Intuit Q4 FY2026 earnings call: transcript, summary & key numbers

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Beau, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Intuit's fourth quarter and fiscal year end-2026 conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer period. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone.

If you would like to withdraw your question, press star too. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Ms. Kendra Goodenough, Intuit's Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma 'am.

Good afternoon, and welcome to Intuit's fourth quarter fiscal 2026 conference call. I'm here with Intuit CEO, Sasan Goodarzi, and our CFO, Sandeep Aujla. Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone that our remarks will include forward-looking statements. There are a number of factors that could cause Intuit's results to differ materially from our expectations.

You can learn more about these risks in the press release we issued earlier this afternoon, our Form 10-K for fiscal 2025, and our other SEC filings. All of these documents are available on the Investor Relations page of Intuit's website at intuit .com. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Some of the numbers in these remarks are presented on a non-GAAP basis. We've reconciled the comparable GAAP and non-GAAP numbers in today's press release.

Unless otherwise noted, all growth rates refer to the current period versus the comparable prior year period, and the business metrics and associated growth rates refer to the worldwide business metrics. A copy of our prepared remarks and supplemental financial information will be available on our website after this call ends. With that, I'll turn the call over to Sasan.

Thanks, Kendra, and thanks to all of you for joining us today. We closed fiscal year 2026 with solid results.

Full-year revenue grew 14%, and we expanded operating margin again this year. This drove full-year GAAP and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share growth of 20 % for both. Our big bets, assisted tax, money, and mid-market collectively grew 34 % and represented 30 % of full-year revenue. At the same time, our results highlighted areas where we need to further evolve. Namely, in key parts of our business, we need to grow new customers at a faster pace.

As we enter fiscal year 2027, we are deliberately shifting our execution and investments towards accelerating customer acquisition and market share growth while continuing to scale the areas of the business that are working well. We have already taken decisive action. We are sharpening our product and lineup strategy to accelerate new customer growth while continuing to scale our big bets and increase adoption of platform services. These actions are designed to strengthen our competitive position and set into it up for durable growth over time.

Today, I'll cover the opportunities we see ahead, the changes that we are making to capture them, and our progress to date. I have a great deal of conviction in our strategy to win as an AI-driven expert platform by creating a unified financial system of intelligence. We bring together decades of trusted proprietary data, deep financial and industry expertise, and domain-specific models built for accuracy and compliance to increasingly do the work for our customers and help them achieve better outcomes.

Our innovation is creating a future where consumers, businesses, and accountants can simply approve financial decisions or collaborate with a brilliant friction entry points to reach millions of businesses earlier in their journey and build a relationship with them from the start.

We recently introduced QuickBooks Free and early results are encouraging. As of last month, we had more than 20 ,000 customers either actively using QuickBooks Free or who have converted to paid offerings with monetization driven by payments adoption and upgrades to more comprehensive offerings. This is the model we intend to scale, acquire more new customers earlier and grow with them as their needs become more complex. That model becomes even more valuable as customers grow in the mid-market, a nearly $90 billion total addressable market.

Our progress in the mid-market has been strong and given us a clear opportunity to broaden the sources of growth. Mid-market customers moved 28 % with roughly three-quarters of the additions coming from upgrades or desktop migrations. This reflects our success moving existing QuickBooks customers into higher value offerings, with our go-to-market emphasis weighted towards our existing base. As we enter fiscal year 2027, we are deliberately increasing investment in direct new-to-the-franchise acquisition to expand our reach and broaden the sources of mid-market growth.

We have tangible proof points that give us confidence in our ability to accelerate direct acquisition. New-to-the-franchise mid-market customers grew over 30 % this year, and Intuit Enterprise Suite annualized revenue surpassed $145 million in Q4, a 4X increase from last year. Our industry-specific approach is also attracting new customers. The launch of Construction Edition drove an incremental 19 points of growth in QuickBooks Online Advanced Customer Editions in Construction, while new Intuit Enterprise Suite contracts in construction increased 20%.

These results demonstrate that industry-specific innovation can be a meaningful new customer growth lever, and we are moving quickly to scale this approach across more verticals. Accountants are another important part of scaling our mid-market new customer pipeline. This year, they drove 25 % of our new Intuit Enterprise Suite contracts. And to strengthen our network effect, this month we launched breakthrough AI-native innovation in Intuit Accountant Suite, bringing together practice management, portfolio-wide insights, books close, and tax workflows in one experience.

accountants using Intuit Accountant Suite report spending nearly 30 % more of their high-value time on advisory work, and over 150 ,000 accountants are already on Intuit Accountant Suite platform. Together, these proof points give us confidence in our ability to expand our reach in the mid-market, not only by growing with businesses already on the platform, but by bringing significantly more new customers directly into the franchise. What makes this opportunity especially powerful is one unified financial platform serving businesses and accountants across their journey.

From an entrepreneur just getting started to a complex mid-market business, we can bring customers onto the platform, solve more of their needs over time, and help them run more of their business in one place. And the more businesses and accountants we bring together on the platform, the stronger the network becomes, driving greater engagement, customer growth, and adoption of services, while creating more value for both sides. A foundational part of that advantage is Intuit Intelligence. Powered by our financial system of intelligence, it brings done-for-you experiences to life, moving us beyond software that simply records transactions to a platform that increasingly does the work for our customers.

Intuit Intelligence combines the context of a customer's financial life and data with our deep domain and industry expertise, advanced models, and workflows built for accuracy and compliance. It understands what is happening in a customer's business, anticipates what needs attention, and turns insight into action. It keeps books current, surfaces anomalies, forecasts cash flow, performs scenario planning, and initiates workflows to get worked on on their behalf while bringing in human expertise when needed. The early proof is encouraging.

Millions of customers are using our AI native experiences, getting paid four days faster, and reducing manual work by 30%. And among more complex businesses, over 75 % of Intuit Enterprise 3 customers use our AI agents every month to keep their books current, automate transaction work and close faster. Our focus now is to scale that value across a much larger customer base. As our customers grow, we have the opportunity to grow with them by managing more of their financial and workforce needs in one place.

Money and workforce help us deliver that value while creating a significant opportunity to deepen customer relationships as they adopt more services and drive higher ARPC over time. We are seeing strong evidence of this today with significant opportunity ahead. Businesses manage over $2.7 1 trillion in invoices through QuickBooks every year and total online payment volume, including bill pay, grew 30 % to more than $225 billion for the full year. And as customers grow with us, they adopt more of the platform.

QuickBooks Online advanced U .S. customers have a 13-point higher payroll penetration rate and a 9-point higher payments penetration rate than core QuickBooks online customers this demonstrates the opportunity to grow the value of a customer relationship over time by solving more of their needs on one platform we continue to expand that opportunity by putting money at the center of the platform our recent launch of the intuit business credit card brings another critical financial capability directly into cookbook's experience creating more opportunities to deepen engagement and and drive additional value for customers.

As we look ahead, our priorities across the business platform are clear. We will widen the front door with QuickBooks Free and QuickBooks Lite to accelerate new to the franchise customer growth, continue to expand our reach and momentum in mid-market, scale consumption and engagement of Intuit intelligence, and drive greater adoption of money and workforce services. Our focus is to execute against both sides of the equation, bringing more customers onto the platform and growing the value of those relationships over time to expand market share, drive higher ARPC, and position the business platform for durable long-term growth.

Now shifting to our consumer platform, revenue grew 11 % this year, and we are seeing strong growth across assisted tax, personal finance, and money. At the same time, we lost quality DIY customers to lower-cost providers. I will unpack that shortly. We now understand what needs to change and are focused to rebuild that customer funnel while continuing to scale the areas where we are seeing strong momentum. Our growth opportunity is to use TurboTax and Credit Karma as powerful entry points to bring more consumers into the platform, grow our share of total IRS e-filers, and deepen those relationships across their financial lives to drive higher platform ARPC over time.

Our financial system of intelligence enables us to do that by helping consumers make smarter financial decisions year-round, whether connecting them to the right credit cards, personal loans, auto loans, home loans, and insurance, helping them manage their money, or filing their taxes. We're already having a significant scale to build from. This year, we helped customers file 39 million tax returns, facilitated over $120 billion in tax refunds, and leveraged more than 70 ,000 tax and financial attributes per consumer to deliver deeply personalized experiences.

We see significant opportunities to expand the value of these relationships. Today, approximately one out of every nine credit card and personal loan originations in the U .S. comes through our AI-powered platform. Over the last two years, our share increased approximately three points in credit cards and four points in personal loans as we gained share with both consumers and financial partners. Revenue for our personal finance key growth offerings, insurance and home loans, grew 44 % this year, while connected financial accounts grew 104%.

Consumer money revenue grew 26%, and we delivered more than $29 billion in fast money refunds this tax season, up 79%. This is the power of one consumer platform. The more customers engage with us across their financial lives, the more context we have to deliver personalized value, and the more opportunities we have to grow the relationship beyond a single tax transaction. Now let me address how we're evolving our tax growth model. Historically, our DIY model optimized for tax revenue and ARPC through pricing and upgrading customers into higher value offerings over time.

That model works for many years, but the market has changed. Consumers have more low-cost alternatives, and we lost quality DIY customers to low-cost providers this year. Price is now the number one reason customers leave TurboTax. We now know what needs to change, and we are already putting that plan into action to rebuild the DIY funnel and grow our share of total IRS e-filers. We are making the entry experience... AI-native virtual experience that combines the speed and productivity of AI with something customers deeply value and AI cannot replace, a trusted human expert who reviews, signs, and takes accountability for their return.

Our ability to deliver that human accountability efficiently at scale, together with competitive pricing and compelling year-round benefits, is a powerful differentiator. TurboTax Live customers do 38 % this year. Over the last two years, we've been very successful in helping existing DIY customers realize the value of assistance. More than three quarters of TurboTax Live customer additions in fiscal year 2026. $1.4 billion, up 43%.

GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.34 versus $1.35 last year, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.03, up 47%. Now, let me turn to the business segment results. Starting with the global business solution segment, we continue to make progress serving businesses with our all-in-one business platform and into intelligence, delivering done-for-you experiences powered by AI and human expertise. GBS revenue grew 16 % for the full year, in line with expectations.

When excluding Mailchimp, GBS grew 15 % during the quarter and 18 % for the full year. Online ecosystem revenue excluding Mailchimp grew 20 % for the quarter and 23 % for the year. We saw continued momentum in mid-market again this quarter, with online ecosystem revenue for QBO Advanced and Intuit Enterprise Suite growing 38%. Online ecosystem revenue for small businesses and the rest of the base grew 14 % this quarter. Our overall growth in online ecosystem revenue ...growth in combined QBO and advanced, QBO advanced and Intuit Enterprise suite customers.

Upgrades within our existing franchise will remain an important part of mid-market growth as customer needs become more complex. At the same time, we are increasing focus on new-to-the-franchise customer growth to expand market share and broaden the sources of durable growth over time. Online ecosystem ARPC growth continued to accelerate in fiscal 2026 to 15%, driven by strong adoption of our online services, including adoption by mid-market customers, as well as value-based pricing for...

Reflects a strong conviction and interest long-term growth opportunity and we expect ...in DIY, grow quality customers, and increase our share of total RSE files while continuing to scale assisted tax.

These actions result in lower tax ARPC in fiscal 2027, but are designed to strengthen the customer funnel and create greater value across the consumer platform over time our turbo tax guide assumes total rs filers remain flat year-over-year turbo text live revenue growth should be mid-teens with a deceleration due to fewer diy upgrades to assisted tax following strong success over the last two years ssr noted we are focused on accelerating the growth of new to the franchise customers given this is critical for durable long-term growth.

Credit economic revenue growth should be 11 to 13% as we continue to increase engagement and therefore monetization across the platform. Our guidance reflects a prudent stance on the pace at which we expect to continue gaining share of partner demand following the strong growth in fiscal 2026. work next revenue growth should be approximately 2% and we expect milch and brevmy goes to be flat to down 1% year-over-year with higher effective prices expected to offset the increased churn as we realigned our internal structure under which Mailchimp is managed we are focused on maximizing its value and delivering strong profitability now to operating margin We expect margin expansion driven by savings from workforce changes announced last quarter and

continued efficiency gains both in how we serve our customers and how we work. We expect those savings to be partially offset by deliberate choices we are making this year to increase investments in areas such as sales and marketing as we focus on growing our new-to-the-franchise customers as well as product innovation. GAAP diluted earnings per share is expected to be $20.12 to $20.36, or a growth of 22 % to 24%, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share is expected to be $22.88 to $23.12, or growth of 23 % to 24%.

This includes a $5.81 impact from shared base compensation expenses. We expect a GAAP tax rate of approximately 27 % in fiscal 2027. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, we expect total company revenue growth of approximately 11%, GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.71 to $1.75, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.44 to $2.48, sense inclusive of a $1. At least one point over three years.

We are on track to be at 9 % of revenue by fiscal 2028. While share-based compensation continues to be an important recruiting and retention tool for top talent, we will scale this cost at a slower rate than revenue. And today, we are furthering our commitment. We now expect share-based compensation as a percentage of revenue to be 8 % by fiscal 2030. And lastly, we remain committed to delivering annual non-GAAP EPS growth of at least high teens over the coming years.

This commitment has been updated due to the inclusion of stock-based competition expenses, as noted earlier. With that, I'll turn it back over to Sasan.

Thank you, Sandeep. We're laser-focused on the areas where our execution did not meet our expectations, particularly in new customer growth, while continuing to scale the big bets that are driving our momentum. Our priorities are clear, the organization is aligned, and we are executing with discipline to deliver measurable progress in fiscal year 2027.

Intuit has navigated periods of significant transformation before, and each time we have emerged stronger by staying relentlessly focused on the customer and moving with speed. This moment gives us the same opportunity.

We were growing customers double digits in the business group.

We were growing customers north of 20%. We had to shift to really focus on building this agentic platform that we have built out to become the financial intelligence layer for our customers and really focusing our capital, our mindshare on three bets, assisted tax, money, and money. because we know we can deliver benefits and monetize across the consumer platform.

But also remember, by acquiring these customers, we can grow with them over time. You know, three-fourths of our TurboTax Live customers actually came from DIY. So we've demonstrated the ability to deliver benefits and monetize. And for us, it's actually a proven model. And now we can do both. Not only serve assisted and win, which is 90 % of the total addressable market, but make sure that our top of the funnel, which is DIY, is very, very strong.

And that's the choice that we're making strategically.

Thank you, Kirk. So next question, please.

We'll go next now to Remo Linschow with Barclays.

Hey, thank you. I get all the comments on tax on the GPS business. This time last year, we talked about like 15 to 20 % growth in the long run. Today, you're talking 10 to 15. The one question I'm getting from a lot of investors, is that kind of pressure from, like, new entrants coming in there, or what's driving the big delta there?

Could you just kind of clarify that a little bit?

Yeah, sure. We are creating the pressure. We are not being pressured to make the change. And the way I would sort of talk about it is, one, a lot of our growth in the business group is actually coming from mid-market. You know, we grew 39%. New customers grew 28%. Overall customers grew 28%. New customers to the franchise grew over 30%. And mid-market customers are really important because of the adoption of services.

You know, when we look at our QuickBooks Advanced offering, which is in the mid-market, payroll penetration and payments penetration are 12 to 9 points higher and so one we want to continue to scale mid-market we want to continue to drive the adoption of our services and because of all of our ai native uh sort of investments that we've made to become truly an ai native erp and serving both sides of the network both the accountant and and businesses we want to continue to scale that, we want to continue to accelerate.

And this is by the way, taken years of work to be able to position our platform both from a product standpoint and a go-to-market standpoint to be able to serve mid-market. And we now want to double down, we're not as focused as we need to be on new customer acquisition. And I want to give We scaled our platform to be able to serve mid-market.

We want to accelerate our growth in mid-market and accelerate our acquisition on the low end. It's also taught us a lot around how to position our product and how to position the go-to-market. So with the introduction of QuickBooks Free and QuickBooks Lite, which has been recently introduced, we have over 20 ,000 customers through the last month that are active, not only in QuickBooks Free and or they have upgraded to upper SKUs and we're monetizing payments.

And so, one, the TAM opportunity is there. Two, we have really learned how to drive the growth that we need in mid-market, and we're going to continue to scale that. But then third, we have the right product with the right focus in our go-to-market to accelerate growth on the low end. And that's what gives us, one, confidence in building a competitive position and the durability of the model as we look ahead to set ourselves up for the future.

Thank you, Taylor. So next question, please.

Certainly. We'll circle back now to Citi Panagrahi at Mizzouho. Citi, please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. Going back to the guidance, you sharply lower both GDS here and tax. And how much of the... going forward.

And those are the reasons in which we've made these decisions and choices.

Thank you, Freddie. So next question, please.

Certainly. We'll go next now to Arjun Bhatia. with William Blair.

Sometimes maybe one for you just on timing. I think you've sort of did a great job laying out the strategy and trying to get net new onto the platform. But when you think about the growth trough and the reacceleration, is fiscal 2027 enough to implement the changes you're looking to make into business or, you know, is there a chance this transition can slip into perhaps fiscal 28 before we see the reacceleration and growth?

Yeah, it's a great question. I'll say two things as context before I answer your question. You know, one, what I'm really happy about is our progress on our big bets, both the scale of revenue, the size and scale across the company, and now we have an opportunity to accelerate new customer acquisition even across our big bets. It's important to start there because that's a significant and material part of the company. It's a very large stamp. We have a very strong innovation pipeline, and we want to continue to scale our big bets.

At the same time, I'm not happy in two areas, DIY tax and the fact that our online paying customers only grew 3%. And both of those, we know how to do well. And the history, again, is very important to look back on because these are both areas where we grew customers double digits. But because of our evolution to focus on our big bets, we now need to be able to do both because I'm not satisfied with where we are.

With that said, with both of them, we've already taken decisive actions and put the actions in place, both in terms of how we pursue winning quality DIY customers, and we already know how to monetize them, but also what we've already launched with QuickBooks Free and QuickBooks Lite that is driving up our traffic and the 20 ,000 customers that I just shared earlier based on new launches. And those are important contexts relative to we're doing this from a position of strength.

And because AI is fueling a lot of our innovation on the low end, I want to make sure that a trusted brand like ours, when it comes to compliance and accuracy, I want to be able to increase our share because these are then customers we can grow with over time. In terms of answering your question about will this pay off by 2028 or is it going to take longer, I think I would just say I'd rather our say do speak for it.

I want to talk to you guys about our results on a quarterly basis, share the progress that we're making, and I think you will then be the judge of how quickly we are executing against these plans. I have confidence because we're scaling the bets today. I have confidence because we've driven new customer acquisition in the past. Now we focus the company on both. Let's watch our quarterly results. We'll update you, and then you'll be the judge of how that's going to impact 2028.

Thank you, Arjun. And that was our last question. So, Bo, I will hand it back over to you.