Earnings Labs

Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Jul 29, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Latvia and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fair Isaac’s Third Quarter Earnings Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers’ remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. Mr. Steve Weber, you may begin your conference.

Steve Weber

Analyst

Thank you. Good afternoon and thank you for joining today’s FICO’s third quarter earnings call. I am Steve Weber, Vice President of Investor Relations, and I am joined today by our CEO, Will Lansing and our CFO, Mike Pung. Today, we issued a press release that describes financial results compared to the prior year. On this call, management will also discuss results in comparison to the prior quarter in order to facilitate understanding of the run-rate of our business. Certain statements made in this presentation maybe characterized as forward-looking under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements may involve uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Information concerning these uncertainties is contained in the company’s filings with the SEC, in particular in the risk factors and forward-looking statements portions of such filings. Copies are available from the SEC, from the FICO website or from our Investor Relations team. This call will also include statements regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company’s earnings release and Regulation G schedule issued today for a reconciliation of each of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure. The earnings release and Regulation G schedule are available on the Investor Relations page of the company’s website at fico.com or on the SEC’s website at sec.gov. A replay of this webcast will be available through July 29, 2016. And with that, I will turn the call over to Will Lansing.

Will Lansing

Analyst

Thanks, Steve and thank you everyone for joining us for our third quarter earnings call. Today, I will brief you on our financial results for this quarter and how we are doing year-to-date. Then I will take a step back and reiterate our strategy overall and in each operating segment and how we are doing executing against that strategy. In our third quarter, we reported revenues of $209 million, an increase of 6% over the same period last year. Year-to-date, revenues were up 7%. This quarter, we delivered $20 million of GAAP net income and GAAP earnings of $0.62 per share. We delivered $32 million of non-GAAP net income, up 10% from last year. During the past year, we brought down our diluted shares from 35 million to 32 million, accelerating our non-GAAP EPS to $1 per share, an increase of 20% from the same period last year. Our applications revenues were down 2% over the same period last year due to lighter license sales this quarter. The segment has performed well this year, up 5% year-to-date. Our tools segment was up 18% over last year, driven primarily by increases in both recurring and license revenues. Growth has been steady in the tools segment and year-to-date tools revenues are up 14% over last year. Our scores segment continues to do very well. Total scores revenue was up 23% compared to last year. Our B2C business was up 73% and our B2B business was up 5% versus last year. Year-to-date, the scores business is up 7%. As we move through our fourth fiscal quarter, it’s a good time to review our strategy and our success in executing on that strategy. In our applications segment, we have invested heavily in order to increase the addressable market for our market-leading analytic applications. We…

Mike Pung

Analyst

Thinks, Will. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, I will emphasize three points in my comments. First, we delivered $209 million of revenue, up 6% from the same period last year. This quarter includes a 23% increase in scores segment and an 18% increase in tools. While our applications segment was down slightly, this segment is up 5% year-to-date. Second, we delivered $20 million in net income, which included restructuring and acquisition-related expenses of $2.3 million. While we continue to invest heavily in our growth initiatives, our emphasis is shifting from new product releases to refining our distribution capabilities. Finally, we delivered $34 million of free cash flow and repurchased 327,000 shares during the quarter. I will begin by breaking the revenue down into our three reporting segments. Starting with applications, revenues were $127 million, down 2% versus the same period last year due to lighter license sales this quarter in our marketing solutions and fraud management products. This was offset somewhat by our acquisition of TONBELLER. Year-to-date, our applications revenue are up 5% versus the same period last year. In the tools segment, revenues were $26 million, up 18% versus the prior year. The growth this quarter was driven by our rules and models products and our data management platform. Year-to-date, tools revenues are up 14%. And finally, in our scores segment, revenues were $56 million, up 23% from the same period last year. B2B was up 5% driven by another strong originations quarter and B2C revenues were up 73% from the same quarter last year. Revenue increase this quarter had a double-digit rate on myfico.com and our Experian partnership continues to evolve with virtually all their subscribers now receiving a FICO score as part of their bundled offering. Looking at our revenue by region, this quarter, 74% of total revenues…

Will Lansing

Analyst

Thanks Mike. With less than one quarter to go in our fiscal year, I am pleased with our progress towards our targets for the year. More importantly, I am pleased with how the company is positioned to deliver value to our shareholders now and in the future. We laid our first strategies through our business. For our software assets, we have invested to maintain our deeply embedded market leadership and to expand our IP assets under broader markets. We are beginning to see results, but there is much more yet to come. On the scores side we are just now seeing how we can take a brand that is so strong in financial services and create substantial value among consumers. Even as we operate in markets with significant stress and turbulence, I believe we have never been better positioned to make the most of our significant opportunities. We will have much more to say next quarter as we talk about our expectations for fiscal 2016. Rest assured we will remain focused on execution. And while 2015 was the year of innovation, 2016 will be a year where we expand our distribution to leverage that innovation. And all that we do will be with an eye towards providing value to our shareholders. I will now turn the call back over to Steve for Q&A.

Steve Weber

Analyst

Thanks Will. This concludes our prepared remarks and we are ready now to take any questions. Operator, please open the line.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays.

Greg Bardi

Analyst

Hi, this is actually Greg calling on for Manav. Just wanted to ask about myfico.com, nice to hear that it’s growing double-digits, I think that might be a step up from at least, anecdotally, what you were saying last quarter, just wondering what’s driving the strong growth there and what you are seeing, at least in the direct channel?

Will Lansing

Analyst

Well, in the direct channel, we are seeing a lot of volume coming through along with some of the enhanced packaging that we put together last year. We took and added several products, including identity theft product last year and we are seeing the benefits of that increased volume against the higher price point.

Greg Bardi

Analyst

Okay, that makes sense. And then also just wanted to ask about the – you talked about the distribution for both applications and tools, when we think about the cost base, is that a shifting of costs from product development into that sales or are we going to see a step up from the added distribution?

Will Lansing

Analyst

I would say that you are going to see a little bit of both. So what we have is a situation where over the last several years, we have invested extremely heavily in our product portfolio both through organic development and also through acquisitions. And we are now in the fortunate position having a really robust set of products and services to offer. And our distribution doesn’t match the breadth of our product portfolio. We – I suppose I am not alone as CEO of a software company who feels like you can never have enough distribution for great product. But it is really very much the case with our company that our product portfolio exceeds the coverage that we have and the ability to distribute it. So we are taking some resource from the products side and shifting it in the direction of distribution – sales and distribution. And we will also be increasing the expenses associated with sales and distribution because we think it represents a pretty big opportunity.

Greg Bardi

Analyst

Okay. And then maybe one more sort of on the same line, just an update on the integration of TONBELLER and where you are in the process of taking that outside of its core markets to some of the other European markets?

Will Lansing

Analyst

It’s very smooth. The integration is very smooth. We have retained all the personnel. We are really thrilled with the management team there. The growth is still being driven primarily and probably will for the foreseeable future, will be driven primarily by the TONBELLER’s sales and distribution arm selling their products. But we are starting to take it out to the FICO parent side of the house.

Greg Bardi

Analyst

Okay. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Bill Warmington with Wells Fargo.

Bill Warmington

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Will Lansing

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Hi, Bill.

Bill Warmington

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

So, I was asked for a little additional color on the bookings numbers. And you saw it in terms of what are the headwinds that you guys faced this quarter that just passed and then also what gives you confidence that you can go ahead and – that you will be able to source new transactions and also, close the ones that are in the pipeline for this coming quarter?

Will Lansing

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Great question, Bill. So this is a couple of quarters in a row now where bookings is underperformed at least our internal targets. And as a reminder, bookings represent net new deals that are signed, new revenue associated with it, not standard renewals. Lighter bookings tends to create a headwind because we rely on deals that we signed to generate future revenue for us. And so with a headwind in the bookings numbers that provides or creates a situation where we have to go and get more net new revenue in order to fill that – to meet our objectives and our plans. The environment that we have been operating in, both in the U.S. and at least in the third quarter EMEA, have been what’s driven to the lighter amount of bookings. In other words, we have been dealing with this challenge in North America for some time. In the last quarter, we had a very light quarter in EMEA, which is quite unusual for the team there. And so, we are actively working towards getting some deals closed that we accounted on and planned for certainly within the fiscal year and in a certain case in the third quarter. Some of the work that we are doing to refine the sales organization includes some new blood that we have brought in over the past few months, including leaders in our fraud line of business and in our marketing line of business. And we are using all those efforts to close the gap here for this fiscal year and as we look at next year’s plan.

Greg Bardi

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Got it. And then on the scores side of the business, on the B2C side, wanted to ask about what kind of activity you are seeing in the affinity market, that’s been a market that’s really been pretty quiet now for a number of years, what’s going on there and are you guys participating?

Will Lansing

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

It’s good news. And we are participating, but I would also say it’s going slowly. So what we see is an increase in the number of RFPs out there. We find ourselves on the receiving end of the RFPs and we are definitely a player in the market and considered so by the people we are looking for affinity [ph] channel. I am very confident about our prospects in this space. That said, recognize that these are complex deals that take a long time to put together and they take even longer to implement. So the revenue impact of doing deals in the affinity space will be delayed, but the early signs are extremely promising.

Greg Bardi

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Brett Huff with Stephens Inc.

James Rutherford

Analyst · Stephens Inc.

Hi. This is James Rutherford in for Brett. Thanks for taking the question. Just got a couple here first, on scores, should we expect that kind of strong growth to continue in the fourth quarter and then how should we think about the tough mortgage comps in the fiscal fourth quarter to impact that growth? And then I have one more follow-up after that.

Will Lansing

Analyst · Stephens Inc.

You can expect the growth to be continually strong in the fourth quarter. We are on a trajectory upward in the third quarter while the best quarter we had in a very long time, it’s not a one-off, its part of a trend and you can follow the dots. It’s a booming business and growing and the fourth quarter should be there in the third. Mortgage is not a big part of the story so I wouldn’t spend a lot of time talking about it.

James Rutherford

Analyst · Stephens Inc.

Okay. On distribution, the new kind of strategy of shifting spend there, how should we think about the margin impact of those investments, given that I would assume some of the product spend was capital spending versus it sounds like more OpEx, is there an impact to the margin, how should we think about that?

Will Lansing

Analyst · Stephens Inc.

No, I don’t think you should – I don’t think you should think that there will be a big margin impact, because in fact, our R&D spending expense is not capitalized. So moving the dollars from the product side of the house to the sales of side of the house is not going to have a big margin impact. And these are not dramatic changes that we are talking about. These are measured changes on the margin.

James Rutherford

Analyst · Stephens Inc.

Got it. Okay. Thanks for the help.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And there are no further questions at this time.