In the six months to 31 March 2008, revenue from continuing activities at Experian increased by 15% at constant exchange rates. Group organic revenue growth was 2% (Q3 2%, Q4 1%). There was good organic revenue growth at Decision Analytics and Interactive, both up 7%. There were modest organic revenue declines in Credit Services and Marketing Services of 1% each. Acquisitions contributed 13% to revenue growth.
North America: Revenue in North America for the six months ended 31 March 2008 increased by 2% in total. Organic growth was 1%, with Hitwise (acquired in June 2007) contributing the balance.
Market conditions in US financial services continued to be challenging, particularly in mortgage and pre-screen. Growth in automotive and business information helped mitigate weakness in consumer information, resulting in a decline in organic revenue of 3% at Credit Services. Decision Analytics performed well against a very strong comparable, delivering 3% organic growth and reflecting a number of new businesses wins in the telecommunications and energy sectors. Marketing Services continued to benefit from the mix shift to new media with 3% organic revenue growth, while at Interactive organic revenue growth was 3%, with continued strength in Consumer Direct and PriceGrabber offsetting further weakness at LowerMyBills.
Latin America: Revenue for Latin America in the six-month period to 31 March 2008 was $221m (prior year $3m), including contributions from Serasa (acquired in June 2007) and Informarketing (acquired in April 2007). Organic revenue growth was 40%, reflecting the performance of Decision Analytics only. Serasa performed well during the period, in line with the buy plan, reflecting the strong market environment for credit in Brazil. The integration of Serasa has now been completed.
UK and Ireland: Revenue from continuing activities for the six months ended 31 March 2008 increased by 7% at constant exchange rates. Organic revenue rose 1%, with the acquisitions of Tallyman (acquired in May 2007), Hitwise, The pH Group (acquired in July 2007) and N4 Solutions (acquired in July 2007) contributing the balance.
While the environment for UK financial services continues to be uncertain, strength in business information helped mitigate weakness in consumer information and as a result Credit Services’ organic revenue declined modestly by 1%. At Decision Analytics organic revenue rose 1%, with some improvement in pipeline conversion, offsetting weak application processing activity. Marketing Services continues to be affected by lower levels of spend by financial services clients, with organic revenue down 7% in the half. Interactive performed very strongly, as higher volumes of new CreditExpert members contributed to a near doubling of revenues.
EMEA/Asia Pacific: At constant exchange rates, revenue in EMEA/Asia Pacific increased by 12% in the six-month period to 31 March 2008. Organic revenue growth was 6%, with acquisitions, mainly Emailing Solution (acquired in May 2007), Tallyman and Hitwise, contributing the balance.
Organic revenue growth was 1% at Credit Services in the half. Decision Analytics performed strongly, with organic revenue growth of 24%, reflecting good performances in both Europe and Asia Pacific. Marketing Services again performed well, particularly across Asia Pacific, with organic growth up 10%.
ContractorCheckSM Pro launched by Experian. It is a new combination report package that provides home-improvement professsionals with convenient access to their ContractorCheckSM report. This includes a full year of business credit report access and monitoring to proactively manage their business profile.
Experian also announced it is teaming with Angie’s List® to provide ContractorCheck products for its consumers and contractors they rate.
“ContractorCheck Pro consists of a detailed reporting of the contracting business’s credit history and a copy of the ContractorCheck report that consumers receive when reviewing the contractor’s business. With a subscription to ContractorCheck Pro, a contractor can proactively manage the business’s profile by regularly checking both reports and seeing if action needs to be taken on any items that may affect the business’s overall rating. Furthermore, by being able to review and understand the underlying business credit data that drives the ContractorCheck report, contractors can utilize it to their advantage to help acquire new customers by demonstrating the business’s reliability.
BIIA Newsletter April 2008 Issue
