VRSK

Verisk Analytics stock has had a weak year, and the valuation checks send mixed signals, with an intrinsic value estimate suggesting the shares may have room to run while market based multiples point to a richer price and a low overall value score. Verisk Analytics is down 26.0% over the past year, which may draw in investors who see the pullback as a possible entry point rather than a sign of lasting weakness. The company’s recurring data and analytics revenue can support long term cash flow expectations, although any slowdown in client spending or contract renewals would put pressure on those assumptions. The stock screens as undervalued on a Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) intrinsic value estimate with roughly a 16.7% discount, yet broader checks are less supportive, with a low value score of 2 out of 6 and market multiples that lean expensive. The issue now is whether Verisk Analytics’ current share price already reflects its cash flow potential or still leaves a reasonable margin between the market valuation and the intrinsic value estimate. Compare Verisk Analytics' mixed signals with a curated set of other candidates that combine discounted cash flow value with solid fundamentals by scanning 50 high quality undervalued stocks. The Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model used here looks at Verisk Analytics’ projected free cash flows and discounts them back to today. On this basis, the company’s latest twelve-month free cash flow is about $1.25b, and the model assumes that this cash generation continues to grow at a measured pace rather than relying on a sharp step change. Feeding those projections into a 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity model gives an estimated intrinsic value of about $233 per share. Compared with the current market price, that suggests the stock screens as roughly 16.7% undervalued on this cash flow view, which represents a notable gap for investors who are comfortable with the underlying assumptions on Verisk Analytics’ recurring cash flows. On this DCF view, Verisk Analytics stock appears undervalued relative to the cash flows currently reflected in the model. Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests Verisk Analytics is undervalued by 16.7%. Track this in your watchlist or portfolio, or discover 50 more high quality undervalued stocks. Head to the Valuation section of our Company Report for more details on how we arrive at this Fair Value for Verisk Analytics. The P/E ratio suits Verisk Analytics because earnings are a key yardstick for a mature, profitable data and analytics business. Through this lens, Verisk Analytics trades on a P/E of about 28.6x, which is very close to the peer average of roughly 28.4x in Professional Services. Compared with the broader industry average of about 22.0x, the stock carries a clear premium to the sector overall. The fair P/E ratio estimate for Verisk Analytics from this model is about 24.4x. That is below the current 28.6x level, which suggests investors are paying a higher price than the model implies for the company’s earnings profile, business risks and sector positioning. The gap is not extreme, but it does tilt this multiple view toward a richer pricing than the tailored benchmark. On the P/E multiple, Verisk Analytics stock screens as overvalued relative to the earnings level that this model treats as a fair anchor. See what the numbers say about this price — find out in our valuation breakdown. Simply Wall St Narratives pick up where Verisk Analytics' valuation puzzle leaves off. They set out what growth, margin and earnings paths would need to hold for the stock to be worth meaningfully more or less than today’s price. They do this by laying out the key assumptions behind each fair value so you can compare those assumptions with Verisk Analytics' actual results over time. Community views on Verisk Analytics are far apart, with one side focused on subscription and AI upside and the other on how much of that is already priced in. Bull case: 18% undervalued Read the full Bull Case to see why Verisk Analytics could be undervalued Bear case: 153% overvalued Read the full Bear Case to see why Verisk Analytics could be overvalued Do you think there's more to the story for Verisk Analytics? Head over to our Community to see what others are saying! Verisk Analytics presents a split picture. The Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) intrinsic value points to a meaningful discount, while the P/E multiple signals the stock is pricing in higher expectations than the tailored earnings benchmark supports. The low overall value checks suggest investors should treat the DCF upside as a possible opportunity but not rely on it alone. The crux from here is whether Verisk Analytics can sustain the cash flow profile implied in the intrinsic value estimate without a material slowdown in client spending or renewals that would justify the richer earnings multiple. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Companies discussed in this article include VRSK. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email [email protected]

It has been about a month since the last earnings report for Verisk Analytics (VRSK). Shares have lost about 4.7% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500. But investors have to be wondering, will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Verisk due for a breakout? Well, first let's take a quick look at the most recent earnings report in order to get a better handle on the recent catalysts for Verisk Analytics, Inc. before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late. Verisk Analytics has reported second-quarter 2026 diluted adjusted earnings of $1.98 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.94 by 2.1%. The figure increased 5.3% from the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $806.3 million topped the consensus mark of $802.4 million by 0.5% and rose 4.3% year over year. Organic constant-currency growth was 5.8%, supported by an 8% increase in underlying subscription revenues and growth across both Underwriting and Claims. Underwriting revenues increased 3.5% year over year to $569 million. On an organic constant-currency basis, revenues advanced 5.6%. Growth reflected annual price increases tied to continued enhancements in the models and content supporting Verisk’s forms, rules and loss cost services. The company also benefited from sales of expanded catastrophe and risk solutions to new and existing customers. Claims revenues rose 6.3% year over year to $237 million. Organic constant-currency growth was 6.1%, outpacing the reported growth rate of the Underwriting business. The improvement was primarily driven by anti-fraud analytics and property and restoration solutions. These offerings supported broader Insurance revenue growth as carriers continued using Verisk’s data and technology across underwriting and claims decisions. Adjusted EBITDA increased 4.2% year over year to $463.6 million. On an organic constant-currency basis, adjusted EBITDA grew 7.4%, reflecting revenue growth and continued cost discipline. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 57.5% compared with 57.6% in the prior-year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA expenses increased to $342.7 million from $327.8 million, while operating income rose to $363.7 million from $354.3 million. Net income declined 9.8% year over year to $228.6 million. The net income margin contracted to 28.4% from 32.8%, while diluted GAAP earnings fell 3.3% to $1.75 per share. The decline reflected a higher effective tax rate, increased net interest expenses and legal fees connected with ongoing litigation. Net interest expenses increased to $52.8 million from $35.5 million, while the effective tax rate rose to 24.6% from 22.7%. Net cash provided by operating activities jumped 49.7% year over year to $366 million. The free cash flow increased 57.9% to $297.9 million despite capital expenditure rising 22% to $68.1 million. The cash flow improvement was primarily driven by higher operating profit and the timing of certain vendor and tax payments. Verisk ended June with $551.4 million in cash and cash equivalents compared with $2.18 billion at the end of 2025. The company entered a $200-million accelerated share repurchase program during the quarter. It received an initial delivery of 949,190 shares at an initial price of $179.10, representing roughly 85% of the aggregate purchase price. In the first six months of 2026, Verisk funded aggregate share repurchases of $1.9 billion and received an initial delivery of 8.5 million shares at an average price of $186.32. The company had $800 million remaining under its repurchase authorization at the quarter-end. Management said that Verisk continues to invest in proprietary datasets and deploy advanced artificial intelligence technologies across those assets. The strategy is aimed at generating differentiated insights and strengthening value for insurance clients. The company expects growth to return to levels consistent with its Investor Day targets during the second half of 2026. Verisk also approved another quarterly cash dividend of 50 cents per share, payable Sept. 30, to shareholders of record as of Sept. 15. Verisk maintained its 2026 revenue guidance of $3.19-$3.24 billion. Management expects adjusted EBITDA of $1.79-$1.83 billion and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 56-56.5%. Diluted adjusted earnings are projected between $7.45 and $7.75 per share. The company expects a tax rate of 23-26%, capital expenditure of $260-$280 million and interest expenses of $190-$200 million. In the past month, investors have witnessed a downward trend in estimates review. At this time, Verisk has a nice Growth Score of B, though it is lagging a lot on the Momentum Score front with a D. Following the exact same course, the stock was allocated a score of D on the value side, putting it in the bottom 40% for this investment strategy. Overall, the stock has an aggregate VGM Score of C. If you aren't focused on one strategy, this score is the one you should be interested in. Estimates have been broadly trending downward for the stock, and the magnitude of these revisions indicates a downward shift. Notably, Verisk has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). We expect an in-line return from the stock in the next few months. Verisk belongs to the Zacks Business - Information Services industry. Another stock from the same industry, TransUnion (TRU), has gained 5.5% over the past month. More than a month has passed since the company reported results for the quarter ended June 2026. TransUnion reported revenues of $1.31 billion in the last reported quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +14.9%. EPS of $1.23 for the same period compares with $1.08 a year ago. TransUnion is expected to post earnings of $1.21 per share for the current quarter, representing a year-over-year change of +10%. Over the last 30 days, the Zacks Consensus Estimate has changed -1.1%. The overall direction and magnitude of estimate revisions translate into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) for TransUnion. Also, the stock has a VGM Score of B. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Verisk Analytics, Inc. (VRSK) : Free Stock Analysis Report TransUnion (TRU) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Looking back on data & business process services stocks’ Q2 earnings, we examine this quarter’s best and worst performers, including Verisk (NASDAQ:VRSK) and its peers. A combination of increasing reliance on data and analytics across various industries and the desire for cost efficiency through outsourcing could mean that companies in this space gain. As functions such as payroll, HR, and credit risk assessment rely on more digitization, key players in the data & business process services industry could be increased demand. On the other hand, the sector faces headwinds from growing regulatory scrutiny on data privacy and security, with laws like GDPR and evolving U.S. regulations potentially limiting data collection and monetization strategies. Additionally, rising cyber threats pose risks to firms handling sensitive personal and financial information, creating outsized headline risk when things go wrong in this area. The 9 data & business process services stocks we track reported a mixed Q2. As a group, revenues beat analysts’ consensus estimates by 1% while next quarter’s revenue guidance was 1.3% below. Thankfully, share prices of the companies have been resilient as they are up 6.5% on average since the latest earnings results. Processing over 2.8 billion insurance transaction records annually through one of the world's largest private databases, Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) provides data, analytics, and technology solutions that help insurance companies assess risk, detect fraud, and make better business decisions. Verisk reported revenues of $806.3 million, up 4.4% year on year. This print was in line with analysts’ expectations, but overall, it was a mixed quarter for the company with a beat of analysts’ EPS estimates but a slight miss of analysts’ full-year EPS guidance estimates. Verisk delivered the slowest revenue growth in the group. The market seems disappointed with the results as the stock is down 11.3% since reporting and currently trades at $188.18. Read our full report on Verisk here, it’s free. Originally founded as an outsourcing company in 1999 before evolving into a technology-focused enterprise, EXL (NASDAQ:EXLS) provides data analytics and AI-powered digital operations solutions that help businesses transform their operations and make better decisions. EXL reported revenues of $594.8 million, up 15.6% year on year, outperforming analysts’ expectations by 3.5%. The business had a very strong quarter with full-year revenue guidance beating analysts’ expectations and a beat of analysts’ EPS estimates. EXL achieved the biggest analyst estimate beat and highest full-year guidance raise among its peers. The market seems happy with the results as the stock is up 21.4% since reporting. It currently trades at $37.05. Is now the time to buy EXL? Access our full analysis of the earnings results here, it’s free. With a research department that makes over 10,000 property updates daily to its 35-year-old database, CoStar Group (NASDAQ:CSGP) provides comprehensive real estate data, analytics, and online marketplaces for commercial and residential properties in the U.S. and U.K. CoStar reported revenues of $925 million, up 18.4% year on year, in line with analysts’ expectations. It was a slower quarter as it posted full-year revenue guidance missing analysts’ expectations and full-year EPS guidance in line with analysts’ estimates. CoStar delivered the weakest guidance update and weakest full-year guidance update of the whole group. Interestingly, the stock is up 7% since the results and currently trades at $32.46. Read our full analysis of CoStar’s results here. Founded in 1986 as a bridge between technology and financial services, SS&C Technologies (NASDAQ:SSNC) provides software and software-enabled services that help financial firms and healthcare organizations automate complex business processes. SS&C reported revenues of $1.70 billion, up 10.3% year on year. This number beat analysts’ expectations by 2.1%. Overall, it was a strong quarter as it also logged a solid beat of analysts’ billings estimates and an impressive beat of analysts’ full-year EPS guidance estimates. The stock is up 23.6% since reporting and currently trades at $82.76. Read our full, actionable report on SS&C here, it’s free. Processing over $10 trillion in equity and fixed income trades daily and managing proxy voting for over 800 million equity positions, Broadridge Financial Solutions (NYSE:BR) provides technology-driven solutions that power investing, governance, and communications for banks, broker-dealers, asset managers, and public companies. Broadridge reported revenues of $2.22 billion, up 7.5% year on year. This result surpassed analysts’ expectations by 2.6%. Overall, it was a strong quarter as it also produced a beat of analysts’ EPS estimates. The stock is up 13.4% since reporting and currently trades at $178.35. Read our full, actionable report on Broadridge here, it’s free. Over the past year, investors have been forced to repeatedly answer the same question: what is the market’s biggest risk? The answer has changed several times, and each shift has reshaped market leadership. Late in 2025 and early 2026, artificial intelligence became the market’s primary uncertainty. Investors questioned whether AI would erode software pricing power and weaken competitive moats as AI made it easier to replicate once-differentiated products. By the spring, technology took a back seat to geopolitics. The U.S. conflict with Iran briefly became the market’s dominant narrative, raising concerns about oil prices, inflation, and global growth. But as energy markets remained orderly and fears of a prolonged supply disruption faded, investors quickly turned their focus back to fundamentals. Want to invest in winners with rock-solid fundamentals? Check out our Top 6 Stocks and add them to your watchlist. These companies are poised for growth regardless of the political or macroeconomic climate.

Image source: The Motley Fool. Wednesday, July 29, 2026 at 6:00 a.m. ET Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations - Stacey Brodbar President and Chief Executive Officer - Lee Shavel Chief Financial Officer - Elizabeth Mann Executive Vice President - Saurabh Khemka Operator: Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Verisk Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Results Conference Call. This call is being recorded. We will have further instructions for you at that time. For opening remarks and introductions, I would like to turn the call over to Verisk's Senior Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations, Ms. Stacey Brodbar. Ms. Brodbar, please go ahead. Stacey Brodbar: Thank you, operator, and good day, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for a discussion of our second quarter 2026 financial results. On the call today are Lee Shavel, Verisk's President and Chief Executive Officer; and Elizabeth Mann, Chief Financial Officer. The earnings release referenced on this call as well as our traditional quarterly earnings presentation and the associated 10-Q can be found in the Investors Section of our website, verisk.com. The earnings release has also been attached to an 8-K that we have furnished to the SEC. A replay of this call will be available for 30 days on our website and by dial-in. As set forth in more detail in today's earnings release, I will remind everyone that today's call may include forward-looking statements about Verisk's future performance, including those related to our financial guidance. Actual performance could differ materially from what is suggested by our comments today. Information about the factors that could affect future performance is contained in our recent SEC filings. A reconciliation of reported and historic non-GAAP financial measures discussed on this call is provided in our 8-K and today's earnings presentation posted on the Investors section of our website, verisk.com. However, we are not able to provide a reconciliation of projected adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted EPS to the most directly comparable expected GAAP results because of the unreasonable effort and high unpredictability of estimating certain items that are excluded from projected non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin and adjusted EPS, including, for example, tax consequences, acquisition-related costs, gains and loss from dispositions and other nonrecurring expenses, the effect of which may be significant. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Lee Shavel. Lee Shavel: Thanks, Stacey. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Today, I will provide a broad overview of our second quarter financial results. We will also offer a perspective on our industry engagement including client discussions focused on the use of advanced technologies, including the evolution of AI and the current operating environment. Finally, I will wrap up with some updates on recent groundbreaking innovations we have introduced into the market, including the release of Verisk Synergy Studio for the Catastrophe Risk market. I will then hand the call over to Elizabeth for more detail in her financial review. Turning to our second quarter results. Verisk delivered organic constant currency revenue growth of 5.8% with balanced growth across underwriting and claims and demonstrating the sequential acceleration that we previously anticipated. Revenue growth was underpinned by an 8% increase in subscription revenues, demonstrating the stability and value of the solutions we provide to the insurance industry, helping them make better decisions. These are supported by our broad connectivity and deep client relationships we have within the industry. Our focus on efficiency and cost discipline drove organic constant currency adjusted EBITDA growth of 7.4%, delivering another quarter of very healthy margins. Growth was modestly ahead of our expectations and reflected the short-term factors we previously described, namely the carryover impact of the very low weather activity, tough compares from strong renewals last year and a work stoppage in a federal government contract. We continue to have confidence that the resolution of these short-term factors and core growth momentum will result in continued sequential improvement in revenue growth as we move through the second half of the year. Moreover, we expect 2026 to be another year of performance in line with our Investor Day targets and reaffirm our 2026 financial guidance. Throughout the quarter, our client engagement was very active. We held several executive sessions across underwriting with top national and regional carriers discussing how we can support clients in the current operating environment, as well as our broader strategic plans, including our AI strategy. Additionally, we hosted client-specific emerging issues workshops within underwriting focusing on topics including data centers, AI risks and regulations and quantum computing, where we discuss company-specific exposures. For one top 20 carrier, we hosted 3 different sessions on artificial intelligence that were attended by almost 400 underwriting professionals across their enterprise. These engagements are a further demonstration of the critical role we play in the industry through our deep industry expertise, data analytics and thought leadership. That same combination is why we continue to win new data contributions. So far this year, we have onboarded 8 new Core Lines contributors and 10 contributors to our new excess and surplus dataset. And with those excess and surplus contributors now online, our data set covers over $18 billion in historical and current premium. Specific to the operating environment, the first half of 2026 has continued on the trends experienced in 2025, namely improved combined ratios and robust industry profitability, helped by unusually low Catastrophe losses. In fact, 2026 is currently tracking for global Catastrophe losses to be below the $100 billion mark for the first time since 2020. With profitability improvements and rate adequacy satisfied across many lines, carriers have turned their attention to driving growth, resulting in price competition and softening markets. As we mentioned last quarter, this dynamic is most pronounced in property and commercial property in particular, where pricing is soft and volumes are lighter. We continue to watch how these dynamics shape client activity particularly as it relates to transactional usage. It is in these types of markets that carriers are increasingly focused on underwriting discipline and risk selection rather than relying on broad-based rate increases. Our comprehensive data sets and analytic insights underpinned by our continued investments in data currency and data coverage can best help segment and understand Risk, helping our clients navigate through these dynamic times. In our conversations with clients, AI remains one of the most important topics, and Verisk has partnered with the industry to help them move from experimentation into production deployments and ultimately to scaled adoption when the industry is ready. As carriers expand their use of AI, they continue to turn to Verisk as the trusted source of data in the industry. Currently, those conversations are increasingly centered on accuracy, efficiency and repeatability as well as driving return on investment from their investments. To meet these needs, we are investing in techniques such as Retrieval Augmented Generation or RAG and broader context engineering capabilities that help improve the quality of AI-driven outputs by better managing how large language models, access, interpret and apply information. This is all further enhanced by our highly cleansed and structured data sets and deep industry expertise, which is leveraged through the semantic layer of AI processes where we provide data structure, context and rules that make large language models work more effectively to deliver consistent and predictable outcomes. More importantly, our goal is not simply to adopt the latest AI tools, but to apply them in ways that deliver measurable return on investment and value for clients by combining advanced AI capabilities with Verisk's high-quality and proprietary data assets, deep industry expertise and established industry standard workflows while also creating connections across the broader ecosystem. We believe this positions us well to help clients navigate the next phase of AI adoption while strengthening Verisk's role as a trusted strategic partner across the insurance ecosystem. As a specific example, in May, we announced our first collaboration with Anthropic, launching 2 Verisk MCP connectors for Claude, which bring our trusted regulatory grade data and analytics directly into conversational AI workflows in an underwriting and claims use case. These connectors enable clients to interact with Verisk's proprietary underwriting intelligence and claim solutions using natural language, helping them access insights when, where and how they need them. These connectors were developed in partnership with Anthropic on an expedited time line from initial discussion to production and public launch and we are the first insurance data provider with MCPs available with Claude. This was made possible by the earlier foundational investments we made in data organization and infrastructure making our data entirely AI-ready as well as experimentation and development of independent large language model applications. Importantly, the architecture is designed to maintain the governance, security and trust our clients expect, with data retrieved only within the client's Claude session and not used for model training. Interest levels across our client engagement are building along with usage with a top 10 carrier already using the MCP. We're excited by the early client feedback we have received, and we are actively developing additional connectors both with Anthropic and with other frontier model companies that can deliver value to our clients. Additionally, we are excited by the opportunities to develop agentic capabilities in coordination with and on behalf of our clients. Last quarter, we disclosed one of those initiatives to develop a next-generation digitally native agentic underwriting platform with a global insurance firm and we are excited with the progress that we are making. We are also in the development stage of agentic capabilities in our life solutions that will build on our conversational Ask Max feature to embed autonomous capabilities within the platform. We're also encouraged by the early traction we're seeing with our generative AI solutions that have had scaled engagement and Premium Audit AI is a good example. Premium Audit AI brings natural language access to our premium audit rules and classification content directly into our clients' underwriting and audit workflows. It's still early as we are now in the first renewal cycle post the launch, but we're beginning to see it show up commercially. The incremental value we have added is supporting stronger renewal growth. It's a proof point for how we're embedding AI into our proprietary content to make our offerings more valuable to clients. In our claims business, we continue to see strong momentum in XactAI, which we launched in the fourth quarter of 2025 and have continued to enhance with new capabilities. XactAI embeds AI directly into the workflows of insurers, adjusters and restoration professionals, helping clients automate time-consuming tasks such as summarizing claim information, labeling photos, extracting key data from documents and generating estimating recommendations. The result is faster claims handling, improved productivity and more consistent outcomes for policyholders. Adoption has accelerated significantly. Since March, the number of XactAI users has increased nearly 10x, and we now have almost 7,000 licensees on the platform. The feedback from clients has been overwhelmingly positive with strong demand for additional functionality. As a result, we are continuing to invest in our innovation road map and expand XactAI capabilities across the broader Xactware suite helping clients realize even greater efficiency and value from their claims operations. The rapid adoption we are seeing reinforces our conviction that AI will become an increasingly important driver of efficiency, consistency and better outcomes across the property claims lifecycle. During the quarter, we also reached an important milestone in our Catastrophe and Risk solutions business, with the on-time and on-budget launch of our reengineered U.S. tropical cyclone model and Verisk Synergy Studio, our new cloud-native platform for integrated Catastrophe modeling and Risk analytics. Our updated U.S. tropical cyclone model redefines the U.S. hurricane Risk modeling by integrating significant advances in climate science, hazard modeling and vulnerability analytics to provide a more accurate, transparent and realistic view of individual Risk and portfolio exposure across insurance, reinsurance and capital markets. Specifically, the model includes key scientific advancements, which provide a more physically realistic view of how tropical cyclones evolve, including the impacts of wind, storm surge and inland flooding. Additionally, as Catastrophe models are used to increasingly inform decisions in industries outside of insurance, including housing, infrastructure, capital markets and climate Risk disclosure, this new updated model is designed to support Risk evaluations with results that can be used across all segments. Verisk Synergy Studio, our cloud-native platform is designed to help clients make better decisions in an increasingly complex Risk environment. The platform brings together advanced analytics, high-performance computing and modern workflows in a single environment, allowing clients to analyze larger and more complex portfolios, generate insights faster and better understand the drivers of Risk and loss across their exposures. The first release of Verisk Synergy Studio includes our complete global model suite in our latest next-generation modeling framework, giving our clients immediate access to our latest views of Catastrophe Risk for every model around the world. This allows clients to run more sophisticated analyses, evaluate Risk more efficiently and make more informed underwriting and capital allocation decisions without having to navigate a patchwork of model vintages. By combining leading science with modern technology, we are helping clients gain deeper insights into Risk while improving the speed, scale and transparency of their workflows. We have already onboarded our first clients onto the system and the initial feedback on performance, scalability and keeping our commitment to deliver on the schedule we promised has been incredibly positive. We have a robust pipeline of additional clients scheduled to migrate to the platform, through the remainder of the year. As a further enhancement to our Catastrophe Risk solutions business, we closed this week on the strategic tuck-in acquisition of McKenzie Intelligence Services, a geospatial intelligence and event response company, specializing in global real-time Catastrophe and conflict event analysis. MIS will become part of Verisk Catastrophe and Risk solutions. We believe that the strategic combination of MIS' real-time geospatial intelligence together with Verisk's Catastrophe models, Risk analytics, weather analytics and claims solutions will give clients a more complete view of unfolding events so they can assess impacts, prioritize response and support stakeholders more effectively. Before I close, I want to announce that Nick Daffan, our Chief Information Officer, is leaving Verisk after 2 decades. I want to thank Nick for his partnership and key contributions to Verisk, which include leading the modernization of our computing platform, successfully migrating from the mainframe to the cloud, strengthening the infrastructure supporting reliable delivery of client solutions and helping position the company well for this next phase of AI innovation. With Nick's departure, Jeff Negrete, our CTO, will step into the role of interim Chief Information Officer. We are confident in the bench strength we have in place within our corporate IS&T organization and will commence a search for a permanent replacement. I'll now turn the call over to Elizabeth. Elizabeth Mann: Thanks, Lee, and good day to everyone on the call. On a consolidated and GAAP basis, second quarter revenue was $806 million, up 4% versus the prior year, reflecting contribution from both underwriting and claims. Net income was $229 million, a 10% decrease versus the prior year, while diluted GAAP earnings per share were $1.75, down 3% versus the prior year. The decrease in net income and diluted GAAP EPS was driven by a divestiture at the end of 2025 as well as the higher year-over-year tax rate, increased interest expense and higher legal fees incurred in connection with ongoing litigation. This was offset in part by higher operating results and a lower average share count. Moving to our organic constant currency results adjusted for nonoperating items, as defined in the non-GAAP financial measures section of our press release, our operating results demonstrate continued solid growth across both underwriting and claims. In the second quarter, OCC revenues grew 5.8% compounding on the 7.9% OCC revenue growth in the prior year period. This was a sequential improvement from the first quarter in both underwriting and claims with reported OCC growth of 5.6% in underwriting and 6.1% in claims. The quarter's performance was modestly better than our expectations primarily due to stronger-than-expected insurance-linked securitization activity. The reported results continue to be impacted by the continued carryover effect of a lower level of weather-related events last year as well as the work stoppage in a federal government contract. Subscription revenues, which comprised 83% of total revenue in the quarter, grew 8% on an OCC basis, compounding the 9.3% growth in the prior year period. The growth in subscription revenue was driven by strength across our largest subscription-based businesses, including forms, rules and loss costs, Catastrophe and Risk solutions and antifraud analytics and reflects strong price realization in renewals, expanded relationships with existing clients and the addition of new logos. The resilience of our subscription revenue underscores the strength of our business model and the critical value our solutions deliver to clients. In Forms, Rules & Loss Costs, our investment in Core Lines Reimagine continues to drive strong price realization through subscription renewal as clients experience the additional value we can provide through the transformation of the platform. During the quarter, we released another 7 new client-facing modules and remain on track for 25 releases in 2026, delivering even further platform functionality and value to our clients. Within Catastrophe and Risk solutions, we delivered another quarter of strong growth, driven by the addition of new clients and some notable renewals that provide upside to multiyear growth. As Lee mentioned, we are excited to announce the launch of Verisk Synergy Studio in June with our first clients already onboarded and a pipeline for additional clients to migrate on to the platform. Additionally, we released our reengineered U.S. tropical cyclone model, which delivers comprehensive advances in how hurricane risk is quantified and applied and is exclusively available through Verisk Synergy Studio. In anti-fraud, we delivered another quarter of strong growth, driven by good price realization, early renewals, adoption of newer innovations, including digital media forensics, and healthy growth in adjacent markets. Our transactional revenues, which comprised 17% of our total revenues declined 4.2% on an OCC basis, a sequential improvement from the first quarter. The declines were primarily driven by 3 factors: one, tougher comparisons from overages in the prior year as well as lower volumes in our commercial property business that could persist in the second half of the year; two, the carryover impact from lower weather events in our property restoration solutions; and three, lower volumes in our international travel business, primarily related to Middle Eastern travel disruption. This was offset by strong ILS issuance within our Catastrophe and Risk Solutions business, which we do not expect to benefit the third quarter. Moving to our adjusted EBITDA results. OCC adjusted EBITDA growth was 7.4% in the quarter, compounding on 9.7% growth in the prior year period. Total adjusted EBITDA margin, which includes both organic and inorganic results were 57.5% down 10 basis points from the prior year. As a reminder, the prior year quarter's reported margins benefited from a foreign currency translation impact, which contributed 120 basis points to margin net. Excluding this nonrecurring benefit, we delivered solid margin expansion driven by revenue growth, disciplined expense management and ongoing global talent optimization initiatives. Moving down the income statement. Net interest expense was $53 million in the quarter compared to $36 million in the prior year period due to an increased debt balance as well as higher interest rates. Our current leverage level is in the middle of our targeted range of 2 to 3x adjusted EBITDA. Our reported effective tax rate was 24.6% compared to 22.7% in the prior year quarter. The year-over-year increase was driven by lower tax benefits from a lower level of employee stock option exercise activity. Adjusted net income decreased 1.9% to $259 million. The year-over-year decline in adjusted net income was the result of a divestiture and higher below-the-line items, including higher interest expense and a higher tax rate. Yet we still grew diluted adjusted EPS by 5.3% to $1.98 per share, reflecting our capital return activity, which reduced our weighted average share count by 6.8%. On a reported basis, net cash from operating activities increased 50% to $366 million, while free cash flow rose 58% to $298 million. The increase was driven primarily by growth in operating profit as well as the timing of certain cash payments. We remain committed to returning capital to shareholders and during the second quarter, we paid a cash dividend of $0.50 per share, an 11% increase from the prior year. Additionally, we initiated a $200 million accelerated share repurchase program which was in addition to the $1.5 billion program we entered into during the first quarter. In total, we retired 8.5 million shares during the first half of 2026. Both programs concluded earlier this week, and we currently have approximately $800 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization. We are pleased to deliver continued momentum in the second quarter and are reaffirming our outlook for 2026. A complete list of all guidance measures can be found in the earnings slide deck, which has been posted to the Investors section of our website, verisk.com. We continue to expect consolidated revenue in the range of $3.19 billion to $3.24 billion. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $1.79 billion and $1.83 billion with adjusted EBITDA margins of 56% to 56.5%. We continue to expect net interest expense of $190 million to $200 million and our effective tax rate to be in the range of 23% to 26%. This results in adjusted earnings per share for the year in the range of $7.45 to $7.75. A few things to note as you update your models and think about pacing for the final 2 quarters of the year. First, we continue to expect a gradual recovery in OCC growth rate for the remaining 2 quarters of 2026. Second, the transactional revenues in the second quarter benefited from strong ILS activity that will not repeat in the third quarter as this is a seasonal market. Third, while it is still early, the hurricane season is off to a slower start as June and July have had limited storm activity. These factors could continue to exert pressure on transactional revenues in the second half of the year. Still taking everything together, we remain confident in our ability to deliver results in line with our financial guidance for 2026 and in line going forward with our Investor Day targets. And now let me turn the call back over to Lee for some closing remarks. Lee Shavel: Thanks, Elizabeth. In summary, we are experiencing the growth rebound that we anticipated in our financial results. Additionally, the increased value in our products from AI functionality is improving price realization and the increased engagement from our clients and partners as they recognize the value of our data and expertise in generating real returns on their AI investments. This has further enhanced our confidence in the operating momentum we are building in the business. We continue to appreciate all the support and interest in Verisk. Given the large number of analysts we have covering us, we ask that you limit yourself to 1 question. With that, I'll ask the operator to open the line for questions. Operator: Your first question comes from the line of Toni Kaplan with Morgan Stanley. Toni Kaplan: Lee, you talked about industry profitability continuing to be strong, and that could lead to maybe a continuation of the soft market. But on the other hand, you're helping insurers with profitability tools. And so I was hoping you could talk a little bit about historical periods where you've been in this part of the cycle and how growth typically plays out just given perhaps decelerating pricing dynamics, but maybe more cross-sell. And so just trying to get at should we be prepared for a few years of growth towards the lower end of your growth algorithm? Or can you like more than offset that through like some of the new product launches and upselling and things like that? Lee Shavel: Yes. Thanks, Toni. So I think you touched on a couple of the elements that we've talked about previously, and I want to reaffirm, first for some historical context. Our experience has been in soft markets that we've generally grown at approximately 6.8% organic constant currency growth rate. And again, hard markets 7.3%. So both of those are well within the range that we are -- that we talk about -- that we talked about at Investor Day. And I think you also correctly identified that in these periods, the value of our data sets in assessing Risk and supporting good pricing decisions become more important. And I think that's something that we have certainly heard in our client engagement as we've been talking about where we can be most helpful. As you heard, in our comments on the call, the level of engagement of clients wanting to have discussions around AI impact on pricing, pricing on other kind of market dynamics is evidence of that. But I think the most important point that I would center on is the fact that our growth is driven much more by the value that we are able to deliver to our clients and our ability to participate in that. And I think over the past 6 months and certainly the past 12 months, the ability for us to utilize our data and our expertise to support our clients value journey in using AI has been very clearly demonstrated across our businesses. And so despite the softening market, while that will have an effect, I think we're more bullish on our ability to create value for our clients and for the industry by supporting their adoption of AI in workflows, in processes in connecting the industry and we're beginning to see that in the pricing dynamic that we described for the Premium Audit AI and XactAI. So I think that is certainly a difference that we've had relative to prior periods. So hopefully, that gives you good context around the growth -- our growth perspective in the softer market. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Steinerman with JPMorgan. Andrew Steinerman: I definitely call out what you just said about June and July hurricane activity. I'll also kind of mention that summertime is not typically hurricane season. But yes, you're right, you have to kind of look with what we have now. So with that, have you assumed a low level or a typical level of hurricane activity when you consider the full 2026 revenue guide. I have one more point to this. And have you considered the return to an El Nino, and I've also read about a Super El Nino being a near-term possible revenue driver for Verisk [ hill ] climate and Catastrophe Risk analytics and our insurance clients asking Verisk about El Nino preparedness at this time. Elizabeth Mann: Thanks for the question, Andrew. Yes, our guidance, as we typically do, the range still considers in the base case and average year of weather activity and of hurricane activity. So what we're highlighting is if that plays out to be lighter as again, and there's different views from the experts as to how it may play out this year. But playing out lighter would be a bit of a Risk on the transactional side. Again, these differentials are small in the overall context of our business and even within the guidance range that we're talking about. As to the discussions on El Nino and the Risk to insurers. It's something that our Catastrophe and Risk modeling team is engaging with clients on. They're discussing the latest weather impacts. And I'll highlight the acquisition, the small acquisition that we just announced today of McKenzie Intelligence Services as a geospatial intelligence platform and event Risk management is one that can, overtime, help to give kind of real-time insights to events as they unfold. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Kelsey Zhu with Autonomous. Kelsey Zhu: Lee, how are you thinking about your channel partner strategy today? I think we've talked about previously how Claude and OpenAI could be helpful as distribution channels. But are you also looking at partnering with some of these AI companies for model co-development? And if so, are there specific areas or processes that you're interested in joining forces with them to add that intelligence layer? Lee Shavel: Thank you, Kelsey. Certainly, we are engaged in discussions with all of the significant frontier model companies. Tangibly, you saw our announcement of the Claude connectors and MCP solution that had 2 applications, one to underwriting and one to claims that were starting points in demonstrating what our datasets could do by pairing them with natural language capabilities of the model. And the feedback from our clients have been strong. In many ways, those were test cases or proof points that we could roll out very quickly. One thing that we've heard from clients is they want us to focus on what can we deliver now that has an impact and not conceptual on what's in development, but what they can use now and that was a demonstration of it. And coming out of that was a clear appetite for us to go deeper and broader in those types of connectors, which will require some further development in a number of our product areas. So specific to your question, we believe that, that type of engagement and work with the model companies is going to be beneficial for our clients. It will, I think, take time for clients to test the products, understand how they apply and develop it, but there clearly is enthusiasm and engagement. We are doing this across the board with the model companies. One thing to your question on distribution, I think we would observe that our ability to provide distribution to the insurance industry as the last mile, particularly to workflows is a very important part of dimension. Our connectivity to claims professionals, underwriting professionals, Risk professionals, it gives us an ability to identify where those models can be best applied, most effectively applied in order to generate real returns to our clients. And that's clearly something that's been recognized by the model companies that we've been in discussions with and I think that strengthens our position in helping them and helping our clients bring that model capability together with the data sets. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Scott Wurtzel with Wolfe Research. Scott Wurtzel: Just wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the lower volumes on the commercial property side and why you would expect those lower volumes to persist in the second half of the year? Lee Shavel: Thanks, Scott. I'm going to turn this over to Saurabh Khemka, who runs our underwriting businesses to give you a perspective on the commercial property, what we're experiencing, what we're hearing from clients. Saurabh Khemka: Absolutely. So overall, in the commercial property line and the insurance industry, what we're seeing is soft pricing, and it's a cyclical thing that happens. And what the behavior that it's driving is that our clients are looking at their business, they're looking at maybe not quoting as many of the opportunities that are out there. And then when they do make the quotes, they're also looking at how much they're spending on underwriting data and analytics to analyze that business. So those impacts are being felt in our transactional part of our business. I do want to say the underlying business remains very strong. So the subscription side of our business is good and continues to be healthy. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Gregory Peters with Raymond James. Charles Peters: One. So for my question, I know most if not all of the large property casualty companies have walled off LLM general access to the data and pricing infrastructure so I have kind of a 2-part question. Are you seeing any shift among your customers and attitudes towards LLM access? And then can you just step back and remind us how you're preserving your unique data assets amid the growing proliferation of AI? Lee Shavel: Great. Thanks for the question. So we will certainly -- data security has been a critical question and issue that we have managed very carefully over decades with our clients. So it is kind of central to our DNA to make certain that we are protecting our clients' data and any application or new technology that we're developing is done with careful consideration and discussion with them about the rights to utilize that data and that technology. And so that has informed our governance approach to the use of data. We have had a data policy and an AI policy for many years, and that serves as a great guide for us to make certain that we are protecting that data. Now 2 additional points. One is that in our work with the Frontier model companies, it was absolutely critical that the use of the data was controlled in the client's Claude instance and could not be used to train models. That's a protection that we think is important for our clients, certainly important in protecting our overall data access. So that is a demonstration of our care in managing access to those data sets and protecting them. It is front of mind in making sure on an ongoing basis that our clients' proprietary information is protected. And while we are finding ways to effectively utilize that data for what we feel are valuable applications that our clients are looking for inquiring that data. And so given, for instance, the success that we've had with premium audit and client uptake in the use of that AI product as well as an XactAI, just 2 examples across the businesses. I think the one thing that I would have a different point of view is if our clients are definitely interested in applying AI to the data sets to support their underwriting or claims functionality. But we're doing that in a very safe and carefully thought-out process. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Manav Patnaik: Lee, I just wanted to touch on the AI monetization today. And you kind of alluded to 2 examples, which I was hoping you to elaborate on. So the MCP Connector, I think you mentioned that one of the top 10 carriers is already using it. So I was just wondering what are the pluses and minuses between, is it all now? Or are they using this instead of something legacy? And then kind of the second part was, I think you talked about XactAI growing 10x. I think you said with 7,000 licensees like so how is that contributing to growth and how we should think of that over time? Lee Shavel: Thanks, Manav. And clearly, as a topic that we're focused on and we're approaching this with the recognition that this is still evolving. We're applying new technologies. We are at the core, assessing how this technology is creating incremental value for our clients? How can we -- how are we helping them create a real return on their investment in AI? So if we can demonstrate, and I think we believe that our clients clearly see value, we have gone beyond the step of just testing it but a demonstration that it improves efficiency, productivity, accuracy. And I think there will be several channels in which we are currently monetizing and expect to continue to monetize that incremental value. One most immediately, and while this at a scale level is not significant for us yet, but I think has -- clearly has the potential to support ongoing growth is simply improving the value of our pricing renewals upon subscription. We've talked a little bit about the -- our ability to do that in our underwriting data on renewals specifically to the Premium Audit product. Similarly, in our Xactware licenses, we are expecting to be able to capture the incremental value that we're delivering there through these additional products on that front. And I think that ideally is kind of the broad-based ability for us to realize value as we have in the past, as we have with the Core Lines Reimagine where more current data sets, expanded data sets we're able to capture that value in increasing subscriptions over time. Additional channels may include as we see appetite and early adoption of AI functionality, potentially some transactional pricing on an initial basis for clients to test and experiment with new AI applications. So I think there are aspects where we could see pursuing an initial transactional model, but we would want -- we would probably want to see that migrate into a more stable and growing subscription business over time. And then thirdly, we have a number of projects that we've talked about in the past where the ability to deliver an agentic AI platform or another AI solution may enable us to generate license fees for that software for that platform that our clients will view as an appropriate way for us to monetize the investment that we've made in delivering that solution. So I think all 3 of those will be paths. I think we are realizing that already on the pricing front. I think as we move from piloting to greater client usage, we could see the transactional element. And we are clearly exploring the licensing component on a number of the platforms that we're pursuing. Overall, I mean, I think that we come out of the last six months and our experience with Anthropic and other frontier AI model companies with increased confidence that the value of our data, the value of our ability to support our clients' AI journey and investment returns on that technology to be a clear upside for us over the next several years. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Faiza Alwy with Deutsche Bank. Faiza Alwy: I was hoping for an update on the Auto business because I know you had talked about some new data sets and new solutions that were supposed to come to market at some point this year. So I just wanted to get a sense of where you are and how you're thinking about that business going forward? Lee Shavel: I'm going to turn that question over to Saurabh as well. Saurabh Khemka: Yes. Thank you, Faiza. I think on the Auto side, we continue to make progress there. The competitive environment remains robust. But our focus on differentiated platforms like Lightspeed and new analytic objects that we're bringing out in our coverage verify business is delivering good results for us in terms of Lightspeed being adopted by more customers and good engagement on these differentiated analytics with other customers. So we continue to focus on that strategy as we go forward. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Henry Hayden with Rothschild & Co. Henry Hayden: I had a follow up on MCP monetization. So is this kind of volumetric? Is there a volumetric component to how you're charging for this or is it all covered in a subscription basis? and, you know, depending on that, how should we think about incremental margins versus variable usage costs and higher storage costs for vectorized data sets? Just to help contextualize that, how should we think about the kind of pace of adoption? You know, you mentioned you have one carrier on this now, but as you roll through the rest of the client base. Thanks. Elizabeth Mann: Yes. Thanks for the question, Henry. On the -- specifically on the MCP connections, it is included in the client base subscription. Their Claude costs or token costs are covered by them separately. So that is not an expense to us directly. More generally, I think we have strong governance on AI spending across our enterprise. And as for the pace of adoption and the rate of diffusion across the insurance industry, I think you've heard Lee talk about that, clients are adopting. We are ready to move with them as they move into more systematic deployment. But I think given some of the discussion, you've heard some of the insurance focused on governance, on data security, protection and other things. So as the industry works through and moves through that, you will see our monetization opportunities increase gradually over time, but it will probably be a slow and steady build. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Thomas Roesch: This is Tom Roesch on for Andrew Nicholas. I was just wondering if you could provide some color on what kind of supports your confidence in the acceleration in second half organic growth rates. It sounds like transactional, at least from the storm activity is softer through the first 2 months, but also do recognize that, I think last quarter, it was like a historic -- last third quarter was at historical low in storm activities, so I was just curious, like what areas of the business do you think are giving you the most confidence on the acceleration and growth in the back half the year? Thank you. Elizabeth Mann: A couple of things. Two things that give us confidence in the build. One is the subscription growth rate, again, that's 83% of our business is where we have some visibility into that. I would add that supported, we had highlighted the federal government contract and a work stoppage there. That work stoppage now has been lifted as of the beginning of the third quarter for a one-year term. So that work has resumed. I will add that was always the assumption that we had going forward, but so this is now the removal of that Risk. So those are some of the elements of the steady acceleration. That said, I do want to highlight it may be more of a sort of steady step up in that year-over-year organic constant currency growth rate. You know, we highlighted some of the headwinds on the transactional side. That strong ILS contribution that we had in the second quarter is not likely to repeat. And so I think you've heard from us, we do have a slightly more cautious view on the transactional revenues, especially in the third quarter with the property market and, of course, the weather as a TBD. So taking all that together, we may see less of the upside in the third quarter and more of an acceleration into the fourth quarter as the year plays out, again with full confidence in the full year range supported by those subscription revenues. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Meuler with Baird. Jeffrey Meuler: Just thinking through the financial impact and timing from the Synergy Studio release, is there like a platform upgrade fee that you monetize? Or is this all about upselling and cross-selling additional and more advanced models. And if you could just help me nerd out for a second, you have a competitor that talks about their high-def models being a real differentiator. You're calling out this like next-gen modeling framework that comes with Synergy Studio. So just help me understand from a model capabilities perspective, like what's different to next-gen models and how you feel that changes the competitive dynamics, recognizing many clients overlap and buy models from both. Lee Shavel: Thanks, Jeff. I'm going to start off, and then I'm going to -- on the differentiation, and then I'll turn it over to Elizabeth to kind of talk through the kind of the pricing revenue elements to it. First, I think what's important is that, first, the models are kind of the starting point. And there, what we are releasing are what we feel are the most sophisticated scientific leading Catastrophe models with a much more physics reality-oriented solution for our clients. And so with the U.S. tropical cyclone model, we think that, that is cutting-edge science and a leading model. Synergy Studio as a platform enables our ability, one, to increase the capacity of our clients to run larger simulations over longer periods, which adds value to them and do that more quickly. So the capability of that platform is a significant enhancement. And secondly, our ability to update those models is much easier for our clients than a traditional on-premises solution. Finally, the -- I think a key competitive differentiation is a consistent economic framework so that all of our models are -- can be utilized to assess risks on a consistent basis across that entire portfolio. And I think that is a distinctive differentiation for our clients that want to understand Risk on a global and a portfolio basis. So those are the elements that I think go to your question from a competitive standpoint in terms of why we think these are great products and why Synergy Studio as a new product will be delivering more value to our clients. Elizabeth Mann: Yes. And I'll add in on the pricing. So first, I'll comment, all of our models are on that next-generation financial framework, and we talked about it a while ago on earnings when we kind of launched that and put all of our models on that next-generation financial framework. So that will be available on Verisk Synergy Studio. There is not -- as to the pricing, Jeff, there is not a specific platform upgrade fee that we're monetizing with that. We do think the overall platform itself derives greater value. And the other piece I will add to it is that some customers may choose to have that operated on a hosting basis. And so some of our customers have migrated to a hosted model and some even before even on their Touchstone platform have added a hosting component, which has added to our revenue. So taken all together, that is all contemplated in the Investor Day guidance for that Catastrophe and Risk business at 8.5% to 9% on a long-term basis. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Curtis Nagle with Bank of America. Curtis Nagle: Just maybe could you comment on growth in Catastrophe and Risk in the quarter. I think it was up double digit in 1Q. What does it look like in the second quarter? And just how to think about general expectations in the back half of the year, particularly with the -- you talked about the launch of the Synergy Studio. Elizabeth Mann: Yes. Thanks, Curt. We don't give specific disclosure on that business on an ongoing basis. It has been a strong contributor. And of course, the second quarter has the securitization market as a benefit on the transactional side. But they're seeing steady uptick and performance that is in line with their long-term guidance. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jason Haas with Wells Fargo. Jason Haas: I wanted to ask a high level strategic one. It sounded like from the prepared remarks, you mentioned like an agentic underwriting platform that you're working on. And some of the comments around XactAI just sounded a bit more like sort of like, I guess, like a workflow tool. So I'm curious if there's an opportunity here to use AI to maybe push a little bit more into workflow software. I know historically you've really been more of a data company. You have obviously some software solutions, but curious how you're thinking about that from a high-level perspective in terms of where you want to take the business? Lee Shavel: Thanks, Jason. So there clearly are elements for us to integrate our data and our insights into workflows. I think the predominant path will be in integrating those data sets into our clients, either AI solutions or their existing workflows. But we have had, as you've noted, clients who have asked us to work on developing a platform which would be a software platform or an AI platform that integrates their workflows more effectively. And we're excited about that because we clearly have the expertise, the data sets are familiar with the workflow in order for us to be able to do that. And as you also referenced XactAI is something that is still into our Xactware platform that services the needs of a wide range of claims companies and professionals. So yes, there is a software opportunity for us to deliver on the -- our clients' needs for data integration, automation and modernization of their processes, also connecting participants within those workflows outside of the individual client basis. So that level of connectivity and integration of data, we can deliver in a variety of ways, in partnership with our clients' preferred platforms, particularly among our larger clients, in partnership with AI solutions that may be developed by the frontier model companies as we've done with the Anthropic MCPs or in specialized platforms that we have developed for clients that want us to deliver that capability. At the end of the day, what we're focused on is leveraging our data sets and our expertise to create more value for the clients, and we have a variety of means to do that. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Ashish Sabadra: I had a question on AI as well. So thanks for sharing the client engagement and the monetization for AI. Previously, it was noted that sales cycles had elongated due to AI. I was just wondering if you have seen any shift in that trend recently. And then another question on the same topic would be a question that we get is that insurance companies are launching industry-specific LLMs, is there a risk that they could move some of these processes in-house? So as we think about the puts and takes, how do we think about AI as being a net positive, or is there some headwinds from moving some of the processes in-house? Lee Shavel: Thanks, Ashish. I'm going to take the second part of the question first. And yes, there are clients that are developing their own LLMs. and I think the opportunity with them for us remains as strong if not stronger because the utilization of the unique data sets that we have, the standardized and cleansed data are just as relevant to them in this context as it would be for a frontier model company. And those have been discussions that we think are, that we have had and have supported our clients with. I would also use that as an opportunity to say the context or the semantic layer of what we have delivered and our retrieval augmentation generation technology is important. Our ability to access all of that data and deliver what's really relevant to them is just as important in that context. So I think to us that's a very positive development. Our general experience is the more sophisticated our clients are from a technology and data standpoint, the more data that they consume, the broader relationship that we have. And on your first question, I may not have heard it, but I think Elizabeth did. Elizabeth Mann: Moving to the sales cycles and the elongation that we referred to in the first quarter, I think that pattern in that environment does remain consistent. As you heard us discuss earlier on the call, there is a tremendous amount of client focus on questions of data usage rights, data protection. There's also our own focus on ensuring that our IP and our valuable data is well protected. So those discussions, both sides are working through the legal terms, ensuring that confidence. In the long run, we view that as a competitive differentiator for us because we have a long history of trust with the insurance industry and the robust governance processes and robust legal team to ensure and give confidence to the clients in the protections that we have there. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jeff Silber with BMO. Unknown Analyst: This is Ryan on for Jeff. I was just hoping you could help us on the EBITDA margins for the quarter. I know there was a tough comp with the FX for the year-over-year, but I was wondering if you could walk through any other drivers that drove the margins? And then just looking forward, are you still anticipating that expenses ramp for the second half of the year? Elizabeth Mann: Yes. Thanks, Ryan. Thanks so much for the question. Yes, it was a strong margin quarter for us. As we highlighted, that year-over-year comp, the Q2 of '25 included 120 basis point impact of FX. That impact is small to minimal in this current quarter. So that margin expansion is real, so to speak. On a trailing 12-month basis, we're at 56.3%, which is in the midpoint of the guidance. Factors for the strong margins this quarter are a couple. Number one, there's -- you've seen historically, there is seasonality in our margins with Q2 often being the strongest quarter because -- in part because that ILS transactional revenue comes in at a high incremental margin and our expenses tend to build steadily over the course of the year. I think I would also just -- I want to highlight, we did -- beyond that, we have had strong expense discipline over the course of the year. And I want to highlight that we delivered margin expansion in every single one of the past quarters, even despite the more modest transactional revenue impact. So I think we've had consistently strong expense discipline over that time. As we build into the balance of the year, though, both the seasonality on those second half margins will have an impact, and then we will have both general timing of expenses as well as perhaps an opportunity to invest further behind these innovative products as our revenue growth continues to accelerate from here. Operator: Your final question comes from the line of George Tong with Goldman Sachs. Keen Fai Tong: You highlighted AI as a driver of stronger renewals and improved price realization. Can you help quantify the contribution that AI is making to organic growth today? Is the benefit measured in 10s of basis points? Or has it already become large enough to contribute more meaningfully to organic growth? Lee Shavel: Thanks, George. Look, it's hard. We're still at an early stage, so I don't think that we are able to quantify certainly its current impact. I do think that based upon what we see, we clearly think it should lift our organic growth rate to some degree. It's difficult to parse out across overall renewal and value that we're providing in other areas. But I certainly feel more confident that this is additive to our overall growth rate, certainly on a gross basis and on a net basis. We see just increasing in client engagement and a recognition of the tangible value that they're getting by integrating our data sets with AI models. Operator: This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect. Before you buy stock in Verisk Analytics, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Verisk Analytics wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut are built for long-term growth and could produce monster returns in the coming years. 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As with all our articles, The Motley Fool does not assume any responsibility for your use of this content, and we strongly encourage you to do your own research, including listening to the call yourself and reading the company's SEC filings. Please see our Terms and Conditions for additional details, including our Obligatory Capitalized Disclaimers of Liability. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Verisk Analytics. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. Verisk Analytics (VRSK) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript was originally published by The Motley Fool

Avis Budget Group, Inc. CAR reported dismal second-quarter 2026 results. CAR’s earnings of 98 cents per share missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.16 by 54.6%. Earnings improved sharply from 10 cents in the year-ago quarter. Revenues declined 1.3% year over year to $3 billion, missing the consensus estimate of $3.08 billion by 2.8%. Lower rental days weighed on the top line, while disciplined fleet reductions helped lift total vehicle utilization to a second-quarter record of 72.6%. Avis Budget Group, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Avis Budget Group, Inc. Quote The lower-than-expected earnings and revenue results dragged the stock down 16.5% since the earnings release on July 28. Avis Budget generated net income of $63 million compared with $5 million in the prior-year quarter. Net income attributable to the company was $35 million, up from $4 million a year earlier. Adjusted EBITDA increased 3.2% year over year to $286 million. The improvement came despite lower revenues, reflecting reduced fleet costs, better utilization and tighter expense management. Total rental days fell 2.3% year over year to 43.91 million. The average rental fleet declined 4.9% to 664,638 vehicles as management accelerated vehicle dispositions in response to weakening booking trends. Revenues per day increased 1% to $68.29. Excluding currency effects, revenues per day were $67.84, up slightly from $67.62 in the year-ago quarter. Management prioritized longer-duration rentals, which carried lower daily rates but offered better transaction economics and reduced handling costs. Americas revenues declined 1.9% year over year to $2.29 billion. Rental days decreased 2.1% to 32.60 million, while the average fleet contracted 5.4% to 489,192 vehicles. Americas adjusted EBITDA rose 7.7% to $237 million. Vehicle utilization improved 2.5 percentage points to a record 73.2%, helping offset lower volumes. Revenue per day, excluding currency effects, inched up to $70.22 from $70.03. International revenues were $710 million, nearly flat year over year. Excluding exchange-rate effects, revenues declined 2.5% as rental days fell 2.9% to 11.31 million. Adjusted EBITDA decreased 11% to $73 million. Management cited weaker commercial demand, lower inbound travel and increased industry fleet supply in several European markets. International revenues per day rose 3.4% as reported, but inched up 0.4% excluding currency effects. Vehicle depreciation and lease charges declined 8.3% year over year to $583 million. Total per-unit fleet costs fell 3.6% to $292 per month and decreased 4.3% to $290 excluding currency effects. Operating expenses remained flat at $1.53 billion. Selling, general and administrative expenses declined 2.8% to $385 million, while vehicle interest expenses increased slightly to $232 million. Corporate interest expenses decreased to $108 million from $110 million. CAR ended June with $558 million in cash and cash equivalents. Available liquidity was approximately $1 billion, with an additional $1.9 billion in fleet funding capacity. During the quarter, the company issued $300 million of senior notes due in 2031 and used the proceeds to reduce notes due in 2027. It also refinanced its $2-billion revolving credit facility, extending the maturity to June 2031. Net corporate leverage stood at 7.4 times, down one turn from the end of 2025. Avis Budget reiterated its full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of $850 million to $1 billion. Management expects to reduce leverage by at least one full turn by the end of 2026. For the third quarter, the company expects the Americas fleet to remain down by a mid-single-digit percentage. Stronger utilization should partly offset the fleet reduction, while revenues per day are projected to remain roughly flat year over year. Management expects year-over-year adjusted EBITDA growth despite continued pressure on rental volumes. Avis Budget carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Verisk VRSK reported second-quarter 2026 diluted adjusted earnings of $1.98 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.94 by 2.1%. The figure increased 5.3% from the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $806.3 million topped the consensus mark of $802.4 million by 0.5% and rose 4.3% year over year. ADP ADP posted fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 adjusted earnings of $2.64 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $2.59 by 1.9%. The metric increased 17% from the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $5.47 billion surpassed the consensus mark of $5.42 billion by 0.9% and rose 7% year over year. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Avis Budget Group, Inc. (CAR) : Free Stock Analysis Report Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP) : Free Stock Analysis Report Verisk Analytics, Inc. (VRSK) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Our analysts just identified a stock with the potential to be the next Nvidia. Tell us how you invest and we'll show you why it's our #1 pick. Tap here. Organic constant currency revenue growth of 5.8% was driven by an 8% increase in subscription revenues, reflecting the stability of core insurance solutions despite macro headwinds. Management attributed the sequential acceleration to the resolution of short-term factors, including the carryover impact of low weather activity and a previously stalled federal government contract. The operating environment is shifting toward a soft market as carriers achieve rate adequacy and pivot toward growth, leading to lighter volumes in commercial property and increased price competition. In this softening market, management is positioning Verisk's data as critical for underwriting discipline and risk selection rather than relying on broad-based industry rate increases. Strategic focus has shifted from AI experimentation to production-scale adoption, utilizing Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) to improve the accuracy and repeatability of large language model outputs. The launch of Verisk Synergy Studio and a reengineered U.S. tropical cyclone model represents a transition to cloud-native, high-performance computing for global catastrophe risk analytics. The acquisition of McKenzie Intelligence Services (MIS) adds real-time geospatial intelligence to the portfolio, enhancing event response capabilities for global catastrophe and conflict analysis. Management reaffirmed 2026 guidance, assuming a gradual recovery in organic growth rates as core momentum offsets transactional volatility. Guidance assumes an average year of weather and hurricane activity, though management noted that a slow start to the season in June and July could pressure transactional revenues. The company expects to maintain healthy margins through disciplined expense management and global talent optimization, even as it invests in AI innovation and product development. Strategic monetization of AI will follow three paths: improved price realization in subscription renewals, initial transactional pricing for new features, and potential license fees for agentic platforms. The company anticipates continued sequential improvement in revenue growth through the second half of the year, supported by the resumption of a federal government contract. Chief Information Officer Nick Daffan is departing after 20 years, with CTO Jeff Negrete serving as interim CIO during the search for a permanent replacement. Transactional revenues declined 4.2% due to tougher comparisons, lower commercial property volumes, and Middle Eastern travel disruptions affecting the international travel business. Legal fees related to ongoing litigation and higher interest expense from increased debt balances impacted GAAP net income and adjusted net income. Management highlighted that while AI sales cycles remain elongated due to data security and governance discussions, this rigor is viewed as a long-term competitive differentiator. One stock. Nvidia-level potential. 30M+ investors trust Moby to find it first. Get the pick. Tap here. Management noted that historically, Verisk has grown at approximately 6.8% in soft markets compared to 7.3% in hard markets, both within their long-term target range. The current cycle is differentiated by the ability to use AI to drive incremental value and pricing power that was not present in previous soft market periods. The new Anthropic MCP connectors are currently included in base subscriptions, with clients bearing the separate token costs for the language models. Management clarified that Synergy Studio does not have a specific platform upgrade fee but drives value through hosting fees and increased model adoption. The new framework provides a consistent economic view across a global portfolio, which management claims is a key differentiator for clients managing complex risks. The cloud-native platform allows for larger simulations and faster model updates compared to traditional on-premises solutions. Management views in-house LLM development as a positive, as sophisticated clients typically consume more of Verisk's standardized and cleansed data to fuel their models. Verisk's role is to provide the 'semantic layer' and proprietary data structure that makes these internal models work effectively.

Verisk VRSK has reported second-quarter 2026 diluted adjusted earnings of $1.98 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.94 by 2.1%. The figure increased 5.3% from the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $806.3 million topped the consensus mark of $802.4 million by 0.5% and rose 4.3% year over year. Organic constant-currency growth was 5.8%, supported by an 8% increase in underlying subscription revenues and growth across both Underwriting and Claims. Verisk Analytics, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Verisk Analytics, Inc. Quote Underwriting revenues increased 3.5% year over year to $569 million. On an organic constant-currency basis, revenues advanced 5.6%. Growth reflected annual price increases tied to continued enhancements in the models and content supporting Verisk’s forms, rules and loss cost services. The company also benefited from sales of expanded catastrophe and risk solutions to new and existing customers. Claims revenues rose 6.3% year over year to $237 million. Organic constant-currency growth was 6.1%, outpacing the reported growth rate of the Underwriting business. The improvement was primarily driven by anti-fraud analytics, and property and restoration solutions. These offerings supported broader Insurance revenue growth as carriers continued using Verisk’s data and technology across underwriting and claims decisions. Adjusted EBITDA increased 4.2% year over year to $463.6 million. On an organic constant-currency basis, adjusted EBITDA grew 7.4%, reflecting revenue growth and continued cost discipline. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 57.5% compared with 57.6% in the prior-year quarter. Adjusted EBITDA expenses increased to $342.7 million from $327.8 million, while operating income rose to $363.7 million from $354.3 million. Net income declined 9.8% year over year to $228.6 million. The net income margin contracted to 28.4% from 32.8%, while diluted GAAP earnings fell 3.3% to $1.75 per share. The decline reflected a higher effective tax rate, increased net interest expenses and legal fees connected with ongoing litigation. Net interest expenses increased to $52.8 million from $35.5 million, while the effective tax rate rose to 24.6% from 22.7%. Net cash provided by operating activities jumped 49.7% year over year to $366 million. The free cash flow increased 57.9% to $297.9 million despite capital expenditure rising 22% to $68.1 million. The cash flow improvement was primarily driven by higher operating profit and the timing of certain vendor and tax payments. Verisk ended June with $551.4 million in cash and cash equivalents compared with $2.18 billion at the end of 2025. The company entered a $200-million accelerated share repurchase program during the quarter. It received an initial delivery of 949,190 shares at an initial price of $179.10, representing roughly 85% of the aggregate purchase price. In the first six months of 2026, Verisk funded aggregate share repurchases of $1.9 billion and received an initial delivery of 8.5 million shares at an average price of $186.32. The company had $800 million remaining under its repurchase authorization at the quarter-end. Management said that Verisk continues to invest in proprietary datasets and deploy advanced artificial intelligence technologies across those assets. The strategy is aimed at generating differentiated insights and strengthening value for insurance clients. The company expects growth to return to levels consistent with its Investor Day targets during the second half of 2026. Verisk also approved another quarterly cash dividend of 50 cents per share, payable Sept. 30, to shareholders of record as of Sept. 15. Verisk maintained its 2026 revenue guidance of $3.19-$3.24 billion. Management expects adjusted EBITDA of $1.79-$1.83 billion and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 56-56.5%. Diluted adjusted earnings are projected between $7.45 and $7.75 per share. The company expects a tax rate of 23-26%, capital expenditure of $260-$280 million and interest expenses of $190-$200 million. VRSK carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) at present. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. IQVIA Holdings Inc. IQV reported second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of $3.15 per share, rising 12.1% year over year and beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.02 by 4.3%. Revenues of $4.36 billion increased 8.7% and topped the consensus mark of $4.29 billion by 1.6%. Waste Connections, Inc. WCN reported impressive second-quarter 2026 results. WCN reported second-quarter 2026 adjusted earnings of $1.50 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.35 by 11.1%. Earnings increased 16.3% from $1.29 in the year-ago quarter. Revenues of $2.56 billion surpassed the consensus estimate of $2.53 billion by 1.1% and rose 6.4% year over year. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Verisk Analytics, Inc. (VRSK) : Free Stock Analysis Report Waste Connections, Inc. (WCN) : Free Stock Analysis Report IQVIA Holdings Inc. (IQV) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Interested in Verisk Analytics, Inc.? Here are five stocks we like better. Verisk reported solid second-quarter growth: Revenue rose 4% to $806 million, organic constant-currency revenue increased 5.8%, and subscription revenue grew 8% to 83% of total revenue. Subscription strength offset a 4.2% decline in transactional revenue caused by weaker weather activity and commercial-property markets. Profitability and cash generation were mixed but the full-year outlook was reaffirmed. GAAP net income fell 10% to $229 million, while free cash flow jumped 58% to $298 million. Verisk maintained its 2026 revenue guidance of $3.19 billion to $3.24 billion and launched a $200 million accelerated share repurchase program. AI and catastrophe-risk initiatives are gaining traction. XactAI users increased nearly tenfold to about 7,000 licensees, while new Claude connectors and the Verisk Synergy Studio platform expand AI and catastrophe-modeling capabilities. The company also completed its acquisition of McKenzie Intelligence Services to strengthen real-time catastrophe and conflict analysis. MarketBeat Week in Review – 02/16 - 02/20 Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ:VRSK) reported second-quarter revenue of $806 million, up 4% from a year earlier, as subscription revenue growth and continued demand across underwriting and claims helped offset pressure in transactional businesses tied to lower weather activity and softer commercial-property markets. Organic constant-currency revenue rose 5.8% in the quarter, accelerating sequentially from the first quarter, while subscription revenue grew 8% and represented 83% of total revenue. President and Chief Executive Officer Lee Shavel said the company saw balanced growth across underwriting and claims and that results were modestly ahead of expectations. → This Tiny AI Supplier Could Be More Important Than the Chipmakers Verisk Is Extremely Oversold—2 Reasons Contrarians Are Circling “We continue to have confidence that the resolution of these short-term factors and core growth momentum will result in continued sequential improvement in revenue growth as we move through the second half of the year,” Shavel said. GAAP net income declined 10% year over year to $229 million, while diluted GAAP earnings per share fell 3% to $1.75. Chief Financial Officer Elizabeth Mann attributed the declines to a divestiture completed at the end of 2025, a higher tax rate, increased interest expense and higher legal fees related to ongoing litigation. Higher operating results and a lower average share count partly offset those factors. → Refiner Stocks Are Near Record Highs—Can Iran-Driven Margins Keep Them There? Organic constant-currency adjusted EBITDA increased 7.4%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 57.5%, down 10 basis points from the prior-year period. Mann noted that the prior-year quarter benefited from a 120-basis-point foreign-exchange translation effect; excluding that nonrecurring benefit, the company reported margin expansion driven by revenue growth, expense discipline and global talent optimization initiatives. Verisk reaffirmed its 2026 outlook, including: Revenue of $3.19 billion to $3.24 billion. Adjusted EBITDA of $1.79 billion to $1.83 billion. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 56% to 56.5%. Adjusted EPS of $7.45 to $7.75. Net interest expense of $190 million to $200 million and an effective tax rate of 23% to 26%. → Innovative ETF Strategies That Are Paying Off This Summer Free cash flow increased 58% to $298 million, while operating cash flow rose 50% to $366 million. During the quarter, the company paid a $0.50-per-share dividend, up 11% from a year earlier, and initiated a $200 million accelerated share repurchase program in addition to a $1.5 billion first-quarter program. Verisk retired 8.5 million shares in the first half and had about $800 million remaining under its repurchase authorization after the programs concluded. Mann said subscription growth was supported by forms, rules and loss-cost offerings, catastrophe and risk solutions, and anti-fraud analytics. Drivers included price realization on renewals, expanded customer relationships and new customers. Transactional revenue, representing 17% of total revenue, declined 4.2% on an organic constant-currency basis. The company cited difficult comparisons with prior-year overages, lower commercial-property volumes, the carryover effect of lower weather-related events, and lower international-travel volumes related primarily to Middle Eastern travel disruptions. Strong insurance-linked securities issuance within catastrophe and risk solutions partially offset the decline, though Mann said that benefit was not expected to recur in the third quarter. Saurabh Khemka, president of Underwriting Solutions, said soft commercial-property pricing has led some carriers to quote fewer opportunities and scrutinize spending on underwriting data and analytics. He said the impact was concentrated in transactional revenue, while the underlying subscription business remained healthy. Management said the company expects gradual organic growth improvement in the second half, but cautioned that a slow start to hurricane season, softer commercial-property activity and the absence of the second-quarter ILS benefit could pressure transactional revenue. Mann said a federal government contract work stoppage had been lifted at the start of the third quarter for a one-year term. Shavel highlighted growing client interest in applying artificial intelligence to underwriting and claims workflows. In May, Verisk announced two connectors for Anthropic’s Claude platform that allow customers to access Verisk underwriting intelligence and claims solutions through natural-language interactions. Shavel said a top-10 carrier was already using the technology, while Mann said the connectors are included in customers’ base subscriptions and customers separately bear Claude token costs. The company also reported expanding adoption of XactAI, its claims-focused AI offering. Since March, the number of XactAI users has increased nearly 10-fold, reaching almost 7,000 licensees. Shavel said the offering helps automate activities including claim summarization, photo labeling, document-data extraction and estimating recommendations. While management said AI-related monetization remains early and difficult to quantify, Shavel said the technology is supporting stronger renewal pricing in products including Premium Audit AI and XactAI. He said future monetization could include subscription pricing, initial transactional pricing for new applications and software or platform licensing for agentic AI solutions. Verisk also launched its cloud-native Verisk Synergy Studio platform and re-engineered U.S. Tropical Cyclone Model during the quarter. The platform combines catastrophe models, analytics, computing and workflows, and includes the company’s global model suite on its next-generation modeling framework. Management said initial clients have been onboarded and additional migrations are planned through the remainder of the year. Separately, Verisk closed the tuck-in acquisition of McKenzie Intelligence Services, a geospatial intelligence and event-response company focused on real-time catastrophe and conflict analysis. The business will join Verisk Catastrophe and Risk Solutions. Shavel also announced that Chief Information Officer Nick Defond is departing after two decades with the company. Chief Technology Officer Jeff Negrete will serve as interim CIO while Verisk searches for a permanent replacement. Verisk Analytics, Inc (NASDAQ: VRSK) is a data analytics and decision‑support provider that helps organizations assess and manage risk. The company supplies data, predictive models and software to customers in insurance, reinsurance, financial services, government, energy and other commercial markets. Its offerings are designed to support underwriting, pricing, claims management, catastrophe modeling, fraud detection and regulatory compliance, enabling clients to make more informed operational and strategic decisions. Verisk's product portfolio combines large proprietary datasets with analytics platforms and industry‑specific applications. This instant news alert was generated by narrative science technology and financial data from MarketBeat in order to provide readers with the fastest reporting and unbiased coverage. Please send any questions or comments about this story to [email protected]. The article "Verisk Analytics Q2 Earnings Call Highlights" was originally published by MarketBeat. View MarketBeat's top stocks for July 2026.

Verisk Analytics (VRSK) came out with quarterly earnings of $1.98 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.94 per share. This compares to earnings of $1.88 per share a year ago. These figures are adjusted for non-recurring items. This quarterly report represents an earnings surprise of +2.06%. A quarter ago, it was expected that this insurance data provider would post earnings of $1.76 per share when it actually produced earnings of $1.82, delivering a surprise of +3.41%. Over the last four quarters, the company has surpassed consensus EPS estimates four times. Verisk, which belongs to the Zacks Business - Information Services industry, posted revenues of $806.3 million for the quarter ended June 2026, surpassing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.48%. This compares to year-ago revenues of $772.6 million. The company has topped consensus revenue estimates three times over the last four quarters. The sustainability of the stock's immediate price movement based on the recently-released numbers and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's commentary on the earnings call. Verisk shares have lost about 5.1% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 8.5%. While Verisk has underperformed the market so far this year, the question that comes to investors' minds is: what's next for the stock? There are no easy answers to this key question, but one reliable measure that can help investors address this is the company's earnings outlook. Not only does this include current consensus earnings expectations for the coming quarter(s), but also how these expectations have changed lately. Empirical research shows a strong correlation between near-term stock movements and trends in earnings estimate revisions. Investors can track such revisions by themselves or rely on a tried-and-tested rating tool like the Zacks Rank, which has an impressive track record of harnessing the power of earnings estimate revisions. Ahead of this earnings release, the estimate revisions trend for Verisk was unfavorable. While the magnitude and direction of estimate revisions could change following the company's just-released earnings report, the current status translates into a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) for the stock. So, the shares are expected to underperform the market in the near future. You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. It will be interesting to see how estimates for the coming quarters and the current fiscal year change in the days ahead. The current consensus EPS estimate is $1.93 on $810.33 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $7.64 on $3.23 billion in revenues for the current fiscal year. Investors should be mindful of the fact that the outlook for the industry can have a material impact on the performance of the stock as well. In terms of the Zacks Industry Rank, Business - Information Services is currently in the top 30% of the 250 plus Zacks industries. Our research shows that the top 50% of the Zacks-ranked industries outperform the bottom 50% by a factor of more than 2 to 1. Iron Mountain (IRM), another stock in the same industry, has yet to report results for the quarter ended June 2026. The results are expected to be released on August 5. This real estate investment trust is expected to post quarterly earnings of $1.40 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of +191.7%. The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. Iron Mountain's revenues are expected to be $1.97 billion, up 14.9% from the year-ago quarter. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Verisk Analytics, Inc. (VRSK) : Free Stock Analysis Report Iron Mountain Incorporated (IRM) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com). Zacks Investment Research

Revenue was $806 million, up 4.3%, and up 5.8% on an organic constant currency (OCC) basis, a non-GAAP measure. Net income was $229 million, down 9.8%. Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, was $464 million, up 4.2%, and up 7.4% on an OCC basis. Diluted GAAP earnings per share (EPS) was $1.75, down 3.3%. Diluted adjusted EPS, a non-GAAP measure, was $1.98, up 5.3%. Net cash provided by operating activities was $366 million, up 49.7% and free cash flow, a non-GAAP measure, was $298 million, up 57.9%. Paid a cash dividend of 50 cents per share on June 30, 2026. Executed a $200 million Accelerated Share Repurchase program. JERSEY CITY, N.J., July 29, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Verisk (Nasdaq: VRSK), a leading strategic data analytics and technology provider to the global insurance industry, today announced results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2026. The earnings release is available on the company’s Investor Relations website at investor.verisk.com. Lee Shavel, President and CEO, Verisk:"Our solid second-quarter financial performance reflects the durability of Verisk’s economic model and the operational discipline with which we are managing the business. Our strong underlying subscription revenues are a demonstration of the essential role we play in helping insurance industry participants make better decisions across underwriting and claims and the deep client relationships and connection we have within the industry. We continue to invest in our proprietary datasets, and deploy advanced AI technologies across these unmatched data assets, in order to deliver innovative and distinctive insights that deepen client value and support future growth. These investments, combined with our operational discipline, position us well to deliver sustainable long-term value for clients and shareholders." Elizabeth Mann, CFO, Verisk:"I am pleased to share that Verisk delivered second-quarter financial results that reflect the sequential acceleration in growth we previously articulated. In the second quarter 2026, we grew revenue 5.8% on an OCC basis with 8.0% underlying subscription growth and delivered 7.4% OCC adjusted EBITDA growth and healthy margins. Our strong cash flow generation enables us to invest at scale in advanced technologies, including AI, while also returning significant capital to shareholders through repurchases and dividends. We are reaffirming our financial outlook for 2026 and continue to have confidence that as we move into the second half of the year, our growth should return to levels consistent with our Investor Day targets." Financial HighlightsSummary of Results (GAAP and Non-GAAP) ($ in millions, except per share amounts)Note: Adjusted EBITDA, diluted adjusted EPS, and free cash flow are non-GAAP measures. Revenue($ in millions)Note: OCC revenue growth is a non-GAAP measure. See “Non-GAAP Reconciliations” on pages 12-13 for a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measure. Underwriting revenues increased 3.5% in the quarter and 5.6% on an OCC basis, primarily due to an annual increase in prices derived from continued enhancements to the models and content of the solutions within our forms, rules and loss cost services, as well as selling expanded solutions to new and existing customers within catastrophe and risk solutions. Claims revenues increased 6.3% in the quarter and 6.1% on an OCC basis, primarily due to anti-fraud analytics and property and restoration solutions. Net Income, Adjusted EBITDA and Adjusted EBITDA Margin($ in millions)Note: Adjusted EBITDA is a non-GAAP measure. Margin is calculated as a percentage of revenues. See “Non-GAAP Reconciliations” on pages 12-13 for a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measure. Net income was $229 million, a decrease of 9.8% in the quarter. The decrease in net income was mainly driven by increases in our effective tax rate, net interest expense, and legal fees incurred in connection with ongoing litigation. Adjusted EBITDA increased 7.4% in the quarter on an OCC basis, primarily due to revenue growth and continued cost discipline. Diluted EPSNote: Diluted adjusted EPS is a non-GAAP measure. See “Non-GAAP Reconciliations” on pages 12-13 for a reconciliation to the nearest GAAP measure. Diluted EPS decreased 3.3% in the quarter, primarily due to higher net interest expense, a higher effective tax rate, and increased legal fees incurred in connection with ongoing litigation, partially offset by a lower average share count and strong operational performance. Diluted adjusted EPS increased 5.3% in the quarter, primarily driven by strong operational performance and a lower share count, partially offset by higher net interest expense and a higher effective tax rate. Cash Flow and Capital Return($ in millions)Note: Free cash flow is a non-GAAP measure. Net cash provided by operating activities increased 49.7% in the quarter, while free cash flow increased 57.9% in the quarter. The increase in net cash provided by operating activities and free cash flow for the quarter was primarily driven by an increase in operating profit and the timing of certain vendor and tax payments. On June 30, 2026, we paid a cash dividend of 50 cents per share on common stock issued and outstanding to the holders of record as of June 15, 2026. In the second quarter of 2026, we entered into a $200.0 million accelerated share repurchase program and received an initial delivery of 949,190 shares of our common stock at an initial price of $179.10, representing approximately 85 percent of the aggregate purchase price. As of June 30, 2026, we had $800.0 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization. During the first six months of 2026, we funded aggregated share repurchases of $1.9 billion, including repurchases not yet settled, and received initial delivery of approximately 8.5 million shares at an average price of $186.32 per share. These repurchases reflect our continued commitment to returning capital to shareholders while maintaining flexibility to invest in the growth of our business. Full Year 2026 Outlook The company's financial outlook for 2026 remains unchanged and is as follows: Subsequent Events On July 27, 2026, our Board of Directors approved a cash dividend of 50 cents per share of common stock issued and outstanding, payable on September 30, 2026, to holders of record as of September 15, 2026. Conference Call Our management team will host a live audio webcast to discuss the financial results and business highlights on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. EDT (5:30 a.m. PDT, 12:30 p.m. GMT). All interested parties are invited to listen to the live event via webcast on our investor website at http://investor.verisk.com. The discussion will also be available through dial-in number 1-833-461-5787 for U.S. participants, 1-365-657-4048 for Canada participants, or 1-44-808-196-8935 for U.K. participants. A replay of the webcast will be available for up to 1 year on our investor website. About Verisk Verisk (Nasdaq: VRSK) is a leading strategic data analytics and technology partner to the global insurance industry. It empowers clients to strengthen operating efficiency, improve underwriting and claims outcomes, combat fraud and make informed decisions about global risks, including climate change, catastrophic events, sustainability and political issues. Through advanced data analytics, software, scientific research and deep industry knowledge, Verisk helps build global resilience for individuals, communities and businesses. With teams across more than 20 countries, Verisk consistently earns certification by Great Place to Work. Verisk is traded on the Nasdaq exchange and is a part of the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq-100 Index. For more information, please visit www.verisk.com. Contact: Investor RelationsStacey BrodbarHead of Investor RelationsVerisk 201-469-4327 [email protected] MediaAlberto CanalVerisk Public [email protected] Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements, including those related to our Full Year 2026 Outlook and financial guidance. These statements relate to future events or to future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause our actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. This includes, but is not limited to, our expectation and ability to pay a cash dividend on our common stock in the future, subject to the determination by our Board of Directors and based on an evaluation of our earnings, financial condition and requirements, business conditions, capital allocation determinations, and other factors, risks, and uncertainties. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the use of words such as “may,” “could,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “target,” “seek,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “potential,” or “continue” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. You should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, because they involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that are, in some cases, beyond our control and that could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. Other factors that could materially affect actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements can be found in our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, annual reports on Form 10-K, and current reports on Form 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. If any of these risks or uncertainties materialize or if our underlying assumptions prove to be incorrect, actual results may vary significantly from what we projected. Any forward-looking statement in this release reflects our current views with respect to future events and is subject to these and other risks, uncertainties, and assumptions relating to our operations, results of operations, growth strategy, and liquidity. We assume no obligation to publicly update or revise these forward-looking statements for any reason, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise except as required by law. Notes Regarding the Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures We have provided certain non-GAAP financial information as supplemental information regarding our operating results. These measures are not in accordance with, or an alternative for, U.S. GAAP and may be different from non-GAAP measures reported by other companies. We believe that our presentation of non-GAAP measures provides useful information to management and investors regarding certain financial and business trends relating to our financial condition and results of operations. In addition, our management uses these measures for reviewing our financial results, for budgeting and planning purposes, and for evaluating the performance of senior management. EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, and Adjusted EBITDA Expenses: EBITDA represents GAAP net income adjusted for (i) depreciation and amortization of fixed assets; (ii) amortization of intangible assets; (iii) interest expense, net; and (iv) provision for income taxes. Adjusted EBITDA represents EBITDA adjusted for acquisition-related adjustments (earn-outs), gain/loss from dispositions (which includes businesses held for sale), net adjustments from equity-method investments, and nonrecurring gain/loss. Adjusted EBITDA expenses represent adjusted EBITDA net of revenues. We believe these measures are useful and meaningful because they help us allocate resources, make business decisions, allow for greater transparency regarding our operating performance, and facilitate period-to-period comparison. Adjusted Net Income and Diluted Adjusted EPS: Adjusted net income represents GAAP net income adjusted for (i) amortization of intangible assets, net of tax; (ii) acquisition-related adjustments (earn-outs), net of tax; (iii) gain/loss from dispositions (which includes businesses held for sale), net of tax; (iv) net adjustments from equity-method investments, net of tax; and (v) nonrecurring gain/loss, net of tax. Diluted adjusted EPS represents adjusted net income divided by weighted-average diluted shares. We believe these measures are useful and meaningful because they allow evaluation of the after-tax profitability of our results excluding the after-tax effect of acquisition-related costs and nonrecurring items. Free Cash Flow: Free cash flow represents net cash provided by operating activities determined in accordance with GAAP minus payments for capital expenditures. We believe free cash flow is an important measure of the recurring cash generated by our operations that may be available to repay debt obligations, repurchase our stock, invest in future growth through new business development activities, or make acquisitions. Organic: Organic is defined as operating results excluding the effect of recent acquisitions and dispositions (which include businesses held for sale), and nonrecurring gain/loss associated with cost-based and equity-method investments that have occurred over the past year. An acquisition is included as organic at the beginning of the calendar quarter that occurs subsequent to the one-year anniversary of the acquisition date. Once an acquisition is included in its current-period organic base, its comparable prior-year-period operating results are also included to calculate organic growth. A disposition (which includes a business held for sale) is excluded from organic at the beginning of the calendar quarter in which the disposition occurs (or when a business meets the held-for-sale criteria under U.S. GAAP). Once a disposition is excluded from its current-period organic base, its comparable prior-year-period operating results are also excluded to calculate organic growth. We believe the organic presentation enables investors to assess the growth of the business without the impact of recent acquisitions for which there is no prior-year comparison and the impact of recent dispositions, for which results are removed from all prior periods presented to allow for comparability. Organic Constant Currency (OCC) Growth Rate: Our operating results, such as, but not limited to, revenue and adjusted EBITDA, reported in U.S. dollars are affected by foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations because the underlying foreign currencies in which we transact changes in value over time compared with the U.S. dollar. Accordingly, we present certain constant currency financial information to assess how we performed excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations. We calculate constant currency by translating comparable prior-year-period results at the currency exchange rates used in the current period. We believe organic constant currency is a useful and meaningful measure to enhance investors’ understanding of the continuing operating performance of our business and to facilitate the comparison of period-to-period performance because it excludes the impact of foreign exchange rate movements, acquisitions, and dispositions. See page 3 for a reconciliation of net cash provided by operating activities to free cash flow. See page 12 for reconciliations of organic revenues, adjusted EBITDA, and adjusted EBITDA margin. See page 13 for reconciliations of adjusted EBITDA expenses and diluted adjusted EPS. We are not able to provide reconciliations of Full Year 2026 Outlook for Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, and Diluted adjusted EPS to the most directly comparable expected GAAP results because of the unreasonable effort and high unpredictability of estimating certain items that are excluded from non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, and Diluted adjusted EPS, including, for example, tax consequences, acquisition-related costs, gain/loss from dispositions and other non-recurring expenses, the effect of which may be significant. Attached Financial Statements Please refer to the Form 10-Q filing for the complete financial statements and related notes. VERISK ANALYTICS, INC.CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (UNAUDITED)As of June 30, 2026 and December 31, 2025 VERISK ANALYTICS, INC.CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (UNAUDITED)For the Three Months Ended June 30, 2026 and 2025 VERISK ANALYTICS, INC.CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (UNAUDITED)For the Three Months Ended June 30, 2026 and 2025 Non-GAAP Reconciliations Organic Revenues Reconciliation($ in millions)Note: Organic revenues are a non-GAAP measure. Consolidated EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA Margin, and Organic Adjusted EBITDA Reconciliation($ in millions)Note: EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and organic adjusted EBITDA are non-GAAP measures. Margin is calculated as a percentage of revenues. Consolidated Adjusted EBITDA Expense Reconciliation($ in millions)Note: Adjusted EBITDA expenses are a non-GAAP measure. Adjusted Net Income and Diluted Adjusted EPS Reconciliation($ in millions, except per share amounts)Note: Diluted adjusted EPS is a non-GAAP measure. CONTACT: Investor Relations Stacey Brodbar Head of Investor Relations Verisk  201-469-4327  [email protected] Media Alberto Canal Verisk Public Relations 201-469-2618 [email protected]