Experian plc (EXPN) Q1 2027 Earnings Call Transcript

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

Thank you, Operator. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 trading update call. I'm here, as usual, with Lloyd, who will take you through the financial performance after my opening remarks. We've had a good start to the year with continued new business strength and accelerating potential across a range of AI-enabled opportunities. Q1 total revenue growth was 10% of actual rates, 8% of constant currency, and organic revenue growth was 7%. Organic revenue growth was 7% in North America. In Latin America, we've continued to see strong momentum, which was up 12%. UK and I delivered 5% growth, and EMEA Asia-Pacific was up 1%. Globally, B2B organic revenue growth was 9%, and consumer services growth of 2% was impacted by the wind-down of two North America breach contracts that we've previously discussed. Turning to the regional highlights, starting with North America, financial services delivered a low-strong quarter, up 13%, building on our excellent FY26 for client renewals. Growth was broad-based across credit, fraud, verifications, and mortgage. And while clients continue to monitor credit quality in the light of inflation risks, the The lending environment remains relatively stable with solid growth in bank lending and originations and is stable to modestly improving delinquencies, supporting growth in unsecured credit volumes. Client momentum also remains strong. Pipelines are healthy and we've reached an important milestone with all 10 of our largest strategic clients now live on Ascend, further strengthening our leadership in platform-led analytics. We're now building on that foundation by moving new agentic AI applications into pilot and expanding adoption of Model Risk Manager, our Gen AI-enabled compliance monitoring solution. We continue to see focus by our financial services clients on strong AI governance and explainability to meet regulatory requirements, as well as on strengthening fraud capabilities in response to the rise in fraud attacks. Both are creating growth opportunities for Experian. In mortgage, 11 of the top 15 mortgage lenders are now accessing Vantage School 4.0. These lenders collectively make up nearly 30% of the total mortgage market, demonstrating strong interest in VantageScore amongst these large lenders. Performance across the verticals was also strong. It was up 8%, led by health and automotive. In health, growth was driven by continued adoption of patient access curator, which is our AI-powered registration platform, and a record level of implementations. In automotive, we continue to strengthen our competitive position through new client wins led by auto-check. In consumer services, we continue to execute our strategy of reaching consumers across every channel, leveraging our trusted financial health brand. Organic revenue growth was 2% lower, which reflects the end of the two data breach contracts. Excluding data breach growth was consistent with last quarter across the product verticals, with good growth in insurance and personal loans and some softness in credit cards. We are focused on extending the Experian brand beyond our own channels and are making good progress with a growing pipeline of partnerships to expand access to our products. EVA, for example, is now live on Snapchat, supporting consumer credit education, and we have established a steady cadence of app launches in ChatGPG, while advancing partnerships with other leading LLMs to deliver compelling, compliant consumer experiences. At the same time, we continue to deepen our existing panels and enhance membership benefits, most recently a mortgage, where the integration of own-up is progressing well. In Latin America, organic revenue growth was 12%, with strong performances in both Brazil and Spanish Latin America. B2B delivered a strong quarter, which is up 9%. In Brazil, we have enhanced our market position in fraud following last year's clear sale integration. And more recently, we added IDWall, which further strengthens our identity assets. Our expanded capabilities are driving higher adoption across our strategic clients, with expansions across major Brazilian banks and telecommunications providers, while also helping us capture new opportunities in new client segments. We're also continuing to expand our proposition for SMEs, where performance has also been very strong. Consumer Services delivered another very strong quarter with organic revenue growth of 22%. Growth was broad-based, driven by continued audience expansion and a growing product portfolio. Our credit marketplace performed very strongly, supported by the expansion of private payroll lending, while we continued to grow premium subscriptions and delivered another strong quarter for Limpinome, helping consumers renegotiate debt and consolidate loans. In the UK and Ireland, organic revenue growth was 5%, with B2B also up 5%. We continue to make good progress through competitive wins and client upsell, driving further penetration of the Ascend sandbox, new use cases, expanded fraud use cases, and some growth and verifications. This resulted in broad-based growth across credit, fraud, and data quality, despite a relatively subdued lending environment. Consumer services delivered 7% organic revenue growth, supported by strong audience engagement and good growth in premium subscriptions, driven by continued product enhancements, as well as further progress in marketplace. In immediate Asia-Pacific, organic revenue growth is 1%, primarily reflecting the timing of deliveries against a strong prior year comparator. We expect Q2 to be at a more normalized level of growth. We continue to make good strategic progress with new products gaining traction across the region, supporting future growth opportunities. And with that, I'll now hand it over to Lloyd.

Thanks, Brian, and morning, everyone. As you've seen, we made a good start to FY27 with Q1 organic revenue growth of 7% in the middle of our 6% to 8% guidance range for the year in line with our expectations. And excluding data breach, organic revenue growth in the first quarter was 8%. Total revenue growth was 8% at constant exchange rates and 10% at actual exchange rates. Acquisitions contributed around 1% point to growth and foreign exchange was a tailwind of around 2% points. By segment, group B2B, organic revenue growth was 9%, with financial services up 9%, and verticals up 7%. Group consumer services grew 2%, reflecting the roll-off of the two North American breach contracts we mentioned at our full-year results. Overall, underlying trading trends were stable and in line with our expectations. Turning to the regions, in North America, organic revenue growth was 7%, with total revenue growth of 8%. B2B growth was 11%, and as you'll recall, in the first quarter last year, we had some one-off revenue in North America financial services, which we lapped in the quarter. Excluding that, all of the trading trends were stable in line with those that we reported in May. Financial services grew 13%, supported by Ascend analytic solutions, broad prevention products, mortgage profiles, and stable underlying client activity. Mortgage trends were in line with the fourth quarter with volumes slightly higher and revenue up in the 45% to 50% range. Within verticals, revenue grew 8% in line with the second half of last year with continued strength in health and automotive. Consumer services was 2% lower, reflecting the completion of the roll-off in the two long-term data breach contracts that we reported last quarter. Excluding data breach, consumer service trends were in line with last quarter, with strong growth in personal loans and insurance and softness in credit cards. In Latin America, as expected, we saw a good quarter of organic growth and total constant currency revenue growth up 12%. At actual exchange rates, revenue grew 25%. B2B reported good growth of 9%, with financial services also up 9%, supported by commercial momentum across our strategic clients in Brazil, including identity and fraud, as well as strong progress in our SME channel and agri-finance. Pipelines continue to be strong, and that really underpins our expectations for the full year of double-digit organic revenue growth in Latin America. Consumer services delivered another very strong quarter, up 22%, driven by Lumpenome, Premium, and Marketplace, including the ongoing expansion of payroll lending. And we also completed the acquisition of IDWall on July 1st, which further strengthens our fraud and our digital identity capabilities in Brazil. In the UK and Ireland, organic revenue growth was 5%, with total constant currency growth of 7%, including the contribution from KYC 360. B2B grew 5%, supported by good progress with new business wins and continued excellent progress with our Ascend platform. Consumer services grew 7%, with marketplace growth supported by higher engagement following the launch of the new 1250 credit score and continued subscription product enhancements. As Brian mentioned, in mere Asian Pacific, organic revenue growth was 1%, mainly reflecting prior year comparatives, and we expect growth to be higher through the rest of the year. And turning finally to the outlook, full year expectations and modeling considerations are unchanged. For FY27, we continue to expect organic revenue growth in the range of 6% to 8%, with an inorganic contribution of around 1%. And based on current rates, we expect foreign exchange to be a tailwind of 1% to 2% for both revenue and benchmark EBIT. And we continue to expect a progression of around 50 basis points in organic constant currency margin progression. And with that, I'll hand you back to Brian.

Great, thanks, Lloyd. In summary, you started the year well, delivering good performance in Q1. We're executing strongly against our strategy and are encouraged by the opportunities ahead. We continue to see favorable trends driving greater consumption of proprietary data, expanded distribution channels, new addressable markets, and enhanced productivity. Together, these drivers strengthen our confidence in the growth of the opportunity ahead, and we continue to expect strong growth in FY27 consistent with our previous guidance. With that, we'll now open the line for questions. We will be grateful if you could limit yourselves to two questions each so that we can get to as many people as possible. Operator, over to you.

Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star 1-1 on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1-1 again. Please stand by. We'll compile the Q&A. This will take a few moments. And now we're going to take our first question. and it comes line of Andy Groble from BNP Paribas. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi, good morning. Just a couple from me, if that's okay. Firstly, on the B2C market in the US, can you just talk about the underlying conditions from a macro perspective and how those are evolving? And with that, any change in the competitive dynamics in that market? And then secondly, for mortgage, I know it's not huge, but it's a decent driver of growth. What are you seeing in terms of Vantage and FICO direct? Is there any conversion? And what do you expect through the remainder of this calendar year, please? Thank you very much.

Thanks, Andy. Just on the mortgage, I don't think that we're seeing anything different to what we talked to you just a few weeks ago in May. Nothing fundamentally new on the direct channel. The only thing I think that we pointed out last time was the trial that's ongoing. We continue to see activity through that, but nothing fundamentally changed from just a few weeks ago. And then on the underlying conditions from a macro perspective as it applies to both, I think your question was in relation to B2C, but I think it applies across the board, B2C and B2B, we're We're not really seeing any significant change in the macro conditions. We would call them stable. I think that continues. The underlying conditions are, you know, good, okay to good. And I think it's only eight weeks since we spoke to you back in May, and nothing really has fundamentally changed. Lloyd, would you add anything to that?

No, I think very stable. You know, if you, I mentioned in the remarks, if you look inside our marketplace business, Loans growth continues to be very strong. Insurance had a good start to the year. And in credit cards, that was a bit softer, but that's really isolated to one or two clients that we talked about a few weeks ago in May. Overall marketplace in North America was very slightly stronger, up from 1% growth in Q4 to 2% in Q2. I mean, we see that as stable. membership was very slightly better at 2% growth versus 1% in Q4. Again, that really underpins our stable commentary.

And in terms of competitive dynamics, has anything changed or is expected to change in the near term in that market?

No, I think it's a straight answer to that, Andy. Nothing's changed. The market remains structured as it was. Again, no real difference to what we talked to you eight weeks ago about. Obviously, I haven't seen any results from competitors yet, but as far as we can see, it's pretty much the same as it was.

Great. Thank you very much.

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

Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is on the comment you made that all of your 10 largest clients are on the Ascend platform today. I just wanted to get some color on what they were using before. Were they using competitors' products? Were they in-sourcing and therefore they shifted to Ascend? Some color that would be great. Thank you. And then the second one on the U.S. B2C business. Sorry, just to go back to the previous question. What would it take to get to high single-digit growth underlying Adjusted for Data Breach? Is it maybe a small rebound on cyclical activity? You know, auto insurance, et cetera, has been doing well, but overall growth is still low single-digit. So I'm just trying to understand the moving parts to get you to high single-digit growth there. Thank you.

So on Ascend, I think, you know, we've talked a lot about as we expand into the different things that Ascend can do, The biggest thing that we're displacing is internal labor. You know, often these are isolated bits of analytics inside the bank. As we've moved into model risk manager, that's compliance activity, et cetera. So these are, Ascend is really a groundbreaking product that replaces lots of individual pieces of analytics and spreadsheets and other things inside the bank. And that's really why, actually, the penetration has been so rapid. It's a very strong both productivity and effectiveness business case that we provide for our clients. On B2C, I think, as we've talked to you in the past, you have, if you think about membership, Membership is often counter-cyclical, so that's often been one of the things that's helped us be very resilient in the consumer business at times when credit availability is low. So I think it really depends on what we see for the outlook for the overall lending environment. The build-out of our insurance vertical last year was, I think, more of a stabilizing year after some strong growth, but we started the year really well. And I think the membership product, we've got some interesting new product releases that are coming out through this year. So we're feeling positive about how that develops. But I think we'll obviously report as we go through this on progress.

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

Yeah, morning, everybody. Two questions from me. First of all, LATAM, you mentioned you'd got a good pipeline and B2B growth's accelerated. Do you think you're sort of through that slightly sticky period you've had the last couple of years where market growth seems to have been constrained by the tightening of the rate cycle? and is your expectation over the medium term that double-digit growth is sustainable in the region? And then second question, I appreciate, Brian, probably things haven't moved on a lot in the last six or seven weeks, but I just wonder if you could go back to the agentic developments and initiatives you've got going on in relation to the Ascend platform and agentic commerce. I think you launched Know Your Agent earlier on this year. Can you give us a sort of sense of what benefit you're expecting from those over the course of the year, what client interest and take-up has been like?

Great. Thanks, Andrew. On the LATAM growth, I think we do expect that growth to be sustainable. I think the market conditions have not really changed that much. I think what you're seeing is another sort of wave of new business opportunities for us, partly coming out of the clear sale integration, which is going very well. So I think we're just executing well against a similar environment, I think, would be the answer. So we feel pretty confident about that. On the agentic side, we continue to make progress on agent trust, and that is further engagement with the ecosystem of partners that are needed to really embed this as part of a, you know, truly operating sort of system in the market, those conversations continue. They're gaining traction. We are close to signing up additional participants in that. So I would say progress is good. Further tests continue. You know, we have prototypes of the product, and we're demonstrating that in lots of different So progress is good. And I think we'll hear more of that as we go through the rest of the year. On Ascend, we launched what we call the Ascend Agentic Operating System of Money 2020 just a few weeks ago. That's an operating system that sits on the Ascend platform, which allows agents to interact with that platform in a really powerful way. The reception to that's been really fantastic. There's lots of engagement on it. So we're excited about that proposition. And we did talk about that in May. We knew we were ready. We hadn't got it launched at the time that we announced our results in May, and we knew that was coming up. So, again, we continue to make really good progress on building out the generative capabilities across all of our portfolio. This is a really great example, and as we've reported, you can see that the engagement through the SEND platform continues to be incredibly strong and, in many cases, actually accelerating. Thanks, Brian.

Thank you so much. Now we're going to take our next question. And the question comes line of Simon Klinch from Ruth Schultz & Co. Redburn. Your line is open. Please ask your question.

Hi. Thanks, Brian. Thanks, Lloyd. So just a couple of questions. First of all, I was wondering if you could just help us think about the cadence of growth in the U.S. consumer business through the rest of this year, the puts and takes we need to think about going forward. So we know the contracts from those two data breaches are rolling off. But I think there's some other sort of one time impacts that we might need to consider when thinking about the overall growth relative to the underlying core, which which I believe is which was three percent last quarter. So we can start with that, please. That'd be great. And then as a follow up, I'd be interested to hear just in terms of the mortgage market and the FICO revenues you have. Could you help break out sort of what the mortgage revenue growth is if you excluded the FICO revenues from that and get a sense of what that growth is as well?

Great. Thanks, then. I'll turn them over to Lloyd.

Yeah, so on the mortgage market, I mentioned the revenue growth from mortgage profiles was high 40s in the quarter, which is very similar to where we finished in the fourth quarter, and we expect something broadly similar the rest of this calendar year on volumes that were up very slightly. So similar sort of pricing benefit that we've seen before. And I think that, given the price rises that were announced earlier this year, that will sustain through the rest of this calendar year as we roll into next year. I think we'll see what the pricing environment is. On the cadence of growth, so if you remember, the data breach contracts were about $20 million a quarter. We lost about half of that in the fourth quarter and the other half in the first quarter. So just on that item, we'll have another $20 million, get the same $20 million loss in Q2 and Q3, and then that reduces to $10 million in Q4, and it's out of the system by Q1 next year. And then in addition, in the second quarter, last year, we had the one-off catch-up on the insurance vertical, which was about $20 million. So in the second quarter, we'll have both of those items that we're lapping, and then that improves in the third quarter. In terms of what that means for the outlook for the group, as you've seen, 7% in Q1. We think the first half is about 7%. Q2 gets clearly a bit more difficult in terms of that comp. So Q2 could round to a 6 or a 7, but I think it's 7 for the half. And if you add all of that back and look at the underlying trends, they're all very, very stable. So the 7% that we've done in Q1 is really 8% if you exclude that data breach, which is really in line with what we were trading out through the whole of last year. So really, really good underlying trading across the portfolio.

Thanks, Lloyd. That's great, Carla.

Thank you. and thank you now we're going to take our next question and the question comes line of author trust love from CTO land is open please ask a question thank you and good morning and a couple of questions from Italy so just on the going back to the marketplace piece are you able to split the revenue growth between the insurance and the lending related piece because it sounds like if growth was kind of one to two percent if i understand correctly in that marketplace business then you know at least one of those must have been a bit soggy um and if you could just explain kind of if it was the lending that was soft then why please the second bit on the mortgage so obviously there's been a change of approach you know fico have obviously put the pricing up a huge amount are you able to just remind us this year are you are you basically putting your prices up to maintain gross margin as you as I've understand you were previously or what are you how are you handling that thank you so I'll take the mortgage question first and then go back to Lord on the marketplace on the mortgage, we're not marking the FICO score up.

That was a change that was made during the course of last year. We have published our prices for our credit reports, which were publicized some months ago. So those prices are in the marketplace. And as we said, when that change took place, that we believe that the value is in the data, and we've reflected that in our approach to the marketplace. So that's all reflected really in the mortgage revenues that go forward. And on the...

Just to add, Arthur, so when we gave our margin guidance for the group as a whole, that included soaking up a bit of margin drag from the pass-through of the FICO royalty. So that was all embedded in our 50 basis points margin progression guidance. On marketplaces, as I mentioned, so just to go through the numbers, so this is North America marketplace. In Q4, marketplace was up 1% and that increased to 2% in Q1. Within that, you have good growth in lending and in terms of personal loans. You have good growth in insurance, and you have a modest decline in credit cards, which was really around those one or two clients that we mentioned, and that's very, very stable through Q4 into Q1.

Thank you.

Now we're going to take our next question, and the question comes line of Tim Ramscale. bank of america your line is open please ask your question thank you good morning gents uh my two uh first up just in terms of emea and apac i think you sort of called out an expectation of improvement in growth trends through the balance of the year maybe just some context as to to what underpins that that confidence please uh and then secondly as regards kind of pipeline of innovation and the send platform just interested in your sort of overall view as to how much more is to come through the course of this year in terms of incremental product capability and also the

extent to which the cloud migration work has helped your sort of speed to market that right okay on the mea apac question really that's a a comparator issue from last year we had a very strong pipeline of deliveries, which happened in Q1. So that actually just falls out in Q2 and beyond. So really, the underlying growth rate in APAC is not going to change very much. I think it's just understated by that comparator. And then on the pipeline innovation, very strong. We have a ton of stuff going on across the company, many, many things that are actually coming to market now, and we expect that, you know, cadence to continue. You know, I think the metrics around that really are kind of encapsulated as we give at the year end with the contributions that we get from new products. So difficult to kind of look at that on a quarterly basis, but overall activity across the company and opportunities that we see are strong. Our sales pipelines are very strong, and they're up substantially year on year. So very good signals, within the business. And I think your question about the migrations to the new technology platforms in the cloud, yes, they do. Of course, they actually help us in terms of freeing up capability to focus more on product development than on transformation. Most of our, all of our new products have been built in the cloud for quite some time. We've talked a lot about the Ascend platform as a great driver of innovation and growth, been on the cloud for, well, it's cloud native. So I think helpful in terms of focus, of work, time, and effort inside the company. So we feel good about that.

Maybe just a super quick follow-up just on that point around the sales pipeline. Is that strength of pipeline likely to play out in FY27, or could it come after that?

Well, it's not just Ascend. That was referencing the pipeline really across the company. So sales pipelines across the company are looking very healthy. And that's the best signal that you can get. Of course, execution against that pipeline has to happen during the course of the year. Sales cycles in our B2B business are lengthy, but I think that's a very strong signal as we go into FY27.

Thank you. and now we're going to take our last question for today and it comes land of ben wild from deutsche bank your line is open please ask your question yeah hi good morning everybody uh two questions for me again on the um the consumer business um firstly on on cards in in the marketplace i think it's it's fair to say that the the market is very sensitive to to growth in consumer at the moment and i suppose um particularly in marketplace can you can you just talk to the specific situations in cards that are driving softness against a bank's reporting cycle in the last week that has looked broadly pretty upbeat on consumer credit. And then a second question on the issue of engagement and active usership in consumer. I think you used to talk to a target engagement level of 30% of monthly active users as a percentage of total consumer membership. If that specific target looks like it's kind of receded in investor communications over the last couple of years, how do you think about engagement on the consumer platform relative to some of your peers? And is your view of how you monetize the consumer audience evolving at all? Thank you.

I'll maybe touch on marketplace. So if you look at marketplace marketplace in the UK, double-digit growth across the categories. If you look at marketplace in Brazil, double-digit growth, again, across the lending categories. In North America, as I mentioned, you've got a slightly broader product set that we have where personal loans is growing well, insurance is growing well, and you have credit cards on our platform that's kind of a modest decline. I think if you look back in Q4, across the competitor set, credit cards were slightly soft. And we saw that as some really quite specific client activity that have a slightly more outsized share of credit card originations on our marketplace platform. So we're clearly seeing that stable through the last three months. We saw some of the effects after the start of the war in February, but since then it's been very stable. In terms of engagement, I'll have Brian comment here, engagement is absolutely a core metric of ours. We've seen some very strong uplifting engagement around new product deliveries. You're seeing the effect of that, for example, in the UK, where we launched the 1250 score, very strong growth last year. Marketplace in the UK grew over 30%. And as I say, double-digit growth on top of that very strong comp as we've entered this year, similar very strong growth on product releases in Brazil. And we've got a good pipeline of additional functionality that we're launching in North America this coming year as well, which we expect to help.

Well, I think the final part of that question is in how do we feel about competitive position? I think we feel very strong, very strong brand, great performance over a number of years, puts us into a really good position. If you look at all of the metrics that we look at, yes, one part of the marketplace is a bit soft right now, still seeing great traction in many other verticals. We're just starting on the mortgage vertical, and we think that that's got really substantial growth opportunities. I think we see tremendous engagement and traction across the market with us as a proposition. So I think we feel strategically in a great position here and, you know, remain confident about the future of the business.

Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

Great. Okay. Well, thank you, everybody, for joining and thanks to your questions. I hope you all have a good day and we look forward to speaking to you again in November for our half-year results. Thank you.