Equifax Inc.

Equifax Inc. is an American global data, analytics, and technology company that operates one of the three major U.S. consumer credit bureaus alongside its Workforce Solutions and International segments, generating $6.07 billion in revenue in fiscal 2025. Its databases contain credit histories on more than 220 million U.S. consumers and employment and income records on over 211 million active workers, making it one of the most deeply embedded information intermediaries in the American economy.

This is a story about a legacy data franchise that spent seven years and nearly $7 billion rebuilding itself after a catastrophic 2017 data breach exposed the personal information of 147 million people. What emerged is an unusual compound: a credit bureau whose cloud-native infrastructure and proprietary datasets — particularly the Work Number employment and income database — give it pricing power and data moats that pure-play software companies cannot replicate, but whose revenue remains tethered to the American mortgage cycle. The central question is whether Workforce Solutions can grow fast enough, and the cloud transformation can deliver enough margin leverage, to turn Equifax from a mortgage-sensitive data utility into a genuine growth compounder.

The company trades at roughly 19 times consensus adjusted earnings and a low-teens EBITDA multiple on a 2026 basis — levels that suggest the market prices it as a steady GDP-plus grower, not as a business whose proprietary data assets and AI capabilities might support something faster. This file examines whether that discount is warranted.