$EFX Equifax Tape Reports
Per Ticker.id: $EFX Equifax Tape Reports — timestamped podcast mentions, volume, and share of voice. Latest 2026-07-24 20:16 UTC.
On this week's wrap, we will discuss the war in Iran, AI developments, a whole bunch of companies reported, investors are showing their displeasure with ever-mounting AI CapEx, and two mailbags. Let's get started. Over the weekend, the US and Iran traded blows, and it was reported that several US soldiers had been killed. Things seem to be escalating. Later in the week, the Houthis decided to get involved and bomb some Saudi tankers. As a result, oil prices climbed to $100 and the yield on the 10-year reached 4.7%. President Trump threatened more attacks on Iran. Last week, the big news was that a Chinese AI company, Moonshot, announced the release of its new LLM model called Kimi K3. Moonshot claimed that Kimi K3 is as good as any LLM out there. But for a fraction of the cost. Prior to last week, we were worried about AI capital intensity and the lack of moats. Now the possibility of a price war looms closer. Moving on, SpaceX is now well below its IPO price. I'm not sure what this means yet, but it does not bode well for the IPO market. And let's get to companies that have reported. First up, Domino's Pizza reported and the stock was up a bit on Monday on the print. Domino's is a poster child for the K-shaped economy. It's down 20% this year. In the March quarter, EPS was down 5%, but in this quarter, EPS was up 7%. However, EPS missed expectations, but revenue beat, and the revenue beat caused the stock to climb 2% on Monday. Don't get carried away. Domino's same-store sales growth, which is the best indication of growth for a consumer-facing company, fell to its lowest pace in 5 quarters, a mere 0.1%. After Monday, Domino's gave back all of its gains plus. Now, normally companies don't report on Monday. Domino's is an exception. Tuesday witnessed more reports. Equifax reported. Now, we have not really spoken about Equifax before except in the context of my short thesis on FICO. Equifax is one of the 3 credit bureaus. Now, while all 3 credit bureaus provide consumer information for scoring purposes, they also have different business mixes. On the scoring side, Equifax is heavily mortgage dependent, but Equifax's largest business is not scoring nor scoring related.
Steve Eisman — The Real Eisman Playbook · Google's Negative Cash Flow and the AI Capex Reckoning | The Weekly Wrap · 2026-07-24Its largest business is called Workforce Solutions Division, EWS, and that is a data and technology business that provides automated verification of income and employment. EWS provides this service to businesses and to federal, state, and local governments. In other words, EWS is a software business. So Equifax's EWS has been part of the SaaS-pocalypse debate. Bears have been arguing that EWS is bound to lose share to AI-powered verification services. Now, because of the SaaS-pocalypse, there is no room for error. Unfortunately for Equifax, Q2 government revenue growth was down mid-single digits and was below both management guidance of flat year over year and below Street expectations. Third quarter EPS guidance is 3% below consensus, and the implied Q4 EPS guidance is also 3% below Street estimates. The lesson here is that Equifax management might have a legitimate reason for the weakness in government EWS revenue, and the company blamed state government budget concerns. But in an environment where the cesspocalypse narrative still reigns supreme, No one is interested in excuses. Prior to Tuesday, Equifax was down 17% this year and down 30% over the last year. On this news, the stock was down an additional 4%. Moving on. It's been a tough period for most auto companies, but General Motors has been executing well. The company reported earnings per share of $3.57 versus $2.53, which is 41% growth, which is impressive. And that's versus expectations of $3.19. So big beat. It raised full-year profit guidance and the stock was up on the news. However, not all is great. Despite the raising of earnings guidance, US sales fell year over year, including sales of large pickup trucks and SUVs, which make up most of GM's earnings. Moving on. Given the geopolitical situation, it is unsurprising that defense companies are doing well. Northrop Grumman reported. The company reported earnings per share of $7.68. Versus $815 and versus expectations of $682. Revenue beat as well. The backlog increased by $20 billion to reach a record of $105 billion, and the company raised EPS guidance. But the stock was down on the open anyway. Then it recovered, but it was not up on these good results. Why? The cost growth on the company's missile programs seem open-ended, and that is hurting current margins. Lockheed Martin also reported and reported great numbers.
Steve Eisman — The Real Eisman Playbook · Google's Negative Cash Flow and the AI Capex Reckoning | The Weekly Wrap · 2026-07-24Digesting today's earnings duds on Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing. Welcome to Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing! I'm your host, Tyler Crowe, and today I'm joined by longtime Fool contributors Lou Whitman and Matt Frankel. Earnings season is in full swing here. We've got a whole bunch of companies reporting, even related to the oil market. We're going to touch into Halliburton's earnings, but more on a state of the oil market, uh, sort of analysis. We'll also hit in the mailbag. But today we're going to start with the two companies that, uh, that reported earlier this morning and we could say were the duds of the earnings reports so far because they were MSCI and Equifax. Shares of both stocks were down more than 10% in pre-market trading, and as of we're recording right now, MSCI is still down about 11%. Equifax is down about almost 7%. So obviously the market didn't like what they were seeing. The funny thing was, is I was looking at the results just as a cursory I asked before I got to talk to you guys is it looked like they both posted improving results and even MSCI's earnings per share was up almost 20%. So guys, what happened here? I mean, Matt, I know you looked at Equifax, Lou, you looked at MSCI. What, what, what's going on?
Tyler Crowe — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Capital Market Earnings Crashout · 2026-07-21Yeah, and I mean, Equifax earnings on the surface at least were not a dud. I mean, 11% year over year revenue growth, earnings per share grew 13% on an adjusted basis and beat estimates. Revenue from the U.S. mortgage business is up 25%, which is nice to see given the state of the mortgage market. The company actually doubled its AI-driven cost reduction estimate to $150 million through 2028. Cost reductions are a good thing. The stock was down, like you said, double digits in pre-market. It's rebounded a little bit, but it's still down despite the earnings beat. A few potential reasons and things to flag here. There was a $100 million charge related to a credit miscalculation glitch that happened in 2023. Gap earnings were down 4% year over year as a result. So that's worth noting. The adjusted EBITDA margins actually fell in all of the segments of the business year over year. Essentially, you know, rising compensation costs, incentives are there. They're both rising faster than revenue. And, you know, most importantly, There's no easier way to make a stock go down than to lower your guidance. While they didn't really lower their guidance, they kept their full-year guidance. The third quarter guidance was a little softer than expected. The adjusted EPS estimate would actually represent a sequential decline. Investors aren't thrilled. Really, this was a solid quarter with a disappointing outlook and margin trends that seem to be scaring investors.
Matt Frankel — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Capital Market Earnings Crashout · 2026-07-21I want to pick at something a little bit because reading through the lines of both of these, you know, Matt, Equifax says that it, you know, these AI-driven cost reductions of $150 million, but then their margins were down. Lou, as you said, like the higher IT costs, it's all kind Some of it seemed to me implying like, you know, tech costs, IT costs, AI costs, token, whatever cost you want to associate with, you know, using AI in their business seems to be rising. And, you know, the, the whole theory here was that, you know, AI costs were going to drive down personnel costs to, you know, put, you know, the, the big doomer sort of approach was people out of jobs, but it appears that, you know, this is actually starting to for high data companies doing a lot of data processing like Equifax and MSCI, it is becoming a real cost headwind. And I'm curious your thoughts, how is this going to play out? People continuing to jump into these frontier models that are getting incredibly expensive, and are they going to have to kind of change their AI strategies?
Tyler Crowe — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Capital Market Earnings Crashout · 2026-07-21Well, with Equifax in particular, it would've been easier if they gave the explanation MSCI did that higher IT costs while lowering personnel costs and things like that. But their margin compression was specifically blamed on rising compensation and incentive costs. So it's a bit of a head-scratcher. I mean, there are a few possible explanations to, you know, in order to, you know, train AI models and things like that, they need to bring on some new talent. That could definitely be a part of it. But yeah, it's kind of a two-way street, right, when it comes to AI cost savings by making your business more efficient and, you know, having to pay more for the personnel that are putting those cost reductions in place. Uh, it, so it remains to be seen if that's kind of a temporary, uh, margin headwind as they ramp up these AI savings, or if it's something that is, is worth, you know, further discussion.
Matt Frankel — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Capital Market Earnings Crashout · 2026-07-21I want to put a last question here because we've got two companies, stocks are down quite a bit today in particular. Equifax is actually down 34% over the past year. MSCI's done a little bit better than that. Uh, so looking at stock prices right now, where the businesses are right now, which one do you think is the better buy today, Equifax or MSCI?
Tyler Crowe — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Capital Market Earnings Crashout · 2026-07-21Yeah, so on the surface, Equifax is definitely the cheaper stock. Uh, it trades for like 18 times forward earnings last I looked versus about 24 for MSCI. Uh, but there are concerns. I mean, dependence on the mortgage market for growth, for one thing. Uh, those margin trajectories I mentioned, it's a bit of a head-scratcher that they're Compensation costs are rising while AI is making the business more efficient. MSCI is a more expensive stock, but you get what you pay for. It's a higher margin business. It honestly has a more defensible moat, which is validated by its record high revenue that we're seeing, or revenue retention rate that we're seeing. It's more of an expense problem with them than anything else with rising IT costs and things like that. To be clear, I'm not buying either of these right now and don't really have any plans to. But I'd probably lean toward MSCI if I were forced to choose one today.
Matt Frankel — Motley Fool Hidden Gems Investing · Capital Market Earnings Crashout · 2026-07-21