Experian plc (EXPN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day, and welcome to the Experian Half Year Results hosted by Brian Cassin. My name is Nigel. I'm your event coordinator. [Operator Instructions] I would like to advise all parties that this conference is being recorded. And now I'll hand over to Brian. Brian, please go ahead.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our first half results presentation. I'm joined today by Lloyd Pitchford, our CFO; and Kerry Williams, our COO, will also join us for the Q&A session. So we had a very good start to FY '22 with a strong first half performance, and we began to revise our full year expectations upwards. We saw a rebound across most of our major markets, and we continue to benefit from favorable long-term trends such as the shift to digital, investment in automation and process and customer experience improvements. Consumer Services had an outstanding first half and growth momentum continues. We are well on our way to becoming one of the largest, most inclusive financial platforms in the world. We saw growth across all regions and business lines in the half with Latin America, our fastest-growing region, and we made good strategic progress on multiple fronts. Turning now to the first half highlights. It was a very good performance all around with revenues, earnings and cash all up strongly. Q2 Organic revenue growth was 11%, and that took us to organic revenue growth for the half of 16% after the easier comparisons we had in Q1. B2B was up 12%. Volumes recovered, particularly in prospecting and new credit origination. We also had a significant contribution from new products with new and expanded data sets and scores, strong growth in platforms, PowerCurve, CrossCore, Ascend are all up materially and all of our vertical markets are doing well, particularly Health. Consumer Services growth of 27% is outstanding. There are several things driving this. Membership growth continues at a good pace. We're now at 122 million free members globally, an increase of 26 million in the last year. And also very importantly, our enhanced customer propositions, meaning that we have a stickier, more valuable membership base. We have made a number of acquisitions on which we have discussed with you before. These include recent acquisitions to extend our customer service propositions in the U.S. and in Brazil, and I'll discuss these in a bit more detail shortly. The U.K. transformation program is going very well. The margin there nearly doubled in the half, and we're also taking steps to drive performance improvements in some of our smaller countries across EMEA and Asia Pacific. Now before I get into the details of the first half, I want to touch on purpose, Experian has a powerful social mission to drive financial inclusion and provide access to affordable credit. This matters because we play a pivotal role in society, and we have responsibility to act on the force for good. We put this interaction every day developing capabilities, which help millions to manage their financial lives. We also develop propositions which are specifically designed to help credit invisibles and particularly marginalized communities bring them into the credit economy and provide them with better opportunities. You see here some details from our soon-to-launch Experian Go initiative, which we also refer to as new to credit. It's a program for underserved communities that allows consumers to go from invisible to scorable. And you can see here the progress we're making towards scoring more of the credit eligible population. I'm very pleased to say we're being recognized for our work. Experian has been included on Fortune's Change the World list with specific recognition for our efforts to drive financial inclusion through Experian Boost. And you've heard me say this many times our products and services are used to make a real difference in financial lives of people all over the world. We're very proud of this. It's very powerful for our employer brand, too. And we're also very proud to have been recognized earlier this year as a Great Place to Work in 21 countries. Let's just quickly recap on some of our more important strategic priorities and drivers of our growth. The graphic here on the left should be familiar to you. We have a lot of opportunity in our end markets, and we're making very good progress. We're leading the way of consumer commission data. This started with Experian Boost, and we're extending into permission data into areas like income and employment verifications. We're also expanding our data assets to drive financial inclusion. Concepts like Experian Lift and Lift Premium combine many different data sets to score more people, as I referenced earlier. And our ambition is to move further into nontraditional data. One of the key strengths of Experian is our ability to extend products and services across many end markets. PowerCurve is our most successful product family in this context, with 594 installations across 66 countries. As previously discussed, we now have added Ascend as a global capability with a lot of progress in non-U.S. markets and now 113 Ascend clients globally across 10 countries, which is still dominated by the U.S., but gaining traction everywhere, particularly in the U.K. and in Brazil and in Brazil, in particular, where the shift to positive data is driving demand for more advanced analytical and decisioning products. We have a number of advanced global leading products like this. CrossCore is another example, but also products we talk less about like Attribute Toolbox new ones like AIS, Ascend Intelligence Services. And one of our key strategic objectives and focus areas for investment is to integrate these capabilities. And we believe this will drive better efficiency for our clients to reduce the number of process steps they need to achieve customer outcomes. For example, the ability to deploy data analytics and decisioning capability seamlessly into production saves huge time and effort and eliminates rework. It also improves speed and response times and help them react much quicker, which is essential, of course, given the world that we live in today. This breadth of capability is unique to Experian. The integration of all these products presents a real opportunity for us and where we believe we have a strong competitive advantage. And we've been investing to make this a reality, and that's now actually becoming so with a growing pipeline of opportunities. I touched on Consumer Services earlier. We're making great progress. Lead generation has rebounded significantly this year and is growing strongly everywhere, 160% growth year-on-year in the U.K., for example. And we're also expanding our product capability. We acquired a small business in North America to strengthen our insurance capability there. And we acquired a small business in Brazil to add a digital wallet and payment capabilities to our membership base. These are great examples of what we mean by introducing new and transformative product concepts. Experian Verify is a new growth area for us launched last year. Since launch, we've had over 270 client engagements, and we now have 67 Experian Verify clients in North America. We're very pleased with this progress. It should make a strong contribution this year, and we're confident in the prospects for this initiative. We've seen a material improvement in the performance of EMEA and Asia Pacific. We have got further scale here. We're making very good progress, building for scale, reducing costs and streamlining operations. And we expect the contribution from this region to continue to improve and to reach good levels of profitability over the next few years. We're very excited by Brazil. We're now seeing very strong growth from positive data products. We think the market is expanding as we thought it would in response to an historic market change. We developed over 100 new products using positive data and client take-up is very strong. We're also executing on the promise to turn Serasa into much more functioning and vertically diverse business. Turning now to our regions and starting with North America, where organic revenue growth was 16% and total growth was 21% when you include the contributions from our Employer Services acquisitions. All major business units in North America grew in H1 with strong growth, particularly in consumer, core bureau businesses and vertical markets like Health and Targeting. Market conditions have been good. There has been good volume recovery as marketing and the lending activity resumed. Mortgage volumes reversed as expected, but overall, the effect was positive. We've secured new clients and expanded our position competitively. Our superior data quality and product differentiation are key determining factors in these wins. Ascend continues to do well with newer products, like Ascend Marketing seeing significant growth. Our newest evolution, Ascend Go, allows clients to link their decision systems for credit approvals and has seen very good momentum. We're also excited about the potential for Ascend Intelligence Services. This will build out a suite of analytical products on top of a global AI platform and will we'll deliver more client value more quickly with more frequent updating and monitoring. Decision Analytics did really well. PowerCurve was a significant driver of growth, particularly our cloud-based PowerCurve proposition for customer acquisition. And as you all know, we've been investing heavily in Experian One, our cloud-based decisioning platform and transition our business globally to become cloud first and digital first with a higher recurring revenue stream. The U.S. has made great progress. The majority of sales were PowerCurve originations on Experian One. And every single one of our software deals in H1 was part of a broader contract with integrated data and software products. Fraud is a large and growing issue in the era of e-commerce. And we saw very good growth in our fraud products in H1, including some very large contract awards, including with the Social Security Administration in our public sector channel. And we've established an early lead in the fast-growing BNPL segment. 3 of the 4 largest players have exclusive relationships with Experian and some of these are becoming global relationships. As I mentioned earlier, Verification and Employment Services is doing well. We're integrating the Employer Services acquisitions. Employers have reacted well to us entering the space. Record count is growing, particularly unique records. We are onboarding clients for Experian Verify across a wide range of industries, financial services, government landlords and also in the automotive vertical. Our health care business is thriving. It's had a great start to the year. What differentiates us is the breadth of our capability, and there have been a mix of drivers through the course of the pandemic. But fundamentally, there's increased demand for new products and health care systems and new bookings performance is strong. We're investing in an initiative that we call the digital front door to help enhance the customer digital experience so that providers can improve their digital portals to deliver health care in more convenient settings. And this is just one example of new opportunity creation in health. Consumer Services is now our fastest-growing business in North America. Organic revenue growth was 24%. We have a simple but powerful mission to deliver financial power to all, and we think about the business across our 4 strategic levers. Our free membership base of 47 million is growing strongly. Our marketing campaigns have performed well, and we're using new distribution models through partners to supplement this. For example, we launched a partnership with China to leverage their ecosystem. Engagement levels continue to grow as we drive towards daily utility. This is really important for many reasons. It helps to drive upsell and cross-sell through CRM and lowers the cost of reacquisition. And this will be an important factor in determining the ROI at maturity. The more reasons we give people use our platform, the stronger engagement will be, that means new products and our pipeline is very strong. Personalization is key. This is where our deep data knowledge and expertise comes in. Consumer permission data is also an important element of this, and our road map will introduce more ways to boost plus a lot more. Identity, credit, personal loans, mortgage and insurance are all areas that just started to scale. And this brings me to the acquisition of Gabi, which is going to substantially enhance our insurance offering. Gabi provides integrations with more than 40 of the top insurance carriers in the U.S. It also brings capabilities that will allow us to address the $2 billion auto insurance online market with a very differentiated proposition. And this will help to reduce some of the pain points people have when they shop for car insurance by getting them accurate and instant quotes online. I think it's also an illustration of how we can leverage our membership base to move into new verticals rapidly at scale. Moving to Latin America, which had an outstanding first half. Organic revenue growth was 20%. When you include the acquisitions, it grew by 27%. As in other regions, the volume recovery was a factor in the performance. But what's becoming very clear is that there is a large transformation underway in the credit industry in Brazil. Digital adoption has exploded. Government COVID support schemes gave us a big push. They prompted consumers to get bank accounts, and there has been a step change in the bank population. The second factor is a significant increase in competition across financial services driven by a very well-funded and fast-growing fintech sector. So the credit industry in Brazil is undergoing massive change. It's being driven by positive data. Financial inclusion is expanding. Competition in lending is increasing and the market for our products is growing. And this is very much as we predicted it would play out. The combination of our positive data and our consumer presence is a powerful one. We can give visibility to a much larger section of population to our credit risk tools, and we can fulfill the demand for credit that this generates in our marketplace. We're seeing this in growing traction for our positive data attributes and scores that I referenced earlier, Serasa Score 2.0 is outperforming all other scores in the market. It's a function of our superior data and the expertise that we're able to transfer to Brazil from all of our other markets. There is another wave of positive data to come when telco operators start to furnish data, and that will unlock still greater visibility to the unbanked section of the population. And it's important to emphasize that the growth driver is going beyond positive data. It drives demand for more sophisticated products for better analysis, decisions and insights. And we're very well positioned for this with demand from PowerCurve, CrossCore, and Ascend all growing. We're also extending our fraud presence, and we have done through the acquisition of BrScan and we're seeing great growth. And we think in the fraud and identity management market on its own could be an addressable market opportunity of nearly $1 billion in Brazil over the next 5 years. Consumer Services is taking the next step in its evolution to diversifying into new revenue segments. eCred started to grow rapidly, a function of rapid digitization referred to above. And we're adding new features to Serasa Premium like lock/unlock, a feature we initially developed for the U.S. market. The acquisition of PagueVeloz gives us a new platform for consumers to make real-time payments via an e-wallet and instantly boost their scores, which will drive engagement and enhance the customer experience. So a lot going on in Brazil and more widely across Latin America, and we feel we are exceptionally well positioned. The U.K. is beginning to show good recovery and we had a successful start to the year. Revenues are on a much better trajectory and it has translated into much improved margin progression. The business has performed well. In part, this has been as land as relaxed lending policies and volumes have recovered, but much of it is also due to the positive results from our transformation, which 1 year into the process is tracking ahead of our plan. Our market performance is on a very encouraging trajectory. Win rates have increased, and we've secured more new business. Again, quality and completeness of our data is a real differentiator as our market-leading propositions, PowerCurve, Ascend, for example. We'll see a step change this year and our affordability offer is viewed as best in class. Consumer Services has had a very strong start in part due to the bounce back in card and loan prospecting. I think, what's also very pleasing for us is the property made with our consumer brands. You can see some of the metrics here. We've improved a lot in terms of trust, relevance and differentiation. So while the comparative will become a bit tougher as we go through the year, we're on much firmer foundations now in this part of the business, and we're well on our way to returning the U.K. to its historical pattern of accretive revenue growth, high profitability and leading innovation. Turning now to EMEA, Asia Pacific, where organic revenue growth was 6%. This region has a broad geographic footprint, and we've seen some countries still being affected during the half by government-mandated lockdowns. But overall, we have benefited from recovery here, too. We are pleased to return to growth overall. We believe this will continue, and we have an opportunity to drive meaningful growth over time, much closer to the growth rates we see elsewhere and on a more consistent basis. The steps we've taken in South Africa, Spain and Germany have been part of this process to build more scale, recurring revenue and profitability, and we have made a lot of progress. Our goal is to deliver performance improvement through a combination of enhanced revenue growth through innovation, efficiency measures to reduce costs and streamlining activities to enhance focus and simplify our operating structure. This will help us to drive more scale and further unlock some of the opportunities that we see across this region. So that brings me to the end of the regional run-through. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to Lloyd to take you through the financial review.

Thanks, Brian, and good morning, everyone. I'll start as usual with the highlights. And as you've seen, we had a very strong first half, ahead of our expectations. We delivered 16% organic revenue growth, our strongest first half organic revenue growth since becoming a public company in 2006. Q2 organic revenue growth was 11%, which was around 3% higher than we guided back in July as we saw strength across our markets but most notably in the consumer, credit bureau and health businesses. Acquisitions added a further 5% of the half with the contributions from the German bureau and the recently acquired verification businesses in North America. FX was a 2% tailwind, bringing total revenue growth to 23% for the half. Strong revenue growth flowed through to EBIT, which increased 25% at both constant and actual rates. EBIT margins expanded 70 basis points at constant currency, consistent with our expectations as guided, and FX was neutral at an EBIT level. So margins were up 20 basis points at actual FX rates. Earnings per share growth was very strong, up 30% in constant currency terms. And we also delivered another period of very strong cash flow conversion and nominal cash flow growth. And given this performance, the Board has approved a first interim dividend of $0.16, an increase of 10% on last year. And finally, our leverage ratio was at the bottom of our 2x to 2.5x EBITDA net debt range, including the acquisition spend of $369 million in the half. Touching briefly on our revenue trends. As usual, you can see that outside of the turbulence we saw focus in the first quarter of last year, we've consistently delivered strong levels of organic growth. In addition, we've consistently delivered incremental inorganic growth, which for this half year added 5%. Looking at these trends across our B2B and Consumer Services segment. On the left-hand side of this chart, you can see our B2B revenue growth trends. Following on from the strong growth in Q1 as we lap the worst effects of the pandemic, B2B achieved high single-digit growth in Q2 and 12% growth for the first half overall. Excluding mortgage, Q2 B2B organic growth was 9%, with data and decisioning overall growing 6% and 9%, respectively. In Consumer Services, on the right-hand side, we delivered our fifth quarter of very strong double-digit organic growth and 27% for the half. Momentum continued through Q2 with credit supply returning to our lead generation markets in North America and the U.K. and Ireland, while subscription revenues remained strong. On the next 2 slides, we show the breakdown of performance for our business within each of our regions. Starting with North America, where we delivered 11% organic revenue growth for the second quarter, taking the organic revenue growth to 16% for the half year. Our bureau business grew 12% organically for the half. Q1 was very strong, reflecting a catch-up in demand and weaker comparators in the prior year due to COVID. During Q2, we delivered double-digit growth in our core bureau, excluding mortgage, as we saw a rebound across traditional client segments as well as across alternative financial services markets. Ascend continued to grow double digits during the half with strong demand from clients as we add new modules and integrate Ascend with our decisioning platforms. As expected, mortgage declined 20% as we worked through the strengthening refinance volumes from the prior year. And we continue to expect mortgage to be a 1% headwind for group organic growth for the year as a whole. Automotive grew 9% organic for the half with volumes performing well despite the well-publicized supply chain issues in the auto market. Targeting did well as demand for advertising recovered from the lowest in the prior year. And our Health business had a great half of strong double-digit growth. We delivered record software implementations and our products benefited from the recovery in activity levels and new innovations. We processed over 500 million eligibility transactions in Q2 alone, which was 19% higher than last year. Decision Analytics performed well, growing double digits as identity and fraud volumes continue to be strengthened by increasing digitization of services. Our software business grew 18% for the half as we continue to transition from on-premise software solutions to more experienced hosting services. Consumer Services performed very strongly in the seventh quarter of double-digit growth. Our free member base has now reached 47 million, up 31% year-on-year. Revenue from premium subscription services progressed well. And on the lead generation side, we saw more lenders return to the credit market as well as further progress in the insurance vertical, which progressed strongly. Latin America grew 20% in the half. The bureau business grew 14% organically. We've seen a recovery in bureau volumes across the region. And in Brazil, we benefited from strong demand from positive data scores and attributes, which is now contributing meaningfully to revenue growth. Decision Analytics grew 31% driven by higher volumes in analytics. Consumer Services grew 64%. Our lead generation proposition eCred saw very strong growth as we build out this platform alongside very strong consumer demand for credit products. And the free member base in Brazil now stands at 65 million, up 25% year-on-year. The U.K. and Ireland region grew strongly through the first half with double-digit growth in both quarters. The bureau business delivered organic growth of 14%. Bureau volumes in the U.K. are now back to pre-COVID levels with consistent strength through the half. And we're seeing good growth in prequalification volumes as lenders have relaxed lending policies. Targeting and auto recovered as the economy continued to open up and demand returns. Our U.K. Decisioning segment grew by 7% for the half. Revenue growth in identity and fraud and our analytics businesses were both driven by improvements in transaction volumes as they continue to exceed pre-COVID levels. Whilst in decisioning software revenue growth was driven by sales of cloud testing solutions and migrations from legacy products. Consumer Services was up 30% for the half, where we saw a strong recovery in the lead generation business as supplies bounce back. Our free member base here has now reached 10.4 million, up 22% year-on-year. The consumer engagement remains strong, and we receive an average of 1.3 million visits per month to our marketplace. EMEA, Asia Pacific delivered growth of 6% in half 1. In EMEA, we were up 5% for the half as volumes recovered and was driven by increased client activity. The Q2 decline in EMEA that you can see on the chart related to a one-off contract win in the prior year in our German acquisition. APAC was up 7% in the first half, reflecting strengthening bureau volumes across the region, and we've also seen good demand for cloud-enabled technologies. If I turn now to EBIT. Last year, EBIT was $647 million on the left of the chart. North America added $127 million to EBIT, growing over 20% on the prior year. Strong revenue growth across the business offset the slowdown in U.S. mortgage and increased investment. We're continuing to expand investment behind momentum in our Consumer Services business. Latin America EBIT grew 34%, reflecting strength in revenue as bureau volumes recovered and positive data products momentum increase. U.K. and Ireland EBIT more than doubled versus the prior year, delivering 150% growth following strong revenue growth and progress with our transformation program. Our EMEA/Asia Pacific business delivered good revenue growth, which dropped through to EBIT. And we also saw a positive impact from our acquisitions. Central activities increased $54 million in the first half. Following a strong start to the year, we incurred a $20 million one-off incentive catch-up in Central to align to strong business performance. We also continued our investment in our global project initiatives following the reduction in discretionary spend we saw in the first half of last year. So for the full year, we expect Central activities to be around $150 million at actual rates, which includes the $20 million catch-up on the incentives in the first half. So excluding that going forward, this gives us a run rate on Central activities of around $60 million to $65 million in the half. We delivered over $800 million of EBITDA during the half, reflecting growth of 25% of both actual and constant FX rates. First half margin was up 70 basis points at constant currency, in line with our guidance. FX was a 2% tailwind to revenue and neutral to EBIT as we guided in July, and therefore, at actual rates, margin was up 20 basis points. So overall, the first half margin came in where we expected, and we continue to expand investment behind the growth momentum that we have in the business. And we're maintaining our margin guidance, which I'll turn to in a moment. Moving on to EPS, starting with half 1 of last year, where Benchmark EPS was $0.479 per share. Benchmark EBIT from continuing operations grew 25%, reflecting the strong organic revenue growth performance. Interest expense decreased to $55 million as a result of lower average global interest rates. The tax rate is 24.8%, down from 26.2% in the prior year, reflecting a one-off credit to deferred tax relating to the amended U.K. tax rate. EPS -- were up 30% on a constant FX basis and up 29% of actual FX rates to $0.617. Taking a look now at our usual reconciliation to statutory results. Our Benchmark profit before tax grew 28%, both constant and actual rates following the strong revenue performance. Acquisition intangibles grew in line with our increased acquisition activity. Exceptional items were a $5 million credit driven by a further earn-out on the sale of our stake in Finicity. Other items here mainly relate to acquisition-related expenses and changes to noncash financing remeasurements was driven as usual by FX changes on income -- and that takes us all to the statutory profit before tax of $654 million, up 43% year-on-year. Moving on to cash flow. We saw a very strong cash flow generation with Benchmark operating cash flow up 25% year-on-year at actual rates and more than double the figure 2 years ago. In addition, we've seen very strong conversion in the half at 89%, meaning we now expect a higher level conversion for the full year of around 100%. Net capital expenditure was up 13%, representing 7% of revenue. Looking at the balance sheet. During the half, we made $369 million of acquisitions. In addition, after the end of the quarter, we completed the acquisitions of Gabi in North America and PagueVeloz in Brazil, which amounted to $353 million of acquisition expenditure. We've also announced a dividend of $0.16 or 10% year-on-year. And we've completed $115 million net share repurchases of the $150 million we announced in May. And as you know, our net debt-to-EBITDA range is 2 to 2.5 and we finished the half year at 2.1 towards the bottom end of that range. And finally, turning to modeling considerations. We previously guided to 9% to 11% organic revenue growth for the full year. Driven by our strong half 1 performance and outlook, we're now upgrading our full year guidance to 11% to 13%, with Q3 expected to be in the range of 9% to 11%. Following the acquisitions after the period end, we now expect acquisitions to add around 4% to our revenue growth for the year, at the top of our previous guidance. We continue to expect strong margin progression of at least 60 basis points at constant currency. And we continue to invest strongly behind the momentum in our business and our growth innovations. We expect FX will be neutral to EBIT growth and a 30 basis point headwind to EBIT margin, assuming current rates continue. We now expect net interest for the year to be around $150 million at the bottom of our previous range. The Benchmark tax rate is expected to be around 26% at the bottom of our previous range and weighted average number of shares is expected to be 950 million for the year. And following the upgrade to revenue, CapEx is now expected to be around 8% of revenue at the bottom end of our previous range. And given the strong cash flow performance across the business, we've upgraded our cash conversion guidance and now expect operating cash flow conversion of around 100%. And that concludes my remarks. I'll now hand you back to Brian for the Q&A.

Great. Thanks, Lloyd. So to summarize, strong first half, better than expected and, overall, set to be a very good year for Experian. Next phase in development, I think is set to be probably our most exciting. We're redefining the opportunity for Experian across many segments, be that Consumer Services Brazil or across many of our vertical markets. We're well underway with our U.K. transformation, and we see great potential to deliver enhanced performance costs at EMEA/Asia Pacific. Taken together, as we look ahead, we are very well positioned. And so with that, I'm going to hand back to the operator for your questions. for which we'll also be joined by Kerry Williams, our Chief Operating Officer. Operator, back to you.

[Operator Instructions] Maybe first question then is from Paul Sullivan from Barclays.

3 for me. Firstly, I mean this is the second organic raise that you put through this year. I mean what drives you towards the sort of the upper end of the implied 9% to 11% for the second half? And how should we think about sort of the conservatism that's built into that? Secondly, could you break down the second quarter growth in the U.S. consumer business by its component parts? And I know you touched on it, are there any specific KPIs you're going to start sharing with us so that we can monitor engagement and monetization a little bit more closely sort of going forward? And then thirdly, we saw your Democrat friends -- remitted to the CFPB over data accuracy amongst other things. Any comment there? And also around noise and pushback against the use of scores and credit reports more generally?

Great. Paul, thanks for the questions. So Lloyd, do you want to deal with the first two and then I'll come back on the CFPB point.

Yes, sure. So organic growth, Paul. So if we continue growing at 11% that we've done in the second quarter, that gets you to the top of the range. We clearly have some tougher comps in the second half, particularly in the consumer business and particularly looking at the subscription business and clearly some uncertainties in other bits of the business. At the bottom end of the range, we would be somewhere in the 8% to 9% organic growth for the rest of the year. So that changes the range. I think a 2% range for the full year with only half to go, I think, are likely -- most probable outcomes are in that range rather than outside of it. Clearly, there's always a chance but more probable will be in the range for the rest of the year would be my guide. On Consumer, we saw continued good double-digit growth in the subscription business year-on-year. Very strong growth in lead generation. So that was almost doubled and give you a shape of it for the full year, we're expecting over $200 million of lead gen revenue in the North America business. Our Partner Solutions business grew strongly. So across the board, growth was very strong, but it has been very strong in lead generation. Brian?

Great. Thanks. Lloyd. And then coming back to your point on the CFPB, I think your specific question, Paul, is around the number of complaints. And I think this is sort of an ongoing story really. There's a couple of points of context. I mean, first of all, I think the CFPB portal, it's quite a mouthful, is used to aggregate customer complaints across the bureau system. If you look at the majority of those complaints, what they're actually focused on really is the accuracy of the data that's furnished to us by the furnishers in the credit system. A very, very small portion of complaints themselves are actually directed at the credit reporting agencies. And we have a statutory obligation to investigate those complaints and disputes and follow them up within specific time scales. And we then have obligations to respond back to that consumer and to CFPB how we have resolved that complaint. 90% of the complaints are resolved with no change to the credit report. So I think that gives you an idea of some of the level of activity that we see. The other thing I would say is that we see an increasing number of complaints that are submitted on behalf of credit repairing organizations. These are organizations that reportedly act on behalf of consumers try and get their credit reports changed. And so in many cases, these are aggregated complaints. We've seen the number of complaints that are submitted by one firm, for example, multiple complaints using the same language, all of which indicates fairly systematic and industrial scale approach to this. There's actually an interesting Oliver Wyman report, which I think is available on our website, which gives you a little bit more detail behind this. So I think -- we think that just looking at that number of complaints doesn't tell you the whole picture. And we think that as an industry, we've made huge strides over a long period, increasing data accuracy and ensuring that we have the most accurate data in the system as possible.

And just coming back on the consumer side, the KPIs on monetization and engagement. Can we expect sort of more info on that, so we can start monitoring that more closely going forward?

Yes. I think we've expanded the disclosure that quite a bit this year. We've talked about the additional revenue that we're getting from the insurance segment. The average disclosure -- sorry, the average engagement we have of 25%, it's pretty stable across our 3 direct-to-consumer businesses actually in that 25% to 30% range. So we'll update on both vertical market expansion and engagement levels as we go forward. And I think that shows that the power actually of the distribution engine that we have there in the consumer business. We'll clearly continue to add free members but increasing the number of things we can do for people and engaging them more regularly at the 2 target measures. So vertical expansion and engagement are the 2 metrics that we'll give you.

The next question is from Oscar Val Mas from JPMorgan.

Lloyd, I have 3 questions. The first one on EBIT guidance. So you've maintained a strong margin progression. And in the past, you've given that as at least 60 basis points. Could you update us on what you think for the full year on margin? The second question is on the EMEA/APAC division. And I appreciate this is really a long-term bet on those markets growing, but you do mention some actions that you're taking this year. How should we think about the timing of your margin recovery, i.e., kind of can you -- what should the margin be this year and next year? And how -- what's the shape of that recovery? And then the final question is going back on one of Paul's questions in Consumer Services. So it seems like the traditional premium subscription business is still growing against a high comp last year. Can you remind us what your view on that part of the business is going forward, i.e., do you still expect to grow your premium subscriptions in the future?

Okay. Shall I run through with those. So there's no change to the margin guidance. Strong margin accretion, which continues, say, at least 60 basis points. And this really reflects our choices as a company to continue to invest behind the momentum that we have. And given the strong momentum we've got in across our scaling B2B platforms and in the direct-to-consumer business, we continue to expand investments behind that momentum. On EMEA/APAC, we've got a number of actions underway to increase the scale of individual markets in that region and also to improve its profitability. And we've said over the next 3 to 4 years, we'd expect that region to get that to about mid-teens operating margins from its current position really driven by some of the individual market scaling and some of the efficiency actions that we have and there's no change there. So we expect it to be profitable for the full year and then increase from there. And then on consumer -- the subscription market, clearly, we had a lot of inflow around COVID and around the housing boom in North America as we came through COVID. So clearly, as that works its way through the system, we probably expect slightly slower growth in that business. But in the long run, our goal is to enrich the product set in our subscription business so that, that can continue to grow. I think the majority of our growth in indirect consumer clearly is going to come from the marketplace business as we expand the different things we can do for our free consumer base.

The next question then is from George Gregory from Exane BNP Paribas.

I have 2, please. Firstly, on income verification services. I'm keen to get your thoughts on the time scale for this to be a scale contributor. I don't know if you have any thoughts as to where you need to get your records base to for that to happen? And secondly, just following on the PagueVeloz acquisition in Brazil. Came to understand how you think about the potential for building a payments platform and whether you're looking to externalize that beyond facilitating debt repayments?

George, thanks for the questions. I'll start up on the first one, and then I'll invite Kerry just to give you a little bit of color around the activity. But your first question really was at what point do we get to scale in verification. It depends on your definition of scale. As Lloyd outlined, we will have a fairly material contribution this year from the acquisitions that we've made and also the traction that we're getting in Experian Verify. Now that's around about $100 million of revenue this year. So it's already a decent contributor, and we expect that to continue to grow. I think your point really on record is -- I don't think we see it as sort of necessarily solely linked to records. And maybe I'll just ask Kerry to elaborate on that a little bit, and then I'll come back on the PagueVeloz question. Kerry?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Brian. Just real quickly on the income verification, it's important to keep the distinction in mind on the data assets in that type of business versus a credit bureau. And in a credit bureau, you do need the absolute widest coverage in the deepest coverage of data because you're competing very specifically on the output from those assets. In the income verification and employer services area where we're leveraging verification capabilities, you can move to the top of the waterfall even if you have a smaller coverage in the market because it's a binary response. You are employed or you are not employed, and your income is X or your income is Y. And if you can't respond with the hit on that, they can just move to the second push down in the waterfall. So that gives us a much faster penetration into the market. In Verification Services than you would see in traditional credit bureau penetration. So that's one of the reasons why we've made such great progress already. And it's important to keep that distinction in mind as we move forward in the coming months. On PagueVeloz, so the main thing that we're focused on initially on that is helping the consumers in Brazil. And how we're doing that is we're speeding up the ability by being able to manage the payment process of when they clear their debts and being able to reflect that almost instantaneously on the credit report. And this is a huge improvement over the current process where they would have to pay and it would have to be reported into us from the credit granter, which would be many weeks in the process before it can be updated on the credit information. And so our focus primarily to start off with is helping the consumers when they make a payment -- outstanding payment on some debt that they owe that it's reflected immediately so that they can continue to move forward with their credit journey and do the transactions that they need to. And that's the importance of the PagueVeloz payment platform initially for us in the Brazil market.

Great. Thanks, Kerry. I think the only point I would add to that, George, on your specific question, it is quite a niche payment capability, as Kerry outlined. Primarily what it does it sort of helps to build out the consumer platform. It does actually have an interesting SME angle, which we'll continue to sort of look to see if we can drive synergies with our very large SME, B2B business in Brazil. So while no immediate plans, we think it gives us some interesting options for future product development going forward.

The next question is from Simona Sarli from Bank of America.

Just a couple of them pretty quick. So the cost for Central activities in H1 increased and you mentioned there was a catch-up effect for the long-term incentive plan. And on the back of that, you provided a specific guidance for fiscal year 2022. So how should we think about Central activities cost for next year? And also, if you can please provide a little bit more color on the size of the one-off contract in EMEA that locked this year? And what has been the organic growth for this region in Q2 adjusted for that?

So the guidance for Central for this year is $150 million. About $20 million of that is the one-off catch-up on long-term incentive. So it's about $10 million adverse FX through diverse strengthening of selling. So this year, adjusted, that takes you down to about $120 million, which is compared to $112 million in the year before COVID. Obviously, the FX is hard to forecast. So we've guided a $60 million to $65 million run rate per half. So we think that's good for the second half of this year and into next year. On EMEA, it wasn't actually a contract that we lost. It was a contract that was a one-off contract really in the prior year. So -- and that was about $10 million in the prior year. So if you take that out, you can EMEA growth would have been about that breakeven during this period.

The next question then is from Rajesh Kumar from HSBC.

The first question is on the consumer business. When you think of the next, say, 3 to 5 years in that business, can you run us through what sort of capital allocation you would require for that? And what sort of -- not the immediate return, not 6 months, 12 months return, but more the medium-term return you can expect to generate on that capital deployed? The second question is around your guidance around mortgage in second half. Obviously, the comps are difficult, and your guidance assumes that there's a bit of decline. But when you're thinking of year 2023 onwards, how do you think -- do you think the market is accurately reflecting what the trend for mortgage would be in first half of '23 financial year? And the third question is around complaint point. You clearly have provided us with additional color in the last 2 quarters that the complaint stats are driven by certain unique features of the market, which are in part related to pandemic, in part related to credit repair, but with your positioning in the consumer business, can you start improving that compared to your peers in the industry?

Okay. Thanks, Rajesh. Let me deal with the Consumer Services question the next 3 to 5 years. I think your question is about capital allocation. The first point I make is, if you look at what we've done in Consumer Services over the last, call it, 4 to 5 years, I mean it's pretty clear we've transformed that business. We've actually done that organically. So we've -- we launched into -- we entered the identity space very successfully. We entered the lead generation space very successfully. We entered insurance space very successfully. At every stage, we had opportunities probably to put very large checks to work to do that. But actually, we believe that organically was the right way to do that from a capital allocation perspective. Now we have done an acquisition in insurance, but we think this is actually a really smart move because if you look at the scale we have on the platform now and you look at the complexity of the insurance market in the U.S. most of you on this call will be used to the auto insurance market in the U.K., which is a pretty slick kind of process after 20 years of development and fierce competition. The U.S. market is nothing like that. It's incredibly complex. It's lots of forms. And there's a real opportunity for enhanced and seamless customer experience. That was very complex from a licensing perspective with each individual state having its own licensing requirement. So you really do need some specific capability here to help you get to your end goal, which is a seamless customer proposition like they would have in credit cards. That's why we did that acquisition, and we think it's going to actually really move our insurance proposition for which -- by the way, it actually is already performing extremely well last year and this year. And that's part of the reason -- this company is actually a partner of ours. And it's a great example of how we develop commercial relationships with a view to potential acquisition and further where we can see how products and companies perform. So we're very confident about that. And I think we're very confident about the organic growth of the business. So I don't think that -- if the right opportunities come up from an acquisition perspective, we'll look at them, but it's not an entirely -- obviously, not an entirely lead acquisition kind of -- it's mostly organic. The other part of that is that if you look at the CapEx that we commit to this business, it's actually lower than the CapEx that we have in B2B. So the real investment that you require in Consumer Services is through the P&L, which -- making sure that you have sufficient marketing investment, making sure you're investing in enough product, which we've done hugely successfully, not just in the U.S. but also in Brazil and elsewhere. So that's our focus. And that's -- when we talk about the continued investment in the business, that's exactly what we're talking about. Lloyd, do you want to deal with the mortgage one?

Mortgage one? Yes. The mortgage market is about pretty much exactly as we said. So we still expect it to be a 1% drag for this year. Clearly, there's been a pull forward of a lot of refinancings as we saw interest rates drop. So there are a range of forecasts still for as we go into next year. We might see it be something like another 1% headwind at a group level through next year, if I take meaning of the different forecasts. So we'll update a bit more on that in my in -- obviously, mortgages are a much smaller part of our portfolio than some of our competitors. So maybe 1%.

Yes. And just coming back to your third question, which is can we dial down complaints as we grow -- maybe I think is the answer to the question. I think what we can do is we grow our ECS business is obviously getting much more consumer-contributed data. And so to the extent that we can actually use that CMP accuracy, then that's terrific. We see that mostly in markets like Brazil, where there's perhaps much greater variation in data quality. I've already said, I think there's a lot of questions on the last time we had a call, the data accuracy in bureau system in the U.S. is actually extremely high. And as I said earlier, the complaints, an awful lot of them are actually disputing trade lines on the bureau -- or sorry, on actual disputing data elements, some of which are valid, some of which are mistakes. A lot of which are simply directed and actually trying to remove items from people's credit reports. That activity probably will never go away. But I think the general point about more data comes from consumers, does that help, absolutely, specifically on complaints, not sure.

Even looking at the complaint on the dataset, it's very clear that most of the complaints are resolved very quickly and not just by you but for your peers as well. What -- my question specifically related to was that given the play you have on proved and consumer contributed data, is there a mechanism by which you can see an edge -- work with your peers who sort of do it indirectly through a third party, where you could actually do with the lawyer through your Boost products so that if you have a complaint, we can help you sort that out sooner and quicker using Boost. I was just trying to see if there's an advantage of Boost, which others might not have.

Well, I think there is an advantage Boost gives us, which is actually more data on the file. I don't think it's sort of in that narrow area of complaints. I think it's more in the comprehensive picture that we have. And we have more data on consumers for those that are willing to contribute that data. Don't forget that Boost actually contributes different new trade lines to the core credit bureau. So it's quite significant. And unless those data trade lines are aggregated elsewhere, they will be unique data features for us.

The next question is from Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley.

I got only 2 questions. The first, I think, Brian, you said at the beginning of the presentation that now you're sort of -- the focus is to combine the capability across analytics and lay off sort of relevant solution to your client. I mean just wondering, can this be net deflationary from a pricing perspective? Or you think you can sort of still maintain the price on the combined product and the advantage for the consumer or the clients is more from a process cost or implementation perspective? And the second question is just, I mean, I think last month, there was an article in Wall Street Journal talking about [indiscernible] state trying to move away from credit score when underwriting policies. I'm just wondering if there is a new alternative emerge with the credit scoring data? What are the long-term risk? Or how do you see the roll-off of bureau sort of changing longer term in that regard.

So let me deal with the second one first. I'm coming up on my 10th year anniversary in the company. And I think I've had this question every single year on the back of some claim by latest fintech, new entrants saying that they're not going to use credit data and scores. And all I can tell you is that every time that I engage with the Chief Credit Risk Officer of any bank, any major bank globally, the concept of moving away from introducing credit data and the scores that they use is a better far away market changes you can possibly ever imagine. So that's not to say that other data and scores don't have a place, they do. But I think people think about this in the wrong way. They think about it as sort of replacement as opposed to supplemental. And we ourselves actually are very instrumental in helping that happen. Hence, for example, Boost, Experian Lift, the stuff we're doing in Brazil, the stuff we're doing in Asia Pacific. And that's the other mistake that people make when they ask these questions, they sort of assumed that we're standing still and we're not. So I mean I'm sure I'll still get this question for another 10 years. But I think the answer will be the same. So lots of development, lots of innovation, but we're at the forefront of it as well. So I don't expect that to be a big issue. Combining capabilities, yes, I think we're making great progress on this. And your question was specifically the inflationary one. I don't think so. I think the combined capabilities enables us to actually tap into additional value pools in organizations that perhaps we haven't recent for. I can give you a small example. And it's a very small example, but it's a good one, which is client, but there's one in the U.K. that actually just use to pull data from us. And there's small clients, so they would have probably been one particular point. They recently contracted with us to take integrated data and decisioning through Experian One. And of course, they are low-volume credit granter. And the proposition enabled them to save a significant amount of money in their credit application process. And as a result of which, the contract value to us essentially tripled. So instead of getting a per transaction fee of x, just based on a data pool, we ended up getting a per transaction fee of 3x because of the combined proposition that we put forward. And why did that make sense to them? It makes sense for them because we give them the data and we essentially give them all the decisioning that they need to do plus all of the compliance requirements. And that means that they can strip out significant costs from their side. So it makes a lot of sense for them. So I don't think you can think of that in terms of deflationary pressures. I think you have to think about that in terms of value creation, which is obviously [ better ].

Okay. Fair enough. So it's essentially allowing you to take more share of wallet from, let's say, your existing customer. That's probably the more proper way to think about it. But yes, that's very clear.

I think the right way to think about it is other tools of spending. So remember, our strategic objectives is to actually help people automate processes and reduce their costs, which is exactly what that example does. And that enables us to attack those verticals.

And that was the final question. I'll now hand back to Brian for closing remarks.

Great. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. I think as you can see, we've had a very good start to the year. And we're very excited about the prospects for this year and beyond. And we look forward to speaking to you again in Q3. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That does conclude the call for today. You may now disconnect. Thanks for joining. Have a very good day.