Experian plc (EXPN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day everyone, and welcome Experian preliminary results hosted by Brian Cassin, CEO. My name is Zoltan and I'm your event manager. [Operator Instructions] And now I'd like to hand over to your host, Mr. Brian Cassin. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our full year results presentation. I'm joined today by Lloyd Pitchford; and in our Q&A session today, we'll be joined as usual by Kerry Williams; but also by Craig Boundy. Many of you will know Craig, he previously led our North America region and was appointed COO in April to take over from Kerry. We had a very good FY '22, which is in line with our guidance. Revenue, margins, earnings and cash flow for the year were very strong. We made a lot of progress across a number of our key initiatives. And while we have some benefit from the recovery, these are a very good set of results. Conditions in our markets right now remain supportive, with notable exception of the U.S. mortgage that is. But in all other areas, particularly unsecured lending, business remains good and customer demand is healthy. Like all other businesses, we're closely monitoring the external environment, and we're well aware of inflationary and other pressures in the system. But it's worth remembering that we have a long history of weathering uncertainties, and these have often, if not, can create opportunities for us as well, and we've got good confidence as we head into FY '23. Turning to the financial highlights. Q4 organic revenue growth was 9%, and that took us to organic revenue growth for the year of 12%, which was in line with our expectations. When acquisitions are included, our total growth was 17%. Margin development was also in line with our expectations, up 60 basis points at constant currency and up 40 basis points including the currency headwind. Cash performance was another highlight. Both cash generation and cash conversion were very strong. The conversion rate of 109% is one of our highest as a publicly listed company. We completed acquisitions worth $800 million during the year and ended the year with net debt of just 1.9x debt-to-EBITDA or 2x on an adjusted basis for post-balance sheet acquisitions, and this gives us ample capacity to pursue our growth plans whilst also maintaining flexibility. We proposed to increase the second interim dividend by 10% to take us to 10% dividend increase for the year, and we will initiate a $175 million share buyback, mainly to offset deliveries under long-term incentive plans. B2B was up 9% organically. This was driven by a strong rebound in bureau volumes and contributions from new products. Areas of note were alternative data assets, Ascend, Buy Now Pay Later, a new vertical. Health had another good year and our push into verifications has progressed well, with over 100 new clients signed up. And in Brazil, positive data take-up is encouraging, and we started our entry into promising new verticals like agriculture. Consumer Services had an outstanding year with growth of 22% spread across all regions and product lines. Regionally, we delivered double-digit growth across North America, Latin America and the U.K. and Ireland, and we added to our positions with some selective but strategically important acquisitions. The U.K. transformation program is going well and we delivered our fastest revenue growth as a public company, and with very solid progress on margin development, which was up by 550 basis points. We took significant steps to reposition our operations in EMEA and Asia Pacific. Margin development there this year was very strong, up 600 basis points in the region, and we expect continued improvement from there. Let's just pick out some of the strategic highlights for the year. Organic investments in new product technology and customer acquisition are key factors in our growth, and that continued in FY '22. What you can see here is how new product generation over time is driving organic revenue growth, exceeds $900 million, and in the past year alone, we launched over 100 new products. Our consumer free memberships have now reached 134 million globally, which is up 24 million in the last year. Inorganically, I referenced just over $800 million of in-year M&A spend, and we've added another $200 and odd post balance sheet. The acquisitions are a tight fit with our strategy. CIC, which is a recent one, supplements our offer in verification services and brings over an additional 1,000 employer clients and should open access to more records. We've been expanding our presence in Spanish Latin America, where we continue to see good growth opportunities across Bureau, Cloud decisioning solutions and ID and fraud capabilities. And in Brazil, we've agreed to acquire a minority stake in a business called MOVA, which will help us build out further in the SME channel. We continue to see large, addressable market opportunity north of $140 billion in total. You've seen this slide before. We translate these into broad trends into -- these broad trends into specific strategic initiatives across B2B and Consumer, and importantly, initiatives that link both B2B and Consumer Services. And every year, we succeed in extending our position into new client segments. As you noted recent ones being Buy Now Pay Later and big technology, both of which are adding to our customer mix. And we serve some very specific needs for our clients across financial services and beyond. Let me also touch on some of our ESG highlights. The strategy here is one we talk about increasingly. Our goal is to deliver financial health to all, financial inclusion and reducing the cost of credit as the strategy sits at the heart of our social mission from core products like Experian Boost and Experian Go to our community giving program. We take these commitments to manage data responsibly very seriously, ensuring that we maintain the highest standards of security and data accuracy, all of which is underpinned by our commitment to our people in a diverse and inclusive culture. This year, we made further progress towards some of our ESG targets. We reached 82 million people through our social innovation products and 87 million through United for Financial Health, putting us on track to reach our targets of 100 million in both these programs. We made further progress on our gender commitments, 32.8% of senior leaders is female, representing further progress towards our 40% target. And on our environmental goals, we reduced our scope 1 and 2 emissions by 44% since our base year in 2019. And we're also engaging with our suppliers to reduce Scope 3 emissions and evaluating plans to move towards net zero. Turning now to our regions and starting with North America, where all business units delivered growth. Generally speaking, the U.S. Consumer still in can shape. Consumer balance sheet is relatively strong with employment at very high levels. Other than in mortgage, bureau volumes continue at healthy levels. Credit demand is pretty good as is credit supply. And asset quality generally remained strong despite some upticks in past due loans in some categories. We also see strong demand for alternative data assets, particularly in short-term lending space. Issuers and lenders broadly continue to invest in new capabilities. Ascend had another strong year. We are seeing demand for new and different sources of data to be added into underwriting, account management and collection decisions. And as a platform and a set of products, Ascend helps lenders effectively analyze model, deploy that information to help drive their lending strategies. We've also extended our cloud-enabled decisioning capabilities and are introducing preconfigured decision solutions to address opportunities in mid-market, with some very good early successes. Our Buy Now Pay Later vertical is also growing, and we expect this to continue. Verification Services surpassed our expectations. We've added to our record counts and we're signing clients to Experian Verify, over 100 so far, approximately 40 of whom are implemented across multiple use cases. This would include, for example, card issuers, mortgage, payday loans, credit unions, FinTechs and others. We reached 42 million income and employment records by the end of the year, including new signings of payroll partnerships and we're also adding unique records. In health, we delivered growth across multiple revenue lines. We did see some contribution from portal authentication for vaccinations and elevated identity volumes, both of which were COVID related and which we don't expect to recur in FY '23. Despite the severe supply side shortages, automotive is performing well, helped by traction we're getting in new products like Experian Marketing Engine, which is the product that helps our automotive customers identify prospective clients. And finally, for B2B, delighted with the progress of our Targeting business, been integrated the Tapad capabilities of the business we bought in FY '21. This has been very strong and it's helping to increase our footprint in the digital sphere and expand further into areas like addressable TV, and we've got good momentum going into FY '23. In North America Consumer Services, FY '22 was a very strong year as our free memberships grew to 52 million. Marketplace performed extremely well. We feel very well positioned to sustain growth here. In fact, we expect marketplace to become the lead driver of growth over the next few years, with personal loans well on its way to becoming our next $100 million opportunity. We expect our next sizable vertical to be insurance, which we're developing through recently acquired Gabi. We will have a significant push over the coming year as we improve that customer experience. The digital insurance market is still very underpenetrated, total market opportunity in the U.S. in the region of $3 billion to $4 billion. We have a very small piece of this today, and we are enhancing our proposition to a new friction, reduce steps for customers to realize savings on their auto insurance. Through FY '22, premium growth is strong and we're enriching our services with new privacy features to strengthen engagement and retention further. We're also adding capability to identify who you're paying and help you negotiate savings on your outcomes. FY '23 will be another big year for us to bring new value to our members and to continue to drive positive trends in engagement statistics. There will be more ways to do scores. We expect to secure meaningful milestones in insurance and we're invigorating premium of privacy and bill negotiation. Taken together, we feel confident that we have a lot of momentum in Consumer Services. Moving to Latin America, which has an amazing year. Positive data products, a really strong contributor to growth. We continue to bring new scores and attributes to market, extending our position with some of our largest clients, and we're seeing consumption also grow across our small and medium channel. Serasa Score continues to do really well, outperforming competitor scores. We're introducing still more powerful versions to incorporate alternative data as well as more positive data attributes. And we saw strong growth in our fraud and identity offer, helped by our recent acquisition of BrScan, which has acted as a catalyst to our competitive position and offering in that segment of the market. We had a very good year in Decision Analytics, with growth across analytics, platforms and also very strong growth in Ascend. And we're broadening into new market segments. Agriculture, I mentioned at the outset, 25% of Brazil GDP. It's a sector where credit allocation is cumbersome and quite inefficient. Very interesting vertical opportunity, which we're actively investing in. Consumer Services had another very strong year. Credit going digital in Brazil. The lenders now see our platform as a place to acquire customers cost effectively. We have 71 million members, so we provide reach to 45% of the Brazilian adult population. eCred is now our biggest growth driver, and we now see big brands offering credit on the platform. And new premium features are extending the ecosystem and further diversifying our revenues. We're very well positioned in Brazil and we see good growth prospects both there and more widely across Latin America region. New ways to originate credit are emerging. FinTech entrants, neobanks are establishing themselves quite rapidly. It's causing traditional vendors to react by investing in their products and their infrastructure. Retailers are also competing, improving digital capabilities and adding financial services super apps. Further regulatory reform is actually adding to this Central Bank of Brazil has sponsored additional reforms to improve competitiveness in financial and credit markets. And we're all familiar with positive data, open banking and open receivables regulations are bringing new sources of data which will add to opportunities going forward. Moving now to the UK&I. We've made a lot of progress in UK&I, with the business now on a stronger trajectory and delivering much improved margins. The economic rebound helped to an extent on the B2B side and we benefited from strength in prequalification and origination volumes. This was supplemented by good performance across fraud and analytics. We continue to see lenders active in the markets with continued appetite for credit, acquisitions. There's also more focus on understanding disposable income and ability to pay, which plays into some of our newer capabilities that we've developed. We've been addressing the foundations of the business, which helped to deliver a very strong year for new business wins, including a very strong finish, and this sets us up well going into FY '23. New business wins came from a broad spectrum, traditional lenders, FinTechs, Buy Now Pay Later, primarily driven by higher quality data assets, best-in-market coverage and strength in analytics and fraud. In Consumer Services, marketplace is now a pretty substantial business, nearly doubling in size in the year. From a standing start 5 years ago, we're now the #2 in the market. We've put a lot of effort into expanding our lender panel to provide consumers with greater choice and transparency when they're applying for credit. As a result, we're seeing consumers get access to cheaper credit deals and proactively switch to save money. We'll build on this over the coming year, and we also plan to add new features to enrich our premium offering. Overall, we feel we've made some really good progress in the U.K. starting to deliver on the ambition we laid out and more sustainable growth profile over the medium term. Over the next 18 months, our focus is on bringing new propositions to market, which will further add to the scale of our opportunity. These included some early-stage investments in income and employment services. We're also making progress with our technology migration program. Turning now to EMEA/Asia Pacific. Our objective here is to enhance growth and profitability by driving greater scale across the region. In the first phase, this has seen a scale-up in some of our bureau markets such as South Africa and Spain. We'll continue to focus for scale in strategic markets like these in Germany, Italy, Australia and India. We'll stay on core -- on this course over the coming year, further streamlining our operational and geographic footprint. And we expect these actions to enhance the financial characteristics of the region, resulting in a higher proportion of recurring revenue and profitable growth. And with that, I will hand over to Lloyd.

Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As usual, I'll start with some of the highlights. As you've seen, we had a very strong FY '22, delivering significant strategic, operational and financial progress. We had a good end to the year, with Q4 organic revenue up 9% compared to our 8% to 9% guidance. For the year as a whole, organic revenue was 12%. Acquisitions added a further 5% from our verification acquisitions in North America, as well as other bureau assets in EMEA and Latin America. FX was neutral to revenue growth, so total revenue growth was 17%. And that flow through to EBIT, with 19% EBIT growth at both constant and actual rates. EBIT margins expanded by 60 basis points at constant currency, in line with our guidance, and 40 basis points at actual FX rates. And this all translated into very strong earnings per share growth, up 21% at both constant and actual rates. We had also another great year of operating cash flow which grew by 22% to $1.8 billion. And given that financial performance, we've announced a second interim dividend of $0.3575, taking the total dividend to $0.5175, up 10% on the prior year. As Brian mentioned, we finished the year in a strong financial position, with our leverage ratio below the bottom end of our 2 to 2.5x guidance range. On this slide, just touching briefly on our revenue trends. You can see on the chart our last 3 years of revenue growth. And whilst the external environment has thrown us many challenges during this period, the resilience of our business and the strength of our strategic growth initiatives shows through in the growth momentum across the period. And looking at these trends through a segmental lens, you can see the consistency of our B2B delivery and the growing momentum of our Consumer Services business. In B2B, we delivered 9% organic growth for the year, in line with the levels seen before the pandemic and after absorbing the headwind from U.S. mortgage, which was a 1% drag for the year at group level. We saw economic rebounds across most bureau markets, with a strong contribution from alternative data, positive data in Brazil, new product innovation and also in the health vertical. In Consumer Services, on the right-hand side, all regions delivered growth in the year as we increased the membership and scale significantly in credit marketplaces, added premium subscriptions and innovative and diversified our product offerings. Turning now to our regional growth. North America delivered 13% organic revenue growth for the year and 8% in Q4. For Q4, we saw double-digit growth in our core bureau, excluding mortgage, with continued strength across our traditional client segments, alternative data and in new client segments, such as by Buy Now Pay Later. Mortgage was down 24% in the quarter. And based on the current outlook for the mortgage market, we now expect mortgage to be down around 35% for the year ahead, which represents around a 1.5% headwind to organic growth at group level. Health had a good end to the year, up 10% organically, as the contribution from one-off COVID revenue moderated. For the year as a whole, Health grew 15%, with around 4% coming from this COVID-related revenue. North America Consumer Services continued to deliver strongly, up 17% in Q4, and 21% for the year as a whole. Credit marketplace performance was very strong, almost doubling to around $220 million in the year as we continue to scale our membership and introduce further propositions. Membership and Partner Solutions revenue also grew well across the year. And as we exit the year, credit marketplace mix of about 20% of our Consumer Services revenue, Partner Solutions around 30% and membership revenue around 50%. Latin America grew 17% for the year as the benefits of positive data and the introduction of our global platforms into the region continued to deliver strong momentum. For Q4, B2B grew 14%, with the momentum from positive data in Brazil continuing to strengthen and the further penetration of our global product suite, including Ascend and Experian One, which can support our clients in exploiting the wealth of value of positive data. Q4 Consumer Services growth rebounded as expected, with very strong growth in eCred in particular, along with a growing contribution from premium subscription services. U.K. and Ireland region grew well up 11% organically for the year and 6% in Q4. Q4 B2B growth was 6%, with good levels of lender activity driving bureau volumes, including growth in prequalification and affordability volumes. Q4 Consumer Services growth was 6%, driven by marketplace as we start to lap the high level of growth we experienced in subscription services during COVID. EMEA/Asia Pacific, delivered growth of 3% for the year with 4% in Q4. Asia Pacific grew 15% organically in Q4 with good growth across our key bureau, and EMEA was flat in Q4 as some subscale markets remain challenged. Turning now to EBIT margin, where overall, we delivered on our guidance of 60 basis points organic constant currency progression. Starting on the left, last year, EBIT margin was 25.9%. Adjusting for some portfolio exits, our FY '21 margin was 25.8% on a like-for-like basis. B2B added 100 basis points through the year. We continue to see progress in the U.K. region from our transformation program. The U.K. B2B margin increased from 17.8% to 22.3%, and our long-run goal remains for the regional margin as a whole to get to around 30%. Latin America progressed margins, a strong revenue growth from initiatives like positive data dropped through to EBIT. In North America, margin reflected the mix of growth along with our investments into the verifications business. Consumer Services margin also grew during the year. Strong revenue growth across all regions and margins increased from 21.8% to 23.2% at the global level with margin expansion in all regions. We saw strong growth in marketplace across all geographies and continue to invest behind customer acquisition and new propositions, including our entry into the insurance marketplace in North America. With the strong growth in Consumer Services this year, mix was a 20 basis points drag on margin, and our central activities costs increased $62 million for the year. As mentioned back in November, around $20 million of this increase relates to a one-off incentive catch-up to align with business performance, and we continued our investment in global innovation and scaling initiatives following the reduction in discretionary spend in the prior COVID-related year. Looking to the year ahead, we continue to guide to a forward run rate of $65 million per half of central costs that we outlined in November. As expected, whilst neutral to nominal EBIT, foreign exchange was also a 20 basis point drag on margin as we indicated at the half year. And all this resulted in a margin of 26.2% for the year, up 60 basis points at constant currency and 40 basis points at actual FX rates. Turning now to earnings per share. Starting from last year, in which the Benchmark EPS was $1.031. Benchmark EBIT from continuing operations grew 19% reflecting the strong organic revenue growth performance and the contributions from our acquisition activities. Interest expense reduced to $110 million as a result of the lower interest rate environment during the year. Tax rate was 25.7%, broadly in line with the prior year. And EPS was therefore up 21% on a constant and actual FX basis to $1.245. Turning to cash flow. We saw another year of very strong cash generation, with Benchmark operating cash flow up 22% at actual rates and conversion of 109%. Overall operating cash flow increased by $324 million to $1.8 billion, and it has increased by nearly 50% over 2 years. During Q4, there was a one-off upfront cash receipt related to a long-term data bridge support contract in Consumer Services, which added around 5 percentage points to the annual cash conversion. We also saw a positive mix impact from the growing share of revenue from Consumer Services, with this business having a shorter overall cash cycle. Net capital expenditure was 8% of revenue, almost half of which related to product development. Now looking at the balance sheet. We completed $813 million of acquisitions and minority investments during the year. Acquisitions completed or signed after the year-end would add a further $229 million. We've also completed $149 million net share repurchases, which will replace equity issued for incentives during the year, and have announced a further $175 million share repurchases for FY '23. And following a year of strong financial performance, the Board has approved the dividend of $0.5175, up 10%. As you know, our target net debt-to-EBITDA range is 2% to 2.5%, and we finished at 1.9, slightly below the bottom of the range. As at year-end, we're strongly financed, with an average remaining tenor on our debt of 6 years and undrawn committed bank borrowing facilities of $2.6 billion. Our current borrowings are over 90% fixed for the year ahead. Taking a look at our usual reconciliation to statutory results. Our Benchmark profit before tax grew 22% at constant rates and 21% at actual rates following the strong revenue performance. Acquisition intangibles and acquisition-related expenses grew in line with our increased acquisition activity. The fair value of contingent consideration payable on prior acquisitions increased to $26 million, driven by our Brazilian acquisitions. And the net $16 million gain on disposals reflects profits on the disposal of associates, offset by the write-down on the exit from our Russian business. Changes to noncash financing remeasurements was driven as usual by FX changes on intercompany financing and movements on cash interest rate hedging activities giving rise to statutory profit before tax of $1,447 million, up 34% year-on-year. So lastly, turning now to our FY '23 modeling considerations. As you've seen, we expect 7% to 9% organic revenue growth for the year ahead. This includes our expectations for mortgage, which we now anticipate will be a headwind of around 1.5% to our organic revenue growth. Including the acquisitions after the period end, we expect acquisitions to add around 1% to our revenue growth for the year. We expect modest organic margin progression at constant currency as we continue to invest strongly behind the momentum in our business and our growth innovations. We expect FX will be neutral to EBIT, assuming current rates continue, whilst adding around 40 basis points to operating margin. We expect net interest for the year to be between $120 million to $125 million, reflecting lower interest income and a higher interest rate environment. The Benchmark tax rate is expected to be stable at around 26%. The weighted average number of shares again will be stable, around $914 million for the year. CapEx will be around 9% of revenue, and we expect cash flow to be over 90% in the year ahead in line with our normal guidance. And with that, I'll hand you back to Brian.

Great. Thanks, Lloyd. So to sum up, FY '22 was a continuation of a long record of extended growth and a good year overall for Experian. In Consumer, we're just starting to realize the opportunities that come with the large audiences we've established. In B2B, the business remains strong and robust, and we expect FY '23 to be another year of growth despite the inflationary pressures and uncertainty that we see. And with that, I'm now going to hand back to the operator for your questions, for which we will be joined by Kerry Williams and Craig Boundy.

[Operator Instructions] And the first question is coming from Paul Sullivan, Barclays.

Yes, three for me. Firstly, how should we be thinking about U.S. B2B in the sort of next -- over the next sort of 6 to 12 months given the slowdown we saw in the fourth quarter and where clearly mortgage and health comps are against you this year? Secondly, sort of tied into that, how do recessionary fears impact your thinking? And can you help us sort of bucket the growth between sort of cyclical and structural considerations this year? And then finally, given the inflationary backdrop, I know we don't usually or you don't usually talk about pricing, but how should we think about pricing underpinning a chunk of organic growth? And clearly, 7% to 9% is good, but it doesn't look quite so good against an inflationary backdrop of a similar amount.

Lloyd, do you want to answer the questions on the growth, and maybe we'll go to Kerry to just talk about pricing more generally.

Yes, sure. So if you look at Q4, Paul, if you think of a U.S. data business ex mortgage, that was high single digit. I think that will actually strengthen a little bit into Q1 and Q2 as we see our Targeting business and the auto business strengthen a little bit. Obviously, mortgage will weaken a little bit. So I guess, broadly stable there. And we finished this year with our core mortgage -- sorry, our core bureau ex mortgage at 10%. So that, I think, shows some of the strength in the business outside of the mortgage business. In terms of kind of structural and cyclical, it's obviously hard to bucket all different bits of our business into different types of activity. We've clearly seen, during both COVID and the financial crisis, just how resilient the group can be. We've entered this year in a strong position. Our trends are trading well outside of that small mortgage drag. So I think we're feeling pretty positive for the year ahead. .

And Kerry, do you want to just maybe just give an overview on the question on pricing?

Sure. Yes. Thank you. So on pricing, we've been spending a lot of time on that, and we've been working across the globe on looking at our customer contracts. And in particular, in our 3 large markets, we've been already executing actions where we have that in the contracts. We -- obviously, with the midsized and smaller clients, it's pretty straightforward to push through the pricing increases that we have in the contracts. With larger clients, as you would imagine, it's a negotiated process. But even those we are moving forward with and making progress on. So we do expect to be able to make progress on our pricing in this inflationary environment, and all the teams are working on that at this point.

Okay. And Brian, I mean, how would you characterize sort of recessionary fears in your thinking in sort of setting guidance?

Yes. I mean, look, there's clearly a lot of talk about that. What I've said at the outset is, right now, we're seeing pretty good conditions. I think that the one factor, which is not taken into account in people's estimations is that employment remains extremely strong across all our major geographies. In fact, I think the U.K. numbers came out yesterday and it's the strongest employment figure we've had for nearly 50 years. So you have to balance the inflationary pressures against the state of the consumer. And the consumer balance sheet is very strong. Employment is strong. So these are counterweights which will help. Nobody has a crystal ball. So we're watching things incredibly carefully. As you've seen us do before, if we believe that things are changing, then we'll obviously try and manage our way through that to deliver our results. That's what we always do. But look, I think like everybody, we see what's happening out there. We also see what's happening in our business today. And we've got a watching brief on it. But I think we feel pretty confident.

The next question is coming from Sylvia Barker.

Two questions from me, please. Firstly, on -- again, on the credit bureau. Just maybe a bit of background. I guess if we exclude mortgages, if we think about your core credit bureau in the U.S., what proportion of that client base is now kind of large banks versus other clients? And if you can give a bit of color there. And how does that compare to maybe the great financial crisis, just out of interest? Then secondly, on marketplaces within B2C, could you talk a little bit more about how -- I guess, how the revenue side works with clients. How much are you getting paid per kind of lead? Has that changed at all? How are your conversion rates there of free members into actual kind of credit uptake? And then finally, on the Verify investment, could you give us any color around kind of how material that is at the moment as a drag on that North American margin? And maybe what you expect more medium term or at least over the next kind of 2, 3 years?

Okay. Lloyd?

Maybe I'll start off with Verify. So I mean you've seen the acquisitions that we've made over the last 18 months and the additional one that we did post the balance sheet date. So the year ahead, we're looking at something on the order of $150 million of revenue from the verifications business. So that's -- from a standing start 18 months ago, both organic and inorganic, that's a pretty strong progress. It's clearly a big opportunity for us. It's not a material drag on the margin. I call it out, it's below group average margin and below North America margin, but it's profitable and accretive to the overall position of the group. On marketplace, the -- you've seen very strong growth this last year, as I mentioned, nearly doubling in the U.S. business. And that comes from both revenue growth and some recovery in rates on the spend per click. That's obviously variable. You see that change almost daily as we see the different mix of products and different clients that we sell into, the revenue per lead that reduced a bit during COVID and then recovered quite strongly on the other side. On the credit bureau, I think probably the first thing to say, clearly, the mix of our customer base is changing all of the time, not just in terms of big banks versus others, but also the things that we're doing for clients. So you've seen the introduction of Ascend enhanced analytical results. And now a lot of bundling, so we bundle ever more products into all of our clients. And we're probably -- you saw we're less exposed overall to the financial services market than we were in the financial crisis as we've grown and expanded and diversified as a group. But still a very strong position with big financials services providers.

The next question is coming from Andrew Ripper.

Good morning, everybody. Well done on the numbers. A couple from me. First of all, just the chart on Slide 4 where you pull out the contribution from new and scaling products seems to have been a little bit of a step-up in FY '22 versus FY '21. And I'm just wondering, if you look out 12 months, what's your sense in terms of the order of magnitude of additional revenue that you can generate from the products that you include in this group? Is it could be the same, more or less? Second question on Consumer, obviously, a couple of questions already around the visibility. Just on marketplace, where clearly you've got very good momentum going into this year, what do you think the order of magnitude of growth could be in FY '23? And how much visibility do you have around that from the new sort of products that you're bringing to consumers on the sort of base? I guess it's around sort of $250 million, $300 million. And then finally, BNPL, can you say a little bit about the additional data that you're bringing into the bureau from BNPL companies? And how significant BNPL now is in terms of absolute revenue and potential for growth this year?

Sure. Thanks, Andrew. And first question, I suppose. I don't think we give a specific number on it for FY '23, but we do expect continuing growth and contribution from products that we introduced in previous years, as well as ones that we have planned for this year. It's always difficult to predict when you've got a product launch, particularly some of them will actually be more back end sort of September onwards. So there's going to be necessarily a range around that. But what I think we can say is we do expect continued momentum in that as we go forward. And obviously, more and more of our efforts get pushed into investing into more into new products. So pace of new product introduction, we expect to continue at an elevated level and we expect contributions to be strong going forward. On the marketplace, we did expect this to grow rebound strongly in FY '22. Remember, in both U.K. and the U.S., we're -- we've actually built very substantial businesses here in a very short period of time. We're talking about less than 5 years in both cases. And notwithstanding that, we've actually built some sizable businesses, we still have a very long runway of growth ahead of us. So in terms of specific numbers, Lloyd, I don't think we've given that out. But do you want to give a broad overview?

Yes. So I think you take the North American Consumer business. We expect in this year ahead, again, another good year of growth, double-digit growth. More of that this year will come from marketplace as we absorb the strong progress we made in subscribers during the COVID period. So that will be more stable in the year ahead. Partner Solutions and marketplace will really drive the growth. We've got a pretty full portfolio of product launches coming at the Consumer segment in North America. We obviously tell you about those after we've launched them, but some really good progress, and we've obviously got the foray into the insurance vertical with Gabi. So we're continuing to progress on that. And whilst we give numbers quarter-to-quarter, you never also forget that this is also our long-term play to be the consumer's bureau. And in the very long run, that relationship with the consumer and the enhancement that gives to our data assets, and putting us really right at the center of helping consumers improve their financial life.

And then just coming back, Andrew, on to your question on Buy Now Pay Later, this continues to be a strong growth opportunity across the industry. We're still seeing that continue to be a very attractive segment. As we, I think, talked on many of these calls, we did always expect that there would be some move towards data reporting and Buy Now Pay Later, and we're starting to see that happen. The plans are in place, that's been worked out. And what we'll see is data will be reported by BNPL providers. And we'll do that in a way where the trade lines will be available, but they won't impact consumer credit scores, and that's really important because of the way that those products are used. So the solutions that we've come up with really is going to give visibility. But I think, hopefully, it's a solution that works to -- for all parties and one that's been agreed in conjunction with the Buy Now Pay Later operators and all of the other data furnishers as well.

The next question is coming from Arthur Truslove from Citi.

A couple from me, please. So firstly, on the Brazilian side of things, just wondering how you would sort of think about the growth there from a cyclical and structural perspective during the year. Obviously, we sit into [indiscernible] Brazil and how does the sort of exit rate compare with what you saw maybe at the start of the fourth quarter. And question two, you might have said it, I'm not sure if I quite caught it. But how are trends progressing on a subscription part of the B2C side? And I just wonder whether you could give us an idea of how that developed over the last year and what you're expecting over the next 12 months as well.

Yes. On Brazil, I think I'll let Lloyd comment as well. We don't normally talk about exit rates, but they're very strong Q4. So that actually is a very strong year, full stop. And we don't see any kind of change in that. There's a very different dynamic playing out in Brazil. We've talked about many, many times about the changes that are going through in the industry, increased competition, a lot of new products coming in. So I think we feel very confident that growth momentum is maintained there. I think on the subscription side, Lloyd?

Yes. So just on for me, back on Brazil. If you look at the growth this year, the last 3 quarters in Brazil, we did 16% in Q2, 12% in Q3, and that was really on the lapping the Limpa Nome fare in Consumer. And then we did 17% in Q4, and we're expecting another strong year of double-digit growth. And it really -- we talked about the tailwinds that the positive data really gives to our business, and it's why you're seeing us invest so strongly in different verticals. But while we're also making a number of acquisitions there, we think this is a point in time really to invest behind the ecosystem that's going to build around all of that positive data in the country. On subscription, for the year just gone, the subscription revenue grew well. Obviously, a fair proportion of that was the annualization of the subscribers that we added around the previous year. For the year ahead, we think overall subscription will be probably stable. And that's really on the back of that very strong growth we've seen during the COVID period, and so more of the growth will come from the other segments in this year ahead.

And just following up on the subscription side. What do you think of as the driver of the subscription numbers/revenues on that B2C side?

I think no consumer in that segment is homogeneous. So for some people, it's about identity protection, some people with maybe a higher credit score, it's much more about protection. For others, it's around the transaction, so a mortgage or something else that would come into a membership. And for others, it's about credit education. So often, if you look back, whenever we've gone into crisis, you've seen the subscription business do very well as people have really become credit hungry and interested in understanding and enhancing their correct position. So there are various subsets that depends on why you're coming to the service.

The next question is coming from Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley.

I've got 2 questions. Just following up on the LatAm question, again. I mean do you think that, that region can play out different even if there is a cyclical sort of weakness? I mean as an economy, they used to live with inflation, what's happening with commodity prices, probably overall benefits, the economy there. So I was wondering like could LatAm play out differently even if you have sort of a global macro slowdown? And the second on the Health business. I mean COVID reversal will obviously be a headwind next year, but do you see some offset with some of the other sort of procedures coming back and that is helping your Health business on a run rate basis?

Right. Okay. Well, I'll do the LatAm one and then maybe I'll just invite Craig to respond on the Health question. Yes, the LatAm one, those who have been around for a long time, we've already lived through the worst recession you could possibly imagine in Brazil, while everybody else was doing quite well. And we actually grew through that. So your question, can it grow through global macro headwinds? Yes, I think so. I think you have to look at the different circumstances that are applying in Brazil. As you say commodity price inflation actually helps them. Higher interest rates are not new in Brazil, neither is higher inflation. It's an economy that's used to coping with that. It keep coming back to the fact that this is once in a lifetime change in financial services in Brazil, which is really driving the growth opportunities across positive data and coming on stream, open banking and open receivables. And so we see the opportunity set expanding, not contracting. So we're very, very confident about the outlook there. And then maybe on the Health, if I could just invite Craig to add a comment on that.

Yes. Thank you. So we did see strong growth in understanding digital identity as part of our Health business but -- particularly tied to the COVID pandemic. But actually, we see a continued drive from our Health clients look for more data, more insight and more sophisticated use of analytics alongside our workflow products. And so that kind of trend with health clients continues and actually see them wanting to use more of our products overall.

The next question is coming from Rahul Chopra from HSBC.

I have 3 questions. First is in terms of your organic growth of 7% to 9%, what does it assume about the macroeconomic backdrop? My second question is why is the Consumer business growing fast? Basically, what happens to this growth if the consumer credit shrinks? And my final question is in terms of -- can you please give us a color on phasing of growth through next financial year, especially given the comps in mortgage and health care please?

Okay. So I think all those 3 questions are really kind of the makeup of our growth next year. So Lloyd, do you want to give an overview?

Yes. So maybe I'll start with the last one, so the phasing. So we started the year as we ended last year really pretty firmly in that 7% to 9% range. So we expect to be in that range every quarter as we sit here today. Clearly, the mortgage headwind is probably a little bit more in the in the first half versus the second half. Some other areas of tougher comps and maybe more 7% to 8% in Q1, but it could easily be higher in the range. So no real comment on phasing. On organic, the 7% to 9% overall, it's really taking today's assumptions on macro. So we've been -- we obviously build our budgets and our forecast based on what we're seeing in the market, but more particularly what we're seeing with clients. And as Brian said, we have a very strong employment position across our core markets, good momentum and good activity from our clients. So that's what we're seeing today and that's what is included in our projection. What would it -- what does the range encompass? Well, clearly, at the top of the range would be better traction with some of our product launches this year, at the higher end of our consumer range of forecasts. What would the low end be? Maybe a more negative macro environment in the second half of the year. So -- but you always start the year with a range of outcomes. And 7% to 9%, bearing in mind that we've got about 2% headwind from health and from -- and for mortgage, I think, is -- shows the confidence that we've got in the performance this year. On Consumer, the different bits of consumer actually respond fairly differently historically. As you look back, whenever we've had a globe crisis, you've seen subscription progress very strongly. We haven't had a big marketplace business when we're going to a significant downturn. It really depends on what you see in terms of changes in credit policy on providers. But what we do know, when we went through COVID, we were able to continue to grow well across the 2 bits of Consumer. So we'll see how the market progresses, but very confident sitting here today that Consumer will have another strong year ahead.

The next question is coming from Katherine Carpenter from Bank of America.

Just sticking with B2C. So you previously had mentioned a long-term target of reaching daily engagement with your B2C membership base as you scale up the marketplace business. So I'm just curious if you could give some color around where you stand today in terms of engagement levels with your membership base and how you expect the launches this year to contribute to the frequency of that membership base going forward.

Sure. Great. On this question, I'm going to ask Craig to chime in as well and just give us an overview of all the things that we've got in train to keep us moving in the right direction.

Yes. I think data engagements are really important thing to think about, just the frequency of how people engage with Experian, as Lloyd said earlier, as part of our journey to continue engaging as part of the consumer's bureau there. And so we keep adding features and we talked a bit about the ability for people to think about engagement with our insurance. In our Brazil marketplace, we have the potential -- in the Brazil market, we have potential for people to work on their dealing with debt. We're now looking at bringing in a whole range of new features over the summer and later into the year that will keep driving up the engagement there. And so I think it's a great question and continued product development in and around, that's how we drive that engagement up.

Okay. So I think that was the last question that we had. And so we're going to bring it to a close. Before we do disappear, I would just like to say a quick word about Kerry Williams, who all of you have met over many years. And this actually -- whilst Kerry will be with us for the rest of the financial year, this is actually his last results presentation with this audience. And I'd just like to express my huge thanks on behalf of all of us at Experian for the massive contribution that he's made in his 20-year career in various positions across the business. Lately, as an absolutely key member of the top management team. His contribution to the business has been immense. Many of the things that we've talked to you and you've questioned us on over the last decade since I've been here, none of them -- very few of them would have happened without Kerry's wisdom, insight and brilliant application. And we just want to express our sincere thanks, and we look forward to working with him for the remainder of the year, but wanted to just show our appreciation on this call today. So thank you very much, Kerry. And that brings us to the end of today's session. Thanks, everybody, for joining us. Hope you all have a good day, and we look forward to speaking to you in our July update.

Thank you, everyone. That concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining. Enjoy the rest of the day.