Equifax Inc. EFX

The business

Equifax sells three things. Workforce Solutions is the payroll database, built by getting employers to hand over salary and employment records so that lenders, landlords and government agencies can verify income without calling anyone. That is The Work Number, and it is the asset nobody else has at scale. United States Information Solutions is the credit bureau, the ordinary business of scoring consumers and selling that score to whoever underwrites them. International is the same two ideas run in twenty other countries.

The economics differ sharply. The payroll data is contributed by employers for free and resold many times, which is why it has always carried the premium. The bureau is a duopoly-plus-one utility with real pricing power and no mystery to it. For most of a decade the first grew faster than the second, and the multiple was built on that ordering.