Jim Peck
Analyst · William Blair. Tim, your line is open
Thanks Aaron. Before I begin my discussion of the business, I want to comment on other news we announced this morning, that Al has decided to pursue other opportunities and is leaving TransUnion on August 18. Al has been a terrific partner for me over the past five years through some very significant changes in personnel, culture, technology, business simplification, and the process of going public I relied on Al and he's been a great friend and colleague. While I am certainly sad to see him leave on behalf of myself, our leadership team, our employees and our Board, I want to thank Al and wish him nothing but success in his new endeavors. What I'm really pleased about is that we have a deep bench of finance talent and we're able to immediately backfill Al's position with Todd Cello. Todd has been with TransUnion for almost 20-years in a wide variety of critical finance roles including CFO of both our USIS and international segments, as well as the Head of Strategic and Financial Planning through our IPO and I believe some of you on this call have already met him. To our succession planning process, we have been proactively preparing Todd for this role. He is an outstanding talented finance leader who is going to continue to add real value to TransUnion. I also know that there will be a strong desire to meet him and we will do our best as Todd transitions into the role. With that, let me turn back to our quarterly performance. As you saw on our earnings release this morning, TransUnion delivered another strong quarter. We saw double-digit revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS growth, as well as another 170 basis points of adjusted EBITDA margin expansion. Importantly our growth continues to be broad-based and innovation driven with especially good results across USIS including financial services and our newer verticals, as well as both developed and emerging markets in our international segment. On top of that, we continue to prudently deploy our robust cash flow repurchasing about $65 million of TransUnion stock during the quarter bringing our total buyback this year to about $133 million. Al will walk you through the details behind these results and actions shortly. Looking at the rest of the year and our long-term view of TransUnion, we continue to have deep conviction in our ability to generate top-tier revenue growth with the market-leading EBITDA margin. Underpinning this confidence is a series of five focused highly impactful strategies that provide the engine for our current and long-term growth. These strategies are driving growth through innovation, expansion into new vertical markets, growth in international markets, capitalizing and growth opportunities in consumer interactive, and leveraging global operational excellence. Last quarter as part of my comments about leveraging our global operational excellence, I started out with the discussion of how we leverage our technology infrastructure on a global basis to drive innovation, reduce cost and increase our speed to market creating a real competitive advantage in the marketplace. There are numerous additional global leverage points that we'll discuss in future calls including sales force effectiveness, product development, and market specific thought leadership to drive customer engagement. Each one of these merits its own space and each is enabling growth. Today however I want to take a higher level view of how we leverage data and analytical capabilities across vertical segments and geographies to fully take advantage of the powerful assets that reside with TransUnion. As I walk through a variety of examples of our strategies, you will see this mosaic affect in all the benefits that we derive from appropriately leveraging our data and capabilities. You'll hear about how fraud and ID solutions, cross vertical, segments and geographies, how both CreditVision and Prama are becoming global and how we see the future path to extending them into other end markets. I’ll talk about our insurance vertical is leveraging our data assets to successfully develop new products to our growth while diversifying their offerings. We'll look at the influx of products and capabilities in Canada that's driving impressive growth in a developed market and I'll wrap-up with how we're leveraging our core capabilities and consumer interactive to a new partnerships and build-out our international footprint. Our ability to leverage TransUnion's powerful business model and valuable asset is critical to understanding how we grown our topline and expanded our margin in recent years. And importantly, how we have such deep conviction that these trends will continue over the long-term. So this is a backdrop, let's dig into how we're driving growth through innovation. I want to spend some time this morning focusing at our fraud and ID solutions. We have established industry leadership in number of facets of this fast-growing highly dynamic yet fragmented market. We delivered very good growth in recent years and see significant future opportunity for TransUnion. A way of background on the industry it's estimated that fraud losses amount to more than $0.5 trillion per year and are growing. To combat this problem, business has spent approximately 15 billion per year and that figure is expected to grow 10% to 15% per year. The fraud solution industry is largely made up of niche players with point solutions, in other words, smaller players who have a single product offering. TransUnion is just one of a few players that can provide a holistic enterprise-level solution for customers which is what we've done through our suite of product called IDVISION. This set of offerings brings together robust data assets with advanced analytics that link, interpret and analyze information to discover anomalies and patterns of risk. Businesses receive actionable alerts and instantly delivered progress scores so they can make timely decisions. As a result, customers across various industries including financial services, retail, telco, insurance and healthcare can identify more good consumers enable secure confident and convenient authentication. Additionally they can detect more fraud patterns that are at origination, doing transactions and by monitoring portfolios. IDVISION was largely created through internal development and one acquisition Trustev which enhance our ability to identify online fraud by authenticating the digital footprint of the transaction. In the past several years as we've refined our products and as industry demand for solutions has increased, our fraud and ID business has more than doubled and now represents a meaningful growing revenue stream for TransUnion. As I mentioned one of the real opportunities is bundling valuable services to more fully meet our customers' needs. TransUnion's IDVISION suite is comprised of multiple solutions addressing a variety of critical issues in the fraud and identity management space. Let me walk you through some of the most significant solutions. Our synthetic fraud model addresses the key questions of whether an identity has been fabricated or manipulated. Today fraudsters are creating identities compromise of fabricated data elements or compilation of multiple real identity elements with the intent to use these synthetic identity to open fraudulent accounts. In fact it's estimated that synthetic fraud now makes up 85% of all first-party fraud. Our synthetic fraud model is specifically built to analyze consumer behaviors by uncovering anomalies or suspect patterns in the development and usage of credit across all lines of business including credit card, auto loans, and personal loans. Our model helps detect this costly type of fraud before a fraudster cashes out. With best-in-class false positive rates so that good consumers aren't unconvinced in the process. We've seen very strong customer engagement particularly in the auto and credit markets. We also provide digital verification and authentication solutions to ensure consumers are who they say they are by examining hundreds of digital signals captured in real time during an online or mobile transaction. More recent addition to IDVISION is the fraud prevention exchange which primarily helps online lenders tackle the issue of product originations in real time. Including fraudulent loans stacking or fraudsters who seek out multiple loans with high velocity so quickly that lenders would otherwise be unaware of their activity. Exchange enables participating funds to confidentially provide inbound loan transactions to a single point. Exchange members receive real-time alerts when certain identity or digital elements have been reported as fraudulent by other exchange members are then associated with multiple rapidly similar transactions within a short timeframe. We have seen good participation by our FinTech customers and traditional lenders are now demonstrating strong interest in joining the exchange. We are in the process of building a fraud prevention exchange in Canada and see opportunities in other international markets over time even as we expand our service to other types of lenders in the U.S. Just as we've leveraged products like CreditVision and Prama globally, we're doing the same with IDVISION. We have developed a solid footprint in Canada already and our building our positions in Colombia, India, and Hong Kong. Over time we see considerable incremental opportunity in these markets. Beyond IDVISION, we are also able to leverage our fraud solutions and our consumer interactive segment. There we are the only bureau to offer free identity and credit protection to a product called true identity. To further enhance our consumer offerings., we recently partnered with Equifax and Credit Lock Plus, the first multiyear of Credit Lock tool. We're rapidly growing market with significant opportunities for innovation and coordination of offerings, we've done a good job of pacing the industry. And as the solutions impact all our segments, many verticals and our key geographies, it is another source of long-term diversified growth. I'll end this section with an update on two key innovations that we've discussed with you regularly that are also driving long term growth, CreditVision and Prama. Let me start with our industry-leading trended data products, CreditVision and CreditVision Link. As we discussed, TransUnion have the only trended data product that works for all lending types and utilizes up to three months of data. With CreditVision Link we've combined the power of trended credit report and highly predictive alternate data sources to allow our customers to score more than 20 million U.S. consumers who they could not score using traditional means. The ability to reduce risk, increase productive outcomes and reach more consumers makes these products incredibly valuable to our customers. As a reminder, Fannie Mae now requires trended data from all their resellers giving us nearly complete coverage of that market. Our FinTech customers were early adopters too. With the 90% of them have taken the product but more importantly they've been consistently renewing their contracts and more fully utilizing the products across the product portfolio. This has led to deeper penetration in incremental business and clearly validates the value of the products. I would also point out the uptake of CreditVision and CreditVision Link and auto lending has been accelerating. We are in the implementation process with several large national customers and have a robust pipeline of potential new accounts. Beyond financial services, we've seen some early traction with insurance companies and solid interest in the telco space. And I'll briefly mention here that we officially launched CreditVision in India during the second quarter and are on track to do the same in Colombia and South Africa by the end of the year. Moving on to Prama which puts the power of TransUnion's data sets and analytics capability into the hands of our customers. Prama is a highly sophisticated suite of products for accessing and analyzing any of the immense amount of our diverse data and can also efficiently ingest data from third parties. To that end, we can build modules for different end markets and in different geographies leveraging promise capability as a means of accessing and delivering end product to our clients. It was an exciting and busy quarter for Prama. We launched two new benchmarking modules, one for auto lenders and one for credit card issuers, as well as our new data extract product that allows clients to directly assess our credit data archives. In the third quarter we expect to launch a module focused on consumer lending with a mortgage product following that. We also rolled up Prama in Canada during the quarter and have seen high levels of customer interest and very rapid uptake. I'll spend a little more time on Canada shortly but this is another example of expanding our innovation across borders just as we're doing with CreditVision and other products. As you would expect, we have plans to launch Prama in additional countries in the future and the commonality of our technology platform allows that to happen quickly and efficiently. Looking a little further into the future, we have proof-of-concept Prama modules with several markets outside of financial services. While it's too early to predict the size and impact that they'll have, we're bullish that we have yet another powerful application of our industry-leading product. The second strategy I want to discuss is our expansion into new vertical markets which have largely been growing revenue at solid double-digit rates and should continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Today I'd like to spend some time discussing our insurance vertical which helps our customers improve risk assessment including policy pricing underwriting decision and potential fraud, as well as helping them gain valuable consumer insights. Historically, our insurance offering leverage credit data as an underwriting tool for auto insurers. About seven years ago, we began to diversify into new lines of the insurance business, as well as into other areas of the insurance value chain. That diversification has allowed us to better match our customers need and to deliver data-driven analytic tools that are driving considerable value in the industry. Starting on the auto side which is still the largest piece of the vertical, we haven't launched any relationships with 14 of the top 15 auto insurers in the U.S., as well as a large cross-section of small and midsize insurers. We provide them with a suite of solutions used for customer acquisitions, coding and underwriting, fraud and identity authentication, as well as a sophisticated investigative platform used in claims. Consumer credit data is a strong predictor of many behaviors including how an individual is likely to perform as an insured driver. And as such it provides the underwriter with a data-driven analytical tool to complement other factors in determining if they want to ensure an individual and at what price. We have successfully diversified our offerings beyond this traditional underwriting product that I discussed a few minutes ago, we are leveraging our fraud and ID capabilities across the company and the insurance vertical has utilized them to help carriers quickly verify the identity of the individual but also other key pieces of information like if they really live and garage their car where they have indicated, given the importance of where the vehicle is kept. We can also identify who else lives in their household. Is there a teenage driver living at the home that the applicant didn't declare and we're able to validate the authenticity of the asset being insured to help avoid a fraudulent claim for a previously damaged vehicle or even to avoid fraud associated with someone trying to ensure a phantom vehicle that never existed only to turn around and file a claim for a stolen vehicle. Carriers have become more exposed to fraud as more and more insurance is sold via Internet or through a call center. Further diversification is come from the acquisition of driver's history which led to the creation of our DriverRisk product. DriverRisk identifies risk associated with an applicant's driving behavior and provide insurers with a cost competitively timely and more detailed offering compared to state issued motor vehicle reports. From a cost perspective, we are able to sell DriverRisk at a price point that makes it cost-effective to be used for quoting new business. Given they have only about 30% to 40% of drivers actually have violations on [reckless], insurers are spending a lot of money to learn that there are no issues. DriverRisk can be used as a screening tool whereby the insurer looks at all applicant and then only orders additional underwriting reports for driver risk shows violation. In other cases, customers can use driver risk as a standalone underwriting tool given that the solution provides a greater level of detail about the driving and fraction that is currently available from traditional sources. Let me walk you through how DriverRisk differs from traditional sources. First, unlike a traditional MBR DriverRisk was so different that the driver was charged with and not just a final determination of a court. In situations the individual contest the ticket. This could show that the driver received a ticket for a DUI and plead to down to a lesser charge very valuable information to insurer. Beyond that, DriverRisk reflects ticketed violations quickly in the event that a driver challenges the ticket in court and MBR will not include that ticket and so the court makes a determination meaning that insurer could underwrite an individual while there are potentially serious track of violations pending in court and not be aware of them. DriverRisk will show the ticket even while the driver's contesting it. With a lower price point, superior timelines and more granular violation data, DriverRisk continues to gain share in the industry with a steadily growing number of auto insurers using the products today. We also continue to expand our national coverage. As of today we're in 31 states which represents 71% of the U.S. driving population. Even as insurance continues to deliver good performance, we also continue to see strength in our other growth verticals notably healthcare, rental screening and governments. All our verticals offer strong growth trends in attractive markets providing very valuable portfolio diversification for TransUnion. At the same time they leverage our diverse and powerful data assets and analytical capabilities to help us create unique positions in these markets. Growth in international markets our third strategy continues to be a very good story and has brought valuable diversification to our portfolio. We spent a fair amount of time in the past talking about our emerging market opportunity which makes sense given the potential end markets like India and Colombia. I’ll provide an update on those markets shortly but I want to spend time discussing our impressive fast growing Canadian business. Clearly the catalyst for sustainable solid double-digit growth in a highly developed market like Canada has not the underlying macroeconomic trends. The story of our business there comes back to our ability to quickly efficiently and effectively leverage our innovation and capabilities to win share and build new markets with our customers. Just like the U.S. and almost all our markets, the core of the business is consumer credit data. We saw financial institutions and help them acquire customers and manage lending related risk across all the same end markets that we serve in the U.S. Our ability to lift and shift their technology and the industry-leading innovation that it supports into Canada has enabled meaningful share gains with some of the largest financial institutions in that market. It started with the launch of CreditVision in 2015. As I discussed earlier, we're the leaders in trended data in the U.S. and internationally. Part of this cutting end new product and our refocus approach to the market, our sales force was able to just place our competitor and gain a primary position in several large national accounts. While we certainly benefit from selling our customers a higher value product like CreditVision, the bigger win is the substantial incremental volume that comes with being at customer's primary bureau. Customers place a premium on innovation that helps them better manage lending acquisition of risk which leads to real value creation for them. For us becoming a source of innovation and valuable partners makes the relationship sticky. With the launch of Prama in Canada in the second quarter, we are cementing our position as a innovation leader in Canada. As I mentioned earlier, we have seen very rapid adoption and have confidence that there is meaningful future growth opportunity. Beyond financial services, we have continued to diversify the business similar to our consumer interactive segment in U.S., we have both a direct to consumer credit monitoring business, as well as indirect partners including our recently announced partnership to power CreditKarma in Canada. The Canadian consumer business has delivered solid double-digit growth over the past four years as consumers are becoming more engaged and understanding their credit score and profile. We are also building our growth verticals in Canada. The largest is insurance where we continue to see strong growth and currently are the primary provider of credit dated to 8 of the top 10 Canadians insurers. Beyond that, we have nascent growing positions in government, credit unions, mortgage brokers and auto. Taken together our strong innovation pipeline, ability to win share and diversification into new verticals give us conviction in Canada as a long-term source of growth for TransUnion. It also offers a good template for how we are able to stimulate growth above and beyond underlying macroeconomic trends in the country. We could describe a similar situation in our other developed market at Hong Kong where we've seen solid growth beyond innovation and the development of a direct to consumer offering. This approach also has implications for our ability to generate above market growth in emerging markets like India, and Colombia. As I discussed last quarter, the underlying market conditions are strong in both countries and we're driving incremental growth by executing the same playbook of innovation, market focus and diversification. As a result, we continue to see very strong performance in India and Colombia and many other international emerging markets. Moving from international to consumer interactive, we have the opportunity to drive solid growth through new partners, verticals and geographies. Last quarter we talked about some important strategic partnerships including Chase with its credit journey offering in CreditKarma and their entry into Canada. I'm pleased to report that both are performing very well. In the case of credit journey, Chase is leveraging our credit fee dashboard giving them the ability to present preapproved offers to consumers that best matches lending criteria and the consumer's credit profile. Through this offering, consumers benefit from a holistic view of the credit profile. This includes their credit score, factors impacting the score, alerts to changes to help protect their identity, educational tools such as the score simulator and in most circumstances the means to access new lines of credit for which they can confidently know that we approved. Chase benefits from a new channel for affectively re-engaging with existing customers and acquiring new ones. With all of our partners, we leverage our highly customer credit view platform enabling rapid product development. Delivery and fast implementation and integration that each partner needs, and we are in the process of extending these capabilities into certain international markets. What is bringing on a new partner in the U.S., helping a partner launch in the new market, our own efforts to build a consumer offering in a new market we have the right technology platform available to quickly and efficiently meet the needs of customers and consumers. That wraps up my look at our five growth strategies, driving growth through innovation, expansion into new vertical markets, growth in international markets, capitalization and growth opportunities in consumer interactive, and leveraging global operational excellence. Now I’ll turn over to Al to walk you through the financials. Al?