Equifax Inc Q2 FY2024 Earnings Call

Hello, and welcome to the Equifax Inc. Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Operator instructions were provided. A question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. Operator instructions were provided. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It's now my pleasure to turn the call over to Trevor Burns, Senior Vice President, Head of Corporate Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Trevor.

Thanks, and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. I'm Trevor Burns. 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 and Events tab at our Investor Relations website. During the call, we'll be making reference to certain materials that can also be found in the Presentations section of the News and Events tab at our IR website. These materials are labeled 2Q 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Also, we'll be making certain forward-looking statements, including third quarter and full year 2024 guidance, 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 2023 Form 10-K and subsequent filings. We will also be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EPS 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 can be found in the Financial Results section of the Financial Info tab at our IR website. Now, I'd like to turn it over to Mark.

Before I cover our strong second quarter results, I want to update you on the significant progress in our cloud transformation. Over the next several weeks, USIS will complete the migration onto the cloud data fabric of all customers and services for their consumer credit and telco and utilities exchanges, which is a huge milestone for Equifax. Along with the EWS Work Number Exchange, which we completed migrating to the Equifax Cloud over two years ago, we will have our three largest data exchanges in the new Equifax Cloud. As of the end of July, we expect over 80% of Equifax revenue will be in the Equifax Cloud, with about 90% of our revenue in the cloud by year-end. The cloud migrations have been a huge effort across Equifax over the past four-plus years. We expect to have a significant competitive advantage as we pivot from building to leveraging the cloud that will allow us to fully focus on growth, innovation, new products, and AI going forward. Completing the USIS cloud and expanding EFX.AI, along with continued expansion of our differentiated data assets, will accelerate innovation and new products at USIS that will drive our top and bottom line. We now have streamlined access to our proprietary data through the data fabric, which will accelerate new product development. We also expect to reduce product development times, resulting in faster time to market for our new solutions. USIS has already begun to see their New Product Vitality Index accelerate. USIS is deploying Equifax proprietary Explainable AI, along with Google Vertex AI across Ignite, our global analytics platform, and Interconnect, our global decisioning platform. For USIS, Vertex AI enables faster and more predictive model development on our Ignite platform. The USIS cloud will deliver always-on stability and faster data transmission that will give Equifax a competitive advantage in today's digital market, driving share gains. We're also driving faster data ingestion and analytics with greater processing power with the new Equifax Cloud. And most importantly, completing the cloud is going to free up the USIS team to fully focus on growth and expanding innovation, new products, data sets and markets. With both USIS and EWS in the cloud, we'll also be able to begin development of new products that integrate TWN income and employment data with USIS credit data solutions for mortgage, auto, cards, and private loans that only Equifax can deliver. Completing the USIS consumer and telco and utility migrations to the Equifax Cloud allows us to start decommissioning legacy on-prem systems in the third quarter, supporting our goal of spending reductions in 2024 that will improve operating margins and lower the capital intensity of our business. In the second quarter, we also made substantial progress on our international cloud transformation activities. Canada is expected to complete their consumer credit exchange customer migrations to data fabric next month. Europe continues to make significant progress with the goal of completing Spain's consumer credit exchange migration to the data fabric and decommissioning of their legacy systems by year-end, and the U.K. is on schedule to complete cloud migrations and decommissioning in the first half of 2025. And in Latin America, we've completed the Argentina and Chile cloud migrations and expect to make substantial progress on several additional Latin American countries in the second half of this year. It's energizing to be approaching the finish line of our cloud transformation. We're entering the next chapter of the new Equifax as we pivot from building the new Equifax Cloud to leveraging our new cloud capabilities to drive our top and bottom line. Now, turning to slide four, we had a strong second quarter, with reported revenue just over $1.43 billion, up 9% and just over the top end of our April guidance. Adjusted EBITDA margins at 32% were in line with our expectations, and adjusted EPS at $1.82 per share was well above the high end of our April guidance. Our global non-mortgage businesses, which represents about 80% of total Equifax revenue in the quarter, had strong 13% current constant currency revenue growth, which is above the top end of our 8% to 12% long-term growth framework. Non-mortgage organic constant currency revenue growth was at 9% in the quarter and also at the top end of our 7% to 10% organic revenue growth framework. This performance was driven by 20% non-mortgage growth in EWS Verifier, led by strong 30% growth in government and talent that was up over 13%. International delivered 28% constant dollar revenue growth and strong 12% organic growth, led by strong growth in Latin America and Europe. USIS non-mortgage revenue growth of 1% was in line with last quarter and somewhat weaker than our expectations. We expect to see accelerating growth in USIS non-mortgage revenue as we complete the US consumer cloud migration later this month. Total U.S. mortgage revenue was up 4% in the quarter. The growth in mortgage revenue was driven by USIS, where mortgage revenue was up a strong 27% and consistent with our expectations. The strong growth in USIS mortgage reflects the continued benefit from strong vendor pass-through pricing actions and performance in our new mortgage pre-qual products. EWS mortgage revenue was down just under 12% and also consistent with our expectations. Equifax also had another strong quarter of new product innovation with a Vitality Index of almost 13%, above our 10% frame for 2024 guidance and our long-term 10% vitality framework. The vitality was up 350 basis points sequentially from broad-based execution across all of our business units, and EWS was particularly strong with a 17% vitality. Turning to slide five, Workforce Solutions revenue was up 5% and well above our expectations. Non-mortgage verification services revenue delivered very strong 20% growth, up 500 basis points sequentially and well above our expectations. Government had another outstanding quarter, with very strong 30% revenue growth from continued growth in penetration in their big $5 billion TAM. Government revenue grew sequentially from strong growth in state revenues despite the substantial completion at the end of March of post-COVID CMS initial redeterminations. We expect continued strong government growth over the medium and long term in Workforce Solutions. Talent solutions revenue was up a strong 13% in the quarter, up 17 percentage points sequentially and well above our expectations. Talent solutions volumes improved sequentially and we saw very strong growth in our insights incarceration data products in the talent vertical. Based on data through May, EWS talent solutions outperformed the BLS white-collar hiring markets by approximately 19 percentage points from new records, new products, and penetration into the vertical. EWS mortgage revenue was down just under 12% and in line with our April guidance. TWN inquiries in the second quarter were down 18% and consistent with the down 19% we discussed with you in April. TWN inquiries continue to be weaker than USIS credit inquiries as buyers continue to have difficulty completing home purchases. EWS total mortgage revenue outperformed TWN inquiries by over 6%. We expect EWS mortgage revenue to benefit significantly in the third and fourth quarters from the significant growth in TWN records already delivered late in the second quarter and from planned additions in the third quarter and fourth quarter. EWS consumer lending revenue was up 8% from strong double-digit growth in P loans and debt management and high-single digit growth in auto. Employer services revenue was down 11%, principally from lower ERC revenue. Excluding ERC, revenue was lower than expected at down 2% due to lower WOTC revenue as we talked about in April, partially offset by positive ACA revenue growth. We expect employer revenue to return to growth in the fourth quarter. Workforce Solutions adjusted EBITDA margins of 53% were up 170 basis points sequentially and continue to be very strong from non-mortgage verifier revenue growth and good cost execution, while we continue to invest in new products, expand in high-growth verticals like government and talent, and grow our TWN records. Before moving on to USIS, I want to acknowledge the significant contribution of Rudy Ploder made to EWS and Equifax over the last 20 years. Under Rudy's leadership, EWS revenue grew from about $900 million in 2019 to $2.3 billion last year and has positioned EWS for strong above market growth, leveraging the Equifax Cloud. We're super energized to have Chad Borton, who joined us in May, leading Workforce Solutions. Chad's broad financial service experience, proven executive leadership, customer focus, and regulatory depth will be a big asset for EWS as they continue to drive above market growth. Turning to slide six, we continue to see very strong revenue growth in our EWS government vertical with 30% growth in the quarter and above our expectations. On the left side of the slide, we provided some of the federal agencies we are supporting with EWS digital income employment and incarceration data that accelerate the time to deliver needed social service benefits to over 90 million Americans and help government agencies ensure program integrity, a win-win for all parties. And in the middle of the slide, you see the substantial progress our EWS government vertical has made in a short time frame, penetrating that $5 billion TAM with a three-year CAGR of over 50%. We expect EWS government to continue to make significant progress in the government vertical from additional sales resources to federal and individual state capital level, strong record growth; new product rollouts; leveraging our differentiated incarceration data; and system-to-system integrations enabled by our cloud-native technology that makes our solutions easier to consume. EWS continues to help federal, state, and local government agencies improve the consumer experience and their own operating efficiency from the application and authentication phases to redetermination and recovery processes. The strength of the EWS government vertical was again clear in the quarter and we expect strong future revenue growth in this business in '25 and beyond. Turning to slide seven, EWS had another strong quarter of new record additions, signing agreements with four new strategic partners that will contribute over 3 million records collectively to the TWN database. Our continued success in expanding partnerships is a testament to EWS’ ability to deliver the highest levels of client service from technology, data security and accuracy, and operational excellence for our partners and their end customers. We expect these new partnerships to come online and begin generating revenue for Workforce Solutions in the fourth quarter. In the quarter, EWS added 8 million active records to the TWN database, ending the quarter with 180 million active records, up a strong 12% on 132 million unique individuals. Total records are now 695 million and were up 10% versus last year. At 132 million unique individuals, we have plenty of room to grow the TWN database towards the TAM of 225 million income-producing Americans. EWS is also making very good progress building a pipeline of pension and 1099 contributors, as well as with HR software companies in partnerships and they expect to close partnerships in the second half of the year as we continue focus on expanding the TWN database. Turning to slide eight, USIS revenue was up 7%, solidly within our long-term revenue growth framework of 6% to 8%. USIS mortgage revenue grew 27% and was in line with our April guidance. Mortgage credit inquiries, while continuing to be down significantly year-over-year at down 13%, were largely in line with our April guidance. Despite the modest reduction in mortgage rates we've seen over the last several weeks, we have not seen an improvement in mortgage market inquiries, likely due to continued low new home inventory levels. Consistent with the first quarter, the strong pricing environment, along with the strength of our pre-qual products drove the very strong mortgage revenue growth and outperformance. At $143 million, mortgage revenue was about 30% of total USIS revenue in the quarter. Total non-mortgage revenue at up 1% was below our expectation of 2% growth. We saw strong growth in consumer solutions and financial marketing services, which were partially offset by a decline in USIS B2B online revenue. We believe growth in the second quarter was negatively impacted by the U.S. team's broad-based focus on completing customer cloud migrations, which likely dampened some of the new business activity we were expecting. USIS online B2B non-mortgage revenue was down about 4% and below our expectations. Consistent with trends from the first quarter, we saw a continuation of tighter consumer demand, which impacted the auto market, as well as the broader FI vertical. Auto was also impacted by a software supplier system outage that we all read about. USIS saw double-digit declines in third-party bureau sales and to a lesser extent low-single-digit declines in telco and auto. These declines were partially offset by growth in the broader FI market and in insurance. ID and fraud was also below our expectations, as was auto. Financial marketing services, our B2B offline business, was up 7%. Marketing revenue was up 4%, primarily due to growth in pre-screen marketing. Our pre-screen quarterly trends have been fairly consistent, with growth coming from large FIs and fintechs, offset by declines in mid-sized banks and credit unions. USIS is seeing growing demand for our suite of Ignite solutions, including Ignite for Prospecting. Fraud revenue was up a very strong 15% from new business wins. USIS consumer solutions D2C business had another very strong quarter, up 13% from strong double-digit growth in consumer direct channel and high-single digit growth in our indirect channel. We expect mid-single digit growth in our D2C business in the second half of this year against strong comps from last year. USIS adjusted EBITDA margins were 33.2% in the quarter and below our expectations, reflecting its lower-than-expected revenue growth. In USIS, the significant efforts across the business to complete the cloud transformation clearly had an impact on USIS customer engagement and non-mortgage revenue growth in the first half. As USIS consumer cloud migration is completed in the next few weeks, the USIS team will now be able to fully focus on customer engagement and growth and we expect USIS non-mortgage revenue to see improved growth in the second half of this year and, of course, in '25 and beyond. Turning to slide nine, international revenue was up a very strong 28% in constant currency and up a strong 12% in organic constant currency in the quarter, excluding the impact of BVS and well above the 20% growth we guided to in April due to continued very strong growth in Latin America and Europe. Europe local currency revenue was up a very strong 12% in the quarter, with continued strong 6% growth in our credit and data businesses and from very strong 23% growth in our debt management business. Latin America local currency revenue was up 124%, principally due to the acquisition of Boa Vista, with very strong organic growth of 30%. Latin America organic revenue growth was driven by very strong double-digit growth in Argentina, Paraguay and Central America. Brazil revenue in the quarter on a reported basis was $41 million. We continue to make good progress on the Brazil integration. Equifax Interconnect solution was launched for small business and medium businesses in the second quarter in Brazil with full feature release to service larger clients in the second half. The first apps of Ignite have also been launched. Identity and fraud solutions, including count and mitigator, are now available for Brazilian customers, and Brazil is driving accelerated negative data acquisition to add to their database. The team is making excellent progress on driving growth and integrating with Equifax. Canada delivered 6% growth in the quarter. As I previously mentioned, we expect Canada to complete their consumer credit exchange customer migrations to the new Equifax Cloud in the next few weeks. And similar to USIS, we are expecting to see accelerated new product rollouts and growth going forward from the Canadian team. In Asia Pacific, revenue was down about 2%, as expected, better than the down 10% in the first quarter. We expect Asia Pacific to return to revenue growth in the second half. International adjusted EBITDA margins of 25.6% were above our expectations and up 130 basis points sequentially, given their strong revenue growth performance. Turning to slide 10, we continue to make very strong progress driving innovation, with over 30 new products launched in the quarter that delivered a 12.5% Vitality Index, which was up 350 basis points sequentially and was driven by broad-based performance across all of our business units. EWS had a strong second quarter with Vitality Index of 17%, up 700 basis points sequentially. And we expect EWS VI to remain strong in the second half with new product introductions focused on incarceration data, mortgage pre-qual or shopping behavior and I-9 and onboarding solutions. USIS saw continued sequential improvement with a Vitality Index of 8%, up 100 basis points sequentially. We expect USIS to continue to show strong VI performance from cloud completion as they leverage our new cloud-native infrastructure for innovation and new products in identity and fraud, commercial, and our new mortgage pre-qual products. International also had strong 11% VI in the quarter, up 200 basis points sequentially. We expect strong Equifax double-digit VI in the second half, leveraging our Equifax Cloud capabilities to drive new product rollouts with a full-year VI for Equifax of over 10%. EFX.AI is one of our key EFX2026 strategic priorities, enabled by our new Equifax Cloud. We're energized to have a new AI leader onboard who will drive our strategic vision and execution in Explainable EFX.AI. We are accelerating the pace at which we are developing new Equifax models and scores using AI and ML in areas such as identity and fraud and consumer loan affordability that drive performance and predictability of our solutions. In the second quarter, 89% of our new models and scores were built using AI and ML, which is up 400 basis points sequentially and ahead of our 2024 goal of 80% and last year's 70%. Before I turn it over to John, I wanted to provide a few comments on our full-year 2024 guidance. We're maintaining our 2024 guidance midpoint with revenue of $5.72 billion, up 8.6% and adjusted EPS of $7.35 a share, up 9.5%. This guidance implies a strong second half for Equifax, with revenue at the midpoint of $2.9 billion, up over 9.5%, and adjusted EPS of $4.03 per share, up 13%. Consistent with our practice, this framework assumes mortgage market activity consistent with the levels we saw in June and early July, resulting in a estimated full-year USIS credit inquiries at down 11% and consistent with our April guidance. As you know, we're using current trends to forecast mortgage market activity and have not seen a strengthening in the mortgage market activity despite the recent modest decline in rates and have not reflected the impact of any Fed rate cuts in the second half. Delivering this level of performance in the second half against the U.S. mortgage market that continues at the levels we saw in the first half, we believe, is very strong Equifax performance. It reflects constant dollar non-mortgage growth of about 10%, again led by very strong non-mortgage growth in our Workforce Solutions verification services businesses and with strong continued organic growth in international and improving non-mortgage growth in USIS despite the continuation of the tight credit markets we saw in the first quarter and second quarter in the U.S., leading to some weakening in the auto market and also impacting the broader FI market. While we expect a continued weak mortgage market, we expect to grow mortgage revenue by 18% in the second half. Of course, we continue to expect significant future mortgage market improvements as rates come down and mortgage market activity returns to normal 2015 to '19 levels. As we've shared previously, we expect to flow the $1.1 billion mortgage revenue recovery through to EBITDA as mortgage market activity improves at our very high mortgage market gross margins. And we're continuing to deliver expanded EBITDA margin growth, principally in the fourth quarter as we complete the transformation of our US consumer businesses and our businesses in Canada, Spain, Chile, and Argentina. Now, I'd like to turn it over to John to provide more detail on our second quarter financial results and to provide our third quarter framework. Our third quarter guidance builds on our strong second quarter performance from new products, penetration, record growth, and pricing.

Thanks, Mark. Turning to slide 11, consistent with our practice from the first half of 2024 and the last several years, our guidance for credit inquiries is based on our current run rates over the last two weeks to four weeks, modified to reflect normal seasonal patterns. We have seen 30-year mortgage rates just under 7% for the last five weeks. However, we have not seen meaningful improvement in the run rate of either credit or TWN inquiries, although we continue to expect mortgage market activity to improve as rates come down in the future. Our guidance reflects mortgage credit inquiries to be down about 7% in 3Q24 and 11% in calendar year '24, which for the full-year is consistent with our April guidance. Our guidance reflects TWN inquiries in the third quarter to be down over 7%, and for the full year, down approaching 14%. Second-half TWN inquiries are down about consistent with the decline in credit inquiries, reflecting an expected normalization of the mortgage shopping we saw in the first half of the year as interest rates remain stable or begin to decline. As a reminder, and as we discussed in April, we expect the level of U.S. mortgage revenue outperformance to moderate as we move through 2024, as we start to lap the growth in new mortgage pre-qual products. We expect 3Q USIS mortgage revenue outperformance to be over 30%, down from the 40% in the second quarter, with full-year USIS mortgage outperformance expected to be about 40%. We expect TWN revenue mortgage outperformance in the second half to increase sequentially from the new records we boarded in the second quarter. Slide 12 provides the details of our 3Q '24 guidance. In 3Q '24, we expect total Equifax revenue to be between $1.425 billion and $1.445 billion, with revenue up about 9% at the midpoint. Non-mortgage constant currency revenue growth should be up about 10%. Mortgage revenue in the third quarter is expected to be up over 12%. Mortgage revenue will be just under 20% of total revenue. FX is negative to revenue about 2%. Business unit performance in the third quarter is expected to be as follows. Workforce Solutions revenue growth is expected to be up about 8%, with non-mortgage revenue up about 10%. Non-mortgage verifier revenue should again be very strong in the third quarter, with growth slightly under the 20% we saw in the second quarter, again, driven by government and talent solutions. EWS mortgage revenue should return to growth and be up slightly in the third quarter. Both verifier mortgage and non-mortgage revenue growth benefit from the strong growth in TWN records we are seeing throughout 2024. And employer services revenue is expected to decline over 15% in the quarter, principally due to declines in ERC. We expect employer services to return to revenue growth in the fourth quarter of 2024. EWS adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be about 51.5%, down about 100 basis points sequentially, principally from product mix. USIS revenue is expected to be up about 8.5% year-to-year. Mortgage revenue should be up over 25%. Non-mortgage year-to-year revenue growth of over 2% should be up from the up 1% we saw this quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be about 34%, up sequentially about 100 basis points as USIS begins decommissioning legacy consumer and telco and utility systems. International revenue is expected to be up about 18% in constant currency, which includes the benefit of the acquisition of BVS that was completed August of 2023. Revenue is expected to be up about 12% in organic constant currency. EBITDA margins are expected to be about 28%, reflecting revenue growth. Equifax 3Q '24 adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be under 33% at the midpoint of our guidance, with a sequential increase reflecting revenue growth and the early stages of decommissioning of legacy consumer and telco and utility assets. Adjusted EPS in 3Q '24 is expected to be $1.75 to $1.85 per share, up 2% versus 3Q '23 at the midpoint. As of the end of the second quarter, our leverage ratio was 3.0 times, with a goal by year-end 2024 of about 2.5 times. We believe this leverage is nicely within the levels required for our current BBB, Baa2 credit ratings. As we achieve these levels, we will have significant flexibility to begin to return cash to shareholders through dividend increases and share repurchases, as well as continue to do bolt-on acquisitions in 2025 and beyond. Slide 13 provides the specifics of our 2024 full-year guidance, which is overall unchanged from the full-year revenue and adjusted EPS guidance we provided in April and is centered at the midpoint. Constant currency revenue growth is expected to be about 10.5%, with organic constant currency revenue growth of 8.5% at the middle of our 7% to 10% long-term organic growth framework. Total mortgage revenue is expected to grow over 10%, despite the over 10% decline in the U.S. mortgage market. Non-mortgage constant dollar revenue should grow over 10%, with organic growth of about 8%, led by very strong non-mortgage growth in our Workforce Solutions verification services business, with continued strong organic growth in international and improving non-mortgage growth in USIS. This is within our long-term framework. FX is about 180 basis points negative to revenue. As Mark discussed earlier, we are maintaining the midpoint of adjusted EPS at $7.35 per share. EBITDA margins, however, are expected to be 32.6%, down from the over 33% we discussed earlier this year. As Mark discussed, we are making very good progress on cloud migrations. However, they are completing up to a quarter later than we had planned. As a result, our cloud cost savings are lower due to timing in 2024, which negatively impacts EBITDA. Partially offsetting this impact is lower depreciation. As these effects are timing of completion, they only impact 2024 and do not impact the cost savings we expect to achieve in 2025 and beyond. Full-year BU guidance is principally consistent with what was shared in April, with the exception of the impact on USIS and international EBITDA margins per my previous discussion. Workforce Solutions revenue growth is expected to be up about 7%, with non-mortgage revenue up about 10%. Non-mortgage verifier revenue should be up over 15%, driven by government and talent solutions. EWS mortgage revenue should be down 3% for the year. EWS margins are expected to be about 52%. USIS revenue is expected to be up 9% year-to-year. Mortgage revenue should be up over 25%. Non-mortgage year-to-year revenue growth of about 2% is expected to be up from the 1% we saw in the first half of 2024. USIS EBITDA margin should be about 34%, down about 50 basis points from our April guidance. And international revenue is expected to be up over 15% in constant-currency, which includes the benefit of the acquisition of BVS. Revenue is expected to be up about 10% in organic constant currency. EBITDA margins are expected to approach 27.5%, down from 28% in our April guidance. Using the midpoint of our 3Q '24 and fiscal year '24 guidance for revenue and adjusted EPS, the implied 4Q '24 midpoint for revenue is $1.465 billion, up 10% year-to-year and $30 million sequentially. And for adjusted EPS is $2.23 per share, up over 20% year-to-year. The improvement in adjusted EPS in 4Q '24 sequentially from 3Q '24 is certainly substantial and requires strong execution. The drivers of this improvement are expected to be as follows. About half of the improvement is driven by the sequential revenue growth at our very high variable margins. Revenue mix also should drive improved margins as non-mortgage revenue grows strongly sequentially and mortgage revenue declines sequentially. Mortgage has much lower margins relative to non-mortgage, principally due to much higher royalties and purchased data file costs in mortgage. Cost and expense reductions drive about a quarter of the improvement. These cost reductions are principally due to completion of cloud migrations in North America and Europe, resulting in lower COGS and also lower development expense. In addition to the cost benefit from completion of cloud migrations, we continue to execute fixed cost and expense reductions, which will also benefit 4Q '24. Items below operating profit, principally taxes, represent on the order of 20% of the improvement. Capital expenditures for 2024 are expected to be about $485 million, which is a year-to-year reduction of about $100 million. This is up from our April guidance, reflecting the timing of completion of the migrations to the Equifax Cloud that I just referenced. In the first half of 2024, CapEx was $256 million, down almost $50 million year-to-year. We expect capital expenditures in the second half to decline further as the tech transformation activities I previously discussed complete. Turning to slide 14, and as we discussed in April, the U.S. mortgage market is on the order of 50% below its historic average inquiry levels. As the mortgage market recovers toward its historic norms, that represents over $1 billion of annual revenue opportunity for Equifax in 2025 and beyond, none of which is reflected in our current 2024 guidance. At our high mortgage margins, this over $1 billion of mortgage revenue would deliver on the order of $700 million of EBITDA and $4 per share that we would expect to move into our P&L. Now, I'd like to turn it back over to Mark.

Thanks, John. Wrapping up on slide 15, Equifax delivered another strong quarter with 11% constant currency revenue growth, which was at the upper end of our 8% to 12% long-term revenue growth framework, reflecting the power and breadth of the Equifax business model and strong execution against our EFX2026 strategic priorities. Our very strong 20% EWS non-mortgage verifier revenue growth, 12% EWS active record growth, and strong 12.5% broad-based VI give us momentum as we enter the second half of 2024. A big priority for 2024 is to complete our North America cloud transformation, as well as significant portions of our global markets, which will enhance our competitiveness, drive margin expansion, reduce our capital intensity, expand our free cash flow for bolt-on M&A, dividend growth, and share repurchases. Completing the USIS consumer cloud migrations in the next few weeks is a significant milestone for Equifax. We continue to expect CapEx to decrease in 2024 by about $100 million to under 8.5% of revenue with further reductions in 2025, allowing us to move towards our long-term CapEx goal of 6% to 7% of revenue as we exit next year. Entering 2025 with 90% of Equifax revenue in the new Equifax Cloud is a big milestone, so the Equifax team can move towards fully focusing on growth. Another significant EFX2026 strategic priority is to drive innovation through our investments in EFX.AI. AI and machine learning are changing the way we develop new products in our single data fabric, the way we build higher performing models, scores, and products, ingest and cleanse data, and operate our consumer care centers more effectively. We're on offense at Equifax with EFX.AI. We're entering the next chapter of the new Equifax as we pivot from building the new Equifax Cloud to leveraging our new cloud capabilities to drive our top and bottom line. We're convinced that our new Equifax Cloud, differentiated data assets in our new single data fabric, leveraging EFX.AI and machine learning, and market-leading businesses will deliver higher revenue growth, expanded margins, and accelerated free cash flow that will enable us to start returning cash to shareholders in 2025 and beyond. We remain focused on executing our long-term model, delivering 8% to 12% revenue growth with 50-plus-basis points of margin expansion annually on average over a cycle. Before I turn the call over to the operator, I'd like to thank Sam McKinstry on the Investor Relations team for his significant contributions over the past four years. Good news, Sam's staying with Equifax and is taking a position within the USIS business to further his career in finance. He's been a real asset to the IR team and the investor community. And joining the Investor Relations team from Equifax is Molly Clegg, and we welcome Molly to the IR team. With that, operator, let me open it up for questions.

Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. Operator instructions were provided. Our first question is coming from Manav Patnaik from Barclays. Your line is now live.

Thank you. Good morning, and congratulations on getting close to this tech transformation ending. My first question was on that, which is, how much of the cost savings have you baked into the third quarter, fourth quarter, and more importantly, the run rate we should think this is now going to help in 2025 just on its own?

Yes, I don't think we're going to get into 2025 guidance, but in terms of third quarter and fourth quarter, we've baked in the cost savings related to the North American consumer businesses completing transformation in the third quarter and beginning their decommissioning, and we've done the same thing with regard to Spain and some other movements we've talked about in Mark's script in the fourth quarter. So when I talk about...

The savings are really in the fourth quarter and then we'll get the annualization of that next year.

Absolutely. As we talked about in the bridge from third quarter to fourth quarter, a significant portion of those savings, as Mark said, really gets in the fourth quarter, because the transformations and the completion of the transformations and beginning to be decommissionings don't start until later in the third quarter.

And Manav, I think, as you know—I appreciate you pointing it out—this has been a long road. We started this five years ago and to be close to this finish line with 80% of our revenue in the cloud in the next month or two and 90% in the fourth quarter, it's really a huge milestone. It's been a huge effort by the entire organization to run the company over the last number of years, but also do the cloud work. And we're super energized to really be pivoting to leveraging that cloud in the second half as we complete USIS in Canada in the next couple of weeks and then really go into 2025 in a very, very strong position.

Okay, fine. And then broadly, from the first half results, it looks like there's a lot of pluses and minuses across the segments. I was curious in terms of the way you set the second-half guidance. Where would you say you've perhaps left some room for error or been conservative on it?

Yes. We try to be balanced. We want to put a forecast out that we know how to meet and we feel a lot of confidence in the forecast we put out. I think John and I in our prepared comments talked about some of the positives we have. We've had some challenges, you always do in a business. I think we highlighted USIS has seen some softening in some of their end markets in the second quarter. Mortgage hasn't really come back, and short of rate cuts, we don't expect that to happen in our guide. We've seen some impacts likely from the big focus in the first half in USIS on cloud transformation. We expect those to mitigate so the commercial team can be fully focused on just commercial conversations versus also commercial and cloud. EWS is performing exceptionally well. You look at the government performance, talent had a very strong quarter. Obviously, we talked about employer impacted by WOTC and some other macros that will solve themselves, but likely later in the year, that will benefit 2025. But putting that all together and maybe just finishing with international, strong momentum there and all the businesses performing above our expectations. When we put that all together, we felt like we had the right framework in holding the year in the second half.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Andrew Steinerman from JPMorgan. Your line is now live.

Hi there. First, I want to confirm that second quarter revenue percentage for mortgage was 20%, I know the word about was used? And then the second question is on the third quarter guide. Mark, I know you talked about the second half. I want to focus specifically on USIS. I heard you highlighting that the cloud migration multitasking will be behind us the end of this month for USIS, so revenue acceleration there into August? I also heard the comment about CDK, which was a drag to auto revenues and auto dealers in the second quarter. That also seems behind us. What other drags have you assumed on USIS in the third quarter guide? Because the third quarter revenue guide for USIS looks a little conservative. And did you change any assumptions about the health of the U.S. consumer outside of mortgage when thinking about that third quarter USIS guide?

Andrew, to your specific question, it's 21% was the exact number.

And to your question on USIS, Andrew, I think we saw some softening in some of the end markets in USIS late in the first quarter and continued in the second quarter. You talked about the CDK impact obviously was a negative late in the second quarter. That's behind us. But the end market softening, for example, in auto—while mortgages have been impacted by higher rates—we're seeing some impact in auto where the payments for new and used cars are very high with the higher rates that are being charged. And we've seen some impact in consumer demand for loans in auto. And then a broader, slight softening in the second quarter. And we carried that forward in the second half. So that's reflected in the USIS guide. I don't know if you'd add anything else John?

No, Mark's already talked quite a bit about the distraction from transformation that does recover in the third quarter. We start to come out of that right, but again we're just finishing transformation in the quarter. So you're not going to see a lot of benefit in the third quarter. You don't start to see that till fourth quarter and really next year. You are starting to see NPI improvements in USIS. But again, those are not going to really accelerate until you get to the fourth quarter and next year.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Heather Balsky from Bank of America. Your line is now live.

Hi, thank you for taking my question. I wanted to start off with EWS verification broadly into the back half and thinking about the sequential trend from 3Q and what's implied into the fourth quarter. Especially for 4Q, there seems to be some implied material acceleration. And recognizing that the mortgage market has somewhat stabilized and the benefits from that, can you walk us through the building blocks to what gets you to the trends in 3Q and what's implied for 4Q and where you're seeing the biggest tailwinds?

So as an overarching statement, it's important to remember that EWS verifier is benefiting in the second half really significantly related to record additions. They've done an outstanding job with adding new partners. We had a significant partner come online very late in the quarter. And as Mark said, we added four more. We added a substantial number in the first half. Those records are coming online, and that drives a substantial amount of revenue in the second half.

Maybe adding to the records point, John, is that we have real visibility as we are in July now and in the third quarter and as we look out to the fourth quarter of meaningful record additions that we're working on, and we haven't closed those yet, so we haven't added them into our discussions with you. But as you know, records, when we add them, they turn into revenue that day, because we're already getting the inquiries. That's the beauty of the system we have.

And as you get into fourth quarter, obviously, what you're seeing from third quarter to fourth quarter is there's some traditional strength generally from third quarter to fourth quarter in talent, because of seasonal hiring in I-9, and because of seasonal hiring where we do onboarding for companies. We generally see some strength in banking and card around CLIs. And then importantly, in CMS, ACA sign-ups start in the fourth quarter. So we generally see nice growth in government going into the fourth quarter. And then you layer on top of that the strength in records, and that's what gives us confidence that we're going to see good performance as we go through the back half of the year in verifier non-mortgage. Mortgage we've talked about; employer, as we get into the fourth quarter, the significant impact of ERC that we saw through the first nine months of the year, we wrap around the decline that occurred in the fourth quarter of last year. So employer revenue on a year-over-year basis, the growth rate will be substantially better. As we said, we expect to be flat to slightly up relative to the declines that we've been seeing, and that's principally driven by the fact that we saw a big decline in ERC in the fourth quarter of '23. So that's why we feel good about the way EWS is trending and the opportunities to drive the revenue growth we're talking about.

Got it. Thank you. And I know you've gotten questions about where there might be a little bit of caution in the guidance and room for upside. There's been a couple of surprises the past few quarters, WOTC, the transition taking a little bit longer. Do you feel like for the back half you've given yourself some room for things that might occur like that, some stuff out of your control?

Yes, we're always trying to do that and it's often not easy. The WOTC change that took place last year we thought would be implemented by the states more quickly. Government bureaucracies sometimes move at different paces. But we think we have good visibility. We talked earlier about the records. That's one where we have high visibility on. We know who we've signed, we know when they're coming on. We have those schedules. So that gives you a lot of visibility. We handicap different macro elements and try to put our best forecast together. On mortgage, while there's maybe increased talk about a rate cut in September, we don't have that in our forecast. That's not our process. If that happens, that's good news for the second half, but outside of our forecast. We expect rates over the medium term into '25 and '26 to come down, and that's going to be a real tailwind for us on the mortgage side. So yes, we've put pluses and minuses that we think we know about into the forecast, and that's why we put it in front of you.

And as Mark referenced, third quarter to fourth quarter requires a lot of execution. But we have a lot of confidence in the way the teams are executing right now and it's around completing the transformations. We think we have very good visibility into how that's going to complete and the timing.

Appreciate it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Kelsey Zhu from Autonomous Research. Your line is now live.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. My first question is on talent. We've seen really strong growth this quarter. Can you tell us more about new products you've introduced year-to-date, how much they have contributed to growth, and upcoming product pipeline and how you expect them to contribute to growth?

In talent, you have to add to it the penetration. That's a large TAM where we have a big position and a lot of runway for growth converting manual employment verification processes. We have incarceration, education data and other data elements like medical credentialing data. Product is a big lever. We've got a lot of focus around new products on incarceration, on education, on different depths of employment data. We rolled out an hourly solution for hourly background screens that don't require as much employment history. There's a big focus on combining those data elements with the goal being to have a single transaction to deliver all the data required for a background screen, which would include employment history, incarceration, education, etc. We signed and announced a new partnership on education that goes beyond college degrees into high school and vocational schools. That's another depth of element that's a part of our second-half focus on talent.

In the second quarter, we saw very nice growth out of the insights portfolio—incarceration, which Mark referenced, helping drive the talent growth rate. So that was a nice growth area for us in the second quarter.

Got it. Super helpful. Second question is on government. Also really strong growth this quarter. How much of that is driven by the CMS contract extension? Any one-off factors? How should we think about sustainable growth going forward?

When you think about government, the biggest driver is penetration into that big $5 billion TAM at the state agency level. We've continued to add resources to drive that penetration. Multiple agencies are using our data, and many are not yet using our data; they're doing it manually across healthcare benefits, food support, rent support, childcare, education, income support. It's a large opportunity. We have about a $800 million run rate today against that $5 billion TAM. So state penetration is a big driver and we view that as very sustainable. We did expand and extend our CMS contract last September. That's a five-year contract with annual escalators, so that's a visible element. There's no major one-offs. We're focused on embedding into workflows, and that's a long-term, sustainable driver. Last quarter and this quarter government has been the largest vertical in Workforce Solutions and it's the business with the largest runway. Over the last three years it has had a three-year CAGR of over 50%, and it was up 30% in the quarter. We expect it to outgrow our EWS framework over the long term.

In terms of 2024, the sequential trends were good and strong. Third quarter and fourth quarter are consistent with past patterns; growth into the fourth quarter is heavily driven by CMS and ACA timing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Faiza Alwy from Deutsche Bank. Your line is now live.

(technical difficulty) ... Hello? Is this okay?

Yes, we got you now. That's better.

Okay. Sorry about that. I wanted to ask about the USIS acceleration that you're expecting on the revenue line just from cloud completion. Talk a little bit about your confidence in that, what type of new products, and potential market share gains. Give us a bit more color and confidence around that acceleration.

We expect some benefits perhaps later in the year, but the real benefit will occur in 2025, 2026 and beyond. There's been distraction for the team; this has been our most complex cloud transformation for the legacy consumer credit platform. Finishing in the next couple of weeks is a huge accomplishment and has taken a lot of bandwidth. The focus returning to customers is a positive that we'll have, but think of the benefits as driving more in '25. The always-on stability, ability to roll out new products faster, and improved data movement will make us a more valuable partner and should lead to share gains. Customer feedback has been outstanding as we've moved nearly all customers to the cloud. Vitality has been below our 10% goal while working on the cloud; it improved to 8% in the quarter, up 100 basis points, which is positive. You'll see new products across identity and compliance, risk-based solutions, data combination solutions leveraging unique data like NC+, DataX, and Teletrack, marketing products, and IXI wealth data integration. Also important is combining TWN income and employment data with the credit file to deliver solutions that only Equifax can provide. Many of these cross-business products will benefit both EWS and USIS and drive share. Expect material benefit in '25 but positive momentum late this year.

We're also seeing nice growth in the use of Ignite in pre-screening and by customers. That platform is where we deploy proprietary models and Vertex AI. Accelerating adoption of Ignite with customers using it directly and internally developing products is a positive sign.

Great. Thank you so much. My second question is on EWS mortgage. We've had a lot of conversations about TWN inquiries versus outperformance. How are you thinking about outperformance from here? You said TWN inquiries are stabilizing; did you reflect on the recent HMDA data and any incremental thoughts around EWS mortgage?

In terms of EWS mortgage vs. inquiries, a lot of second-half improvement is driven by records. We've added new partners and a significant number of records boarded late in the second quarter. We expect revenue benefits from these record additions and from continuing additions through the rest of the year. We're also working on new products earlier in the funnel including marketing products, which we expect to help.

When we add records, they immediately turn into revenue because the inquiries are already coming in. Strong momentum on records and good visibility on pipeline means we'll see benefits as those records come online. New products will also help in mortgage but the major lever in the second half is the record additions.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Surinder Thind from Jefferies. Your line is now live.

Thank you. I'd like to start with a question about the innovation cycle. When we think about your commentary, is the idea that we should be entering a period, especially within USIS, of accelerated innovation? How quickly will those products come out? Should we expect well above normal in the near term? Help us work through that cycle.

Great question. USIS innovation has been dampened during the cloud work. Their vitality has been below our 10% goal for a number of years, and we expect them to move toward 10% as we get into 2025. We saw momentum in the second quarter even while doing migrations—vitality at 8% and up 100 basis points. We have a dedicated team working on EWS-USIS cross-product solutions that we've never done before and we think will be powerful. Expect acceleration in '25, with positive momentum late in this year. Many products will take time to roll into revenue, likely impacting 2025 more substantially.

Thank you. And on implied 4Q margins, it sounds like there is a tax benefit in there too. If we adjust that out, is that the right run rate for the firm on a go-forward basis beyond 4Q?

In terms of 2025 EBITDA margins, we'll provide guidance as we get into 2025. Our long-term model expects about 50 basis points of improvement per year. We do expect to see nice margin improvement as we get into 2025, but exact levels will be communicated next year.

I'll add that when the Fed cuts rates and the mortgage market recovers, that will be accretive to our margins because mortgage revenue flows through at very high incremental margins. We expect meaningful benefit likely in 2025 and beyond as rates move down toward more normal levels.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Andrew Nicholas from William Blair. Your line is now live.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. On the record additions, it seems really strong. Can you unpack what drove the new additions? Specifically, how chunky can the pension/1099 additions be on a one-by-one basis? Are they more expensive from a sales perspective or comparable to HR software relationships?

It's a mix. Pension administrators can be chunky and act like payroll processors, so those can be larger relationships. We have a dedicated team and leader focused on records, including pension, 1099, and payroll processors. About half of our records come from direct relationships through employer services. For 1099, channels include large gig operators and tax prep services. We have scale and a multi-pronged approach—pension administrators, HR software companies, payroll processors, and direct employer integrations. Some deals are large, some are more granular—it's a mix, and the team is focused on all avenues.

Very helpful. And for EWS mortgage, is the expectation that TWN inquiries more closely track overall mortgage inquiries in the back half or will the gap persist because lenders still don't get all the way through to purchases?

In the second half, we've assumed it narrows and that they trend together percentage-wise. That's based on current trends and seasonality. We have seen in the past that shopping behavior can continue longer than expected, but right now it looks like it's starting to narrow analytically.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Jeff Meuler from Baird. Your line is now live.

Thank you. When you had an Investor Day a few years ago, there was an expectation of outsized margin expansion after the cloud transition was complete. What's the current thinking on flowing tech transformation savings into margin versus reinvesting to capture increased revenue opportunity from the cloud?

No change. We will flow the savings through. We've been investing appropriately—while building the cloud we've also invested in new products and commercial resources. The incremental savings from the cloud will expand margins. When the mortgage market returns, that will also flow through. We're focused on growing Equifax at 8% to 12% and delivering roughly 50 basis points of annual margin expansion. Mortgage recovery and cloud savings will flow through and help expand margins and free cash for returning capital to shareholders.

Got it. And on ID and fraud softness this quarter—was that Kount and Midigator? What drove that and how quickly can it recover? How is international doing for those businesses?

Kount performed well—fraud revenue was up from new business wins. We saw a little weakness in chargeback management, which is Midigator. We've launched Kount 360 and expect the platform to take hold, improving performance. As we integrate chargeback management into Kount 360, we expect improvements there as well. Fraud has better margins and is performing well; we expect improved performance for the combined portfolio as new platforms gain traction.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Scott Wurtzel from Wolfe Research. Your line is now live.

Great. Good morning. Wanted to go back to the Vitality Index in EWS and its sequential acceleration. Apart from talent, were there other notable positive outliers contributing to that acceleration?

EWS has outperformed our 10% vitality goal for several years, principally after they completed the cloud, which was a step-up. The performance is broad-based across verticals. Talent saw product rollouts and pipeline; mortgage has new solutions; employer has an I-9 Virtual solution; government is strong. Innovation has been broad-based and we expect continued strong vitality from EWS.

Got it. That's helpful. And a quick follow-up on international: one peer called out headwinds in Brazil from flooding. Did that impact you in Q2?

There was substantial flooding in the South of Brazil and it did impact our business. However, our Brazil business performed fairly consistently with plans for the year.

We're pleased with Boa Vista's performance. We're integrating products like Ignite and Interconnect, launching features for small and medium businesses and full-feature releases for larger clients in the second half. Identity and fraud solutions are now available in Brazil. Integration is progressing and we're optimistic about growth there.

Great, thank you.

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Kyle Peterson from Needham & Company. Your line is now live.

Thanks, and good morning. On the records growth, it seems really strong. Can you rank order the bigger contributors to net new records this quarter? Also, on auto, you called out the CDK issue—should we think of that as a late Q2 or early Q3 impact and how do you think about auto excluding that impact for the balance of the year?

Records are broad-based. We have a fully dedicated team focused on records, which we made in December. We add records from employer solutions, partnerships with pension administrators, HR software companies, payroll processors, and direct employer relationships. We added four new strategic partnerships this quarter and a pipeline of more. The TAM is large—225 million working Americans and 132 million unique individuals in our data set today—so the runway is large. Regarding auto, we've seen impacts from higher interest rates on consumer demand for auto financing. That's a separate dynamic from the CDK supplier issue, which was a discrete outage in late Q2 that is behind us. The auto demand impact from higher rates persists until rates soften, and we've reflected that in our guidance.

Got it. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Shlomo Rosenbaum from Stifel. Your line is now live.

Hi, good morning. Can you give a bit of color on the overall consumer credit environment? Is any deterioration sequentially coming from banks tightening or consumers being unable to afford loans? Also, how is the financial and marketing area performing, given its growth moved up to 7%?

There's been some slight softening in consumer demand in certain areas. The consumer overall remains strong with low unemployment and solid wage growth. The biggest areas impacted by rates are mortgage and, to a lesser extent, auto—higher monthly payments have dampened some demand. The subprime consumer remains pressured by inflationary impacts that increased their cost of living. Most financial institutions are in a strong position, and our customers remain focused on growth. The impacts we see are more demand-driven in specific categories rather than broad tightening across banks.

Thanks. A follow-up: you noted margin guidance was lowered due to timing of cutover and decommissioning. If those move out a quarter, why wouldn't that snowball into 2025 as well?

We're at the finish line with a lot of these transformations. When we migrate customers to the cloud there's a period of overlap where we pay for both new cloud and legacy systems. That overlap is pushing some savings out of 2024 by a few months. The full run rate benefit will be realized in 2025 once decommissioning is complete.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Owen Lau from Oppenheimer. Your line is now live.

Good morning. The market currently expects a rate cut of 50 to 75 basis points this year, possibly starting in September. If the Fed cuts by 50 basis points, how much incremental benefit could Equifax capture? How do you think about this year?

It's difficult to give a point estimate. Rate cuts will be positive for mortgage activity, which is currently about 50% below historic inquiry levels. We estimate a recovery toward historic norms represents over $1.1 billion of annual revenue opportunity for Equifax in 2025 and beyond. That recovery would deliver substantial EBITDA given our high incremental margins. Timing and magnitude will depend on how rates move and inventory dynamics, but lower rates are a significant tailwind for our mortgage-related businesses.

Thanks. On talent, revenue was down earlier this year and then up 13% in Q2. Was that pent-up demand from Jan/Feb or more sustainable improvement?

January and February are seasonally weak for hiring. We saw weaker activity early in the year and then recovery in March and a stronger second quarter. The growth was driven by normal seasonal recovery plus strength from insights products like incarceration and education product launches. We expect continued focus on talent and sustainable growth from penetration and new products.

All right. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Next question is coming from Craig Huber from Huber Research Partners. Your line is now live.

Can you discuss AI spending? Are dollars spent within your normal technology budget or incremental? Is it displacing other tech spending or is it incremental and impacting margins?

We're investing meaningfully in AI and ML. This isn't new for Equifax, but we've increased focus and resources. The cloud transformation enables faster model development and leveraging Vertex AI. We hired a strong AI leader to drive strategy. In Q2, 89% of our new models and scores were built using AI/ML, ahead of our 2024 goal of 80%. This investment is strategic; it will produce higher-performing, more predictable solutions and better customer outcomes. As we move to a single data fabric and nearly completed cloud, AI and ML will be a major growth lever.

A significant amount of our capital spending is around getting data into the fabric, which dramatically accelerates AI and ML. Compared to peers, you should include transformation spending to fully reflect AI enablement because data normalization and availability are core to unlocking AI. We're spending substantially on AI and ML capabilities.

And on credit cards, you touched on the outlook there. Refresh us on what happened in Q1 and Q2.

A small portion of the credit card market is subprime and went through a cycle in '22 and '23 where there was some dampening due to credit risk. That has flattened out and is at a new run rate. Prime/near-prime remains a good business and we don't see major changes there. Banking and lending have been growing mid-single-digits and we expect that to continue. The consumer is generally strong, and our customers have strong balance sheets and continue to invest in origination and marketing.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you. Next question today is coming from Toni Kaplan from Morgan Stanley. Your line is now live.

Thanks. I wanted to go back to the EWS mortgage outperformance, which was slightly lower than last quarter. Can you give more color on drivers there? Any mix components or factors that led to the variance?

Toni, we'd characterize it as consistent with guidance—slightly up or down is pretty close to the same thing. Overall, it was fairly consistent with what we expected, which gives us confidence for the second half driven by records and other initiatives.

Okay. Great. And international had very strong organic growth this quarter, with LATAM a standout. Have you seen share gains in LATAM or is it early? How are you thinking about LATAM for the rest of the year?

Latin America strength was driven by acquisition of Boa Vista and organic growth of 30%, with very strong double-digit growth in Argentina, Paraguay and Central America. Brazil is early but progressing—$41 million in Q2—and we've launched Interconnect and Ignite apps and identity/fraud solutions. Europe also had strong performance with CRA and debt management doing well; Canada performed well and Asia Pacific is expected to return to growth in the second half. We're optimistic on Boa Vista integration and growth.

We provided full-year guidance inclusive of BVS. We expect International to perform well; LATAM will be strong but not necessarily at Q2 levels for the remainder of the year.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next question is coming from George Tong from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now live.

Hi, thanks. I wanted to go back to USIS non-mortgage: you mentioned continuation of tight credit conditions that impacted auto. Can you clarify the broader credit condition outlook for the second half?

To clarify, I did not say tight credit conditions in auto; I said higher rates are impacting end-user demand for auto purchases, which affects auto loan volumes. Overall, consumer fundamentals remain positive—low unemployment, steady wages. The subprime segment saw pressure in prior years, which has flattened out. Our customers are strong. The primary areas impacted by rates are mortgage and to some extent auto, but broadly credit conditions are stable for the consumer.

Got it. And in EWS non-mortgage, how much is pricing contributing to growth versus records and penetration?

EWS growth is driven by four principal levers: records, price, penetration into new verticals, and product. We don't disclose price specifics, but product and penetration are major drivers. EWS is unique with the records lever, which converts to revenue immediately as records are added. Over the long term we think about these levers as collectively driving the 13% to 15% growth rates we see in EWS.

Got it. That's helpful. Thank you.

We reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I'd like to turn the floor back over to Trevor Burns for any further closing comments.

Yes. Thanks, everybody, for their time today. If you have any follow-up questions, just reach out to me. I look forward to catching up throughout the quarter. Thank you.

Thank you. That does conclude today's teleconference and webcast. You may disconnect your line at this time, and have a wonderful day. We thank you for your participation.