All right, we'll keep going. I'm Jeff Meuler, Baird's information solutions analyst. Pleased to introduce Equifax as the next presenting company. Equifax is the leading provider of employment and income verification, and one of the three global credit bureaus, in addition to a variety of other information solutions. With me on stage, CEO Mark Begor, who's been CEO of the company since 2018. Prior to which he ran several businesses at GE, including its card business, and he was previously on the FICO board. Also with me on stage, John Gamble, who's been Equifax's CFO, going on 10 years. And then in the back of the room is Trevor Burns, the head of IR. We'll launch into it. We'll start with the largest and fastest growing, and highest margin segment, your Workforce Solutions segment.
That includes the employment and income verification business. It's over half of EBITDA now. It's the key EBITDA growth driver of the company. Let's start with records growth. It's been a significant driver of revenue growth. It's been a good news story. Just talk about, like, what's driving it, the size of some of the recent wins, and the timing for them to onboard, and the records pipeline.
Yeah, I think what you, you know, is unique about Workforce Solutions, just framing it again, as you said, it's about half of our revenue, $2.3 billion last year, 50% EBITDA margins. We expect Workforce, Jeff, as you know, to grow 13% to 15% over the long term, versus 8% to 12% for overall Equifax. And with those 50% EBITDA margins, it's accretive into our overall revenue growth, as well as our margins going forward. So an attractive business for us. It has multiple levers for growth, you know, price, product, penetration, typically against a white space of manual verifications we can chat about. And then, as you point out, records. Quite uniquely, we have the ability to add records. There's roughly 225 million working or income-producing Americans.
A lot of them have two jobs or more. There's about 170 million, I'll round up, of non-farm payroll. There's another 40 million, roughly, of self-employed 1099 employees in the United States, and that ranges from an Uber driver to a doctor, dentist, lawyer. So, you know, lots of income producing Americans in there. And there's about 25 to 30 million defined benefit pensioners. So that's kind of the population of records that we're chasing. As you know, we get our records really two ways. One is through direct relationships with individual employers, where they'll outsource to Equifax some of the regulatory compliance processes we do for them. Unemployment claims, which is when someone gets laid off, you have to fill out the paperwork so they can collect unemployment benefits.
I-9, which is the onboarding of an employee. We do healthcare validation of their eligibility for government-supported healthcare. We do Work Opportunity Tax Credit, which is a tax credit, you know, for certain employees when they go to work for a company. We do W-2 management, you know, for companies, so a wide array of regulatory services. And then, as a part of that relationship, we'll do income and employment verification for that company for free. And if we're not doing income and employment verification, the HR manager has a call center, has people that are really manning the phones to take those inbounds from a mortgage broker, an auto lender, a background screener, or government social service, you know, doing that, and that's half our records. We have a dedicated team that's out selling those services to U.S. companies.
So we're growing records every month, every quarter, as we add those new relationships from our employer business. The other half of our records come through partnerships. Think pension administrators, HR software companies, payroll processors. And we have 60-odd relationships there that we add, you know, the same kind of value, free value-added service for their clients. They can bring along with the payroll processing or delivering a SaaS software solution. They can add to it a free service that's income verification of their employees done by Equifax for free. So that's a free value-added service, and then we pay a rev share on those records. So those are. We have a dedicated team there also, you know, looking at all those different partnerships in W-2, 1099 and pension, you know, records.
And as you point out, we've had, you know, very successful growth in both levers over the last three years, four years, five years, you know, adding records. Our records in the Q1 were up 10%. We've had strong growth over the last almost five years from both levers, but principally driven by increased partnerships. You know, more partnerships rolling in, where we have that relationship, you know, with an HR software company or a pension processor. So that's been really driving that going forward. We added two partnerships in the Q1. One of them, a larger partner that we telegraphed in April, that we expected that to come online in the Q2.
And as you know, the power of adding new records to our data set is because we have so much distribution through different verticals like mortgage, auto, cards, P loans. We sell data into background screeners because we collect the job title, along with the company, as one of the 50 attributes every pay period, so we have a digital resume. So we sell the data there, and then we also have a very fast-growing business on the delivery of social services at the government, principally the state level, where all social services are income verified. And because we have so many connections, when we add new records, we're already getting the inquiries for every applicant from our customer. So as we add new records, we're able to monetize them across the multiple sources. So it's a very powerful lever for growth, along with penetration-...
price and product expansion.
And I want to talk about those other kind of factors, because to me, the profit and revenue CAGRs of the business have been great. Records growth remains good, but the monetization growth per record lately has not looked as good, including in Q1. Let's zoom in on, like, mortgage outperformance, because you have the records growth, you have pricing on top of it, and it looks like they net down to mortgage outperformance that's, like, less than those two combined. So I'm not seeing some of this-
Those are your words, not mine, but go ahead and finish.
Well, no, I mean, do you, do you dispute that there's, that that's not the case? You give us mortgage outperformance-
Yeah.
You give us records growth.
Sure.
I have a sense of what I think pricing's doing. So it looks like there's some sort of headwind that's netting against it, or maybe we're not seeing... And I know you're rolling off the ramp of Mortgage 36, but it doesn't seem like we're seeing the product and the penetration factors contributing to growth in the most recent quarter.
So, when we think about all the workforce solutions businesses, I said earlier, we expect them to grow 13 to 15 over the long term. So we would expect mortgage to do that, we would expect government, and I hope we talk government a little bit, because government was up-
We'll get there.
... 35% in the quarter. It's now our largest vertical, to be fair. It's larger than mortgage for the first time in the Q1. So specifically on mortgage, as you point out, our mortgage outperformance versus the underlying market in EWS in 2022 and 2023 was in high teens, and that was substantially driven by a very successful product we rolled out called Mortgage 36, where we deliver three years' worth of income history to the mortgage originator, and it gave them the ability to approve more consumers more quickly, and there was a big take rate on that. Historically, we didn't do that. So that drove our mortgage outperformance really up almost 2x to what we would expect it typically to be.
We would expect over the long term to have our mortgage outperformance in that kind of low double-digit range, aligned with that 13 to 15. In the Q1, you know, we were south of that. We expected the runoff of Mortgage 36 from a comp standpoint to play through. We still had record growth, as you point out. We had some pure price roll in there. Less product in the quarter and maybe in the H1. We're rolling out some new mortgage products in EWS in the H2. We're looking at rolling out a Mortgage 24, so 24 months' worth of data. We're gonna roll out something that looks like a Mortgage 90, so 90 days' worth of data.
But basically filling in more solutions that match the wide variety of the consumer that's applying for a mortgage and what their income history is, either changing jobs or if they're an incentive income, that incentive income. If they're a sales commissioned employee, that may be up or down in certain months, so you need more history. So we would expect, and we gave guidance on that, in April, that that kind of high single-digit outperformance from mortgage in the Q1, we would expect in the H2 to move more to that 10 to 11 range. And the driver from Q1 to H2 is principally record additions being stronger than we thought. We talked about that large partner that we added in the first—in the Q2, that we signed in the Q1.
But there'll likely be some impact from product as we continue to roll out products going forward. And so the fourth lever, you know, which we also have opportunity in mortgage for EWS, is penetration. Not every mortgage originator uses our solution. All mortgage originators have large manual operations because our hit rates are south of 50%, so they're still manually verifying half. So as we continue to convert a mortgage originator that's fully manual, that adds to our revenue growth and our mortgage outperformance.
Q1 mortgage outperformance was a little lower, and it was just really mix, right? The mix of our customers moved a little bit toward customers that had a little better pricing. They were generally larger, right? So for the rest of the year, we just assumed that mix would stay. Movements in mix between larger and smaller players, so affecting our price realization, that happens. That's happened for years. It just happened to be slightly negative in the Q1. It's not unusual.
If we take your TWN mortgage revenue, subtract out the mortgage outperformance, we get the TWN mortgage inquiries. Is that correct?
Yeah, and which we consider to be market.
So-
That's our proxy for market.
Your credit research team also puts out the credit pulse data, and I know that there's a lag in terms of the full reporting.
Six months
... for mortgage.
Yep.
But if I go back, like, three quarters, it looks like your implied TWN inquiries and mortgage are lagging the credit pulse data in terms of mortgage originations. Just how do you monitor market share in the mortgage market? Are there any sort of, like, moves back towards manual as people look to save money in a market where they have excess staff?
Yeah, we haven't seen any moves like that. You know, we still deliver, obviously, speed. You know, every mortgage originator we do business with is trying to shorten the cycle of a mortgage because there's a lot of volatility in that consumer ability to close. You know, do they lose their job? Does their credit score change in that time frame? That's why they want to shorten it up. So speed is very important, accuracy, but we also deliver productivity. You know, if you're gonna spend $40 or $50 on an income verification or employment verification with us, you know, if you don't use us, you're gonna do it manually, and you're getting on the phone to call the company, call Baird and say, "Does Jeff work there?" Getting someone on the phone, then they've got to make sure that they're not a fraudster, right?
How do I know you're really not a fraudster? There's just a lot of friction with that. So, you know, we haven't seen, you know, a move, you know, to manual, and we think we deliver a lot of value to the industry, which is why we have the various products that we're rolling out, you know, for that vertical, as well as all of our others.
We watch the relationship between credit inquiries and TWN inquiries, right? They tend to be within five to six points of each other. Right now, you are continuing to see more shopping or people are having a hard time closing loans they start, right? I think that's known in the industry.
And the shopping principally is in a credit pull-
Right, right
... before they put an application in. We're testing in the market a solution for income for shopping, you know, that someone's working. You know, so we're just testing that. We don't have a solution today. So on the TWN side, for income and employment, we really only participate between application and closing. In the shopping side, we'd like to. We think there's value in understanding someone's credit score when you're kind of pre-qualifying someone as a mortgage originator. Do I want to spend $5,000 on Mark because I think he can close by adding Mark's working to that equation and the shopping behavior? So we've got that in market testing now, which would be a new product.
Got it. And then, as you mentioned, government within TWN is a really good news story. You've had kind of like 30 to mid-40s growth for a couple of years now, including in Q1.
Yep.
Talk about the contract wins and the timing of them onboarding.
Yep.
As you get through the redetermination benefit, where should the government growth normalize?
Yeah. So just to, you know, just to put some numbers on the table, as I mentioned earlier, government now for us is our largest vertical in workforce solutions. And when we talk government, it's really the delivery, principally at the state agency level, of income and income verification for social services. There's over 100 million Americans that receive at least one social service. I think the average is four or five or six different social services. So think rent support, childcare support, income support, food support, student lending support. All different services are all needs-based, and you have to verify income. We think about the TAM of manual verifications that have been done for decades, at a state agency level, which is where this is delivered, of being something like $5 billion.
In the Q1, our run rate is about $700 million against that $5 billion. So there's another $4 billion-plus of manual verifications at those state agencies. And as you pointed out, we've had really strong growth over the last three years, and we were up 35% in the Q1, but a 50% CAGR the last three years. So really strong growth. Clearly, that's not a long-term growth rate. We do expect government because of the macro of primarily that $4+ billion of manual verifications in the 50 states and the kind of dozen agencies in each state, the ability to penetrate into that as being a huge growth lever. And we expect government to outgrow our 13% to 15%.
You know, we haven't given a long-term growth rate, but we expect it to be accretive to 13% to 15% over the long term because of the macros of that market and the value we deliver. We have multiple levers for growth there. So record additions drives higher hit rates, right? So if we're growing records, we're already getting inquiries from the clients we have, the agencies. If we have more records, we're delivering more instant verifications form. These are generally multi-year contracts in nature. We generally have price escalators every year in those contracts, so we have visibility around what those are. It's also a solution that has multiple transactions. So the first time a family or a consumer goes to get food stamps or rent support or child care support, each service, their income's verified.
And as you might imagine, there's a lot of churn in and out of social services. So every time they come back, let's say they're on one of the social services, and then their income goes up, they no longer qualify, they come off the social service. And then at some point, they may have a family event and not work, and they're getting more social services. Each one of those is a transaction. There's also every 12 months for each service that you're on, a requirement for a redetermination to make sure you still qualify. And that's the redetermination you were talking about. What Jeff was referring to is during the COVID pandemic, the federal government paused the requirement for annual redeterminations. When the pandemic was lifted last May, that requirement back into place, and there was some level of increase there. When...
My view, when you think about a 50% CAGR or 35% in the Q1, that was a piece of it. A bigger piece is the state penetration, and the last piece is these new federal contracts, which I'll talk about. So there's annual redeterminations happening for each of the social services. So you've got an ongoing revenue stream. And our price points in government, you know, we've talked before about mortgage, but are in kind of the $5 to 10 to 15 range. And as you'd imagine, we deliver a ton of productivity versus a government employee doing that verification themselves at pick your hourly rate, $30 to 40 an hour with benefits, versus an instant verification for $5 to 10 to 15. So big productivity. It also delivers speed. It also delivers accuracy. You know, we're to the source.
Then, Jeff, as you pointed out, we had two federal contracts. One was an extension, one was a new contract last September, that are both benefiting Q4, Q1, and the rest of 2024. One was an extension of our CMS contract for Medicaid services verification. Our new contract was a 5-year contract at $1.2 billion for Equifax, and that had a price increase and annual escalators in it. The second contract was a brand-new contract we hadn't had before, and that was with USDA, which is SNAP TANF, which is the food stamp programs. And that was a new $190 million contract over five years. So that's new in the PNL in Q4 and Q1, you know, and benefiting that 35%.
So multiple streams of opportunity, and, you know, we're pretty confident, short of, we'll touch or maybe not touch it, a mortgage market recovery that's quite substantial and rapid. Government's gonna be our largest vertical going forward for as long as we can see, as we really move into that $5 billion TAM, you know, more aggressively.
And we're adding more data assets beyond income, right? So currently, we sell the incarceration records into government. Increasingly, we'll do criminal information into government, and then you'll see us broaden that even further.
Yeah.
The third of the big three is the talent or pre-employment screening.
Yep.
I know that there's some challenges because of weaker gross hiring activity for some white-collar professionals.
Yep.
But can you just comment on, like, the Q4 to Q1 year-over-year revenue trend? Because it's softened, and if we look at the JOLTS data for white-collar professionals, we don't see the same slowdown in gross hiring from Q4 to Q1. So just what's going on with that trend, and is there any impact from the pending consolidation of the background screening companies?
No impact from HireRight and Sterling. That hasn't happened yet, you know, and we wouldn't expect that to have any impact on us. On the white collar one, as you might imagine. So maybe just I'll just size talent, if I could, and I think it's helped to describe our position there. It's about a $3 billion TAM. This is our math on the manual employment history verifications that are done, and other data elements around a background screen. And as you know, pre-Equifax, the background screening industry principally had BPO shops doing manual verifications of your resume for employment history, your education, your credentials of medical or other credentials you have that support the job you're gonna have. We're trying to digitize that by being the data provider to the background screeners.
We think about that TAM of manual effort of being about $3 billion. Our business today is north of $400 million run rate. So the difference between $400 million and $3 billion is really the additional penetration. So really, to your question of white-collar workers, we've got strong penetration with the bigger background screeners. Not every background screener does business with us. So, you know, when you look at white-collar broadly, our customers may have a different mix on that. What we hear from our customers about what's happened in the market last year and this year, really post-COVID, is there's been a broad tightening of white-collar employment. I think we all know blue-collar employment is red hot. You know, there's more jobs open than people, so there's a lot of activity there.
Those are generally a lower price, lower data, background screen at the hourly level, and as you might imagine, everyone in the room here, they're gonna check five years of education, or actually check your education, they're gonna check five years of prior employment, where an hourly background screen might just check last job worked. You know, so there's different levels there. I know, John, if you want to add to the Q4 to Q1, you know, deltas.
Matt, thanks. We just saw. Normally, you see a weaker January and February in white-collar hiring. We've seen it traditionally. We just saw more weakness in January and February than we'd seen in prior years. March was a little better, and so we based our run rate for the rest of the year on what we're seeing in March.
Okay.
That's how we expect it to continue through the rest of the year.
But outside of market, Jeff, when you think about, you know, obviously there's a macro in the hiring market-
Sure
... whether it's up, down, or sideways. I think broadly it's a robust market. I think everyone in the room knows, in the neighborhood of 75 million people a year change jobs. So there's a lot of churn, particularly at the kinda hourly low-end level, but there's a lot of job changes happen. They all have background screens. That's why it's a great space. We want to be the data provider to that. So our levers, you know, are similar to government. Record additions give us higher hit rates. You know, we have 700 million. We keep every record. We have 700 million jobs and people in our data set over the last 20 years. So we keep them every, every week, every pay period, we're adding more job titles to our, work history. So records, you know, drives revenue in that business.
We have higher hit rates. Product is a big one. You know, really bring product solutions for the right job. We just rolled out last fall an hourly solution, you know, which is really last job worked versus more history. Pricing, we take price up, you know, as you might imagine, you know, there. And then penetration, like government, penetrating into the background screeners that are not using our solution. And then, as John pointed out, we're really trying to build a data hub to be the data provider of all the data elements that are used in a background screen: employment history, education, job credentials. You know, whether it's medical credentialing data for a doctor, dentist, lawyer, or long-haul truck driving data for someone who's doing a w, you know, tri- kind of license.
All that data we want to be able to provide, either by owning it or partnering on it. And then where we'll move to is having products that are job specific, where we're delivering all the data elements in an instant decision, you know, to our, our customers, which are the background screeners.
Got it. And then I think structurally, a big part of the reason why investors like to own Equifax is because of the employment and income verification business, but there's also kind of this untapped earnings power at this current point in the mortgage cycle. So recap what the benefit to Equifax will be with market normalization, and I think you give it on a per fulfilled inquiry at current pricing basis.
Yeah, yeah.
So talk about what you'd expect for a market outgrowth in mortgage to layer on top of that.
So maybe, Jeff, I'll start with, if you believe that. So the mortgage market, by our measures, you can, everyone in the room can see if you agree or disagree, is down 50% from what we would call normal. That's the mortgage market activity. So think originations, or in our, world, it's inquiries. That's our revenue. How many inquiries are we getting that are tied to originations? And we use that, kind of 2015 to 2019 as being what we call normal. As everyone in the room knows, there was a refi boom during COVID when rates were slashed. 2015 to 2019 is kind of normal. We're 50% below that from an activity standpoint. So really, two points. Number one, if you assume mortgage stays at this 50% level below normal forever, Equifax mortgage market grows eight to 12.
You know, our mortgage business grows eight to 12, and you'll see that in the Q4 when we're kind of comping out to a flat Q4 2023 market in Q4 2024. Price, product, penetration, records, really drives that kind of eight to 1 2 outperformance. We already talked about EWS mortgage outperformance. In a flat market, we would expect it to grow kind of low double digits. And then, depending upon the FICO price increase, USIS could be north of that, like it is this year, you know, if there's a larger FICO price increase to go through. So kind of a, in a flat market, which we don't think is gonna happen over the long term. As rates come down by the Fed and mortgage rates come down, we expect mortgage activity to improve.
But flat mortgage market, it's very powerful for us to just continue to deliver. As you point out, you know, there's that 50% decline we sized for our investors in the Q1. February call and April call, there's a chart in our investor deck that it's $1 billion of incremental revenue for the market to move back to 2015 to 2019 levels, and that's at, as you point out, at today's pricing. Today's pricing, today's product, today's records, really, it's January's. You know, meaning whenever it happens, we're gonna keep growing-... the businesses-
Mm-hmm.
From all those levers. And we shared with our investors the $1.1 billion translates into about $700 million+ of incremental EBITDA, very high incremental margins. As you might imagine, on the way down and then also on the way up, and then $4 a share. And we also said that, you know, when that happens, it's gonna drop through. We're not gonna reinvest that. We're reinvesting in the core Equifax. When that mortgage market recovery comes, you know, we would expect that to be incremental to our growth rates, incremental, you know, to our, margin expansion and incremental to our, free cash flow, which obviously will be a part of, you know, our planned capital allocation to start returning cash to shareholders at the right time.
Can you just comment on the CFPB request for inquiry or request for information? They named kind of FICO, and they named TWN Pricing-
Yeah
... as two factors, and you just mentioned that those are two of the, like, the mortgage market structural outperformance factors for Equifax.
Yeah, so, two weeks ago, Director Chopra was at a MBA, Mortgage Bankers Association conference here in New York. I wasn't there, but some of the team was. You can read the transcript. He talked a lot about the fact that FICO prices have gone up and credit report prices have gone up. There was also some comments around TWN prices going up, and then he announced, I think, late last week, that he's requesting information from the industry around perspectives on market pricing and the impact there. You know, I think, as you know, the mortgage origination costs are roughly $5,000 to 6,000 for a consumer. The data costs are a couple hundred bucks, which is what the director was focused on.
You know, I think we'll all see where that goes from a path standpoint, but, you know, we believe that we're delivering real value to the consumer to allow them to access the mortgage market and to our customers who use it to underwrite, a mortgage to give the right pricing to the right consumer that can afford the mortgage. You know, that's the value of the data that we deliver, both on the credit report side and, the score side, as well as on the income and employment side.
Then, just talking international, we were having this conversation earlier, but I think a lot of investors, they think Experian, they think about the Brazil story.
Yep.
They think TransUnion, they think about the India story. What do you want investors to think about when they think about the Equifax international story?
Yeah, so against our eight to 12, we expect international to grow seven to nine. They have been over the last three, four, five years, so we've been pleased with that growth. As you know, we've made, over the years, acquisitions when they're available to expand platforms, and we bought Boa Vista last year, which is the number two i n Brazil. Obviously, Experian's got a very strong, very successful business. We think we can compete well with them there in, in Brazil, which is why we bought Boa Vista. We're bringing in our platforms, our technology.
Why we like international, particularly as we complete the cloud, which, we'll be completing in the next, you know, internationally, really in 2025, but, U.S. and North America this year, which is most of Equifax, is our ability to really, continue that seven to nine growth rate, expand the margins, but also move products around the globe. When we create one product, it's very easy because we're on the same tech stack, to move it to other markets. So that's the power of international. You think about our market leadership, we're number one in Canada, we're number one in Spain. Obviously, Experian's number one in the U.K. We're holding our own in the U.K. We're number one in Australia. We're number one internationally in every Latin American market except Brazil, where we're number two, and we're not in Colombia.
Latin America's a very fast-growing market for us. We like our international business. In particular, we think we have an advantage when we complete the cloud, you know, versus TU and Experian, of our ability to innovate internationally.
talk about the impact on Equifax, and product innovation more broadly, including in the U.S. and EWS, from the completion of the cloud-
Yeah
... transition.
Yeah, so as you know, innovation's a big part of what all D&A companies do, TU, Experian, Equifax. We think, you know, we're more deliberate about it. We're the only one of the three that have a Vitality I ndex. We've had it for a decade. And I think as the room knows, we measure our innovation through a Vitality I ndex, which is the % of our revenue from new products introduced in the last three years. Historically, we were 5% to 7% of our revenue. Three years ago, we set a 10% goal. We thought the cloud, as well as adding more product resources, would allow us to ramp up our innovation. And again, we believe from a customer standpoint, if you're innovating more with your customers, you're a more valuable partner. If you're bringing new ideas to your customer, you're a more valuable partner.
So we set that 10% goal, expecting we'd get there as we complete the cloud. As you know, Jeff, we've been north of that 10 the last two years. We're around 13 and 14 almost in the last 2 years. Principally driven, as you point out, by Workforce Solutions that completed the cloud two years ago, and they really put the pedal to the metal around innovation. They've been north of 20%, Mortgage 36. Products for talent, products for government, really driving very high innovation with 20% of their revenue being from new products in the last three years. So that 10% goal is a really important one for the company. We think it makes us a stronger partner to our customers because, as I said, we're bringing more value to them with new ideas to help them grow.
We sell ROI. That's, that's what we bring to our customers: higher approval rates, you know, lower losses, higher identity match rates. That's the what we bring to our customers.
And then just, maybe John, if you can give us quick sound bites on, the back-end loaded guidance. Why should investors have confidence in the $4+ of EPS in the H2 versus, like, $3.20 in the H1? And then can you hit on, free cash flow, conversion outlook, and capital allocation priorities?
Sure.
How they change.
So Mark talked about it, right? We're completing the Cloud Transformation as we move through North America, and that allows us to deliver nice cost reductions, starting in the Q3, but really accelerating into the fourth, as we're able to get rid of the redundant costs that we're currently incurring, right? We're running dual systems in North America, principally around our consumer credit businesses, and as those transformations complete, those costs come out of the system. So that's what we're driving to execute to, and that's what's embedded in the guidance. As we move through this year, obviously, we expect our overall leverage to come down. We committed that when we bought BVS, we'd bring our leverage back down to be consistent with our current credit ratings. We'll certainly be there, we expect, by the end of this year.
And then with reducing capital spending and growing margins and obviously very nice growth, we expect our free cash flow to grow substantially. It's gonna allow us to invest in acquisitions to deliver that one to two points of growth that we've been talking about consistently, while also now starting to increase the dividend, probably growing it somewhat consistent with earnings, and then also starting a buyback. So we feel very good about our ability to start distributing cash to shareholders as we move through this year and get into next.
Perfect. Thank you. We will wrap there for this room. Trevor from the IR team will be available for a breakout in the Astor Suite A now. But please join me in thanking Mark and John for their insights on Equifax.