Earnings call transcript: Experian’s Q1 2025 revenue rises 12%, stock dips

Experian PLC reported a robust start to its fiscal year with a 12% increase in total group revenue for the first quarter of 2025. Despite these gains, the company’s stock saw a 2.5% decrease, closing at 3,606 pence. The earnings call highlighted strong organic growth across various regions and sectors, but market reaction remained subdued.

Key Takeaways

• Experian’s Q1 2025 total group revenue grew by 12%.
• Organic revenue growth was 8%, with North America leading at 9%.
• New products and innovations continue to drive company performance.
• Stock declined by 2.5% despite positive financial results.

Company Performance

Experian’s first-quarter performance was marked by a solid 8% organic revenue growth, driven by strong results in North America and innovations in product offerings. The company continued to expand its digital platforms and successfully integrated recent acquisitions, contributing to its 12% total revenue growth. Consumer services also performed well, with a 6% growth rate, excluding data breach services.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: 12% growth year-over-year
• Organic revenue growth: 8%
• North America organic growth: 9%
• Consumer services growth: 6% (13% excluding data breach services)

Outlook & Guidance

Experian remains cautiously optimistic about the economic conditions, expecting full-year organic growth in the mid to high single digits. The company plans to focus on new product development and sees potential opportunities in the mortgage and credit scoring markets. Future EPS forecasts for FY2026 and FY2027 are 1.78 USD and 2.0 USD, respectively, with revenue forecasts of 8,375.27 million USD and 9,108.35 million USD.

Executive Commentary

CEO Brian Cassin expressed confidence in the company’s trajectory, stating, "We’ve had a strong start to FY26. Q1 organic revenue growth was 8%, continuing our positive trend from Q4." CFO Lloyd highlighted the long-term growth potential in Latin America, noting, "The long-term trend in Brazil and Latin America is increased credit penetration."

Risks and Challenges

• Economic uncertainty in the UK could impact growth.
• High consumer indebtedness in Latin America poses a risk.
• Potential changes in mortgage credit scoring could affect market dynamics.
• Competitive pressures in digital debt resolution and consumer services.

Experian’s Q1 2025 results demonstrate strong revenue growth and strategic advancements in product innovation. However, the stock’s decline suggests investor caution, possibly due to broader economic concerns and regional challenges. The company remains focused on leveraging its market position and exploring new opportunities in the evolving credit and data services landscape.

Full transcript - Experian PLC (EXPN) Q1 2026:

James Rose, Analyst, Barclays: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Experian’s first quarter trading update webcast and conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, please press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I will now like to turn the conference over to your first speaker, Mr. Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Thank you very much. Hello, everybody, and welcome to our Q1 trading update call. I’m here, as usual, with Lloyd, who’ll take you through the trading performance after my opening remarks. We’ve had a strong start to FY26. Q1 organic revenue growth was 8%, continuing our positive trend from Q4. Recent acquisitions have added to this to take the total group revenue growth to 12% at both constant and actual rates. The acquisitions we completed last year have all performed well in the quarter, and we’re on track with their integrations. Organic revenue growth was 9% in North America, 5% in Latin America, 1% in the U.K. and I, and 7% in EMEA Asia Pacific. By segment, B2B organic revenue growth was 8%, with good contributions from both financial services and verticals.

Globally, consumer services delivered 6% growth, rising to 13% excluding the one-off impact of prior year data breach services contribution. Turning to the Q1 regional highlights, starting with North America, where we had a really good first quarter and made a lot of strategic progress. Regional organic revenue growth was 9%, which included a strong B2B performance of 12%. Across financial services, we saw 15% organic revenue growth. This was broad-based across business lines and included client wins and modest improvement in the underlying market. Clarity Services, analytics growth, and further Ascent expansion all contributed positively, as did mortgage. We expect new products such as Cash Flow Analytics and new modules to the Ascent platform to support sustained growth. Verticals’ growth was 8%.

This was led by automotive, which signed a new milestone, new strategic partnership in the quarter, which broadens our Auto Check vehicle history presence across the dealer ecosystem, and by health, in part driven by strong market adoption of Patient Access Curator and our strong new business bookings performance last year. We’re also encouraged by underlying performance in marketing services. Audigent has made an excellent start and is expanding the use of Experian Audiences across digital marketing channels. We had a strong underlying quarter in consumer services, where the 3% headline organic growth number was 11%, excluding data breach. Membership, marketplace, and partner solutions, excluding breach, all contributed favorably. Membership has benefited from our increased focus on financial health, and we saw particular strength in marketplace, supported by broader lender engagement and expanded partnerships, with more lenders on board and major lenders now launching custom models on our Activate platform.

Our EVA AI chatbot has also helped to serve stronger customer demand with more personalized credit card offers. In Latin America, we delivered mid-single digit organic revenue growth of 5%. Rising rates and high levels of consumer indebtedness have dampened the operating environment for B2B in Brazil, and year-on-year revenues are flat, constant FX. Q1 saw further progress across fraud prevention, analytics, and B2B software, where we continue to broaden our proposition for clients. We have acted quickly to integrate ClearSale, and we are excited by the prospects to broaden our propositions as we integrate the ClearSale fraud suites, and our SME business also performed very well. Our new product execution roadmap also continues to be strong, including new payroll loan applications to take advantage of this emerging market opportunity. Consumer services delivered another strong quarter with 24% organic revenue growth on expanded membership and increased revenue diversification.

We onboarded new lending partners into our credit marketplace and have introduced new features to support debt consolidation within our LimpaNome platform. In an environment where consumer defaults have reached record levels, LimpaNome helps us to support consumer financial health, which we’ll continue to focus on through our fairs and with new feature introductions. The U.K. and Ireland delivered organic revenue growth of 1%. B2B was down 2%, but consumer services delivered another strong performance of 11%. The trend in financial services is still subdued against the soft macroeconomic backdrop, but we continue to make good new business and strategic progress, with a number of clients now live on the Ascend platform. U.K. consumer services made excellent progress with Q1 growth of 11%. We’ve made very good progress overall with new feature introductions for our membership.

Marketplace, where our panel continues to grow well, with increased pre-approved and exclusive offers on our panel, leading us to outperform the overall lending market. In EMEA Asia Pacific, we had another good quarter with organic revenue growth of 7%. We are making good progress to expand revenue from new product introductions, and the integration of the acquisition of illion continues to perform well and is on track. With that, I’m now going to hand it over to Lloyd.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Thanks, Brian. Good morning, everyone. As you’ve seen, we started the year well and in line with the trends we saw at the end of last year, with organic revenue growth of 8% or 9%, excluding data breach services revenue. North America continued its recent momentum, driven by strong double-digit growth in financial services. Excluding the expected headwind from lower data breach services activity, North America consumer services also grew double digits, driven by strong marketplace performance. Both the U.K. and Ireland and Latin America delivered resilient growth against challenging macro conditions, with each showing notable strength in consumer services and, in particular, in marketplace services. For the group, B2B globally grew by 8%, whilst B2C grew very well at 6% or 13%, excluding the data breach services. Recent acquisitions contributed 4%.

Of inorganic growth, while exchange rates were neutral in the quarter, leading to total growth at constant and actual exchange rates of 12% for the quarter. Turning to performance by region, beginning with North America, where we delivered strong organic revenue growth of 9%. With 12% in B2B and 3% growth in consumer services, or 11% ex-data breach. Within B2B, overall, North America financial services grew very strongly, up 15%. And financial services, excluding mortgage profiles, grew 10% in the quarter, predominantly driven by Clarity, our Ascend analytics solutions, positive revenue phasing in the quarter, and some improvement in underlying client activity. Mortgage profile revenue, which represents about 3% of group revenue, grew 46%. On a modest volume decline in the quarter. Elsewhere, verticals grew 8%. Automotive had another strong quarter, growing 13%, driven by credit and our value recovery products.

Health continued to grow well, up 8%, with our patient access and claims products progressing well. In consumer services, premium membership grew mid-single digits, and our marketplace continued recent momentum with very strong growth across both credit cards and personal loans. Partner solutions, excluding the expected breach slowdown, also grew well. Moving on to Latin America, where total revenue was up 17% at constant currency, with a strong contribution from our new acquisitions. Organically, as expected, Latin America improved sequentially to grow 5% organically due to great progress in consumer services, which grew 24%. Whilst B2B revenue was in line with the prior year. In B2B, growth was consistent with last quarter. We saw good growth in high-priority areas such as SME and our software solutions, though persistently high interest rates continued to impact client activity.

Consumer services had another strong quarter, supported by new partners, while LimpaNome also continued its trend of double-digit growth. Turning to the U.K. and Ireland, which grew modestly at 1% organically, B2B was 2% lower, with financial services in line with the prior year and a decline in verticals’ revenue. The flat financial services revenue reflected this ongoing subdued macroeconomic environment. Consumer services delivered a strong 11% revenue growth, driven by strength in our marketplace. Continued new feature enhancements and strength in our lender panel drove acceleration compared to the prior quarter. Finally, in EMEA Asia Pacific, which grew 36% in current currency thanks to a strong contribution from the illion acquisition, which is progressing very well. Organically, growth was consistent with recent trends at 7%, with good progress across most markets through a combination of strong performance across Australia, New Zealand, India, and the Southern Europe markets.

Turning to our full-year expectations, which are unchanged from those we discussed just a few weeks ago in May. With that, I’ll hand you back to Brian.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Great. Thanks, Lloyd. In summary, we’re very pleased with our Q1 performance, with lots of progress across the business. Still a long way to go in FY2026, but we’re very encouraged by a strong start. Now, with that, let me open up the line for questions. If I can ask, just to give everybody a fair chance to ask their questions, could you please limit yourself to two questions each? Operator, over to you.

Speaker 1: Thank you, sir. As a reminder to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Once again, please press star one and one for any question. Thank you. We are now going to proceed with our first question. The first question’s come from the line of Ryan Flight from Jefferies. Please ask your question. Your line is opened.

Ryan Flight, Analyst, Jefferies: Hey, good morning. Ryan Flight from Jefferies here and two from me, if I may. The first one, seemingly you’ve got marketplace strength across the board. I wondered if you could comment on current lending appetite, what’s new, and the current mood of lenders. And then number two, just on new verticals, health and in particularly autos. Historically, I thought about this business as kind of mid to high single-digit organic revenue growth, pretty steady businesses, but the past two quarters have obviously been particularly strong. So, I mean, a pretty difficult question, but is this a new normal of growth in those businesses? Thank you.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Right. Thank you. Just to comment on the marketplace, I think it’s not that long since we spoke to you about the full-year results. I think at that time, we said we hadn’t really seen very much of a difference in the marketplace. People, I think, felt that they were pretty well positioned and in a strong position. Obviously looking and waiting to see what may happen economically as we go through FY2026. I think in the passage of time, I think the U.S. economy continues to be strong. We still see very good metrics across that economy in particular. I think what we started to see is people getting a bit more confidence in that market. None of the sort of worst-case scenarios seem to have materialized from a GDP perspective.

There’s still quite a lot of caution around, but people getting slightly more on the front foot. I wouldn’t characterize that as a very significant change, but we do call it a modest improvement, but it is an improvement. You can see that in the numbers. On the health and auto, yeah, I mean, I think the health business has actually been performing at that level for quite some time. We’ve had some very strong growth for many years now. I think there’s a lot of things driving that: new product introductions, Patient Access Curator we referenced in the script has been a really great product addition to us. We continue to see very good dynamics in that market. Auto is a sort of similar position. I think that the growth rate can bob around a little bit.

We’ve had a few very strong quarters, but really we’ve got a very strong track record of very good growth in that business for a very long time. The last few quarters you’ve seen, in particular, good volume growth, some good client wins. We referenced the new strategic partnership that we’ve just signed. That isn’t in the auto numbers yet. It’s just been signed, but that’s going to underpin growth as we get into the back half of this year. I think the outlook is good. We feel pretty confident about it. Not entirely sure if we’ll sort of do very mid-teens growth rates in those verticals every quarter, but I think that they’re well positioned and they’re strong growers.

Ryan Flight, Analyst, Jefferies: Thank you.

Speaker 1: We are now going to proceed with our next question. The next question’s come from the line of Simona Salley from Bank of America. Please ask your question.

Simona Salley, Analyst, Bank of America: Yes, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. I also have two. First of all, for Latin America, organic revenue growth sequentially improved in Q1, but what makes you confident that you can continue improving sequentially, considering still muted growth, lending volumes, and also higher comps in Q2 and Q3, and therefore what you are guiding effectively for the rest of the fiscal year? Also, secondly, if we look at the recent news flow around the use of VantageScore for US mortgages, what are the implications for Experian and the overall credit bureau sector, and could that also potentially impact other segments you operate in? Thank you.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Great. Thanks, Simona. Lloyd, do you want to take the Latin America?

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Yeah. Yeah. Hi, Simona. We said that the full year, I think last time we expected for the full year to be somewhere between mid and high single digit. Obviously, we started Q1 in that range. I think whilst we’re not expecting a very starkly different economic environment, we’re making good progress with a lot of our new product introductions. The acquisitions that we’ve been making there, I think, will contribute really positively to growth. I think we expect to be in that mid to high single-digit range, probably a little bit firmer through the rest of the year than where we started. That’s probably the backdrop. As you can see, consumer services continues to go there from strength to strength, which is really positive.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Coming back to your second question on mortgage, I mean, obviously, there have been some public pronouncements recently, and I think they’re referencing some changes which may take place. If we look at those recent announcements, it appears there’s kind of two elements to it. First, it does appear that we’re moving to a regime where lenders may have a choice in the use of credit scores. Secondly, it also appears there’s going to be no changes to the 3B requirement in mortgage. We haven’t seen any policy changes yet, but if those two elements are confirmed, it does have the potential to be positive for Experian given our JV ownership advantage. I would say also, however, this is a longer-term question because ultimately it does depend on the pace of market adoption.

As we know, there’s a lot of work that would need to be done to facilitate any market change. We are assimilating all of that and working through what the implications may be.

Speaker 1: We are now going to proceed with our next question. The question’s come from the line of Suhasini Varanasi from Goldman Sachs. Please ask your question.

Suhasini Varanasi, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my question. It’s just one main one, to be honest. The growth in the quarter has been 9% excluding data breach. Can you discuss your expectations for the next quarter and the key moving parts that will get you there? Given the strong start to the year, are there upside risks to your guidance, effectively? Thank you.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Hi, Sadhan. Yeah. So 8% organic growth in Q1. I think as we look ahead to Q2, the big moving parts are, first of all, we think mortgage is slightly weaker. We did 46% revenue growth in Q1. We think that’s probably mid-20s in the second quarter. We started to get into the period in the prior year where we started to see expectations of rate recovery and a slightly higher volume. Mortgage will be a little bit weaker. We’ve got a very strong, in this first quarter, financial services growth. Some of that is underlying, as Brian mentioned. Some of that’s a bit of positive revenue phasing, some one-off incomes, which doesn’t sustain into Q2. Those together knock about a 1% lower growth into Q2, but we obviously end the lapping of the strong data breach services, which add 1%.

You take all of that together, Q2 looks a lot like Q1, I think. Clearly, as we move into the second half, different economic scenarios come into play. I think we’ll see how that progresses and then review our guidance when we talk to you at the half year. Clearly, we’ve had a good start to the year.

Suhasini Varanasi, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Thank you.

Speaker 1: We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Annelise Vermulen from Morgan Stanley. Please ask your question.

Annelise Vermulen, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Hi, good morning, Brian. Good morning, Lloyd. Two questions from me as well, please. Firstly, in your financial services, you talked about a modest improvement in underlying client activity or sentiment. Was that driven by any particular category of customer or lender? Was that more among larger lenders, for example, or was it relatively broad-based? Secondly, just coming back to autos, I think at the full year, you spoke about a bit of pull forward of demand for autos in Q4. It sounds like autos has remained relatively robust, but could you perhaps talk about autos in Q1 versus Q4 and whether you’ve seen any reversal of that? Thank you.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Yeah. Hi, Annelise. So auto in Q4, just to remind everybody, we had very strong growth at 16%. That softened a little bit to 13%. I think that reflects some of that activity that was around some of the announcements that we had at that time, but still a strong growth into Q1. We think we’re going to have a good year in auto this year. As you know, we’ve been broadening out the auto business as we’ve really diversified our revenue streams across that sector beyond credit. I think our expectations for auto are pretty good. On financial services, I think, as Brian mentioned earlier, over the last six months, we’ve seen stable to modestly improving conditions. I think as we’ve come into this year, conditions have been a little bit better than we thought. I think it’s obviously on a modest.

Trend, but unemployment remains low. I think you’re seeing some of the economic scenarios that have been laid out not necessarily coming to pass in the near term and some lenders being a bit more front-footed. That’s not necessarily across the board. You see, I think, some of that in fintech, some in some of our larger clients as well. It is, I think, hopeful as we go into the rest of the year.

Annelise Vermulen, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 1: We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Andrew Ripa from Liberum. Please ask your question.

Andrew Ripa, Analyst, Liberum: Hi, morning, everybody, and well done on such a good first quarter. A couple of questions from me on the U.S. In terms of the growth drivers, you mentioned sort of generic comments on new products. Just wondering what you’re referring to there. Then on Clarity, you’ve called it out a few times, actually, in the last sort of couple of years. Can you give us a sense of the order of magnitude of Clarity now? How big is it relative to the North American business? Finally, I just wanted to ask, in terms of the comment about the modestly improved underlying client activity, I don’t know whether you could reference that as against the consumer credit data numbers we’ve seen coming out of the Fed, which seem a little bit choppy.

They seem to be quite strong in April, but then May, particularly revolving credit data, seem to drop back again. Do you see something similar in terms of sort of the monthly evolution of sort of trading in North America, or should we just look at the quarter in entirety, just thinking about the go-forward in terms of that underlying activity point? Thanks.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Yeah. Hi, Andrew. Just on, I think, sort of. Similar question on the underlying outlook. I mean, we are, as we said, we’ve seen some modest improvements. I think you’ve got to look at the quarter in its entirety. As Lloyd said, it’s not every category, but we have seen that come through a little bit on the volumes and the bureaus. Again, it’s modest improvements, but it’s slightly better than when we reported to you six or seven weeks ago. To be honest, I think it kind of reflects, as we said, just the absence of anything really bad happening in the economy. At the time that we reported, we were only a few weeks from the introduction of the tariffs, and there was a lot of uncertainty around. I don’t think that people really understood how that was all going to work out.

I think there’s a bit more confidence about that now, but there also still remains quite a lot of uncertainty. I think that’s why it’s difficult to look much beyond sort of a quarter out on that. We sit here today in a slightly better position than we did back in May, and I think that’s a good position to be in. We don’t break out the Clarity numbers.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: We don’t.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: What else you want to comment on that?

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Yeah, we do not. I mean, just as a reminder, Clarity is our short-term lending bureau. We found a lot of demand for the data and the insights and attributes around that data across our largest and most complex clients. We have increasingly developed new scores, new attributes, new products around that data set that are very interesting to some of our larger clients. We are calling that out. It has been a driver of underlying growth, as you say, for the last few quarters, actually. We do not disclose the size separately.

Andrew Ripa, Analyst, Liberum: Sure. Just the sort of generic comment on new products, which you led with in terms of the key contributors in North American growth, was there anything in particular you’re referring to there?

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Yeah. I think the continued strength in the Ascend. We’ve had very strong engagement from clients across all of the new areas of the development of that platform. We continue to make great strides with it. That is probably the one I would call out. The innovation that we have is very broad. There are lots of products in the pipe that are driving that.

Andrew Ripa, Analyst, Liberum: Great. Thanks a lot, guys.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Thanks.

Speaker 1: We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Andy Grobler from BNP Paribas Exane. Please ask your question.

Andy Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas Exane: Hi, good morning. Two from me as well, if I may. Firstly, just on VantageScore, you talked about it a little earlier. Could you just help us with kind of the scale of that existing business, how it feeds through the P&L, and also kind of pricing on that relative to FICO scores? And then secondly, just in terms of competition, one of your larger competitors is adding employment and income data to their scores. Have you seen any impact from that in terms of market share and demand, and what are your expectations through the next few quarters from that? Thank you.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Yeah. Andy, hi. I think we’ve had that question on the adding the flag. We haven’t seen any impact from that. That’s a relatively new product. I think we need to see how that plays out. We’ve also highlighted that there are lots of things that go on to credit reports, and people can compete in different ways. We’ll just see how that evolves over time. We don’t break out the VantageScore numbers. As you know, mortgage market is essentially, or is all FICO. VantageScore has some revenues in the other segments of the market in places like auto, unsecured loans, and so on and so forth. Its market share is low. Obviously, FICO is the big player there. In terms of pricing, I think, Lloyd, do you want to comment on that?

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Yeah. We do not comment on relative pricing. I mean, clearly, we will see how the guidance around the regulations change, and then we will determine our go-to-market pricing accordingly.

Andy Grobler, Analyst, BNP Paribas Exane: Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 1: We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of James Rose from Barclays. Please ask your question.

James Rose, Analyst, Barclays: Hi, there. Just one left for me. It is coming back to Clarity, actually, because you have called that out for a number of quarters. I mean, sort of hypothetically, if lending were to carry on recovering and there was a bit less of a focus on subprime, perhaps, are Clarity revenues sticky, or do they come down? I mean, is this somewhat of a countercyclical revenue stream? How would you think about that going forward?

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: I think, look, I think one of the things you’re seeing with Clarity is that there’s a—I think there’s just a large population which is underserved from mainstream credit providers. Yes, that may change a little bit if credit policies get relaxed. If you look back over a decade or so, that population has actually become relatively larger. I don’t think that we see any fundamental change. I think actually one of the big, perhaps, surprises is how strong Clarity has performed over the last few years. I think that reflects the continued kind of underlying market conditions and actually the ability of those lenders in that segment to continue to access good customers. I think we feel pretty good overall about that segment.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: I think also, James, whether that is the way you referenced the question was really in relation to volume, there’s a wealth of value in the data inside the Clarity Bureau. Of course, we’ve been innovating on top of that with attributes, with trended data, with analytics, packaging that up and bundling with other products. The value that we’re extracting from that rich data is increasing. It’s not just a volume play. Of course, that’s what we do across the rest of our business. We’re seeing a lot of good growth there, which I think over the long run will be sticky.

James Rose, Analyst, Barclays: Great. That’s very helpful. Thank you.

Speaker 1: We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Arthur Trutlove from Citi. Please ask your question.

Arthur Trutlove, Analyst, Citi: Thank you very much, and good morning. A couple of questions for me on mortgage, actually. In Q1, you obviously grew mortgage revenue by 46% on a modest volume decline. That obviously follows 66% in the fourth quarter, again, on a more modest volume decline. I guess FICO does its pricing on the 1st of January. I was just wondering why that gap has closed and why you’re expecting it to close further between revenue and volume, given that FICO pricing comes in on the 1st of January. I guess kind of whether that’s to do with the comps or something else. The second question around mortgage volume, as I understand it, the Mortgage Bankers Association is showing reasonable data year over year on volumes as we speak today. If I understand correctly, you’re expecting volumes to be down in the second quarter.

I just wondered why that was, really. Thank you.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Yeah. So Arthur, if you go back to calendar Q1 or Q4, we said that we obviously had the strong increase in pricing from FICO that we passed through. We also had some grandfathered contracts that over time, some of those come through in quite a lumpy way. So price contributed more in Q1. Some of that grandfathering contribution reduced as we moved into our Q1. When you go to Q2, we expect volume to be down year on year. We have got modest volume decline in Q1. We think it will be double-digit declines in Q2. If you go back to last year, over the summer, as we started to get some of the rate-reducing cycle, you saw a bit of increasing activity in mortgage. As we lap that, I think volumes will be down. I think when you look at.

Commentary on volumes for the year, I think. There’s a lot of commonality. I think the Mortgage Bankers Association is probably an outlier there versus commentary from some of our peers, which I think also say volumes will be down in the second quarter. That’s really the difference.

Arthur Trutlove, Analyst, Citi: Great. Thank you.

Speaker 1: As a final reminder to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We are now going to proceed with our next question. The questions come from the line of Simon Clinch from Redburn Atlantic. Please ask your question.

Andrew Ripa, Analyst, Liberum: Hi. Good morning, everyone. A couple of questions. First of all, similar to the question around Clarity earlier on, when we look at the growth in consumer services in Latin America driven by LimpaNome, clearly that seems to be benefiting from the high indebtedness, the struggling, I guess, the challenges in that market. I was just wondering, if we were to see the economic tailwinds return for the B2B portion of it, should we anticipate that consumer services growth starts to slow as the environment sort of normalizes, or is there a much stronger structural element there? My second question is just wanting to get some update on your thoughts around the M&A environment, your pipeline, and how, I guess, given the sort of uncertain macro environment ahead of us, if there’s any changes going on.

In the context of the recent sort of improvement in comps. Thanks.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Great. On LimpaNome, we do not see any potential drop-off in the growth of that product. You have structurally high indebtedness in Brazil. You have an enormous number of people who have debts on their file who will look to get them resolved. You also have a structural play, which is really a lot of the kind of debt collection activities in Brazil are digitizing. There is still a tremendous amount of that activity, which is offline. We are the largest digital platform. We are becoming an incredibly powerful network effect there. We continue to see the structural growth, signing new partners to actually partner with them to resolve their debt collection capabilities on the platform. We do not really see that. I think not in terms of the number of people who are in delinquency. That would take a long time to get resolved.

Alongside that, you have a structural shift into how that market operates, and we are by far and away the best. Organization’s best positioned to benefit from that going forward. You also have strong growth coming from other parts of the consumer services business. We saw very good growth in our marketplace business, which we built. We have been operational now for quite a few years, but obviously it has not been a material contributor as we sort of went into a tougher economic environment in Brazil, and there was kind of less credit being extended, certainly, into sort of below prime segments. If you have more of a recovery in Brazil and therefore an extension of credit across that spectrum, we are going to be one of the biggest beneficiaries because there are not that many places you can go where you can access large audiences.

It’s a tried and tested kind of route we’ve done both in the U.S. and the U.K. We know what we’re doing. We’ve built a platform. We’ve got a fantastic brand reputation and large audience. We would expect that to be a material growth driver for us in the future as well. I don’t see any change to that. On your question on the M&A, nothing has really changed when we spoke to you seven or eight weeks ago. It’s still the same environment. We continue to have a lot of opportunities to look at, but whether any of those will sort of meet their criteria or be able to be executed sort of remains to be seen as we progress through the year.

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: Just one, Simon, just one for me to add on. Consumer services in Latin America. Of course, the long-term trend in Brazil and Latin America is increased credit penetration. It’s underpenetrated in the consumer segment with credit. It’s increasing. That’s the secular growth driver that will help us monetize the audiences that we’ve created. We think you take kind of individual months and quarters out of the agenda, this will be a very positive business for us to have in an economy that is increasing its credit penetration.

Andrew Ripa, Analyst, Liberum: Great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: We are now going to take our final question. The questions come from the line of Simona Salley from Bank of America. Please ask your question.

Simona Salley, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you very much. Just a couple of follow-ups. First of all, on auto, you mentioned you have signed new strategic partnerships that are not in numbers yet. When should we expect to feed through numbers and if you can quantify the potential revenue impact? Then going back to health, you mentioned that it was growing 8% in Q1, which is a little bit softer compared to Q4. Is that an impact from cuts in Medicare, DOGE, and what is sustainable for the rest of 2026? Thank you.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Yeah. I think on the health one, the answer is no. Of those changes that were announced, will not actually take. There will not be any impact from that for actually for a couple of years out yet. We would not see any impact from that. I think the health number is just a quarter-on-quarter movement. It is sustained at a high single-digit growth rate for quite some time, so we do not see any change there. On the auto, as we referenced, there is no impact from that contract. Lloyd, any further detail you want to give?

Lloyd, Chief Financial Officer, Experian: No. I think it’s important to call that contract out because it’s a new strategic partnership. It’s kind of a demonstration of how we continue to broaden and strengthen the network in auto. As we highlighted in some of the slides that we had at the full year, this is a business that’s grown double-digit for 20 years. The strength of our verticals is something that you’ll increasingly see us talk about. They’re very broad-based businesses. On health, I think you’ve seen us win some market share there from competitors over the last 18 months. Very strong finish the last year, but high single digits are a better growth guide for the year ahead.

Simona Salley, Analyst, Bank of America: Thank you.

Speaker 1: We have no further questions showing. I will now hand back to Mr. Cassin for closing remarks. Thank you.

Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, Experian: Great. Thank you, everybody, for joining today. Thank you for your questions. I hope you all have a good day. We look forward to speaking to you again in November for our half-year results. Thank you very much.

Speaker 1: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you.

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