RBC Capital downgrades Experian to ‘underperform’

RBC Capital Markets downgraded its rating on shares of credit-checking firm Experian to ‘underperform’ from ‘sector perform’ and slashed the price target to 2,400p from 2,900p.

The bank said that despite "excellent" ESG reporting and a commitment to ‘improving financial health for all’, Experian is at longer-term risk of significant financial disruption from interventions designed to tackle economic inequality in the US, via changes to credit scoring and data regulation.

"Our deep dive into the genesis of a think tank proposal for an alternative Public Credit Registry highlights detailed policy objectives which, we think, could ultimately better be addressed by utility-inspired regulation," it said.

"We think this material risk is at odds with the highly positive consensus view on the stock and we lower our rating to underperform."

At 1135 BST, the shares were down 1.8% at 2,681p.