Earnings Labs

Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 5, 2015

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Courtney and I will be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Fair Isaac Corporation's Quarterly Earnings Conference Call. Thank you. Mr. Weber, you may begin your conference. Steven P. Weber - Treasurer, VP & Investor Relations Officer: Thank you, Courtney. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining FICO's fourth quarter earnings call. I'm Steve Weber, Vice President of Investor Relations, and I'm 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 an understanding of the run-rate of our business. Certain statements made in this presentation may be characterized as forward-looking under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements involve many 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 November 5, 2016. Now I'll turn the call over to Will Lansing. William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer…

Operator

Operator

And our first question comes from Bill Warmington.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Good evening, everyone. Michael J. Pung - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President & Investor Relations: Hey Bill.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Congratulations on a strong finish to the year. Michael J. Pung - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President & Investor Relations: Thank you.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

So I wanted to start off by asking about the build out of the sales force for this past year and next year, if you could just talk a little bit about how many sales people were actually added in 2015? How many you plan to add in 2016? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, Bill, I'll give you the actual numbers. So, we started to shift internal dollars that we were spending primarily in development into our distribution channels in around the third and the fourth quarter. So for the last quarter and a half, we probably added about 30 people and onboarded 30 sales people and in the meantime we have reduced our head count in other areas by just over 100. We expect between now and the next month or two to probably add at least another 30 to 40 people in the sales capacity and all-in we're expecting to bring our sales team up by roughly 60 people, most of which are hired from the outside, but some we actually have redeployed from areas like product management into our sales force. So to some degree, we are reshifting already existing spend as opposed to adding new spend to the organization.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then, if you could talk about the – you mentioned the Affinity market being a source of potential opportunity for you. Could you talk a little bit about the pipeline that you see in terms of the number of transactions that you're considering participating in, what types of industries they're in and then maybe even talk about what such a potential deal might look like? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Well, so we have a – we're in conversations with probably half a dozen potential Affinity customers and we're looking at it in a couple of ways one is directly where we would be, for lack of a better word, the general contractor, and also in other situations where we provide the FICO Score to a partner participating in that space, who would serve the bank or the retailer or whoever it is providing the Affinity services to their customers. And that is kind of the range it's, it is very typically banks, it's retailers, it's anyone who has a large customer base that are good candidates for credit report monitoring services. In terms of the timing, these things take a long time to negotiate and they take quite awhile also measured in quite a few months to turn on, to implement and turn on, and so although we have conversations that are quite far along right now, it's not clear that the revenue will flow in 2016, we'll just have to see how that plays out.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. And then I wanted to ask the top line guidance, it looks like it's about roughly 2.5% to 3.5% times. If you could talk a little bit about the growth assumptions within each of the three segments, Applications, Scores and Tools? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Sure. I think that we expect continued growth in Scores, strong growth in Scores. We expect continued strong growth in Tools, although as some of that shifts to cloud and recurring revenue, it may not appear quite as strong in the revenue as it has historically when it was license sales. So we are a seeing a shift from Tools being predominantly license to being more of a mix with SaaS and our DMS offering. And then Applications is clearly the slowest growing of our major business segments. I do think it's probably worth pausing on this for a moment and talking a little bit more about the relationship between Tools and Applications. The fact is that the IP that underlies our Applications, and the IP that underlies our Tools is the same IP. And we solve the same kinds of problems, whether it's originations or questions on a recovery or any other kind of decisioning. And at some level, the way we've gotten to where we are is Tools were a more flexible and a more custom solution. And when there were enough customers who had the same kind of a problem, we would build an application, which was kind of a somewhat standardized solution for a group of customers sharing the same kind of a problem. And so, the distinction between Tools and Applications is a little bit of a fuzzy one because you can use either Tools or Applications to address the same problem. What we're seeing today is much more fuzziness between the two. Our sales people are not compensated to sell one over the other. We are really focused on selling the right solution to the customer, whatever that may be. And as Tools have become more easy to use, as our DMS suite has developed more functionality, more features, it's become more of an alternative to some of our applications and I think what we're seeing is in certain situations, customers opt for a Tools solution where they might previously have opted for an Applications solution. So, this is a case of some amount of cannibalization of our Applications business by our Tools business and it's not a bad thing. You have to look at it holistically and look at the two on a combined basis to have an accurate picture of how our business is doing.

William A. Warmington - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Got it. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Okay. And your next question comes from Manav Patnaik.

Manav Shiv Patnaik - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Yeah. Good evening, guys. So, just on the revenue growth and I guess the margins, we're still in this low single-digit range in revenue growth. Margins still look like they'll be flattish. And I guess you've talked about your long-term targets for quite some time now to do well beyond that. So, I was just wondering in the context of that, like when is that breakout year in your view, where we start getting close to those ambitions? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Manav, I think that is a very fair question, and I think that 2016 is on our way to a breakout year in 2017. I think that the only reason you see the caution that you see today, is we really do have uncertainty about when some of the stuff hits, but I don't think it's three to five years out. I think it's in the next couple of years. And so, what doesn't happen towards the end of 2016, I think we will start to see happening in 2017. We fully expect that 2017 will be a year of stronger revenue growth and expanding margins.

Manav Shiv Patnaik - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. And then in the context of this quarter probably being the first full quarter ramp of the Experian deal, we were hoping you guys could provide a little bit more color on what the baked-in assumptions are for Scores and maybe that segment in 2016 to try and sort of gauge what the moving parts really are? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. So, Manav embedded in the guidance that we provided for Scores is high-single digit growth. And what we did not try to bake in to the guidance for Scores is any incremental revenue that would run through the Experian channel as we have it today, the direct-to-consumer channel beyond the run rate that we are starting the year with. There are other opportunities and other products that could get added along the way if Experian chooses to do that, and if the customer demand exists for it, and that could provide something beyond what we have built in to our guidance. And as Will mentioned in his comments the Affinity programs and any revenue that could come through a partner like Experian or directly through the customer has not been built into any of the guidance as it also is quite uncertain as to when a customer is ready to launch a program like that. I guess I'd lastly say that we also very purposefully have left to the side the alternative Score XD and not included any of that in our plan for fiscal 2016, though from the latest feedback we've gotten from the test group there is certainly is a high degree of interest to bring that into their credit risk management processes. And those things also take a little bit of time and so in order to be prudent we thought we would hold that off to the side and see that how that plays out. So we think there is some upside opportunities along the way in our Scores business that provide some of the tailwind if you will that may offset some of the headwind we saw this year in our software businesses and the late bookings.

Manav Shiv Patnaik - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. And then just one more from me, so just on the Tools side obviously, historically you've shown it and you've always guided to sort of low double-digit growth. It seems like I guess momentum didn't carry on in the last quarter here, but should we still see low double-digit in 2016? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah, inherent in our guidance is much higher growth in Tools along with high single-digit in Scores and then relatively low single-digit in the biggest part of our business, Applications.

Manav Shiv Patnaik - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

And on that Applications, would it be fair to say that if it's conservative it's because you just don't know when those license deals hit? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: That's very true with Applications. We also have some tough comps in the Fraud area where the last two years we've had some pretty large Fraud revenue quarters because of the timing of license revenue. And so with that being harder to predict , we think you blend it all together and this is a reasonable range to operate from and set our cost structure around.

Manav Shiv Patnaik - Barclays Capital, Inc.

Analyst

Got it. All right. Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Brett Huff.

Brett Huff - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. One thing that looked really good in the quarter was the bookings, they really turned around. Is that just a typical seasonality or was there some things in the works that finally came through or is there any color there that you can give us and then may be anything, any thoughts as you move into 2016? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Yeah. There was no real seasonality in it. it was more some things that have been in the works for a while that finally came through. The bright spot embedded within the bookings numbers, the $105 million of bookings is that a larger percentage of those bookings than we've seen in recent quarters relates to transactional volume revenue and so that's part of the recurring revenue stream that, once they go live we'll start seeing that revenue quarter-after-quarter. There's a less of beginning an end point if you will like there is in License and Services. So, not only was it a larger number I would say from my perspective the quality of those bookings were better than we've seen certainly over the last few quarters.

Brett Huff - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

That's helpful. And then, on the Affinity you were talking about I just want to make sure, did you – have you signed any of the Affinity programs to the new FICO Scores, either directly or through partners or are these the ones that are still in discussion? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: No, these are still in discussion.

Brett Huff - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. And then last question from me is given the success of the Experian reseller agreement or partnership, how do we feel about the other credit bureaus or even other ways to distribute that that FICO Score not the Open Access, but through another similar credit bureau or other similar partner? William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: You know, we continue to look for other ways to take the FICO Score to market. I'm not in a position to comment on the specifics of our discussions with credit bureaus, with the other credit bureaus. But we're always interested in expanding the use of FICO Scores.

Brett Huff - Stephens, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. That's exactly, and thank you for your help.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. William J. Lansing - President, Chief Executive Officer & Director: Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining. Michael J. Pung - Chief Financial Officer, Executive Vice President & Investor Relations: Thank you.