2024-05-15 16:43:04 ET
Experian plc (EXPGF)
Q4 2024 Results Conference Call
May 15, 2024 04:30 PM ET
Company Participants
Brian Cassin - CEO
Lloyd Pitchford - CFO
Craig Boundy - COO
Conference Call Participants
Simona Sarli - Bank of America
Suhasini Varanasi - Goldman Sachs
Andrew Ripper - Liberum
Ryan Flight - Jefferies
James Rose - Barclays
Kelzey Zhiu - Autonomous
Rory McKenzie - UBS
Arthur Truslove - Citi
Andy Grobler - BNP Pariba Exane
Sylvia Barker - JPMorgan
Presentation
Brian Cassin
Hello, everybody, and welcome to our FY '24 results presentation. I'm joined, as usual, by Lloyd. He'll run through the financials after my initial overview. And also on the call today is Craig Boundy, our Chief Operating Officer. And Craig will join us for the Q&A segment of the call.
We're very pleased with how we performed in FY '24. The strength and diversity of our portfolio as well as contributions from newer products allowed us to navigate difficult underlying conditions and end the year with impressive organic growth and a strong finish in Q4.
We've also made good strategic progress, with further expansion into new verticals, some important acquisitions, excellent progress in client NPS and employee engagement scores and material progress in our technology transformation. The progress we made in FY '24 builds on work done over many years to create new paths for growth. It's allowed us to deliver strong results, whilst investing for growth and in transforming our technology estate.
Looking ahead to FY '25 and beyond, we expect to continue to drive strong top line growth, while gradually benefiting from a normalizing credit environment. We also expect to improve our margin trajectory through a combination of technology efficiencies, productivity efficiencies and operating leverage, and Lloyd will provide additional details on our financial assumptions later on. So overall, our performance in recent years demonstrates our strategy is working well, and FY '24 was further evidence of good progress.
Now going into a bit more detail. FY '24 was at the top end of our guidance range at 6% organic growth. And in this macro environment, that's a very good result, and it demonstrates the resilience of our business and how well we've executed strategically.
Q4 organic growth was 8% to take us to 6% for the year, and all regions and segments delivered organic revenue growth for the year, with both North America and the U.K. strengthening as the year closed. By business segment, Consumer Services led the way, with organic revenue growth of 7% despite a very difficult backdrop from marketplaces. Acquisitions and FX took total revenue growth to 8%. Underlying EBIT margins progressed by 10 basis points at constant currency, and we delivered an 8% uplift in benchmark EPS.
Cash conversion was 97%, also very good, and so our strong -- our financial position remains very strong. So very good progress all around.
Now let me briefly comment on some of the more significant developments during the year as we've made some great progress in many areas. The insurance marketplace in North America Consumer Services progressed really well. We're very confident this is on track to be a very large vertical for us.
Sticking with Consumer Services. We grew free consumer memberships to over 180 million globally, exceeding the targets we set ourselves a few years ago. And it's been a good year for new client wins and retention, with competitive wins in all major geographies, solid performance across business -- all business lines and very good growth in some of our larger verticals, such as health and automotive and some new ones, such as verifications.
We continue to invest heavily in our products. This year, we made material progress developing our unified platform and further expanding [indiscernible] suite of products. Over the last few years, we've invested heavily to also to build out a comprehensive product portfolio in Brazil, and we've seen continuing great success in FY '24 with strong growth, in particular, in fraud and ID, agribusiness, SME and consumer.
We also completed a number of acquisitions recently signing an agreement to acquire illion in Australia as well as infills in health, data quality and also in Brazil. And we've done more to strengthen our foundations. We progressed our NPS with clients for a fifth year in a row. And we're again ranked as a top employer and certified as a great place to work in 24 countries. And we've made great progress with cloud native technology infrastructure and new generative AI investments....
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Experian plc (EXPGF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript