Equifax Inc. (EFX)
NYSE: EFX · Real-Time Price · USD
170.57
-1.90 (-1.10%)
At close: Apr 27, 2026, 4:00 PM EDT
171.00
+0.43 (0.25%)
After-hours: Apr 27, 2026, 4:59 PM EDT
← View all transcripts

M&A Announcement

Aug 10, 2021

Speaker 1

Greetings, and welcome to the Equifax Investor Call to discuss the Apris Insight acquisition. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host, Dorian Hair, Senior Vice President and Head of Corporate Investor Relations.

Please go ahead.

Speaker 2

Thanks and good morning. Welcome to today's conference call. I'm Dorian Hair. With me today are Mark Begore, Chief Executive Officer Don Gamble, Chief Financial Officer and Rudy Plautter, President of Workforce Solutions. Today's call is being recorded.

An archive of the recording will be available later today on the IR Calendar section of the News and Events tab on our IR website, www.investor.ecopax.com. During the call today, we will be making reference to certain materials that can also be found in the Presentation section of the News and Events tab on our IR website. These materials are labeled a PRIS Acquisition Investor Update. During this call, we will be making certain forward looking statements to help you understand Equifax and its business environment. These statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations.

Certain risk factors inherent in our business are set forth in the filings with the SEC, including our 2020 Form 10 ks and subsequent filings. Also, we will be referring to certain non GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EPS attributable to Equifax, which will be adjusted for certain items that affect the comparability of our underlying operational performance. Our non GAAP measures for completed periods are detailed in reconciliation tables, which are included with our prior period earnings releases and are also posted on our website. Now, I'd like to turn it over to Mark and ask you to please turn to Slide 4 of the presentation.

Speaker 3

Thanks, Doreen, and thanks everyone for joining us this morning on such short notice. As you saw from our press release this morning, last night we signed a definitive agreement to acquire Apparatus Insights, a portfolio company of Clear Lake Capital Group and Insight Partners for $1,825,000,000 This attractive strategic and accretive bolt on acquisition that will strengthen our largest and fastest growing business workforce solutions by broadening their suite of verification capabilities in the fast growing talent or hiring space and government vertical for delivery of social services. In conjunction with the acquisition, Equifax will receive a tax benefit with a net present value of approximately 360 $1,465,000,000 multiple paid for AFRIS Insights excluding the tax benefit is about 23 times 2021 EBITDA and 19 times 2022 EBITDA. This acquisition is highly synergistic to Workforce Solutions, we expect to deliver $75,000,000 in high margin run rate revenue and data synergies by 2025. Adding the present value of these run rate synergies to Afris 2021 results, the EBITDA multiple is an attractive 14 times.

The acquisition expands Workforce Solutions, our largest, fastest growing and highest margin business and moves them forward on the path of being over 50% of Equifax revenue in the future, up from 40% in the first half of this year. Appris' focus on the hiring and government verticals also further diversified Equifax towards 75 plus percent non mortgage revenue in the future, up from 70% this year. During the past 6 plus months, we have focused on reinvesting our strong outperformance and leveraging the eFX cloud with bolt on acquisitions strengthen Equifax for the future and have announced or completed 8 acquisitions we expect to add over $300,000,000 of Equifax run rate revenue in 2022. We plan to pause on further larger acquisitions over the next several quarters to focus on integration and bringing our leverage back in line. We've known Appris Insights for over 5 years and have been a data partner with them for the past 3 years.

Appris Insights is a trusted and comprehensive source of unique and differentiated risk data, including leading capabilities in incarceration and criminal justice intelligence and medical license and sanctions data. This data at scale is used for a variety of purposes, including new employee hiring and onboarding processes, government social services delivery, public and workforce safety, law enforcement, talent management, fraud detection and prevention, and healthcare credentialing. This acquisition is a complementary fit for our largest and fastest growing business unit, Workforce Solutions, and significantly advances our plan to build out a comprehensive workforce solutions data hub for verifications and monitoring in the fast growing talent solutions or employee hiring space. We're excited that Brian Matthews, President of Appris Insights and his team are joining Rudy floaters Workforce Solutions leadership team. Appris Insights will bolster our Talent Solutions business and accelerate growth as we continue to support the nearly 75,000,000 annual new hires in the United States.

With AppRIS Insights, we are extending our verification capabilities to include a robust portfolio of employment, criminal background, medical credential and educational data. The combination of Appris Insights and Workforce Solutions differentiated employment income data also creates the opportunity to deliver broader, more comprehensive solutions to federal and state governments across unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food assistance, rental support and other benefit programs. Leveraging the new Equifax cloud to deliver new products and solutions based on our more comprehensive EWS data hub, we expect to deliver $75,000,000 in high margin run rate revenue and data synergies by 2025. These new solutions will leverage our scale twin data assets for real time response and ongoing monitoring based solutions. Assuming an early October close, Apres is expected to add over 2 75 basis points to our 4th quarter growth rate and will be highly accretive in 2022.

Turning to Slide 5, Apercine's site was founded in 1994 in Louisville, Kentucky. The company's platform houses the nation's most comprehensive source of incarceration, justice and people based risk intelligence data, as well as medical license and sanctions data. At founding, they established and still manage today, the Vine Crime Victims Notification Service, providing incarceration status to victims of violence and other crimes. APPRIS also established in 2006 and still manages today the and retailers and pharmacies across the United States to control the over counter distribution of pseudephetamine, the key ingredient in the production of metaphhemous. Apris currently has approximately 6.50 employees and contractors and we are excited to have Brian and his team join Equifax when the transaction closes.

APRIS Insights delivers unique solutions to partners and customers across talent management and in support of federal and state government entitlement program management. They've established a deep customer base across the U. S. Including 20 federal agencies, state agencies in all 50 states and thousands of employers and over 500 background screeners in pharmacies nationwide. Apparition Insights is expected to generate approximately $150,000,000 of revenue this year, up over 30% from 2020, with attractive standalone EBITDA margins of about 40%.

The data assets we are acquiring are industry leading and will be accretive to the only Equifax solutions that Workforce Solutions provides. As shown on Slide 6, APRIS has a broad set of justice based data, both current real time and substantial historical data assets. APRIS Insights has over 92% of real time incarceration data across the U. S, primarily through proprietary interfaces with over 2,800 state and local jails with over 170,000,000 historical records acquired over the past 15 years. APRIS has access to current court records for criminal and other related data through its proprietary robotic process automation platform, as well as a network of court runners for situations where current court data must be obtained at the court in person.

APPRS also provides access to other justice based information that allows comprehensive person based risk analysis by their customers and partners. This data is used for solutions supporting talent solutions, law enforcement, government program support and integrity. APRS also has access to 2,500 medical credential and sanctions data sources for credentialing doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals, which includes over 5,000,000 historical medical credentialing records. As a part of their inflex solution, Apris is connected to over 50,000 U. S.

Pharmacies for real time validation of pseudoephetamine based consumer purchases such as allergy and cold medicines. Users of Vapris Insight's products and services across all 50 states in the U. S. Include law enforcement officers, state and federal agencies, background screeners, private investigators, crime victims, unemployment insurance agencies and child support agencies. We are very excited about the growth prospects of this business, especially when powered by our eFX cloud capabilities and integrated into the EWS data hub.

Slide 7 provides details on the suite of solutions that AppRIS Insights provides and the markets they serve. Starting on the left is the Vine network, which provides victims of crime and other concerned citizens with real time incarceration and criminal justice data. Over 25,000,000 blind notifications are sent annually to users. This service is free to victims with funding provided by state and local governments. To deliver this service, AppRIS Insights has built proprietary real time interfaces with over 2,800 local and state jails, making them the largest real time source of this unique incarceration data.

N Flex, the real time decisioning engine used by pharmacies to regulate the sale of pseudoephetamine based products to consumers is mandated by 39 states and used by retailers, major pharmacies and law enforcement nationally. This service is funded by major drug manufacturers on a per transaction basis. Risk Intelligence is their largest solution. This solution supports background checks, employee screening and monitoring related to incarceration conviction and sanction related events. We expect risk intelligence to play an even more significant role going forward in supporting the hiring of the about 75,000,000 people who change jobs annually in the United States.

The Provider Safe solution addresses healthcare talent, providing the industry with credentialing and sanctioned checks. Real time workforce monitoring is also a capability increasingly in demand for both the risk intelligence and provider safe solutions. Justice Intelligence is the APRIS law enforcement vertical and provides real time incarceration and monitoring solutions to police and other law enforcement agencies. Incarceration Intelligence is the APRIS government portal, which provides solutions to federal and state governments relating to unemployment claims, Medicaid food, rental assistance, and child support payments. The solution helps state agencies identify when to potentially suspend benefits, for example, at the onset of incarceration and when to reinstate benefits at the release from incarceration.

This reduces both fraud and reduces predictivism as individuals released from incarceration can get immediate access to government benefits. In the case of fraud, US Department of Labor Inspector General recently estimated that at least $87,000,000,000 in unemployment insurance benefits could be paid improperly with a significant portion attributed to fraud by the time the CARES Act expires. A recent test with APRA's incarceration data with a large state helped identify 1,000,000 of dollars in potential unemployment insurance fraud. There are opportunities to expand that continuous monitoring solution to other states and other government programs like Medicaid. As detailed on Slide 8, the addition of APRA's criminal and sanctions data as well as medical credentials data strengthens the Workforce Solutions data hub.

The Work Number income and employment data with over 119,000,000 current income and employment records and over 482,000,000 current and historical records as of the end of the last quarter is the Data Hub's cornerstone. With APPRSS Insights, Workforce Solutions will have the capability to provide twin work history data alongside APRIS criminal and sanction data and with other partner data assets like education certification data to deliver a complete 360 degree picture of the prospective employment employee instantly. As these data assets are integrated on the Equifax cloud, we'll be able to deliver multi data solutions that will be extremely valuable to our customers in both the private and public sectors. The talent solutions and government verticals offer large and growing addressable markets for workforce solutions. As shown on the left side of Slide 9, we estimate an addressable market of $5,000,000,000 in the U.

S. Hiring and onboarding space with over 75,000,000,000 new employees onboarded annually across the U. S. About 40% of these hires are enrolled that require background checks and other verifications, including healthcare, financial services, public sector and portions of many industries. The remainder are in roles where background checks and some level of verification is typically done as a part of the onboarding process.

Our twin data and solutions coupled with Appra's insights capabilities will make us a leading source for background screeners and others that provide talent based onboarding services. We expect our Talent Solutions business to continue to outperform in the future. Workforce Solutions government vertical is focused on delivering data and solutions to support federal and state benefit programs as well as law enforcement agencies. This is a substantial and growing sector that we estimate to have an addressable market of about $2,000,000,000 Each year, 88,000,000 Americans receive some level of government benefits. Nearly half received Medicaid and CHIP benefits with others receiving Medicare, ACA, SNAP, TANF and other benefits.

The combination of twin income and employment data with APRS Insights incarceration and criminal background data will allow us to deliver integrated solutions federal and state agencies in support of benefits enrollment as well as program integrity and fraud prevention. APRIS Insights' existing solutions supporting law enforcement as well as their NPEQ solution should also deliver growth as we continue to expand their data footprint. Turning to Slide 10, the combination of Workforce Solutions and Aperis Insights will create solutions only Equifax can provide in delivering capabilities across pre hire screening, post hire monitoring and government verticals. In pre hire screening, the EWS data hub will deliver real time employment, education and criminal pointer data and for the healthcare industry, both work history and medical license and sanctions data. For post hire monitoring, APPRIS Insights will provide employers in the ride sharing and other related sectors information on their drivers and service providers.

We believe that post hire monitoring will become an increasingly valuable service as employers realize the benefits and insights that Equifax Talent Solutions data can now provide. In the government vertical, workforce solution products are increasingly used primarily to make initial benefits eligibility decisions and periodic redeterminations of benefits for program integrity to manage fraud. Leveraging the APRIS incarceration monitoring solutions, we will be able to expand the Workforce Solutions product into continuous monitoring and provide agencies with more comprehensive programming integrity solutions for unemployment insurance, Medicaid and other government program benefit programs. As shown on Slide 11, Workforce Solutions is our fastest growing and highest margin business, delivering over 20% compound growth in both Talent Solutions and the government vertical over the past 3 years. Growth in Talent Solutions accelerated in 2021 and is up more than 150% year to date.

New products within this space include Talent Select All, which delivers contextual employment data in support of a more holistic view of a candidate in a single report, helping hiring managers make critical decisions with greater confidence in real time. The Talent Report Express product provides customers with instant access to employment, identity and education history in one report. By combining Apparas Insights with talent solutions, we'll be able to provide customers with a one stop shop for data pertaining to employment, income, criminal background, education and where appropriate, medical license and sanctions. Speed is increasingly important in the onboarding process to shorten the time between making an offer to a prospective employee and getting them on the floor in the office, store, factory or restaurant in an increasingly competitive work environment. Both Workforce Solutions, Talent Solutions and AFRIS Risk Intelligence Suites of product solutions prioritize speed and efficiency and can provide responses instantly in most cases.

Our government vertical is also seeing accelerated growth in 2021, up over 10% year to date. We expect this growth to accelerate with our new SSA contract that went live last week, which will ramp to $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 of revenue at run rate next year. We have commercial resources working in major state capitals around the U. S. As well as in Washington that will provide expanded commercial coverage for the AppRiver Insights solutions.

Some key products within the government vertical include our social service verification product and the Social Security Administration payroll exchange product. The Social Service verification product is an SSN based search that provides BOE and BOI for all records available within the past 3 years. The Social Security Administration payroll exchange product that went online last week will allow administrators to more quickly and accurately distribute monthly insurance benefits under the Social Security Disability Income and Supplemental Security Income Benefits. APRIS Insights has several solutions focused on the government vertical, including Vine, Implex, Justice Intelligence and Incarceration Intelligence. We are energized that this new suite of products is expected to continue to drive growth in the government vertical in the future.

Slide 12 shows the presence that Workforce Solutions will have in pre hire screening and onboarding. With the acquisition of Appra Insights, Workforce will have significant capabilities across 6 of the 9 most frequently used data categories in pre hire screening. Workforce will now own 5 data sources, including the 3 most utilized categories of criminal, credit and SSN trace checks. And we will continue to partner to offer comprehensive educational data. The hiring space is a huge market with 75,000,000 people changing jobs or being hired annually, and Equifax will increasingly play a role in supporting this linchpin of the economy.

Slide 13 is a reminder of the accelerating growth from workforce solutions over the past 2 years with the twin database passing the 50% mark of non farm payrolls. In the Q2, core EWS grew over 45% for the 2nd consecutive quarter. Core revenue growth excludes the impacts of movements in the mortgage market on Equifax revenue as well as the impacts in our UC claims and employee retention credit revenue from our recently acquired Hiretech business. This above market growth at Workforce Solutions is driven by multiple growth levers including new products, vertical expansion, penetration and pricing, of course record expansion and bolt on M and A. We expect Apparas Insights to contribute positively to Workforce Solutions core growth in the future.

As shown on Slide 14, Workforce Solutions continues to deliver above market growth and is on track to be a $2,000,000,000 plus business for Equifax or almost 3 times larger than it was just 4 years ago. It is our largest and fastest growing business with highly accretive margins and is driving Equifax's strong performance. I'm energized by the future growth plans Rudy Floater and his team have in front of them. In addition to Aperis Insights, I'm sure you saw our Teletrack and Healthy FX acquisitions we announced in the last 2 weeks. We closed the Healthy FX acquisition we announced on Saturday yesterday and we expect to close TeleTrac in the Q3.

As shown on the left side of Slide 15, Healthy FX is a leading ACA software solution provider, delivering software to leading tax, payroll and benefits administrators in many of the nation's largest employers and 22,000,000 individuals. Its high quality customer base includes 25 percent of the Fortune 575 companies in the Fortune 500. This bolt on acquisition will become part of the Workforce Solutions Employer Services Board vertical and we'll expand our current ACA compliance services. The acquisition will allow workforce employers services to further support the HR and payroll industries by providing automated data driven services that simplify complex ACA compliance tasks while supporting the addition of new records to the TWN database. We also announced the definitive agreement to acquire TeleTrac from CoreLogic 2 weeks ago.

TeleTrac is a specialty CRA that provides non traditional credit data to financial services industry. Teletrac will be combined with USIS' DataX Business, creating a leading U. S. Specialty consumer reporting agency, which will have data on more than 80,000,000 thin file, unbanked and underbanked and credit rebuilding consumers. Together, Teletrac and DataX will leverage the EFX Cloud to make non traditional credit information more accessible to lenders by creating new solutions that use bank transaction data, telco and utility payment data and other alternative data sources for decisioning.

And now I'd like to turn over to John to provide a financial summary on the Aperis acquisition.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Mark. Turning to the financial slides on Slide 16. As Mark indicated earlier, the purchase price for Apres is $1,825,000,000 In conjunction with the acquisition, Equifax will receive a tax benefit with a net present value of approximately $360,000,000 At $1,465,000,000 the multiple pay for Apparition Insights, excluding this tax benefit, is about 23x2021 EBITDA and 19x off 2022 EBITDA. We're very pleased with the financials of the acquisition. Appress Insights revenue for 2021 is expected to be about $150,000,000 up over 30% from 2020.

We expect to see sizable standalone growth in the coming years, while we also expect to deliver $75,000,000 in high margin run rate revenue and data synergies by 2025. We expect EBITDA margins for AppRIS Insights to expand from 40% this year to about 50% in 2025. As we've discussed, the acquisition of AppRIS Insights significantly strengthens the EWS talent solutions and government verticals. Pro form a 2021 revenue and talent solutions, combining EWS and AppRIS Insights would be about $270,000,000 The government vertical on a pro form a basis combining EWS and AppRIS would be over $300,000,000 Combined, the Apris, HealthFX and Teletrac acquisitions are not expected to significantly impact 2021 adjusted EPS. However, in this year's Q3 due to pre financing of the acquisitions, the impact on adjusted EPS is expected to be slightly negative.

Combined, the 3 acquisitions will be strongly accretive to adjusted EPS in 2022. Brian Masters, the Atris Insights Division President, and his leadership team will continue to run the business reporting to Rudy as part of Workforce Solutions. Since joining Apparisk in 2017, Brian has led Apparisk Insights product strategy, successfully pivoting the business towards new growth opportunities in risk management and fraud prevention, growing revenue by 70% and doubling EBITDA. As Mark said earlier, we're excited to have Brian and the rest of the Aperis Insights team join Equifax. The acquisitions of Aperis, Teletrac and HealthFX will be financed with a combination of bank and public debt.

We expect to retain our current BAA2, BBB credit ratings. With regard to our capital allocation for the remainder of 2021 and into early 2022, we plan to focus on integrating the acquisitions we have completed in 2021 and will pause on further large acquisitions over that timeframe as we focus on debt leverage reduction. We currently intend to suspend share repurchases over the same period and hold the dividend flat through 2022. And now I'd like to turn it back over to Mark.

Speaker 3

Thanks, John. Turning to Slide 17, accretive and strategic bolt on M and A is central to Equifax's long term growth framework. We believe bolt on M and A with accretive revenue growth rates and margins that strengthen and broaden Equifax will generate attractive shareholder returns. Our priorities for M and A are clear and the acquisitions we have done are aligned around, number 1, expanding our differentiated data, which is at the core of Equifax. We have scale and unique data assets that we want to expand and leverage with new data elements to drive enhanced decisioning for our customers.

More data drives better decisioning and higher predictability. Appra's Insights brings new and unique data elements to Workforce Solutions. All the acquisitions we have done in 2021 and over the past 3 plus years have delivered new data elements to strengthen Equifax. Number 2, expanding and widening our largest and fastest growing business Workforce Solutions is also a key M and A focus. The Healthy FX, Higher Tech and iQ Verify acquisition strengthened the core of Workforce Solutions Employer Services Business, delivering broader regulatory solutions to HR managers while expanding the twin database.

Appris Insights expands the EWS Data Hub to deliver new solutions in our fast growing talent solutions and government verticals. And number 3, broadening our ID and fraud capabilities in the fast growing digital and e commerce space is an M and A priority. Cowen moved us forward meaningfully with their unique data set and advanced ID and fraud capabilities. AFRIS Insights will also bring new data elements that are additive to our ID and fraud assets. AFRIS count and the 6 other acquisitions that we completed or announced in 2021 will add over $300,000,000 of run rate non mortgage revenue from bolt on M and A, which is the equivalent to 9% of the 2021 non mortgage revenue in the guidance we shared with you 2 weeks ago.

We've taken advantage of our significant outperformance over the past 18 months to reinvest in future growth both organically and with accretive and attractive bolt on M and A to strengthen Equifax for the future. All eight acquisitions we've completed or announced in 2021 align with our key priorities for M and A and Apris Insights checks all three boxes and is a strike zone bolt on acquisition for Equifax. All the acquisitions are accretive to our growth rate with meaningful synergies that will deliver EBITDA and EPS accretion. Moving to Slide 18, the Apparatus Insights acquisition is a strike zone acquisition for Equifax. The acquisition will bolster our strongest and fastest growing business, Workforce Solutions, and further diversify Equifax.

Workforce Solutions will be a market leader in not only income and employment verification space, but also in the criminal data records market. With approximately 75,000,000 new hires across the U. S. Annually, Workforce Solutions will play a key role in providing a host of solutions that include most of the crucial information that goes into the prescreening or onboarding process of new employees. The AWS government vertical will also benefit as federal and state agencies come to Workforce Solutions to provide detail on those applying for and receiving government benefits.

APRIS Insights data combined with Twin Work History creates a leading portfolio of employment, criminal background, medical credentialing and education data. Appris Insights provides data that supports law enforcement operations as well as workplace safety. The Appris Insights customer base is large and broad based. Customers place their trust in Appris Insights data and the people responsible for delivering it, and we're committed to continuing to fill those relationships. The Equifax cloud technology transformation that we've been working on over the last 3 years gives us confidence in bolt on M and A by allowing accelerated integration and recognition of revenue, data and cost synergies.

With over $300,000,000 in run rate revenue from acquisitions completed in 2021, we are reinvesting our strong outperformance to broaden and strengthen Equifax for the future. Wrapping up on Slide 19, we are energized about the new Equifax that is growing faster with a more diverse revenue base. We spent the last 3 years investing in the new EFX Cloud and are starting to see the early signs of the competitive and new product benefits from our cloud investments. Our above market financial performance over the last 2 years has driven our top line, margins and cash and allowed us to reinvest in accretive bolt on acquisitions like Appris Insights and Count that along with the other acquisitions completed in 2021 will add over $300,000,000 of run rate revenue and further diversify Equifax. Workforce Solutions is our largest and fastest growing business with revenue and margins that are highly accretive to Equifax.

Their strong core growth coupled with the Aperis acquisition synergies will drive Workforce Solutions from 40% of Equifax to over 50% in the future, a powerful growth lever for Equifax with Workforce Solutions accretive revenue growth rates and margins. Our strong core growth in non mortgage verticals including FI, identity and fraud, government, employer services, retail and talent solutions, along with the Appris Insights, Count, Teletrac, Health, EFX, HyreTech and iQverify acquisitions in 2021 will further diversify Equifax from roughly 70% non mortgage today to over 75% non mortgage in the future. As John and I mentioned, we'll spend the next few quarters focused on integrating Appris Insight's count and the other 6 acquisitions while we bring down our leverage. We'll also continue to prioritize completing the Equifax cloud to deliver the top line, cost margin and cash flow benefits in 'twenty one, 2022 and the future, while leveraging the Equifax cloud to accelerate our product led focus and new product rollouts. We are still planning to have an Equifax Investor Day this fall where we plan to reinstate our long term financial model and capital allocation framework for the future.

Our Equifax 2023 growth strategy is our compass for the future and centers around leveraging the new Equifax cloud to drive innovation, new products and growth. We are convinced that the Equifax cloud data and technology investment will strengthen our competitiveness, allow us to ingest more data, deliver multi data solutions and accelerate NPI rollouts while driving our top line, reducing our costs and expanding our margins and free cash flow. We are energized about the future of the new eFX as a faster growing and more diverse data analytics and technology company. With that operator, let's open it up for questions.

Speaker 1

Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. Our first question today is from Kevin McVeigh of Credit Suisse. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you so much. Hey, good morning. Congratulations. Hey, Slide 5, just real quick, the direct versus the partner, the split of the revenue there, can you just help us understand that a little bit?

It looks like 30% direct, 70% partner. What are the components of that? Just wanted to understand that a little bit more.

Speaker 4

Yes. So they sell direct. Most of the revenue they generate in Talent Solutions as well as in government flows through and on the government side, flows through partners. And on the talent solutions side flows both direct either direct or through partners. So that the breakdown is different based on whether it's going through government whether it's going through talent solutions.

I don't know, Rudy, anything you'd like to add?

Speaker 3

Maybe I'll just add, John. As I mentioned earlier, we've been a partner of theirs for 3 years. So we would fall in that partner revenue for Appris where we take their data and deliver it to market. And as you know, we have a mix of partner and direct relationships. We're actually much more direct, but we really value the partner relationships that Apprise brings to Equifax.

Speaker 5

Got it. And then just the other interesting thing is it seems like you're aggregating a lot of alternative data. I wonder how does that impact kind of the core USIS business as well? And the reason I say is just it seems like you've really pretty nimbly reinvested a lot of the over performance in mortgage as well as kind of USI AWS this year. But just is there the potential just given the focus on alternative data to enhance USIS as a result of some of these more recent transactions?

Speaker 3

Yes. And as you know, Teletrac is a bolt on for USIS and a very attractive acquisition, the alternative data space. There's a large population of consumers over 60,000,000 that are underbanked, unbanked or thin files. And we acquired a business back in 2018, DataX, that brought some unique data assets there and Teletrac will be quite additive to that with over 80,000,000 records combined. So the addition of alternative data or differentiated data is central to our strategy.

On Page 17, you look at the acquisitions we completed so far this year, every one of them and actually if you add PayNet and DataX and others over the last 3 years, they're all centered around expanding our differentiated data assets. At the heart of Equifax, we're a data analytics technology company and identifying unique differentiated data is at the center of that. And of course, Apres checks that box, account did too. And APRIS has real scale in differentiated data that is really quite unique. And those kind of acquisitions are very attractive to Equifax.

The cloud allows us to integrate those in our single data fabric and then bring new products to market that have multi data solutions on it. So to your question about additional M and A, as we mentioned, we're going to pause on larger M and A over the next several quarters while we focus on integration, but that won't slow us down and watching the marketplace and building a pipeline. And we would like to add more differentiated data to USIS like TeleTrack, like DataX, like PayNet that we've acquired over the last 3 plus years. And of course, strengthening workforce solutions, our strongest business, is also a real priority of ours. And as I mentioned, it's very important to us to continue to diversify.

You mentioned doing acquisitions around mortgage and actually none of our acquisitions have been around mortgage and we've been quite focused on diversifying Equifax, broadly making workforce more stronger, diversifying beyond just FI. If you think about the Equifax of today versus pick your timeframe, we're much more than a credit bureau today with the scale of Workforce Solutions and the scale of our non mortgage businesses like Identity and Fraud, like Workforce Solutions, the Employer Services business we have, the Talent Solutions business, the government vertical, that's very deliberate on our part to continue to diversify Equifax.

Speaker 5

Makes a lot of sense. Congratulations.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Manav Patnaik of Barclays. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Good morning. My question was, it doesn't sound like the data is as proprietary at Everest, but it's more the platform and the technology that's kind of put it all together. So I was just hoping if you could if that is correct and if that platform has some advantages to, I guess, Equifax or how does that get integrated, I guess, is the question?

Speaker 3

Yes. No, I wouldn't characterize it that way, Manav. We think it's they really have quite proprietary data at scale. And that's one of the very real attractions to APRIS. Obviously, the criminal justice data they have is very unique.

They're really the only ones that have at the scale that we're talking about quite meaningfully. Some of the other data elements they have is very valuable like the medical sanctions data and credentialing data is also quite unique. And we're always on the lookout and it's a very important priority of ours to add data that is very unique. And that was one of the key thesis we had when we started engaging with APRS 5, 6 months ago was around the uniqueness of their data sets and that's really a big portion of why we want

Speaker 4

to do the acquisition. In many cases, what makes the data assets unique is the fact that they're real time in nature, right? So although in some cases data can be acquired in other sources over time, but the time period between when APRS would receive it and when others would can be substantially different. And they're in many cases the only party that gets data real time.

Speaker 3

And as you know Manav, that real time decisioning is increasingly important in really every use case we have, just because of the desire, whether it's an employer trying to onboard someone to do it quickly before they maybe take another job between offer and hire. In government services, it's delivering those services instantly versus having someone who's trying to get the services come back multiple times to the state agency office to get those services. So that instant decisioning is a big part of the capabilities that we want to deliver and the cloud investments that we've made really facilitate that. And with regards to integration, we'll be integrating this into the Equifax data fabric, all of the data elements that they have as we complete the integration.

Speaker 6

Got it. And I was hoping you could just address the sources of the $75,000,000 of revenue

Speaker 3

Yes. So, the revenue synergies are really driven around new product solutions that we'll bring to market. It's leveraging our broader footprint in government. As we've talked before, we have Equifax resources, Workforce Solutions resources in many of the large state capitals that is something APPRIS didn't have. So we think we can help them grow.

It's integrating the data for multi data solutions, whether it's in government or in talent. It's a combination of their data assets with ours. What else you add to that, John?

Speaker 4

Real time monitoring. Yes. Monitoring. Increasingly, we think there'll be real time monitoring solutions available that will be an accelerant to our growth as well as theirs, obviously.

Speaker 7

Which will give us access to more records

Speaker 3

to the work number? Correct.

Speaker 6

Okay, got it. And if I can just squeeze in one more, John. Can you give us what Health FX and Teletrac would add because I think those were post your guidance?

Speaker 4

You say that again, Manav, wanted to know

Speaker 3

what HealthDfx and Teletrac would add to our guidance. Yes. So

Speaker 4

we gave a view simply for the rest of the year and we didn't break out the revenue individually by those 2 acquisitions. But as I indicated in the Q3 specifically, right, it's the 3 acquisitions together because of the free financing are going to be slightly dilutive, I think a couple of cents per share.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Toni Kaplan of Morgan Stanley. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 8

Thank you. I wanted to start with a broader question around the background screening industry. I was hoping you could help us understand the differences between your and APRIS' combined offerings compared to what maybe the traditional background screeners are offering like First American or others, for example? And just, I guess, how far do you go into background screening? How far do you want to go into background screening?

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. We don't have interest in being a background screening. The companies you mentioned and others are our partners and Apris' partners and they do a great job. We want to be a data provider to them. And I think that's really the combination of Appris and Equifax will allow us to provide new solutions that can speed up their decisioning so they can be a better partner to their customers.

And that's really our focus there. We have a lot of respect for all the companies you mentioned and all the others that are in the space and we want to be a strong partner to them.

Speaker 8

Perfect. And on Slide 12, you show that you don't have sort of the international drug and vehicle data coverage. Should we think of those as potential future M and A or partnership opportunities? Or do you think you don't really need the full spectrum? And I know you said you're pausing on acquisitions, but I'm just trying to think about it longer term.

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. That's a great question. And I think Tony, we've been clear with you and others that this was a priority of ours to build out these data assets in the data hub and us there both in the criminal justice data, but also in the medical sanctioning data. But our goal is to continue to either through partnerships or through M and A in the future to continue to build out that Equifax, the Workforce Solutions data hub for both the hiring or onboarding space and the government space. And APRIS moves us strongly forward on that.

We've got some great partnerships already. This fast growing space. We like the TAM. When you think this fast growing space. We like the TAM.

When you think about the hiring space being $5,000,000,000 spent to onboard 75,000,000 new employees annually in the United States. The $2,000,000,000 TAM in kind of the government data space that's used to deliver social services. There's a lot of opportunity to grow there and we want to continue investing both organically and inorganically to expand our presence there. And as I mentioned earlier, it also provides great diversification for Equifax in a fast growing market and moves us to be more diverse away from mortgage from 75% to 70% in the future. And then of course, it really strengthens our fastest growing highest margin business Workforce Solutions.

Speaker 8

Makes a lot of sense. Thank you. Congrats on the deal.

Speaker 3

Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Simon Klinch of Atlantic Equities. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 9

Hi, Ivan, and congratulations on this deal. I was wondering if you could expand a little bit more around the cadence of the revenue synergies going forward. And just to make sure I understand this right, I mean, perhaps you could also talk about the underlying growth of that you expect out of APPRIS going forward on top of which those synergies come through?

Speaker 3

Yes. I think we gave you some visibility. APPRIS is a very strong double digit growth. It's not going to be up in the range of 30% this year, which is quite attractive. That's one of the things we like about the business.

And as you know, our M and A criteria is to look for acquisitions that are going to be accretive to Equifax, meaning the revenue growth rate and their 40% margins are above Equifax average, below workforce. But with the synergies, we think there's some real accretion there. You add anything, John?

Speaker 4

Yes. So their organic growth, as we indicated, right, is in north of 15%. We expect it to stay at those levels. And generally the revenue synergies in the 1st year out, so 2022, it takes a little time to ramp. So we will see some synergies next year, but really accelerating as you get to 'twenty three and beyond.

Speaker 3

It's really driven by integrating their data into the Equifax cloud. Obviously, that takes some time. It's much faster than what we would do in our old legacy environment. But those synergies and multi data solutions and new products that we'll have on a combined basis will really flow out of that integration.

Speaker 9

That's really useful. And just a follow-up on that last point. I mean this is, I believe, the biggest deal for a while for you guys. So in terms of preparation and confidence around the integration of that data, is this like the first real asset test of your existing infrastructure?

Speaker 3

No. We've been doing acquisitions for a while, as you know and obviously accelerated meaningfully given our outperformance financially over the last 6 months with the 8 acquisitions we've announced, we've got a lot of confidence in our infrastructure, in the cloud and we're well down the path on the cloud, but still have work to do to finish it and in the early days of reaping the benefits from it organically. But of course, we're starting to see some of the cost savings flow in. And we have a lot of confidence in our ability to in the company's performance to support an acquisition like this, the financial performance and also in our cloud capabilities to integrate it.

Speaker 7

Now our data hub concept is not a concept, it's a reality, it's working and operational

Speaker 10

today.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Kyle Peterson of Needham. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 11

Hey, good morning guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Just wanted to touch a little bit, you guys mentioned the possibility for the margins in this business to expand from around 40% to 50% on an adjusted EBITDA basis over time. How much of that expansion is driven by some of these kind of higher margin revenue and data synergies? And how much of that is just some kind of natural efficiencies and scale benefits on the cost side of the equation?

Speaker 3

Yes. The bulk is going to be around data and product and revenue synergies. This is a business we're going to invest in. We didn't do this for cost synergies or cost efficiencies. We really did it because of the uniqueness of the data assets, the power of the Workforce Solutions Data Hub by having these multiple data elements that are anchored off our income and employment data that has such scale and such value, that's really the focus of the acquisition.

Speaker 11

Got it. That's helpful. And then maybe just a follow-up on the organic growth. I know you guys mentioned it's expected to be like 30% this year and have been north of 15% historically. What has been the biggest driver behind their growth historically?

Is it adding more states and more data sources? Are there opportunities, maybe add some non medical like professional kind of services and licensure info? Like what do you guys see as kind of the big drivers of organic growth in that business moving forward?

Speaker 3

It's really been around new solutions that they brought to the marketplace. So you saw the diversity of AFRIS' revenue sources from the different verticals that they play in. But between the hiring space or talent solutions and the government space, it's really bringing new solutions to market. And we've talked before about most of the data that we sell in the, for example, in the government space and Apercell in the government space is used for the initial delivery of social services and that we both see meaning APRIS and Workforce Solutions a real opportunity in program integrity or fraud space. And I mentioned a recent test that APRS had done with their data, their criminal justice data in one of the large U.

S. States actually about a month ago that showed a meaningful amount of unemployment insurance fraud that the state is now going to address. And that's kind of a new area for them and that we're both going to be leaning into. And when we think about the synergies between the two businesses, it's really those multi data solutions that make it easier for our customers, whether it's a government agency, a background screener, someone's using the data to really move up that process. And we hear from our customers on all verticals that speed is really important.

And that's why the instant decisioning is so valuable in having the scale data that can really provide that quickly. If you think about today's hiring market, you know the number roughly 75,000,000,000 people are going to change jobs. There's so many open jobs today. When an employer puts an offer out, they typically will then start a background screen. They want to do that quickly, and they want to do it instantly so they can get that individual on the floor because they probably don't have enough people in the restaurant, in the store, in the hotel to be servicing their customers.

So that speed is really, really valuable and a big part of what's driven Apprys' growth as well as the scale of the uniqueness of their data set.

Speaker 11

All right. That's super helpful. Thanks guys.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Hamzah Mazari of Jefferies.

Speaker 10

This is Mario Cortellacci filling in for Hamzah. Maybe

Speaker 7

just give us

Speaker 10

a quick overview of how the contracts are structured for this business. Are they typically annual contracts, multi year? And then what kind of pricing have they gotten historically? And is there any pricing opportunity for these products going forward?

Speaker 3

Yes, they have a wide array of commercial relationships as you might imagine. I wouldn't characterize their commercial relationships as being distinctive or different from what you would find in workforce solutions or other relationships. We don't disclose pricing. They're really leverage has been around new solutions or new products that they're bringing to the marketplace just like workforce solutions that's really been driving their business and we expect it to going forward. And in particular, as we start bringing multi data solutions to market that combines their data and ours, we've already started that with the partnership that we've had over the last 3 years.

As we said, we've been buying their data for the last 3 years and then bringing it to market along with our data and that'll just be much advanced with a single data fabric and integrating their capabilities and unique data sets with workforce solutions and to bring those kind of solutions to market.

Speaker 10

Great. And then just my follow-up is on just the mix of transactional versus subscription for the business. You gave some color on prescreening and post hiring. But just can you give us a sense for what the mix of the transactional versus subscription is and what

Speaker 3

the growth rates have been

Speaker 10

for those? And you also mentioned that it sounds like post hiring is a big opportunity as well. I guess, how big do you think that can be as part of the pro form a mix over time?

Speaker 3

Yes. I'll take the second half and let John come back on the first half of your question. So I would think about both the post hiring and then I would also think on the government side around post receiving those social services that monitoring, continuous monitoring. So you think about the hiring side, if there's jobs out there where it's a requirement to do monitoring of whether there's a criminal issue with someone who's working for you or medical issue from a credentialing standpoint, there's different requirements. We just think that that's got an opportunity to continue to grow as employers, for example, focus on keeping their workplaces safe.

On the government side, when you think about the initial delivery of the social services, that's the area that we and APRS have been focused on. But the monitoring to make sure that someone still qualifies for those social services over time is a big opportunity as evidenced by that example I shared where there was some meaningful unemployment fraud taking place in a large state. So those are real opportunities going forward. You want to take

Speaker 4

the first step, John? Sure. And they obviously have a mix of both transactional and subscription, but obviously as with all of our businesses, our focus is on driving more transactional revenue as we go forward, and that will continue to be the focus we have.

Speaker 10

Great. Thank you so much. Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question is from George Mihalos of Cowen. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 12

Hi, guys. This is Philip on for George. Earlier in the slides, you had done a lot of talking about expanding the government side of the business, but now that you're in all the state capitals. And currently, the revenue is broken out 60% commercial, 40% government. Should we expect that a lot of the revenue is going to shift more to the government side as you start to bring your relationships in with the state capitals and federal agencies over time?

Or just how do

Speaker 7

you see that developing? Thank you.

Speaker 3

We think government is a very attractive space for us. We've got a scale business there that's led by Rudy and his team and of course Brian and the APPRSS team have a very attractive business. We think there's some opportunities together. I mentioned earlier that leveraging our commercial footprint and government relations footprint is much larger than APRIS. So we think that's going to be a positive for the AppRIS team as we continue to grow.

Multi data solutions is another opportunity for us going forward. And of course on the talent solutions side, we expect that to continue to grow. And we talked about the area of program integrity on the government side as being, we believe a growth opportunity around fraud or really identifying individuals that really don't qualify anymore, shouldn't be receiving the social services. So that's an area of growth for both Rudy and his team at Workforce Solutions in our income and employment data and also for the APPRSS team.

Speaker 4

And just as a reminder, we've seen really nice growth in both government and talent, but our Talent Solutions business obviously has been growing extremely fast over the past year. So combined, we've seen really good performance in Talent Solutions. I think

Speaker 3

it was up 150% in the Q2. We talked about in the Q2 earnings call some of the new solutions that we're bringing to market and we're going to continue to roll those out. And Rudy and his team have a continued pipeline of new solutions to address that hiring process. But then the APRIS data allows us to bring even more combined solutions together that will benefit our customers and really drive the instant decisioning that a lot of solutions require and our customers are after.

Speaker 7

And we don't see this either or. The total addressable market in talent is sizable, is far larger than government. And the speed to implement solutions in the talent solutions area is much faster. And as Mark very, very well said, speed is of the essence when somebody is hired. So I would think that in the near term, we will see a higher proportion of revenues coming from talent because of the job openings, how fast people move in that area and the total addressable market.

Speaker 3

Maybe Rudy, I should add one last point. We mentioned it earlier is that just as a reminder, we mentioned it on I think every earnings call for the last year or so. But our new large SSA contract, which went live last week, That's a new government contract for us that's sizable, which is why we're talking about it. And we expect that to be $50,000,000 of incremental revenue at run rate in 2022. So that's obviously going to power our government vertical along with all the other things we've already talked about and of course, APRIS is going to help that.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Jeff Meuler of Baird. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 7

Yes. Thank you. I guess a follow-up on the Aperit's competition and the role in the value chain of the employment screening providers. Is it that the employment screening partners are that their value adds are predominantly lower margin, which is why you want to be the data hub provider and or are they bundling multiple providers because they would also want to use PRIS' competitors to aid in the completeness of data, just not totally understanding the interplay of all of those things? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. Background screening just doesn't seem like a space for us. There's some great players in the space that operated extremely well. And it's we think outside kind of our game. We're a data analytics technology company and having data in multiple verticals, whether it's identity and fraud or mortgage or credit cards or in the hiring space or in the government space where we want to play.

For the background screener is that what's really unique about the APPRIS data is the scale of the data set and the fact as John mentioned that it's current and online and there really aren't other solutions like that. There are other solutions that actually will go to the courts and pull actual court records that are used in the actual hiring process. APRIS has a business that does that. There's actually multiple companies that do that. And I believe some of the background screeners do that themselves.

But what's unique about Appraisal is the scale of that initial data element that will really generate that second step to verify at the court level, either through an electronic process or through what they call a court runner to actually verify that information.

Speaker 7

Got it. And then on the fraud and ID synergy potential, I hear you loud and clear on the government program integrity side of it. Do you see meaningful fraud and ICE synergies outside of the government verticals from this data as well? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes, Jeff. It's just additional more data signals around individuals. So the more data you can accumulate and we're as you know through our account acquisition that we made in the Q1, we're building out a data set that combines all of the signals we have. Kount has just massive amounts of data from the e commerce space. But of course, we have massive amounts of data from Financial Services around Mark Vigor and so many different elements of how I operate as an individual.

We haven't worked for solutions on my the fact that I'm employed by Equifax and then APRIS will have other data signals on individuals that will be accretive to that identity and fraud beyond some of the program integrity solutions that we talked about in the government vertical.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Mark. Congrats on the deal.

Speaker 4

Thanks.

Speaker 1

The next question is from Craig Huber of Huber Research. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 13

Thank you. I assume you would agree it's not probably too much of a stretch to say it's unlikely you guys to spend $1,800,000,000 on an acquisition of this size plus roughly say another $1,000,000,000 or so, these are the smaller acquisitions year to date that you've announced. My take is, I assume you wouldn't disagree with this, you guys must be feeling pretty good about your own legacy company outlook here, how you're performing in the middle of this pandemic and stuff, the outlook is not concerning you too much. So in other words, you feel comfortable to do an acquisition of this size plus they have a bolt on ones at very attractive interest rates out there right now. Is that a fair statement?

Speaker 3

Yes. Craig, we try to be clear that we feel like the company is performing exceptionally well. Our outperformance in 2020 was very strong at 18%. In the first half, we're up 26% in revenue and we guided a strong double digit number in the Q2 for the year that we feel confident in. You add to that our investment in the cloud, we really spent the last 3 years really rebuilding Equifax from a technology standpoint.

And that cloud investment and capabilities gives us a lot of confidence in M and A. And as you point out, we clearly have a very strong M and A pace over the last 6 months. I wouldn't think about that as a Equifax run rate. There's perhaps a small element of catching up over the last couple of years, while we were building the cloud in 2018, 2019 2020, we did some small bolt ons, but we were in the marketplace. As I mentioned, using Apprys as an example, we've been talking we've been a partner of Apprys for 3 years and we've been talking to them probably for 2 and then really serious discussions for close to 6 months around this transaction.

But just to put a point on your question, we believe and I was clear in my comments earlier that bolt on M and A that's accretive and strategic to Equifax and we've laid out kind of the criteria not only in this call, but I've done it consistently since I joined 3 years ago of unique data assets we think are very attractive to drive shareholder value, whether it's strengthening workforce solutions, our strongest business, we think that's attractive for shareholder value and strengthening identity and fraud, which is a fast growing macro. Those are the three areas we've been focused on for M and A and you should expect us to and we've been clear on that too that M and A will be a part of our long term framework when we put it back in place going forward. And you shouldn't expect it to be at this pace, but it will be a meaningful part.

Speaker 13

And also just talk about the numbers a little bit here. I think you guys said this acquisition has grown 15% organically on a historical basis. Do you expect that you'll keep it around those levels going forward? Plus, I think you said you think you'll have about $75,000,000 of annualized revenue synergies by 2025 layered on top of that 15% growth. Is that correct?

Speaker 4

Yes. We said organic north of 15% this year and we said into next year and then we also said the $75,000,000 Yes.

Speaker 13

Great. Thank you, guys.

Speaker 1

Our next question is from Andrew Nicholas of William Blair. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 14

Hi, good morning. This is Trevor Romeo in for Andrew. Thanks for taking our questions and congrats on the announcement. Just wanted to quickly follow-up on APRIS data assets. Just kind of to clarify, are the integrations with jails, for example, are those exclusive data agreements?

And are there kind of barriers preventing others from collecting the same data? Or is it more so just kind of the real time integration capability that nobody else has? Just any more color

Speaker 3

on your thoughts, that would really help. No, those are unique relationships. They got over 2,800 of them. They're I believe all exclusive or generally exclusive arrangements. And what's unique about it is 2,800 and the fact that they are exclusive and that they are online and instant is very valuable and very unique and that's part of the attractiveness of the scale of their data set in making the acquisition.

Speaker 14

Great. That's really helpful. And then just wondering if you see potential to expand EpiRust internationally. You guys obviously have a presence in a variety of regions. I don't know if there are any barriers or structural differences across the case, but just wondering if you've given any thought at this point?

Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yes. It's a great question, one that we haven't thought about over the last 5 months and a couple of months when we were doing the acquisition about expanding Apprise internationally. As you know, we've got a footprint internationally over $1,000,000,000 of revenue outside the U. S. And in 25 countries.

And we've talked before that workforce solutions, which will be where Afris will be embedded, is now in 3 markets outside the United States, Canada, Australia and India. And we have aspirations for sure to take workforce into other markets. At this time, we don't have any plans on NAPPAS.

Speaker 14

All right. Thanks again.

Speaker 1

There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Dorian Hair for closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Thank you for joining the call and for

Speaker 4

your interest in Equifax and

Speaker 2

the EPRSS acquisition. This does conclude the call. We look forward to hosting you next in the fall to review our Q3 results and to providing you with more information on our upcoming Investor Day.

Speaker 12

This concludes today's conference.

Powered by