Fair Isaac Corp Q4 FY2021 Earnings Call

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 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 made 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 one-time 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. Good afternoon, everyone. As you may have seen in our 10-K and the financial highlights presentation on our website, we have significantly enhanced our financial reporting this quarter, including new metrics in our Scores and Software segments. I will briefly preview these metrics and take some extra time to provide more details on our disclosures and the insights these numbers offer. As Will mentioned, we had a strong finish to our fiscal year and are well positioned entering fiscal 2022. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $335 million, down 11% compared to the prior year mainly due to reduced upfront recognition of term license revenues from on-prem software sales, the sale of our Collections and Recovery product line in June, and lower professional services revenue in our Software segment. For the full year, revenue was $1.32 billion, an increase of 2% over last year. In our Scores segment, revenues were $169 million, a 10% increase from last year. B2B revenue increased by 2% year over year. Last year's fiscal fourth quarter included a one-time royalty true-up that did not happen this year. Adjusting for that true-up, B2B revenue grew approximately 15% this quarter. B2C revenues were up 32% compared to the same period last year, with significant growth in both myFICO.com and partner revenues. One new financial metric we're adding to our disclosures is the breakdown of Scores segment revenues between B2B and B2C components. For the full year, Scores revenues reached $654 million, a 24% increase from last year. We merged our Applications and Decision Management segments into a new Software segment. Software segment revenues for the fourth quarter were $166 million, down 25% year over year. Full-year Software revenues totaled $662 million, down 14% from the previous year. This decline was attributed to reduced upfront license revenue recognition, lower professional services revenue, and the divestiture of our Collection Recovery products. I will discuss these factors further and their impact on FY '21 results. At the start of fiscal 2021, we changed the timing of revenue recognition for on-premise term license subscription deals, resulting in lower upfront license revenue and more revenue recognized ratably over each contract term. This change led to a decrease of about $12 million in Q4 license revenue and approximately $34 million for the full year compared to what it would have been under our previous model. To highlight the impact of upfront revenue recognition on on-prem software sales, we've added a new table in the 10-K that distinguishes between revenue recognized at a point in time versus revenue recognized over the contract term. Regarding professional services, we've been deemphasizing low-margin, nonstrategic engagements, which has resulted in a 35% decline in PS revenues for Q4 compared to the previous year and a 20% decline for the full year. Our professional services remain essential to helping customers implement our software effectively. We anticipate modest declines in services revenues over the next few quarters before returning to a growth phase that aligns with our on-premise and SaaS revenues. The third factor impacting reported revenues was the divestiture of the Collections and Recovery product line in June and the earlier sales of our Enterprise Security Score and certain assets to a joint venture in China. We’ve included additional details in the financial highlights presentation on our Investor Relations website to illustrate the impact of these divestitures, including revenue reconciliations for prior periods without these sales. In this quarter, 81% of our total revenues came from the Americas region, while EMEA contributed 14% and Asia Pacific accounted for 5%. The Americas region combines our North America and Latin America areas for our financial reporting moving forward. As mentioned last quarter, we planned to introduce several new financial metrics for the Software segment, and we are excited to share them with you this quarter. You can find a complete description of these metrics in the 10-K and on Page 8 of our financial highlights presentation. Let me summarize these new metrics. The first is annual recurring revenue or ARR, which reflects the performance of our subscription-based software contracts. ARR is defined as the annualized revenue run rate from on-premise and SaaS software agreements during a quarterly reporting period and excludes non-recurring elements like perpetual licenses. We calculate ARR by multiplying our quarterly recurring revenue run rate by four. The second metric is annual contract value or ACV bookings, which replaces our previously disclosed total contract value metric. ACV bookings reflect the average annualized value of software contracts signed in the current reporting period that generate revenue for both on-premise and SaaS offerings. We consider contracts that have an initial term of at least 24 months, excluding perpetual licenses and professional services revenues. For renewals, we only count incremental annual revenue expected from the current contract as ACV bookings. The third new metric is the dollar-based net retention rate, measuring our effectiveness in retaining and growing revenue from existing customers. To calculate this, we compare the ARR at the end of the prior comparable period to the ARR from the same customer cohort at the end of the current quarter. This takes into account additional product sales, price increases, and usage fee increases as well as customer losses and price decreases. It’s important to note that our disclosed figures for ARR, dollar-based net retention rate, and ACV bookings for the current and prior quarters do not include revenues or bookings from divested assets to facilitate better meaningful comparisons. Fourth, we’re disclosing the revenue from our Software segment that is recognized at a point in time versus over the contract term to clarify the factors influencing differences between reported Software revenue and ARR across periods. Finally, we are separating our on-premise and SaaS software revenues, ARR, and dollar-based net retention rate into platform and non-platform components. Transitioning our software solutions to the FICO platform is our primary strategic objective in the Software segment, and this new disclosure adds significant visibility into that progress. Collectively, we believe these metrics greatly enhance investor visibility into our Software segment. In particular, ARR and dollar-based net retention rate demonstrate how we're maintaining and expanding our subscription-based customer relationships, while our platform disclosure indicates the size, growth, and expansion potential of the FICO platform. Let's review some highlights from these new metrics for this quarter. Our Software ARR for the fourth quarter was $524 million, a 7% increase over the prior year. Our platform ARR was $75 million, which accounts for 14% of our total fourth quarter ARR and reflects a growth rate of 58% compared to last year. Non-platform ARR was $449 million for the fourth quarter, up 1% from the previous year. Our dollar-based net retention rate this quarter was 106%, with non-platform customer retention being relatively stable around 100%. Our platform customers experienced strong net expansion from subsequent sales and increased usage, achieving a dollar-based net retention rate of 143% in Q4, up from 116% the previous year. Excluding divested product lines, our software ACV bookings for the quarter totaled $25.8 million compared to $28.9 million in the previous year. However, ACV bookings increased to $62.8 million for the full year from $58.3 million in FY '20, representing an 8% year-over-year growth. Remember that ACV bookings only reflect the annual value of software sales, not including professional services. Now, regarding our expenses for the quarter, total operating expenses were $219 million, which included an $8 million restructuring charge mainly linked to reductions in our professional services team and resource rationalization post-divestiture of Collections and Recovery. Our non-GAAP operating margin was 45% for the quarter and 40% for the full year, showing non-GAAP margin expansion of 600 basis points for the year. GAAP net income this quarter was $86 million, a 45% increase from the same quarter last year. Our non-GAAP net income was $112 million for the quarter, a 15% increase from last year. For the full year, GAAP net income reached $392 million, which included a $100 million gain from product line asset sales and business divestitures. Non-GAAP net income was $383 million, up 31% from last year. The effective tax rate for the year was 17%, factoring in $24 million of reduced tax expense from excess tax benefits related to employee stock awards. We expect our FY 2021 recurring tax rate to be approximately 25% to 26% before accounting for excess tax benefits and other one-time items. Consequently, our estimated net effective tax rate for the year is around 24%. Free cash flow for the quarter totaled $90 million, while free cash flow for the full year was $416 million, a 21% increase from last year's $343 million. At the end of the quarter, we held $195 million in cash. Our total debt was $1.26 billion, with a weighted average interest rate of 3.3%. In October, we amended our credit agreement to facilitate a $300 million term loan with our bank group, raising our total bank capacity to $900 million. We used the proceeds to reduce our revolving credit line draw. Regarding capital returns, we repurchased 845,000 shares in Q4 at an average price of $446 per share. For fiscal 2021, we bought back a total of 1,877,000 shares at an average price of $470 per share for a total of $882 million. As of the end of September, we had approximately $173 million remaining under the Board’s repurchase authorization, and we continue to see share buybacks as a valuable use of cash.

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.

This concludes our prepared remarks, and we're ready now to take your questions. Operator, please open the lines.

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. We examine mortgage, auto, card, and prescreen. We assess all these components and make estimates based on that. We rely on industry forecasts to inform our estimates, but we also form our own opinions. That’s essentially how we arrived at the 6%. It includes a combination of volume increases based on industry trends 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.

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.

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. It clearly varies for each client. Generally, we introduce the platform with a set number of use cases and specific ideas about its usage and the problems it addresses. However, we're increasingly implementing it with a perspective towards providing additional solutions in the future. What we are observing is a classic land-and-expand approach, which is proving effective with our current platform customers. Those who have adopted it more recently are experiencing expansion, demonstrating new applications and innovative uses of the platform. This is reflected in our impressive 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 timelines generally involved?

The timeline is somewhat longer than our historical 270-day sales cycle with our older applications. However, the situation is more significant for the client as it is being integrated into a larger strategy. It is being introduced with the intention of enhancing interactions with consumer customers in a strategic manner. This results in more complex discussions, but we are currently engaged in them. We are central to how our clients wish to connect with their consumer customers, and we are increasingly featured 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 headcount of the number of people that are on there, all else equal, or usage?

I'm not following the headcount 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 and usage base is important. For instance, if a lender has around 10 million accounts as a use case, that figure can change. Are there specific ranges for this, or how does it work? I just want to grasp the potential volatility involved.

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.

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.

This is John Mazzoni filling in for Ashish. Maybe just a quick one on the B2B revenues. I know there was a one-time 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 one-timers 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?

I want to mention that this is not guidance, but I would highlight our impressive platform growth of 50%, indicating strong demand in the market. We currently have 19 large enterprise customers who have embraced the platform, with many more in the pipeline. This reflects a blend of customer conversions and the replacement of traditional solutions with our platform offerings, alongside new growth opportunities. Over time, although it may take a while, we will see a shift from our older solutions to platform solutions, which are expanding at a significantly faster rate. Consequently, we expect our growth rate to increase as we shift more of our Software business to the platform. If our current platform business represents 6%, I would project it to rise well above that in the coming years, and we anticipate reaching double digits eventually.

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.