FICO

Day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the 2nd Quarter 2026 FICO Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session, to ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message that letting you know your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Dave Singleton. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon. Thank you for attending FICO's Second Quarter Earnings Call. I'm Dave Singleton, Vice President of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by our CEO, Will Lansing, 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 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 to 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 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 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 April 28th, 2026. We have refreshed our quarterly investor presentation with additional content, which is available on the investor relations section of our website. We will refer to this presentation during today's earnings announcement. I will now turn the call over to our CEO, Will Lansing.

Thanks, Dave, and thank you everyone for joining us for our second quarter earnings call. We had a very strong quarter and a great start to the H1 of our fiscal year. Based on our results and outlook, we are increasing our fiscal 2026 guidance. We reported Q2 revenues of $692 million, up 39% over last year, as shown on page 5 of our investor presentation. For the quarter, we reported $264 million in GAAP net income in the quarter, up 63% and GAAP earnings of $11.14 per share, up 69% from the prior year. We reported $297 million in non-GAAP net income, up 54% and non-GAAP earnings of $12.50 per share, up 60% from the prior year.

We delivered free cash flow of $214 million in our second quarter. Over the last four quarters, we delivered $867 million in free cash flow, an increase of 28% over the prior fourth quarter period. In Q2, we continued returning capital to shareholders through share repurchases, buying back $605 million or 484,000 shares at an average price of $1,251 per share. At the segment level shown on page 6, our second quarter Score segment revenues were $475 million, up 60% versus the prior year. While B2B Scores were the key driver of growth, we also experienced the sixth straight quarter of growth in B2C Scores. In our Software segment, we delivered $217 million in Q2 revenues, up 7% over last year.

Results included 54% platform revenue growth and a 12% decline in not platform revenue. Steve will provide additional revenue details later in this call. Last week, we issued a statement on our website in response to the FHFA and FHA update on credit score modernization. We applaud the FHFA and FHA initiative to get FICO Score 10T into the market in the coming months. FICO Score 10T is the most predictive credit score for all borrowers, including first-time home borrowers. FICO Score 10T incorporates rental and utility payment history, enabling more consumers to qualify for mortgages.

To support the goal of increased homeownership and bring the benefits of increased competition to the marketplace, we updated our FICO Score 10T performance model pricing in the FICO Mortgage Direct License Program from $4.95 per score plus $33 funding fee to $0.99 per score plus $65 funding fee. We anticipate the release of FICO Score 10T data in the timeline provided by the FHFA and GSEs. In the last quarter, we added 11 more lenders to our FICO Score 10T early adopter program. As a reminder, through this program, FICO Score 10T is made available for free with the purchase of Classic FICO. The 55 lenders in the program account for more than $495 billion in annual serviceable originations when evaluated using 2025 HMDA data and more than $1.6 trillion in eligible servicing.

We're moving closer to the go-live dates of our next generation cash flow UltraFICO Score with our strategic partner, Plaid, and the FICO Mortgage Direct License Program reseller partners. We continue to actively work alongside participants to support testing on both initiatives. As AI adoption accelerates, we recognize the need of stakeholders to weigh the associated opportunities and risks. At FICO, we view AI as a tremendous opportunity that we've committed significant resources to for several years. In the Scores business, AI is limited by strict regulatory requirements on credit underwriting outcome explainability and model governance. In addition, our scoring models are supported by proprietary data access, mainly with the credit bureaus and deep ecosystem integration.

Across both businesses, FICO has been issued 137 AI-based patents, which include patents in blockchain technology that are helpful for traceable and explainable decision-making, the type of market-leading innovation that will be in high demand as businesses seek ways to safely deploy AI analytics in highly regulated industries. In our software business, as shown on page 13, FICO Platform is architected from the ground up to be agentic by design. That foundation delivers decision-grade analytics, deep domain expertise, and an enterprise platform that clients depend on for precision, consistency, explainability, and trust. These principles are non-negotiable for our primary target market, the highly regulated financial services industry. FICO Platform is the world's leading AI decisioning platform for financial services. Recognized as such, as a leader by Gartner, Forrester, and IDC.

Its agentic architecture powers a real-time, always-on customer profile engine that delivers hyper-personalized consumer experiences where every interaction can inform and improve the next. There are over 150 clients globally using the FICO Platform across multiple connected use cases to power their customer experience, business-critical operations, risk management, and fraud monitoring and prevention. FICO Platform brings together multiple functions within an enterprise in a common operating environment and enables them to operationalize AI at scale to drive real business outcomes. Financially, a substantial majority of our nearly $350 million Platform segment annual recurring revenue is driven from FICO Platform. Financially, a substantial majority of our Platform segment annual recurring revenue, approaching $350 million and growing rapidly, is driven by the FICO Platform, reflecting years of proven commercialization.

FICO transforms 70 years of proven deep domain knowledge into validated explainable AI that powers the most consequential business decisions. With that expertise embedded directly into the agents, models, and guardrails that operate on the Platform. FICO Platform accelerates client innovation by providing clients with the ability to build, test, optimize, and monitor decisioning across the enterprise. With FICO AI-guided operations, clients create a self-reinforcing cycle of value generation, reinvesting outcomes back into the Platform by enabling additional use cases, driving further value for their businesses. FICO Platform's Marketplace and FICO Assistant unlock broader capabilities that compound with scale. Every new model, agent, and integration from the ecosystem strengthens the customer profile engine and accelerates consumption of proprietary capabilities across the Platform. At FICO, AI is already driving meaningful results today while creating significant opportunities that we are well-positioned to capture.

I'll now pass it back to Steve to provide further financial details.

Thanks, good afternoon, everyone. As Will mentioned, our Scores segment revenues for the quarter were $475 million, up 60% from the prior year. As shown on page 16 of our presentation, B2B revenues were up 72%, primarily attributable to higher mortgage or origination scores unit price and an increase in volume of mortgage origination. Our B2C revenues were up 5% versus the prior year, driven mainly by our indirect channel partners. Second quarter mortgage originations revenues were up 127% versus the prior year. Mortgage originations revenues accounted for 72% of B2B revenue and 63% of total Scores revenue. Auto originations revenues were up 13%, while credit card, personal loan, and other originations revenues were up 6% versus the prior year.

For your reference, page 17 of our presentation provides five-quarter trending of our Scores metrics. As in the past, our updated guidance assumes conservative score volumes. To reiterate, we do not anticipate share loss competition in any vertical. Turning to our Software segment, our Software ACV bookings for the quarter were $28 million, as shown on page 18 of our presentation. On a trailing twelve-month basis, ACV bookings reached $126 million this quarter, an increase of 36% from the same period last year. With our strong pipeline, we expect bookings in the second half of the year to exceed the first half of the year. Our total Software ARR, as shown on page 19, was $789 million, a 10% increase over the prior year.

Platform ARR was $349 million, representing 44% of our total Q2 2026 ARR. Platform ARR grew 49% versus the prior year, while non-platform declined 8% to $440 million this quarter. Platform ARR growth was driven by both new customer wins as well as expanded use cases and volumes from existing customers. Platform ARR growth includes the one-time Q1 Liquid Credit Solution migration and Q2 CCS migrations from non-platform to the platform. Excluding those migrations, our platform ARR growth was in the mid-30% range. The non-platform year-over-year ARR decline was driven by migrations, end-of-life products, and some usage declines. In our CCS business, which contains both platform and non-platform, ARR growth was relatively flat. Our dollar-based net retention rate in the quarter was 109%.

Platform NRR was 136%, while our non-platform NRR was 90%. Platform NRR was driven by a combination of new use cases and increased usage of existing use cases. Second quarter software segment revenues detailed on page 20 were $217 million, up 7% from the prior year. Within the segment, our SaaS revenues grew by 19%, driven by FICO Platform. Our on-premises revenue declined 4%. Year-over-year, our platform revenues grew 54%, driven mainly by success of our land and expand strategy. Non-platform revenues declined 12%, driven mainly by migrations. As a reminder, our FY 2026 revenue guidance reflects an expectation of lower point-in-time revenue throughout FY 2026 due to fewer non-platform license renewal opportunities compared to the prior year.

From a regional point of view, 90% of total company revenues this quarter were derived from our Americas region, which is a combination of both our North America and Latin American region. Our EMEIA region generated 7% of revenues, and the Asia-Pacific region delivered 3%. Operating expenses for the quarter are shown on page 21 were $289 million this quarter versus $278 million in the prior quarter, an increase of 4% quarter-over-quarter, driven by personnel expenses. We expect operating expense dollars to trend modestly upward from the Q2 run rate into the back half of the fiscal year, driven mainly by personnel expenses and marketing for both FICO World and our Scores business.

Our non-GAAP operating margin, shown on page 22, was 65% for the quarter compared with 58% in the same quarter last year. We delivered year-over-year non-GAAP operating margin expansion of 712 basis points. The effective tax rate for the quarter was 25.7%, and we expect a full year operating tax rate of 25%-26% and an effective tax rate of around 24%. At the end of the quarter, we had $272 million in cash and marketable investments. Our total debt at quarter end was $3.64 billion with a weighted average interest rate of 5.5%.

This includes the March issuance of $1 billion in senior notes due 2034, which used some proceeds to fund the redemption of $400 million in senior notes that were due in May. As of March 31st, 2026, 93% of our debt was held in senior notes. We had a $265 million balance on a revolving line of credit, which is repayable at any time. We anticipate interest rate expense dollars to trend modestly upward from the Q2 run rate into the back half of the fiscal year. As Will highlighted, we continue to return capital to our shareholders through buybacks, as shown on page 23. In Q2, we repurchased 484,000 shares for a total cost of $605 million, representing the single largest quarterly repurchase in dollars in FICO history.

We continue to view share repurchases as an attractive use of cash. With our recent $1.5 billion board authorization, strong free cash flow, and unutilized revolver, since April 1st, we have bought an additional $170 million or 164,000 shares at an average price of $1,040 per share. With that, I'll turn it back to Will for closing comments.

Thanks, Steve. As we approach the start of FICO World 2026, which is gonna happen on May 19th through the 22nd in Orlando, we look forward to showcasing our continued innovations. The event brings together customers and partners from around the world to explore how real-time scalable decision-making is transforming consumer engagement. We remain focused on enabling deeper customer relationships through always-on personalization that drives strong business outcomes. The conference also provides a forum to connect with industry experts, share best practices, and advance initiatives that drive financial inclusion. We had a great first half of our fiscal year, and I'm pleased to report that today we are raising our full year guidance as we enter the third quarter. As shown on page 24 of our presentation, revenue guidance is now $2.45 billion, an increase of 23% versus prior year.

GAAP net income guidance is now $825 million, with GAAP earnings per share of $35.60, an increase of 27% and 34% respectively. Non-GAAP net income guidance is now $946 million, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $40.45, an increase of 29% and 35% respectively. With that, I'm gonna turn it back to Dave, and we'll open up for a Q&A.

Thanks, Will. This concludes our prepared remarks. We are now ready to take questions. Operator, please open the lines.

Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. Please stand by while we compile our Q&A roster. Our first question is gonna come from the line of Jason Haas with Wells Fargo. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, and thanks for taking my question. I'm curious to start, Will, if you could talk about the philosophy behind adjusting your pricing model, going to the $0.99 upfront. Appreciate some commentary. Thanks.

Absolutely. That's a step in the direction we've been talking about now for several years. I mean, we have historically charged upfront first score. That's the historical way we have always charged for our IP. What that does is it doesn't spread the cost across the rest of the value chain. A lot of the beneficiaries of the IP are not really paying for it. We have that cost concentrated up front. The whole idea behind moving to the performance model was to give us more flexibility so that we could distribute the value, the monetization of that IP over more players across the chain. That's really what we've done.

In this most recent move to $0.99 plus a $65 funding fee, the idea was to encourage adoption of FICO Score 10T because we think that the most powerful thing that we can do is really get FICO Score 10T established. Obviously it's already established in the non-conforming market, but we'd really like to encourage wide use of Ten T. This kind of pricing is designed to encourage that.

Great. Thank you. That certainly makes sense. Now that VantageScore is available to be used on the conforming mortgage market, do you expect what percentage of lenders do you think would shift fully away from FICO to just using VantageScore? Or do you see most lenders, if they are going to use VantageScore, do you see them also pulling FICO during the mortgage process and then submitting the score ultimately that's most favorable to them, to the GSEs?

Well, I suppose we'll see how it turns out. If you think about the decision process for those who purchase scores, if they're after the most predictive score, 10T is the answer to that. If they're after price, I think we have parity. 10T at $0.99 is at parity with Vantage at $0.99. You know, on both predictability and price, we think we're highly competitive and frankly, don't see good reasons to switch. Now, depending on how the FHFA decides to handle the gaming problem, there may be opportunities for Vantage based on the gaming. We'll just have to see how that unfolds.

Our analysis suggests that in a gaming scenario, if there's true consumer shopping for the best rate and the system is gonna be gamed in that way, that originators and lenders would wind up pulling both scores.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Will, for the 10T adoption, obviously that $0.99 is only available through the Direct Loan Model that you have, DLT model. Can you give us an update on when that's going live, what the feedback right now is with lenders and kind of adoption that you expect there?

Yes, absolutely. There's a few pieces to getting the Direct License Program live, and they're mostly in place. We're working on the last, you know, kind of final details now. We have three of the top five major resellers signed up. We're in deep discussion with the other two, and fully anticipate that all five of the big resellers will be able to provide the Direct License Program. We also see a great deal of interest from the lender community for this performance-based pricing model. There's pent-up demand, and we anticipate quite a lot of usage of this model once we get direct up and running. We do still need FHFA's final sign-off on having the resellers calculate the score.

We don't anticipate any issues there because the math is identical and the score, we've tested it, and the score calculated by the resellers is the same score as that calculated by the bureaus. It's on the same data, and it's the same methodology. Although I can't give you a date, I can tell you that we're closing in on it.

Okay. Then just in terms of, you know, the historical 10T data coming out sometime in the summer, maybe just some help on how that process works. Like, will there be another pilot like they're doing now with VantageScore once 10T is out? We're only looking for something realistically in 2027 for both to be ready to go fully live, I guess.

Well, the FICO Score 10T data, as you know, is with the FHFA and the GSEs, and it's up to them to decide when to release it. There's certainly a lot of market sentiment for being able to evaluate 10T and Vantage at the same time. Certainly by the time the GSEs accept, truly accept Vantage, I think the market would like 10T to be available as well. There's some market pressure to get this done, but I don't have the timeline.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment as we move on to our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Simon Clinch with Rothschild & Co Redburn. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Thanks very much for taking my question. Will, I was wondering if you could just cycle back to the question I think it was Jason asked about the pricing of FICO Score 10T, and your comment to that is at parity with VantageScore. I was wondering if you could talk about the philosophy or, like, how you think lenders will treat the success fee in that kind of situation.

In that kind of situation.

And how we should think about that dynamic in that sort of comparison.

I think the beauty of the way we've structured this is that mortgage originators and lenders have a choice. They can continue to buy the score the way they always have on a per-score basis, or if they prefer, they can move to the $0.99 plus funding fee. The idea there is that it encourages very widespread use of the score in the, you know, in the prospecting phase, in the customer acquisition phase, in figuring out who's qualified for a mortgage. Frankly, you know, with the goal of trying to encourage more housing and more mortgages, making the upfront score cost very low is likely to support that. You know, it really is up to the lenders which model they prefer, and we leave it to them.

We are, you know, I've said before, we're largely indifferent as between the two models because it's about revenue neutral for us either way. I think that each model meets the needs of a, you know, different customers for the score in different ways.

Understood. Thank you very much for that. Just as a follow-up to the reseller readiness right now, I mean, I understand, you know, we're getting close to go live or at least on come to place. The bit I would love to get a bit more color on is just I guess sort of what has, relative to initial sort of expectations, it feels like it's taking longer than expected. I was wondering if you could talk about sort of what has been behind some of the prolonged processes.

You know, I think that some of the expectations were a little on the optimistic side. We certainly didn't think it was going to happen in two months. We thought that it would take a while to put this together. It's a pretty complicated program. Not a complicated program, but there's enough moving parts that require validation and testing that, you know, we knew it was going to take some time. This much time, I would say we actually believed that it would be up and running by now. I would say that we're close. As I said earlier, it's really up to the FHFA to sign off on the calculation of the scores by the resellers, and then we're pretty much there.

All right. Thanks so much.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Surinder Thind with Jefferies. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Well, just following up on the timing of 10T, just to understand, Is there a sequence of dependencies before the FHFA kind of makes it available in the sense of, like, releasing the historical data? Obviously, you know, you gotta have the systems and everything ready, but are there other things that we should be aware of? Is it just kind of once the systems are ready, they can release it whether or not the historical data is available?

No, I would say that there are not a bunch of additional things that no one knows about. I think we have to get the 10-T data out so that people can test it, and then the GSEs have to accept 10-T, and that's it. That's all that's required.

Got it. In terms of just switching away, can you maybe talk a little bit about the outlook for expenses here? I noticed you talked a little bit about, you know, incremental Scores marketing expense. What should we expect there, other than, you know, kind of the step-up that's related to the annual FICO World Conference?

I mean, it's not all that material. I mean, there'll be some expense. I mean, you know, I think you can kind of back into it when you look at our guidance numbers, it's not all that material. We've got some, you know, there's some additional personnel expense. We got expenses around FICO World. There's some other types of marketing we're doing. You know, when you see more growth on the software side, that's not a 100% margin either, right? There's cost of goods sold. You're going to see some expenses there, but none of it's all the material.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, and one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yes. Hi, thank you. Firstly, I wanted to ask about the very strong growth that you saw in mortgage revenue this quarter, up 127%. I think we know, we know about your pricing, but it implies pretty strong volume growth. I'm just curious if you can talk a little bit more about some of the factors there.

Yeah. I mean, we had, you know, decent volume growth. I think it was a pretty good quarter. You know, there was a period of time there where interest rates dropped a little bit, and we saw a little bit of an uptick here, and I think it's consistent with what we hear from the bureaus as well. It was a decent volume quarter, probably better than we expected when we gave our guidance. Again, we guide very conservatively because it's really difficult to know what those numbers might be.

Okay. Understood. Then just on the software side of the business, again, pretty strong bookings, really strong ARR growth on the Platform side. You know, again, give us some context in terms of what you're seeing there. Are you seeing higher usage? I've noticed that you alluded to, you know, growth or maybe focus outside of financial services, and I'm curious if you're sort of changing your approach there at all.

I would not say that moving to other verticals is driving the growth. It's really primarily in financial services, and it's across a wide range of use cases. We, you know, we continue to have success and the model that we've been experiencing just continues to be strong, which is, a financial institution will adopt the platform and make it the kind of the heart and soul of the way they interact with their consumer customers and then discover just how powerful it is and then get more utility out of it, the more use cases they put on it. It's the land and expand strategy which we have for that business is working really nicely and the customers have tremendous satisfaction and, you know, that's driving the growth.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question will come from the line of Jeffrey Meuler with Baird. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Yeah, thanks. From an earlier question, it sounds like the answer may be TBD, depending upon what FHFA decides to do. I don't know, do we have to wait for the selling guidelines? The question is, what's your understanding? I think the language is the enterprises cannot accept scores from multiple models. Have they said anything about if an underwriter can pull scores from multiple models earlier in the process, or is that waiting for the selling guidelines to know the answer?

I think that's waiting on the selling guidelines. I mean, I can't speak for the GSEs on that.

Okay. Do you have any sense of what went into the approval process of the 21 initially approved lenders for VantageScore 4.0? Were they asked to apply by FHFA? Is there any sort of, like, commitment? How intensive of a process it is? Just trying to figure out if that's a meaningful signal or not.

We don't really have a lot of detail around that program. You know, obviously we weren't invited to be part of it, and so we just don't have the details. You know, it's, you know, remains to be seen what happens there. Our understanding is it's a fairly manual process.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking my question. I know you just announced the FICO 10T pricing, I just wanted to understand what's your pricing strategy over the midterm. Is there still a gap between price and value? As you think about it, how do you think about closing that gap? Would you also consider alternative pricing algorithms, including a percentage of the loan amount for the success fee? Any color there. Thank you.

You know, as you know, we've talked about a lot of different approaches to pricing for our IP, and those are under constant evaluation and study. The balancing act is we, you know, we don't want to shock the market. We don't want to make precipitous changes. In fact, we don't love change. We, you know, the market works really well the way it is today, and so we don't like change. That said, you know, there is a case to be made for low pricing upfront. There's a case to be made for shifting around the monetization of the IP across more than just the first purchaser. We're always evaluating those kinds of things. Our philosophy has not changed.

What you see is the first couple of steps in the direction of what we've been talking about for several years now.

That's very helpful color. Then maybe just on the VantageScore LLPA grids, FHFA mentioned that they are taking into account proper credit risk accounting in order to make sure, and that's why those matrices are different compared to FICO. I was wondering, based on your experience, what are the key credit risk that they would consider when they are designing these matrices, and why should FICO or FICO 10T get a preference? Thanks.

Again, I can't really speak for the way the GSEs are thinking about it. What we believe is that in these LLPA grids, you know, if you're gonna account for risk, there's gonna be price differential, there's gonna be gaming that goes on. What kind of risks might be accounted for? I don't know how they account for them exactly, but certainly you could have very different credit default risk for Vantage versus FICO. You could have very different prepayment risk for Vantage versus FICO. As you know, Vantage only goes. The Vantage data only goes back to 2013. It's never been tested through a full cycle. There's a lack of understanding, not for want of trying.

The data is not there to understand how Vantage will operate through a full cycle. You know, I'm not really sure. You know what does that mean? It means that, you know, downstream investors are gonna demand some kind of a premium for the lack of understanding around the prepayment risk and the credit default risk. How that gets translated into the LLPA grid, the g-fees, hard to say. Because the pricing will be different for FICO and Vantage, and we guess that sometimes Vantage will have better pricing for a consumer and sometimes FICO will have better pricing for a consumer. It's gonna create some real headaches for the GSEs. We'll see. We'll just have to see how they solve that problem.

Very helpful, [Colin]. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Next question will come from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks. Good afternoon. With the Direct Licensing Program, it sounds like you're awaiting FHFA approval. Are there other implementation hurdles to have to overcome among the top three resellers that have signed up so far? Can you talk about why the remaining two out of the top five are taking a bit longer to sign up?

I would say that there are none other factors, nothing meaningful. We're really just waiting on approval from the GSEs and from the FHFA. Then in terms of the two that haven't signed, I can't get into the details, but we're very close.

Okay. Got it. With respect to your outlook, can you elaborate on what assumptions are baked into your full year guide with respect to VantageScore adoption, the timing of the direct licensing model going live, and performance fee adoption?

We anticipate no loss of volume to VantageScore in this fiscal year. That's in our that's assumed in our guide. We are as I said earlier, we're in roughly the same place financially, whether they go with the first score model or the performance model. It's revenue neutral. There's a little bit of a timing difference because with the performance model, you know, the funding fee would trail the initial fees. I mean, there's some minor differences, but I would say on balance, it's pretty close to a wash between the two, so it doesn't really matter when the adoption occurs.

I suppose you could argue that if the adoption of the direct license program is delayed, that's beneficial to FICO in the very short term, you know, from a timing standpoint, we don't think about it that way.

Yeah. We, we do have some lag built into the guidance based on the assumption that the performance model will go live, and we'll have some revenue that's pushed from late this fiscal year into early next fiscal year, because again, because of the timing piece that we described.

Got it. Very helpful. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Next question is gonna come from the line of Alexander Hess with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi, everybody. Could you start with the 127% year-on-year growth in mortgage? I understand that, you know, your rack rate is widely known. You know, if I layer on top of that volume assumption, it's still a bit below. Maybe were there any, you know, prior year pricing adjustments that feathered into the present fiscal year or just anything that might have, you know, given that an extra boost or, you know, is this sort of the rate you guys think you can continue at these volume levels?

Yeah, I mean, not really. I mean, there might be some difference in the unit cost. I mean, there's some, you know, without getting into a lot of detail, that some people were on a little bit lighter rate last year and were up to the full rack rate this quarter. It's primarily, you know, just the new rate and then the, you know, the additional volumes we saw.

Got it. Thank you. Then maybe shifting to, you know, usage of the FICO Score overall. I know there were some remarks about, you know, stepping up expenses for the Scores business, you know, introducing the new version of UltraFICO. If you could just talk about your investments in innovation in the Scores business and how that sort of benefits the franchise you guys have there, that'd be super helpful.

In the, you know, in the scheme of things, the investments in incremental expense is not large, okay? I mean, just to be really clear. That said, we are constantly investing in innovation, developing new scores. UltraFICO is, although we've talked about it for several years, it is very much, you know, on our minds, and we have a plan, which we're gonna talk about at FICO World next month. I can't go into the details now. UltraFICO is likely to be a pretty significant factor in the scores business in the future.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. The next question's gonna come from the line of Kyle Peterson with Needham. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Good afternoon, guys. Wanted to start off on, you know, software. You know, the platform growth remains really impressive. Bookings are really good. I know the non-platform was just kind of ran off maybe a little faster than we expected kind of second quarter in a row. I guess, should we expect this trend to continue where, you know, the platform growth is accelerating, the non-platform is running off? Or do you think it'll kind of return to, you know, flattish non-platform and historical platform growth? Just, I guess, like, the moving pieces there would be helpful.

It's a good question, Kyle. You know, we've talked about this in the past. We have the platform growth, which comes from selling the platform often to customers, generally to customers we already have, but not necessarily for the same things that they've been doing with us on the legacy side. There's new growth in platform which look like new deals with customers that we know and occasionally with customers that we've never met before. There's migration from our legacy applications to platform. I would tell you there that we are not forcing that migration. We're not even really encouraging that migration because we have our hands full with the growth in the new platform. We really leave it to the customer. It's the customer's choice.

If the customer comes to us and wants to renew for three more years a legacy application that is working extremely well for them, we are all for it. It's highly profitable business for us and it's good. If they're ready to make the move, we're happy to help them make the move. We work on that too. You know, I think there is a balance there. I think at some level, there's a bit of migration that happens from the legacy business to the platform business. That would explain, you know, higher growth on the one side means a little bit lower growth, you know, a loss of business on the legacy side. I wouldn't say it's a huge factor.

I just think that the two are kind of in balance at this level now. We're not pushing it with our thumb on the scale one way or the other. That may change in the future, but for now, we, you know, we're very happy with the growth on the platform side.

Got it. That's helpful. Then, you know, as a follow-up, wanted to switch, you know, over to auto origination Scores revenue. I guess it did decelerate a little bit this quarter. Obviously, I think the comps are getting tougher, but wanted to see. At least directionally, if you guys could give a little bit more color on, you know, what drove the year-over-year decel between, you know, tougher comps, pricing changes in calendar year 2026 or any changes in origination volumes or trends that you guys are seeing.

Yeah, it's really the tough comps. You know, the volumes are not growing as rapidly as they were. The pricing is relatively consistent. The 2026 price increases is consistent with 2025. I think what you see is that, you know, the comps are difficult, and there's probably a little bit of mix shift there in terms of the pricing tiers that some of the lower, you know, the lower unit cost pricing tiers have gained the volume from those that are higher unit cost. There's sort of some of that happening in the auto industry in general.

Okay. Thanks for the color. Next results.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Craig Huber with Huber Research Partners. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thank you. We've talked about this in the past, but can you just update us on your understanding, what's the data show you in terms of what the market share out there is for VantageScore, you know, in credit cards, autos, personal loans, and also non-conforming mortgage loans? What's their market share right now? We'll go from there.

Right. I guess it all depends on how you measure it because if you ask them, they would tell you they have significant market share in all those things.

Mm-hmm.

Near as we can tell, nobody's paying for VantageScores. The bureaus send along the VantageScore for free when someone buys a FICO Score. You know, when you see the big VantageScore score volumes that VantageScore talks about, you should know that they're largely unpaid for. You know, are they? Is anyone using them? Don't know. Is anyone paying for them? Our sense is not much. You know, it's pretty hard to triangulate on what their market share is. I mean, I think it's trivial, is what I would say. I think you see that in our numbers, right? I mean, if we were losing market share, you'd see it in our numbers, and you don't see any of that. We have to report our results. They're audited.

You know, they don't have that same obligation. You know, there's a lot of scrutiny on what we produce, and we back it up with actual numbers that are verified.

Just to be clear, if you had to ballpark, you think it might be 5%-10% market share? Maybe it sounds like it's not even that. It's not even that, it sounds like, right?

No. If I had to ballpark, I would call it 2%.

Okay. On the non-conforming part of mortgages, you're saying probably the same thing, right? Roughly.

No. On the non-conforming part of mortgages.

Zero?

I don't think they have any share at all.

Okay.

Just to be really clear, in the non-conforming market, the lenders use FICO Classic and they use FICO Score 10T, and they don't use Vantage.

What's all this worry out there that AI, put that aside for a second. All the worry out there that VantageScore is gonna take significant share just because of the changes from the government standpoint. The rest of the market here, Well, VantageScore has been going up against FICO for 20 years, right? Since 2006.

That's right.

You're telling me it's roughly 2% market share.

2% market share.

Give or take.

Maybe. We don't know. No one knows.

What's gonna change, though? No, what's gonna change here on the conforming mortgage side of things here that they're gonna get significant market share? I mean, that's the theory out there for a lot of people. What's the case there that you can possibly see?

Look, I am not gonna make the case for how Vantage takes market share because I think we're competitive on price. We are far more competitive on predictiveness. We have a better score than Vantage. There's not a good reason for them to take any share at all.

Okay, My final question then is why did you lower the upfront fee down to $0.99 from $5 then?

Two reasons. One is to be competitive with Vantage and to have, you know, have a low entry point and encourage widespread use of the score. Second, to encourage adoption of FICO Score 10T.

But some-

That's a pretty classic approach to launching a new product, is to price it so that people use it.

Again, you're not worried at all that Vantage is gonna take any meaningful share from you on the conforming mortgage side, right? Is what you're saying?

That is correct.

Okay, great. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Ryan Griffin with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey. Thank you so much. I'm just wondering if you have any feedback to share from the securitization market in terms of score reference in light of all these mandates. Thank you.

You know, everyone's done their own market checks, and we have too, and I would say that the securitization market is not ready to accept Vantage. You know, there's some hurdles to be overcome and so we'll see how that all unfolds. You know, I don't have a lot of insight there. I mean, the market is still all FICO. I think, something like 20 mortgages have been securitized, you know, with VantageScore paper and, you know, which is obviously, you know, less than, less than 1%, less than 0.1% of the most recent securitization. It, you know, it's not real yet. We'll have to see how the market reacts.

Thank you. I know we're getting some data released over the summer from the GSEs. I was wondering what you're expecting that release to tell and how you think it might validate the predictiveness of FICO.

Well, I can't give you a date for when the FHFA will release the FICO Score 10T data to the marketplace. You know, we're certainly not standing in the way. We provided the data, and we're ready to go. In terms of validating the predictiveness, you know, we have white papers posted on our website that actually analyze FICO Score 10T versus VantageScore and provide insights on credit default risk and prepayment risk and the differences. We qualify 5% more borrowers. I mean, there's a lot to see there. That's already been done. If you don't believe FICO because it's self-serving, I'd encourage you to look to third-party analyses as they come out because I'm sure they will.

They're you know, you're gonna see a lot of analytic work around this topic in, you know, in the coming weeks and months.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Owen Lau with Clear Street. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my question. The AI disruption narrative hasn't gone away. Could you please talk about why it's very hard for whatever Vantage or a third-party AI platform to come in and create a more predictive credit score, which will be adopted by lenders and consumers if they can offer a lower price? Thanks.

Okay. There are two different things there. One is AI versus the current credit scoring system, and the second is, you know, within that, more predictive. First, I would say with respect to AI displacing the FICO Score, we have, you know, we have a really well-defined body of law, fair lending laws, which are designed to protect consumers to ensure that there's not discrimination, ensure that consumers are treated fairly. That requires compliance with all kinds of things that our scores take into account. I mean, just one small example would be redlining, which is not allowed in the United States. Is it a predictive factor? Yes, it's a predictive factor, but it's not allowed. So, you can't use redlining as a factor in a credit score. AI doesn't.

AI would find 100 other ways to get to the same result. The regulators are not gonna be comfortable with AI making underwriting decisions when they're not explainable, when it's a black box, when they can't demonstrate that discrimination is not occurring. That's kind of the core problem with using AI in underwriting is, I mean, AI is great in a lot of things, but using it in underwriting, the biggest play is that it's gonna get around the rules and regulations of the fair lending laws. Now, you know, you're probably aware that FICO Scores carry with them 32 reason codes.

When a consumer's turned down for credit, they get a letter or the line is not increased on a request or whatever, they get a letter, and the letter says, "Here's why." That reaches into the FICO score and the reason codes, and those reason codes are shared with the consumer. There's a level of comfort with the regulators and with the consumer that they understand what's going on. I would also point out that, you know, the experiment with AI, you know, and some of the black box underwriting that was undertaken several years ago by Upstart ended with the CFPB shutting it down. I, you know, I think there's some real challenges, not that it'll be this way forever.

We are prepared for the day when AI is appropriate in underwriting. We have patents in the area of explainability and ethical AI. I think we're in an advantaged position. I would not hold my breath. I think that's gonna take a long time. On predictiveness of the score, I would tell you that our latest and greatest score is more predictive than Vantage and frankly, more predictive than any other score out there. The only, the only, you know, asterisk I would put on that is there are lenders who build proprietary scores on top of FICO, and they leverage their first-party data, and so they have incremental data, and they get incremental signal out of that.

There are some proprietary scores that are really excellent that are, you know, most typically developed on top of FICO.

Got it. Maybe quickly on LLPA. Have you heard of any of these 21 lenders received the updated LLPA grid from FHFA for the pilot? Do you have any expectation that when the new grid will be made public? Thanks.

No idea. Have heard nothing. I encourage you guys to keep asking the questions, but you know, what's going on there, I think it's a manual process.

Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Scott Wurtzel with Wolfe Research. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hey, good afternoon, guys. Just on the guidance, I understand, you know, you're still being, you know, seems like being conservative on your assumptions regarding volume. Just wondering if there had been any sort of change to your volume assumptions after the last quarter at all?

Not really. I mean, again, we tend to be pretty conservative because obviously, you know, there's a lot happening in the world, and, you know, if we get that number wrong, it's difficult to make that up someplace else. Not really. I think we had a better second quarter volume-wise than we had anticipated when we gave guidance. You know, we don't necessarily think that's gonna continue, we tend to take the same conservative approach for the rest of the year.

Then just on the, on the buyback, I mean, you know, the number, you know, $600 million in the quarter was great to see along with.

Yeah

Incremental buyback this quarter. Just wondering, I mean, how, you know, how aggressive do you think or would you guys be, you know, with the stock at these current levels and, you know, given the capacity that you have?

You know what I can say is what we've said in the past. We're always interested in share repurchase, and we're in the market kind of all the time. We tend not to be market timers, although we have leaned in much more heavily on an opportunistic basis. I would certainly consider our stock at these levels to be, you know, an opportunistic time.

Yeah. Thanks, guys.

Thank you. One moment for the next question. Our next question comes from the line of Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks so much. I wonder if you had any thoughts on, you know, given the, you know, the current shift in the regulatory environment, do you feel like that's pretty much contained at this point or is there anything else you're kinda focused on as we think about, you know, whether it's FHFA or other parts, that you kinda continue to manage through from a regulatory perspective?

You know, the mortgage market is a $13 trillion market and everyone takes it pretty seriously, and no one wants to do things that are reckless there. Everything that happens in that market you see coming a mile away. I think that's kind of where we are. I think we know everything there is to know about the way this is unfolding for now. No, I don't really see, you know, being blindsided by regulatory or other kinds of things in the market. I think we understand how the market's evolving. We understand what the choices are for evaluating credit in the mortgage market. You know, will things change if the GSEs get out? I mean, that's anybody's guess when and if that happens. Will things change?

We actually don't think they'll change that much. I think we think that in a world where the GSEs are private or if they were to lose the guarantee, the emphasis on credit default risk would go up. The interest in credit default risk goes up. That's advantage FICO because we have the best score for evaluating that. Again, these are more theoretical and down the road kinds of things. I don't think there's any surprises ahead.

Sure. Thank you.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Curtis Nagle with Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks. Most of my questions have been taken, but just maybe, Will, I guess any stats or, you know, detail you could provide in terms of the uptake of 10T within the non-conforming market at this point for mortgages?

Yeah, I don't have an updated number for you, but we, you know, we have underwritten trillions. Yeah, most of them are running it in parallel with Classic because they're, you know, they wanna be able to use the latest score so they run them in parallel with each other.

Got it. I guess any running, I guess.

I think the number is $1.2 trillion.

Okay.

The latest number.

Okay. Okay. Thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our last question is going to come from the line of Sean Kennedy with Mizuho. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my questions. With VantageScore, I was wondering if you could discuss a bit more about potential adverse selection, how lenders could pull both scores in the beginning of a process, but could pick one or the other for the remaining initial result and the implications there for the mortgage market.

Yeah, it's a good question. I think, of course, we don't know how this is going to unfold. I mean, it is strong. It's really in the interest of the GSEs and the FHFA to prevent gaming, to not have a gaming situation. That said, in a two-score system it's almost inevitable. It's kind of structural that one score or the other is going to be more beneficial to the consumer at all times. In a world where the systems are in place to use both scores, you know, barring other unforeseen things, there will be some people who pull both scores. It may unfold that way. I think if to the extent that that happens, I mean, it is technically share loss for FICO but it's not volume loss.

What you're really doing is expanding the market by the second pull. You know, it's, it's conceivable that Vantage could get some share that way if they don't solve the gaming problem. I, you know, again, I don't see volume loss for FICO.

Great. Thanks. I was also wondering just with the auto and card P-loan growth, have you seen any, you know, volume weakness later in the quarter on account of the macro?

I think it's hard to say. I mean, the auto.

Instrumental consumer weakness there. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean auto tends to be pretty stable, unless there's like a real disruption in the economy. A lot of the volume on the card side is really the banks that are marketing. If they wanna market more they'll find consumers that will take it up. That can vary, you know, quarter to quarter. You know, so far we haven't really seen any significant weakness on the volumes. They've actually been pretty good. There's been a little bit of a fall off in the subprime, but it's been picked up throughout the rest, you know, the prime, super prime. We haven't really seen anything.

Got it. Appreciate the color. Congrats on the quarter.

Thank you. This does conclude today's question and answer session. Ladies and gentlemen, this also does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for participating and you may now disconnect. Everyone, have a great day.

Thank you.