Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) Q4 2021 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Greetings, and welcome to the Fair Isaac Corporation quarterly earnings call. [Operator Instructions]. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded today, Wednesday, November 10, 2021. I'd now like to turn the conference over to Steve Weber. Please go ahead.

Thank you. 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 McLaughlin. 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 may be characterized as forward-looking under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements involve many uncertainties, including the impact of COVID-19 on macroeconomic conditions and the company's business, operations and personnel, 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 10, 2022. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Will Lansing.

Thanks, Steve, and thank you, everyone, for joining us for our fourth quarter earnings call. In the Investor Relations section of our website, we posted some slides that we'll be referencing during our presentation today. I'm pleased to report that our Q4 capped another terrific year, a year in which we posted record revenues, earnings and cash flows. And we were able to do this despite headwinds in fiscal '21 due to a shift in the timing of revenue recognition for term license subscription sales and the sale of 2 product lines in our software business and the managed and deliberate decline in our software and professional services revenues. Pages 2 and 3 show some financial highlights from our fourth quarter. We reported revenues of $335 million in Q4 and $1.32 billion of revenue for the fiscal year. We were able to grow our full year revenue despite these negative revenue factors. We delivered $86 million of GAAP net income in the quarter and GAAP earnings of $3 per share. For the full fiscal year, we delivered $392 million of GAAP net income and $13.40 of earnings per share, which includes the gain of $100 million on product line asset sales and business divestiture. On a non-GAAP basis, Q4 net income was $112 million, up 15%. And earnings per share of $3.92 was up 21% from the prior quarter -- prior year quarter. Full year non-GAAP net income was $383 million, up 31% over last year. And non-GAAP EPS of $13.07 was up 34% over the previous year. We continue to deliver strong free cash flow growth as well. Q4 free cash flow was $90 million, bringing the fiscal year total to $416 million, up 21% from the previous year. In fiscal 2021, we continued our commitment to shareholder return, buying back $882 million of stock during the year. We increased our leverage by about $425 million compared to year-end fiscal '20, but our adjusted leverage ratio remains a modest 2.07x. We view FICO shares as the best use of our excess cash at this time and expect to continue to aggressively buy back shares in the coming year. We had another solid year and making steady progress on our strategic initiatives. In our Scores segment, our diversification of verticals has enabled us to continue to drive growth even as various sectors slow down. Scores were up 10% in the quarter versus the prior year and up 24% for the full year, as you can see on Page 7 of the presentation. On the B2B side, revenues were up 2% in the quarter versus the prior year, which had a onetime royalty true-up. Adjusting for that, revenues were up about 15% for the quarter and 21% for the full year. As expected, we saw a slowdown in mortgage origination volumes, and revenues were down about 18% year-over-year. Auto origination revenues were up 19%, and card and personal loan origination revenues were up 45%. We are seeing particular strength in the card and personal loan space from our customers, including fintechs. The year-over-year pricing increases we implemented in fiscal '21 also had a positive impact on overall B2B revenues. Our B2C revenues were up 32% versus the prior year quarter and 42% for the full year compared to 2020. We saw strong growth through both our own myFICO.com products as well as through our partner channels. In next year's guidance, which I'll discuss in greater detail later, we expect the Scores business to grow about 6%. There's been no change in our strategy or approach to special pricing. Accordingly, special pricing increases consistent with the past several years are not included in this guidance. While we expect these price increases to have an impact consistent with those over the last several years, because it's difficult to estimate the timing and the magnitude of the impact, we remain conservative in how we issue our guidance relative to such increases. Turning to our Software business. As we have mentioned in recent quarters, we have been developing new financial metrics that provide more visibility into the recurring revenue generated by our subscription-based SaaS and on-prem software and the retention and growth of our existing software customers. Beginning this quarter, we are pleased to unveil our revised software reporting structure and these new metrics. Mike McLaughlin will go into much more detail in his remarks, but let me give you just a few highlights. First, we reevaluated our operating segments to better align with how we assess performance and allocate resources. We merged our legacy Applications and Decision Management Software segments into a single Software segment. We continue to report the Scores segment, which is unchanged from past reporting. We also changed the classification of revenue from transactional and maintenance, professional services and license to on-premises and SaaS software, professional services and Scores to better align with our business strategy and peer reporting practices. You'll also find in our 10-K this year our first reporting of annual recurring revenue, or ARR, which provides visibility into the growth trajectory of our Software business without the variability that comes with the upfront revenue recognition required by ASC 606 for on-prem subscription sales. We are also disclosing dollar-based net retention rate and annual contract value of software bookings. Another big change we'll be talking about is the split of our Software revenue between our on-platform and off-platform products. We'll give those splits for revenue, for ARR and for dollar-based net retention revenue. We believe it's important to focus on the progress of our on-platform offerings as it's the central strategy of our Software business. As in prior years, we will continue to focus on investing in our software platform. In fiscal '21, we divested assets that could not be easily migrated to the platform and reallocated resources to accelerate platform development and our go-to-market efforts. By allocating the resources strategically and efficiently, we expect to spur growth and achieve scale while effectively managing our operating expenses. I'm happy with the progress we made in 2021, and I'm optimistic about what lies ahead in 2022 and beyond. We'll continue to allocate our resources to areas of high strategic importance, and we'll continue to focus on long-term shareholder value. I'll have some final comments in a moment, provide our fiscal '22 guidance then. But first, let me just turn the call over to Mike for further financial details.

Thanks, Will. And good afternoon, everyone. As you may have already seen in our 10-K and the financial highlights presentation posted to the FICO website, we have made significant enhancements to our financial reporting this quarter, including the introduction of new metrics in both our Scores and Software segments. We'll briefly preview these metrics, and I will take some extra time on this call to provide more details on what we are disclosing and what new insights these numbers provide. As Will said, we have a strong finish to our fiscal year, and we are well positioned as we enter fiscal 2022. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $335 million, a decrease of 11% over the prior year due primarily to a reduction in upfront recognition of term license revenues on-prem software sales, the sale of our Collections and Recovery product line in June and lower professional services revenue in our Software segment. Our full year revenue of $1.32 billion was up 2% over last year. In our Scores segment, revenues were $169 million, up 10% from the same period last year. B2B revenue was up 2% over the prior year. As you may recall, last year's fiscal fourth quarter included a onetime royalty true-up that did not recur this year. Adjusting for this onetime true-up, B2B revenue was up about 15% this quarter. B2C revenues were up 32% from the same period last year. Both myFICO.com and partner revenues grew significantly. One of the new financial metrics we are adding to our 10-K and 10-Q disclosures going forward is the breakdown of our Scores segment revenues between B2B and B2C components. For the full year, Scores revenues were $654 million, up 24% from last year. As Will previewed, we have merged our Applications and Decision Management segments into a new Software segment. Software segment revenues in the fourth quarter were $166 million, down 25% versus the same period last year. Full year Software revenues were $662 million, down 14% from the previous year. This quarterly and full year decline was due to reduced upfront license revenue recognition, reduced professional services revenue and the divestitures of our Collection Recovery products. I will spend a few minutes discussing each of these 3 factors and their impact on FY '21 results. At the start of fiscal 2021, we shifted the timing of revenue recognition for on-premise term license subscription deals. As a result, we now recognize less upfront license revenue and more revenue ratably over the term of each contract. The net impact was lower license revenue in our Software segment of about $12 million in Q4 and about $34 million for the full year versus what it would have been under our prior sales model. To help show the impact of upfront revenue recognition of on-prem term license software sales, we have added a new table in the 10-K that breaks out our on-premise and SaaS software revenue into revenue recognized at a point in time versus revenue recognized over the contract term. Turning to professional services. We have previously explained how we are deemphasizing low-margin nonstrategic services engagement. As expected, this has resulted in lower PS revenues. Our PS revenues were down 35% in Q4 compared to the prior year quarter and 20% for the full year. Professional services continued to be an important part of our business, helping our customers implement our software and realize the most value from it over time. We expect to see additional modest declines in our services revenues over the next few quarters, after which we expect it to return to a growth trajectory in line with our on-premise and SaaS revenues. The third factor negatively impacting reported revenues this period was the divestiture of the Collections and Recovery product line in June as well as the sale earlier in the year of our Enterprise Security Score and the sale of certain assets to a joint venture we established in China. To help understand the impact of these divestitures, we have added additional details to the financial highlights presentation posted on our Investor Relations website. In that presentation, you will find reconciliations of our revenue in prior periods excluding these divestitures. This quarter, 81% of our total company revenues were derived from our Americas region. Our EMEA region generated 14%, and the remaining 5% was from Asia Pacific. The Americas region, which we will use in our financials going forward, is simply a combination of our North America and Latin America regions. We mentioned in our call last quarter that we are planning -- that we were planning to introduce a number of new financial metrics for our Software segment. We are pleased to introduce those metrics this quarter. You will find a full description of these new metrics in the 10-K and on Page 8 of our financial highlights presentation. Let me take a few minutes to briefly walk you through each new metric. The first of these is annual recurring revenue, or ARR, which measures the underlying performance of our subscription-based software contracts. ARR is defined as the annualized revenue run rate of on-premise and SaaS software agreements within a quarterly reporting period. And as such, it is different from the timing and amount of revenue recognized in any given period. All components of our software licensing and subscription arrangements that are not expected to recur, primarily perpetual licenses, are excluded. We calculate ARR as the quarterly recurring revenue run rate multiplied by 4. Second new metric is annual contract value, or ACV, bookings. This replaces our previously disclosed bookings metric, which was based on total contract value, including the value of professional services. ACV bookings is the average annualized value of software contracts signed in the current reporting period that generate current and future on-premise and SaaS software revenue. We only include contracts with an initial term of at least 24 months, and we exclude perpetual licenses and other revenues that are nonrecurring in nature. We also exclude the value of professional services sales. For renewals of existing software subscription contracts, we count only incremental annual revenue expected over the current contract as ACV bookings. The third new metric is dollar-based net retention rate, or DBNRR, a measure of our success in retaining and growing revenue from our existing customers. To calculate dollar-based net retention rate for any period, we compare the ARR at the end of the prior comparable period, we call it the base ARR, to the ARR from that same cohort of customers at the end of the current quarter, retained ARR. Then we divide the retained ARR by the base ARR to arrive at the dollar-based net retention rate. Our calculation includes the positive impact among this cohort of customers of selling additional products, price increases and increases in usage fees and the negative impact of customer attrition, price decreases and decreases in usage-based fees during the period. It is important to note that our disclosed ARR, dollar-based net retention rate and ACV bookings numbers for the current quarter and all prior quarters exclude revenues and bookings from our divested assets to make period-to-period comparisons more meaningful. Fourth, as mentioned briefly above, we are disclosing the amount of our Software segment revenue that is recognized at a point in time versus recognized over the contract term. This helps provide an understanding of a key factor that drives the differences between reported Software revenue and ARR from period to period. And finally, we are breaking out our on-premise and SaaS software revenues, ARR and dollar-based net retention rate into platform and non-platform components. The shift of our software solutions and capabilities to the FICO platform is our #1 strategic goal in the Software segment. This new disclosure provides significant additional visibility into our progress. Taken together, we believe these metrics significantly enhance investor visibility into our Software segment. Specifically, ARR and dollar-based net retention rate show how we are retaining and growing our subscription-based customer relationships. And our platform disclosure shows the size, growth and expansion potential of the FICO platform. Now let me give you a few highlights on what these new metrics show this quarter. Our Software ARR in the fourth quarter was $524 million, a 7% increase over the prior year. Our platform ARR was $75 million, representing 14% of our total fourth quarter ARR and a growth rate of 58% versus the prior year. Our non-platform ARR was $449 million in the fourth quarter, which was 1% higher than the prior year. Our dollar-based net retention rate in the quarter was 106% overall, while our non-platform customers' software usage tends to be mature and relatively stable with retention hovering around 100%. Our platform customers are showing very strong net expansion from land-and-expand follow-on sales and increased usage. The dollar-based net retention rate for platform was 143% in the fourth quarter, up from 116% in the prior year. Excluding divested product lines and businesses, our software ACV bookings for the quarter were $25.8 million versus $28.9 million in the prior year. ACV bookings increased for the full year to $62.8 million versus $58.3 million in FY '20, representing growth of about 8% year-over-year. As a reminder, ACV bookings include only the annual value of software sales, excluding professional services. Turning now to our expenses for the quarter. Total operating expenses were $219 million this quarter. This included an $8 million restructuring charge primarily associated with reductions in our professional services delivery staff and rationalization of resources following our Collections and Recovery divestiture. Our non-GAAP operating margin, as shown on our Reg G schedule, was 45% for the quarter and 40% for the full year. We delivered non-GAAP margin expansion of 600 basis points for the full year. GAAP net income this quarter was $86 million, up 45% from the prior year quarter. Our non-GAAP net income was $112 million for the quarter, up 15% from the same quarter last year. For the full year, GAAP net income was $392 million, which included a gain of $100 million on product line asset sales and business divestiture. Non-GAAP net income was $383 million, up 31% from the prior year. The effective tax rate for the full year was 17%, including $24 million of reduced tax expense from excess tax benefits recognized upon the settlement or exercise of employee stock awards. We expect our FY 2021 recurring tax rate to be approximately 25% to 26%. That expected recurring tax rate is before any excess tax benefit and other discrete items. The resulting net effective tax rate is estimated to be about 24% for the year. Free cash flow for the quarter was $90 million. For the full year, free cash flow was $416 million, up 21% from last year's $343 million. At the end of the quarter, we had $195 million in cash on the balance sheet. Our total debt at quarter end was $1.26 billion with a weighted average interest rate of 3.3%. In October, we amended our credit agreement to allow for the issuance of a $300 million term loan with our bank group, increasing our total bank capacity to $900 million. We used the proceeds of the term loan to reduce the draw on our revolving line of credit. Turning to return of capital. We bought back 845,000 shares in the fourth quarter at an average price of $446 per share. In fiscal 2021, we repurchased a total of 1,877,000 shares at an average price of $470 per share for a total of $882 million. At the end of September, we had about $173 million remaining on the Board repurchase authorization and continue to view share repurchases as an attractive use of cash. With that, I'll turn it back over to Will for his thoughts on fiscal '22.

Thanks, Mike. As we move into fiscal '22, I believe we are well positioned for the year ahead. In our Software business, we continue to solidify and add functional capabilities to our platform. And we remain committed to becoming the preeminent provider of decisioning analytics. We are committed to pursuing growth opportunities and improving our efficiency. In our Scores business, we continue to innovate and find new ways to add value for our customers and benefit from the diversification that comes from the broad usage through the various credit verticals. We entered the new year with more visibility than last year, and as such, are again providing guidance for fiscal '22, as shown on Page 15 of the presentation. We are guiding revenues of about $1.35 billion, an increase of about 3% versus fiscal '21 on an as-reported basis and about 6% when adjusted for the divestitures. We are guiding GAAP net income of approximately $318 million, GAAP earnings per share of approximately $11.29, non-GAAP net income of $397 million and non-GAAP earnings per share of $14.12. I'll turn the call back over to Steve, and then we'll take your questions.

Thanks, Will. This prepares our prepared -- this concludes our prepared remarks, and we're ready now take your questions. Operator, please open the lines.

[Operator Instructions]. And our first question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs.

You're guiding to Scores revenue growth up 6% next year. That excludes any special pricing increases. Could you talk about what the assumptions are and factors are that go into your 6% growth outlook?

It's a continuation. We break it down into the pieces. And we look at mortgage. We look at auto. We look at card. We look at prescreen. So we look at all the pieces and put estimates on that. We use industry forecasts to inform those estimates, although we're not always exactly on top, we form our own views. And that's basically how we do it. That's how we got to the 6%. I mean it's a combination of -- it combines both volume increases based on industry and price increases as well.

Okay. Got it. So there is some measure of underlying pricing increase in there?

Yes. Just to be clear, it's CPI kinds of increases.

Not including the strategic price increases.

Right.

And George, I would add to that. I just -- sorry to interrupt, just looking across those segments, we do our best to predict volumes for the 3 major parts of our B2B business. Just like you probably do. We don't have a crystal ball. But I can say that our expectations for mortgage are in line with what you would find from third-party forecasters. And likewise, we expect modest but positive growth in the auto and credit card and other segments.

Okay. Yes. That's helpful. That was the extra color I was hoping to get. And then with the extra Software disclosures, I guess if we dive into ARR performance, the percentage of ARR that's on platforms at 14%, it's nearly double what it was about 2 years ago. What are your expectations for how that continues to tick higher? What's embedded in your 2022 guide? And how would you expect that trajectory to just perform in the years ahead?

We see the platform side of ARR growing at over 50%.

And overall, if you just do the math on our guidance, the 6% total revenue growth is approximately equal in terms of percentage between the Software and Scores business. So if you expect very strong continued growth in the platform business, we think our platform is going to be relatively flat.

Okay. So 50% is a good run rate growth to apply to the platform piece.

That's right.

Our next question comes from Surinder Thind with Jefferies.

As a follow-up to the ARR question and more specifically the net revenue retention rate of 143% for the platform, can you talk about the sales process and how that works for the client in terms of what the client initially buys and kind of what the upsell is and how the timing of the upsell works?

Sure. And obviously, it varies from client to client. Typically, we put the platform in with a specific number of use cases and very specific ideas about how the platform will be used and what problem is being solved. But increasingly, it's being put in with a view to being able to provide additional solutions later on. And what we're seeing -- a classic land-and-expand strategy. And what we're seeing is that's working with our current platform customers and what -- and the ones that have gone in less recently, we're seeing expansion. We're seeing new uses, new ways of using the platform, and so -- which is what's really informing that 143% retention rate.

That's helpful. And then in terms of just bringing on new clients onto the platform, can you talk a little bit about the conversations you're having there and what it's kind of taking to get them across the finish line and the time lines generally involved?

The time line is a little bit longer than our historic 270-day sales cycle with our older applications. But the -- what's happening is it's a bigger deal at the client. It's being brought in as part of a broader strategy. It's being brought in with a view to using it to really interact with consumer customers strategically. And so it is a bigger, more complicated conversation, but it's -- we're kind of in the middle of it. We're right in the middle of the way our clients want to interact with our consumer customers. We're seeing ourselves pop up in their strategy presentations.

Got it. And just kind of a technical question on the accounting part of the ARR maybe. Is there a kind of a volume component to it in the sense that there's a head count of the number of people that are on there, all else equal, or usage?

I'm not following the head count part of it. Are you talking about our contracts that are usage-based as opposed to based on minimums per year?

Yes, the combination of minimums versus usage base. So let's say a use case has -- a lender has, I don't know, 10 million accounts or something like that as a use case or was part of that. And then obviously, that number can change. So are there kind of bands? Or how does that work? Just to understand what the volatility might be.

Yes, it's a good question. So our contracts have both. Many have minimums. Many have usage components. Some have minimum with usage if you exceed a certain amount of volume or use cases or accounts. What we do is if it's minimums, that's what goes in the ARR unless and until that customer exceeds the minimums, and then that additional run rate is added to ARR in the period in which that occurs. If it's a purely usage-based contract, some of our customer communication services contracts, for example, are based on the number of messages that are sent in cases where fraud is identified or what have you. There, we estimate once the solution has been installed and is running and has shown a stabilized usage rate, we then use that as the ARR that we will enter into the quarter's results. If that usage goes up or down in future quarters, we adjust ARR accordingly. Does that make sense?

Yes. That's actually very helpful. That's it for me.

Next question comes from Kyle Peterson with Needham.

Just wanted to touch on the margins. Obviously, it came in really strong this quarter. I know there's been a lot of moving pieces with deemphasizing professional services and the C&R divestiture. But just wanted to get any thoughts on what your assumptions would be on like the sustainability of operating margins in line with what we saw this quarter.

There isn't anything structural that has changed or we expect to change in the quarters ahead in fiscal '22 versus what you've seen in recent quarters other than the fact that we expect to return to traveling. So if you look at the expense breakdown in our supplemental materials, I think we spent $0.5 million on T&E in Q4. That's going to go back up to a more normal rate, or at least that's what we're projecting. Professional services, as that declines, that's a low gross margin business, therefore, a high cost of goods sold business. So the cost of goods sold declines as those revenues go down. But otherwise, in terms of what we're investing in R&D and go-to-market and G&A, nothing dramatic has changed in our forecast versus our historical other than we've taken out a lot of expense from divestitures.

Got it. That's helpful. And then I guess just a follow-up on the B2C side. The performance continues to be really impressive for Scores. Is this something that you guys think you can keep growing kind of above trend? It seems like you guys are putting up significantly faster growth than what we're seeing with some of the other players in the space.

I think that there's a lot of strength in the FICO brand, and I think that there's a lot of strength in the operating and management acumen of our B2C team. So doing better than others, I think you could expect that. Will we be able to repeat year-over-year performance in the 30s? I can't promise that. I think we're more likely to be on something closer to our quarter-to-quarter growth.

[Operator Instructions]. The next question comes from Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets.

This is John Mazzoni filling in for Ashish. Maybe just a quick one on the B2B revenues. I know there was a onetime impact that if adjusted, that would be around 15%. How should we think about these moving forward, especially going into kind of the '22?

Those kinds of onetimers happen periodically. It is kind of part of the business. We do audits and true-ups every few years with different channel partners. And so can you expect them to continue? Yes, there will be things like that, that are a little bit unpredictable. But it is part of the business.

Understood. And then maybe just a quick follow-up. How do you see the Software business evolving over time? Maybe of a longer-term perspective, just as we kind of wrap our heads around these new metrics, what could be a longer-term growth rate or any type of things that investors should be paying attention to?

Okay. With the caveat that this is not guidance, I would say look at our platform growth, 50% platform growth, which tells you that we have something there that the market wants. We have a large number -- a large number -- 19 enterprise customers, large customers who have adopted the platform and many more in the pipeline. And what we're seeing is that's a combination of conversion, substitution of platform solutions for more historical solutions, but it's also growth. It's also new stuff. And so over time -- and it could be a very long time. But over time, you'll see our software transition from our older solutions to platform solutions and the platform solutions piece is growing a lot faster. So will our growth rate go up? Yes, it almost certainly will go up as we do more and more of our total Software business on the platform. So if today is 6%, I would just extrapolate out from 6% upward. And I don't know how many years it will take, but we will be in double digits eventually.

And Mr. Weber, there are no further questions.

All right. Thank you all for joining today's call, and we look forward to speaking with you again soon. This concludes the call.

And that will conclude the conference call for today. We thank you very much for your participation. You may now disconnect.