Trading update, Third quarter

17 January 2019 ─ Experian, the global information services company, today issues an update on trading for the three months ended 31 December 2018.

Commenting on the performance, Brian Cassin, Chief Executive Officer, said:“We delivered strong growth in Q3 with total and organic revenue growth of 9% at constant exchange rates and total revenue growth at actual exchange rates of 5%. Our performance reflects the success of our strategy to deliver innovative products at scale across our geographies and to build direct relationships with consumers, and our full-year guidance is unchanged.”

% change in revenue from ongoing activities year-on-year for the three months ended 31 December 2018

1 Experian reports in US dollars

% change in organic revenue year-on-year for the three months ended 31 December 2018

1 Ongoing activities only, at constant exchange rates. 2 B2B = Business-to-Business segment consists of Data and Decisioning business sub-divisions.

North America

In North America, total and organic revenue growth was 12%.

B2B delivered strong growth of 12%, reflecting strength in core credit volumes, trended data (which annualised at the beginning of Q4 FY19) and new product introductions. There was also strength across business credit, health and automotive. Clarity Services, which provides non-traditional credit data, performed well as its core market expands and as we introduce Clarity data to existing clients. We have successfully delivered Ascend, our flagship analytics-on-demand platform, across major strategic clients and continue to build a very strong pipeline. Decisioning also performed very well as we continue to secure new wins for software product bundles.

Consumer Services performed strongly, up 12% as market adoption of our new offers increases and underlying trends continue to improve. We have also secured new client wins in partner solutions, which added one-off data breach support revenue in the quarter. We saw further expansion in our identity protection offer where we have now enrolled approximately 320k paying members. CreditMatch, where we match consumers with credit offers most relevant to them, is gaining scale supported by new advertising campaigns. Our free membership base has now reached over 17m consumers. In December we were delighted to introduce Experian Boost, a new service which will help consumers to contribute data to their credit reports and potentially boost their credit scores by permitting access to telecom and utility payment information from their deposit accounts.

Latin America

In Latin America, total and organic revenue growth was 4%.

We delivered strong growth across Spanish Latin America as we strengthen our market position and as we deploy our One Experian approach. In Brazil we delivered low-single digit organic revenue growth. We saw growth across our larger clients including in Decisioning as we benefit from large multi-year contracts with major Brazilian institutions, helping to offset lower revenue from countercyclical products. There was also some modest improvement in the small and medium enterprise vertical and the contribution from services to consumers grew significantly in the quarter from a small base.

UK and Ireland

In the UK and Ireland, total and organic revenue growth was 3%.

Organic revenue growth across B2B was 4%, driven by new business wins, pre-qualification and data aggregation services (Runpath). There was also good growth in decisioning software and fraud prevention, including new wins for CrossCore. We are encouraged by progress across our innovation portfolio which includes a growing pipeline for Ascend, the launch of our Open Data platform (Verdus) and as sales of our affordability services gain traction.

Consumer Services made further progress as the rate of decline moderated to (1%), with strong growth in credit marketplace referral fees which mostly offset lower credit monitoring revenues. The free membership base increased to 5m consumers.

EMEA/Asia Pacific

We continue to make good progress across EMEA/Asia Pacific, where total and organic revenue growth was 9%. This reflects further success for core global products specifically PowerCurve which saw several new client wins. We saw a growing contribution from newer activities such as digital marketplaces in Asia Pacific, and we have added a new client, signing an agreement and equity investment with Jirnexu, Malaysia’s leading comparison website for financial products such as credit cards, loans and insurance products. 

Foreign exchange modelling considerations

In November, we guided there was an expected 5% impact of foreign exchange to Benchmark EBIT growth rates for the year ending 31 March 2019. Updating for the most recent movements in foreign exchange this guidance is unchanged.

Future events

Experian will release results for the year ending 31 March 2019 on Wednesday 15 May 2019.

Contact:

Experian

Nadia Ridout-Jamieson             Investor queries                                     +44 (0)20 3042 4215

Gerry Tschopp                          Media queries                                       +1 949 677 3377 

Finsbury

Rollo Head                                                                                            +44 (0)20 7251 3801

Jenny Davey

This announcement is available on the Experian website at http://www.experianplc.com. 

All financial information in this trading update is based on unaudited management accounts. Certain statements made in this trading update are forward-looking statements. Such statements are based on current expectations and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual events or results to differ materially from any expected future events or results referred to in these forward-looking statements. 

Neither the content of the Company’s website, nor the content of any website accessible from hyperlinks on the Company’s website (or any other website), is incorporated into, or forms part of, this announcement.

About Experian

Experian is the world’s leading global information services company. During life’s big moments – from buying a home or a car, to sending a child to college, to growing a business by connecting with new customers – we empower consumers and our clients to manage their data with confidence. We help individuals to take financial control and access financial services, businesses to make smarter decisions and thrive, lenders to lend more responsibly, and organisations to prevent identity fraud and crime.

We have 16,500 people operating across 39 countries and every day we’re investing in new technologies, talented people and innovation to help all our clients maximise every opportunity. We are listed on the London Stock Exchange (EXPN) and are a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.

Learn more at www.experianplc.com or visit our global content hub at our global news blog for the latest news and insights from the Group.