Earnings call transcript: Fair Isaac’s Q4 2025 EPS beats forecast, stock rises

Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) reported its fourth-quarter earnings for 2025, surpassing analysts’ expectations with an EPS of $7.74 against a forecast of $7.34. Revenues also exceeded predictions, reaching $516 million compared to the anticipated $513.21 million. Following the earnings announcement, Fair Isaac’s stock saw a 1.44% increase, closing at $1606.10, although it dipped slightly in aftermarket trading. The company’s robust performance was driven by significant growth in its Scores segment and strategic innovations.

Key Takeaways

• Fair Isaac’s Q4 2025 EPS of $7.74 beat forecasts by 5.45%.
• Revenue increased by 14% YoY, reaching $516 million.
• Stock price rose by 1.44% post-earnings announcement.
• Scores segment revenue surged by 25% YoY.
• Launched new FICO Platform and AI-driven models.

Company Performance

Fair Isaac’s strong quarterly performance was primarily fueled by a 25% year-over-year increase in its Scores segment revenue, which hit $312 million. The company reported a 14% increase in total revenue for the quarter, reflecting its strategic focus on innovation and product development. This growth aligns with broader industry trends where data analytics and AI-driven solutions are increasingly in demand.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $516 million, up 14% YoY
• Earnings per share: $7.74, exceeding the forecast by 5.45%
• Non-GAAP Operating Margin: 54%, expanding by 210 basis points YoY
• GAAP Net Income: $155 million, a 14% increase YoY
• Non-GAAP Net Income: $187 million, a 15% increase YoY

Earnings vs. Forecast

Fair Isaac’s EPS of $7.74 exceeded the forecast of $7.34, marking a 5.45% positive surprise. The revenue of $516 million also surpassed expectations of $513.21 million, reflecting a 0.5% surprise. This performance continues the company’s trend of beating market expectations, driven by strong demand for its scoring products and innovative platforms.

Market Reaction

Following the earnings release, Fair Isaac’s stock rose by 1.44%, closing at $1606.10. Despite a slight drop in aftermarket trading, the stock remains well within its 52-week range. The positive market reaction underscores investor confidence in the company’s strategic direction and growth potential.

Outlook & Guidance

For fiscal year 2026, Fair Isaac projects revenue growth of 18% to $2.35 billion and a GAAP net income increase of 22% to $795 million. The company anticipates continued growth in its software SaaS offerings, particularly driven by the FICO Platform. However, it remains cautious due to macroeconomic uncertainties.

Executive Commentary

CEO Will Lansing emphasized the value of Fair Isaac’s scoring products, stating, "We believe that there continues to be a very large value gap between what we charge and the value that the score provides." CFO Steve Weber highlighted the company’s conservative approach to new pricing models amid economic uncertainties.

Risks and Challenges

• Macroeconomic uncertainties could impact consumer spending and credit demand.
• Competitive pressures in the analytics and scoring market.
• Potential regulatory changes affecting financial services.
• Dependence on the U.S. market, which accounts for 87% of revenues.
• Ongoing restructuring efforts to optimize resource allocation.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the reception of the new Mortgage Direct License Program and potential competition from the FHFA. Executives reiterated their focus on closing the value gap in scoring and expressed confidence in ongoing discussions with regulatory bodies.

Fair Isaac’s strong performance in Q4 2025, driven by strategic product launches and robust segment growth, has positioned the company well for future challenges and opportunities in the evolving financial services landscape.

Full transcript - Fair Isaac and Comp Inc (FICO) Q4 2025:

Will Lansing, CEO, FICO: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the fourth quarter 2025 FICO earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker’s presentation, there’ll be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you’ll need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dave Singleton. Please go ahead.

Dave Singleton, Vice President of Investor Relations, FICO: Good afternoon, and thank you for attending FICO’s fourth quarter earnings call. I’m Dave Singleton, Vice President of Investor Relations, and I’m joined today by our CEO, Will Lansing, and our CFO, Steve Weber. 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 with the prior quarter to facilitate an understanding of the run rate of the business. Certain statements made in this presentation are forward-looking under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results that differ materially. Information concerning these risks and uncertainties is contained in the company’s filings with the SEC, particularly in the risk factors and forward-looking statements portion 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 reconciliation of each of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure. This includes an FY26 guidance reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP earnings, which are adjusted for items such as stock-based compensation and excess tax benefit. This reconciliation is part of the earnings release included in Exhibit 99.1 to our 8-K, which we file with the SEC under item 2.02 called Results of Operations and Financials. 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 5th, 2026. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Will Lansing.

Will Lansing, CEO, FICO: Thanks, Dave, and thank you everyone for joining us for our fourth quarter earnings call. In the investor relations section of our website, we’ve posted some financial highlight slides that we’ll be referring to during this earnings announcement. Today, I’ll talk about this quarter’s results and our guidance for fiscal 2026. We had another fantastic year. We exceeded fiscal 2025 guidance on all metrics and delivered record annual free cash flow. As shown on page two of the fourth quarter financial highlights, we reported Q4 revenues of $516 million, up 14% over last year. For the full fiscal year, we delivered $1.991 billion, up 16% versus the prior year. In our software segment, we delivered $204 million in Q4 revenues.

While performance at the segment level was flat year over year, results included 17% platform revenue growth driven by FICO Platform and 7% decline in non-platform revenue due to the end-of-life legacy products and timing of recurring revenue within the quarter. For the fiscal year, we delivered $822 million in revenue, up 3% from last year. We have strong momentum in our software business driven by customer adoption of FICO Platform. At FICO World, we announced upcoming general availability of next-generation FICO Platform, enterprise fraud solution natively on FICO Platform, and the groundbreaking FICO Marketplace. Our R&D investments are directly tied to driving real value for our customers. These innovations bring connected end-to-end customer experience, including new use cases to the market. They enable smarter explainable outcomes, improve performance, and improve speed of deployment and yield better customer ROI.

This quarter, we announced the general availability of FICO-focused foundation model for financial services, what we call FICO FFM. FICO FFM consists of FICO-focused language model, which is FICO FLM, and FICO-focused sequence model, which is FICO FSM. It is a domain data and problem-specific GenAI model for financial services. That delivers accurate and auditable outcomes. FICO FFM enables enterprises to use small language models built for their specific business problems, significantly helping to mitigate hallucinations and provide transparency, auditability, and adaptability. FICO FFM achieves improved accuracy and cost efficiencies compared to conventional GenAI models. For example, FICO FFM results in more than 35% lift in world-class transaction analytic models in areas such as fraud detection while requiring up to 1,000 times fewer resources compared to conventional GenAI models.

In fiscal 2026, we plan to advance our direct and indirect distribution strategy and invest to capture market opportunities emerging from these innovations. Steve will discuss that further later on. As a reminder, our analytic innovations and intellectual property at FICO are protected by our patent portfolio of over 230 issued patents and nearly 80 pending applications. Many of these issued and pending patents are AI-specific and reinforce FICO’s position at the forefront of responsible AI development. Turning to scores. In our scores segment, our fourth quarter revenues were $312 million, up 25% versus the prior year. While B2B scores were the key driver of growth, we also saw continued encouraging growth in B2C scores. For the full year, our revenues were $1.169 billion, up 27% versus last year, and that was materially driven by B2B scores. The FICO Score, used by 90% of top U.S.

lenders, continues to be the standard measure of consumer credit risk in the U.S. Long-term model stability is a critical consideration for lenders determining which credit scoring model to use for originations. FICO scores are used by lenders across consumer credit sectors because they’re time-tested, trusted, reliable, and they are the independent standard around the world. In fact, FICO remains the only independent analytics provider and the only score with known predictable performance through a complete economic cycle, including the stressful period of the Great Recession. FICO scores continue to be widely used and critically relied on throughout the consumer credit ecosystem. That includes cards, personal loans, auto lending, and mortgages. The FICO score was established as an industry standard and was freely chosen by mortgage market participants long before the GSE selected Classic FICO as the credit score for guaranteeing conforming mortgages.

With no government guarantee outside of conforming mortgages, market participants seek out the most predictive score, which is often one of our recent innovations, like FICO 8, FICO Auto 10, and FICO 10T. In fact, bureaus have provided free VantageScores for years outside of mortgage. Yet FICO has continued to successfully compete and win business in those areas. Our scores remain the standard for use in mortgage underwriting and pricing, in investor credit risk and prepayment models, in capital requirements, and by credit rating agencies for mortgage-backed securities ratings. Classic FICO is critical to driving investor pricing of mortgage-backed and other securities and ultimately the cost consumers pay in the mortgage industry. We recently announced our FICO Mortgage Direct License Program, with a view to driving competition, transparency, and cost savings in mortgage while aligning with calls from policymakers and industry leaders to modernize credit infrastructure and promote.

Affordability, liquidity, and access in the $12 trillion U.S. mortgage market. In the short time since our announcement, we’ve seen overwhelming interest in the FICO Mortgage Direct License Program. As we announced today, we entered into a multi-year direct license and distribution agreement with Zactus, the largest credit verification and trimerge provider of FICO scores. In addition, we’re actively engaged with resellers representing about 90% of mortgage volume, including the largest trimerge resellers as well as technology platform providers who serve the smaller trimerge resellers to enable our mortgage direct program as quickly and efficiently as possible. We’ve already provided our FICO score scoring software for the Mortgage Direct License Program software to the top four resellers along with several key platform providers.

With our FICO Mortgage Direct License Program, trimerge resellers have the option to calculate and distribute FICO scores directly to their customers, eliminating reliance on the three nationwide credit bureaus. The calculation of the FICO score and the packaging to create a trimerge bundle does not add incremental complexity or risk for trimerge resellers. The trimerge resellers have the infrastructure and processes to package data today, as this is their core business. The FICO score algorithm that will now be used by the resellers under our direct program is the same model as what is currently installed at the bureaus today. The underlying data used by resellers and bureaus in the FICO score models is the very same data.

The data format for the FICO Mortgage Direct License Program is the very same data format processed by trimerge resellers today that lenders use today, and that’s required in the conforming mortgage market by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae today. In fact, it’s the same format we use in our partnership with the trimerge resellers for the FICO Score Mortgage Simulator, which is in the market today. Our FICO Mortgage Direct License Program provides optionality to the market. We offer two alternative pricing models. A historical per-score pricing model and a new performance pricing model. The performance pricing model is built on successful mortgage funding and answers the call of industry participants to provide optionality in our pricing models. We anticipate resellers evaluating lenders’ throughput rates to determine which FICO Score pricing models provide lenders with the most savings.

From a pricing perspective, the FICO Score for mortgage originations was $4.95 per score in 2025. The bureaus marked this price up on average to $10 per score in 2026. Under the FICO Direct License Program, lenders have a choice of either the performance model at $4.95 per score plus a funding fee at closing or the per-score model at $10 per score. The performance model yields a 50% reduction in average per-score fees to what resellers paid for FICO Scores in 2025. The per-score model is on average the same price as the resellers paid for FICO Scores in 2025. Lenders obviously have a lot to consider when evaluating which credit scores to adopt, and that decision considers factors well beyond the upfront cost of the credit scores. Classic FICO is still the only score used for conforming mortgages guaranteed by the GSE.

It is the only score that has performance data through the Great Recession in 2008-2009. It’s the only score that’s leveraged throughout our secondary mortgage markets. Regardless of GSE guarantees, predictiveness of the score matters. Recent independent studies by Milliman, Urban Institute, AEI Housing Center, and others have found Classic FICO, a score developed 20 years ago, to perform similarly or on a par with, or at times to outperform, the recently developed Managed Score 4. Our latest score, FICO 10T, is the most predictive and inclusive credit scoring model on the market. We continue to see growing momentum and adoption of FICO Score 10T. There’s a large industry efficiency benefit in testing FICO 10T and Managed Score simultaneously, and we expect FICO Score 10T to be made available for implementation at the GSEs.

FICO 10T builds upon FICO’s decades as a trusted pillar of the mortgage ecosystem using advanced modeling techniques and comprehensive consumer financial data, including rental payments, a source of data that we at FICO have used in our credit score model since 2015. In addition to rental data, utility data, and telco data, by leveraging trending credit data, FICO Score 10T analyzes borrower behavior over time, which allows lenders using the score to gain deeper insights into prospective borrowers, helping them to make more precise lending decisions. Our latest score is a meaningful step forward in credit risk assessment. FICO 10T offers significant improvements in predictive accuracy combined with a focus on fairness and model stability, offering tremendous benefits for lenders, investors, and borrowers alike.

Earlier this year, our team at FICO published a comprehensive white paper demonstrating how FICO Score 10T offers significant improvement in predictive accuracy over other models, including both Managed Score and Classic FICO. The link to that white paper and other studies mentioned in today’s earnings call can be found in our investor relations presentation. Specifically, FICO Score 10T identified 18% more defaulters in the critical score decile commonly used for mortgage originations, while Managed Score identified only marginally more than Classic FICO. FICO Score 10T also enables a 5% increase in mortgage originations without taking on additional credit risk. Managed Score claims to score more consumers but does so using models that are statistically unsound for predicting risk. For example, scoring using one month of payment history. We, by contrast, do not lower our standards. In 2024, the GSE average credit profile included an average FICO Score of 758.

Managed Score claims they can score more consumers but with less than 10% of GSE guaranteed loans below FICO Score 680. This does not result in a material increase in loan qualifications that are guaranteed by the GSEs. In fact, it can actually hinder those who have thin credit profiles from processes that are already in place that are designed to approve no-file or thin-file applicants. Make no mistake, we have access to the same data as our competition. What matters is how the data is used to innovate scoring models to yield the best risk prediction. FICO’s decades of experience enable us to innovate better, as shown in the outstanding performance of FICO 10T versus Managed Score, which can only keep pace and in some cases cannot even do that with a score that we created two decades ago.

FICO Score 10T’s better performance will drive benefit for not only mortgage insurers and investors but other market participants as well. It’ll deliver improved mortgage pricing and lower monthly costs for borrowers. It’s going to benefit millions of Americans. To further emphasize this point, the benefits of FICO Score 10T are not hypothetical. In the non-conforming mortgage industry, FICO Score 10T has already been adopted by nearly 40 lenders, accounting for more than $316 billion in annual originations and more than $1.5 trillion in eligible servicing volume, most making multi-year commitments to use the FICO Score for mortgage decisions in both the conforming and non-conforming markets. We’re proud of our innovations and ability to adapt to needs of our customers. We’re excited about the perception and adoption of our latest offers. I’m going to pass it now over to Steve for further financial details. Thanks, Will, and good afternoon, everyone.

We had another good quarter with total quarterly revenues of $516 million, an increase of 14% over the prior year. As we discussed last quarter, sequential revenue is down due primarily to lower point-in-time revenues from scores and software licenses, as well as seasonality and lower professional services revenues. Software segment revenues for the quarter were $204 million, flat versus the prior year. From page five of our presentation within that segment, you can see on-premise and SaaS software revenues were flat year over year, while professional services declined 5%. We delivered $822 million in fiscal year revenue, which was up 3% from the prior year. This quarter, 87% of total company revenues were derived from our Americas region, which is a combination of our North America and Latin America regions. Our EMEA region generated 8% of revenues, and the Asia-Pacific region delivered 5%.

Score segment revenues for the quarter were $312 million, up 25% from the prior year. As shown on page six of the presentation, B2B revenues were up 29%, primarily attributable to a higher mortgage origination scores unit price. Sequentially, B2B revenue slightly improved when excluding our prior quarter multi-year U.S. license renewal on our insurance score product last quarter. Our B2C revenues were up 8% versus the prior year, driven both by our myfico.com business and our indirect channel partners. Total scores revenues were $1.169 billion, up 27%, despite lower than historical mortgage originations volumes driven by persistently high interest rates. Fourth quarter mortgage originations revenues were up 52% versus the prior year. Mortgage origination revenues accounted for 55% of B2B revenue and 45% of total scores revenue. Auto originations revenues were up 24%, while credit card, personal loan, and other originations revenues were up 7% versus the prior year.

According to guidance for 2026, our FY 2026 revenue guidance assumes software SaaS growth driven mainly by FICO Platform, offset by less point-in-time revenue due to fewer non-platform license renewal opportunities and a similar level of annual professional services revenue. For our Scores business, our guidance does not anticipate any significant improvement in the macro environment. We also do not expect any loss of market share or any significant volume changes in auto, card, and personal loan originations. As a reminder, our last quarter contained one material non-recurring multi-year U.S. license renewal on our insurance score product that we will not see in FY 2026. As shown on page seven of our investor presentation, our total software ARR was $747 million, a 4% increase over the prior year. Platform ARR was $263 million, representing 35% of our total Q4 2025 ARR.

Platform ARR grew 16% versus the prior year, while non-platform declined 2% to $484 million this quarter. Our platform ARR experienced lower performance due to usage reductions from select CCS customers. Non-platform ARR was consistent with the last few quarters. We expect total software ARR to increase in fiscal 2026, reflecting the benefit of recent FICO Platform bookings going live. Our platform lend and expand strategy continues to be successful. On page eight, our dollar-based net retention rate in the quarter was 102%. Platform NRR was 112%, while our non-platform NRR was 97%. Platform NRR was driven by a combination of new use cases and increased usage of existing use cases. Our software ACV bookings for the quarter were $32.7 million compared to $22.1 million in the prior year, representing our best quarterly ACV performance in the six years since we began disclosing this metric.

On a full-year basis, ACV bookings reached $102 million, our strongest annual performance over that timeframe. Expenses for the quarter, as shown on page five of the financial highlight presentation, total operating expenses were $279 million this quarter versus $274 million in the prior quarter, a 2% increase. In our prior quarter’s prepared remarks, we outlined key factors we expect to contribute to a sequential increase in total expenses. Those factors largely materialized, as expected, and included $10.9 million for restructuring, increased interest expense, and increased marketing expenses. Partially offsetting these factors, stock-based compensation declined in Q4 due to forfeitures. The restructuring I noted was the result of reallocating resources to align with our strategy. For the full year, our expenses were $1.066 billion versus $984 million in the prior year, an increase of 8%.

Our FY 2026 guidance assumes a similar year-over-year operating expense growth compared to the prior year. We maintain our focus on efficiencies and are committed to prioritizing resources to our most strategic initiatives. Investments focus on headcount for distribution and continued development of our FICO Platform, as well as increased headcount for our Scores business and marketing across both sides of the business. Our non-GAAP operating margin, as shown in our Reg G schedule, was 54% for the quarter compared with 52% in the same quarter last year. We delivered year-over-year non-GAAP operating margin expansion of 210 basis points. Our full-year non-GAAP operating margin was 55%, an improvement of 340 basis points year-over-year. We reported $155 million in GAAP net income in the quarter, up 14%, and GAAP earnings of $6.42 per share, up 18% from the prior year.

Excluding restructuring, GAAP net income would have been $166 million with earnings of $6.76. As reported for the full fiscal year, we delivered $652 million in GAAP net income, equating to $26.54 of earnings per share, up 27% and 30%, respectively. For the quarter, we reported $187 million in non-GAAP net income, up 15%, and non-GAAP earnings per share of $7.74 per share, up 18% from the prior year. Note, restructuring is added back to the non-GAAP net income, as shown on the Reg G schedule. For the full fiscal year, we delivered $734 million in non-GAAP net income, equating to $29.88 of earnings per share, up 23% and 26%, respectively. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 23.4%, and the operating tax rate was 25%. Our full-year net effective tax rate was 18.8%, while the operating rate was 25%.

As a reminder, the key difference between operating tax rate and net effective tax rate was the $44 million excess tax benefit. Our FY 2026 guidance assumes a net effective tax rate of 24% with an operating tax rate of 25%. As shown on page 10, we delivered free cash flow of $211 million in our fourth quarter. Over the last four quarters, we delivered $739 million in free cash flow, which represents an increase of 22% year-over-year. At the end of the quarter, we had $189 million in cash and marketable investments. Our total debt at quarter end was $3.06 billion, with a weighted average interest rate of 5.27%. As of September 30, 2025, 91% of our debt was held in senior notes with no term loans. We had a $275 million balance on our revolving line of credit, which is repayable at any time.

We continued to return capital to our shareholders through buybacks. This quarter, we repurchased 358,000 shares at an average price of $1,499 per share. For the fiscal year, we repurchased 833,000 shares at an average price of $1,693 per share. Share repurchases totaled $536 million in the fourth quarter and $1.41 billion for fiscal 2025, the highest quarterly and annual repurchase levels in the company’s history. Going forward, our philosophy has not changed, and we continue to view share repurchases as an attractive use of cash. With that, I’ll turn it back to Will for his closing comments. Thanks, Steve. We continue to execute well on our strategy, and we’re well positioned for a strong fiscal 2026. As we announce our guidance, I’ll remind everyone that, consistent with prior years, we expect some of the pricing initiatives in 2026 to have an additional impact beyond our guided numbers.

Because of uncertainty in volumes, it’s difficult to estimate the timing and magnitude of that impact. I’m pleased to report that today we’re guiding even stronger growth than we achieved in fiscal 2025. As you can see on page 13, we are guiding the following. Revenue of $2.35 billion, an increase of 18% over fiscal 2025. GAAP net income of $795 million, an increase of 22%. GAAP EPS of $33.47, an increase of 26%. Non-GAAP net income of $907 million, an increase of 24%. And non-GAAP earnings per share of $38.17, an increase of 28%. With that, I’ll turn the call back to Dave, and we’ll open up the Q&A session. Thanks, Will. This concludes our prepared remarks, and we’re now ready to take questions. Operator, please open the lines. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

If you have a question or a comment at this time, please press star 11 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you wish to move yourself from the queue, please press star 11 again. In the interest of time and to allow everyone the opportunity to participate in the Q&A session, we ask that you limit yourself to one question. We will pause for a moment while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open. Thank you. Good evening, gentlemen. I guess my one question is just a broader question around your recent discussions with the FHFA. Obviously, there is a lot going on, and Director Pulte has tweeted favorably about your recent actions. Also, what is next? A lot of the talk on FICO 10T. Do you think that gets approved soon?

Just anything there you could provide that would be helpful. Sure. We’ve obviously been engaged in constructive conversation with the FHFA. The director has had a big push for increasing competition, and our direct distribution program is a big step in that direction. It basically creates competition in the distribution of credit scores. That was positively received. With respect to 10T, it is with the GSEs, and we’re working with them to get it out. I can’t give an exact date, but we’re confident that eventually it’ll be released. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Simon Clinch with Rosenblatt. Rosenblatt and Company, Redbird, your line is open. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just to clarify, that’s Rothschilds and Co. Redbird. Apologies. Rosenblatt.

I was wondering, maybe, Steve, if you could talk about some of the assumptions around the actual direct licensing model that you built into the guidance for the year and how we should think about the cadence of that through the year. Because I know quite a lot is really sensitive to the mix of whether it’s the historic model or the performance model. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a really good question. And honestly, I think if you follow us for several years, I mean, you realize that we’re pretty conservative with the way we guide generally, but we’re probably more conservative this year because there’s a lot of uncertainties in the macro environment and the timing around some of this. With the performance model, for instance, there could be a time lag. Just because of the way it works.

If it’s performance-based, if the mortgage process starts in December and it spills into January, we won’t necessarily get paid on the performance piece of that yet. Even at the end of the year, if the process starts in the August-September timeframe, it might not close until October. That performance fee might spill into 2027. There is a lot of complexity to all that. Frankly, we’re being very conservative with the way we look at this, and we just don’t know for sure yet who’s going to take which model. There is probably more conservatism built in than what we generally have. Within a couple of quarters, we’ll be able to give you a lot more information on that and how that really shapes up, and then we can all do a better job of understanding the timeline of this. Thank you.

One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jason Haas with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. I know we have just recently gotten the price information for fiscal 2026, but we are already starting to think about what pricing could look like in fiscal 2027 and beyond. I was curious if you could talk about how you are thinking about price increases over the long run and if there is any change to the pricing runway now that you are going through this direct model. Thank you. Yeah, I guess everyone would love to know what the pricing is going to look like in 2027, 2028, and beyond. As is our custom, we are not going to share any of that with you because we do not know ourselves. We read the market, and we read the environment.

Here is what you can take as kind of our baseline. We believe that there continues to be a very large value gap between what we charge and the value that the score provides to those who use it. We have been on a mission over a number of years, and it will continue into the future to close that value gap. As we have said in the past, our goal is to do it in a predictable, methodical way and not create any kind of big dislocations, but to make it very manageable for all industry participants. Do we believe that the value gap continues to exist? It does. Are we going to address that in coming years? We will. Exactly the nature and form of that and the amount of that is all TBD because we do not know ourselves. Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from Faisal with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Yes. Hi. Thank you. I wanted to ask about what type of feedback you’ve gotten from lenders on the two pricing models that you have, and if there’s any hesitation around going via the resellers and essentially going direct, because I believe the performance model is only available if they go direct. And if there are any complexities or additional costs that lenders might have to incur if they’re going direct and not to the bureaus. So far, we’re getting really positive reception to the direct model. Now, our goal is to make our IP, our FICO Scores, available through both the bureaus, as we’ve done historically, and through the direct channel through the trimerge resellers. A lot of enthusiasm for the direct approach. There are not a lot of operational complexities. We’ll work through the details.

It is going to be available. In terms of the reaction from lenders, the whole idea was to provide a choice, to provide optionality to let those who consume the scores optimize for their own businesses the way that they consume the scores. We have done that with the two models. You can imagine that we spent a lot of time thinking about how to construct them so that we would not be—we FICO would not be terribly hurt through adverse selection because you can expect that those who consume the scores are going to choose the model that is best for them. That all went into the calculus, and we are very comfortable that however the mix shakes out between the per-score model and the performance model will be fine, and customers will be happier. Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from Surinder Thind with Jefferies. Your line is open. Thank you. Will, given that we’ve seen 10T adoption in the non-conforming market, can you maybe walk us through those conversations. The specifics of the evaluation and maybe how long it took those lenders to make that decision? I think that would be helpful and just kind of color to try and understand the timing around some of these upgrades and the complexity. In the non-conforming market, more than anywhere else, they truly care about default risk and prepayment risk, and the predictiveness of the score really matters. I think that’s what motivates and drives those who already have chosen FICO 10T to do that. We make the score available. We give them both Classic and FICO 10T. We give them the data with which to do the analysis.

So far, there’s a lot of happiness over the introduction of our latest and greatest score. I mean, that’s the dynamic. In that market, like in all scoring markets, things move slowly. It takes a while to test and to adopt. There’s still a lot of room for penetration in the non-conforming market, but we’re very happy with our progress to date. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Jeff Mueller with Baird. Your line is open. Yeah. Thank you. Let me invert the answer you just gave to that question. In the conforming market, where it’s more about residual credit risk and there’s less default risk to the security holder, just help us understand kind of the value prop or compare and contrast the value prop of staying on FICO in the conforming versus non-conforming market.

Thank you. I think it’s. There are some people who believe that because the GSEs have a guarantee that suddenly credit risk does not matter and that we default to a much lower importance criteria like the price per score. I would just challenge that. I would tell you it is not true. The reality is that mortgage originators who pass the loans to Fannie and Freddie still care about credit risk. They still care about prepayment risk. They still care about default risk. As many of you know, when things go wrong with a mortgage, the GSEs are able to put these loans back to the originators. They basically take a look at the documentation, and there are often problems with the documentation, and the loans get put back.

The originators, even if they do not hold the loan and hold the risk associated with the loan, they still care about the credit risk. I think that in both the conforming market and the non-conforming market, you are going to see appetite for the most predictive score and the best understanding of prepayment and default risks. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Thanks for taking my question. I will just ask a question on the software front. ARR moderated there, but you obviously had a very strong ACV bookings quarter, but as well as the year. How should we think about this ACV starting to convert into ARR as we head into 2026? Yeah. We will actually see, as soon as Q1, acceleration of ARR. That is something that we see coming in.

Because as these deals go live, it helps us right away with ARR. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. Now that mortgage resellers will be undertaking more responsibilities calculating the score under the direct licensing program, what are your thoughts on whether they may raise their fees to match what the credit bureaus charge? What have some of the conversations with these resellers suggested? That is up to the resellers what they are going to charge. I think that is all TBD. I do not think that their pricing is completely understood from the bureaus on the data side. I think they are still putting together their pricing. We obviously do not really influence that. They are running a business, and they do what they do.

I mean, that’s entirely in their hands. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Scott Wurtzel with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Hey, good afternoon, guys. Thank you for taking my question. I’m just wondering if you can talk about, in the FY26 guide, what you’re contemplating in terms of pricing on other areas and scores, such as auto, and how you’re thinking about the monetization opportunity there. Thanks. Yeah. It’s a little more modest than mortgage. I mean, what we do—we’ve talked about this in the past—what we do is we look across all the different segments in which the scores are used. And we will typically put in place kind of a cost-of-living, inflation-oriented adjustment on price across the board.

We go after selective areas where we think that there’s the big value gap and there’s an opportunity for a little bit more price. We have done that this year in areas outside of mortgage, as we always do. I would not point to any particular segment for dramatic change. I do not think you will see that. It is more like years past where it is a little bit more than inflation and cost of living. There are selective spots where we do a bit more than that. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Alexander Hess with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Looks like they had a bit of phone issues. Their line is disconnected. I will move on to the next person in the queue. One moment. Our next question comes from John Mazzoni with Seaport, sorry, Seaport Research Partners.

Your line is open. Hey, thanks for taking my question. Maybe just a follow-up on the strength in the ACV bookings. Could you just maybe give us some color in terms of what drove that kind of outsized quarterly performance? Is there any kind of budget flush or any other items we are seeing? I just wanted to make sure there was not a pull forward or any other things like that. Thanks. Yeah. There was nothing. I mean, I think you have seen in the last several quarters kind of an acceleration in that number. We are just seeing momentum there, right? We have got a new sales leader that came in. There is some excitement around that. Plus, we just have those momentum gaining with the products that we have produced in the platform. It just takes time for that to gain traction, and we are seeing the results of that.

We hope to see that continue going into the next year as well. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Ryan Griffin with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Thanks so much. Just hoping to focus a little bit on the mortgage volume side of the equation. I was curious what is built into your guidance and what swing factors, whether it’s trigger loans or rates, could impact the view. Thank you. Yeah. I think this is where the conservatism comes, right? We do not really have a full understanding. The trigger leads, we have a pretty big assumption in there for reduction because of trigger leads. But we are being really conservative. I mean, we are looking at this and thinking until we know more, it is a lot easier to raise your guidance than it is to lower it.

I think we’re always conservative, but this year, probably more than other years, we’re extra conservative. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Owen Lau with Clear Street. Your line is open. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. For the multi-year agreement with your reseller, I think, Zactus, could you please add more color on the pricing arrangement for this agreement longer term? Is the pricing locked in in this agreement, or there’s flexibility for FICO to raise pricing because of the value you provided? Thanks. That’s a good question. Our pricing is for 2026. We have a multi-year agreement to work together, but the pricing that’s been published is for 2026. As you know, we adjust our prices every year, and that’ll continue. Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from Alexander Hess with JP Morgan. Your line is open. Hey. Sorry about that. I accidentally pressed hang up instead of unmute. On the guidance, you indicated—and tell me if this quote is wrong—that your guidance, that you don’t expect any loss of market share or any significant volume changes in auto, card, and personal loan originations. That was sort of from the prepared remarks. Mortgage wasn’t touched on that. I know you just said you’re being conservative with the assumptions, but what could surprise to the upside in mortgage? Is it better volume, better market share retention? I mean, I think it’s the market share I’m not very worried about, to be frank. The volumes will vary mostly with interest rates. And your guess on that is as good as ours.

As we have for many years, we’re very conservative on forecasting increases in volume based on expectations about where rates go. We’ve been rewarded for that conservatism in years past because rates have, for the last several years, not come down to the extent that people expected. We’ve done more of the same this year. Although there’s a good chance rates will come down, big volume increases associated with rate declines are not built into our guidance. Yeah. I mean, just to further expand on that, if you follow us, you realize that all we look at guidance is we build a model that we believe is what’s likely to happen. Then we will take that and haircut that expectation. We want to be able to exceed, right?

We do not want to be sweating out to the fourth quarter hoping that things are going to work well. That haircut gives us the ability to, without things getting dramatically better, to still be able to raise our guidance or beat our guidance. We have done that again this year. Like I said before, it is probably a little bit more of a haircut that went into that because there is so much uncertainty. That is just kind of a background, again, on how we actually prepare our guidance. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Your line is open. Great. Thanks so much. Hey, maybe you could give a sense of are the resellers on pace for the 1-1 adoption? If you are helping them with the implementation, any thoughts as to what they have experienced?

It sounds like they were pretty far along anyway, but just any thoughts around that? We’re on pace. I mean, I can’t give you an exact date, but things are tracking very nicely. As I said, there’s not a lot of operational hurdles to be overcome. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners. Your line is open. Thank you there. Is your position right now that you think the credit bureaus are not going to have the option for the performance model that you guys are offering, that the resellers will? You’re just not sure what percentage yet of the resellers will offer both models and not sure what percentage of the lenders will go with the performance model? Thank you. Yeah. I can’t give you a definitive answer to that. We’re in that discussion.

We, frankly, do not know what the split is going to be between the per score and the performance model. We just do not know. We have obviously done a lot of modeling and sensitivity around it. It is easy to come up with a hypothesis about how it will split based on the average number of scores pulled per closed loan for different kinds of lenders and different kinds of mortgage originators. That is kind of what has gone into our calculus on what winds up in which model. I mean, those are the things that inform the decision, but it is not finalized. Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from Raina Kumar with Oppenheimer. Your line is open. Hi. This is Guru on for Raina. Thanks a lot for taking our question.

I was wondering if you could maybe just help us understand the usage of FICO Scores in the downstream market. How material is it to total mortgage score volume? What are the overall dynamics like there? This will be helpful in determining how we should be thinking about the potential uptake in the new $495 plus $33 performance pricing model and the value of that $33, right, which was previously the reissue fee. Thanks. Yes. Obviously, there’s a lot of score volume that happens downstream that we have historically not monetized. It ranges from where does the score get used? Without focusing on who pays for it, the score gets used by the mortgage originators. It gets used by lenders. It gets used by the GSEs in terms of their screening of whether they’re prepared to accept the loan or not. It gets used by the.

Rating agencies, S&P and Moody’s, when they rate the bonds, the mortgage-backed securities that go out to the marketplace. It gets used by the mortgage-backed securities investors when they price those bonds. It gets used by the mortgage insurers. It also gets used by some of the prudential regulators in their capital adequacy models. It is used in many, many, many places downstream. Historically, we have not charged for that. Your point is well taken, which is the per closed loan pricing was designed to capture some of that IP value. Thank you. I am not showing any further questions at this time. As such, this does conclude today’s presentation. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.

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