Equifax Inc. Common Stock (EFX) fair value

ACCE thesis

Equifax runs one of the three national consumer credit bureaus, selling credit reports, scores, and identity and employment verification data to lenders, employers, and government agencies, alongside its Workforce Solutions business. Its moat is the proprietary data set and the cost of replacing it: lenders embed Equifax data in underwriting models, and that integration creates switching costs that a 55.2% gross margin reflects. The near-term growth case rests on the Workforce Solutions verification franchise and the company's cloud data platform, which has shifted revenue toward recurring, higher-margin contracts. Revenue growth of 9.6% and a 21.0% operating margin are solid for a business of this scale, and the stock trades at 19.0 times forward earnings against a trailing 29.5, implying the market expects earnings to recover and expand. The valuation gap between trailing and forward multiples is the main thing to test: if the earnings step-up does not show up in the numbers, the stock has less cushion than the 15.4% ROE suggests, so this merits a deeper look at the earnings bridge before anything else.