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J.P. Morgan Ultimate Services Investor Conference 2024

Nov 14, 2024

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Good afternoon. I'm Andrew Steinman, Business Information Service Analyst at JPMorgan. This is the Ultimate Services Investor Conference. This is the Info Services track. This is the Equifax Fireside Chat. I hope everyone's in the right room. I'm just going to make a quick advertisement for our Information Services Data Book, which is our quarterly primer that we publish quarterly and with this conference. This is one of our exciting interviews of the day. Mark Begor is sitting next to me, CEO John Gamble, to his right, and Trevor Burns and I are here. We're going to have 30 minutes together. I'm going to ask questions, but you could, of course, imagine I'm going to ask you to ask questions as well. Mark, you know we're sitting a week after the election. My question is, does a Republican sweep change your view of the trajectory of Equifax's business?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

I don't think it changes the trajectory, but it's certainly positive. You know, the Republican focus likely on less regulation, keeping taxes low, hopefully getting inflation under control. There's still some work to be done there. I think it's good for business, and that's good for Equifax. There'll obviously be a likely regime change at the CFPB. They're a strong regulator under Director Chopra. There was a strong regulator under President Trump's first term. It'll be a strong regulator going forward, but likely a bit different tone, perhaps, than it has been the last four years with Director Chopra. So, you know, we think that's a positive for us also.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Isn't there some negatives? I mean, you said inflation under control. There surely is a vow for tariffs. Isn't there at least a little bit of a mixed message, or do you think it's just positive?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

I think, and I don't want to get partisan, but versus the alternative?

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

No, no, no. What do we have? What do we have right now?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah. From the chair I sit in as CEO of Equifax, how it impacts us, I think it's net positive.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. Fair enough. And you think it's net positive, but one of your big businesses is mortgage. Interest rates are coming down.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Slowly.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Slowly. But also what I'm saying about, if tariffs go through like they're being discussed, might interest rates come down?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

More slowly.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Slowly. Yeah.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's something we're watching closely. You may remember, Andrew, we talked about on our earnings call two weeks ago that in September, when the ten-year came down and mortgage rates came down, we saw a lift in activity. So there's clearly pent-up demand that's in the marketplace. As you know, we've sized that. We use 2015 to 2019 as kind of a normal level of mortgage activity. We're 50% below that. So there's a lot of pent-up demand around the purchase side, as well as around refis. When we got into October and the Fed dropped rates, but inflation came out and the ten-year went up again, we saw that little bit of lift in September drop off again.

And when we take kind of current run rates for mortgage and run it out through 2025, you know, we're something in the kind of mid-single-digit increase year over year. And as you point out, you know, inflation feels like it's going to be a bit more stubborn. I think your firm is forecasting that. You know, it doesn't feel like it's coming down. It's hard to kind of predict how much of a rate change do we need to see meaningful activity. But we were encouraged by the fact that when there was a reduction in the mortgage rate, we saw an uptick in the latter weeks of September. But of course, that's dampened out. Would you add to that, John?

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

Just since the earnings release, we've seen rates go up a bit. We have seen mortgage weaken. That's continued to happen as rates moved higher, kind of the inverse of what we saw in September. We've seen some weakening activity there. I think it's just important to realize, even in a flat mortgage market, Equifax performs extremely well in mortgage. We think our EWS business can grow very nicely, high singles to 10%. Obviously, our USIS mortgage business grows substantially faster than that, given the price increases we're seeing from a significant partner, as well as the price increases we can drive as well. We feel like even in a flat mortgage market, we perform extremely well. We are seeing certainly pressure on mortgage and increased pressure even since the earnings release.

As we look to 2025, one thing we want to reference to people is we continue to think we're going to perform very, very well in 2025, even in a mortgage market that could be more muted. And as we look forward, when we think about margins, our expectation is that we'll continue to be able to deliver the very good performance we're talking about on margins with 50 basis points of growth per year. And then we also talked about that we executed a restructuring in the Q3 that should drive incremental savings for us into 2025. We talked about $70 million.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

That restructuring was from our cloud completion.

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

From cloud completion, absolutely. We talked about $70 million of spending reduction, which probably results in the majority of that being a reduction in expense. So given the normal 50 basis point type of acceleration in margins that we would normally generate, plus that incremental, I think something $40-50 million potentially related to the cloud reductions that we already took, that should give us the ability to grow margins next year. It's something approaching 100 basis points, something under 100 basis points, but approaching.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Right. So you're all lined up for a strong 2025, even if we don't get mortgage recovering, but if we do, it will be upside from there.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

And Andrew, just as a reminder, is that when we think about that mortgage recovery, which we think is just a matter of when, not if, as rates come down because they're at 20-year highs, we size that for you and our investors of being north of $1 billion of incremental revenue just from the mortgage market recovery back to what we call normal, very high incremental margins. Think about $700 million plus of EBITDA. And on today's pricing, we'll update that for 2025 when we get there. But on today's pricing, that's $4 a share. We're running the company, not assuming there's a mortgage market recovery, meaning we're investing the amounts in the company that we need to run to grow it in technology, in people, in product. Said differently, we would expect that mortgage market recovery when it comes to drop through.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

I understand.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

It'd be incremental EPS, incremental EBITDA, incremental cash flow.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Right. And do interest rates need to go back to kind of 2015 to 2019 average levels for you to realize that 4%? Because a lot of it has to do with interest rates.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah, it's a great question. We don't think so. We think the consumers have been through clearly a very heavy rate shock. We've never had interest rates go up in this short time frame in really our lifetimes. Rates more than doubled over a 24-month period. So I think the consumers trying to sort through those that own a home, when do I sell it? Because I know I want a bigger home. Those that have a big home and want to downsize, when do I sell it? Because I want to get a smaller home. So there's probably some element of getting used to these rates. From my perspective, that lift we saw in September with a fairly small change in rates, I think is a reflection there's a lot of pent-up demand.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

So you're saying change of rates, direction of rates is more important than the exact level of rates.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah. And it's hard to tell how much you need to really get the activity going. The other point is, you know, the mortgage market is made up of purchase activity. That's the biggest part. People buying a home, either for the first time or upgrading a home or downsizing in a home. Then you've got a refi market that's sizable. And there's really two flavors of refi. One's rate refi, one's cash-out refi. Cash-out refi, the capacity for that, because home price appreciation has increased so much over the last really three years, there's over $29 trillion of untapped equity in people's homes. And a consumer many times will trade even a 7% mortgage for a 15% or a 13% or 12% auto loan, meaning doing debt consolidation with debt equity there. So that's going to be a positive going forward.

And then we're building at these higher rates, some element of refi, people that have taken mortgages out at the 6%, 7%. As rates come down, if you get 25, 50 basis points of reduction, you have a population that's in the money for a rate refi. Anything else on that, John?

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

No, I think you covered it well. Yeah.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

So we just sort of established it a little hard to call the mortgage market for 2025. Think about Verifier, which obviously is your best business. Do you think Verifier non-mortgage organic revenue growth is set to accelerate from here into next year? So I'm not talking about Q4. I'm saying going forward. And what would be the drivers of that, again, on a non-mortgage basis?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah. So non-mortgage, as you know, is the bulk of Equifax. And it's also the bulk of EWS and the Verifier business. And when we talk non-mortgage, you remember in Verifier, which is our income and employment business, we have a large mortgage business. We also sell the income and employment data into auto, some into cards. It's used in personal loans quite broadly. It's also used, as everyone knows, in the background screening space, where we sell the job title and the work history on individuals to the background screeners. And then we have a very large business in government. I won't go through all the pieces. But your question was, what do we expect the long-term growth of our non-mortgage businesses? We expect those to be in that 13-15% kind of long-term range. Said differently, growing twice the rate of Equifax.

We expect it to grow much faster than USIS and EWS into that double-digit range. One of the many drivers in the non-mortgage growth is our government vertical. It's increasingly becoming our largest vertical in EWS and one of the largest businesses in Equifax. When we use the term government, we sell the verification of income to agencies in the federal government that are used for the delivery of social services: food stamps, rent support, childcare support. There's 100 million, roughly, consumers in the U.S. individuals in the U.S. that receive social services: rent support, childcare support, food care support, medical support. They generally receive five to seven different services. That's about a $5 billion TAM of principally manual verifications that are being done principally by the state agencies that deliver those social services.

That business, for us, is exiting the year at a $800 million, roughly, run rate. So a very large part of Equifax. And over the last three years, that business has way outgrown the 13%-15%, Andrew, as you know. The CAGR over the last three years is above 40% in that business. So substantial growth as we've been penetrating into that $5 billion TAM for the $4 billion-plus that we don't have. So that's a business that we go into 2025, 2026, 2027, 2028, because of the large TAM, we expect that to outgrow the 13%-15%. So that's one of the big Verifier non-mortgage drivers for us that's above Workforce Solutions' long-term growth rate.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

So our clients are starting to get their EWS price increases for 2025. Obviously, there's no easy way for me to aggregate up what it is, but I definitely know the numbers are getting communicated now. Do you feel like going into 2025, this might be a year of normal price increases? And if it's not, why and what area?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah. And you want to talk Equifax or EWS or both?

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Just EWS.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Okay. Because we raise prices everywhere.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

When I say EWS, I really mean Verifier.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we take prices up across all of Equifax, including EWS. We generally do it on one-one. Most of our contracts in EWS and Equifax are one year long, one year in nature. So we can do those annual price increases. Government is more multi-year. So we'll have just maybe one quick second on that. Government contracts can be two, three to five years. And we have escalators in those. So we know what the price increase is. We pre-negotiate those in our multi-year contracts. So in 2025 in EWS, I would think about it as being a normal pricing year. Over the long term, in our 13%-15% long-term growth rate framework for EWS, we have a couple of points, think three-four, of price in the long-term framework.

And I think that's the right way to think about how we think about normal pricing in that business. So we have meaningful pricing leverage. We're measured about it because we're delivering a lot of value. And we take it up on one-one every year.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Would talent fall into that normal range too?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yep, 100%.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. Any worries now that First Advantage and Sterling merger closed? Obviously, they presented this morning here. They have the ambition of being, let's call it somewhat disruptive.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah. They're both big customers. I say both quite deliberately. We know Scott very well. And we know Sterling very well. Obviously, them coming together. We have strong relationships with them and the other background screeners. First Advantage has some level of a database, I think, as you know, that they've been building from their manual verifications, keeping the data elements. I think that's quite accretive to them. But they still do a lot of business with Equifax. Because of the broad depth that we have in our data set, we have over 600 million jobs in our data set. As you know, we keep every record. So we would expect to continue to have a very strong relationship with the combined company, as well as the rest of the background screeners.

And just jumping back in the talent vertical, which is where we principally sell our employment verification, which is really job history, that's done at a background screen. That's a roughly $400 million business for us in a $3-$4 billion TAM. So there's still a lot of growth potential. I think, as you know, we've been adding other data elements like education, which is verified in a lot of background screens. We bought Appriss Insights a couple of years ago. We're the only data set on incarceration data, which is used in every background screen, also used in government social services as a part of that verification. And we're looking to build out other data assets so we can be a more valuable partner to the background screening space.

And we're also working to bring other data assets we don't have either through acquisition or through partnerships to build out a data hub. For example, we have some medical credentialing data that's very deep. There's a lot of data used when a doctor, dentist, nurse, health practitioner gets a new job. There's a lot of credentialing data that's used along with incarceration and their job history. We've got some of that from Appriss Insights. We'd like to either partner or buy to really build out that full data set. Those are examples of where we're trying to add to our capabilities in that talent vertical.

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

I think we've done a lot to add the capability to allow our customers to bundle themselves and for them to get volume discounts, to have the ability to make sure that they're comfortable with the level of net price increase, revenue increase to Equifax that's being generated by buying more information, buying more education, buying more criminal background checks from Equifax. So we can be a bigger vendor, drive greater penetration for us. They get better pricing. But we have our revenue continue to grow the way we'd like it to grow.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Yeah, I totally like the penetration of verification areas. The thing that bothers me is, obviously, we only really know about the two public companies, but they keep on getting weak base revenues. Their volumes are low. They have trouble finding a bottom, really. I just don't understand why that hasn't kind of clicked through on your numbers. And I know your numbers have been growing.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

We've had impact there, for sure. If the hiring market slows, I think everyone in the room knows there's generally in the neighborhood of 70 million people a year in the U.S. change jobs. It can go down to kind of the mid-60s. It can go up north of 70. But there's a base load of people that are changing jobs very consistently. Each of those job changes is a background check, which is good for our customers and good for Equifax. We saw, and maybe I'll just get a little more tactical, we saw, and I think they saw, because we talked to them in kind of mid-September, a real downdraft in activity, meaning companies were tightening their belt around hiring, perhaps coming into the election, perhaps coming into the new year.

We've seen in many cases if you go back through COVID, but in different economic environments, when there's an industry that's doing layoffs for different competitive reasons, they have a hiring freeze-on. They're generally not hiring people if you're laying people off. So we definitely see that. So we saw a drop in September that continued in October that's still continuing, meaning that companies feel like they're still being conservative around new hires, which creates background screening volume. As we get past the election, it still feels like that's happening going into the year. Now, the way we outgrow the underlying market is some of our new products. We penetrate some of the customers that are not doing business with us in the background screening space. Remember, the TAM is $3-plus billion. We've got $400 million. So we think there's room to grow in there.

Pricing, that happens on one-on-one. But that's what's driving record growth. So we have higher hit rates, meaning we can deliver more of those historical histories of individuals' employment. Because remember, one of the attributes we get in the 50 attributes every pay period is someone's job title. So we have a digital resume on the average American. I think we have seven jobs on the average American. Obviously, in some areas, there's people change jobs very rapidly, a couple of times a year. And others, white-collar workers, maybe less change. But every week, every pay period, we're building up that data set. So it makes it even more valuable, as you point out, from hit rates.

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

Despite the fact that we're seeing the weakening in the market, it's actually probably gotten a little even weaker since the earnings release.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

I know.

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

That's what we think we can continue to do is add more smaller background screeners to build out our share. So we think we have real opportunity to do that. We have good positions, as Mark said, with larger background screeners. We think a lot of opportunity as you move down in size.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. That makes sense. Something that I've been super impressed with is the addition of payroll and HR software partners to contribute records to TWN. This year has just been amazing. My question is, because this year was so amazing, are there still larger, let's call them sizable payroll processes, HR software companies that don't have an income partner and they might want to sign up with an income partner? That's sort of question one. And then question number two, do you really need to start pushing the needle on 1099 sources and pensioners? Because maybe it's going to be harder to add partners surely as amazingly as you did this year.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah, the answer to both is yes. Maybe just sizing for the rest of the room. By our math, there's roughly 225 million income-producing Americans in the U.S. every week, and that's made up of non-farm payroll or W-2 income, which is about. I'm going to round up, 160 million. I think it's 159 million people. Andrew, as you know, there's about 40, 50, 60 million self-employed individuals in the U.S., and that includes doctors, dentists, lawyers, but also the gig workers. DoorDash, Uber, drivers is in that 40, 50, 60 million, and then there's about 25, 30 million of defined benefit pensioners, and that's income to that defined benefit pension when they apply for a credit card, a loan, a mortgage, so we're chasing the 225 plus million Americans that receive income today. We've got over half of that today.

We grew, as you know, in the Q3, 10% or 12%. We're up kind of double-digit year to date. We've been up close to double-digit the last five years in growing our records. We get our records two ways, and Andrew asked the question. I'm just trying to frame for everyone. We get our records through partnerships, and we'll pay a rev share to a partner, and a partner, as Andrew pointed out, could be a payroll processor or could be an HR software company that has software installed with a company that's using that to manage their own payroll. In the U.S., more than 50% of payroll is done in-house as opposed to an outsource so you have to have multiple strategies to get to it so half of our records come through partnerships.

The other half of our records, we get through direct relationships where our Employer Solutions business that sits inside of Workforce Solutions is about a $400 million business, and we deliver regulated services to HR managers, and they'll outsource to Equifax their unemployment claims management, their I-9 validation for incoming employees. We do W-2 management, tax documents for companies. We do HCA, healthcare eligibility management, so all those regulated services, and a part of that relationship, we will get their payroll records and do the income and employment verification for them for free.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Right. It's a Trojan horse. I mean, data is the most valuable part.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Totally. And it's a decent business. We've been investing in it for the obvious reason.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Make a margin on it.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Totally. So back to Andrew's question about growing the records. The other change we made in December last year is we had a leader that was responsible for records, talent, and our employer business. And obviously, two big businesses and a big initiative in records. We split that up. The leader, who's one of our stronger leaders inside of Workforce Solutions, now just does records for really the obvious reason. We want to continue driving that engine because it's so powerful. And remember why it's so powerful for us. When we add a new payroll record we don't have, we monetize it that day directionally because we're getting inquiries from our customers for every applicant. And when you think the breadth of our industries we're participating in, you're getting high.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

That day and going forward.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Totally. So you've got someone applying for a mortgage. Today, we don't have the record. We add new records tomorrow. We monetize that application that comes in or that inquiry. In government social services, those are coming into us as we add records. We monetize those. Someone's getting a new job. Someone's applying for an auto loan, a personal loan. So the validation is super strong. So your question around going after the records, we're very focused on continuing to drive W-2 additions. We're continuing both through our direct relationships with employer and through partnerships. I'll come back to your point around what kinds of partners. We've also got a big focus on the 1099, the self-employed. That's a different strategy to go after those. It's direct to companies that are employing those. It's tax preparation companies. Different ways you can get that 1099.

The pension is either to companies that are still doing defined benefit pension payments themselves or to some of the, in essence, a pension payroll processor that's doing that on an outsource basis. So to your question on partners, historically, we've had a big focus on the payroll processors. We've most recently moved. We've been working on this for quite some time, but we had some success. I think it was public knowledge that Workday and Equifax announced a new partnership around their payroll records about 45 days ago. That was really our first big HR software company. We want to go after the other HR software companies that are out there. And you think about it, Oracle and some of the others that are providing those kind of platforms to companies.

So both payroll processors, HR software companies, think of pension administrators as being another partner kind of group for those pension records and others as we go forward. So we're quite energized around the progress that we've made on records. And maybe just a last point, Andrew. As you know, we've added over a dozen new partners this year.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

It's been an amazing year.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

The partners in the H2, including a scale partner like Workday, principally are going to benefit, bring records on board in 2025, so it gives us visibility of those additional records. Remember, as you're growing your record base, you're growing your revenue because we're able to monetize them across all of our different verticals, so it helps give us some visibility to the future, and our path is we've got another 100-plus million payroll records to go after for those that we don't have that are producing income in the U.S..

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. John, do you think when you look at 2026, which really kind of gives you time to get all the cloud benefits, that Equifax's free cash flow conversion should be typical for the sector? Just FYI, typical free cash flow conversion is something under 100% towards 100% net income, 60% of EBITDA. By 2026, should we be a normal free cash flowing info services company?

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

We gave a cash conversion target of 95% plus. We would expect as we get into 2026, because our capital will have come down, by then we'll probably see depreciation running at levels above capital spending. We think we should see our free cash flow conversion be above our 95% metric, or at least at by 2020.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Or by the end of that year.

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

I think probably within 2026. I'm not trying to give guidance here, right? But as we look forward, we would think we have a very good opportunity to be delivering our 95% type of levels as we get into 2026.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Andrew, you remember a couple of weeks ago with our Q3 earnings release. We—I would call it—updated our long-term framework to add a cash conversion metric, which we didn't have before. As John pointed out, we said over the long term, we expect to have a cash conversion of 95% plus. It was intentional to put plus on there because we expect to be north of that as we get out there. As you know, as we get into 2025, with the cloud substantially complete, we'll end the year at 90% of our rev in our new Google Cloud environment, which is a huge milestone after so many years of working on this, that we'll really be able to bring our CapEx down. Then with the margin expansion John talked about of the directionally 100 basis points next year, our EBITDA expands.

We expect to have substantial excess free cash flow. I don't know if we'll get to it in your.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Don't say it now. I think it's going to be the trifecta, right?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Capital allocation.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

We're going to have everything, right? We're going to have the smart acquisitions. We're going to have a share buyback. And we're going to increase the dividend in line with earnings.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

So Andrew gave really the punchline. So as we move to 2025 and 2026, 2027, CapEx will come down. We'll still continue to invest in the company. But CapEx for Equifax in 2025 and beyond, as we complete the cloud, becomes CapEx that's really fully offense. Now, I don't want to give the impression that the cloud investments we made is an offense. That differentiates Equifax going forward. But the CapEx we spend in 2025, 2026, 2027 is going to be on new products. New products are going to drive our top line, drive our innovation. So something like 6% of rev in CapEx, directionally $500 million a year, as Andrew pointed out, is a part of our long-term framework. We expect to continue to do bolt-on M&A that strengthens the core of Equifax, very deliberately using the term bolt-on. We're not looking for big acquisitions.

We frame it to be one to two points of rev growth per year over the long term, which you think about as $50-$100 million of rev, which directionally is about $500-$600 million of cash to buy companies that deliver that. A great proof point is Boa Vista that we bought last July, over $150 million of rev in our P&L. And that was $600 million. So $500 million of CapEx, call it $500-$600 million of bolt-on M&A on an annual basis. Then the balance of the excess free cash flow, our intention is to start returning that to shareholders through growing our dividend. We expect our EPS over the long term to be up strong double digits. We would expect our dividend to go in a strong growth rate on an annual basis. Then the excess free cash flow.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

You mentioned Boa V ista. Which should that grow long term?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Boa Vista.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Or Brazil total.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah, Brazil and Boa Vista, we think the market itself is growing kind of in the high single, low double digits. We would expect Boa Vista to do the same, much like our Latin American business. So our international long-term revenue growth framework is seven to nine. We would expect Boa Vista to be at the high end or above that over the long term.

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

Back on cash flow, just a reminder, holding our leverage at two and a half times, given the very strong growth we'll have in EBITDA, generates a significant amount of cash that we can add through leverage that allows us to stay strongly investment grade to support acquisitions, but also substantially support return of capital to shareholders. It's not only that very strong cash conversion, but it's also a lot of capability related to the increased EBITDA while holding our leverage.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Do we have a quick question if we have in the audience? Has to be a quick question. Not a two-part question.

Moderator

Yeah, the microphone's free.

Ram Sampath
Analyst, TD Asset Management

Ram from TD Asset Management. Can you talk about FICO increasing prices by 41%, right? $5.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

$4.95, actually.

Ram Sampath
Analyst, TD Asset Management

$4.95, yeah.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

I think they said that to you.

Ram Sampath
Analyst, TD Asset Management

But how can you take it on? It will take a hit on your EBITDA margins, right?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

It actually.

Ram Sampath
Analyst, TD Asset Management

Because you cannot increase as much as.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

We typically will take something, a supplier increase like that, and then mark it up to protect our margins. We did that in 2024. We did that in 2023 at a much lower price increase from a supplier like that. In 2022, a much lower price increase, same thing. It's a positive for Equifax going forward because we'll be able to pass that through into our credit file pricing.

John Gamble
CFO, Equifax

A very strong positive in dollars, right? In terms of cash flow dollars, that's available for M&A in return.

Ram Sampath
Analyst, TD Asset Management

Got it. If I can ask one more. Tri-merge to bi-merge, how are you thinking about that? Would that be an impact in terms of overall revenue generation for you?

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Yeah, just as a reminder, the FHFA is still in a comment period around that idea, and it's combined with adding a VantageScore as a required score in mortgages. Today, just the FICO score is required and a 3B is required with the FICO score in each credit report. FHFA has been doing some study around should we add the VantageScore to every mortgage application every time a credit file is pulled, so it'd be two scores pulled with every credit file and relax the 3B to 2B standard. The VantageScore thing would be a big upside.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

As an option.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

As an option. Great correction on the 3B, 2B. So many times people want to talk about the 3B, 2B. They don't want to talk about the VantageScore. As you know, the three credit bureaus, TU, Experian, Equifax, own VantageScore. So our COGS are zero on that. So we would likely price that at the same level as the FICO credit score. Why would we do anything differently if it's required? So that would be a huge upside. The 3B, 2B, as Andrew points out, is an option in this study that's being done by the FHFA. The mortgage originator could still pull all three. And remember, both credit score and credit file, when it's pulled in the application process, is paid for principally by the consumer. So it's a pass-through. So there really isn't an incentive for a mortgage originator to take three down to two.

And there's some real facts around why they wouldn't do that. There's 10 million consumers only on one credit file. So if you pull two, but not that third, you can't underwrite that consumer. There's 40 million consumers that have a 40-point difference in their credit score between the three credit bureaus. If you pull the two low ones, you may not be able to prove it. So those are going forward. And then the other thing to Andrew's first question, there's a change in administration. I think it's highly likely there'll be a new FHFA director. There's very limited industry support for this. So I think it's likely that it wouldn't happen. The last point is Equifax is working hard to invest to differentiate our mortgage credit file. Last year, we added some cell phone utility data attributes to the mortgage credit file that TU and Experian can't do.

So that's one that differentiates our mortgage credit file. And we're testing today in the mortgage shopping process an employment flag on our credit file from our The Work Number data. Only Equifax can do that. That advantages our mortgage credit file. So we're making some investments there. So different factors there, like net net, if it happened, we think it would be a positive, principally because of the VantageScore. And then we're investing to make sure we're differentiated from a mortgage credit file standpoint to make sure we've got one that's adding more value.

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Okay. We got to end on that. Thank you very much.

Mark Begor
CEO, Equifax

Thank you .

Andrew Steinman
Business Information Service Analyst, JPMorgan

Mark, John, Trevor, we always appreciate it here.

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