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Experian also said on Tuesday it raised its $600 million share
buyback programme by $200 million using proceeds from recent
divestments.
The company, which is best known for running consumer credit
checks for banks, landlords and retailers, said it would pay an
interim dividend of 12.5 cents per share.
The FTSE-100 stock rose as much as 6.7 percent to 1178 pence on
the London Stock Exchange and was the top gainer on the index on
Tuesday morning.
"We view the results as overall better than expected; the
buyback, although relatively small, should be incrementally
accretive (about 1 percent) and the slight increase in guidance,
despite the macro headwinds in some regions, should be also
taken well by the market in our view," Goldman Sachs analysts
wrote in a note.
Experian reported a fall in first-half pretax profit to $458
million from $534 million a year earlier. Revenue fell to $2.24
billion from $2.39 billion.
The company said foreign exchange would continue to be a
headwind and it expected organic revenue growth of
mid-single-digit for the year on constant currency.
Experian said the breach at a North American server was an
isolated incident, which affected a single client and did not
involve its U.S. consumer credit division or include payment
information or bank details. (http://bit.ly/1kItIbh)
It was currently not possible to predict the scope and effect on
Experian of these regulatory and government investigations and
legal actions, including their timing and scale, the company
said.
In the event of unfavourable outcomes, however, Experian may
benefit from applicable insurance recoveries, it said.
Experian said one-off costs of directly responding to the
incident were reflected in a charge of $20 million in the six
months ended Sept. 30.
Attorneys general in Connecticut and Massachusetts were
preparing for investigations into the breach.
The data breach had exposed sensitive personal data of some 15
million people who applied for service with T-Mobile US Inc in
September.
(Reporting by Noor Zainab Hussain in Bengaluru; Editing by
Gopakumar Warrier)
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