First Advantage Corporation Common Stock Barclays 11th Annual Global Credit Data & Analytics Forum

Thank you very much, Manav, and thank you, Steven and Joel, for joining us and everybody for participating in what has been a successful 11th edition of our Annual Credit Data and Analytics Forum. First Advantage, obviously, coming off a strong 2Q, I think 15% revenue growth, 6.7% base growth, 12.5 combined combination from new logos, upsell, and cross-sell. Before we dive into that recent strong performance, the trends and drivers there, and also the updated guide, I think appropriate being at this Credit Data and Analytics forum is to first start with the transformation.

Steven, I will leave it to you as to how you want to describe it, evolution, revolution of First Advantage, from a technology-enabled screening provider to today, a global software and data company, and how First Advantage helps organizations manage the human capital risk, their proprietary databases of more than 1 billion records, AI-driven fulfillment and fraud detection capabilities, and also the historical and key integrations across ATS and HCM platforms. Could you help us understand that transformation, evolution, revolution about where FA sits in the value chain today and how that will continue to progress?

Yeah, no, Ronan and Manav, thanks for having us and good morning, good afternoon to everyone. Lots to unpack in that question. I will certainly start off, but I am sure I will miss a few pieces, and I will have Joel fill in for you. Ronan, I think when you really think about that question, it is almost the 10-year-plus history of First Advantage is kind of the answer of that. Joel and I have both been here for the better part of that decade and have seen that evolution really happen from, to your point, really a transformation from what was really kind of a BPO-looking company, which was really reflective of where the, quote-unquote, "archaic" kind of fulfillment methodologies that this industry had.

Really over the last, call it 10 years, have been really putting in a lot of those core tenets of a company that to really transform into a data-enabled and a tech-based company. That started in the earlier days with automating things on the back end. So that would have been reflective of our RPA initiative a decade ago. That has evolved to machine learning and now AI, to your point, and embedding that in the product, in our internal process, in the fulfillment. As we marked through that evolution, and certainly this was a strong tenet on the First Advantage side of our history, really trying to be data first, right? That is really reflective in the over 1 billion proprietary records that you mentioned.

That is both on our criminal fulfillment side, that is also really seen in our employment and education data, in our verified and SmartHub technologies that we use to fulfill there. While all that is going on, so you are automating the back end, you are putting data on the platforms to enable that function. We really have spent a ton of time and obviously annual investment, doubled down with that with our acquisition of Sterling, in terms of putting that into our tech platforms. That is our user experiences through our core fulfillment platform, how they integrate with our customers and their HCM systems. We have well over 100 of those integrations with all the leading platforms in the world to really transform this, from back to my earliest point, from being a true just outsourced business process to a true tech-enabled solution that our customers are able to really value.

When you do that, and you do that well, you are able to then add incremental value through the process through additional products and services. We have seen that evolve over the years, most recently with our digital identity solution, but we have our continuous monitoring, our compliance solutions, I9, you name it. As you have this one cohesive modern-day tech platform, you are able to add those incremental value adds to your customers, improve your value proposition to them, and all while at the same time, thinking about our shareholders, making a much more valuable, robust, and durable company. That is why if you look at our customer base, wide set of verticals, right? Healthcare, retail, transportation, gig, financial services, industrials, all over the place. Wide geographic mix. We are able to do these services all over the globe at high quality, high turnaround time.

And then look, we have an enterprise customer focus. If you looked at the names of our customer database, it is the who is who of the Fortune 500, Fortune 1000, Global 1000. You have really kind of seen over the last decade, I have been here for a little over 10 years. Joel, roughly, her and I started not too far apart. We have seen that evolution firsthand, and I think it is probably really admirable for our shareholders to be able to see the value come through our P&L and overall, just the quality of the company over that same period of time.

Yeah, Ronan, I would say, to simplify a lot of everything that Steven just said, which was great, we have really evolved from a point-in-time, one-time check, if you will, at a certain point throughout the hiring life cycle, and you zoom out, and we are really now a broad-based kind of product and platform that delivers managing risk across the entire life cycle of someone in the workforce. So whether it be from the initial start of an interview all the way through to, yes, of course, the background check, which is where we have known, to an identity check. Then, as Steven mentioned, even the post-hire, where right-to-work, I-9, and then continuous monitoring. So it is really taking it from just a one-time transaction, truly, to an end-to-end solution across the workforce to manage risk. And so it has been a really great ride for us.

As Steven mentioned, we took those platforms and the data investments, and we really tried to elevate the organization to allow us to deliver, again, those risk mitigation services from a compliance perspective across for all our verticals. As Steven mentioned, the verticals is a key focus of ours, not something we were doing 10 years ago, something we have absolutely doubled down over the last probably seven, eight years, and it has been really good for the business.

Very good. Appreciate all the insights there. It is an excellent way to start the discussion, especially at this conference and the nature of it. So with that technology and that AI proprietary data and moat, obviously you guys have been investing in that for quite some time and applying AI across now customer care, fulfillment, software development, verification flows, fraud mitigation. Can you talk about, and Joelle, if you want to touch on some of the key product innovations, even from a digital ID standpoint, where you are seeing the most meaningful benefits today, and where we expect to see the most meaningful benefits going forward?

Sure. Yeah, absolutely. What is really interesting and a dynamic change in this industry in particular, but kind of across enterprises, and as Steven mentioned, that is our main focus. The buying pattern has kind of changed. Companies, for really the first time over the last year and a half, 2 years, are prioritizing risk as the number one requirement for them. When they buy, they are like, "How are you going to help me manage risk? How are you going to do this?" If you kind of reverse the conversation maybe 5, 10 years ago, it was all about speed. "I need to get people hired right away. I need to get people in the door." This dynamic change has been a complement to what you talked about with regards to our product suite. As we mentioned, we have a number of verticals.

We are vertically focused. We have a wide range of sub-verticals inside of there, and we are seeing broad-based growth across all of those verticals. That is being driven by the innovation that we have done for those specific verticals inside of our platforms. When you think about the kind of revolution of AI, which you kind of talked about, we would like to consider ourselves using good AI to fight bad AI. The reason risk is so prevalent right now in the top buying pattern, it is because a lot of these organizations are struggling with identity fraud. Identity fraud is coming in all shapes and sizes. It is the only product we have really ever had that is being demand-driven across every vertical, every customer segment, and every region.