Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Experian's First Quarter Trading Update Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be the question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you need to press star one one on your telephone keypad. You will then hear an automatic message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw a question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to our first speaker today, Mr. Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 trading update call. I'm here, as usual, with Lloyd, who'll take you through the trading performance after my opening remarks. So organic revenue growth in Q1 was 7%, which is a very good result, in line with our expectations. Total group revenue growth was 8% at constant currency and 7% at actual rates. So we started the year well, consistent with our expectations. It reflects successful execution of our growth strategy. A special call out goes to Consumer Services, which achieved double-digit organic revenue growth and encouraging performance across all geographies, taking our total installed free membership base to over 185 million. Touching now on the regional Q1 highlights and starting with North America, which again showed sequential improvement overall, delivering organic revenue up 8%.
Both B2B and Consumer Services delivered well, up 7% and 10%, respectively. B2B benefited from good balance across the portfolio, including strength across Automotive and Health. In CI and BI, we saw positive contributions from Experian Ascend and Mortgage. The unsecured credit environment has not changed a lot since we last spoke, with lending standards remaining tight, but with some signs now that delinquencies are approaching their peak. Automotive performance was helped by recovery in new vehicle sales and increased dealer marketing activity, while Health delivered a very good start to the year for bookings, supported by our expanded product suite. Double-digit growth in Consumer Services is a great performance, which illustrates how diversified our platform has become. Progress in the Insurance Marketplace has been excellent. We've expanded our insurance panel. We're launching new features like insurance rate monitoring.
While Credit Marketplace volumes are still soft, we're very confident of our market positioning for when credit recovery comes. Other revenue streams also contributed positively, with paid membership benefiting from higher enrollments, which follows the investments we've made into new features. We've also had another good quarter of data breach services wins. Turning now to Latin America, which delivered organic revenue growth of 5%. Overall, we continue to make a lot of strategic progress to introduce our integrated platforms, enter new growth markets, and expand our consumer propositions. It was a slower quarter for B2B, up 1% due to deal phasing and the recent floods in Brazil, and we expect an improved performance in Q2. The build-out of our fraud and analytical services is progressing well and with further progress in our Agribusiness vertical. Consumer services delivered a very strong quarter, up 24%.
We've established multiple new revenue streams, which have steadily diversified the business and provide new avenues for growth. Q1 included strong contributions from Payments and our Credit Marketplace, while Limpa Nome also continues to perform well, benefiting from platform enhancements, for example, enabling consumers to view their debts in one place and make it easier to pay them off. UK&I delivered organic revenue growth of 2%, with B2B up 2% and Consumer Services up 4%. In B2B, growth is supported by our superior data quality, program of new product introductions, and through the proceeds of our platform strategy. Macro is still subdued, with credit card lenders having been out of new credit origination for the best part of 18 months. There isn't a widespread pickup yet in new credit issuance, with activity varying a lot by lender. UK Consumer Services has made very strong progress.
We've made a lot of enhancements to our platform, which have enhanced the experience for both consumers and lenders, and it's driven growth across both subscription and marketplace. EMEA Asia Pacific has had a positive start of the year, delivering organic revenue growth of 7%. We continue our focus on generating high quality revenue with a larger innovation contribution and less dependence on one-off consumer software contracts. Also, good to see growth in the quarter, fairly evenly spread across all of our focus markets. So with that, I'm now going to hand it over to Lloyd.
Thanks, Brian, and morning, everyone. As you've seen, we delivered good growth in line with our expectations for Q1, with organic revenue growth of 7%. We saw consistent growth in the U.S. Bureau, strong double-digit growth in North America Consumer Services, supported by the Insurance Marketplace and elevated data breach activity. Latin America Consumer Services also delivered another strong double-digit quarter. B2B globally grew by 5%, while B2C grew very well at 11%. Acquisitions added 1% to growth, and exchange rates were a 1% headwind following some depreciation in the Brazilian real, meaning total revenue at actual exchange rates grew by 7%. Turning to the performance by region, and starting with North America, where we delivered strong organic revenue growth of 8%, with 7% in B2B and double-digit growth in Consumer Services.
Within B2B, the bureau, excluding mortgage profiles, grew 2% in the quarter. The performance of the core bureau was consistent with last year, remaining broadly in line with Q3. Credit conditions have remained stable and in line with our expectations. As we mentioned back in May, there was some strong batch and archive activity during Q4, which was one-off in nature. Ascend delivered another double-digit quarter through both new client wins and growth of our existing client base. Mortgage profile revenue grew 37% on a volume decline of 12%, the difference coming from passing on the FICO price increase. This takes total organic bureau growth to 6%. Elsewhere in Data, Automotive had another strong quarter, growing 9%, and Targeting delivered good growth in a challenging market for offline retailers, as we added new logos in digital, which continued to grow double digit.
Decisioning grew 8% organically, with Health growing 8% following good growth in Coverage Discovery and claims products, just under half of the growth coming from new product innovation. Decision Analytics grew well in the quarter as Fraud and ID delivered double-digit growth. In Consumer Services, Marketplace grew well following the continued strength in our insurance proposition. Credit Marketplace declined during the quarter, similar to the trends we saw last year. Premium Subscription delivered good growth following higher acquisition volumes and diversification of some new product introductions. There were also some one-off data breach deals in the quarter, and we're seeing more activity here in recent quarters, but given the nature of the business, it's quite difficult to forecast. Moving on to Latin America, which grew 5% organically, with 1% growth in B2B, and 24% in Consumer Services.
In B2B, there was some deal phasing in the current and prior year within the bureau. There was also an impact of the severe flooding in Rio Grande do Sul, which limited credit activity in the region. In our strategic focus areas outside the bureau, we continue to see strong growth in Fraud and ID, following key client wins in the quarter. Our Agribusiness also delivered double-digit growth, with quite a number of new clients added during the quarter. We expect more normalized levels of growth in B2B and Latin America in the second quarter. Consumer Services had another strong quarter with growth of 24%. Limpa Nome continued the trend of double-digit growth, and our Payments platform grew very strongly during the quarter.
Turning to the UK&I, which grew 2% organically, B2B was up 2%, with the bureau growing 4%. We continue to perform well in a subdued credit market, with good contributions from Ascend and Fraud and ID. Consumer Services delivered organic growth of 4%, with growth across both Subscription and Marketplace. I'm moving on, now on to EMEA Asia Pacific, which grew 7%, with good progress across most markets through a combination of a strong bureau performance in Southern Europe and growing innovation across the region. Looking now at our expectations, there are no changes from the outlook that we gave in May. So all outlook and expectations are unchanged. With that, I'll hand you back to Brian.
Great, thanks, Lloyd. And so in summary, we've started the year really well with Q1 in high single digits, and we continue to make excellent strategic progress. Our prime focus is on investing behind a range of growth initiatives, several of which are adding materially to our performance. Unsecured credit is still a headwind, but this will reverse, and when it does, it will increase our growth. We are on track to deliver our full year guidance and the medium-term outlook we've previously shared. And finally, I would like to acknowledge the announcement today that Craig Boundy has decided to leave Experian and will step down as CEO, COO, and from our board in August. Craig is joining McAfee, the U.S.-based online protection company, as their CEO. Craig's had a huge contribution to Experian. We're immensely proud of what we've achieved together.
We wish Craig well on his next chapter of his career journey, and we thank him for everything that he's done at Experian. With that, we'll open the line up for questions. Back to you, operator.
Thank you, dear participants. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone keypad and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by, we'll compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. And now we're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Simona Sarli from Bank of America. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Yes, good morning, gentlemen, and thanks for taking my questions. I have three, please. So first of all, if you could please provide more color on the impact from flooding and contract phasing in Brazil, and what is supporting your conviction that growth might return to double digits from Q2 onwards? Secondly, if you can give a little bit more color on your expectations going into Q2 and the growth trajectory for the rest of the year, and in particular, what are the moving parts that might bring Experian to the low end of guidance, also considering the boost in that you are benefiting from the data breach solution versus the high end of your guidance? And the last question is related to the Supreme Court overturning in June, the Chevron doctrine.
If you can please elaborate on the implication from your point of view for the U.S. credit bureau sector and in particular for Experian. Thank you.
Okay, Lloyd, do you wanna handle the guidance question?
Yeah, sure.
On the Supreme Court.
I'll start with your second question, Simona. The expectations for the rest of the year, we expect each quarter to be in the 6%-8% range. If you look back, we've been pretty firmly in these levels with stable lending conditions, and we expect really to be there until we see a more broad-based recovery in lending. What might call the range, where we are in the range, it's really the things that would drive some variation. If we see a drop-off in the data breach activity, that's been quite firm, that would put us in the lower end of the range, 6%-7%.
If we see it continuing firm, we'd probably be more like in the middle of the range, and some other strengthening in some other bit of the portfolio would be probably what we would need to be at the top end of the range. But expectation just now is the middle of that range, and in the range each quarter. In terms of Brazil, yeah, we were expecting a slower first quarter based on our forecast of the deal pipeline and deal phasing. What came on top of that was the weakness in relation to the flooding. If you've been watching the news, it's a very extensive flood in the south of the country across a huge area.
So we think that the impact of the floods was somewhere between 1% and 2% off the Brazil growth rate. The underlying lending conditions in Brazil are progressing well, lending volumes are growing. We have some caps and collars around volume growth in some of our contracts, so a number of our contracts are at the cap in terms of volume, and we have a good line of sight of those deals for the second quarter. So we expect that to come back to more normalized levels from the second quarter, and for the full year, Brazil to grow very well, double-digit. I think those were the first two questions, Brian, on Supreme Court?
Yeah, so I, you know, think on the Supreme Court, I mean, I, I think you're referring to the decision in Loper Bright, which really sort of looks at where the power resides between courts and regulatory agencies, and how they can interpret federal law. I think in the short term, doesn't really have much of an impact. I think, in the longer term, we think it probably brings a bit more certainty into interpreting, how federal law will be applied, and I think less variability in terms of some new rules that can be imposed by the agencies, when there's lack of clarity.
So, yeah, I think summing it up, I think it's a good decision from our perspective in terms of understanding where we stand with respect to legislation, and perhaps sort of giving a little bit less room for interpretation for new rules to be, you know, introduced by the regulators. So overall, pretty positive, I would think.
Thank you very much. Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and the question comes from the line of Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi, good morning. I just have one question, please. As we head into the first half results in November, can you please talk about the margin expansion, phasing between first half and second half, and any FX drag that we need to think about on a reported basis? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks, thanks, Suhasini. On, in terms of FX, the... No, no change to the guide of 0%-1%. I think we've, we've started probably nearer the 1%, given where, we've seen a little bit of weakness in the Brazilian real, but we'll see how that progresses during the year. In terms of margin, we're obviously only a few weeks since we announced the enhanced margin progression in our midterm framework. We're very confident in our ability to deliver that within this revenue range. And as always, we manage margin quite closely to the full year.
I think, yeah, we'll obviously report some first half in November, but the underlying ability to control our margin within our framework, I think is pretty high, and you've seen that in recent years.
Thank you.
Now we're gonna take our next question. Just give us a moment. The next question comes to line of Annelies Vermeulen from Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, please ask your question.
Hi, good morning, Brian and Lloyd. It's Annelies from Morgan Stanley. I have two questions, please. So firstly on data breach, you've clearly had another good quarter there, and I appreciate it's difficult to predict how that will pan out through the year. You've mentioned, you know, one-off deals in the quarter, which I think you've said in previous quarters as well. So I'm just curious, that data breach activity, has that accelerated in Q1 relative to what you saw in Q3 and Q4, or has it remained, you know, or continued roughly in the same, same sort of levels that we've seen in the last couple of quarters? And then my second question was on just on acquisitions.
I don't think you've announced anything new for Q1, but correct me if I'm wrong. So, how is the pipeline looking for Q2 and beyond? Are you still confident in completing further deals in the current fiscal year? Thank you.
Yeah. Hi, hi, Annelies. So on data breach, what we saw at the second half of last year was a step-up in activity, and I think, you know, anybody reading the press, you're seeing there's a lot of data-based intrusions into companies that we help support. So we saw outsized growth from Q3 last year, and it was contributing about 1% to group growth per quarter, and that's continued into the first quarter of this year. It's hard to forecast. If it carries on at this level, then you know, which we've got every indication it will, then yeah, that's probably more likely in the middle of the range for Q2.
If we see it soften, it's probably more in the 6%-7% range. But it's hard to forecast. We are seeing a period of elevated activity. And then on acquisitions, we've done a couple of small acquisitions in the first quarter, small bolt-ons. We acquired an Insurance Marketplace business, auto Insurance Marketplace business in Brazil, which we are following the strategy of being able to add on different products and services, and now that we've built the audience in the consumer business and following the great success that we're having in North America. And we've also added an employment and income verifications business, small bolt-on also in Brazil. But those were very small bolt-ons.
In terms of pipeline, strong. I think, you know, this is, as we said, at the full year, this is a good time for us to have a capacity, as we've seen. I think valuations get to a more normalized level. Our focus will be in, as you would expect, in the core areas of our business, anything with a data asset, anything where there's a fraud technology that we can distribute or anything that we can put on our consumer platform. Pipeline continues to be quite strong.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from the line of Silvia Barker from JP Morgan. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Thank you. Hi, morning, everyone. One question left for me. Could you talk about the Insurance Marketplace? Could you maybe update us on the revenue run rate and the scale of the revenue growth that you're seeing at the moment? Thank you.
Yeah, just, I mean, a general comment, I think, you know, we're extremely pleased with how that's developing. You know, it's sort of exceeding our expectations went into it. I think we talked a little bit about this at the year-end. You know, I think some pretty significant milestones last year and building that out and, you know, we're starting to see that come to fruition really. Lloyd?
Yeah, I think, you know, last year we saw some particular product introductions in that marketplace where we were able to provide a very differentiated service to consumers that are searching for auto insurance. And we saw some major carriers go on to the marketplace for the first time. And the coming together of those things, you can see the progress we're making. Annualized run rate from the quarter is now up to $80 million dollars, so it more than doubled in the quarter. So quite strong as we've grown the carrier coverage, we've been growing out state by state as we went through the second half of the year.
I think what this shows is the power of the audience that we've built in our consumer business, and the ability now to add different products and services to help consumers in their financial lives. In the membership product I mentioned in my remarks, we've added some money saving types of services which have enhanced the inflow of new members into the subscription product. So now that we've built this audience, it, I think, will start to be a very powerful platform as we add new products and services.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes from the line of Rory McKenzie from UBS. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good morning, all. It's Rory here. Two, please. Firstly, on the lending conditions in the U.S. overall, which you described as stable, which I think is about where you've been for a year now. Can you share any more detail on the clients or market segments? You know, for example, what's happening in those lower deciles of consumers as delinquencies have picked up recently? And then secondly, just to follow up on that last question from Silvia, can you give us some more stats on the U.S. consumer audience? What is the total number of active users you have in the U.S., and can you say how many individuals have engaged with the Insurance Marketplace so far? Thank you.
Yeah, I think there's really no change in terms of lending conditions. I don't think even, when we think back, it's only, eight or nine weeks since we spoke to you, so really there's nothing material to add. What we see is, I think you can see this from the macro stats, a little, you know, a few more tick up and slight tick up in delinquencies at the lower end of the credit spectrum, but nothing really significant. And we see stabilization across the rest of the piece, but no material acceleration at this stage. And I don't think that we're gonna see that in the short term. I think that, you know, needs a bit more time to play out, but, you know, play out, it definitely will, and we expect that to come back.
So, you know, from our perspective, this really is just a timing thing. Lloyd mentioned, I think, you know, I think in Brazil, where we actually, you know, despite the fact that B2B was weaker in Q1 for some one-off factors, we actually are seeing volumes starting to move in the right direction in Brazil, which is easy to forget that, you know, in 2024 we had a very strong performance in Brazil, but actually, the underlying credit conditions were quite difficult. So that's potentially a, you know, very important development on the horizon. And I think you know, even when we look across the UK, it's also significant to see that the marketplace in the UK has started to move into positive territory, which tells you that there is, credit issuance starting to happen again. It's not widespread, it's patchy.
It's not consistent across the piece, but we think that's a bit of an early sign. So I think overall, we feel okay where we are. We think it is more or less the same, but maybe a few green shoots here and there.
And then on the, on auto insurance, Rory, we've been rolling out to incremental states. And just last week, we launched a major new advertising campaign, for the insurance, portal. So, we'll let that, progress over the summer, and we'll give you some more stats around how it's progressing, probably at the, at the half year. But we're really pleased with, with progress. We think the product is very differentiated. The ability for a consumer, in some areas and with some bits of the product, to be able to do three-click apply, for an insurance product, to do real-time monitoring of comparator rates on the insurance hub, it's a very differentiated product.
As we get all the state coverage completed and more carriers on board, I think, yeah, we're quite excited about how it'll continue to grow. But more detail probably at the half year. That's great. Thanks both.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from the line of Andrew Ripper from Liberum. Your line is open. Please ask the question.
Yeah, morning, everybody. I've just got two small follow-ups, really. Just building on Rory's questions about the macro. I think I'm right in saying your 6%-8% guidance for this year is largely based off sort of self-driven factors. You've not assumed any improvement, you know, any particular improvement in credit conditions. Just wondering what your view is in terms of how reductions in interest rates may affect the business? Not necessarily just the next couple of quarters, but over the medium term.
Yeah. Well, I mean, obviously, I think interest rates, reducing interest rates are gonna be a beneficial impact on the business because it's gonna have a positive impact on credit issuance. But, you know, I think we also need to look at how the cycle, how this works. As interest rates increased, there was a sort of delayed impact, and I expect as interest rates decrease, there will also be a delayed impact. But I think what you would say is, is credit conditions are the same, but again, the credit industry remains in a very good position. And I think, as we said in May, people are sort of looking and anticipating and waiting, you know, to see, you know, what gives them the confidence to actually start moving forward.
There are signs that, you know, some people are doing that, but I, as I said, it's not widespread, and so that's why we say the conditions are more or less the same as they were. But I mean, you know, ultimately, you, Andrew, you're right. You know, as interest rates decrease, we will start to see that activity pick up, and it's difficult to pin that down to a quarter, but, you know, it's inevitable that will happen. Yeah ... there's no typical cycle. When you look back, from the point that you see the first reduction in base rates, anywhere between 9 and 18 months, until you see, you know, very broad-based recovery and origination activity. But it's hard to forecast. There isn't really a typical cycle.
So that's why we think it isn't this year. We think it's next year to start seeing that. But we'll obviously see what happens as we start to move into a more reducing rate environment.
Thanks. Then second question, just come back to insurance. You mentioned, Lloyd, the run rate's up to $80 million now. What sort of visibility do you have or expectation do you have for how that might evolve over the next 12 months or so in terms of where the run rate could get to?
Yeah, I think, you know, this is the power actually of having established an audience and being relevant to consumers in their financial life. You know, what we've proved out is that, you know, a credit intent membership base that we built actually can convert into other areas of financial well-being, including insurance. I think to do that, you have to have product, and you have to be able to talk to people with something that's unique, and we think-- and we think we can do that. I think we'll have more information on that, Andrew, as the year progresses. We've been building out the state-by-state coverage, building out the panel, and we've just launched this advertising campaign. So I think we'll know a bit more.
We'll have a bit more visibility of that as we come into the half year. But, we're certainly well ahead of the expectations that we had when we developed the product and we signed the other partnerships, this time last year.
Okay, thanks. So so maybe a bit more color on that, the insurance. And then, just, just coming back to, to breach. Obviously, it's been a significant benefit. I think you called it out as a one percentage point benefit for the last couple of quarters. Can you just reaffirm that? And then maybe just in terms of sort of how the revenue is recognized and the nature of the support that you're providing to people that might have been affected by a breach, does it tend to be just for sort of three to six months, or do you have a bit more visibility than that, and how does that relate to how the how you recognize revenue on those breach-related deals?
Yeah, it's two types of deals, I would say. There are a very small number of very long-term deals. These are very large, very public deals where the support would be for somewhere 5-8 years. That revenue tends to be recognized over the period, because it's quite a long dated nature of the support. For other deals, they tend to be shorter. We recognize revenue based on our cost curve. So there's a lot of cost up front, where we onboard clients and consumers that are supported, so it tends to be quite a front-end loaded revenue recognition. So maybe a 1-year deal or a 2-year deal with the majority of revenue in the first 2 quarters.
That's why it can be a bit lumpy.
Yeah, understood. That's helpful. Thanks for your answers.
Thanks.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes from the line of Arthur Truslove from Citi. Your line is open, please ask your question.
Thank you, and good morning. Just a couple of questions from me, please. Excuse me. I can see that the U.S. mortgage business has done extremely well, and in terms of organic growth, obviously, that's pricing driven to compensate for what FICO have done. I guess firstly on that, is it right to think that your strategy remains to sort of maintain gross margin? And how should we think about the margin implications of a scenario where volume's down, I think you said 12, and obviously pricing's up, around 50 or so? So that's the first question. Second question, I don't think you've precisely provided it, but are you able to just give us an idea of the growth of the different verticals within consumer?
So obviously, you know, the subscription, you've obviously mentioned the insurance has done really well, and then a bit more precision on the consumer lending vertical as well. Thank you.
Yeah, I can do that. So inside North America, subscription growth was at the low end of mid-single digit. We released some new money saving products. This is a subscription manager hub that's resonated very well, so inflow of new consumers has been quite strong. This last quarter, that takes a little while to feed through into revenue, so that was good. Credit Marketplace was down about 10%, which is where it's been for the last few quarters, and that's really the soft lending environment. The Insurance Marketplace more than doubled. Given my comments earlier and then very strong growth in data breach. In terms of U.S. mortgage, the volume continues to be weak, so down, as I mentioned, 12%.
We think for the second quarter, a similar sort of volume weakness. But with price bringing it. It's clearly a higher margin vertical for us, but it's very small. So, yes, it's good margin, but it doesn't really move the needle at a group level, given its size. But we remain very confident in the overall enhanced margin framework that we announced, you know, a few weeks ago. So, and that's all taken account of in that margin guidance.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, Arthur.
Thank you. Now we're going to take the next, our next question. The question comes from the line of Rohan Faiyaz from Jefferies. Line is open, please ask your question.
Yeah, good morning, both. Just two from me, please. So firstly, on Health, you're obviously quite strong there. Just wondering if you could give us some more color. So have you won some new mandates of new hospitals, or any particular trends that stand out? And then number two, if you could give us a bit more color on EMEIA-APAC, particularly Australia and New Zealand, and I've obviously got some interest with illion there if some more color would be helpful, please.
So, start with Health. Health, you know, continues to grow well, as you can see. There, we have quite a high penetration in terms of physician practices and hospitals of about two thirds of them. So most of the growth comes from, I think I mentioned this in my remarks, from new innovations and growing out the services to the existing client base rather than the new wins. Some of our competitors have had some travails in the last six months, which is helping with new customer acquisition. So we're quite hopeful for continued progress in Health. On EMEIA-APAC, good growth across the region.
Actually, we're seeing particular strength in, you mentioned, Australia and New Zealand in the decisioning area there, where we've got a very strong position. And that we built up over time, and we obviously announced some time ago the proposed acquisition of another bureau there, which we're, you know, still going through the regulatory approvals for, and we'd expect some more news on that about the middle of the year. But good progress. Very stable performance, actually, across EMEIA, Asia Pacific over the last 18 months.
Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and the question comes from a line of James Rose from Barclays. Your line is open, please ask the question.
Hi there, good morning. I've just got one on Latin B2B, if I may. Could you help us understand the lumpiness in growth rates and contract signings that we see across different quarters? For example, you know, data and decisioning activity in Q4 was really strong last year. So why isn't there a more obvious carryover into the first quarter from those signings? If you can help us understand that, that'd be great. Thank you.
Yeah, I think, you know, if you think about the business, James, you have the core volumetric bit of the business. A lot of the contracts we have in Latin America have caps and collars. So you've seen quite a lot of good volume growth in Brazil over the last 18 months, and you have a number of contracts now that are at, they're capped out in terms of the volume, and a number of those renew it in the second quarter. So we expect to see that release. And then, in terms of the bundles, we're increasingly selling mixes of bundles across data and decisioning, which has some lumpy recognition and some ratable recognition.
So it's just really the mix of that, of that, set of clients plus the caps and collars in the contract that, that mean that the phasing can be a little lumpy.
... a little lumpy. We expected that in Q1. Obviously, the floods we didn't expect, so the two coming together gives us a slightly weaker position in Q1, but we'll be back to high single digit or double digit for the rest of the year.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our next question, and it comes from line of Simon Clinch from Redburn Atlantic. Your line is open, please ask your question.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I've just got two. I just want to cycle back to the US core CI/BI Bureau growth ex mortgage. And I just wonder if you could help us think about the given the environment we're in, and given the performance you delivered in the fourth quarter, you know, what sources—I mean, is there potential for those contributors to the outsized growth in the fourth quarter to happen at any time during this year? Is that something we need to think about as well? So maybe that we can start with that. And then second—my second question is about Brazil.
I just wondering if you could just comment on the competitive environment there, if we've seen any real changes, any competitors starting to improve their performance, if that even features on your radar? Thanks.
Yeah. Let's deal with Brazil first, and it's a pretty simple answer. No, we don't see any change to the competitive environment there. So we continue to progress our business very well. I think it's like probably a bit more detail on that. I think it's worth remembering that we do tend to perform more strongly in the back half of the year than in the first half of the year. And you know, I think that's reflected, and we called it out in May and in terms of Q4. And some of that is due to contract renewals and so on, but Lloyd, why don't you give more color on that?
Yeah, I think, yeah, there are a number of different types of business that we do. Some of it is one-off in nature, things like archives and retro jobs that we do and look back. And if you think about the sales team, I mentioned this in the fourth quarter, if they're pushing for the line, often in the fourth quarter, they can, you know, you can have an enhanced sale of some of those more one-off type of activity. If you exclude that, you look back at the CIBI, excluding mortgage, Q1 last year we were 2%, Q2 2%, Q3 3%, skip Q4, Q1 2%. So we've been very firmly in this very stable soft lending environment now for 15, 18 months.
And our expectation is that continues until you see a broader based recovery, and that's all embedded in the 6%-8% guidance that we had. Can you see one-off income at any time? Yeah, of course. It's just not, you know, what we're forecasting. And I think to get out of this range, I think you need to see a broader improvement in lending conditions. So that's how we're thinking at the moment.
Thank you. Now we're going to take our final question for today. The question comes through the line of Ben Wild from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open, please ask your question.
Good morning, everyone, and apologies in some respects to come back again to the soft and stable lending environment that you've described. But, Lloyd, I think you talked previously about just over $1 billion of revenue being short term and volumetric in nature and perhaps more variable in the very short term. When you talk about the soft and stable lending environment, are you implying that revenue is still falling at stable growth rates, or are you saying that within that batch of revenue, growth rate is starting to flatten? And kind of as an adjunct, what absolute level of growth are you seeing in that batch of revenue? And given the stable environment you've described, when would you expect the growth rate to start flattening out? Thanks.
Yeah, so I think the way I would best describe it is while in aggregate it's stable, it continues to be quite volatile at an individual lender level. And that tells you that there's no broad aligned sentiment in the market. You see individual lenders come in and go out of origination activity at different times. And you can see that probably most clearly in the marketplace inside Consumer Services, where we're still down 10% in the first quarter. In our core bureau, where we have more of a weighting to tier one and more of a weighting to prime, you can see that we're more stable at, you know, about flat volumes now.
So I think within the range that we're able to forecast, we expect this to continue for some time. And I don't think we're expecting to see any material change from that. So obviously we'll keep you up to date as we go through the quarters, but it—I think 6%-8% is a good, is as good a guide as I can give just now, until we see something more broader happen to the lending environment.
Great. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker, Brian Cassin, for any closing remarks.
Well, thanks everybody for joining today, and thanks for all the questions. Hope you all have a good day, and we look forward to speaking to you again in November for our half-year results. Thank you.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.