Intuit Conference Call Highlights

Intuit

reported its third quarter earnings on Friday. Shares of the company are up two percent. Below are some key highlights from its conference call: • We're out of the gates strong in fiscal 2015. We grew revenue 8% in the first quarter, and exceeded our QuickBooks Online subscriber and our company financial targets. • QuickBooks Online is generating new customer acquisition, with over 75% of QuickBooks Online customers being new to the Intuit franchise. • We're also actively marketing QuickBooks Online to Desktop customers who are cloud-ready. • The QuickBooks Online ecosystem is building momentum. • We grew total QuickBooks Online subscribers by 43% in the first quarter, up from 40% growth in the previous quarter. • We closed Q1 with 739,000 paying subscribers worldwide. • Outside the U.S., QuickBooks Online subscribers were up more than 170% to 103,000, further accelerating from last quarter. And the improvements we're seeing in the leading indicators are quite promising, with new user attach rates of 12% for payments and 31% for payroll, up from 6% and 20% respectively, a year ago. • We remain squarely focused on driving customer growth and increasing market penetration. • QuickBooks Online has a very low penetration when you reflect our total addressable market of more than 160 million small businesses globally. • Although we're still early in terms of taking QuickBooks Online global, we're excited about the huge market opportunity. • Adding just one additional point of penetration would more than double our QuickBooks Online subscriber base. • The capstone to the quarter for our small business team was our first-of-its-kind QuickBooks Connect event that was held in October. • We hosted more than 3,500 attendees, including accounting professionals, small business owners, entrepreneurs and developers. • The attendees found inspiration from the main stage, while learning practical advice on how to start and grow their businesses from renowned experts in breakout sessions. • With that context around our small business performance, let me now shift to tax. • Fiscal 2015 is the second year of a multiyear journey to achieve our product vision of how taxes are done. • We're excited about the progress we're making in preparation for the upcoming tax season, but there's still much to do over the next several years. • We'll continue our focus on improving conversion with a more simple and responsive experience that leverages data to get customers through their tax return with ease and confidence. • We'll also focus on delivering a unified help and answer experience, driving TurboTax customers to clear explanations on everything tax related, including the Affordable Care Act. • We're looking forward to getting our new lineup of solutions out to market in the next few weeks. • In the Professional Tax business, we're seeing strong new customer growth early in the season, and our shift to the cloud continues to pick up steam. • We intend to build on our leadership position and capitalize on this once-in-a-generation shift to the cloud for accountants. Financial Metrics: • For the first quarter of fiscal 2015, we reported revenue of $672 million, up 8%; • non-GAAP operating loss of $36 million; • GAAP operating loss of $114 million; • non-GAAP loss per share of $0.10; • GAAP loss per share of $0.29. • Small business online ecosystem revenue grew 30%, and customer acquisition in our online ecosystem continues to drive growth. • QuickBooks Online subscribers grew 43%, accelerating from the previous quarter. • Total online active payments customers grew 3%. • Online payments charge volume grew 22%, driven by strong growth in payments customers connected to QuickBooks Online. • Online payroll customers grew 24% and full-service payroll customers nearly doubled. • Rounding out the online ecosystem, Demandforce customers grew 27% for the quarter. • Switching to the desktop side, total desktop ecosystem revenue declined 2%, and QuickBooks Desktop units declined 23%. • This is in line with our expectations as we continue to emphasize QuickBooks Online. • QuickBooks total paying customers grew 22% in the first quarter. • Our board approved a $0.25 dividend per share for our fiscal second quarter, payable on January 20. • This represents a 32% increase versus last year and reflects our large and growing cash position as well as more recurring and predictable revenue streams. Guidance: • QuickBooks Online is accelerating our transition to the cloud, which is driving value for our customers as well as for Intuit and our shareholders. • We're also gearing up for tax season, and we're looking forward to getting our new offerings in the market in the coming weeks. • So we're heading into our busiest time of the year, and we are excited about the momentum that we're continuing to build.