Equifax Inc. (NYSE:EFX) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

During the quarter, about 90% of new product revenue came from non-mortgage products leveraging the Equifax cloud. The positive momentum in our NPI and Vitality Index is encouraging for the future and reinforces our long-term strategy of leveraging our differentiated data assets and new cloud capabilities to drive new solutions for our customers. Leveraging our Equifax cloud capabilities to drive new product rollouts, we expect to deliver a vitality index of over 10% again in 2024. On the right side of the slide, we’ve highlighted several new products introduced in the quarter. These new solutions are a testament to the power of the Equifax cloud and driving innovation that can create the visibility of consumers to help expand access to credit and create new mainstream financial opportunities as well as drive Equifax top line growth and margins.

Turning to Slide 12, we believe Equifax AI, leveraging our differentiated data assets, our new Equifax cloud capabilities and new product focus, is positioning our industry-leading EFX AI powered model scores and products. On the left of the side of the slide, our large and diverse proprietary data sets is a significant differentiator for Equifax. Our proprietary data at scale, keyed in linked in our single data fabric leveraging our new AFX cloud gives us significant advantages in using AI to build more predictive multi-data models, scores and products. Our ESXi is enabled by our EFX developed explainable AI solutions that leverage our Ignite platform and our Google Vertex capabilities. Our modern AI and ML-enabled cloud-based model scoring engine and our over 1,000 Equifax DNA professionals.

AI leveraging our patented explainable AI capabilities is a big priority for Equifax in ’24 and beyond as we complete the Equifax cloud. As shown on the chart in the middle of Slide 12, we’ve made tremendous progress building advanced models in leveraging our market-leading AI capabilities. In 2023, 70% of our new models were built using AI and ML tools, up from 60% in ’22 with a goal of over 80% this year. Our investments in AI are generating results. To date, Equifax has received over 90 approved AI patents supporting areas such as our proprietary AI NeuroDecision Technology, or NDT, an explainable AI with over 130 AI patents pending. We’ve launched new products developing at EFX AI, including Equifax OneScore for consumers incorporating traditional credit, alternative credit, as well as cell phone utility and pay TV data, which has improved the performance of the solution to score 20% more consumers.

We are energized about the capabilities that Equifax AI is bringing to strengthen our business and accelerate the value of our proprietary data through richer data combinations. Now let’s turn to 2024 guidance. Moving to Slide 13, we entered 2024 with momentum from the fourth quarter and the underlying growth of our non-mortgage businesses and the strong execution against our EFX 2026 strategic priorities. The U.S. mortgage market appears to have bottomed and through January, we’re seeing some slight improvements versus our expectations in both USIS and EWS, which is good news for the future. Our 2024 planning assumption is that the current level of U.S. mortgage activity will continue for the rest of the year with adjustments for seasonality.

On this basis, U.S. mortgage inquiries across USIS and EWS would be down on a blended basis by 15%. We’re assuming twin inquiries will see a slightly smaller decline in USIS credit inquiries as the level of consumer shopping behavior moderates. For perspective, our 2024 framework is over 30 points lower than the average current forecast from MBA, which is currently forecasting 24 origination units, up 17% versus our down 15%. And Fannie Mae, which is not forecast units, but is forecasting origination dollar volumes up 24%. MBA and Fannie Mae forecast mortgage rates move down to 6.1% and 5.8%, respectively, from 6.8% today. We will continue to forecast our mortgage market trends or current EFX run rates as we have done for the past 5-plus years.

And as in the past, we do not include interest rate decreases or increases in our forecast. We will continue to share mortgage credit inquiry volume changes with you each quarter so you can make your own judgments on the mortgage market outlook for the future. Further, we are assuming that the U.S. economy will see modest deacceleration in ’24 with growth slightly below the 2% average we generally assume in our long-term growth framework. In our key international countries, we expect slowing and low levels of GDP growth in Australia and in Canada, UK and Brazil, we expect about flat GDP. Despite the decline in the U.S. mortgage market and some modest economic deacceleration across our major markets, we expect to deliver 2024 revenue of about $5.72 billion at the midpoint of our guidance with reported growth at the midpoint of 8.6%.

Constant currency revenue growth is expected to be about 10.5%, with organic constant currency revenue growth of 8.5% and again at the center of our 7% to 10% long-term organic growth framework. Total mortgage revenue growth should be about 9.5%, about 24 points better than the about 15% decline from the USIS and EWS mortgage inquiries in our framework. Non-mortgage constant dollar revenue should grow over 10.5%, with organic growth of almost 8.5% and FX is about 190 basis points negative to our revenue growth. We expect Workforce Solutions to deliver revenue growth of about 8% in 2024. This reflects mortgage revenue at up just under 2%, about 15 points better than underlying EWS mortgage transactions. And EWS non-mortgage verticals are expected to grow almost 10.5%.

Excluding the expected significant decline in ERC revenue as that pandemic support program completes, EWS non-mortgage revenue growth is about 12%, which is a strong performance given the expected weak hiring market in 2024 as well as the weaker overall U.S. economy. Talent in EWS is expected to grow about 7% despite a decline in our underlying markets and government is expected to deliver over 15% growth against a very strong over 30% comp last year. Twin record growth in NPI Vitality Index of over our 10% EFX goal and continued strong growth in both pricing and penetration will continue to drive EWS outperformance. We expect USIS to deliver revenue growth of almost 8% in 2024 at the high-end of their long-term growth target of 6% to 8%. Mortgage revenue is expected to grow over 20%, over 35 points stronger than the expected 16% decline in mortgage market inquiries.

We are continuing to see substantial revenue benefits from both pricing increases from one of our largest USIS mortgage vendors that we pass on to customers at levels to maintain consistent margins and new product and pricing benefits by USIS. Non-mortgage revenue in USIS is expected to grow almost 4% despite modestly slower economic growth. The non-mortgage growth will be driven by continued strong commercial and identity and fraud growth as well as mid-single-digit growth in FI and auto. Consumer Services is expected to grow about 5% with financial marketing services expected to grow in the low single-digit percent. And we expect to see weaker revenue growth in D2C and telco. International had a very good 2023 with 6% organic constant dollar revenue growth but saw some weakening in end markets late in the year, particularly in Canada and Australia.

We expect international constant currency growth to be over 15% in 2024 with organic constant currency growth of about 10%. The accelerating inflation we are seeing in Argentina is expected to benefit overall international revenue growth by over 5 percentage points. Although uncertain, we have assumed currency devaluation in Argentina will be more than offset by inflation in our 2024 planning. We expect our new product vitality index to be over 10% again in 2024, led by EWS in Latin America. As U.S. and IS and Canada principally complete their cloud transformation, we expect their NPI rollouts to accelerate as we exit 2024. For the full year, EBITDA is expected to be about $1.9 billion, up over 12% with adjusted EBITDA margins of about 33.3%.

And adjusted EPS is expected to be about $7.35 per share, up about 9.5% from last year. Capital spending will decline by over $100 million to about $475 million or about 8.3% of revenue. The reduction reflects our progress in completing our cloud transformation and is a significant step towards our goal of 7% or below as we exit 2025. Now I’d like to turn it over to John to provide more detail on our 2024 assumptions and guidance and also to provide our first quarter framework. Our 2024 guidance builds on our strong 2023 non-mortgage growth from new products, record growth and pricing. John?

John Gamble: Thanks, Mark. As Mark discussed, and as shown on Slide 14, our planning assumes a 16% reduction in mortgage credit inquiries in 2024. 1Q ‘24 is expected to see USIS mortgage credit inquiries down over 26% year-to-year with EWS twin inquiries at similar levels. Sequentially, as we move through 2024, we are assuming overall mortgage activity stays at about these levels with normal seasonality for the remaining quarters of 2024. Slide 15 provides a full year revenue walk, detailing the drivers of the 8.6% revenue growth to the midpoint of our 2024 revenue guidance of $5.72 billion. The blended about 15% decline in the U.S. mortgage credit and twin inquiries is negatively impacting 2024 total revenue growth by almost 3%.