Ashish Sabadra: That’s very helpful color. Thank you.
Operator: We have a question from Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Faiza Alwy: Yes. Hi, thank you. So first, I just wanted to pick on a comment that you made saying that you thought revenues were ahead of plan. Maybe you could talk about what areas in particular were better than your expectations in the quarter?
Steve Weber: Yes. I mean it was modest, but it was on the software side. I mean, the Scores number is pretty much dead on plan, and software came in a little bit ahead of plan. So it’s encouraging to see that, that happen.
Faiza Alwy: Okay. Great. And then on the software side, I’m curious how we should think about the non-platform revenues. I think previously, you had talked about those revenues being roughly flat. And they are. They were down just a little bit on a year-over-year basis. I’m talking about the recurring revenue. Like is that €“ like €“ so that $450 million, is that sort of the right way to think about it going forward? Or do you expect sort of more €“ some declines from here in that business?
William Lansing: I think someday we will have declines, but I think for the time being, flat is the right way to think about it. Now obviously, we can manage that number. We choose to end of life some products, and that contributes to shrinkage. And it’s a balancing. And it’s really a balancing act that we are in. I think that we’re in a good place right now at flat. That’s just about the right balance where we can close down, end of life the products that would result in us having a lot of technical debt where we did continue them without really shrinking that business. The day will come, no doubt, when we will shrink that business somewhat. But that day is still a ways away.
Faiza Alwy: Got it. And then just on expenses. I think you mentioned that expenses are going to go up a little bit as we go through the year, mostly driven by personnel expenses. And I’m curious, is that something that’s €“ something that’s already put in motion? Or maybe want to talk about the magnitude of that increase, if you can? And secondly, like how much flexibility you have on that, should the planned revenues don’t come in line. Is that something you can pull back on?
Steve Weber: It’s not €“ it’s not a lot of money. But I mean, we put €“ we have salary increases that take place in December. So we’ll have three full quarters of that. There’ll probably be some additions to headcount, but we expect to have more revenues, too. So I mean, we can delay the headcount hires if the revenues don’t come in. So we do have control over it to some degree, but it’s not a step function in expenses.
Faiza Alwy: Got it. Thank you so much.
Operator: Our next question is from Jeff Meuler with Baird. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Unidentified Analyst: It is on for Jeff. I was just hoping to get a little color on some of the nonorigination B2B scores, and particularly, the marketing and prescreen side of things. How is that trending…
Steve Weber: Yes. Prescreen is down slightly from last quarter. Some of that is seasonal. But we still see pretty strong pre-stream numbers, but they’re not what they were in the fall. So we’ll see what happens after the first of the year. Typically, that’s a lower marketing quarter, but we monitor that, and we’ll see. It’s still strong, but it’s not as strong as it was in the fall.
Unidentified Analyst: Okay. And then…
