Intuit Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 24, 2023

There are 8 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Reza, and I will be your conference operator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Intuit's 4th Quarter Fiscal Year 2023 Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question and answer period.

Operator

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Kim Watkins, Intuit's Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Watkins?

Speaker 1

Thanks, Rosa. Good afternoon, and welcome to Intuit's 4th quarter fiscal 2023 conference call. I'm here with Intuit's CEO, Sasan Gadarsi and our new CFO, Sandeep Agula. Welcome, Sandeep. It's nice to have you on the call.

Speaker 1

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 10ks for fiscal 2022 and our other SEC filings. All of those documents are available on the Investor Relations page of Intuit's website at intuit.com. We assume no obligation to update any forward looking statements.

Speaker 1

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 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.

Speaker 2

All right. Hello, Kim. Thank you, and thank you, everybody, for joining us today. We had a very strong Q4 as we executed on our strategy to be the global AI driven expert platform powering prosperity for consumers and small businesses. We grew full year revenue 13%, delivered strong operating margin expansion and exited the year with momentum.

Speaker 2

Our overall performance demonstrates the strength of our platform and diversity of our call, including our ability to maintain earnings power in uncertain times. This past year, we expanded our operating margin again, while And the most important areas to drive durable long term growth. We're guiding to another year of double digit revenue growth and margin expansion in fiscal year 2024, even with a macroeconomic environment that is uncertain. We're entering Intuit's most exciting era yet. 5 years ago, we declared our strategy to be an AI driven expert platform With data and AI core fueling innovation across our 5 big bets.

Speaker 2

We've made strong progress transforming from a tax and accounting platform where Our consumers and small businesses have to do the work to achieve the benefit that they are seeking to a global financial platform where we do the hard work for them. Now we're creating a future of done for you, a future where the hard work is done automatically on behalf of our customers to fuel their financial success. This future is only possible because of our history of significant investments in our platform, talent, data and AI and now our accelerated investments in generative AI. At the core of our platform is powerful relevant data. Intuit has incredibly rich, longitudinal, transactional and behavioral data for 100,000,000 customers.

Speaker 2

For small businesses, we have a 3 60 degree view of their business and customers. We have 500,000 customer and financial attributes per small business on our platform, and this data gives us insights into behaviors, income streams, expenses, profitability and cash flows, enabling us to provide personalized experiences and recommendations to help them prosper. Additionally, we have 60,000 financial and tax attributes per consumer on our platform, including income, expenses, credit history, spending history, outstanding loans, cash flow and tax information, which enables us to become a financial assistant in their pocket. We are using our data to fine tune our own financial large language model that specialize in solving tax, accounting, cash flow and marketing and personal finance challenges. The investments that we've made in data and AI over the years allow us to introduce innovation at an accelerated rate.

Speaker 2

Intuit's rich data platform is a powerful foundation that allows us to create innovative AI assisted experiences for all of our customers powering their prosperity. In June, we introduced our generative AI operating system called GenOS to ignite innovation at scale for the benefit of millions of consumers and small businesses. GenoWest empowers Intuit's technologists to create breakthrough generative AI experiences. We are using a platform approach given our teams across Intuit's resources and the tools they need to design, build, test and deploy these new experiences with unparalleled speed. This includes our own powerful financial LLM as well as those from other leaders in Gen AI, which together unlock new opportunities to serve our customers in a cost effective way.

Speaker 2

We are entering Intuit's most exciting era yet and believe the next several years will be game changing. On September 6, we'll be hosting Intuit Innovation Day, a virtual event where we will unveil exciting Gen AI innovation across our platform and how it will drive business growth in the years ahead. We look forward to sharing more with you then. Now let me turn to our Big Bats, which are driving growth and benefits for our customers today. I'd like to highlight some examples of recent progress in one of our Big Best.

Speaker 2

And as a reminder, our 5 Big Best are revolutionize speed to benefit, Connect people to experts, unlock smart money decisions, be the center of small business growth and disrupt the small business mid market. Our 4th big bet is to become the center of small business growth by helping our customers get new customers, get paid fast, manage capital and pay employees with confidence in an omnichannel world. In Payments, our innovations continue to drive digitization from creating an estimate to invoicing a customer to getting paid. Today, easy discovery, auto enabled payments, instant deposits and getting paid up front are all helping drive adoption of our payments offering, leading to 22% total online payment volume growth this quarter. We're making significant progress digitizing B2B payments to accelerate and automate transactions between small businesses and ultimately improving their cash flow.

Speaker 2

We see tremendous opportunity as 80% of businesses still pay other firms via paper checks. We recently expanded the The availability of the beta of our native Bill Pay solution by 10x. Turning to Mailchimp, we're well on our way to becoming the source of truth for our customers to help them We have 3 acceleration priorities with Mailchimp. 1st, delivering on our vision of an end to end QuickBooks and Mailchimp customer growth platform. 2nd, disrupting the mid market by developing a full marketing automation, CRM and e commerce suite.

Speaker 2

And 3rd, accelerating global growth with a holistic go to market approach. This last quarter, we implemented our 1st generated AI capability in Mailchimp, The email content generator, enabling customers to create faster email campaign based on industry, marketing intent and brand voice. This quarter, we launched the beta of new product announcement generator, which uses AI to automatically create an e mail that a small business can send to their customers. We also announced over 150 new and updated features at recent Mailchimp Conference in London, designed to support the needs of advanced Marketers, including a calendar view, custom reporting and analytics, more e commerce advanced segmentation, more real time behavioral data based on e Commerce Automation and SMS Marketing. Lineup changes and free trials are driving positive trends in year over year paid customer growth, which accelerated this quarter.

Speaker 2

We continue to make progress in mid market. Our 90 day retention rate this quarter is the highest it's been in 2 years. We've also translated the product into 5 different languages. We'll share more on the outcomes we're delivering across our 5 big bets at our Investor Day. Wrapping up, with our durable AI driven expert platform strategy and focus on innovating with Gen AI across our products, We're moving at a high velocity.

Speaker 2

This will help us put more money in our customers' pockets, save them time and ensure complete confidence in every financial decision they make. As we lead this next technological shift, we are well positioned to power prosperity for our customers and communities that we serve with the leadership team that is built for the era 8i. Now let me turn it over to Sandeep. It's great to have you on

Speaker 3

the call, my friend. Thank you, Sussan. I'm excited to be here, and I look forward to meeting many of you in the future. We delivered strong results in fiscal 2023, including total revenue growth of 13%, strong margin expansion and GAAP and non GAAP EPS growth of 16% 22%, respectively. For the Q4 of fiscal 2023, we delivered results that exceeded the high end of our guidance range across all key metrics, 6, including revenue of $2,700,000,000 up 12 percent GAAP operating income of $17,000,000 versus a loss of $75,000,000 last year non GAAP operating income of $627,000,000 versus $433,000,000 last year, up 45%, GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.32 versus a loss of $0.20 a year ago and non GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.65 versus $1.10 last year, up 50%.

Speaker 3

Now turning to the business segments. In the Small Business and Self Employed Group, revenue grew 21% during the quarter and 24% for the full year, which included 4 points of benefit from a full year of Mailchimp revenue this year versus 3 quarters last year. Online Ecosystem revenue grew 21% during the quarter and 30% for the full year. With the goal of being the source of truth for small businesses, Our strategic focus within the Small Business and Self Employed group is 3 fold: grow the core, connect the ecosystem and expand globally. First, we continue to focus on growing the 4th.

Speaker 3

QuickBooks online accounting revenue grew 22% in Q4 and 26% in fiscal 'twenty three. Growth for the quarter fiscal year were driven mainly by customer growth, higher effective prices and mix shift. 2nd, We continue to focus on connecting the ecosystem. Online services grew 20% in Q4, driven by payroll, Mailchimp, payments, capital and time tracking. For the full fiscal year 'twenty three, QuickBooks Online Services grew 34%, driven by Mailchimp, payroll, payments, capital and time tracking.

Speaker 3

Within payroll, revenue growth in the quarter reflects an increase in customers adopting our sales solutions and a mix shift towards higher end offerings. Mail shift revenue grew mid teens in Q4. Growth was driven by higher effective prices and paying customer growth. Within payments, revenue growth in the quarter reflects ongoing customer growth as more customers adopt our payments offering to manage their cash flow as well as an increase in total payment volume for our customer. 3rd, we continue to make progress expanding globally by executing our fresh international strategy, which includes Leading with both QuickBooks Online and Mailchimp in our established markets and leading with Mailchimp in all other markets as we continue to execute on localized product and lineup.

Speaker 3

On a constant currency basis, total international online ecosystem revenue grew 12% in Q4 and 31% in fiscal 'twenty three. The power of our small business platform continues to resonate with customers as it looks to grow their business and improve cash flow across all types of economic environments. Our platform remains critical to our customer success, and we continue to see them adopt multiple offerings across the platform to manage their business. Desktop Ecosystem revenue grew 19% in the 4th quarter and QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise revenue grew in the low 20s. We are approximately 2 thirds of the way through a 3 year transition for customers consistent with our principal to price for value.

Speaker 3

Looking ahead, we expect continued strong desktop ecosystem revenue growth next year as we complete the remaining part of the 3 year transition. Our focus is to continue building out our online ecosystem and to help Our desktop customers migrate seamlessly to our online offerings. We continue to expect the online ecosystem to be a growth catalyst longer term. Looking ahead, we continue to anticipate small business and self employed revenue growth of 15% to 20% per year long term. Now shifting to Credit Karma.

Speaker 3

Credit Karma delivered revenue of $424,000,000 in Q4, down 11%. On a product basis, The decline in Q4 was driven primarily by macroeconomic headwinds in personal loans, auto insurance, home loans and auto loans, partially offset by growth in credit cards and Credit Karma Money. Full year revenue was $1,600,000,000 down 9%. Credit Karma represented 11% of Intuit's total revenue in fiscal 'twenty three. We are seeing continued stability across our core verticals, which led to the improvement in year over year performance during Q4 versus Q3.

Speaker 3

For context, Credit cards and personal loans represented nearly 60% and nearly 30% of Credit Karma's revenue in fiscal 2023, respectively. Looking ahead, we continue to anticipate Credit Karma annual revenue growth of 20% to 25% per year long term. Now shifting to our consumer and products groups. Consumer group revenue was $4,100,000,000 in fiscal 'twenty three, up 6%. Each tax season has been unique since the pandemic began 4 years ago, introducing volatility into consumer group results.

Speaker 3

However, Average annual trends over this 4 year period are more in line with the long term trends. Over the past 4 years, consumer group revenue increased by an average of 10% annually, which aligns with our long term growth expectations of 8% to 12%. While this was a unique tax season, I am proud of the progress the team made with transforming the assisted segment with TurboTax Live, which grew revenues 17% this year, while customers grew 12%. Looking ahead, we are confident in multiple growth drivers. First, we see large runway ahead of us with Perfect slide.

Speaker 3

Given our ability to use both Gen AI and human experts powered by AI to deliver confidence for our customers, We are investing in scaling our full service offering, which has good product market fit based on the highest product recommendation scores of any product at Intuit this year. 2nd, we are planning to scale our business tax offering following a successful pilot this year. And 3rd, we see significant opportunities ahead, driving Credit Karma members through TurboTax and giving TurboTax filers faster access to their money with Credit Karma Money. Given the growth opportunities I just shared, we continue to expect annual consumer group revenue growth of 8% to 12% per year over the long term. Turning to the Pro Tax Group, revenue was $561,000,000 in fiscal 'twenty three, up 3%.

Speaker 3

Now let me share more on our financial principles and capital allocation. Our financial principles guide our decisions remains our long term commitment and are unchanged. We finished the quarter with approximately $3,700,000,000 in cash and investments and $6,100,000,000 in debt on our balance sheet. Approximately $4,200,000,000 of the debt is maturing over the next 15 months, and we are evaluating refinancing opportunities subject to market and other conditions. We repurchased $465,000,000 of stock during the Q4 and $2,000,000,000 during fiscal 'twenty three.

Speaker 3

Depending on market conditions and other factors, our aim is to be in the market each quarter. The Board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.90 per share, payable on October 17, 2023. This represents a 15% increase versus last year. We recently finalized our 3 in-1 year strategic plan. I feel confident in the investments we're making to drive durable growth, including executing across our Big Best and continuing the accelerated pace of innovation, particularly with Gen AI.

Speaker 3

We have a proven playbook for operating in both good and difficult economic times. We manage for the short and the long term and control discretionary spend to deliver strong results while investing in what is most important for future growth. Our goal remains for Intuit to emerge from this period of macroeconomic uncertainty in a position of strength. Moving on to guidance. Our fiscal 2024 guidance includes total company revenue of $15,89,000,000 to $16,105,000,000 a growth of 11% to 12%.

Speaker 3

Our guidance includes Revenue growth of 16% to 17% for the Small Business and Self Employed group, 7% to 8% for the consumer group and a decline of 3% to a growth of 3% for Credit Karma. GAAP earnings per share of $9.37 to $9.67 growth of 11% to 15% and non GAAP earnings per share of $16.17 to $16.47 growth of 12% to 14%. We expect GAAP tax rate of approximately 23% in fiscal 2024. Our guidance for the Q1 of fiscal 2024 includes revenue growth of 10% to 11%, GAAP earnings per share of $0.15 to $0.21 and non GAAP earnings per share of $1.94 to $2 We are taking a prudent approach with guidance given the continued macroeconomic uncertainty. As a reminder, in Q1 of fiscal 'twenty four, we expect to pay approximately $700,000,000 in cash tax payments related to fiscal 'twenty three, which were deferred due to the IRS disaster area tax release.

Speaker 3

You can find our full fiscal 2024 and Q1 guidance details in our press release as well as on our fact sheet. With that, I'll turn it back over to you, Sasan.

Speaker 2

Great. Thank you. Well, in wrapping up, we are confident in our AI driven expert platform strategies and progress with our 5 ks bets, the investments that we're making in GenAI and our leadership team driving our platform innovation. The combination of our assets and our strategy creates a growth flywheel for Intuit to accelerate penetrating our $300,000,000,000 in town. In today's uncertain macro environment, the benefits of our global financial technology platform are more important and mission critical than ever to our customers.

Speaker 2

I look forward to your attendance at our Intuit Innovation Day on September 6th and Investor Day on September 28th. With that, let's open it up to your questions.

Operator

And we'll take our first question from Keith Weiss with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Excellent. Thank you guys for taking the question. And a really nice quarter and nice to see a forward EPS guide ahead of kind of where consensus was to see those numbers start moving up. My inbox though is getting filled up with questions about the consumer business and the consumer guide. You've talked about a longer term 8% to 12 Growth there, the 4 year CAGR of 10%.

Speaker 4

But this year, we're looking for 7% to 8%, so below that guidance framework. And I think what people are trying to understand is why that is. Last year was a difficult tax season. Did you pull the levers too hard on pricing? Or was it, do we need to refill the tank in terms of units?

Speaker 4

Like what is it that's going to Thank

Speaker 3

you.

Speaker 2

Thank you for your question. Let me give you the headlines, but allow me to unpack it. I think the headline is we're just simply being Fine, but allow me to unpack it. I think the headline is we're just simply being prudent. Our focus on future growth and our bullishness It does not change at all.

Speaker 2

Let me unpack that. 1st and foremost, when you look at the assisted segment, there's a $30,000,000,000 TAM and And $20,000,000,000 of it is Consumer Assisted segment and $10,000,000,000 of it is business segment. And the second is the secular shift towards digitization will And you can only accelerate in the years to come. And with that as context, we probably saw some of our biggest green shoots this year, which is why we're probably more bullish about what's Possible in this business than we were even 3 to 4 years ago. And I would put it in 2 buckets, Credit Karma and then the Assistance segment.

Speaker 2

In Credit Karma, Just as a reminder, our vision from the moment that we bought Credit Karma was to create 1 consumer platform where a consumer of just rapid experimentation. We had a massive breakthrough this past year where our customer growth within the Credit Karma platform, This is the number of Credit Karma members that became TurboTax customers was up 5x and we are scaling that Both on the product side and on the business model side, because that gives us a lot of confidence going into next year and beyond. The second is in the assisted segment and it's in 3 parts. 1st and foremost is we actually had product market fit This past year in full service, our biggest focus was how do we scale. We had some breakthroughs and how to scale.

Speaker 2

In fact, as you heard from Sandeep, it had our best product recommendation score of any product across the company and we are significantly leaning into that in the coming year. The second is business tax. We launched and learned to get the product market fit in business tax that is now going to be available both across our QuickBooks Live platform and directly going to market with TurboTax. And we have 100 of 1,000 if not millions of people have come to TurboTax looking for business tax. We've never had an offering.

Speaker 2

We will next year and we are scaling it. The last thing I would say in the assisted segment, one of the biggest things that we've learned in this last year is local matters. What that means is people will go on Google and they will search. If I'm in San Diego, it's very pro close to me. Well, we've never been good at being found in local.

Speaker 2

And in fact, when you look at the experts that we have, we are 10 miles from every home in the household in the United States. And so we're going big on local this year. And so when I look at our green shoots in the assisted segment and Credit Karma, it gives us a lot of confidence as we look at this coming year and the future. And I'll end with where I started, which is the essence of your question about our guidance. We're simply being prudent given the year that we just had.

Speaker 4

Excellent. That's super helpful guys. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

And we'll take our next question from Citi Panagrahy with Mizuho. Your line is open.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Great quarter. And Sandeep, congratulation on your first earnings call and looking forward to working with you. So, San, I want to ask about your Bill Pay, what sort of feedback have you been getting from your bill customer from that QuickBooks Netty Bill Pay? And how should we think about the near term opportunity as you're switching the legacy powered by payment solution with now your native bill pay?

Speaker 5

And then on the broader vision side on small business, now that you have full end to end cash flow management, now You have AR Invoice Payment and AP Bill Pay, then you have Money Bank accounts. So what is your broader vision in terms of monetizing the whole ecosystem.

Speaker 2

Yes, Cindy, thank you for your question. Let me take it in 2 parts. 1st and foremost, you've heard us in the At year plus talk about digitizing B2B with respect to all of the manual work that gets done today in terms of 80% The back and forth between small businesses is all sort of paper checks and manual. And our goal has been to digitize all of that. And one last Element of what we needed to do was to launch Bill Pay.

Speaker 2

I think the headline I would just give is the feedback we've been getting has even gone better than what we thought. And we're now at a place where we are 10xing our beta and we hope to have it available to all of our So we feel very good about what we are seeing in bill payments and how fast we're able to build it based on the platform capabilities that we have and the feedback that we've gotten from customers. I think back to your second question, you're right. And in fact, the The vision I would take you back to is that we have set out to be the source of truth for a business and We'll be the center of small business growth. And in order to do that, we have to have capabilities that not only help a small business, Growth our customers, retain their customers, market to their customers, but to be able to manage their cash flow and be able to manage their employees.

Speaker 2

We now have all of those capabilities End to end. And I think particularly what's important that advantages us to deliver for our customers is the data and our AI investments that we've made in the last 5 plus years. And I think I would just encourage you to attend and if you can't attend when it's on real time, watch the replay of our September 6 Intuit Innovation Day. And you will see how with our data, AI and gen AI capabilities, we help Customers manage their cash flow and really digitize all of money movement in a way that's so intuitive, so easy And delivered at a moment of truth. So we're quite excited about what's possible as we look at this coming year, but the years ahead.

Speaker 2

And let me, by the way, be very explicit that none of our potential innovation that you're going to experience in September 6 around Gen AI It's included in our guidance, but we believe it is fundamentally revolutionary as we think about the world we're going to create in the future.

Speaker 5

Thank you. Thanks, Justin.

Speaker 2

You're very welcome.

Operator

And our next question comes from Brent Thill with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Thanks. Sasan, When you mentioned prudent in

Speaker 4

the tax guide, I'm curious, are you baking in more wiggle room this year than in past years In the guidance, can you just walk through what you mean by prudent?

Speaker 2

Sure. Great question. First of all, I'll just take you back to what you already know, but I think it's important that we start there. This past year IRS return, We continue to estimate we'll be down a couple of points. The do it yourself category will be down nearly one point.

Speaker 2

And the driver of that, Which we are now certain of based on all the work and analysis that we've done is we had a number of folks that came in to get their stimulus dollars and tax credit. And so it was pandemic driven. And so that created just what you heard from Sandeep, it's sort of a very unusual tax But then when you step back and look at the last 4 year trends, it sort of straightens out. And so what we mean by Prudent is really a couple of things. One, we're not assuming IRS growth in our numbers this year, And we're not banking on all of the innovation that I just shared paying off this coming year.

Speaker 2

And that's just part of Being prudent because we want to demonstrate to all of you that this is a business that grows 8% to 12%, and by doing so, we must deliver the results. And so it's just being Very intentional and very prudent. As we think about, by the way, our guidance holistically, it's not just TurboTax. It's TurboTax, it's Credit Karma and And the way we thought about small business. But those are that's the sort of the definition of what we mean by prudence.

Speaker 6

Thank you, Susan.

Speaker 2

Yes. You're very welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Michael Turrin with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Okay, great. Thanks so much. You delivered outsized margin expansion this past year. You've mentioned a focus on cost controls given the tougher environment throughout the year. I realize It's one of the guiding principles, but maybe Sandeep, you can just speak to what's allowing you to guide for continued margin expansion as a starting point here and Maybe how we should think about what's allowing for continued margin expansion as you break into the upper 30s there on the operating margin side?

Speaker 4

Thanks. Thanks

Speaker 3

for the question, Michael. And let me unpack it a little bit. We go through our 20 1 year planning process as I shared in the prepared remarks. And during that process, we look at 1 of the biggest needle movers to deliver growth both in the near term and the long term. So it's durable growth levers for the company.

Speaker 3

And we make sure those are funded for success, inclusive of Big Bet and investments in Gen AI. So the 40 to 60 bps of guidance reflects those investments and of course, frankly, reflects the strength and resilience of our platform. As a reminder, this is an expansion we're delivering on top of the 3.5 points of expansion we delivered over the last 3 years. As I look ahead, I see plenty of runway for us to continue to operate in accordance with our financial principles to grow expenses slower than revenue, therefore implying a margin expansion. And really as of the candidate, what gives me confidence is that we are AI driven expert platform and we operate as an ecosystem across technology across customer success, across marketing.

Speaker 3

So in addition to giving us competitive advantage for Having faster time to market from opting as an ecosystem, it also gives us advantage in getting operating leverage as we scale as a business. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Taylor McGinnis with UBS. Your line is open.

Speaker 1

Yes. Hi. Thanks so much for taking my question. Maybe I'll focus on the small business and self employed full year guide, which was really strong. So I know there's a bunch of moving pieces in there between customer adds, mix shift, online services, attach and price.

Speaker 1

But are you able to help us understand how each of those levers are contributing to the guide. And based on what you're seeing in the environment, what's giving you comfort in the durability of those growth drivers?

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you for your questions. Let me start us off and Cindy, please jump in if you want to add anything. Yes. First of all, we have a framework at the company level where we want to drive the majority of our growth from volume and mix On the lesser part from price, but we always focus on pricing for value.

Speaker 2

And so when we look at our growth drivers this year, Yes, it is coming from customer growth and it is coming from mix and to a lesser extent this year compared to last year, by the way, from price. With that in context, I would just remind you that the big picture when you look at our opportunity this coming year, but even in the next 3 to 5 years plus. We now have a platform and a portfolio of services where we have the opportunity to drive further adoption of our services From Mailchimp to payments to payroll to time tracking and to a lot of our New innovations around bill pay and digitizing B2B that I just mentioned. But also, although we are 3 to 4 years in, we're just at the beginning of what's possible in the mid market. Mid market is a significant ARPC opportunity because these customers use a lot The capabilities that I just mentioned, except they pay a lot more.

Speaker 2

And we're just at the beginning of the flywheel of penetrating mid market. So when you look at The portfolio of the services that we have, the strength of the experience that we're delivering because of data and AI And because of mid market, it allows us to drive most of our growth from customer growth and mix. And none of that, by the way, takes And to account what's possible as we look into the future with our generative AI experiences that you'll be able to observe on September 6. But those are the main drivers.

Speaker 3

And Taylor, I'll add to that. Over the long term, we remain committed to our growth algorithm of 10% to 20% ARPC and customer growth. That remains unchanged. And really, as Hassan mentioned, it's our innovation across our platform that gives us opens up the atmosphere for us to cross sell and upsell our customers Across more offerings on our platform as well as opportunity for us to price for value as we look ahead.

Speaker 1

Great. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Very welcome.

Operator

And our next question comes from Kash Rankin with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Hi. Thank you very much. I hope you can hear me okay. So the recession that everybody has been expecting, it doesn't seem to be quite happening. Sasan, I know you've got a great read on your SMB ecosystem.

Speaker 6

What are some of the indicators that you're seeing? And if you've already I proactively addressed this, my apologies for bringing it up again. But what are some of the forward looking indicators that you see in the Credit Karma business or the SMB ecosystem That give you renewed confidence that we are going to be okay because your fiscal 'twenty four guidance definitely It's not reflecting of any caution in the environment, but more like a continuation of what we've seen in the last 4 quarters. Just some thoughts there would be great. Thank you so And congrats.

Speaker 2

Yes, sure. Thank you for your question. And you're loud and clear, my friend. So let me start with Small Business. Generally, I would just leave with, they continue to be healthy, but they're challenged in this environment.

Speaker 2

The specifics that I would share is The cash flow and cash reserves of small businesses is 90% of what it was this time last year. However, it is still stronger than pre pandemic. In terms of looking for labor and finding employees to drive their growth, That's still quite strong. And in fact, in this environment, small businesses are able to do a better job finding what they need versus when the market was hot, which is good Because then they can deliver for their customers and drive growth. And the last thing I would just say is there are certain sectors that are very weak, transportation, real estate, advertising It's very weak within small businesses.

Speaker 2

So that's the aggregate picture I'll end with where I started, struggling but still healthy compared to pre pandemic. On the consumer side, let me hit on sort of 2 different points. I'll quickly hit on Credit Karma. As Sandeep mentioned, what we're seeing is stability. And our innovation that we've been focused on is really getting hold.

Speaker 2

And there's some Exciting things that we're working on in Credit Karma that we'll share both on September 6 and 1, we redesigned the entire app and we have begun to roll it out to a small A cohort of customers will eventually scale it, and we're actually seeing very good engagement with the redesigned app. And then that With our Gen AI experiences, along with all of our innovation with Lightbox and Credit Karma Money, gives us A lot of excitement around the future, none of which, by the way, is in our guidance. But the headline is stability in Credit Karma and lots of innovation That is helping us with where we are and coming. If I just focus on the consumer, a couple of things I would say. If you look back to last March of 2022.

Speaker 2

Credit scores are on average down 13 points. Credit balances Are up about 30%. And the credit band of like $600,000 to $660,000 has the largest balances. They're carrying about $10,000 on average. And the Gen Z balances have gone up the most, they're up 45% year over year.

Speaker 2

So Job market is still good. People still have jobs, but there's certainly some level of strain on the consumer.

Speaker 6

Brilliant. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2

Yes, very welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Brad Reback with Stifel. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Great. Sasan, following up on that Credit Karma commentary. Obviously, the world we live in today is different than when you acquired the business. Do you think the long term growth rate of Credit Karma is meaningfully different in a world where interest rates are mid single digits versus 0? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, Brad, thank you for your question. The short answer is no. We're very bullish on the business. And in fact, a couple of things that I would share with you, which we can talk more about at Investor Day, but just not to leave you hanging. The monetization model in Credit Karma is how many members do you have, how frequently they engage and there's a model for Every time a customer engages, there is an average revenue per customer that we benefit from.

Speaker 2

And in fact, this past year in 'twenty three, when our results were down year over year, our frequency of engagement is actually higher Then the prior 2 years where we had 37% growth and 58% growth. Now why is that? It's because of all of our innovation. It's because the customer is engaging, but in many areas, credit is still tight. So when credit begins to open up, and that's the stability that we're seeing now, We view this business will accelerate back to the 20% to 25% growth rate.

Speaker 2

Plus, I'll remind you that, that plus The integration with TurboTax drives actually more stickiness, more monetization and truly creates this one consumer platform, which was our Vision from day 1 when we acquired Credit Karma. And with all of the data and AI capabilities that we have in our accelerated Gen I experiences, as I said earlier, You're going to see on September 6 some of the new innovations that are coming that will make it easier for customers to find what they need, the benefits that they need to Engage in the financial products that they want and manage their money. And so all of that leads to our view is completely unchanged relative to the long term expectations of 20% to 25% growth in Credit Karma.

Speaker 3

And Brad, the one thing I would add to this because you asked about a scenario in which interest rates are higher. When interest rates are higher, the consumer have a higher propensity to shop around because even a small improvement in the rates that they're getting has a bigger difference in terms of the interest rates attained and a bigger difference to their bottom line. So in fact, the product becomes more important critical to the end user And higher rate environment.

Speaker 6

That's great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

You're welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kartik Mehta with Northcoast Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Good evening, Sasan. This year, you're really focused at least from a TV advertising standpoint on full service, really trying to get the message out. And I'm wondering, one of the things you talked about is being a little bit more prudent on revenue growth on the consumer business. I'm wondering, And are you will your strategy change at all in how you're marketing the full service product? And How did the full service product perform compared to your expectations this quarter as well this year as well?

Speaker 2

Yes, great question. Let me give you an answer that I think you'll find somewhat helpful and somewhat vague intentionally. We learned a lot this year. We came into the year with a full service offering that has product market fit. And as you know, it's all AI driven, Wow, AI driven, and we can virtually get things done within an hour or same day.

Speaker 2

We learned a lot around how to scale it And how to have customers find our full service offering. And a lot of it also has to do with what I mentioned earlier, which is local marketing. If I'm in San Diego, if I'm in Kansas City, even if I see that TurboTax can provide experts, I go to search to see locally if there's somebody there. All of our experts that we have are within 10 miles of many of the households in the United States, But we've never marketed that way. And so that's going to inform our marketing going forward.

Speaker 2

So there's a lot that we learned in terms of how to evolve our marketing. So it becomes enhanced and not an eitheror, and

Operator

Our next question comes from Kirk Materne with Evercore ISI. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Yes. Thanks very much. Yes, Susan, I'd love to hear you just give a little bit more detail on what you're counting on Mailchimp to do this year and maybe not If you don't want to get too much into the quantitative side, qualitatively, you guys have done a lot of work around the product, the monetization. How important is sort of A continued acceleration of Mailchimp as

Speaker 4

you look at sort of

Speaker 6

the small business in aggregate for next year. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes, Kurt. Thank you for your question. It's really to answer your question, it's really threefold. 1st and foremost, As you know, we made this acquisition ultimately to create one growth platform, so we can help a small business in one place Be able to grow their business and manage their cash flow and manage their workforce all in one place. And really the key to all of this has been data, AI And now our accelerated investments in Gen AI.

Speaker 2

And so 1st and foremost is we want to make significant progress in this area. And you'll actually see some of this on both September 6, our Intuit Innovation Day and at Investor Day. That's number 1. The second is, as I mentioned earlier, we had the largest release In June, that we've ever had in Mailchimp's history, we had 150 new and updated features that we released On top of multiple gen AI driven announcements that we had made a couple of weeks prior to that. So our second focus is adoption, Getting our customers to adopt these benefits because not only will it help fuel their success, but it will help us with monetization, particularly in the mid market, which is where our focus is very similar to the focus that we've had with cookbooks mid market.

Speaker 2

And then 3rd is international. Mailchimp is the lead horse internationally, and we've done a lot to localize their product, I had mentioned earlier in the 5 languages and more is coming. We've also been doing a lot of price studies and price testing because we've had like one class Right internationally, that doesn't work. Sometimes it should be higher, sometimes it should be lower. And so we've learned a lot in terms of some of our testing and many of that We're going to be scaling this year.

Speaker 2

So those are if I were to just sort of carve out your question, those are the 3 big areas that we are very focused on in the coming year.

Speaker 6

Great. Thanks, Hassan.

Speaker 2

Yes, you're welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Brad Zelnick with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hi, Hi, everyone. It's Nick Giovacchini on for Brad this evening. Congratulations on the strong end to

Speaker 2

the year and welcome Sandeep.

Speaker 4

I appreciate you taking the International growth has decelerated since the beginning of the year. Can you talk us through how you see that growing going forward? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Thanks for the question, Nick. Couple of things on the international growth. On international growth, as I shared earlier, our focus, Our refreshed strategy is to lead with both Mailchimp and QuickBooks in the markets where we have product market fit and in other areas to lead with Mailchimp at the tip of the spear. Our growth decelerated for a couple of reasons and some of that Sasan shared As we lean into rightsizing the pricing for Mailchimp in some of these geographies, historically, it was the same price. It was basically the price that's in the U.

Speaker 3

S. Simply converting into the local currency and applied in that geography. We went in and we looked at what the price should be based on the competitors in the market, based on the GDP per cap And all these other factors and we right size the price. Secondly, as we do in QuickBooks, we introduced free files Our discount initially when folks join the product is what we have experienced over our years of doing that is people more people come into the product and they stick around as that leads to A better 90 day forward retention, etcetera. So these are all the factors and all the improvements we're making in the Mailchimp product and the lineup, which is leading to what are described as a temporary headwind in terms of our international growth.

Speaker 4

Great. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Very welcome.

Operator

Our next question comes from Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking

Speaker 7

the question and congrats on a really nice and prudent guidance methodology for next year. I guess maybe I'll just I want both of my questions to really target the SMB Growth rate, it seems like the guide there ex MailStimp is really strong. Ben, if you're now in the CFO, Steve, maybe just talk about we talked about the prudence impact, but the prudence in the SMB guide, what gives you guys the confidence To kind of guide that way, how much of it has to do with some of the payments functionalities that are coming to market, some of the Gen AI functionalities coming to market? What gives you guys that guidance? And then dovetailing into that, new leadership for that group obviously as well.

Speaker 7

Is there talk about Essential for either disruption or how is that accounted for or why Mariana was the right For that role specifically and kind of where what she's going to bring to the table?

Speaker 2

Alex, can I take the leadership question and take it more broadly and then let Sandeep, jump in and answer specifically your question around the guide? Let me take this opportunity to talk about The leadership changes that we've had in the company and I'll of course include Mariana in that as well. First of all, one of our greatest superpowers Leadership Development and Succession Planning. One of the focus areas that we have as part of our Intuit operating system, which starts at the top with my staff and staff is we spend 4 times a year, several days at a time, focusing on talent, focusing on succession planning, reviewing development plans And being very intentional about architecting mobility moves. And ultimately, our goal is to be 3 deep in all of our key roles at multiple levels in the company, which by the way is very hard to do, but that is why we are a leadership factory.

Speaker 2

The second thing I would say is that we are Very focused on mobility of senior roles, so the Vice President above, which is an officer of the company and above. Typically, within a 3 to 5 year period. There's a lot of it you don't have visibility to, of course, because you only see potential changes that happen in my staff. But we're very intentional about mobility because we believe fresh perspective, fresh thinking is important in our technology areas in our businesses and also training the leader to be ready for bigger jobs is very important. By By the way, I'll use myself as an example before I stepped into the CEO job 4.5 years ago.

Speaker 2

I was in TurboTax for 3 years. I was in book running small business for 3 years I was the CIO for 2 years. So that's just an example of mobility. With all of that said, sometimes our mobility is up And to the right, changes within the company, sometimes we celebrate folks taking on roles outside of the company because that may be the best fit for them. So with that as context, we have a lot of confidence in our leaders.

Speaker 2

And let me now specifically touch on our 3 of the leaders just To make it very real. When you look at Mariana, I actually hired Mariana into small business when I was there. She was our Chief Product Development Officer and is very familiar with small business. When I became the CEO, I moved her into the CTO role and she's done an unbelievable job fueling innovation across the company And now she's going back home to where she started running small business and very excited about what she will do to unlock the next year of growth. When When you look at Mark in TurboTax, I actually started with Mark in TurboTax a decade ago and worked with him for 3 years.

Speaker 2

We then after I left TurboTax Few years later promoted him to be our Chief Customer Success Officer of the company and he is the godfather of our live platform that we talk a lot about Today. And now he's going back home and running TurboTax. So he's very well versed not only in the business, But our disruptive growth driver of the future, which is live. And then Alex Balazs, just upon our CTO role, I also worked with them in TurboTax. We then moved them to a broader Q and A and data role where he's been Mariano's Right hand person, feeling the innovation across the company.

Speaker 2

We just moved him into the CTO role. The reason I wanted to go through that a bit thoroughly is For all of you to understand that succession planning and leadership development is our sort of core competency, and I We believe that we have the strongest team that we've had ever built for the era of AI given their backgrounds and experiences. So with that as context, let me have Sandeep answer the other part

Speaker 3

of your question, Alex. Absolutely. And actually, let me touch on one additional point as to what Sasan added. It's never About one individual, we are a system and we have strong leadership team that's around our general managers and CXO staff as well. So So getting back to your question on the guidance, Alex.

Speaker 3

So just for context, the small business group grew 24% in fiscal 'twenty three with 4 All those points coming from the benefit of the timing of the Mailchimp acquisition. So that's about a 20% organic run rate. And as we have shared with you with the group in the past is 80% of the revenues in the small business group are subscription based. So that makes the so that recurring nature of the revenue makes it highly predictable. And we This year saw strong results in areas where we are focused such as QuickBooks Advanced customer growth as well as in the mid market area that Sasan touched on.

Speaker 3

So that is one component of what's giving us confidence as we guide for next year. The second aspect is, it's the importance of our products to SMBs. This is something core to how they run their business, how they pay their employees, how they get paid themselves, how they get access to Capital to take on new projects and grow their business. And we have made tremendous improvement in our product, in our ecosystem that makes that platform that much more Relevant and important to the lives of our customers. So that is what's all baked into the guidance that we provided for the Small Business and Self Employed Group.

Speaker 3

You asked a question if we were relying on Gent AI. I want to reiterate and be very clear. GENTAI, we believe it will be an accelerator for our business, but that is not baked into the guidance that we shared with you all today.

Speaker 7

Super clear. Thanks a lot, Sandeep and Sathan for the very in-depth explanation. No doubt that The talent factory is alive and well.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Alex.

Operator

We'll take our next question from Mark Murphy with JPMorgan. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Hi, this is Artie on Mark Murphy, congrats on the quarter and thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to dig in on Credit Karma, specifically as it relates to the opportunity to begin to pursue prime customers in addition to the Prime and near prime customers you guys have kind of focused on historically? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yes. Thank you for your question. Yes, it's a big focus area for us going after Prime customers. And just for context, it's sort of a third of our monthly active users and There's at least engaged because really when you look at the platform, we traditionally focused on subprime and nearprime. And we have a lot of the capabilities that we developed in the past and know these prime customers very well, which is why we have merged Our Mint and Credit Karma team and platform to really solve for these prime customers.

Speaker 2

And so we have been working, I think, for the last Almost a year really understanding their needs, running a number of experiments and are now and has been in the midst of Launching multiple things that are very geared towards prime customers, and we're actually very excited with the app redesign. There's sort of 2 big Things that we've been working on in Credit Karma beyond what we've been sharing with you. One is really redesigning the whole app To enable customers and certain cohort of customers like Prime

Speaker 3

to be

Speaker 2

able to find the benefit that they're looking for because of everything that we know about them proactively. The second is the Gen AI experiences that again we will unveil more of September 6. And the combination of Those two things and what I shared a moment ago around prime customers gives us a lot of sort of excitement around what's possible to serve these prime customers going forward, which is something that we've not benefited from a monetization perspective. None No, that is included in our guidance, but it's something that we're very excited about.

Speaker 6

Thanks for the insight. Looking forward to hearing more about

Speaker 2

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Brad Sills with Bank of America. Your line is open.

Speaker 4

Wonderful. Thanks so much for taking the question. Wanted to ask one on AI here as well. It sounds like some exciting things coming and looking forward to learning more about that. A lot of possibilities here within Small Business and Consumer.

Speaker 4

We'd just love to get your perspective on kind of where you're coming from. Sasan, you've alluded to the fact that Intuit is well prepared here because of the platform capabilities here and the underpinnings of that with data. So just curious, any color as to where Intuit is coming from such that you're able to iterate on AI the way that we're looking forward to learning more about.

Speaker 2

Yes, thank you for your question. I'll start with taking you back to 5 5 years ago, when we declared our strategy was to really shift the company from just a tax and accounting platform, which is very important set of problems to solve for customers to a global financial platform that really Played a far more meaningful role empowering the prosperity of consumers and small businesses on a daily basis. When we made that strategic declaration on the 5 best that ensued. What we talked about at that time was that data and AI was going to be core to making that shift. And in fact, when we made the acquisition of both Credit Karma and Mailchimp, one huge driver of the acquisition was around the data.

Speaker 2

Because in essence, we would know a lot more about Customers and we could leverage that data for their benefit to fuel their success. So and even prior to 5 years ago declaring this, Data and machine learning has been a decade long focus of Intuit. So when you think about a decade long investment in data, Unusable data, cleaning the data and making sure that it's structured in a way where it can be used. And then our investments in AI, specifically in knowledge engineering, Which really takes rules and the relationship between data and turns it in the code is what our advantages in TurboTax, machine learning and natural language processing. Those have been it's been a decade long set of investments and the 2 acquisitions have propelled us forward about 10 years.

Speaker 2

And then you couple that with what we started several years ago, which is Gen AI. And then what we launched in June, which is GenOS operating system GenOS, which by the way is not something you can create overnight. This is years of investment. When we couple Those set of investments, data, AI and GenOS, which is really primarily our own Intuit Financial Large Language models that are trained on our customers proprietary data. It allows us to personalize things, humanize things and do the work for customers in a way that's revolutionary, which ultimately gets to the punch line of we are creating a future that is done for you.

Speaker 2

Rather than you having to do the work to run your business, rather than you having to do the work to be able to How your prosperity manage your finances as a consumer, we want to put you in control where it's done for you. You're always in control. You have the choice of Whether or not you move forward with the decision, but we want to be able to help you grow your customers and run your business for you, help you manage your Cash flow, always put the right choices in front of you. And the same thing goes on the tax side and Credit Karma side. So that's what's so exciting about it's a decade long focus.

Speaker 2

We really tripled down on it 5 years ago when we declared our strategy. And we're we have now galvanized And energize the entire company that the future of Done For You that we declared 5 years ago is very real, very much here. And we had an enormous opportunity to do amazing things for our customers. And that's what really gets us excited about what's possible. And if I could do another advertisement, Join us September 6th for Intuit Innovation Day followed by Investor Day, and you'll get a real good feel for the world that we are going to create for the future.

Speaker 4

Looking forward to it. Thanks, Hassan. You're welcome.

Operator

We'll take our last question from Scott Schneeberger with Oppenheimer. Your line is open.

Speaker 6

Thanks very much. Welcome Sandeep and good afternoon, Svanteep. I have a couple on consumer. One, very high level and one just a clarification. So the first is on Thanks.

Speaker 6

Hassane, can you hear me?

Speaker 2

Yes, we can now. Yes, if you don't mind, start over again because we lost you.

Speaker 6

Absolutely. Thanks. So two quick on consumer. First, volume and price mix, just your consideration of that Going into fiscal 2024 and beyond given the trends of the recent years. And then for you or Sandeep, just curious in the extension season, in the post tax season, what did you see?

Speaker 6

Anything interesting with California? Should we See a shift from fiscal 2023 to 2024 that's material related to anything extension wise? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Let me start with your volume mix question around TurboTax. I would say the way to Think about it with what I described earlier, leaning into full service, leaning into business tax and continuing to lean into TurboTax Live, which really comes with assistance recognizing it's all data and AI driven. You're going to see more come from ARPCs in volume, And that's just the nature of the opportunity. Now there is 88,000,000 plus people that are in the assisted segment And there's $30,000,000,000 of spend. So there's both a volume opportunity and an ARPC opportunity.

Speaker 2

It is our view looking at the next 10 years, by the way, this is not a 1 year answer. Both matter. You're going to get we're going to get more from ARPC. And I'll let Hamid jump in here as well. I mean, on the expansion season, that's just been very weird with many states that got extended to July and California to October and what we're seeing from customers is they've even gotten confused which month they have to file and they're safe.

Speaker 2

So net net is there's more to file. When you look at it at the company level, it's really not material, but not everybody has filed yet.

Speaker 3

Yes. That's basically the answer, Scott. It's not material for our Q1. It's been a unique behavior on the taxpayer. But also remind us That last year, we also saw a great deal of extensions by taxpayers.

Speaker 3

So that's also something to keep in mind as you look at our Q1. Thank

Speaker 7

you, both.

Speaker 2

All right, everybody. I think that brings our questions or Q and A. So Annette, thank you for your wonderful questions. Thank you for spending the time with us. We look forward to seeing you September 6 and at our Investor Day.

Speaker 2

Take good care and be safe. Bye everybody. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Good bye.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call.

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Earnings Conference Call
Intuit Q4 2023
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