022 from that deal along with Health e(fx) and Teletrack. How much is embedded in your 2022 EPS expectations from the deals? And could you help with assumptions behind the significant accretion because some investors are more neutral?

It is accretive in 2022. I won't give a specific number for the level of accretion for the acquisitions. We expect good EBITDA margins from those acquisitions, and the level of margin exceeds the cost of interest expense. The level of margins generated from an acquired company in the first year isn't as high as the variable margin we achieve on our direct organic sales. So while the acquisitions are accretive to EPS, they are somewhat dilutive to EBITDA margin in the first year relative to our organic business margins because of that difference.

Got it. And then looking at the revenue trends in the appendix, non-mortgage online info in the U.S. was positive 15% but decelerated relative to last quarter. Is that because of auto softness? Are there other verticals impacting that? Are you expecting the lending environment to get better in the fourth quarter or next year?

Part of the growth-rate movement reflects comparisons to last year. The third quarter of 2020 saw a meaningful improvement relative to the second quarter, which affects year-over-year rates. But overall, we feel good about banking and lending, with nice growth in the quarter, and we expect to see nice non-mortgage growth in USIS in the fourth quarter. Marketing-related revenue and identity and fraud were strong in the quarter, and Financial Marketing Services was very strong.

Our next questions come from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair.

First question on talent solutions. As it becomes a larger piece of Workforce Solutions, how should we think about the cyclicality of that business? With the tight labor market, as you're thinking about 2022, how do new product innovation and hiring activity impact performance over the shorter term?

The underlying macro of 75 million people changing jobs every year doesn't change much over time, and many of those require screening. A structural change is companies' desire to complete hiring faster, which drives demand for instant decisioning. We're building out the EWS Data Hub and combining TWN work history with Appriss Insights (criminal and credentialing), National Student Clearinghouse education data, and other data to deliver solutions that speed hiring and onboarding. Products will be packaged for different job requirements; some roles require more verification than others. There's a large $5 billion addressable market in U.S. hiring and onboarding, and we are investing in new products and partnerships to capture this opportunity. We're executing via acquisitions and partnerships to accelerate growth in talent solutions.

Two quick modeling questions: the legacy system savings you outlined previously was $85 million year-over-year — is that still the right number? And is the SSA contract fully ramped this quarter?

For modeling 2022, focus on the walk we provided: 200 basis points of margin expansion. We'll give more detailed guidance and bridges at Investor Day. Regarding SSA, we launched the program this quarter and started delivering data at low volumes. We expect it to ramp through the fourth quarter and into 2022, reaching run rate sometime in 2022. It's a substantial and positive contract but currently at start-up volumes.

Our next questions come from the line of Hamzah Mazari with Jefferies.

On integration of M&A this year, could you give examples of what integration is yet to come and what's behind you? When will you reengage in the M&A market? Will you be active next year or wait until integrations are complete?

We completed eight acquisitions this year, including Kount and Appriss. We're further along integrating Kount, completed earlier in the year; Appriss closed October 1, so we're early in that integration. The cloud allows us to integrate more quickly by bringing unique data into our single data fabric. We're seeing early top-line synergies in Kount and are energized about Appriss. Synergies build over multiple years; there are early synergies in year one and larger ones in later years as we fully integrate products and data. We paused substantial M&A for several quarters to focus on integration and bring leverage back in line. We expect to be back in the M&A market in the latter half of 2022, while continuing to be disciplined and focused on differentiated data, identity and fraud, and expanding Workforce Solutions, with an emphasis on accretive deals that enhance long-term shareholder value.

Follow-up on International: do you expect to see benefits from the tech transformation on International as early as next year or a bit later?

Most benefits come later, though Canada is well down the path and should get some benefits in 2022. There are early benefits in the U.K., Spain and Australia in 2022, but the bulk will come, particularly in Latin America, in the latter parts of 2022 and into 2023.

Our next questions come from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan.

Two quick questions. First, how much mortgage revenue as a percentage of total third quarter Equifax revenues was there? Second, can you indicate what the tech transformation expense drag on 2022 EPS is compared to the $1.01 in 2021 referenced on Slide 7, Footnote 5?

Mortgage as a percent of total in the quarter was just under 32%, and that's down significantly from last year and will go down again in the fourth quarter. In terms of tech transformation expense, this year we expect to incur about $165 million (which results in the $1.01 impact). We indicated we expect to reduce that by about $100 million next year. It's not a perfect number but would be on the order of $60 million to $65 million next year. We'll refine that as we move through the fourth quarter and provide formal guidance early next year.

Our next questions come from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

Your third quarter revenues beat guidance by about $50 million, while your full year guidance increased by about $130 million at the midpoint. I know Appriss is adding revenue. How much of the increase in the guide above the third quarter outperformance is due to contributions from Appriss and other acquisitions versus improved assumed performance in the fourth quarter with the underlying business?

In the fourth quarter, the acquisitions add about $45 million.

And the remainder is from outperformance in the underlying business?

Correct.

You mentioned USIS non-mortgage is expected to outperform underlying markets in 2022. How much of that outperformance is due to M&A versus organic outperformance?

That statement was intended to indicate organic outperformance. We're expecting USIS to outperform their core market on an organic basis.

Workforce Solutions acquisitions do not materially affect their mortgage outperformance; the outperformance is substantially organic.

Our next questions come from the line of Jeffrey Meuler with Baird.

On 2022 margins, do you view 2022 as still fairly depressed by one-time expenses, or is it a good underlying baseline for the future? There are still $65 million of tech transformation items and redundant systems that you can work down over time. Should we think of 2022 as transitional or closer to run-rate?

We'll present a long-term framework for revenue and margins at Investor Day. 2022 is a transition year with mortgage market impact and remaining cloud transformation costs. We're not at a normal run rate in 2022, but we expect to expand margins over the long term and to continue investing in new products and growth.

We expect $165 million in transformation costs in 2021 and to reduce by about $100 million next year, with net cloud cost savings kicking in. We're committed to delivering net savings next year versus this year and substantial savings beyond as the transformation completes internationally in later years.

Very helpful. On buy now, pay later (BNPL), is it cannibalistic to card? Given Australia is a more developed BNPL market, plus you have bureau share there, what are your thoughts? Over time, do you expect cannibalization of card?

Some card issuers may see pressure from BNPL as consumers use it instead of cards. From Equifax's perspective, BNPL is another financing channel and has been a net positive. We sell identity data to BNPL players and increasingly see them using alternative data in underwriting. From our vantage, this expands the market for data and identity services and is generally positive for credit bureaus.

Our next questions come from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

John, you mentioned the 200 basis point margin expansion. Could you provide order-of-magnitude impacts from the tight labor market, acquisition dilution, and the 600 basis point declines from mortgage and UC/ERC? How much of a headwind is each?

We continue to invest next year in new products and innovation to drive growth. There's a balance in 2022 between margin expansion and reinvestment.

I'm not going to size each item specifically. They're all meaningful and impacting margins. But delivering 200 basis points of margin expansion in a market with a 600 basis point headwind from mortgage and UC/ERC is a substantial improvement and reflects our confidence in the savings and net cloud cost reductions as well as disciplined reinvestment.

For modeling, could you give the 2021 EC and UC revenues so we can model the 30% decline? Also please provide D&A, interest expense and CapEx assumptions?

We haven't disclosed the explicit EC and UC revenue number on the call. We noted the 30% reduction is about 1.25% of revenue. With those pieces of information, you can approximate the UC and ERC revenue. We'll provide more formal details at Investor Day and in future disclosures.

Our next questions come from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital.

Two questions. First, on pricing: there have been material pricing increases in the verification business. How should we think about pricing going forward? Second, the $50 million of reinvestment — is that a one-time investment or should we expect similar incremental investments in future years?

For the investment piece, we will continue to balance growing margins while investing in new products and innovation. The $50 million referenced is targeted at new product development and leveraging the cloud to drive top-line growth; this is part of an ongoing approach to invest where we see the greatest opportunity. We'll provide more detail at Investor Day on the long-term balance. On pricing, pricing is one lever we use across Equifax, and Workforce Solutions has stronger pricing power than other businesses. We expect pricing to be a positive in 2022, and that's included in our early framework. New products, increased polls, penetration and records will also drive growth and pricing power, particularly in verification.

Our next questions come from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners.

Can you touch on personal finance area and credit cards within your traditional credit bureau business? How did that do in the quarter and what's the near-term outlook?

Coming out of COVID, we expected card and personal loan marketing to recover, which it has, particularly in marketing. Card issuers and personal loan issuers paused a lot of marketing in 2020 due to uncertainty and have resumed in 2021. We expect issuers to continue acquiring customers and build up balances, so there's marketing activity that benefits our Financial Marketing Services and banking-related products. We've seen double-digit growth in banking in the second and third quarters.

On Global Consumer Solutions, can you discuss outlook near term for direct versus indirect partner businesses?

We expect the partner business to return to growth in the fourth quarter. It was impacted by tightening of originations by many of its customers. The direct business is expected to improve as well.

Our next questions come from the line of Gary Bisbee with Bank of America.

On records growth and payroll partnerships: you have momentum with payroll channels. Is payroll partnership scale enough to deliver continued double-digit records growth? How meaningful are gig and pension opportunities over 12 to 24 months? Are there other types of players beyond payroll to get records from?

We get the bulk of our records through Employer Services and that remains a steady and growing source. There's still runway in payroll processor partnerships, which can be lumpy but are meaningful when large processors are added. HR software partnerships provide another avenue where software embeds access to records. Then there's gig and pension opportunities, where different approaches are required, such as partnering with platforms that process contractor payments or payroll providers that have self-employed solutions. We see a long runway to continue to grow records and monetize quickly due to high hit rates and system-to-system integrations. Workforce is unique with a large addressable market and many avenues to grow records.

One more on pricing and new products: can you give an example of a new higher-priced product driving revenue, what the price point is, or what makes it different than traditional income and employment verifications?

There are several. In mortgage, a standard verification might sell for $20 to $40. For more comprehensive solutions with 24 to 36 months of history, price points can be $100, $150, $200 because they provide more depth and value. Mortgage Duo, delivering both borrowers' reports together with additional polls, is in the $175 to $200 range. In I-9, traditional offerings are in the $10 to $20 range; our I-9 Anywhere offering, which accelerates the onboarding process and allows verification at many sites, is priced in the $75 to $100 range. These products deliver significant value in speed and completeness, leveraging our historical TWN records and additional data like Appriss Insights and National Student Clearinghouse to create higher-value packaged solutions. Those are examples of how we use multi-data and cloud capabilities to expand price points and monetization.

There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the call back over to Dorian Hare for any closing remarks.

Thank you for joining today's call. Looking forward to joining you again for a robust discussion when we have our Investor Day on November 10. Once again, the registration is currently open, and there is a link on Slide 24 where you can register for our Investor Day. We'll also be releasing a press release later today with those details. This does conclude the call.

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Have a great day.