Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our first, half results presentation. This was another good set of results. We have strong organic revenue growth, and we have a lot of progress in a number of areas. Now we've made exceptionally strong progress in North America with growth across all fronts. Latin America, firmly back into double digit levels of growth, Brazil, in particular, exceeding our expectations.
We see great momentum continuing in new product introductions. And the standout this half has really been consumer services, especially in North America, Experian boosts had tremendous start, we're seeing really strong growth in identity and lead generation, and we believe there's plenty more to come. So overall, it's been a great start to the year, particularly in consumer credit. Actually, we're seeing volumes in our consumer credit businesses are strong across the whole, all regions, And at the same time, we're successfully scaling a range of new products across the globe. And all of this gives us, great confidence as we go into H2.
As you can see from this morning's announcements, we've, slightly raised our guidance to the upper end of the growth range that we gave you in May. Okay. As usual, Lloyd will go through, a lot of the details shortly, but I'll just pick out a few highlights. So we delivered 7% organic revenue growth in H1. That represented 7% in Q2 and acceleration from Q1, which was 6%.
Total growth in the half was 8%, which reflects the impact of acquisitions. The momentum in our B2B business continues to be very strong, up six sent globally. Data in particular was the real driver of that, which performed well across all territories. Decisiony a slight weak spot in half was mainly due to strong comps and some uncertainty in the UK. The Consumer Services business overall grew by 11% with North America accelerating to 13%.
A number of things driving this I said earlier, Experian Boost has been really an outstanding success so far. Our lead generation revenues across our consumer businesses are four times higher, than this time last year. And we are proactively investing to support this. You'll see that in Lloyd's presentation, we invested significantly behind the launch of Experian Boost earlier this year. But of course, it's not just the US, where we're investing.
We've been investing globally. And to give you an idea of the rate of progress, we now reach over 70,000,000 consumers with free propositions which is up by about 24,000,000 consumers from this time last year. So it's very significant. We're very pleased with performance. We have executed, I think, is a very significant turnaround in consumer services over the past few years, and we see more growth to come.
It's also been a busy period for acquisitions, all of which significantly enhance our core capabilities. And we've done a $181,000,000, dollars of buybacks as of the date of this, presentation. In addition, 1st interim dividend has been raised by 4 percent to $14..5, US cents per share. Okay. Just move on to some of the key points of presentation then.
You've seen this slide before, it really highlights the major strategic themes that we believe are playing out across all of our markets. And this provides a framework about how we think about directing our efforts and our investment all companies need to get better at acquiring, onboarding and managing customers in the digital world. They want to improve the experience for their customers through better, more targeted outcomes, frictionless onboarding, and improved propositions. They have to invest in technology, and better businesses, processes, to achieve this. And to do that, they really rely on data combined with sophisticated analytics and decisioning increasingly cloud based.
And of course, that all plays into experience strengths. We recognized these trends a number of years ago, and we've made a lot of investments to position the business well to take advantage of those. And that's really what's driving our success in the marketplace. You've heard about a lot of the products that we've developed, things like Ascend, cross core, Experian 1, our open banking propositions. All of these are really aimed, at those opportunities.
And the take up rates for those products has been very strong. Now we've developed these global, these platforms as global platforms, so they can work across our business, not just in different geographic markets, but also increasingly across different vertical markets and I'll show you some of that in a moment. And I think the final point about this is the pace at which we've, developed these products has really accelerated over the last few years, and that's really a reflection of how we've changed our business. Of course, it's actually consumers that are driving these trends, they want convenience, they want instant, frictionless access, they expect extreme personalization, and they expect real value, and they're prepared contribute their data in order to achieve that. And that's central to our strategy.
And our approach so far has been unique within our peer group. I think you can see it's very clearly working, in the US and also in Brazil, and we expect it to be a feature in every major Bureau market that we have. You've got great momentum in credit matching services, as well as in identity monitoring propositions and a lot more to come. And so we're introducing this model as we, across our territories as we go forward. In addition, I think all of you can see that the pace of innovation and product development has really changed significantly at Experian over the last few years.
If you want to take a moment just to talk to you about some of the investments we've made over the last few years to really enable that to happen. And the critical enabler of this has been investments in technology. We have been systematically revamping our technology estate in a thoughtful, measured way, which both enhances our competitive position and helps us manage the risk. We focus first on the platforms that we really needed to build to enhance our product capabilities and give us the building blocks necessary to really introduce, new products to market. And you're seeing, I think, positive results of these investments.
I've mentioned most of those before, Ascend, cross core, Experian, one of all great examples of investment programs that we started many years ago. One of the other reasons I think why our consumer services business is is is doing well is also because we've re platformed all of those businesses and the rate at which we can deploy new features and react to the market is, is very significantly up. And we do that now in a much more cost effective way. Important point is that a lot of these technologies have been built leveraging some fundamental components, which I know a number of you have heard our CIO, Barry Levinson talk about things like data fabric, oxygen, platform as a service, and the introduction of agile methodologies across the business have all been key fundamental components in helping that happen. And so while you've talk, you've heard us talk about that in the context of the new products I just mentioned, They actually also provide the components that we're using as the framework for Bureau modernization, and we've been getting on with Bureau modernization in the background.
So for example, in Brazil, for the introduction of positive data, we have built a completely new Bureau. That environment is live it's fully up and running. It builds on those previous technologies I referenced, data fabric and our Hadoop cluster technologies. Also in Columbia, we've re platformed the entire credit bureau, again, using those module components, and we've done this for considerably less cost and in a much reduced time frame that would have been possible historically. So these architectures that we're using in, Colombia and Brazil, the base which all Bureau modernization we based, we've already completed a number of these, mainly in EMEA, and we commenced, core modernization programs everywhere.
What we have done over the last few years is build great standardization in the technology architecture, and that allows us to leverage investments many times over and it's going to give us much greater flexibility and speed to market, faster to meet client needs. And these are just some of the benefits that we bring. And of course, for us, I think it's going to help us continue that roadmap of accelerated new product development and introductions and in helping us scale, our activities globally. This program is going to continue at pace and will be a focus for investment over the next few years. So turning now to the regional performances, starting with North America, which was up 10% organically.
Our B2B growth was broad based. We had strong growth in CI, BI Health, Automotive, decisioning, all performing really well. CI was the star performer. We had great strength in our underlying volumes, combined with contributions from new products and new verticals such as insurance and fintech, that clarity, the business we bought a short while ago has performed very strongly. We're now bringing to market, new scores, incorporating traditional Bureau, alternative and trended data assets.
Ascend has been a great success. I'll show you a slide on that in a second. We had fantastic growth and great client wins in fraud. And our health business continues to go really strongly in revenue cycle management, and we broadened our offer with, a bolt on acquisition there in My Health Direct. Consumer Services I referenced earlier has a lot of momentum.
So since March, When we introduced, Experian Boost, we've had 2,000,000 consumers connect their bank accounts to the Bureau. We're now reaching the scale across our consumer services business to be a major competitor in the digital customer acquisition. And this actually makes us one of the largest 2nd largest platform in the US by the number of members when you take account of the boost and the free members that we have in the platform. Now as we anticipated, Boost has actually driven traffic to credit match. So when consumers boost the score, they usually have some credit intent and it's natural for them to want to explore our new card offers.
And so as the traffic comes in to Experian.com, it's not just actually giving us a lift on the lead generation side. It's really helping the whole ecosystem. So we're seeing a benefit across the whole piece, in lead generation, but also what we're seeing is, a slowdown in attrition in the legacy, credit subscription revenues, which have also moderated quite quite considerably. So let me give you, a bit of flavor, on our progress with a couple of spot rights. So starting with, lead generation, You can see the approval rates on the right hand side.
This really matters to our lenders because we're now delivering traffic at scale. Our approval rates are incredibly high because of the accuracy of the data and the integration with, decisioning capabilities on the platform. And this really provides them a new way to prospect for customers through the credit match platform, very significant. For consumers, we're investing to make that journey as easy as possible all the time, taking friction out the matching process, enhancing that user experience and giving more people, reasons to engage with Experian. Experian Boost itself actually changed the perceptions of the brand, in North America.
It's very, very positive. Consumers are saying great things about Experian and our brand That's also making a difference. You can see that in the sort of Google search demand, chart, on the bottom right hand side. So we're very pleased with progress, and I think it gives us a great platform and a great opportunity to build on this momentum, in months and years to come. Okay.
We talked to a lot about Send, probably one of our most successful product launches ever. That continues. We now have several ASCEND modules in market, and the total contract value has reached $270,000,000. So for example, we've recently launched a very, a new and very exciting Send module for credit marketing. This is designed to help lenders with their credit marketing campaigns, for new loans.
And it really cuts down the time to design and execute a marketing campaign from weeks to days. We've always talked to you about the benefit that Sand brings in terms of shortening processes and helping people really work with data and much faster way. And this completely changes the deployment model. Clients spend a lot less time on analysis, and they can cut out several aspects of the business process so they can design their campaigns much more quickly and much more cost effectively. We already have 3 clients on this module, it will make a revenue contribution this year.
And we're hopeful that this is going to be a a significant growth opportunity for us going forward. Really, not just on that, but across all of the Ascent modules that we have. So great progress in the US. We're also in four countries now with Ascent in total. And we have another 5 to come where we'll be launching before the end of the financial year.
Right. Just very quickly, we don't really often talk a whole lot about our US auto business, but we did want to give you a brief overview because coming a more material part of our business given the growth we've had over the last few years. It's not as large as health, but it's getting there. It is one of our top verticals. It's had great growth, great margins, and it's also a good example of one Experian in Action.
So it's grown to be almost a $200,000,000 business, and it's been actually a very reliable and constant performer at all points of the cycle. So just a quick reminder, what do we do in automotive? Well, obviously, we provide, the credit data for auto loans, but our strategy has always been to do more than that. There's been to marry that data with our extensive automotive databases so that we can make the link between the credit assessment of the individual with the worthiness of the vehicle for which the loan has been given. And from that, we build products for our customer prospecting, marketing, management, and fraud.
The client base spans many customer segments, lenders, dealers, manufacturers, and marketing agencies. And innovation around the provision of core credit data and auto data really has been what's driven the growth in that business over many years. And it's been the linkage of many different Experian capabilities building on top of that data that's expanded our addressable market. And on that point, we're really pleased to announce that we've launched the Ascent SandBox in Automotive. It's in market.
It's going extremely well, and I think it's going to be a major term helping to continue our success in that vertical. And you'll have seen from the, press release today that we announced a small acquisition in, in automotive. It's called auto ID. It's a bolt on, and it's really focused on, the area of fraud in, fraud and and used car auto lenders. So a good progress there and more to come.
So turning to Latin America, we've had a very good performance here. Organic revenue growth double digits, up 10% made great progress in Brazil. Markets improving. We're seeing credit volume growth, a lot of new business. In particular with large financial institutions.
We've had a number of new products in market just to the point we think where the economy is improving. Cross Chorus Sand, Experian 1, all important new products that are in Brazil right now, launching in LatAm. And we also entered the auto vertical in Brazil earlier this year, and actually after a great start looking very promising. Consumer business in Brazil has also moved strongly into monetization. Our member ship has now grown to over 39,000,000 members.
I think that's very significant as we think about when we change into a positive data environment going forward, gives us tremendous advantage to take it, capitalize on that. And then elsewhere in Latin America, Colombia performed extremely well, some very good client wins the Bureau rearchitecture I mentioned earlier, we're about to go live on that platform, and we expect further benefits in terms of speed to market new product capabilities as a result of that. So we have, ambitions also to extend our consumer operations, further in Spanish LatAm. We have a small but actually a very quickly growing business now in Colombia. Okay.
So positive data, has been a long time coming. I know some of you were sitting here a long time ago, and we were saying positive data will be here next year, next year, next year, next year. It actually is finally here, so that's something to celebrate. The banks have now started to send us positive data. Once we have all of that, we're then required to send a communication to consumers, and we'll be allowed to use the data about 6, 60 days after that.
So we should complete the implementation period by the end of December. And from January 2020, we'll start incorporating positive data in our scores. Now we expect to receive 100 of millions of new data records from telcos, utilities, as well as the financial institutions. A very big expansion and is gonna greatly widen access to credit in Brazil. So as I mentioned earlier, our technology platform is in place To give you an idea of what we built here, we're very pleased with it.
We processed our first 13,000,000 records last week. It took us 18 minutes to do that. That is world class capability. So we're in market with the technology, that we need to really cope with the new environment. And our product strategy is also at a very advanced stage.
Some of you will remember a few years ago we, embarked on our own opt in collection process, which gave us about 10,000,000 consumers on positive data. That's enabled us to actually get a head start on what kind of products that we can build. We've obviously leveraged the global teams as well in bringing our capabilities to market. So in a test environment, we have a very strong knowledge of exactly what we're going to go to market with, We've also tested that with our customers. We think the reception is going to be very strong, and we are in advanced discussions with many customers.
So we're positive about that. We're excited about it. Were ready and, can't wait for it to happen. Okay. So the UK, UK was flat for the half.
It was a mixed performance. We did see weak demand in some parts of our B2B portfolio. Happily, first time for a while, been able to say it was offset by an improved trend in consumer services. And the good news is that the consumer credit bureau in line with all of our bureaus across the world performing very strongly, and we think we've strengthened our position in the marketplace. We now have several clients on our open data platforms, and we have real scale in personalized digital services for B2B Marketplaces.
Our marketing focused business targeting EDQ and, decisioning had weak first halves. Last year, we secured a number of big profit or decision in contracts in the UK, they've been difficult to lap recently. And recently, we have noticed a lengthening sales cycle in the UK for new products. Now that said, the pipeline is building. We do believe it's high quality.
We've had several new wins for Experian 1 and cross core. As I said earlier, I think this is probably a better story for us in FY 'twenty one. Consumer services has turned a corner, we're back to growth, Customer acquisition in credit matcha has been strong. We have higher visits, stronger engagement, and we're deploying new features on the new platform that I referenced earlier. And faster rate, and we have a very strong product roadmap for the second half.
Okay. EMEA, Asia Pacific delivered total growth of 5% Organic revenue growth was down 3%. We had great progress in EMEA, which continued to be really solid, particularly on the data side, And here, we're benefiting from new technology and new products, which are really driving growth in the data businesses. Strategy across both regions. We're bringing platforms successfully to market, Ascend, our open banking propositions all have applicability and we're going to be bringing a lot more product to market in the coming year.
Pleased to say also that, our acquisition, our acquisition of CompuScan in South Africa is performing extremely well. And as we look, as we look for, as we look across Asia Pacific, it'll be a tougher half there as we lapped some really very big contract wins last year in marketplaces. We do expect this to recover as we exit the financial year pipelines in Asia Pacific are are very strong. And we have a lot of momentum, across our Bureau businesses in Australia and India, in particular. We have continued to expand our footprint.
We've recently taken our controlling interest in RAM CI. A, a bureau that we had a minority stake in in Malaysia. And we're seeing really good traction for, some of our PowerCo modules like PowerCo collection which have been a big focus in that area, and we expect that to be, you know, a major contributor going forward. So with that, I'm going to hand over to Lloyd to take you through the financial review.
Okay. Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. I'll start as usual with an overview. As Brian mentioned, we've had a good first half, sustaining the high rates of growth and performing strongly in our largest markets.
And as expected, growth accelerated, in Q2, reflecting particular strength across the business in North America and and improving recovery in Brazil. The B2B portfolio delivered another good half with strong progress across a range of new products, And our innovation investment program, which underpinned this revenue growth also delivered strong growth across our global sales pipelines. And consumer services continued to accelerate with great momentum behind our new consumer products and in our partner solutions business. And with the strong momentum that we've seen in the first half, our promising new business pipelines, we've raised the organic growth guidance for the full year to the top end of our previous range now 7% to 8%. And you've seen we've invested strongly behind Experian Boost, and global scaling in the first half.
So our margin cash flow will be a little second half weighted this year, but our full year guidance is unchanged. Turning to the highlights, after a 6% organic growth in Q1, we delivered that good momentum into Q2 with 7% in the second half. And with that being a good 7%, it was also 7% for the half as a whole. Total revenue growth at constant rates was 8%, benefiting mainly from the Compuiscan acquisition and FX in the half was a 2% headwind. Growth in nominal benchmark EBIT was also good up 6 percent, and we invested behind Experian Boost, with what, with our first half launch costs incurred during the half, which I'll cover in a moment.
We also saw increased depreciation, from our technology and innovation program. And overall, in the first half average group margin, was 50 basis points lower at constant currency. And excluding the 1 off launch costs, margin was slightly higher in the 1st half and the guidance remains for modest margin expansion for the full year. Benchmark EPS growth in the half was 3% at constant currency and 1% after the FX drag I mentioned. Cash conversion from EBIT was 51% in the traditionally weaker first half with the phasing of payments a little more weighted to the first half of this year.
And for the full year, we continue to expect our cash conversion to be around 90%. And finally, the board's approved a 4% increase in the first interim dividend. On to our usual organic trends, charts on the left, you can see the trends in, the, the global revenue growth with a sustained mid to high single digit group organic revenue growth performance. And on the right, you can see the picture for the global B2B businesses where we've had organic growth across the portfolio now consistently strong with 19 consecutive quarters of mid to high single digit growth. And you've seen from Brian on the consumer side, the very strong momentum that we have in our operational metrics.
And here on the chart on the left, you can see how that's translated into strong financial progress. Organic revenue growth in the first half was 11%, 16% in the second quarter, which was helped by the great progress we've had with Experian Boost in North America and the return to growth in the UK Consumer business. And we also continue to make good progress in the breach support business, which by its nature could be a little lumpy You'll recall that we called out, a one off contract in the third quarter last year that added around 5% to the U. S. Consumer business.
And in the second quarter of this year, we had a similar one off contract, which contributed about the same amount, which you can see highlighted on the charts. And looking ahead to Q3, obviously, our 3rd quarter results for the consumer business will reflect the lapping of that one off And on the right hand charts, you can see how the strong progress we've made with some of the new product introductions are helping to diversify the shape of our consumer business, both in North America and the UK. And not only are we seeing strong growth from those new products, but the rapidly scaling consumer relationships are helping to drive cross sell opportunities and also increasingly supporting our B2B business with enhanced data assets. Turning now to the regional results, in a little bit more detail, where I'll comment on the performance constant currency. In North America, you've seen a strong performance.
We continue to deliver organic revenue growth of 10%. In data, there was strong growth from the consumer information market, driven by growth in core profiles with a small tailwind from higher volumes in mortgage and great momentum in Ascend that you saw in Brian's presentation. Auto also performed strongly, growing double digits as it benefited from strength in our Automotive Ascent module and our Autodealer marketing product auto audience. There was also good growth in our decisioning business, We continued to grow our power curve, pipeline and saw really strong growth in cross core. Was another good half in the health business with very strong growth across coverage discovery, patient, patient engagement, and claims.
And in Consumer, as you've seen, we had great progress with considerable strength across our DTC portfolio, both to the traffic and engagement driven by the investment in the launch of Experian Boost. You'll recall that last year, we said that the revenue from the 2 products, identity and lead generation was $80,000,000 for the year as a whole. And we've, recorded $80,000,000 of revenue just in the first half this year. So that outlines some of the great momentum we've got in those 2 new products in North America. And we also saw good growth in Partner Solutions, the B2B2C business, and a contribution from the new acquisition or clear ID, which provides breach and a pre reach preparedness and resolution services.
So if you tie all of that together, for North America, you can see the revenue growth translated into strong EBIT growth, We reported a 20 basis point margin progression as operating leverage in the B2B business added around 110 basis points which more than offset at the North America level, the significant one off marketing expense to launch Experian boost. Turning to Latin America. For the half, the region grew 10% with Brazil growing double digits in both quarters. That's the 3 quarters of double digit growth now in Brazil, and FX was a 6% headwind in the half overall. There was good growth in data across both consumer and business information in Brazil as we saw strong growth from our banking and credit union clients.
And in our consumer business in Brazil, we continue to invest strongly behind the expansion of the consumer membership base in advance to the move to positive data. We currently report the Latin America Consumer business within data and it performed really strongly. More than doubling in size as we monetize our growing free membership base with particular strength in the Limpanoi and eCred product lines. And we think we have an exciting story to tell you about that over the coming years. Margin reflected operating leverage in the core data business in Brazil offset by investment in the consumer business, and as we invested behind, preparing for positive data.
Moving, to the UK and Ireland, where organic, consumer growth 3% for the half overall and B2B was 1% lower. Total organic growth for the region was flat and FX was a 6 percent, drag to, revenue in the half. In data, there was good growth in the core consumer information bureau business, which was up 11% and this reflected strength in prequalification services as well as a growing contribution from affordability services through our open data platforms. This was offset by weakness in marketing data and automotive business in the UK. Decioning improved to a low single digit decline in Q2 after lapping the strong comparatives in the first quarter.
And we continue to see the effects of U. K. Political and economic uncertainty with delays in client new product investment decisions and therefore expect UK decision growth, to continue to be restrained in the second half. Consumer Services delivered organic growth of 3% for the half, driven by very strong growth in our marketplaces business, which more than offset the decline in our traditional subscription business. And we expect low single digit growth to be sustained in the second half with upside coming along new side new propositions as we enter the new year.
And overall, EBIT was down 20% to $75,000,000, reflecting the decisional, decisioning revenue decline, combined, with increases in depreciation, on our investments in the new consumer and digital platforms. In EMEA and Asia Pacific, we continue to reflect strong comparatives in Asia Pacific in the prior year, and we declined 3% organically for the half. The data business performed well across our bureaus with good growth in EMEA and Asia Pacific, in particular, strength in India, Australia, Italy, and the Nordics. Decioning was down 12%, driven by tough prior year, our comparators in Southeast Asia, and the marketplaces, deals that we secured last year. And we've got, as Brian mentioned, really good line of sight on a very strong pipeline in APAC, and we expect to see that translate to improving growth rates as we exit this year.
And EBIT growth overall reflected a good contribution from Compuestown and organic operating leverage in EMEA, across both data and decisioning, partially offset by the effect of the Asia Pacific decisioning headwinds. On to our benchmark EBIT margin for the half and looking at the key drivers, I'll walk you across of the story here. So if you adjust for a small disposal, and also the impact of the IFRS 16 accounting change, you see that the restated prior year margin is 27.6% and that IFRS 16 benefit as I outlined in May's fully offset and an extra interest charge. We had good operating leverage in the half, which more than offset the expected headwinds, from the increase in depreciation, global scaling costs and our investments behind preparing for positive data in Brazil. And overall, this underlying performance contributed a net positive ten basis points, for the margin, for, to the margin for the half as a whole.
And during the half, we've invested in 1 off launch costs for Experian Boost. And as you can see, this had a 1 off drag in the half year of around 80 basis points, which won't repeat in the second half. Turning now to half year EPS, If you start with our first half twenty nineteen, the benchmark EPS was $0.48.7 per share. And growth in benchmark EBIT from continuing operations was 5%, reflecting the organic growth performance. Interest expense increased to $66,000,000 as a result of higher average debt and the IFRS 16 interest charge offsetting the EBIT effect I mentioned earlier.
The tax rate was 26.2 percent, reflecting the mix of our profits and prevailing tax rate. By territory. Non controlling interest was $3,000,000 for the half, reflecting the strong growth in our micro analytics business, And now that we've acquired the rest of that business, the 2nd half non controlling run rate will reduce to around $1,000,000. And we saw the benefit of the share repurchase program with weighted average number of shares at $903,000,000. So for the half year, EPS was up 3% on a constant basis, and 1% of actual FX.
Looking at our usual, reconciliation to statutory results, you can see that acquisition related items increased slightly from $9,000,000 to $15,000,000, consistent with the increased acquisition activities during the half. Exceptional items included a gain from a business disposal within our cross channel marketing associate, offset by, some movements in legal provisions, and that nets over all to $1,000,000 in the half. And non cash finance re measurements reduced slightly to $58,000,000 to 51,000,000. So statutory profit before tax was, $480,000,000, also up 2% on the prior year. Turning to the cash flow performance, our conversion rate of benchmark EBIT into operating cash flow was 51%, Half ones are seasonally weaker half of the year, and this year, the timing of cash flows is a little bit more second half weighted.
And you can see, the explanation of that on the on the right. First thing to note, there's there was an 11% reduction to cash conversion in the half from higher employee incentives related to last year's performance, but paid, in this, first half. And as these are paid in the first half, the impact on the full year, conversion will be about half that number. Also compared to last year, we expect CapEx to be a little bit more first half weighted this year within our 9% to 10% range. And there was a further 5% timing on the mix of working capital including the effects of the Experian boost launch, which we'd expect to reverse in the second half.
So overall, with the timing elements, broadly reversing in the second half, we continue to expect our full year cash conversion to be around 90%. And onto the balance sheet, we ended the half with net debt of $4,100,000,000, up $798,000,000 from the start of the financial year, really reflecting the acquisitions we've made, during the half. And our net debt to EBITDA was two point four times, within our two to 2.5 times guidance range. And with cash flow weighted to the second half, as usual, I'd expect this to come down a little within our guided range by the end of the year. Brian talked, about our investments in technology.
So this, slide shows a view of our CapEx versus this time, last year. And as I mentioned in, in our May presentation, we continue to invest in our technology and innovation agenda with proportionally more of our capital investments, being into growth orientated infrastructure and product development. And as you can see from the chart on the left, most of the increase has come from product development as we look to further invest in products such as Experian Boost, additional Ascend modules enter scale, the innovations that we've bought to market in certain countries globally. Depreciation and amortization increased in the half, reflecting the investments that we've been making in new products and, which are supporting our high rates of growth. And we'd expect to see this trend of increasing depreciation continue for the next few years.
Acquisitions, and investments, you can see we've had quite an active, first half with a number of acquisitions completed, As you know, we completed, the acquisition of Compuiscan early in the year and the integration of that business is going well. We also made a number of smaller acquisitions in the half. We increased our stake in my, Experian micro analytics. The driver behind the marketplace's product, as well as a number of other bolt ons, which give us capabilities like Castlight, in open banking, and my health direct. In patient scheduling.
And in addition to those acquisitions in the half, we've also made a number of strategic minority investments, particularly in the Asia Pacific region. And these included investments in Grab, Southeast Asia's leading everyday super app and compare Asia Group 1 of Asia's leading financial management platforms for banking and insurance related products. And if you take all of that together, We made acquisitions and minority investments in the half of $499,000,000. As Brian mentioned, after the end of the half, we also made 2 further acquisitions. We took a controlling interest in Ramzi, the Curip Bureau in Malaysia, which further expands our position and presence in Malaysia, giving us access to unique data assets in a strategically important country for us.
And we also acquired auto ID, which strengthens our product offerings in Experian Automotive and supports our further penetration across our lender base. Now onto some, modeling considerations, any of which I've covered, during the the presentation so far. So We've raised our organic revenue guidance for the full year to the upper end of the previous range, so we now expect organic growth in the 7% to 8% range. The acquisitions of all CLEAR ID, CompuScan, MyHealth Direct and Ramci, and auto ID will together add a further 1% to 2% of revenue. For the year as a whole.
We continue to expect EBIT to grow at or above revenue growth with another year of modest margin progression as we continue to invest in technology, new product innovation, global scaling and also growing, our consumer businesses. We now expect interest in FY20 to be around 130,000,000 reflecting lower market interest rates than the time we guided in May, but partially offset by the additional investment we've made in acquisitions. And the $130,000,000 includes the $10,000,000 non cash effect from introducing IFRS 16. The benchmark tax rate, continue to expect that to be around 26% and the cash tax rate to be in the low 20% range. And due to the, minority acquisition of the minority share in Experian microanalytics, We expect the full year non controlling interest charge to be around $4,000,000.
Taking into account the effect of the share repurchase program, would expect, shares to be in the region of 900,000,000, for the full year, and we're just under halfway through, completing that program. And we expect CapEx to continue to be in the 9% to 10% range. FX obviously has been volatile for the last, a few weeks. But we'd expect it to be somewhere in the 1% to 2% range versus the 1% that we gave at the time of Q1. So to summarize, we've delivered good momentum, as expected in the first half, with strong growth across our B2B particular strength and momentum in our consumer businesses.
And with good momentum and strong sales pipeline, that's given us the confidence to raise our full year outlook to the top end of our previous range. And while foreign exchange continues to be a small headwind, We continue to see good progress in EBIT and, modest margin progression for the full year and strong progress in benchmark earnings. All at constant currency. And we'll continue to apply our capital framework as you've seen us do and continue to invest where we see opportunities to add value to the business. And with that, I'll hand you back to Brian.
Okay. Thanks, Lloyd. So bring this section to a conclusion. Good progress here to date plenty of growth opportunities ahead. As you can see over the last few years, we've made a lot of investments and we're executing successfully.
A lot of investments to technology, we think have rejuvenated the company's, ability to develop innovation at scale, And we're also really pursuing a number of opportunities, which are scalable global platforms, boost, Experian, 1, Ascend, cross core, open banking. These are really big opportunities for us to adjust in their infancy today, and they play into the big trends of digitization and convenience, consumer convenience we talked about earlier on. We do think our approach, particularly in the consumer side, unique in the industry is making a difference to our performance. As you can see, it's also making a difference to our brand perception. In the markets that we operate in.
And we feel good, about the position that we're in for the rest of FY 20. And the opportunities for continued growth as we go ahead. So with that, I will draw this part of the presentation to conclusion and ask Kerry to us on stage, and we'll open it up for your questions. Thank you. Okay.
Let's get some mics.
We got Paul up front here left.
Okay. Thank you. A couple for me. Firstly, on margin, isn't there always going to be an experienced boost? So sort of I know it's particularly large, but why call it out?
And, and more generally, could you talk about the trade off between growth and margin. And whether given the investments going through the business, whether modest margin expansion is sustainable or even desirable going forward. And then in terms then secondly on this send, could you just sort of give us a sense of the opportunity that lies that lies ahead versus what we've seen to date, and is this product capable of scaling to $500,000,000 or perhaps a $1,000,000,000 say? Thanks.
Okay. A number of questions there. So I sincerely hope that we have many more boost products to back going forward. That's the idea. There's no change to the margin framework that we've been operating under for a number of years.
I'll let Lloyd comment on this in a second. But, you know, our philosophy has always been to invest in the opportunities we have in the P and L, You've seen that in the new products. You've also seen that we've been re engineering our technology platform, not something that we've talked about in great detail before, All of this we've done, you know, within our margin guidance. You know, we believe that, we want to invest in, in growth opportunities across the business. We also believe in the discipline of making sure that that's profitable growth.
So there's a risk element to that in terms of how many things you can pursue at any particular point in time. And we try and give us to let ourselves the flexibility to make these investments. Why continuing to manage, you know, for profit, which is ultimately what we, what we want to do.
Yeah. So I guess why, why call it out it, impacted our margin in the half, but it was always part of our plans when we guided to modest margin progression this year. There are always things that we're investing in. You know, we mentioned also the investment behind effectively launching a brand new Bureau in Brazil. We managed that all within our margin guidance.
The way I think about it, these, rates of growth, we have lots of options. Our first port of call is always to invest to create value where we can, but it should mean that we can continue to get more this margin progression at these, at these sorts of growth rate.
And, on this end, yeah, I mean, you can see that the total contract value is building very significantly, You know, we are very excited about the opportunities that we have. We've really only started in countries outside the U. S. Most of that contract value is in the US. You can see that, we continue to innovate in the platform.
We have always said that we do not think that we're going to be the only people in market with a product like Ascend forever. And so we continue to push the boundaries of how, of what we do with that product and that capability this is already getting to a point where, you know, in a few years' time, you can see this being as big as our decisioning business alone. So the numbers that you threw out are not they're not unrealistic. Obviously, we have to deliver against that. But I think we're very confident in the product capabilities that we've developed, and we're very confident about the opportunities.
So, you know, we expect to continue to grow strong in that.
I think, I think the other thing, Paul, when you have products like Ascendis, it changes the nature of the dialogue with clients. You know, they're looking to partner with companies and suppliers who investing strongly behind innovation, bringing, products that can really change how their competitive position is in the market. And You're really seeing that the nature of the conversations has, has moved on tremendously, with products like I said.
It's Alex Meezer,
JP Morgan. 3, please. Firstly, just with regard to Experian Boost given how successful it has been in the U. S, can you just give a sense for the sure you see for the product outside of that market? Secondly, in the UK, the delays that we've talked about with regard to decisioning projects getting over the line.
Do you see this as something that if there is resolution in the political situation that that will come back, or is this something more structure in terms of where people are looking to invest. And finally, as we move into a positive data environment in Brazil, you give a sense of the sort of, products that you might be launching to take advantage of that, please?
Right. So let's deal with those questions. So experience boost, we do intend to bring it into other markets, and we haven't announced exactly when, but it would be, no surprise either we, you know, we expect to introduce that in other major Bureau markets. Starting with the UK, So that will be, in the not too distant future. Moving on to UK, decisioning I think there are 2 aspects to this, as we highlighted.
1, you know, if you look back over the last few years, our decisioning business has grown extremely strongly, We had a very strong year in the UK last year. So we're lapping that as part of it. We think our pipeline, for what we sold in the last few years is not as strong going forward, so originations and power grid modules largely because, actually, we've already been very successful with that So a lot of our pipeline is really, on new products, Experian 1 and so on. So you've seen some, I think, delay in in actioning on those but I think as we highlighted, the pipeline is, building and is strong for those products. So we think that there will be, opportunities as we go ahead that may take a little bit longer.
I think some of the uncertainty in the environment is feeding in some of those decisions. So I think that, that's how we would characterize. Would you add anything to that?
No, I think you've covered it. So it's a little hard to call the exact timing, but so we probably think it'll continue to be a little suppress the second half of this year, but we think FY21 will do better.
And then, Gary, do you want to talk about positive data? Sure.
I think the 3, the 3 initial product areas that we'll be looking at, first, obviously, just the expansion of the core credit report and what that's going to mean in terms of the consumers. I think you saw in some of the slides, have roughly 63,000,000 consumers on the negative Bureau today. We've got another 12,000,000 on the positive data file where we've collected the consents the expansion into the consumers now with positive data will be greater than 150,000,000 so just the expansion of credit into the Brazilian market will be the 1st major area that we're focused on second will be account management capabilities. We've also started selling Ascend into the, market now, the ability for the banks to be able to take this new source of data and to be able to not only analyze it in the way that they need to, but to use it in credit marketing opportunities or or other uses. And the 3rd will be, triggers, trigger type products.
So the expansion of credits related to that, but the the information on the file will obviously allow the banks to accept triggers and to be able to take actions to increase credit limits or do other type of actions on there. And those are, you know, 3 kind of bread and butter, product capabilities that we would see to expand in the Brazilian market, from day 1.
Yeah. We do, we do have a lot of people dining in today. So we've got a question on the conference line. We have question online. Okay.
The audience? Andy at the back then?
It's Andy Grabler from Credit Suisse. Just two if I may. You had a very long list of things that are going well, which is great, and apart from a bit of UK political uncertainty what are the areas that aren't quite going to plan at at this stage would be 1st and second within lead generation as you really kind of gain scale in the US, and gaining more scale in the UK. Are you getting more pricing power? Can you push pricing up to the lenders, or is that a relatively static, event at the moment?
Alright.
Carrie, What's going wrong? I think it's a question.
So we we have, too many opportunities with our new Experian 1 platform and our ability to, produce the development to take advantage of those opportunities globally as fast as we would like to. That's one of the things where we would like to be able to improve upon. Form in all the regions, across the globe. And we have a series of use cases that are designed around acquisitions or account management or collections variety of of use cases and just the ability to get those out the door so that we can sell them and keep up with the demand that the clients actually giving us. And further to Lloyd's point around decisioning in the UK market, the UK markets actually had the best success with the launch of our Experian platform so far.
So that gives us confidence that we will, we're just in a a bit of a a lull with the traditional power curve type platforms in the UK moving those over. So I I think that's that's one of the areas where, where we have a, a, a desired into a little bit better. I think I think another area is our ability to, take advantage of the consumer opportunity that's in front of us. And how do we, make the right choices in these developing markets, whether it's Columbia, Brazil, what's going on in India, putting in more capital to India, giving how it is now starting to scale and scale in a robust manner and and, really starting to achieve the vision that we had many years ago with the investment in India. How do we put our dollars to work there?
How do we further take advantage of the consumer opportunities in the US and the UK and to be able to capture the opportunities there. So by and large, our focus is on, how we can produce more throughput into our capabilities in various markets. And that's where we spend a lot of time and effort internally trying to figure out, you know, how are we going to do this better? We have right now, we have much fewer areas, are are very few areas where we're simply looking at you know, how do we, how do we deal with a specific problem in this area? So it's our constraints around throughput.
And the ability to get the capital invested and produced into capabilities quickly to take advantage of the more of the opportunities that are staring us in the face in these market.
And let me just come back on the degeneration point. I don't think that it's really, about pricing because actually, there's there's plenty of revenue available in the marketplace. There's a lot of growth there. So you know, I think that the, you know, the, the revenue that you get for lead generation business for customer acquisition is very strong. So It's not really again about pricing.
It's actually, again, about getting traffic in and, producing larger volumes of, of qualified leads for financial institutions, which they're hungry for. So I think that's where the growth comes from, and not really a pricing game. Okay. Just go to Ed and then we'll go, Tom, after you.
Thanks, thanks very much. Ed Steele from Citi. A couple of questions, please. Firstly, thank you for the pie charts on page, slide 17. It looks like, I may have got this wrong, but looks like the UK, lead gen B2C business has, but it starts a lot later than the US 1, but it seems to have got more traction, more quickly, than the US lead gen business relative to the size of of the market.
Yet, yet looking at the matrix of, the divisional and geographic profit margins, it looks like the UK B2C Business it's margins doing worse than the US. So could you sort of talk around that, that comparison, please? And then, just on back on boost, you say the launch costs won't repeat in the second half, are those launch costs mainly marketing? I've I've seen lots of ad adverts in the state about boost. So are you saying you're gonna pull back on marketing because you've hit that penetration point?
And are you not concerned that it may be more sensible at this point just to really go go for it, given it seems to be going so well. Thank you.
Okay. So let me deal with the point about lead gen in the UK for arsenal hand up to Lloyd for the margin point. Actually, we started lead gen in the UK before we did the US. And, if you look at how that business has grown, it it is actually I'm pretty sure it's the fast financial services lead aggregation platform in the UK. So we've gone from nothing to being number 3 in the marketplace and the space of 2 years.
So I think that gives a 2 and a bit years. I think that gives you an idea of the capabilities that we have. Obviously, we have invested behind that. And so that's, you know, I think we're very, very proud. I think the team's done a great job there.
By the way, when they started it, they, they actually didn't even have the new technology platform. So really, what we're starting to see now is the new technology platform is fully operational and then being able to pull a lot more levers in the business that they couldn't do 3 years ago. So I think it's a good story. And, I think we have plenty of growth opportunities ahead of us. In terms of the margin point, do
you want to comment? Yeah. Just just one further on that. I think if you the difference on the chart said is if you take out the partner solutions business, which is big, in North America. I think that split might look a little different.
I just assumed that ID and Lee Jen were fairly equal waiting in the U. S. Pie. So that's how I came to that conclusion. Oh, you don't have, ID in the UK.
Yeah, that's right. But if you take, if you look at the, the nominal size lead gen business in the US is, is is bigger. And so I I can maybe offline, I can walk you through the numbers.
There's a there's a difference in pricing between the two markets that impacts the margin. What you can what you can command in the UK for lead gen versus what you can command in the U. S. Market.
If you look at consumer overall, actually the margin is pretty similar in the U. S. And the U. K. If you strip out things like the one off, revenue that we get for some of the breach support, which is a fairly high margin.
So they're both pretty consistently in the 20 percent to 25%. And remember, both of our consumer businesses pay a royalty to our data business. So the contribution to the group as a whole is really very positive.
Am I still interested on boost about why you're not going to keep pressing on with the marketing.
Sorry. Apologies. I should have come back to that. You want to deal with that?
Yes. So, when you look at it year on year, Ed, we actually started the launch program in March. So we, we had about 10,000,000 of launch costs in March and about 20,000,000 in, in Q1 this year. So when we we go into the second half, we don't really need the launch costs, and we lap some of the launch costs last year. So we're also you know, once you get something like this, the momentum building, you're able to use the, the, the benefit of the launch you've already got going in terms of awareness and and rely much more on digital and much more on CRM, so that that's really what's driving that.
Yes, thanks very much. So Tom Salix from Deutsche Bank. Just, if you could help us on maybe ballpark the revenue contribution from ASCEND, maybe half year this year and half year last year. Please. And then does that have a different working capital dynamic as well?
So just thinking about your billings and is that more upfront payment for you? And then on the, identity business, the pricing and identity? Is there any signs of a little bit more price competition there? And again, what are the working capital dynamics on that business?
So I'll start with identity. No, no change to the average, revenue per per member. If anything, it's slightly up, in our our direct to consumer subscription businesses, those are are are positive in terms of working capital, the lead gen businesses are a little bit negative, just given the the cycle. On revenue from Ascend, on average, the contracts were about 5 years. So you take the TCE, divide by 5, and you get on average about current year revenue.
So you can see the circa 250 this year as a whole will be, approaching $50,000,000 of revenue. That's a good guide.
Just a final question on the CapEx. How much of the data costs are per and our costs that maybe in the long run automation is going to keep those fixed because obviously they've been fixed for quite a long period of time and presumably is then a fixed level of depreciation you see, which is then giving you operational leverage. So will we at all ever see the CapEx on data go up, or is that something you think you get an ongoing automation benefit that you, you know, obviously then are reinvesting in other areas, but
So the the majority of, of the data costs is in, is in Brazil, and relates to the acquisition of some of the, the negative data in the environment. There is, you know, some element of internal costs there. But it might reduce marginally, Tom, but I wouldn't expect it to be a big factor. The biggest factor in CapEx will be our continued investment in product development.
Okay. So we, if we don't see that in data, we will continually see a rise in the internally generated software line. That's where it will come up as you report it, whether that's the right units.
That's the right way to think about it. Yeah. If you, if you're doing comparisons of us versus our peers or us versus history, if you look back, we've been as high as 11% as low as 7 in terms of CapEx. So 9 to 10 is, is kind of our long term, range comparing to the competitors we a capitalized data, they don't. So you have to take 2 to 3% off that.
So like for like, we're kind of 6 to 7, and, you know, they're anywhere between 8:12.
Is it right to call that software, all of that cost?
Sorry, I didn't hear that.
Is it right to call all of that internally generated software, but is it right to call all of that software or whether other things that are going into
software and, and the platforms that facilitate our business. So the infrastructure to build a new bureau in Brazil to gradually re platform our other Bureau businesses. Those are all the things that we're spending money out.
Thank you very
much.
This is Anvesh from, Morgan Stanley. Just two quick ones. First, coming back on to the UK, you called out some cyclical weakness in the marketing business. In this statement. Have you seen any signs of that in your other regions?
Maybe it's not significant to call it now, but any early signs that you're seeing some cyclical weakness in other parts of business. And second, just, just from a modeling perspective, to hit your margin guidance for the full year or the EBIT guidance for the full year, you need probably an acceleration into the 50 basis point of leverage you got in first half. Maybe if you can just talk about what are the building blocks and where you'll get it from.
So, sorry, the margin question, do we see upside to the guidance?
To hit the EBIT growth at our Apergy revenue, growth. You you probably need an exploration on 50 basis point of, leverage you got in business performance that you called out on slide 22 in second half. And probably where will that come from?
Yeah. So I think, the the way to think about it is we, we don't have the drag on at the launch costs about $20,000,000 in the first half. We also don't have the $10,000,000 of launch costs that we had in March. On Experian Boost. And then if you look at the mix of growth, we're obviously growing more strongly in North America and in Brazil, which are our higher average margin.
That plus the momentum in the business really gives us the confidence. And I think, you know, you've seen for the last few years, we we have a lot of levers on investment, and the the choices we're making in the group to, you know, give confidence around how we guide to margin. On on marketing, a couple of different effects, we're still lapping in some regions, the loss of the Facebook contract. We call that out to you in you know, it kind of drops out of the numbers in in different places. But the UK marketing business was a was certainly a bit weak.
And that's probably more isolated to the UK business.
We've got one more question from Ed who obviously didn't get all of his questions in last time around.
Thanks. So, yeah, I did two questions. I did have a follow-up. So I'm just you you've described the momentum in the group as accelerating, and clearly you've raised the guidance for for the full year, but if you strip out the one off, data breach revenue in the, in the second quarter, it looks like the growth was fairly similar to the first quarter. Is is that fair?
Yeah. So we, we were 6 in the first quarter in the 2nd quarter, we'd have been 7 without the breach, ah, revenue. If you then go into the 3rd quarter, we obviously lap just under 1%, a headwind from the one off breach that we had last year. So if we're in the 7 to 8 range, you strip that out, we'd be probably more in, at the top end of that range without that. And that, that really underpins the guidance that we've got.
It was a very, it was a very strong 7 in, in the 2nd quarter at
Okay. So I just calculated about $17,000,000 benefit from the breach. That that's all I made my master on.
Yeah. It was about 9.
Alright. Well, I think we'll bring that to a conclusion. Thank you very much for attending today, and we look forward to seeing you. In May and talk with you in January. Thank you.