TransUnion Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
October 23, 2024

There are 12 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the TransUnion 20 24 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen only mode. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Craig Barty, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good morning, and thank you for attending today. Joining me on the call are Chris Cartwright, President and Chief Executive Officer and Todd Cello, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. We posted our earnings release and slides to accompany this call on the TransUnion Investor Relations website this morning, and they can also be found in the current report on Form 8 ks that we filed this morning. Our earnings release and the accompanying slides include various schedules, which contain more detailed information about revenue, operating expenses and other items, as well as certain non GAAP disclosures and financial measures, along with the corresponding reconciliation of these non GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures. Today's call will be recorded and a replay will be available on our website.

Speaker 1

We will also be making statements during this call that are forward looking. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those described in the forward looking statements because of factors discussed in today's earnings release, in the comments made during this conference call and in our most recent Form 10 ks, Forms 10 Q and other reports and filings with the SEC. We do not undertake any duty to update any forward looking statement. With that, let me turn it over to Chris.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Greg, and let me add my welcome and share our agenda for the call this morning. First, I will provide the financial highlights for our Q3 of 2024 results. 2nd, I will detail progress against our transformation program and next milestones. Finally, Todd will detail our Q3 results along with our Q4 and full year 2024 guidance. In the Q3, TransUnion again exceeded guidance across all key financial metrics.

Speaker 2

Given the strength in the quarter and ongoing business momentum, we are raising our full year 2024 guidance, which Todd will discuss later. Revenue grew 12% on an organic constant currency basis above our 8% to 10% guidance. Excluding mortgage, our growth of over 8% also exceeded expectations. In the U. S, we continue to experience stable economic and lending conditions.

Speaker 2

Household finances remain healthy due to low unemployment and some real wage growth. Although lower income consumers face affordability pressures from higher shelter, transportation and other expenses. Consumer delinquencies have improved for personal loans and appear to be stabilizing for credit cards and auto loans. In mortgages, delinquencies have risen but remained below historical averages. In September, the Fed announced a 50 basis point interest rate cut with market expectations for further gradual reductions over the next several quarters.

Speaker 2

We expect an interest rate easing cycle will benefit our volumes over the medium term. In mortgage, we expect there will be a notable refinancing opportunity for loans opened over the last 3 years, as well as potentially higher purchase activity resulting from improved affordability. Outside of mortgage, we expect lower rates to benefit consumers who will see lower borrowing costs and our customers who will benefit from lower funding costs and increased consumer demand. These dynamics are in the context of lending volumes that remain below historical trends. In our U.

Speaker 2

S. Market segment, revenue grew 12% in the 3rd quarter. Financial services grew 17% led by over 60% growth in mortgage and growth across all our non mortgage lines of business. Emerging verticals grew 3% driven by double digit growth in insurance. Consumer and active grew 21% due to our large breach remediation wins.

Speaker 2

In our International segment, we grew by 12% on a constant currency basis, the 14th consecutive quarter of double digit growth. India led with 23% growth, while Latin America, Asia Pacific and Africa all grew double digits. And finally, we prepaid $25,000,000 in debt during the quarter for a total of $105,000,000 year to date with the intent to make additional prepayment in the 4th quarter. Our leverage ratio is on track to be within our near term target of 3 times or under by year end. As we approach the 1 year anniversary of announcing the next step in our transformation, I want to provide an update on the strong execution throughout the year.

Speaker 2

As a reminder, this phase of our transformation comprises 2 complementary programs aimed at reducing costs and accelerating innovation. First, we're optimizing our operating model by expanding our global capability center network. 2nd, we're modernizing our technology capabilities on the state of the art data management and product platforms. Let me detail the progress made to date and the next steps to complete the programs in 2025 as intended. Our operating model optimization is the continuation of a multi year journey to build scale across the organization, foster knowledge sharing and standardized ways of operating.

Speaker 2

We leverage our Global Capability Centers or GCCs driving workforce productivity and allowing us to provide more services from talent rich geographies such as India, South Africa and Costa Rica. Over the last 12 months, we substantially completed the relocation of roughly 1,000 roles from local markets to our GCCs. As of the end of the Q3, nearly all new positions in the GCCs have been filled. We now have roughly 5,600 employees in our GCC network, largely in India, but with significant presence in Africa and Costa Rica to support 20 fourseven availability. We also strengthened our local GCC leadership by hiring senior management roles within the regions to support these deep talent pools.

Speaker 2

A majority of our GCC employees are software developers within our technology, data and analytics organization in addition to sizable teams supporting our corporate functions and business transformation efforts. As more work shifts to the GCCs, we're implementing a rigorous playbook to mitigate knowledge transfer risk. Our centralized transition team systematically tracks and documents work processes and develops a feedback loop for continuous process improvement. We also emphasize training, development and assessment for recent hires to ensure success in their new roles. We're very pleased with the execution of our GCC strategy which is driving material realized cost savings in 2024.

Speaker 2

Our focus now is further refining our processes to enhance and expand our best in class GCC network. Last quarter, we laid out how we're aligning TransUnion around global technology and product platforms powered by OneTrue. Today, I'll focus on the innovative capabilities and product launches in recent months. Earlier this year, we tested and demonstrated that OneTrue can materially improve the speed and efficacy of FactorTrust, our short term credit lending bureau in the U. S.

Speaker 2

We recently went live with several enhanced capabilities, including triggers, innovation labs, new attributes and customer free screens. We plan to migrate FactorTrust customers over the remainder of this year. In 2025, we plan to migrate our primary U. S. Credit system customers and decommission the legacy platforms.

Speaker 2

We also re released the first capabilities of TrueValidate integrated fraud suite for general availability. The suite produces notable predictive uplift and allows us to deliver our fraud point solutions to customers via a common API. In the Q3, we signed our first contract for the integrated suite in a competitive win against top fraud vendors. True IQ data enrichment provides instant access to TransUnion credit from within a customer's technology environment. This privacy first approach enables our customers to develop highly targeted marketing campaigns while retaining control of their sensitive IP.

Speaker 2

In August, we launched data enrichment on the Snowflake platform to high customer interest with strong new sales and a growing pipeline. We see significant opportunity to embed identity centric solutions like data enrichment directly within cloud data warehouses such as Snowflake, enabling customers to access our data within the environments of their choice. In our true audience marketing solutions, we achieved another key milestone in integrating products and building capabilities. Earlier this year, we unified the underlying identity graphs of our solutions to deliver more accurate identity resolution. This quarter we consolidated the product so that customers can experience our identity products on a common and modern user interface with improved features and functionality.

Speaker 2

Over the next few quarters, we expect to release further enhancement as well as roll out the capability internationally. Finally, we're in the process of migrating our internal big data and analytics environment which we call Shape onto One True. Shape is frequently the starting point for new product innovation and is also used for customer analytics work, including our innovation labs. We've onboarded and trained approximately 400 of our data scientists onto One True and delivered 10 innovation labs utilizing the platform. We plan to onboard and train all 1,000 plus of our data scientists by the end of this year, allowing us to decommission the legacy Shape platform in early 2025.

Speaker 2

OneTrue is accelerating our innovation and enabling new products that resonate with our clients. We've already built a pipeline approaching $50,000,000 and growing from recently introduced OneTrue powered products. Now the early success of One True strengthens our conviction in our technology modernization strategy. In addition to delivering continued innovation, 2025 will focus on application development and customer migration. Let me discuss our key initiatives for the coming year.

Speaker 2

In core U. S. Credit, we aim to have end to end capabilities for both online and batch services on year. We plan to start parallel runs and initial migrations of customers in the Q1 with continued migrations throughout 2025. In India credit, we are similarly migrating all data and analytics work on the OneTrue next year.

Speaker 2

This will enable us to launch our True IQ analytics suite and innovation labs into the region. We anticipate strong demand in India for our next generation analytics solutions. We are also well underway in modernizing our consumer solutions technology, which underpins our credit education and identity protection offerings for our indirect channel partners. We plan to consolidate our offerings including those acquired through SonTek onto a single global platform. We also plan to launch a comprehensive new interface for our direct to consumer product in early 2025.

Speaker 2

Finally, given the positive early indications of OneTrue strengthening our core credit applications, we are evaluating opportunities for further international bureau migrations. Remember that our announced program focused on the U. S. And India through 2025, but we view One True as our destination platform for all bureau applications. Next year, we plan to lay the groundwork in 4 other key markets for their eventual migration to One True.

Speaker 2

We remain on track to complete our transformation program in 2025 with full savings benefits expected in 2026. We continue to expect to incur $355,000,000 to $375,000,000 of one time expenses to capture the benefits of our transformation programs, including $200,000,000 in 2024. We now expect CapEx to be 8% of revenues in 2024 against a prior expectation of 9% driven by more efficient spend throughout this year in addition to higher revenues. We continue to expect CapEx to be approximately 8% of revenues in 2025. We continue to expect to deliver roughly $200,000,000 of free cash flow benefit by 2026 driven by $100,000,000 to $140,000,000 of operating expense savings as well as $70,000,000 to $80,000,000 of CapEx savings as we lower our CapEx requirements to a sustainable 6% of revenues.

Speaker 2

In 2024, we now expect to deliver $85,000,000 of in year operating expense savings ahead of our $65,000,000 expectations at the start of the year and supporting almost 100 basis points of margin expansion in the year. The higher savings in 2024 have been largely driven by our people related actions and expanded GCC network. The remaining $45,000,000 of expected savings will be driven primarily by our technology modernization. We expect to complete the investment program in 2025 and most of the technology cost rationalization will be actioned late in 2025 near the completion of the program. That remains that the remaining savings will not be realized until 2026.

Speaker 2

Taken together, our transformation programs are driving tangible benefits across the organization and will enable us to reach new levels of performance and scale. We look forward to updating you on our accelerating innovation as well as progress against our remaining cost savings targets. Now Todd will provide further details on our Q3 financial results and our updated full year 2024 outlook. Todd?

Speaker 3

Thank you, Chris, and let me add my welcome to everyone. As Chris mentioned in the Q3, we exceeded our guidance across all key financial metrics. Mortgage was the largest driver of our outperformance and our non mortgage financial services businesses and international segment also contributed positively. 3rd quarter consolidated revenue increased 12% on a reported and organic constant currency basis. There was no impact from acquisitions and an immaterial impact from foreign currency.

Speaker 3

Our business grew 8% on an organic constant currency basis excluding mortgage from both the Q3 of 2023 2024. Adjusted EBITDA increased 11% on a reported and constant currency basis. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 36.3%, above the high end of our expectations. Margins were down 50 basis points on a year over year basis, which includes an 80 basis point drag from our lower margin breach wins as well as an over 100 basis point impact from lapping last year's lower than typical incentive compensation. Excluding those items, we delivered another strong quarter of underlying margin expansion driven by revenue growth and transformation savings.

Speaker 3

Adjusted diluted earnings per share was $1.04 an increase of 14%. Our adjusted tax rate for the quarter was 24.6%, higher than expected due to a recently started internal project to restructure our legal entities to maintain a tax efficient structure as we expand our global footprint. Finally, in the Q3, we took $69,000,000 of one time charges related to our transformation program, $47,000,000 for operating model optimization, primarily related to our planned exit of an office lease and $22,000,000 for technology transformation. We incurred $145,000,000 of one time transformation expenses year to date. Looking at segment financial performance for the Q3, U.

Speaker 3

S. Markets revenue, which includes consumer interactive, was up 12% compared to the year ago quarter. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 37.7 percent or down 120 basis points. Excluding the impact of breach revenues and last year's lower incentive compensation, margins were up strongly. Financial services revenue grew 17%.

Speaker 3

Excluding mortgage, financial services revenue was up 4%. Trends remain consistent with the last several quarters with year over year growth improving sequentially as we start to lap the slowdown in activity from last fall. We outperformed flattish volumes driven by successful cross sell of our broader solution suite. Our credit card and banking business was up 5% despite tempered online volumes. This customer segment has seen some of the strongest interest in data enrichment and the broader True IQ analytics suite in addition to other highly relevant products such as Trusted Call Solutions.

Speaker 3

Consumer Lending revenue grew 2%. FinTech online activity remains muted but stable with lenders slowly resuming some level of marketing activity. The FinTech market appears to be trending in the right direction and should be a longer term beneficiary of falling interest rates, which lowers funding costs and supports increased consumer demand, particularly for debt consolidation. Our short term lending business improved benefiting from recent wins. Our auto business grew 1%.

Speaker 3

The market remains choppy across both the new and used car market as consumers face persistent affordability challenges. Against this backdrop, we drove new business wins including in true audience marketing solutions as well as trusted call solutions. For mortgage, revenue grew 63% ahead of our expectations compared to inquiry volumes down 8%. For the first time this year in late September, we experienced volumes that were ahead of last year's pace as average mortgage rates moved below 6% following the Fed's announcement. Mortgage rates have since crept back above 6%, which has tempered the pace of activity in recent weeks.

Speaker 3

We continue to take a conservative approach to forecasting 4th quarter volumes even as originations remain significantly below historical averages. On a trailing 12 month basis, mortgage represented about 10% of total TransUnion revenue. Emerging Verticals grew 3% in the quarter, led by double digit growth in insurance, public sector, tenant and employment and tech, retail and e commerce also grew offsetting declines in telco and media. Insurance grew double digits as market trends progressed as anticipated. Insurers continue to gradually increase marketing activity, driving demand for our credit and identity based marketing solutions.

Speaker 3

While marketing activity has improved, it remains below levels seen a few years ago as select insurers still work to achieve rate adequacy. Shopping remains strong with increased activity across all demographics. We see good momentum expanding our value proposition to the insurance market with products such as TruVison, Driving History, Trusted Call Solutions and our fraud and marketing products. Senate employment returned to growth as we lap the impact of our product recalibration with further improvement expected in the Q4. Public sector grew low single digit led by communications and fraud solutions.

Speaker 3

Public Sector had favorable project timing in the 2nd quarter that reversed in the 3rd quarter and we expect this vertical to grow low double digits for the year. Tech, Retail and E Commerce also grew low single digit, primarily led by Trusted Call Solutions. Media declined mid single digit, lapping mid teens growth in the prior year, which was aided by one time project wins. We expect this vertical to return to growth in the Q4. Collections was flat and telco declined low single digit, both as expected.

Speaker 3

Turning to Consumer Interactive, revenue increased 21%, driven by recent breach remediation wins. Our cross functional teams executed well against these contracts, supporting consumers and building our credibility in this space. Excluding the breach benefit, revenue declined mid single digit primarily due to our direct channel. We are making good progress on broadening our value proposition and go to market strategy in direct to consumer and we expect to have more to share in the coming quarters. For my comments about international, revenue growth comparisons will be in constant currency.

Speaker 3

For the total segment, revenue grew 12% with 4 of our 6 reported markets growing by double digits. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 45.7 percent, up 110 basis points. Now let's dig into the specifics for each region. In India, we grew 23% with broad based growth across consumer credit, commercial credit, fraud, marketing and direct to consumer. While growth remains strong, we experienced some deceleration in the last two quarters.

Speaker 3

As previously noted, the Reserve Bank of India has tempered the pace of lending activity by tightening regulations on unsecured lending and targeting lower loan to deposit ratios industry wide. This resulted in our online volume slowing in the 3rd quarter compared to strong growth throughout the first half of twenty twenty four. We believe the RBI is taking a proactive approach to support financial stability over the long term as they build a world class lending market. These actions are also in the context of good GDP growth, inflation in line with historical trends and an overall healthy consumer with delinquencies below long term averages. In this period of consumer credit tightening in India, we are benefiting from our ongoing product and vertical diversification.

Speaker 3

Our team is doing an excellent job outgrowing the underlying market, leaning further into our commercial credit solutions and new products like our API Marketplace. We are monitoring lending conditions in India and expect strong growth in the Q4. Our U. K. Business delivered another quarter of growth, up 4%.

Speaker 3

The market is trending positively with gradually improving banking and FinTech activity as well as higher consumer optimism supported by lower inflation and the Bank of England's first interest rate cut in August. We delivered strong new business, including wins across our FinTech, insurance, government and gaming verticals. In Canada, we grew 9%. We outperformed flattish market volumes, driven by strategic cross sell into financial services and alternative lenders, recent breach and consumer indirect wins and strength in insurance. We anticipate mid to high single digit growth from Canada in the 4th quarter.

Speaker 3

In Latin America, revenue grew 13%. Colombia grew high single digit outpacing muted volumes. Brazil grew double digits supported by new business wins and our other Latin American countries also grew double digits. In Asia Pacific, we grew 11% led by strength in Philippines and a solid quarter in Hong Kong. Finally, Africa increased 10% with broad based growth led by our retail vertical.

Speaker 3

Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with roughly $5,200,000,000 of debt and $643,000,000 of cash. We finished the quarter with a leverage ratio of 3.1 times. We made a $25,000,000 voluntary repayment in the Q3 for a total of $105,000,000 year to date. We expect to make an additional prepayment in the 4th quarter with excess free cash flow after funding our transformation initiatives. Remember that the majority of the roughly $280,000,000 of accrued one time transformation expenses from the Q4 of 2023 through the end of 2024 will be paid out this year.

Speaker 3

Since announcing our NuStar acquisition, we have voluntarily prepaid $1,600,000,000 while executing on 3 refinancing transactions to lower our interest expense and extend our maturity profile. Net of our swaps, our all in average effective cost of debt at today's rates is roughly 4.7% below current SOFR. You can find a slide on our debt profile in the appendix of our presentation. Based on our expectations for adjusted EBITDA and cash generation, we expect our leverage ratio to be roughly 3 times by the end of 2024. We continue to target a leverage ratio of under 3 times and view debt prepayment as an attractive use of cash.

Speaker 3

Turning to guidance, we are pleased with our outperformance over the 1st 3 quarters of the year, but our guidance approach remains unchanged. In prior guides this year, we assumed no benefits from interest rate cuts. With the Federal Reserve announcing a 50 basis point interest rate cut in mid September, we have incorporated modest improvements in mortgage volumes based on what we have experienced over the last few weeks. While we expect interest rate reductions to benefit our broader U. S.

Speaker 3

Financial Services business over the long term, we do not expect those benefits to manifest meaningfully in 2024. We assume muted but stable lending volumes will persist through the end of the year. That brings us to our outlook for the Q4. We expect foreign exchange to have a less than 0.5% impact on revenue and insignificant impact on adjusted EBITDA. We expect our revenue to be between $1,014,000,000

Speaker 4

$1,034,000,000

Speaker 3

or up 6% to 8% on an organic constant currency basis. Our revenue guidance includes approximately 5 points of tailwind from mortgage, meaning that we expect the remainder of our business to grow 1% to 3% on an organic constant currency basis. In terms of other drivers of revenue in the Q4, we expect mortgage revenues to increase over 80% based on roughly 10% volume growth. We continue to expect financial services excluding mortgage to grow mid single digit. We expect emerging verticals to accelerate from 3% growth in the 3rd quarter and grow mid single digit.

Speaker 3

We anticipate another quarter of strong growth from international and we expect consumer interactive to decline roughly 10% as the business laps a sizable breach win from the prior year. We expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $360,000,000 $375,000,000 up 10% to 15%. We expect adjusted EBITDA margin of 35.5 percent to 36.2 percent or up 130 basis points to 210 basis points. We also expect our adjusted diluted earnings per share to be between $0.92 $0.98 up 14% to 21%. Turning to the full year, we now expect revenue to come in between $4,161,000,000 $4,181,000,000 or up roughly 9% on an as reported and organic constant currency basis.

Speaker 3

We expect our organic constant currency growth excluding mortgage to be up about 5%. For our business segments, we expect U. S. Markets to grow high single digit or up low single digit excluding mortgage. Across U.

Speaker 3

S. Markets, NuStar remains well on track for mid single digit growth in 2024. We anticipate financial services to be up mid teens or low single digits excluding mortgage. We expect mortgage revenue to increase about 60% based on mortgage inquiries down less than 5% for the year. We now expect emerging verticals to be up mid single digit.

Speaker 3

We expect consumer interactive to increase low single digit and we expect international to grow low double digits. Turning back to total company outlook, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be between $1,488,000,000 $1,503,000,000 up 11% to 12%. That would result in adjusted EBITDA margins of 35.8% to 36% or up 70 basis points to 90 basis points. We anticipate adjusted diluted earnings per share to be $3.87 to $3.93 up 15% to 17%. We now expect our adjusted tax rate to be approximately 23.5%, higher than our previous guidance due to the previously mentioned internal project, which we expect to complete in 2025.

Speaker 3

We remain focused on maintaining the most efficient tax structure, but expect our future adjusted tax rate to be modestly higher than our recent historical rate given the evolving tax landscape, including initiatives like the global minimum tax. Depreciation and amortization is now expected to be approximately $535,000,000 We expect the portion excluding step up amortization from our 2012 change in control and subsequent acquisitions to be about $250,000,000 We anticipate net interest expense will be about 2 $45,000,000 for the full year and we now expect capital expenditures to be about 8% of revenue. We expect to incur approximately $200,000,000 in one time charges in 2024 related to our transformation program. With today's guidance raise, we have raised our revenue expectations over the course of the year by $161,000,000 adjusted EBITDA by $62,000,000 and adjusted diluted earnings per share by $0.19 Our revenue increase has been driven by stronger mortgage revenues, large breach remediation wins and broad based business momentum. We also modestly increased our adjusted EBITDA margin expectations despite adding lower margin breach revenue supported by revenue flow through and higher in year transformation savings.

Speaker 3

I'll now turn the call back to Chris for some final comments.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Todd. And to wrap up, we exceeded 3rd quarter expectations driven primarily by U. S. Financial Services and International. We're executing well against our transformation program, driving material savings and a step change improvement in innovation with several new capability and product launches powered by OneTrue.

Speaker 2

We're raising our 2024 guidance and expect to deliver strong high single digit revenue growth and mid teens adjusted diluted earnings per share growth for the year. Now let me turn it back to Greg.

Speaker 1

That concludes our prepared remarks. For the Q and A, we ask that you each ask only one question so that we can include more participants. Operator, we can begin the Q and A.

Operator

And we will now begin the question and answer session. And our first question comes from Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Yes. Hi. Good morning and thank you. So Chris, I wanted to touch on your comments around OneTrue and the transformation. You talked about around $50,000,000 I think of pipeline related to ONETREW products.

Speaker 5

I'm curious if we should consider those potentially as incremental revenues and how should we think about really the additional revenue benefit from the transformation as we look ahead to 2025 beyond?

Speaker 2

Okay. Well, good morning Faiza. Thank you for the question and welcome everybody to the Q3 call. One True is having a very profound impact on our business and our ability to compete in a variety of product lines and markets. I think what's been most exciting is completing the integration phase of the acquisitions and the tech transformation that we've been doing and pivoting really to strong innovation.

Speaker 2

Over the past couple of quarters in earnings and in press releases, you've seen us announce a whole series of product innovations in analytics, in marketing solutions, in fraud, in credit for short term unsecured lending. And I think the market should get used to this elevated pace of innovation, which is going to buttress our revenue growth and our revenue forecasts as we roll into next year. Recently, you may have seen an announcement of the next gen of our true audience marketing solutions. We've brought together the best of NuStar and the best of TransUnion marketing solutions for identity resolution and market segmentation and audience generation and onboarding with a new user interface onto the One True platform. And over the course of 2025, we have quarterly robust product functional improvements in the pipeline.

Speaker 2

The story is the same on the fraud side. We've launched TrueValidate, which is our brand name for our global fraud solutions. And again, we've integrated our various very strong point solutions for e commerce fraud mitigation and just transaction authentication onto a common platform. Our predictive models are far more performant. We are winning new clients.

Speaker 2

And so we pointed to kind of a cumulative $50,000,000 bookings benefit at this point that is driven directly from that innovation. I can say that over the last couple of quarters, our sales of marketing products have improved materially. And again, that's against a pretty tepid, advertising and marketing environment as CMOs have had the belt tighten in a more difficult revenue environment and just a less aggressive posture toward client acquisition. I think as rates come down in 2025 and we achieve this soft landing and if economic macro conditions continue to be stable as they are or even improving, you could see consumer or rather our customers pivot more toward acquisition, which again would benefit. So I mean, I think before I say it's additive since we haven't guided to 2025, I just think it certainly de risks our belief that we can return to steady high single digit revenue compounding over the intermediate term.

Speaker 2

And that's really the goal. And look, the good news is we are guiding to that type of growth in 2024 with this raise. And we've yet to see any real strengthening in our end markets. We've just gone from a negative volume environment over the past 18 to 24 months to one where we have stable but still muted market conditions and we're demonstrating how growthful we can be given all of our products, given our geographic spread and the stability that we're now enjoying.

Speaker 5

Great. Thank you, Chris.

Operator

And our next question comes from Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Hi. Could you just tell us your assumptions around the consumer credit activity kind of through the Q4 in the guide? And do you anticipate that there's a direction as we head into next year around credit activity?

Speaker 7

Good morning, Andrew. This is Todd. I'll take that question. Let's answer it specifically from Financial Services excluding mortgage, right, and the trajectory that we're seeing. So as you saw in the Q3, we grew 4% on that basis, which was a bit better than the low single digit expectations that we had.

Speaker 7

As you just heard Chris say, volumes, they're stable, but they're still muted. So you look at that in more of a flattish perspective. And when you look at the comparables to the prior year, needless to say, it's important to look that we're lapping the slowdown in the headwind that Chris again just had alluded to. So as we look into the Q4, we are expecting mid single digit growth here in this space. As we're just considering that the conditions persist and the comparisons will also ease.

Speaker 7

I think what's important here is that we're not assuming that there's any type of material benefit from the recent actions that the Federal Reserve took with interest rate reductions. However, we do believe that we will be a medium term beneficiary of those rate cuts, so more as we get into 2025. And as we look at the lines of business within Financial Services excluding mortgage, consumer lending is one that we would say is a little bit more rate sensitive. And as I'm sure you know, this is where the vast majority of our FinTech customers reside. And it's kind of 2 pronged here.

Speaker 7

First, with lower rates, the FinTechs have cheaper access to capital, which then improves their funding models. But then on the demand side, if rates are lower, you'll see consumers look for products such as debt consolidation. So rate sensitivity there is impactful and we should see a benefit. If you look at our auto business, the lower rates are aiding affordability. Vehicle prices have gone up significantly since before the pandemic.

Speaker 7

So a lower rate environment will help. There's also a potential refi opportunity in the auto space as well too. And as you think about how auto loans were taken out at very high levels of interest rates, there could be an opportunity there as well in the medium term. Thinking about the credit card business, probably a limited impact that rates are going to have there. And then finally, when we think about the banking side of the equation, the small and medium sized lenders, as we talked about a year ago, this group felt outsized pain from higher rates as well as dislocation of deposits last year in the wake of a couple of banking failures.

Speaker 7

So we look at that group of customers, which TransUnion is well positioned in, that lower interest rates again in the medium term should help.

Speaker 6

Makes sense. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Speaker 8

Thanks so much. I wanted to ask about mortgage. You talked could you just talk about the delta between the mortgage revenue growth and inquiries? I'm sure a lot of this is coming from the FICO price increase, but maybe just help with some other drivers just given the large delta and it accelerated from the last couple of quarters. And maybe if I could just tag on really quickly, the inquiries of down about 8, looks a little bit light compared to peers and third party sources.

Speaker 8

So, anything to read into the inquiries as well? Thank you.

Speaker 7

Good morning, Tony. Thanks for that question. And that's an important one for us to go through the details on. So as you stated, our mortgage volumes in Q3 did decline 8%. What's important there to call out though is that's as we expected it.

Speaker 7

So we're pretty much right in line with how we felt volumes are going to come in at the beginning of the quarter. One thing that is important to remember when you look at the volumes that TransUnion reports for mortgage, we include everything that's mortgage in that number, including pre qualification. So other numbers that you may see in the market maybe don't compare on a like for like basis. So that's an important distinction there as well. The early access program grew in the Q3, but the growth was moderating as we lap the program ramp that started in the second half of twenty twenty three.

Speaker 7

And as I said in my prepared remarks, we did see volume start to turn positive in late September as mortgage rates were 6% or below. But since then, we've seen rates creep back up. And so we've seen the tri merge volumes in mortgage decline. So we've changed our guidance though because of what we've seen with rate cuts and just a handful of weeks of performance in mortgage. And as you can see, we are now calling for a 10% increase in the 4th quarter, which if you think about it from seasonality perspective, it's typically very low.

Speaker 7

But then historically, we had a very weak Q4 of 2023. So there is definitely a comparable that you have to take into consideration. And now we're expecting from the little bit of benefit that we're getting from the rate reduction that we're expecting the second half volumes to be roughly flat where last time we spoke with you, we were talking about a 5% decline. Now to your question specific about the gap between the revenues and the volumes. In the Q3, we posted 63% growth, but as I've already said volumes were down 8%.

Speaker 7

So that delta is about 71%, if you do the math on that one. And then for what we're guiding basically for the Q4, was a 10% increase in volume, in essence, assuming 80% in revenue. So what we're seeing here is just a positive mix in price from TransUnion's products. And this includes the pre qual shift to early access plus the reporting that we put on our own credit products as well. And I guess one last point too is when you look at our mortgage revenues, another important thing to remember is that there's more than just online volumes in our mortgages.

Speaker 7

So we in particular, we work with mortgage lenders to help them target and prospect consumers that may be in the market for a mortgage. So we're starting to see that business pick up in a meaningful way.

Speaker 8

Thank you.

Operator

And our next question comes from Jeff Meuler with Baird. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Yes. Thank you. So I just how fully do you feel the RBI actions have been felt on the market and your financial services business or consumer credit business within India at this point? And then just anything you can say, I know it's a diversified information solution business. So is growth as strong as ever kind of outside the U.

Speaker 9

S. Consumer credit business in India? I know you said growth should remain strong. I'm just not quite sure what that means in the context of 23%, but decelerating growth recently. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Okay, Jeff. I'll take the India question. And I'm going to take your question about the diversification component as applying to India and not to the U. S. Markets, correct me at the end.

Speaker 2

Correct. Yes, so as we pointed out, I think the last call, the RBI has become concerned over the pace of lending growth across the Indian marketplace and has taken certain actions to lower the loan to deposit ratio in that market. We view it as a prudent step to ensure kind of the stability and the soundness of lending practices within India, which year on year had been growing very rapidly. And I think the RBI is going to maintain that for the coming quarters until they're comfortable that there's real integrity across all the lending practices, particularly unsecured lending, which they've scrutinized more highly. I think it's important to remember that India is an amazing market for all the reasons that we've talked about in prior calls, population growth, economic growth, penetration of financial products and general innovation.

Speaker 2

And India wants to create a world class financial services marketplace. And I think the actions by the RBI are toward that end. The lending market continues to be very strong. Delinquencies are at 3 year lows. So there's not really a specific problem.

Speaker 2

And if you look at some of the recent actions against specific lenders, they were more concerned that the appropriate interest rates were being charged to consumers, not an excess interest rate. So it had the flavor of anti usury, if you will. And also that banks were properly diligence in the affordability of loans for consumers. So really, we just view it as a prudent and conservative posture by the RBI to ensure that they don't suffer a boom and then bust cycle. I think we got to remember that we're accelerating our growth outside of core consumer lending, while we're also expanding the number of use cases within consumer lending that we can serve, particularly agri lending and other small dollar lending, micro lending, if you will, and increasing the analytic products that we're bringing to consumer lending.

Speaker 2

But the team is confident that we can continue to produce this outsized growth for the intermediate future because of the diversification in commercial, in direct to consumer, in fraud and marketing solutions as we bring them and just a whole array of new analytic products that we can bring across the Indian marketplace. So while growth has slowed from the low 30s to the low 20s, we still expect this market to compound the next 3, 5 years at very attractive rates and we'll guide more to that effect in the early part of next year. Thank you.

Operator

And our next question comes from Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering if you could talk about what's driving the improvement in emerging verticals in the Q1. And as you think about going forward with some of these innovations from One True, how should we think about that momentum going forward? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. So emerging verticals in the U. S. Grew 3% in the Q3. It's down a touch from the 4% growth rate we achieved in the 1st couple of quarters.

Speaker 2

We don't really view it as a concern. We think things will accelerate and we'll be back mid single digits for the Q4 and for the full year. I mean, on a quarterly basis, there's always some lumpiness or noise. In the Q3 for emerging public sector, which is a lumpy business group, but not as fast as it typically does and will for the full year. We were also lapping some very large comps in media.

Speaker 2

You may recall next year we had a big media quarter in the Q3 of 2023 and so there was a difficult comp there. The good news is that insurance is returning to its former growthfulness and we saw some double digit growth, low double digit growth in the Q3, technology, retail and e commerce solid, tenant employment screening, etcetera, still looking good. So our prospects are improving and momentum is improving in emerging verticals. And again, we saw a lot of marketing and fraud solutions into emerging and I feel like we're pretty well positioned to deliver a good year of growth and continue into next year.

Speaker 4

That's great color. Thank you.

Operator

Next question comes from Kelsey Xu with Autonomous. Please go ahead.

Speaker 10

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. So we've seen really strong growth in Canada for the last few quarters. And I think you previously mentioned that part of the strength comes from share gains. So I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more colors around what has worked really well in that market and what level of medium term growth rate we should expect going forward?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you, Kelsey. So I've been in the business for 11 years now and for 10 of them we've had outsized growth rates in Canada and that team has done a great job of consistently gaining market share. The playbook has been consistent innovation. They have done a great job of innovating in country, but also importing just a range of relevant product innovations from the U.

Speaker 2

S. And adapting it to the Canadian market. We were also the 1st mover in launching trended data in the Canadian market and we've got a very rich trended data set, many attributes that perform extremely well vis a vis our competition and we've been able just to bring down shingles year after year in Canada and I expect that the team will continue to do so. Now we're starting to lap some very large growth rates in a mature market. And so the rate of growth is going to decelerate from the mid and sometimes high teens that we've enjoyed over these last few quarters.

Speaker 2

But the Canadian team knows what they're doing. They're going to continue to innovate. They're going to continue to focus on ways to make Canadian lenders more effective and more profitable. And I think we're going to do quite well going forward.

Speaker 10

Thanks a lot.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jason Haas with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Speaker 9

Hi, good morning and thanks for taking my question. I'm curious to focus on the consumer interactive segment. I'm curious if trends worsened excluding that breach. It sounds like maybe that was due to PTC. And then I'm just curious what can you drive sort

Speaker 7

of improvement there going forward? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thanks for the question, Jason. Direct to consumer and the consumer business overall remains an area of intense focus for innovation and we've talked a lot about it in recent quarters. I feel like we're still on the path to deliver what we need to strategically to return this business to growth. Now look, in any one quarter, you're going to have some noise, but it's important to understand that on the direct to consumer side, we are broadening the value proposition and improving our go to market strategy so that we can better monetize the audience that we're getting, 1, just our natural flow given our brand in the U.

Speaker 2

S, but also through our marketing efforts, which we've continued to fine tune to be both effective and entirely compliant. When we talk about broadening the value proposition, I mean, obviously, we've got to bring all things credit to the consumer. We've got to have education and access and simulation and we're good at that. But we've been able to bring identity protection and breach remediation services. And I believe in the relatively near future, we will also launch offers capability, which has been a missing link to the component.

Speaker 2

And we're very excited about bringing that capability to the U. S. Markets and beyond and enabling our indirect business to bring the full complement of consumer solutions, which again is credit, identity protection breach mitigation and a financial and insurance offers engine, right. So that's kind of the strategy and we are making great progress in delivering that and the fact that will probably become a focal point of an upcoming earnings call. So that's what I'd say about consumer.

Operator

Next question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Please go ahead.

Speaker 6

Thank you. Chris, I just wanted to understand the expected drop in CapEx from 8% to 6% in 'twenty six percent. I think part of it might just be your expectations of high single digit top line growth, maybe a bigger revenue base. But maybe just trying to appreciate perhaps the power of all the spend in the tech platform because I imagine there's always going to be the need to spend on analytics, software, data, etcetera. So a whole 2 point drop seems like a lot assuming things keep changing?

Speaker 2

Yes. Well, thanks for the question Manav.

Speaker 7

There is a bit

Speaker 2

of a revenue element, but it's secondary. The core is that we're actually achieving the technology transformation with a lower level of spend. Now when we announced in the early Q4 last year, this current chapter of the transformation, which is really the 2 components of an operating model shift where we'll relocate more work to the GCCs, but also an acceleration of technology investment on the backs of Project RISE to consolidate applications on the platform. We're just getting that done with a lower level of spend this year. And so we've reduced our guidance on our CapEx to 8% from 9%, but it really has to do from effectiveness.

Speaker 2

Now some of these other areas that you mentioned, they are important areas of investment. We're continuing to invest disproportionately in innovation, but not all of it is capitalized, right. So the component that is capitalizable, we're getting the work done with less. And so I think it's good news.

Speaker 7

And Manav, I would add on to it because I think you're more referring to how do we get to 6% of revenue in 2026? Is there any risk? Are we foregoing anything? And the important thing to remember here is that we're migrating all of our applications to the cloud. And by doing that, we no longer have the need for hardware and software purchases, which historically would have been capital expenditures.

Speaker 7

So now as we have cloud computing costs that comes into the P and L as an operating expense as opposed to capital expense that we would depreciate over the life. So what's left in that capital spend when we get to 2026 primarily our innovation. It's the internally developed software to develop our products and services for our customers.

Speaker 2

Yes. And the other wrinkle on that is, given that we are actually consolidating on a global platform and not just migrating the same stuff to the cloud, we will have fewer systems to care and feed for and we can concentrate our engineering on a common configurable global platform. And I think that's really going to be a point of leverage in our earnings and our innovation going forward.

Operator

Thank you.

Speaker 3

And our

Operator

final question comes from Simon Klintz with Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead. Simon, your line may be muted.

Speaker 11

Apologies, that was muted. Thanks for taking my question. I was just wondering if you could talk a bit about the longer term sort of competitive environment in what has historically been a very stable core credit business for the credit bureaus. As your you and your peers are all developing new products and there's a greater capability of sort of, I guess, bundling additional services beyond just the traditional credit file into these revenue streams and for your customers. And I was just wondering if you expect that to change the intensity of competition or anything like that in long term and how you would be able to compete in that environment?

Speaker 2

Yes, thank you for the question. So look, my perspective is that each of the bureaus provide great data and analytics and serve their customers well. And that there is a good competitive intensity and a lot of innovation. And if you look over the decade that I've been here, lots of innovation. Each of the 3 of us have differentiated value propositions.

Speaker 2

And I think you know what those are. I don't necessarily view this as 0 sum type competition. I view it as each of the bureaus expanding the range of services and the value they can add to clients to gain share of spending, to gain wallet share, if you will. And I think we'll each pursue our somewhat differentiated strategies to accomplish that. But net net, this is an expanding market.

Speaker 2

There's a lot of work that clients do internally that I think the bureaus are well positioned to take over and incorporate into their value propositions. And then I also think that it's just data and analytics is hugely important to lenders, insurers and the entire client base operating effectively. And so they're willing to pay premiums for quality data and insights that help them manage their broader P and Ls more effectively. So I think that's why it's a great business. There's a constant stream of innovation.

Speaker 2

We can prove the value that we add and I think TransUnion is certainly well positioned to grow with and above the market across the geographies that we compete in.

Speaker 1

Perfect. That brings us to the end of today's call. Thank you for your time and have

Speaker 7

a great rest of the day. Thanks.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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Earnings Conference Call
TransUnion Q3 2024
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