Good day everyone, and welcome to the Experian Q1 Trading Update conference call hosted by Brian Cassin. My name is Camilla, and I will be your event manager today. During the presentation, your lines will remain on listen only. If you require assistance at any time, please key star zero on your device and the coordinator will be happy to assist you. I would like to advise all parties this conference is being recorded for monitoring purposes. Now I would like to hand it over to your host today. Brian, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 trading update call. Hope you're all keeping well. I'm here with Lloyd, who will take you through the trading performance after my opening remarks. Q1 was a good quarter in line with our expectations. Total revenue growth was 9% at constant exchange rates and organic revenue growth was 8%. Our three largest regions delivered good growth with a very strong performance in Latin America. While it's not yet reflected in good revenue performance, we are making progress as we reposition EMEA Asia Pacific. By segment, consumer services, where we now reach 139 million free members globally, delivered 13% growth, and there was robust performance in B2B at 6%. In all, Q1 came in line with full year expectations that we set out in May.
Let me now touch on some of the regional Q1 highlights, starting with North America, where all business units were in growth. Excluding mortgage, market conditions have been pretty stable, good in fact, helped by the strength of consumer balance sheets and tight labor markets. While extreme inflation is putting pressure on consumer spending, most consumers continue to make their payments on time, and credit card delinquencies have not returned to pre-pandemic levels. No single trend driving client behavior. While lending criteria are tight in some subprime segments, many larger lenders and fintechs are looking to grow share and remain active in new credit issues. The clear evidence of this is in the performance of our marketplace business, which was very strong in Q1. Both consumer demand and supply are good.
Many clients also see opportunities to accelerate the shift to digital, take out costs, to manage higher inflation, and this is driving demand for data, new attributes, and platforms that help with automation. This quarter highlights include favorable bureau volume trends when mortgage is excluded. We saw strong demand for alternative data from Clarity, and we made very good progress in verifications where revenue is growing. Fannie Mae recently certified Experian Verify for Day 1 Certainty. This is a very positive milestone and should add to revenue progress as we move through the year. Health delivered a respectable outcome with good growth in core revenue cycle management, even as we lapped a tougher comparable from elevated COVID-related identity checks, and there were solid performances in auto and targeting. Consumer services delivered another good quarter of very good progress.
Our credit marketplace grew strongly, helped by our ability to deliver a large audience to our lending partners. Our free membership base now stands at 55 million. We're adding new features, and we have detailed plans to greatly enhance our auto insurance offer this year, adding to the utility and appeal of our insurance marketplace and helping consumers to save money. We're also adding greater value to our premium features, and we continue our efforts to help credit invisibles through Experian Boost and Experian Go. Experian Boost now has approximately 10 million connected accounts, which is a great achievement, and these actions are all deepening the engagement that we have with our members. I should also add that Partner Solutions contributed positively to the growth performance and has a strong pipeline of new business opportunities.
Taken together, this gives us good confidence of our ability to sustain strong levels of growth in this part of the business. Turning now to Latin America, which delivered a strong quarter of organic revenue growth, up 18%. We've had a very strong start to the year, both in Brazil and in Spanish Latin America. In Brazil, growth is broad-based, with strong tailwinds arising apart from positive data. Our position with existing and new clients continues to grow as we introduce new features, attributes, and scores. We're also generating growth from new installations of Ascend and through take-up of our cloud-enabled platforms. We're making inroads across other areas where we've placed a strategic focus, for example in fraud and identity management. We're very pleased with progress in new areas like agribusiness, which we believe has a lot of long-term potential.
Consumer services is also performing extremely well. We are building a powerful new concept in Brazil, what a financial marketplace can be. The aim is to offer consumers the ability to pay down their debts, get access to finance, get premium features like lock unlock, and to utilize data to enhance the consumer experience. We're making very good progress with strong revenue growth and continued membership growth now reaching 73 million. Overall, the U.K. and Ireland performed well. Our B2B business operations have been resilient. We've had good success in new business wins, which we expect to sustain, supported by a strong pipeline. As in the U.S., there's no overall trend in the credit market. Consumer appetite for credit remains healthy and credit origination volumes are actually growing. We see some increased emphasis by clients on affordability analysis and customer segmentation, which is natural in this environment.
More widely across UK B2B, we continue to be successful in fraud and identity management. We started well in business credit, and we continue to execute turnaround in parts of B2B portfolio. All in all, U.K., we've had a very good first quarter. In UK consumer services, we have seen very strong growth in our credit marketplace across cards and loans, and there's no real evidence of weakening. We have seen some softening in UK consumer services subscriptions. We benefited during COVID from increased sign-ups to our premium subscription offers, which has since reversed. We look to address this by launching new features during the course of the year to add more value to the premium proposition. In EMEA Asia Pacific, we're focused on executing the strategy we outlined in May, which will see us concentrate on our most strategic markets.
We're in the process of exiting from some of our smaller geographies, and we're executing on a plan to enhance operating efficiency. We expect this process to take up to 18 months and to be accretive to our financial performance once we are through it. With that overview, I will now hand over to Lloyd for the financials.
Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As you've seen, we had a strong start to the year in line with our expectations, with Q1 organic revenue growth of 8%. Our core lending markets remain resilient, with good strength in Latin America, and our consumer services business delivered another strong quarter, with strength across marketplaces in particular. Organic revenue for consumer services was up 13%, while B2B was up 6%. Including acquisitions, our total revenue growth at constant exchange rates was 9%. Exchange rates in the quarter were at 2% revenue headwind, bringing total revenue at actual exchange rates to 7%. Turning to the performance by region, beginning with North America, where organic revenue was up 7%, with B2B up 5% and consumer services up 13%. Data was up 4% with growth in all business units.
Bureau revenue, excluding mortgage, grew double-digit, reflecting continued robust new lending appetite across our financial services clients. Our alternative data business, Clarity Services, also performed well, and demand for eligibility services continued to increase. Excluding the mortgage headwind, the growth in our data segment was 9%. Mortgage revenue was down 31% against last year, and we still expect mortgage revenue to be down around 35% for the full year. We also continue to make good progress in verification and services, further diversifying our sources of growth. Decisioning was up 6% as both health and decision analytics grew well against strong prior year results. The underlying trends in the health business are positive, with eligibility, transaction volumes and client bookings both growing well. Decision analytics grew across all the principal areas of software analytics and ID and fraud management.
Consumer services was up 13% as marketplace revenues performed very strongly for the quarter, as both cards and loans showed strength. The acquisition of Gabi has further enhanced our auto insurance proposition, and we see this growing its contribution as we continue to progress our product offerings throughout this year. As expected, subscription revenue grew modestly as we lacked the pandemic-related member influx. Moving on to Latin America, where organic revenue was up 18%. At constant exchange rates, total revenue was up 23%, including acquisitions. Factoring in an FX tailwind during the quarter, total revenue grew at 30%. B2B was up 15% organically, while consumer services delivered organic growth at 42%. Data grew 13% organically as our clients access our widening range of positive data propositions. The Ascend platform also performed very well with revenue doubling during the quarter.
Consumer services grew across the product suite. Limpa Nome continue to grow well, with almost 60% of these inquirers now online. Our marketplace proposition also grew strongly, and this now makes up around 30% of consumer revenue. Adding in our recent Brazilian acquisition, Tag Glass, total consumer services revenue growth was 64% at constant currency. Turning to the U.K., we saw 5% organic revenue growth, down 6% at actual rates after factoring in foreign exchange headwinds. B2B grew 6%, while consumer services was flat on last year. Data grew 8% during the quarter, benefiting from new business wins in the prior year and volumes back at pre-pandemic levels. We also saw good growth in affordability and eligibility product propositions as our clients continue to look for more ways to expand lending while maintaining strong controls.
Decisioning was up 2% organically with new business wins across both identity and fraud and analytics. Consumer services was flat, reflecting strong growth in marketplace offset by our subscription business lapping the tougher comparatives in the prior year. Finally, on to EMEA and Asia Pacific, where organic revenue grew 1% with data and decisioning both growing. In data, we saw a mixture of recovery in some of our APAC markets, and challenges remaining on the EMEA side. As Brian mentioned, we're well progressed with our plans for the region going forward, and we'll update you more on that at the half year results in November. Turning now to our near-term expectations. Our full year expectations are unchanged from those we've discussed in May.
We continue to expect organic revenue growth for the year in the range of 7%-9% with a further 1% from acquisitions. We expect Q2 also to be in the 7%-9% organic revenue growth range. Our margin guidance is unchanged. We expect to deliver modest margin expansion at constant currency, and all other areas of modeling considerations remain unchanged. With that, let me hand you back to Brian.
Thanks, Lloyd. To summarize, we started the year well with a solid performance in Q1, and we expect a similar outcome in Q2. As Lloyd's just said, our guidance for the year is unchanged. Clearly, the pressures of the macroeconomic environment are yet to have any major impact on our operations. Banks continue to lend, and credit quality is generally good, with strengthening consumer balance sheets supported by a tight labor market. Brazil sits in a different cycle to other markets, and we're taking advantage of the many opportunities available to us there. Similarly, in consumer services, we're growing our position in the marketplace, and we have an extensive roadmap of new offers to help consumers to save money. Combined, this gives us confidence in the stability and resilience of our model and our ability to deliver a good outcome for the year.
With that, we'll open up the line for questions. Back to you, operator.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please key star then one on your telephone. If you then decide to withdraw your question, simply press star two. Questions will be answered in the order received, and all other lines will remain on listen only. Again, if you wish to ask a question, please key star one on your telephone. We have our first incoming question. It is coming from the line of Rory McKenzie from UBS. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Morning, all. It's Rory here from UBS. Just two questions, please. Firstly, on the credit cycle. Obviously, it's safe to say that sentiment has worsened in central markets. People are expecting default rates to go up in consumer credit. Have you seen any of your clients changing their maybe acquisition behavior in terms of their strategy to market, or otherwise changing how they're consuming your products? Secondly, related to that, how has the kind of product pipeline for your larger installations been, things like Ascend? Secondly, on consumer, can you just say where the paid subscriber numbers are in the U.S. and the U.K. today, compared to the pre-pandemic level? Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Rory. I'll deal with the first one, and then Lloyd, maybe you can deal with the second one. We're not seeing any real change and, you know, I'll just give you some data points, actually. If we look at the state of credit report for so far in 2022, these numbers will be accurate really as at the end of May. You know, if you look at average VantageScore, if you look at median VantageScore, they're all still higher than they were pre-pandemic. There's no stress in the system. Average credit card balances have increased a little bit in 2021, but again, still below the pre-pandemic levels. That trend really continues as you look across all the lead indicators, particularly in delinquencies.
You know, there has been a little bit of a tick up in delinquencies compared to 2021, but that was really an unusually low rate. The real measure is to look at that, you know, compared to 2019, which was a strong credit year. Actually, they're substantially below the 2019 levels. We don't see any as yet kind of stress in the system. I think there is a little bit of pullback in the subprime area, but no major alteration that we see in the credit stance. Now, as we said in May, I think we got 100 different varieties of this question in May, for understandable reasons. Yes, everybody is sort of looking around at the headlines and looking ahead and kind of thinking what might be.
Really, I think if you look at the marketplace results that Lloyd outlined, they're incredibly strong, which tells you that credit issuance is still there and that consumer demand is there and supply is there. I think that's the best indication we can give you, Rory. Now, everybody always asks us, this data's pretty up-to-date. It's only a month. We'll get the June numbers pretty soon. They won't be changed very much in my view.
Yeah, on consumer, the paid subscription. If you go back to FY 2019, FY 2020, the North America subscriber base is higher, and the U.K. is broadly flat. You know, we saw the same behavior in the U.S. and the U.K. during COVID, strong inflow of subscribers. The size of that was much bigger in North America. You see more of an instant reaction when you hit harder times in the North America business into the subscription product. On product pipeline, yeah, really continues to be very strong. You know, we've had quite an investment in some of our scaling products, so Ascend, CrossCore, Experian One, and we're making great traction with those.
You saw just as an example in Brazil where we're making a lot of progress as positive data gives us the opportunity to bring a lot of our analytics and software products to bear on that market. You saw that in the decisioning number this quarter, and I expect that strength to continue.
That's great. Thanks both.
We have our next incoming question. This question is coming from the line of Paul Sullivan from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning. Morning, everyone. Just following up on the consumer in the U.S. I don't know if you can give us a bit more granularity on the growth rates of the component parts. If we go into a tighter lending environment, how do we view the sort of cyclicality, or how are you thinking about the cyclicality of that marketplace business? Because it, you know, it's something that you haven't gone through in previous cycles. Second, can you just talk about or characterize your ability to protect margin through a downturn? Third, as fintech valuations come down, they struggle to raise cash. Could M&A become a more material driver over the next 12-18 months in your view and any priorities you can share?
Thank you.
Yeah. Thanks, Paul. So a few questions there. We'll tag team on this one. On the Consumer U.S., I'll let Lloyd deal with the granularity point. On the cyclicality point, I think that your comment that, you know, we haven't sort of been through a cycle on that is partially correct because, of course, the marketplace business is a relatively new one for us. Actually we did actually start it before COVID. Of course in COVID, what we saw was, for a short period of time that, you know, a complete hiatus in credit offers. If you recall, we managed to still grow during that period, largely because, you know, we're ramping our business up.
I'd still say that we have a long way to go in our marketplace business, both in cards and loans. You know, I think that might offset any cyclical downturn that we might see. Of course, if you do see a radical change in credit offers available in the marketplace, you know, it's automatic that that would have an impact on that business. But don't forget, though, that, you know, this year, you know, we're making a big push into our insurance product as well, and we expect that's gonna be very favorable for us. I think that's less cyclical than, say, cards and loans in a downturn.
Of course, you know the question we face every time that, you know, somebody asks a question about what happens in a, in a macroeconomic downturn, is what happens to the subscription business? Every time that question's been asked, the answer has always been the subscription business actually performs well. We've seen that through the financial crisis. We've seen it through COVID. Of course, the next question is, well, you know, how will it perform in this time? Of course, you never know exactly, but the evidence would suggest that, you know, there's a bit of resilience built in, because of that.
You know, it's impossible to say whether it's exactly like the last time, but you would expect that, you know, consumer behavior mimics what it's done in the past, that those would all be things that could actually help us through that. Let me just deal with the M&A question and then come back to Lloyd on the other two. Yeah, I mean, valuations in fintech have come down dramatically in some cases. You know, the M&A market is actually pretty dormant, I think. There's a lot of opportunities in the pipeline. I think in these sort of situations, what you find is valuations in public markets come down very quick, which they have. Private markets take a lot longer to adjust.
I think there are opportunities around. We deliberately put ourselves in a position to, you know, have a strong balance sheet so that we could take advantage if those opportunities arise. You know, we will, we'll be proceeding, looking to, you know, add M&A, where it makes sense strategically and where we can get the right value equation. It's not automatic that the opportunities arise just because, you know, some valuation rounds have been quite publicly kind of reduced significantly. You know, I think a lot to play out there. Yeah. I expect that, as we get into the second half year and into next year, that, you know, maybe there'll be a tick up in activity. It's, as you know, it's always really hard to predict this stuff, Paul. Lloyd?
Just a couple comments on scenario planning, I guess, you know, if you look at this year, clearly we've banked 8% in the first quarter. We've got very strong line of sight of 7%-9% in the second quarter. Our range of 7%-9% for the full year is solidifying. You know, we've got confidence in that range. When you think about a potential downturn scenario in the credit cycle, clearly we've talked in the past about looking back to the financial crisis where we bottomed out at 2% organic growth. Now, that was a very particular liquidity-driven downturn. Our portfolio is very different now.
Clearly we have health in the portfolio. We have a much bigger Brazilian business, both of which are subject to different types of variability. We'd expect to be less leveraged to U.S. GDP. You know, the other thing I think that's important is to just talk about mortgage. You know, if you think 18 months ago, our mortgage business was about two-thirds refinancing and about one-third origination. By the time we're through this year, that share will reverse. Of course, origination is a much less sensitive. I think we come out of this year with the majority of the softness in mortgage out of the portfolio.
Again, you have to take that into account when you're thinking about what a credit cycle impact might be. On consumer, your question in the quarter. The lead generation business grew about 70%. Partner Solutions business grew at high single digit, and the subscription business, as we said, was stable.
That's wonderful. Thank you very much.
Our next incoming question is coming from the line of Sylvia Barker from JPM. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Thank you. Hi, good morning. Three quick questions, please. First on targeting, that was very strong in the quarter. Could you talk about the drivers behind it? Can you just talk about how discretionary that marketing spend can be? How much of a order book, I guess, you have in that business? Secondly, on Verify, could you just update us on the progress there and maybe just on the run rate of revenue, if you can. Finally, BNPL, that piece had been very strong last year. Maybe just a quick update on how that's looking as well. Thank you.
Sure. On the targeting business, yeah, we had a good quarter. We bought a business in targeting, about two years ago, Tapad, which really pushed us more into the sort of, you know, digital identity resolution area. That's seen some very strong growth. We've seen strong growth with things like Connected TV. I think there's a couple of macro drivers that are helping out there. Of course, if we think back to, you know, to COVID, you know, there was quite a large impact on the retail sector. You know, I think there's been a bit of a rebound in that because you know I've seen such a dramatic contraction in that sector, and that's a very big vertical for that area.
I think you know, the strategic moves we've made in that business has positioned us well. There are some favorable strategic dynamics playing out. Again, I think it comes back to a macroeconomic question if there a little bit like the last one, if there was a significant downturn, that business would see some impacts. I think it's also an indication that you know, we're not seeing that yet because you know, pretty good performance, and we're pretty confident about the outlook as we go into Q2. On you know, BNPL, you know, that's still actually performing well. You know, and I think everybody's focused on you know, some pretty high profile revaluations. You know, I think again, the same trends are playing out.
You know, the long-term trend of this category is attractive to consumers. Demand still remains there. I don't think we see anything radically different in the credit market performance of those businesses. On Verify, Sylwia, we're still making good progress. We're winning employer services contracts, which is adding to the unique record count. We're winning contracts on the verification side, quite a number of which are putting us first in the waterfall. Really good progress there to update on maybe later in the year.
In terms of run rate, we've said this year ahead that we would expect a bit over $130 million of revenue in the combined employer services and verifications business. That that's still very much our guidance.
Okay, great. Thank you. Maybe just a quick follow-up on BNPL, just around the Apple Pay Later news. I suppose we had these questions. If they're not using credit bureaus, could that be a trend that we see elsewhere? Is that something that you're seeing at all as a change?
No, we don't see any change. They haven't introduced their proposition yet. They've just announced it, so I think that's a development that will happen in the future. I don't see any difference between that question and the question we've been asked over the last few years about BNPL. It's the same question. The BNPL has become, you know, part of the kind of bureau environment, and I don't see this would be any different.
Okay. All right. Thanks very much.
Our next incoming question is coming from the line of Anvesh Agrawal from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open now.
Yeah, good morning. Got two questions. First, just going back onto the B2C, and we know that a subscription can be countercyclical and grows. This time, sort of you're coming already from a higher base, so closer to sort of COVID bump that we had. If we do sort of end up into a broader slowdown, do you sort of see the same trends playing out, or it would be more difficult because there is already sort of big base that is already under the subscription? Then just on the marketplace overall, when we saw some of the players like LendingTree sort of came out and cut their guidance.
They called out the home product and also the insurance product, which is where you're pushing, but your outlook is sort of quite different on the marketplace. Just trying to understand, is there, like, any fundamental differences between what you're offering versus some of the other players in the market that sort of make your outlook much more resilient than what we're hearing across the sort of marketplace?
Hi, Anvesh. I'll maybe take those. So on marketplace, I think if you look at the last quarter results across all the players, it was very strong. You've seen we're probably first to report this quarter. We're seeing continued strength. What does that tell you? It tells you there's a lot of demand for credit, and there's a lot of supply for credit, and that's where it lands in that marketplace business.
In terms of insurance, you know, we're obviously making a pretty unique play into the auto insurance sector, where we think we've got some very unique assets to bring to bear that can accelerate the digital shift on customer acquisition in auto insurance, in a market that's been traditionally quite broker-led. Then we can do some unique things with our auto data assets. We think that's a very differentiated position. I'm not too aware of LendingTree's position in the insurance market. The marketplace continues to grow well. We have, as Brian mentioned, quite a number of new product launches coming in the second half of this year.
We made an acquisition of a company called BillFixers that helps consumers negotiate with some of their day-to-day bills. We'll expand Boost to include rental payments onto the credit file and quite a number of other outside of auto insurance and other launches, which will really drive higher engagement across you know the growing number of members that we have. On your question of subscriptions and countercyclical, I think you know every economic cycle is a bit different. I think what we've seen through all of the cycles is when you know consumers are credit hungry, and if you see a point where credit supply is restricted, they then tend to search out avenues of how to get credit fit.
That's of course what we try and target the subscription product at. We would expect that if you see at any point in the cycle withdrawal of credit supply, that behavior would continue. Now it's hard to scale it. It was different in the GFC than it was in the pandemic, but we saw that effect in both cases.
Yeah. Just as a follow-up on the auto insurance part specifically, is that business contingent on the sale of the autos or like the sort of consumer actually buying the cars? Or even if like a consumer sort of looking to switch the auto insurance, you essentially can drive the business, so therefore the cyclicality of your auto insurance marketplace could be quite different, really.
No, it's nothing really to do with auto sales. It's purely the annual and biannual cycle of insuring your car. The maturity of that digital market in the U.S. is very immature in comparison, say, to the U.K. market. We see just a real opportunity. Remember, we have a big auto business there with the data on all the cars in North America, and we've now got 55 million people on our consumer platform. There's a lot we can do matching up those two data sets.
Fine. That's helpful. Thank you.
Great. Thanks.
The next question is coming from the line of Andrew Ripper from Liberum. Please go ahead, your line is open now.
Yeah. Morning, everybody, and well done on the numbers. Just a couple of quick ones from me. First of all, just in terms of the core bureau businesses in North America and LATAM, you have very good growth rates. Is that all volume or have you been getting some price growth as well? Secondly, on costs, can you just say a few words and maybe just remind us what sort of increase in wages you're paying this year, and where are you in terms of sort of tech and data costs for this year, please, in terms of guidance? Thanks.
Great. Hi, Andrew. Maybe Lloyd, you do a cost one. I mean, the bureaus are obviously very different between Brazil and North America, but, I mean, the answer is, it's a mix of all three, really. Volume growth we've seen. You know, again, I think Lloyd referenced the, you know, the number of marketplace that tells you credit issuance is still strong. We continue to penetrate, you know, with new products. You know, I think at the smaller end of the scale, you know, some pricing actions. So, you know, in Brazil, and you flip over to there, you still have this sort of very strong secular trend with positive data coming into play, driving a lot of growth. You know, we don't really see that changing. Some of the stats coming out of Brazil are pretty significant.
We're seeing, you know, pretty significant increase in the number of people that are actually, you know, included in the financial net. We're seeing, you know, a lot of new products coming into play. I think, you know, if we start to see, you know, that's really just benefiting the overall data environment there. You know, we have just to give you some stats, you know, we think that we have now more than 22 million extra people who have access to credit through the introduction of positive data. We think that's gone from 59 to 81, and that's across all age groups. You can see that, you know, what we always said about positive data, whether it'll expand the market, and that's what we're seeing.
It not just expands the market, it also expands the addressable product market because positive data is a much richer data set, the requirement for analytics and for more sophisticated solutions to deal with that, you know, just drives demand for things like Ascend and others. You know, I think very different dynamics, but I suppose short-term the answer is it's a mix of all of those things. Lloyd, would you add anything to that? Yeah. I think just to add on Brazil, remember that when the government started the move to positive data credit, the size of the credit sector to GDP is very low in Brazil in comparison to almost every other market. That's the opportunity for us.
The richness of that data, it democratizes that data into the credit market. It's just a great opportunity, and we expect it to be a tailwind for quite a number of years. If you look back, you'll remember, Andrew, it was the reason we bought the bureau in Brazil all that time ago. We feel very good about that.
On cost, if you look at our annual wage increases, typically pre-COVID, they were in the 2.5%-3.5% range. That's ticked up this year by 1%-1.5%. A bit different in each market. We've seen, you know, some of the frothiness that we saw last year start to abate just a little bit as some of the recruitment into private equity and venture-backed FinTechs has started to take some of the frothiness out of the market. Obviously, we're watching it closely. On tech costs, you know, there's a lot going on in tech costs in all directions.
Probably the thing that, you know, we spend most time on is managing the tech transformation out of our legacy estate on into the cloud and the dual running costs that I've talked to you about in the past. That's probably the principal area of focus of managing that just now rather than inflation. You know, again, all manageable and all within our margin guidance that we've held versus the May position.
Yeah. Just a quick follow-up. In terms of Brazil with the thicker files, I mean, do you charge more or is it all volume?
No, that's kind of the wrong way to think about it because what happens is that it gets blended. You know, you renegotiate contracts with new products as part of the bundle. You know, if you were to try to unpick the pricing in that, it would be pretty difficult. The way to think about it is that we expand share of wallet because we're providing, you know, much more, you know, a much wider set of products and blended scores between negative and positive data.
Thank you.
Our final question is coming from the line of Suhasini Varanasi at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Just one from me, please. Sorry, I want to go back to the sensitivity to slowdown in the U.S. If you see a sharp slowdown, specifically, in the U.S. GDP, what can be the impact? How should we think about the growth in the B2B side of the business in the U.S., please? If you think about today's mix versus 2008, 2009, you have health, fraud ID now. You probably don't have marketing services. Probably the B2B side of the business in the U.S. was down mid-single digits, I suppose, during GFC. Does that basically mean with the same mix you have something more like a low single-digit decline or maybe flattish growth in the U.S. B2B side of the business? Just to get some color, that would be great. Thank you.
Hi. Yeah. Just to leverage back on, I guess, some of the sensitivities we've given before. If you go back to the GFC, we saw about a 7% reduction in group growth rate from about 9%- 2%. As you say, we have the health business now. We don't have some of the more volatile marketing services business. We have a larger business in Brazil that isn't really driven by U.S. GDP. If you took the same downturn scenario and applied it to today's portfolio, that 7% reduction, all other things being equal, would be something like a 4%-5% reduction. You obviously have to look at different scenarios.
The GFC was a very sudden liquidity crunch that affected credit supply everywhere. I think, whatever scenario we have, I think it's unlikely to have that. Clearly the drop in mortgage has already predated any future turn. I think you have to look through all of those movements. I think we've shown through both the GFC and through COVID that we've got a robust and resilient portfolio. We didn't go negative in either of those global crises. We're looking ahead with confidence. The trends in our business are strong. The 7%-9% guidance range that we have for this year is solidifying. That's probably how best to cover it.
Thank you very much. If you don't mind, I just have one follow-up please on the profit side of the business. Because even when you had the decline, your EBIT was quite well protected either during the GFC or even during the pandemic. I mean, it didn't decline as even though you saw the top line decline. Is it fair to say that you have enough flex on your cost base to protect the absolute level of EBIT even in this time around? Thank you.
Again, I think, you know, as you say, both of those examples show that we have a lot of levers to pull. At the end, we're a growth company over the long term. We expect our markets to deliver a lot of incremental value. There's always a fine balance between managing the cost base for the short term and making sure that we're generating the long-term growth in value that we've shown we can do as a company. I think our track record shows we can manage the cost base, you know, through those turbulent times.
Thank you very much.
We do not have any other incoming questions. Sorry, go ahead.
Great. Thank you very much. Okay. Well, thank you everybody for joining today, and thanks for the questions. I wish you all a very good day, and we look forward to speaking to you again in November for our half year results. Thank you very much.
Thank you, everyone. That concludes your conference call for today. You may now disconnect. Thank you for joining. Enjoy the rest of your day.