Operator
Operator
Good day everyone and welcome to the Equifax Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Trevor Burns. Please go ahead, sir.
Equifax Inc. (EFX)
Q2 2019 Earnings Call· Thu, Jul 25, 2019
$172.42
+1.08%
Same-Day
+3.45%
1 Week
+0.44%
1 Month
+4.24%
vs S&P
+8.24%
Operator
Operator
Good day everyone and welcome to the Equifax Second Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Trevor Burns. Please go ahead, sir.
Trevor Burns
Management
Thanks and good morning, welcome to today's conference call. I'm Trevor Burns, Investor Relations. With me today are Mark Begor, CEO, and John Gamble, CFO. Today's call is being recorded. An archive of the recording will be available later today in the Investor Relations section in the About Equifax tab of our website at www.equifax.com. During this call, we will be making certain forward-looking statements including 3Q and full-year 2019 guidance, to help you understand Equifax and its business environment. These statements involve a number of risk, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. Certain risk factors inherent in our business are set forth in filings with the SEC, including our 2018 Form 10-K and subsequent filings. Also, we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP financial measures including adjusted EPS attributable to Equifax and adjusted EBITDA, which will be adjusted for certain items that affect the comparability of our underlying operational performance. For the second quarter of 2019, adjusted EPS attributable to Equifax excludes accrual for legal matters related to the 2017 cybersecurity incident, cost associated with the acquisition-related amortization expense, the income tax effects of stock awards, recognized upon vesting or settlement, certain acquisition cost, and foreign currency losses from remeasuring the Argentinian peso denominated net monetary assets. Adjusted EPS attributable to Equifax also excludes legal and professional fees related to the cybersecurity incident principally fees related to our outstanding litigation and government investigations. As well as the incremental non-recurring project costs designed to enhance our technology and data security. This includes projects to implement systems and processes to enhance our technology, and data security infrastructure. As well as projects to replace and substantially consolidate our global networks and systems as well as the cost to manage these projects. These projects that will transform our technology infrastructure and further enhance our data security, were incurred throughout 2018 and are expected to occur in 2019 and 2020. Adjusted EBITDA is defined as net income attributable to Equifax adding back interest expense, net of interest income, income tax expense, depreciation and amortization and also is the case for adjusted EPS, excluding accruals for legal matters related to the 2017 cybersecurity incident. Costs related to the 2017 cybersecurity incident, certain acquisition costs and foreign currency losses from remeasuring the Argentinian peso denominated net monetary assets. These non-GAAP measures are detailed in reconciliation tables which are included with our earnings release and are also posted on our website. Now I'd like to turn it over to, Mark.
Mark Begor
Management
Thanks, Trevor, and good morning everyone. As you know, this was a busy week in quarter for Equifax with Monday's settlement announcement, and our focus during the quarter on driving growth, operations in the EFX 2020 technology and security transformation. Before I get into a discussion of our second quarter financial results in the business units, let me spend a few minutes discussing the announcement we made on Monday, about the legal settlements we made in connection with the 2017 cybersecurity incident. Monday's announcement was a real milestone and pivot for Equifax, which allows us to fully focus on operations, driving growth in our EFX 2020 technology and data security transformation. The comprehensive resolution we announced is comprised of multiple related settlement agreements with the consumer class action plaintiffs and the federal Multi District proceedings, the attorney generals of 48 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the New York State Department of Financial Services and resolve the claims and investigations brought by these parties related to the 2017 cybersecurity incident. As you recall from our first quarter earnings call in May, we recorded an accrual of $690 million for expected losses associated with certain legal proceedings and government investigations related to the 2017 incident. Principally as a result of the comprehensive settlement announced on Monday, we increased the accrual by approximately $11 million in the second quarter of 2019, resulting in total charges of $701 million. This amount excludes the cost we have incurred to date offering free credit monitoring to US consumers in 2017, 2018 and 2019 for which we've already taken charges. Details of the settlement and related costs are available in the 8-K we filed on Monday. Importantly, the settlement program establishes a single consumer…
John Gamble
Management
Thanks, Mark and good morning, everyone. I will generally be referring to the financial results from continuing operations represented on a GAAP basis, but will refer to non-GAAP results, as well. As Mark covered our overall results and the business unit details, I'll cover some corporate items overall margins, free cash flow and our guidance. The finalization of the Consumer Settlement was a significant step forward for Equifax and we now have a clear view of the timing of near term payments including to the MSAG, CFPB and NYDFS and the initial $25 million contribution to the consumer restitution fund. In total, we expect to make about $350 million in payments in 3Q'19 against the $701 million in charges taken in the first half of '19. We intend to fund this initially with commercial paper issuance and have included related interest expense of about $0.03 per share in second half '19 in our guidance. The timing of the remaining approximately $350 million payment to the consumer restitution fund is uncertain, but not expected to be made before 1Q '20 and we therefore have not included any interest costs related to this payment in our guidance. As Mark mentioned, we continue to make good progress with our technology transformation. This includes progress in estimating cost savings, we hope to achieve, when we have fully executed the transformation and the incremental capital to execute the transformation is fully depreciated. There are 2 areas in which we initially see savings. First , we have estimated the savings we hope to achieve in the technology portion of our cost of goods sold. Based on analysis of cost to operate our US consumer credit exchange at GCP in a virtual private cloud versus our current premise-based system. This analysis was done both working with our…
Operator
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We'll take our first question from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Please go ahead.
Manav Patnaik
Analyst
Thank you, good morning, guys. Mark, in your prepared remarks you talked -- I think you alluded a little bit too, but you still being a little cautious. And I was wondering if you could just elaborate on that in terms of -- is the recovery or the better results you're seeing and guiding more sort of catch up from what you lost. So maybe, can you just elaborate a little bit more on the competitive environment and your visibility improvement?
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, Manav, it's a great question. We do still remain cautious. We kind of had now three quarters from USIS, where they've delivered either at or above our expectations. And as I mentioned -- John and I mentioned, second quarter is one of those, and we're very pleased with the online growth. We also mentioned the growing pipeline in USIS, which is a really positive sign. We're really pleased with the new leader. But then you look at some of the businesses, for example, our financial marketing services business, they had a strong first quarter. I think we talked about that in May, that we thought that, was probably a bit stronger than what we expected, because of a couple of large deals and then in the second quarter, they were below our expectations and that business is still on its recovery mode. So we're very pleased. I think I used the words that second quarter was a very strong step forward for USIS. It's a business that competitively we're in the marketplace, we have yield pipelines that are up 30% from year end and 2x from 18 months ago, there is no question that we are back in the marketplace. I'm really pleased with our leader there, who's no longer new to this sort of things. He's bringing really commercial leadership, but it still takes time to rebuild all of those relationships and as you know the deal closing pipeline while we are seeing some progress on that conversion, that's still not at a historical level. So I think that's what we are still watching. But we've laid our guidance for the second half, where we expect that business to continue grow and recover as we go through the second half.
Manav Patnaik
Analyst
Got it. And then just another one from me. Just on the tax savings you talked about or at least referred to, just to clarify, like maybe some color on the timing around which, do you think you can get there? Is that the end state or is that kind of what the project should deliver without the other costs along the way where we might not see the absolute 16% and 25% that you guys referred to.
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, what we're trying to do Manav is, give some visibility to what we expect this cloud transformation to deliver and as, you know, in the last 90 days or so, we're starting to share with you and other investors where we see some of the cost benefits, that's probably easier piece and they're quite substantial. And when you just talk about the cost benefits, those numbers, we've talked about the 15 to 20 on our tech costs in 25% on our development costs, those are on a run rate basis when we're fully completed and we're not giving visibility yet past 2019, but we've also talked about the fact that we expect those benefits to roll into 2019, 2020 as we work through the full implementation of this technology transformation. And we're just not ready to give a date when these benefits will fall to the bottom line. We're also working to try to quantify what our expectations are about the topline benefits, we think we're always on capability, the speed to market, the ability to move products around the globe, we're also going to help us on our topline. So we're going to have additional costs which we try to -- it's in our guidance for 2019, we'll put it in our guidance for 2020 around the tech transformation and migration. And then we should start seeing benefits as we retire legacy debt this year and next year and we'll give guidance once we are ready to do so, on what we think the full transformation is going to deliver, we're just trying to give some perspectives that we think it's going to be quite positive for Equifax. All right. Got it. Thanks a lot.
Mark Begor
Management
Thanks, Manav.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from Judah Efram Sokel with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Judah Efram Sokel
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you for taking my question. First one is just about guidance for EPS for the year. I just wanted to make sure I understood that the total change to guidance was simply because of the interest expense related to the settlement or is there any other shifting of costs, perhaps an acceleration of the tech, tech spending, as you mentioned the 350?
Mark Begor
Management
The guidance that John shared is, we're sticking to our prior guidance with only the change of the financing cost we have from the settlement payments in the second half. That's the only change we are making.
Judah Efram Sokel
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Okay, perfect. And then my other question was just around USIS margins, you had a lot of helpful color on margins in the other segments as well as revenues. I was just wondering if you could help us think through more specifically USIS margin expectations for the back half of '19.
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah. So our expectation is, I think we've mentioned in the script is, we're expecting USIS margins to also improve as we get through the back half of '19. As their revenue continues to grow, since we're seeing nice growth in online, the expectation is, we'll see continued improvement in margins as the online variable margins are very high.
Judah Efram Sokel
Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
All right, thanks.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from Kevin McVeigh with Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Kevin McVeigh
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks so much. Hey, really helpful color on the TTI initiative around the expense. I know it's early in terms of quantifying what the revenue could be, but is there a way to kind of frame it relative to kind of NPI where you'd expect it to be above that. And then just within the context to the FICO partnership, when should we start to see the revenue associated with that kind of start to come into the numbers, and I don't think there's anything in the guide for that, is that right?
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah. Thanks, Kevin. On your first one, we're not ready to talk about what our expectations are around the revenue. And we tried to give some color on the expense benefits from our cloud transformation. So, I guess, stay tuned. As we work to refine that, we want to share that with you as we bring it forward. But we clearly believe it's going to be positive for Equifax on the top line and that's as far as we've gotten on that. On the FICO partnership, we're in the marketplace, we've got joint deal pipelines, we haven't landed any revenue yet, nor we've given any revenue guidance on that, and my guess is it, we won't give specific guidance on that revenue. It will be a part of Equifax's revenue and of course FICO is going to benefit from two as part of our joint revenue sharing in that. But I just wanted to give an update to you and other investors that, that project is continuing, there is great momentum with it and there's really positive customer reaction to it, particularly around the Data Decisions Cloud where we're combining FICO's decisioning software with Equifax's Ignite InterConnect and Hardline piping in our data. And we believe that there'll be a set of customers that are going to really be attracted to that turnkey solution as well as the other products that we're working to bring to the marketplace.
Kevin McVeigh
Analyst · Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Thank you.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from George Mihalos with Cowen. Please go ahead.
George Mihalos
Analyst · Cowen. Please go ahead.
Hey, good morning, guys. Wanted to ask on the international side, specifically for APAC now, as the comps sees in the back half of the year, it sounds like you're expecting a return to modest growth over the back half, but then as we start going into 2020 and all the progress you've made related to positive data, would you expect positive data initiative to benefit APAC growth in as early as 2020?
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, we're not ready to give 2020 guidance, of course, but we've been consistent around -- we believe positive data is going to be attractive to our Australia business and we expect some benefits in the second half. And as we get closer to 2020, we will give you some perspective on 2020, but it really goes to the premise that more data is going to be attractive for us and it's going to be more data is going be attractive for our customers and it more data opens up more revenue opportunity source.
George Mihalos
Analyst · Cowen. Please go ahead.
Okay. And then, John, just a point of clarification, if we look at USIS revenue growth of 2.5% I think as you talked about, if we look at that organically -- your -- it's down slightly. I think something like 50 bps or the math work, something like that. If we sort of adjust for the impact from mortgage solutions, thanks to the mixed shift which again is kind of voluntary and the benefit that you've gotten from mortgage in the quarter. Is it safe to say that sort of on a normalized basis USIS were sort of sort of flatish.
John Gamble
Management
Now, it's up about one, right. I think we try to put that in the script. I think it's up about one. And again, as you look forward, right, so we're seeing nice progress in online as Mark talked about quite completely and then the financial marketing services was down in the quarter and we expect to see growth in financial marketing services, when we get into the back half. So when you think about why are we getting comfortable that we're going to see some improved growth out of USIS? It's really the momentum in online and then financial marketing services starting to grow again. And those two pieces that we need to deliver on clearly, it requires execution. As Mark said, lots of execution for that to be true, but that's the basis on which we're getting comfortable, we're going to see improved performance in the back half.
George Mihalos
Analyst · Cowen. Please go ahead.
Okay, thank you.
John Gamble
Management
Further improve. It was already been improving, further improved performance.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Toni Kaplan
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I'm still not a 100% clear on the EPS guide. So, you mentioned you lowered the guide by $0.03 from the interest expense and then -- but you beat this quarter by like $0.05, $0.055 and now you're saying you'll comment toward the bottom end of the range. So I'm essentially thinking of that as outside of the interest expense, basically up to $0.15 guide down and so I just -- I'm not understanding what's driving that?
Mark Begor
Management
Our full year guidance, as we said, was only adjusted for the $0.03. Yes, we had a good quarter and as we talked about last quarter, right. For us to deliver the full year, we needed to have very strong execution as we were expecting substantial improvement in USIS and then across the business broadly. And I think what you saw in the second quarter is good direction toward the improvement that was necessary for us to be able to deliver the full year that we talked about in May. And that's why we repeated the guide here that we did in July. So, the execution to continue to show the improvement that's necessary for us to deliver the year, I think it's what you're seeing in our guidance and hopefully improve confidence in our ability to deliver it. And that's very important to us and that's where we're focused.
Toni Kaplan
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Okay. And then on M&A, from your comments, it sounded like acquisitions contributed over 250 basis points or roughly to USIS a little higher than what I was thinking, should that continue? Is that the main driver of the revenue guide being above the mid point now? Thank you.
Mark Begor
Management
No, no. So again you got to remember DataX was acquired in July of last year. So we are like most companies right -- we -- in our organic calculation, we just -- we consider the acquisition for its first year to be incremental. But beyond -- now that we have comparable period starting in July, that will move to organic. Right. So it isn't driven just by acquisitions. You're seeing improved performance broadly. And again, you can see a nice big step up. Hopefully, on year-over-year in FMS.
Toni Kaplan
Analyst · Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Okay, thanks a lot.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from Ashish Sabadra with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Ashish Sabadra
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Just a quick question on the FMS improvement going forward, is that related to the timing of closing the deals, which got pushed out from the second to third quarter?
John Gamble
Management
No, I think as Mark talked about, we closed some large deals in 1Q that just didn't repeat in 2Q. I don't think we made any comment about anything pushing out. I think the comfort we have is that if you take a look over some longer periods, we said it's choppy. Right. So if you want to kind of watch the choppiness out of the results, you will look over slightly longer periods and over those longer periods basically, we've been performing kind of flat over the past nine months. So we feel we are getting comfortable that we've stabilized at that flat level and we're starting to see funnels grow and our expectation is better performance as we get into the back half. So, that's really what it is. If you go back to last year, we'd said, well, you'll start to see improvement in our sales execution as we got into the back half of '19 based on the fact that we had a year to sell once we were free to sell again, following the cybersecurity incident. And effectively our forecast for USIS represent success at that model. So again, as we said, we need to execute, and it is a substantial effort for us to do but that's what's built into our forecast. Our forecast assumes success in that selling effort and therefore growth in those businesses.
Mark Begor
Management
I think I'd add to that that we gave you some visibility around the USIS new deal pipeline, which includes FMS in there and that's up substantially from a year ago. And of course up substantially from the beginning of the year. So that continues to built. So that gives us some of the confidence that the teams out there in real commercial discussions of transactions that will benefit the second half and I think John mentioned in FMS that it's also seasonality that typically a stronger in the second half and of course, last year we were still working on the post cyber. We view that we're a more normal commercial -- in a very normal commercial mode today versus where we were a year ago.
Ashish Sabadra
Analyst · Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
That's very helpful. And maybe just and why; as we saw some pretty good improvement even excluding PayNet and mortgage. How -- can you just give any more color on any particular verticals or products that drove that strength. Thanks.
John Gamble
Management
And I guess I think Mark included in his script, right. We saw some strength in insurance, some strengthening and performance in government. Identity and fraud, which are really separate business has also performed better and nicely and saw some growth and quite honestly the momentum and banking lending is improving. Now banking and lending obviously has the acquisitions in it, but the momentum is improving and we're expecting that momentum to yield in the second half. So those are all areas where we feel -- where we had improving performance in the second quarter and are expecting continued performance going forward.
Operator
Operator
Thank you. And our next question from Tim McHugh with William Blair & Company. Please go ahead.
Tim McHugh
Analyst · William Blair & Company. Please go ahead.
Yes, thanks. Just wanted to add a higher level talk about maybe the technology transformation. This may be too high of a summary. But I think you talked a little bit about some small parts of the projects that are -- maybe started or a little bit delayed relative to the original plan, you also talked about spending more than you had originally planned this year. I guess. I think the spending was conveyed in a sense of strength in terms of opportunities to do this, but I think just to address the question, I'm sure I'll get questions from people who will take those other two data point and try and talk about the difficulty of the project. So can you just in that context maybe talk about how you're progressing and I guess the confidence and the kind of the pathway that you've laid out to achieve the overall technology transformation?
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, first off on the spend. I think we tried to be clear Tim that our current forecast is to spend what we've already committed to you, so no change in that. We did give the caveat that, if we see some opportunities to accelerate migrations in particular, we might spend a little bit more. But it's going to be in that same framework. We're not having overruns or things like that, we didn't want to give that impression, because that's not the case. The one area that was a bit more complex than I think we anticipated over the last 90 days with the build-out of the data fabric at Google Cloud, that's now complete. We had hope to complete that maybe 30 to 45 days earlier. But it was completed a month ago and it's in the hands of all the business teams. But we're just trying to be transparent. This is a big project. There's a lot of pieces to it. One of the ways we try to derisk is it was breaking it down into pieces and are -- we're attempting to just be transparent and what you know where we're going on it and how it's progressing. Overall, we're very pleased with the progress, the teams are embracing it. Customers are very excited about it. Our dialogs with customers about the overall investment, where we're going to take it, the benefits they're going to get, as well as the migrations of things like InterConnect and Ignite to the cloud environment are very, very positive.
John Gamble
Management
And, Tim, capital is up a bit. We did say capital would be up a bit in the year. And I think the way you should think about that is, capital is more driven by build than migration. Right. So I think as Mark talked about, data fabric is built and moving InterConnect built and moving, we made some commitments around and are executing against things we're doing very nicely with Ignite and integrating Ignite and InterConnect, that's all build. Right. And then also quite honestly, when we gave the guidance in the beginning of the year, the investments we are going to need to make to do important partnerships like FICO weren't necessarily in our guidance at the time. So you're seeing increasing spend around some of those things, but it's more around the build activity which is upfront and then the migration activity. So I think you should view it as good progress and in the context of the $700 million to spend or just over $700 million to spend, we're talking about, we still think we're in a pretty narrow band with an adjustment during the year of about $20 million. So we're not feeling like there's big overruns, as Mark indicated, and the capital is really around the build segment, which we think is progressing and some things have been added that weren't in the original guidance that we gave you back in February.
Tim McHugh
Analyst · William Blair & Company. Please go ahead.
Okay, great, thanks. That's all I had.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from Gary Bisbee with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, please go ahead.
Gary Bisbee
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch, please go ahead.
Hi, good morning and thanks for the commentary on how you're thinking about savings over time from the technology program. I guess one area of that, that we haven't heard a lot about is how you're thinking about potential reinvestment for a portion of those savings? Would it be right to think that a lot of that fall to the bottom line or are you more likely to reinvest a significant portion of that as you continue to drive innovation and trying to drive the topline?
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, it's a great question, Gary. And as you might imagine that's one that we're thinking a lot about and we're not at this stage to talk about it. And of course, we're not at the stage where we're ready to put our financial framework, back in place. But there is no question we expect there to be benefits. We're going to look hard at what portion of those benefits that we plowed into more new products, into more growth and what portion do we bring to the bottom line to increase our margins and we'll have some clarity on that as time progresses and share it with you.
Gary Bisbee
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch, please go ahead.
Okay. And then just the follow-up to that. In a couple of public appearances during the quarter, it sounded like you were indicating that completion of the program could slip beyond 12/31/2020 timeline initially, is that -- I just wanted to get your latest thoughts on that, is mid 2021 more realistic target given what you know at this point or where you are thinking today. Thank you.
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah. What we tried to do, Gary, in all of our discussions is to be clear with you that our intent is that the incremental spend that we have in ' 18, '19 and '20 will end in the end of next year and then anything that's left to be done, and there certainly will be elements of this cloud transformation that is going to flow into 2021. It's not going to be 100% complete. We do expect to complete a lot of the work between now and the end of next year and then anything that's required after that, our intention is, that, that would go into our normal operating expenses and normal capitalized costs as opposed to the incremental spend that we've been doing for the last 18 months and then we plan to continue for the next 18 months that was the kind of boundary we put around it and we're still sticking to that.
Gary Bisbee
Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch, please go ahead.
Great, thank you.
Operator
Operator
Our next question comes from Bill Warmington with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Bill Warmington
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Good morning , everyone. So I feel like it's been a while since we've heard anything about the commercial business. It used to be its own division up until a few years ago and -- but now we've done an acquisition of PayNet which is B2B data around commercial lending and leasing. And then you also mentioned strength in the USIS B2B business. So I wanted to ask, what's changed there and how are you thinking about the B2B business going forward?
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, it's still an important business for us. As you know, that's why we made the PayNet acquisition, because we knew we'd enhance our position commercially. In the earlier comments when we talked about B2B, that was really referring to our online business with our normal customers versus the commercial business.
Bill Warmington
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Got it.
Mark Begor
Management
The business is, we didn't talk about it in our prepared remarks, but had growth in the quarter that was similar to the overall business, so it's performing quite well.
John Gamble
Management
Ex-PayNet the commercial business has actually done very nicely this year and with PayNet it's only accelerating. So as you know, as you remember that we made substantial investments in building out the CFM and that's improving. We did, -- we integrated SBFE. So we think we have a very good partnership here, we announced earlier in the year that we are one of the -- we're very early and think we have outstanding risk scores in commercial and have won some significant new customers. So that business was making progress on its own. And with PayNet we think it's going to accelerate. I think it's been going -- we mentioned on the May call that we were so impressed with the PayNet leader that, he is now leading our US commercial business, which combines our core commercial business with the new PayNet assets and business. And we're really energized about the last 60 days as he's been out in the marketplace really driving that business
Bill Warmington
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
And then, a housekeeping question. You didn't explicitly give the organic revenue growth for the 3rd quarter, I just wanted to check that it, it looks like it's probably about 2.5% to 3% by just need to run that by you.
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, we didn't give guidance on organic growth in the 3rd quarter. So you are correct. We did not. But, again, please remember right that DataX is no longer inorganic starting in July. Right. So because we acquired them a year ago to this month, so the amount of acquisition revenue actually declines.
Bill Warmington
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Got it. Okay.
Mark Begor
Management
From DataX.
Bill Warmington
Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Okay, got it. All right, well thank you very much.
Mark Begor
Management
Thanks, Bill.
Operator
Operator
Our next question will come from Jeff Meuler with Baird. Please go ahead.
Jeff Meuler
Analyst
Yeah, thanks. Mark, question on pipeline conversion in USIS. And I guess what I'm wondering is, is the slower conversion and historical -- is it just a function of, you've had a lot come into the pipe recently, so therefore is that an earlier stage, but it's progressing through as normal or has the selling motion and hurdles that your clients are putting you through changed because of the breach or maybe some other factors, just -- can you just help shape it up for us, please?
Mark Begor
Management
Yeah, it's definitely not the latter, Jeff. We're in normal commercial mode and there is no change I would characterize it today than it was in 2017 prior to the cybersecurity breach. If anything, our commercial discussions are more positive, meaning that we've got a dialog around new data assets, we've got a dialog around our technology transformation and how we're going to deliver more capabilities to our customers. Your comments in the pipeline, were right on. The pipeline, as we said is up 2X over what it was at the beginning of last year and is up strong double digits, from the beginning of the year. So the pipeline is growing. And as you pointed out, some of those opportunities are newer and the lifecycle on those on when they get actually converted, vary -- everyone varies, but generally newer items have a longer tail on them than more mature items in the pipeline. So really good news that the pipeline is growing and is at increasingly high levels and the comments about -- we continue to be watching the conversion is, it's just not fully mature yet, when we'll get there is hard to forecast as far as maturity to pipeline, but clearly every day we're getting closer to that. And it should continue to progress in the 3rd quarter and 4th quarter, and our leader there, Sid Singh, who is driving the business is really bringing a lot of drive and energy around the commercial side of the business and of course I'm still spending a bunch of time with our US customers to continue to help drive the USIS return to their historical growth.
Jeff Meuler
Analyst
Okay. And then let me take a 3rd shot at EPS guidance question. So I'll ask it this way, you're guiding revenue above the midpoint of the prior range, you're guiding EPS to the low end and what's typically a good incremental margin business. So is the offset something with mix, with, I don't know, UK and Australia, or is there increased investment just if you could maybe the 3rd time is a charm, I think.
Mark Begor
Management
So, I think as you take a look at our back half, what you'll see in our back half is improving revenue growth and growing margins, right. So what I suggest we do is, not look at this kind of relative to guidance movements, but relative to absolute performance. And I think what you're seeing is, improvements across both and that's what we would expect to try to deliver and it is what we think we're delivering.
Jeff Meuler
Analyst
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Operator
We'll take our next question from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
George Tong
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks. Good morning. Online Information Systems has accelerated to 10% growth in the second quarter, can you break out how much of the growth is coming from PayNet and how much is coming from improving underlying performance post the data breach?
John Gamble
Management
Yeah. So, George, we gave organic growth and it's at
Mark Begor
Management
36%.
John Gamble
Management
Yes. So of the 10, 4 was 4 was through from acquisitions and that's just not PayNet, that would be DataX as well. Right. Because data was, as we said, bought in July of last year.
George Tong
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Right. And if you were to break out the impact between PayNet and DataX instead X will be rolling off next quarter, how would you split the difference?
John Gamble
Management
Yeah, we didn't give revenue of each, but they were not that different in size.
George Tong
Analyst · Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Got it, that's helpful. And then, a follow-up question around margins, your EBITDA margins contracted 130 bps year-over-year in the second quarter. Can you discuss what expectations for margins in the second half of the year are embedded in your full year guidance and what factors you have that you see that can drive better margin performance in the second half?
John Gamble
Management
Yeah. So again, we think our margin performance improves as we go through the year and again that's driven by the growth rates we're seeing in revenue, in general. Right. So I think it's similar -- similar to the answer I gave to the last question, it's really the same here. And that's our expectation, as we go through the rest of the year. I think as you take a look at our EPS guidance relative to our revenue guidance, again, you're starting to see us forecasting improved EPS -- adjusted EPS, sorry, in the second half and that would go along with the improved -- the improving overall profitability.
Operator
Operator
Our next question will come from Shlomo Rosenbaum with Stifel. Please go ahead.
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst
Hi, thank you very much for taking my questions. Could you just talk a little bit about the competitive situation in online? I'm just trying to understand was the 6% organic growth coming from white space that you guys have created with some of your NPI or you just become more competitive in the marketplace? Are you taking business from a competitor? Can you just kind of talk about that a little bit and then I'll have a follow-up.
Mark Begor
Management
Yes, it's pretty broad base. It's hard to put on one item. We're clearly back in the marketplace. We're working with existing customers to try to increase our share with those customers, so that's helpful . I think we talked about the fact that we reentered the FinTech space really 12 months ago, and we've got almost a dozen commercial people there and so that's I'm talking about the US, which is your question. So there are some wins happening there in the marketplace. And then, as you pointed out, we're in there with NPIs I'll leave PayNet and DataX out of it, just talk the organic phase, we're in there with NPIs that drive new online volume, and it's fairly broad-based and it's what you would hope to see with equifax, getting back into a more normal commercial mode.
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst
Okay. And then, I guess, a similar vein type a question just on the UK. If I could look at the UK performance versus say, like, what I'm seeing from call credit. Now, I understand that there is different mix of business over there, but it still seems like there's a dichotomy between the growth that you guys are having and what they are having. Can you talk to that a little bit or do you compete with them directly. Is it really a difference in mix, and like-for-like you think you've grow on the same way, if you could just elaborate on that?
Mark Begor
Management
I think we talked about that we've seen some pressure from Brexit in just some of the NPIs in the UK. We didn't expect that, we didn't see it in the first quarter. So there was some pressure there. We talked about -- are you focused on the credit side, the debt management business, I think we talked about some new business from UK government moved over from second quarter into in the third quarter. So we're expecting that business to get better as we go into the second half, it's hard to forecast the Brexit impact, but we're watching that business closely.
John Gamble
Management
And if you look at our credit business, right, we set our online business grew mid single-digit and have been growing high single-digit , which we think is very good and probably consistent with what you're seeing from other people actually, I think there has been other results reported in the quarter that, that were not quite that high. Right . So the difference for us was our -- was offline right, was the back -- was the deal business and we just had an execution issue in the second quarter, it's relatively , it's basically consolidated to that. So our expectation is -- as online will continue to perform and that will improve our execution in the back half.
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst
Okay. Can I just squeeze in one last thing just on the settlement. There is going to be another $350 million or so that gets paid in 1Q '20 is that the way to understand that?
Mark Begor
Management
We don't have clarity on the timing of that payment as we've tried to be clear. It could be, you know, as soon as then, it's driven by the court approval process and when we have clarity, then we'll share with you.
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst
And there is highly unlikely to be 7 million people signing up for this. What happens if there is excess funds? Does that get kicked back to you, they gets absorbed by other sales?
Mark Begor
Management
No, it stays in the fund and there is various ways that is used to fund other consumer activities, but the consumer benefits, but nothing comes back to Equifax.
Shlomo Rosenbaum
Analyst
Got it. Thank you so much.
Operator
Operator
And there are no further questions at this time. I'd like to turn the call back over to Trevor Burns for any additional or closing remarks.
Trevor Burns
Management
Thanks everybody for joining the call and I'll be around today if anybody has any questions. Thank you.
Operator
Operator
This does conclude today's call, thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.