Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Market Pulse is a monthly podcast by Equifax, in partnership with Moody’s Analytics. Equifax hosts bring you interviews with industry experts on the latest economic and credit insights that can help drive better business decisions. Whether you’re in financial, mortgage, auto or another service industry, we help make sense of the latest economic conditions that impact you. This podcast series supplements our Market Pulse webinars, which occur on the first Thursday of each month.
.
Welcome to the Market
Pulse Podcast from Equifax,
where we break down the latest economic
and credit insights to help you navigate
today's business landscape.
Well, welcome everybody to our next
edition of the Market Pulse Podcast.
We have a very exciting
conversation ahead of us. You know,
as a part of the recent small Business
week and now small business month,
we figured we'd do a
little bit of a little,
a little bit of a highlight on what's
happening in the small business
marketplace. A little bit of
opportunities, a little bit of threats,
see what's going on.
And we are extremely
fortunate to have a couple of
exceptional experts in the
space with us today from Fiserv
Darryl Tyndort, Director of Economic and
Analytical Insights, and Mike Spriggs,
Head of Consumer Insights. I really
appreciate you guys being here.
I think we're gonna have a really great
conversation. Before we jump into it,
though, before we jump
into that conversation,
we do want to throw th throw it over
to Moody's Analytics for a quick macro
economic update and when
we will get things going.
The US economy is chugging along,
but cracks are starting to
appear in the first quarter.
Real GDP fell 0.3% annually. According
to the preliminary estimates,
the decline was largely due to a surge
in imports from firms who stocked up on
inventories in advance of expected
tariffs. However, consumption activity,
which has been driving the economy forward
for several years up at this point,
slowed and contributed less to
growth than in previous quarters.
The good news is that the pre tariff
inventory stockpiling that occurred in the
first quarter has kept price
increases muted so far.
Consumer price inflation has been tame
and continues to descend towards the
Fed's target. However,
as firms work through excess inventories
and start repurchasing in coming
months, prices will start to rise.
The April Producer Price Index report
also showed some evidence that some firms
are eating the cost of higher tariffs.
The PPI fell 0.5% on the month
led by a sizable decline in
trade services. And now the PPI for trade,
for trade services is a measure
of the change in profit margin
wholesalers receive when
selling to retailers.
So the sharp drops suggests
that wholesalers are
absorbing tariff costs rather
than passing them along to retailers.
And given the on, again and off again,
approach to trade policy from
the Trump administration,
wholesalers may be betting
that the current tariff
framework will be short-lived
rather than alienating customers
and risking market share,
firms are hoping that tariffs are
reduced further and costs come down. Now,
this is a short term relief for consumers,
but it cannot be expected
to be sustained. Longer term
credit. Stress also appears
to be elevating after
nearly a year of stability,
and much of this is a result of a
spike in student loan delinquencies,
the rate of which is at an all time
high with moratoriums on repayments and
interest accumulation and reporting
delinquent borrowers to credit agencies.
At this point. A thing
of the past late payers,
some of whom expected mass
loan forgiveness have been
caught flat-footed and
will soon face increased financial stress
as their credit scores take a hit and
authorities garnish their wages
and reduce some federal benefits.
Great. Thank you. Really
appreciate that economic update.
So now we get to get into the fun part
of the conversation. As mentioned,
we've got some, we've got some great
folks out there today. I'm David Adams.
I'm the head of commercial product
marketing here at Equifax. And again, our,
our Fiserv experts who
are exponentially smarter
than I could ever be.
So I can't thank you guys
enough for being here.
If you guys wanna just say a quick
hi and we'll get things going.
Sure. I'll start. I'm Mike Spiggs,
as you said head of
Consumer Insights at Fiserv,
and we spend our time
looking through all of the
card and cash and check data
to try to understand what
consumers are doing on a daily,
weekly, monthly, quarterly basis,
and try to relate that back to external
factors that are happening in the
marketplace.
I'm Darryl Tyndorf director of Economic
and Analytical Insights working with
with Mike as he mentioned. And
I try to bring some of the,
the nuance between the economics
and the consumer, you know,
understand that data story and kind
of understand where we're going.
There you go. So it's, it's,
the way I interpret that is you're
basically the guy out there predicting
everything that's gonna happen
tomorrow in the marketplace, right.
, you know I don't know about
prediction , but you know,
I can I can at least say,
Hey, this is what I think.
Well, I was, I was kind of hoping you'd
say you would. I got to, you know, it's,
so we got together, what,
two, three weeks ago.
We got on the Market Pulse webinar. You
guys were able to give a nice little,
you know,
we're able to give a really great
update to kind of what's going in the
marketplace, but I'm like,
it's been three weeks and like the
whole world has changed. You know,
it seems like uncertainty.
I think we know uncertainty is
kind of the word of the day.
Ask anybody and everybody's gonna
be like, Hey, what's gonna happen?
I don't know. You know, I'd be interested
to get your guys' thoughts. What,
where do you think we are? Are we
coming out of that uncertainty,
or is there still so much uncertainty?
I don't know. What do you guys think,
Mike? Darrell, you know,
Mike, you wanna go first?
I think we're in the
middle of a global game of
hokey pokey. We're in,
we're out, you know,
what's it gonna be? You know, who's
calling the, the shots here? Right?
And that breeds uncertainty, right?
That's the whole anxiety of that
game is like, oh, what am I gonna do?
What am I, every week is a new,
a different news cycle about
deals and tariffs? Are they on,
are they at 140% or are they at 30%?
Just a lot of uncertainty. You asked,
you know, is that gonna continue?
I for the foreseeable
future, it seems like.
I can tell you from what we've been
examining with consumer spending
once this cycle of uncertainty started,
consumers seem to try to take
control of their own destiny and
made purchases on large scale
on or large ticket items.
And then that seemed to kind of back
off. And now as we're looking now, we're,
you know, through April and into May,
we're seeing a decided
downshift in discretionary
spend, which seems to kind of
align with people saying, okay,
I don't know what's gonna happen,
so I'm just gonna kind of hold onto my
money until things become more clear.
That's, that's what we see
in, in the, in the data,
the signal that we're picking up.
I think a lot of people are echoing
that a little bit. It's when you're par,
I don't know, is paralysis, is
that the right word, Darrell? Like,
are people paralyzed?
Yeah. You know, and I don't
know about paralyzed. I,
I think I said this at
the time of the election,
which was I thought that it was going
to be very uncertain times, right?
And I think that lags were going to be
also the other statement
that was gonna be used.
And what I mean by the lags is that we
just don't know when we were gonna feel
any of these pressures because
of the uncertainty, right?
So we saw Q1 GDP contract.
The argument has always, you know,
started to come around like, you know,
that what's being forced was core GDP.
I would argue that core GDP
is not entirely the most
accurate picture. There's, you
know, consumption of demand.
And when we look at these GDP numbers,
really what I see is
that it reflected the,
the consumer wanting the cheaper prices
because it was focused on already
existing inventories,
not the production of inventories that
we, the new production of inventories.
So with that, you know, ultimately, hey,
those goods are at cheaper
prices. And so because of that,
we didn't see the price increases,
right? With CPI that was released.
And what I mean by not seeing those
increases is that ultimately it
eased was still high. And, you know,
everybody expected CPI to come in hot and
really, you know, inventories
were stocked up on cheaper prices.
There wasn't an incentive
to push those on yet to,
to consumers because nobody
knew it was gonna happen.
And so we don't know
it's gonna hit, right?
Tariffs are higher than they have been.
We are going to see increases in
prices. It's just a matter of when.
And that's why I say that uncertainty
in the lag component, really,
in my opinion is, is we
don't know. And so consumers,
as Mike said, right, we
saw them kind of pull back.
MRTS came out today kind of echoing what
we've been saying, which is, you know,
consumers slowed in
April. And that's slowing,
I would say,
is representative of the pressures
that households are feeling and that
uncertainty pressure.
So we saw a similar,
what you just described,
we saw a similar thing on our
side. Some of our economists,
some of our analysts were
looking at it. Like in March,
there was this like big bump in
some spending and some lending.
And we're like, well,
that's really strange. Well,
everybody's trying to get
ahead of the tariffs, right?
And then everything kind of stopped
there for a second, the next month,
where it's like, okay, nobody's
doing anything. So like it's,
it kind of throws that CPI, you know,
off a little bit. And Yeah, like some,
go ahead. It's.
It's, it's all
unprecedented, right? And so,
and people are trying to respond in
real time to whatever they think is
in their best interest, right? And
so, just like what you, you guys saw,
we saw this off cycle spin,
and it was really interesting.
We have the the good fortune of being
able to kind of decompose small business
and big box and total market.
And so what we saw in our,
in our numbers was across the
small business, electronics,
retailers and furniture retailers, we
saw this early book mm-hmm .
Like late February, early
March, we saw that bump.
And then I guess once
the new cycle kind of
substantiated the fact that yeah,
these tariffs are inevitable
and they're coming,
then we saw the big box
retailers and another off cycle
jump in volume across those
same large ticket items.
Yeah. And, and, and goods across goods.
And so now all of that is kind
of really settled out, right?
'cause Now we're into May, April
was like we've been saying,
slowed downs a little bit
lackluster for a lot of categories.
Some of the heavy discretionary
spend areas like travel way down,
except for, here's an interesting thing.
We see a lot more activity now in
public transportation. So, you know,
what that says to me is this return to
work environment that we're in is now in
play. I, I think we're,
we're headed toward kind of
just a really conservative time
in terms of how consumers are gonna
spend over the, the foreseeable future.
Foreseeable future. All this stuff
seems so intertwined to me. 'cause It's,
you know, there was,
there was conversations about fear
and uncertainty and that was growing,
but like consumer spending was still
propping up a lot of small businesses.
And now the consumers, you
know, there's the deposits,
we're seeing deposits grow. People are
holding their money back. I don't know,
I guess I'm trying to
figure out, it's like, what,
what kind of pulls us
out of this pause? Is it,
do consumers start spending more
because they're okay and they're feeling
relaxed? Or is it like the, the tariff
thing gets sorted out and all of that?
I don't know. Well.
You know, I think, I think what
you end up seeing is, again,
with the uncertainty, we don't know
what's gonna happen, right? Yeah.
And I think, you know, I,
I think we could end up having this
up and down pattern because the,
the headline comes in as
inflation eased, right?
So if inflation eased, you could
see consumers, because, you know,
ultimately I haven't looked
at the the employment numbers
claims. But, you know, job numbers came
out that, you know, before they were,
they were, you know, stable incomes
are still stable, but it was, you know,
the uncertainty what to do. And the,
they were tariffs were being implemented
at the beginning of April, right?
And so now we're assuming prices go up,
and so we see the headline inflation ease.
And so that might bring
some consumers out to spend,
especially those in the income
brackets that can spend, right?
And so we could see that spending,
but then, you know, as we said,
prices will increase,
then all of a sudden we could then see
another pullback because prices increase,
right? This is that hokey pokey
nature that we are, we're,
we're kind of alluding to here, which
could be, Hey, we're in, we're out,
we're in, we're out. And it's because
of that level of uncertainty, right?
Households and businesses
do better with certainty.
They can plan ahead. And so, you know,
if prices are in line with
something that they need, right?
We saw the change from discretionary
to essential, and they need it,
they will buy it. Yeah.
I swear, you know, by the way,
where are you? We are, you think,
gonna have to create a visual for the
hooky pokey or just layer in the music on
top as our background? Yeah.
, something like that. It's,
you know, darl, I forget who said it,
there was an really famous economist
that said this. It was 10, 20,
30 years ago, whatever
it was said, businesses,
it doesn't matter who's
in office politically,
it doesn't matter what's happening in the
marketplace up or down left and right,
it doesn't really matter as long as
there's some level of confidence.
I think that's the key word.
There's some level of confidence that
they know what's going on or what could
be coming. Hey, we think that this is
gonna happen. We're fairly confident.
So even if they think it's gonna go down,
okay, businesses can respond to that.
Consumers can respond to that if the
other thing. So it's like, maybe,
maybe that's it. Maybe it's just,
it's the shift from uncertainty
to confidence that we
need and who knows what it
is that's gonna do that.
We just gotta be careful. I hope us as
consumers, we're all consumers, right?
I hope we, as we listen to the
news that comes out, we talk about,
hey inflation ticked down from two
four to two three, that's great. Okay.
Does that give me a little
bit more confidence to spend?
You just gotta be careful, right?
Because that's the top line number.
And what we've been seeing is, you know,
when you start to pull that basket apart,
we still see some of the essential
spend things that you gotta,
you gotta spend on, are
still creeping up, you know,
housing and utilities and things like
that. So that's still creeping up.
The the other thing is, we've
been saying for a long time now,
certainly since the start of the year,
we've been talking about
consumer resiliency. It's great,
but when you look at how
consumers are spending,
there's a lot of credit being used.
There's a hard stop with that at
some point, right? And so we just, I,
I just have a, a, a, a legitimate
worry that, you know, at some point
the ability to spend is gonna
dry up because, you know,
credit limits are gonna get maxed out,
and repayments are not probably
gonna come in with the same,
at the same level that they are
now. That's, that's what I worry.
Well, it'd be, well, we, we
hear it with small businesses.
Access to credit is always the biggest
driver. And when the, you know,
when the funds dry up again, that's when
things go sideways. The question is,
you know, when is that gonna happen? If
it's gonna happen? Knock on wood, it's,
I guess, you know, the, the jobs report,
I guess that's a nice part is as long
as people are gainfully employed,
like to me that that's like, personally,
I look at that and I'm going,
look, as long as I got a job, as
long as other people have a job,
we can all pay our bills.
We can afford to feed our families and
things like that. The bare essentials,
you know, we can dial things back. Like
the, you mentioned the travel, you know,
a good example. Although, funny
enough, one of the, in, in one of our,
we, our small business lending index,
one of the things that we've seen recently
is we've actually seen entertainment
and retail and some of those
nice to have components.
We've actually seen an increase in
lending, although you're making me wonder.
It's like, has the increase in lending,
is it a result of needing the money
in the capital because of the lack of
spending? Or is it money for investment.
Yeah. To stay afloat or to
invest and expand? Yeah,
that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So the
mix is as we examine, we got a,
we got an end a segment that we call
leisure within our spend trend product.
Okay? And so it's kinda a, a
hodgepodge of different stuff.
But what we've been noticing is that
some of the,
the lower cost family oriented things,
destinations within leisure are
picking up a little momentum,
movie theater box office family
entertainment centers you know,
where you can go and the kids can
play laser tag or bowl or, you know,
and stuff like that, right?
We've seen an uptick in that. So
It's not like consumers are just backing
away from discretionary spend, totally.
But just like we've seen in restaurants,
they're trying to figure out, okay,
of all the menu options
that I have available to me,
how can I stretch my dollars,
maximize the value for the,
for what I have to spend, right?
So we see that in leisure.
We certainly see that in restaurants. And,
and Darryl's has done a quite an in-depth
analysis on the impact of inflation
and restaurants, you know,
tariffs and inflation and two sides
at the same point, right? So we,
we've been looking at that as well.
Restaurants have a hard time passing on
higher prices to consumers right now,
right? They, you know, they want
to, they wanna be competitive.
You know, Mike, you were just
talking about, you know, the,
the cup of coffee example, right? Like,
I mean, coffee beans have soared, right?
Due to that price point. And you know,
even though when we look at food
inflation, that has eased, and so,
you know, currently it's still, you know,
relatively cheaper and easier
to go to a grocery store
where, you know,
obviously they're insulated a
little bit through, you know,
the elasticity of prices and so forth.
And so what ends up happening is
they're also substitutes, right?
If it's too expensive, well, I can
find another substitute, right?
And so there's that, whereas
you go to a restaurant,
there's not necessarily a substitute.
And so what we've seen is first off,
the trough of inflation
for restaurants, you know,
went down to its bottom in January,
it started to pick up again.
And so we've seen that ultimately
consumers have changed their
pattern first decreasing at fine dining,
which you would expect, right? Consumer
behavior, Hey, where am I going to,
where am I gonna end
up pulling back first?
And it's the most expensive pieces
that I don't necessarily need.
Then all other areas started
to see that slowing effect.
And the one that is, you know,
seeing some, still seeing growth,
it's slower than it was, but seeing
growth is the quick service restaurants,
right? Because now I can stretch my,
my dollar and I would also make the
argument right quick service restaurants
are not the,
the all encompassing bad eating out that
I think we associate them with, right?
They have now adjusted, right?
They've improved their menus,
healthy eating, you know, we, you know,
Kellogg's came out and said
that they're seeing an,
an adjustment in their
cereal aspect, right?
That consumers are not in demand of that
they want healthier options. And so,
you know, QSRs did make that leap earlier.
And so, you know, they can get
healthier foods at A QSR. And so,
you know,
I just wanna make sure that we're not
pigeonholing that QSR is all bad when
it's not all bad. And so there's some
aspect of stretching your dollar,
right? That people are doing at
restaurants. And that's what we're seeing.
You know, inflation did take
a big chunk of it, right?
Restaurants improved
after the, the pandemic.
But now the, the, the growth
levels are below pandemic levels.
That's the inflationary impact that
has happened with restaurants. And so,
you know, the tariff piece, you
know, could impact even more. So.
I love what you said there
in terms of it's not all bad.
There's, I think there's
another aspect too,
I'd be interested to get your guys'
opinion on this is some of the stuff
that we're seeing here, whether it's
restaurants, either lack of, of,
of stuff that people are finding or,
or my people looking for people to
extend their dollar in other places.
I think it's creating some
opportunity, which I'll get to it,
which is side gigs, side hustles
and things like that. You know,
we're seeing on our side, we're adding,
we're adding more than 400,000 new
businesses to our databases a month.
And businesses that we're looking at
credit, credit files and things like that,
which is exponentially higher than what
we saw, you know, 3, 4, 5 years ago.
But what we're finding is we're finding
a lot of those business are side hustles
where people are trying to make some
extra money. And I'm wondering if,
I'm wondering if it's
just a combination of,
are people opening up a side hustle
because they need to or because they want
to? And are people opening up side
hustles and do these things? Because like,
there's this perception, Darrell, that
maybe, oh, this, this, this place is,
is not good for me.
I'm gonna do something myself and I'm
gonna try and bring other people into it.
I'm gonna try and find just grow. I think.
It's both. And I don't think it's
either or. I think it's both.
And I think history has shown
us that any economic disruption
creates opportunity, right?
And so for somebody with an
entrepreneurial spirit they see
an opportunity to serve a new,
a newly created demand or some,
some twist or change on existing
demands. They feel that they can,
they can solve that, right? And so it
creates opportunity and they jump in.
I think that that's definitely true on
small scale, small business, you know,
gig type work and large
businesses as well, right?
We saw that with restaurants during covid
the way that they changed their business
model to start to serve a population
that wasn't gonna sit down and eat
and make it profitable. We, we,
we kind of witnessed that real
time as we were, you know,
as we continue to process transactions
for, you know, all sizes of business. So,
so that's true. At the same time, you
know things are getting more expensive,
money's getting tighter. Housing is
going up, utilities are going up,
insurance is going up,
all of these essential spend things
reducing the amount of discretionary
dollars, but you still wanna enjoy
your life. You still have a family,
you still gotta buy shoes and, you
know, pay tuitions and things like that.
So I think it's, it's both
hands satisfying, you know,
taking advantage of a disruption
in, in the status quo,
but then also just trying to stay afloat.
Well, and I think too, I, I
think you know, and I don't,
I don't know this for certain, and I
think it'd be interesting to research and,
and find out, because I,
if I recall correctly,
I thought right during covid and,
and during some of our downtimes,
there have been increases
in LLC development.
And it would be very interesting to
see if, you know, or even, you know,
survey oriented, however, the, the
research will be conducted, which is,
you know,
is it a matter of
developing that LLC as a,
as a buffer if something
does happen, right?
Is it an LLC to bring in, you know,
additional revenue to
continue on that? If, again,
hedging your risk, right? In sitting
there saying, listen, you know,
I, I don't know what's
gonna happen, right?
If a business can do better
without me, they will.
So I might as well have something on
my side that can end up maintaining at
least some sort of income or some
sort of benefit to myself. So I think,
you know, maybe that's, that's
one thing that, you know,
regarding the increases in in
those LLCs. And I think, you know,
two to the point of what you said
regarding restaurants and adapting, right?
You know, every industry
during an uncertain time,
we're talking tariffs, we're
talking COVI, you know,
it's all about the adapting
piece, right? In some regards,
this is what the argument is
about small business, right?
Small businesses don't have
the underlying red tape.
They can adapt quicker to
nuances. Yes. And so if,
you know covid hits, for
example, right? How do I adapt?
I increase technology,
I increase getting my good or service
to that individual in a safe manner
during high price tariffs,
right? What do I do?
I stock up on my inventory.
I find another, you know,
supplier from a lower tariff
place, or if I'm a restaurant,
I find another means for that
product in a different sort of food
or in a different sort of,
I find some other substitute
or utilize it in a different
mechanism. So I think, you
know, the thing about business,
especially small businesses,
is their ability to adapt.
And I think that kind of goes hand in
hand with that thought process of, hey,
you know, consumers aren't any different.
So people aren't any different,
which is, hey, there's uncertainty.
Maybe me developing LLC is a smart move
that somebody would still pay me to
do these things if they're
not gonna pay, like, you know,
a larger term aspect of my employment
that it could be contractual.
Oh my, I think you are a hundred
percent spot on on that one, Darryl.
It went from, so 2019, I
think the number was like 3.4,
3.5 million small business
applications were filed.
2020 covid hit. We,
I think the number was in the 4 million
range, or maybe that was 2021, but 2021,
it was in the fours and the fives,
it stayed in the 5 million new business
application ranges the last several
years. And the thing that I think is so
interesting about it is a couple things.
One is I think there was
a perception that, oh,
to start a small business,
I need thousands of dollars and I
need all this stuff Now. It's like,
for a couple hundred dollars you can
go get an LLC set up and a license and
maybe to maybe to use a, a funny
line from a movie. You know,
the difference between ordinary and
extraordinary is that little bit extra,
you know, in our, in our lives, you
know, ordinary versus extraordinary,
right? Like my impression
is people are like,
that little bit extra is okay,
I can now take my my family out to dinner
that I want to do. Or like you said,
Mike, it's, it's, look, if
something does happen or like this,
this unexpected expense comes,
comes up, I'm not going,
do I buy food at the grocery store
this week? Or do I pay this, this bill?
'cause I have to. Yeah. It's like,
I think people are just finding it as
a way to just soften or just create a
level of comfort, you know?
Yeah. Confidence. Hey,
confidence that I can get through
what, whatever's coming my way.
Like I no truer words. I think
for what you said there, Daryl,
a hundred percent spot on. So,
but still so much uncertainty.
I think everybody's a little
bit, you know, okay, great.
I'm gonna stockpile some cash, I'm
spending a little bit too much.
I don't know. Can,
can we just fast forward three months
and or look into our crystal balls and
figure it out? Like that'd be
easier, wouldn't it? Yeah, yeah.
I just wanna get done with this and
just move on to whatever it's gonna be.
I just wanna get there, .
Yeah, exactly. Let's just get there
so that we know what to do and just.
Wanna get there, man.
Is the apocalypse upon us or
is it rainbows in unicorns?
I don't know. ,
right? No. Anyways, I know
we're, I know we're getting,
getting close to time. I, I, I could
talk to you guys for hours. Like this is,
I love these kinds of conversations.
It's such good things. I don't know. Any,
any last thoughts? Any any,
you know, any predictions?
I know it's a scary thing. Where are we
gonna be in six months? We gonna be up,
we gonna be down, we gonna
be figuring it all out.
Yeah. You wanna go first or what?
Yeah, I mean, I can, you know, I you know,
I I think we're still gonna be uncertain.
I don't know that we're gonna know
when things are gonna hit. And
you know what, it could be a,
it could be a slow process,
right? It could be that the,
the function of, you know, passing on
prices to consumers ends up slower.
So we see a slower uptick every
month in inflation, right?
And a slower pace of decline,
you know, in, you know,
the Fiserv Small Business
Index and MRTS and and PCE,
what we're definitely gonna see
is we are gonna see rising prices.
It's gonna be, it's gonna be how adaptable
businesses and especially small
businesses and consumers are to,
to that. And I think a lot of that
will, will depend on, you know,
watching the jobs numbers
and income numbers,
because I think that's gonna be
our gauge about when consumers
really decide to start to pull back.
Yeah.
Yeah. Dar I, yeah, I,
I think I'll just speak from the
consumer aspect of this, right?
So consumers are gonna
continue to be cautious. And I,
I've got an anecdote hot off the presses.
We just did a review of
Mother's Day activity,
and I hate to say mom,
we're on a budget this year.
So, so we didn't kinda, as consumers,
we collectively didn't
like go all in to spoil mom
with gifts and all kinds
of experiences like,
like we've done even
last year in years past.
So I think that that
speaks directly to the
discretionary spin pullback, right?
Summer's coming we usually see
certain industries pop with
summer travel is, you know,
waiting on summer with bated breath,
but like we've just been talking
about travel has slowed down.
So does that create an
opportunity for those operators
in our leisure segment to kind
of pick up those dollars that
are not being spent in big travel
events and doing more
staycation stuff where,
you know consumers can figure out how
to stretch their dollars, right? And,
and local leisure activity
providers taking advantage of that.
So we may be on the cusp of another shift,
another realignment as,
as businesses that are aligned to
kind of fill those new consumer
needs as they align and
figure out how to do that.
We may see this shift and, and
then this will become our new norm.
Who knows?
You know, Mike, as, as you said
that I was thinking, you know,
what we should do is
we should look at our,
our findings and compare it with the
lipstick index, right? And kind of see,
you know, kind of what
ends up happening there.
. Yeah.
That would be that'd be interesting
to see given, you know, the fact that,
you know, the belief that, you know,
obviously it was coined by Leonard
Lauder but you know that as the
economy weakens consumers shift,
you know, towards, you know,
more affordable luxury items like
lipsticks and so forth and cutting back on
their larger discretionary.
So it'd be interesting to see.
Thank you for the time.
I really appreciate it.
This has really enjoyed the conversation.
Maybe we could do it again in a couple,
three months or six months or whatever
that might be when we get through some of
this stuff and, and we figure it
out. But Darrell, Mike, again,
I really appreciate your time and
thanks for a good conversation.
Thanks David. Thanks David.
Appreciate it. Great.
The information and opinions provided
in this podcast are intended as general
guidance only, and are subject
to change without notice.
The views presented during the podcast
are those of the presenter as of the
date.
This podcaster recorded and do not
necessarily reflect official positions of
Equifax.
Investor analysts should direct inquiries
using the contact desk box on the
investor relations section@equifax.com.