直覺電腦 (INTU) 2020 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon. My name is Latif, and I will be your conference facilitator. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Intuit's Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2020 Conference Call. (Operator Instructions)

With that, I'll now turn the call over to Kim Watkins, Intuit's Vice President of Investor Relations. Ms. Watkins?

Thanks, Latif. Good afternoon, and welcome to Intuit's Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2020 Conference Call. I'm here with Intuit's CEO, Sasan Goodarzi; and Michelle Clatterbuck, our CFO.

Before we start, I'd like to remind everyone that our remarks will include forward-looking statements. There are a number of factors that could cause Intuit's results to differ materially from our expectations. You can learn more about these risks in the press release we issued earlier this afternoon, our Form 10-K for fiscal 2019 and our other SEC filings. All of those documents are available on the Investor Relations page of Intuit's website at intuit.com. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statement.

Some of the numbers in these remarks are presented on a non-GAAP basis. We've reconciled the comparable GAAP and non-GAAP numbers in today's press release. Unless otherwise noted, all growth rates refer to the current period versus the comparable prior year period, and the business metrics and associated growth rates refer to worldwide business metrics. A copy of our prepared remarks and supplemental financial information will be available on our website after this call ends.

And with that, I'll turn the call over to Sasan.

Thanks, Kim. Thanks to all of you for joining us today. I hope you're all safe and well.

We had a very strong fourth quarter, capping off a dynamic fiscal year 2020. Full year revenue were 13%, and operating margin expanded. Total revenue growth was fueled by 15% growth in the Small Business and Self-Employed Group, and 13% growth in the Consumer Group. QBO and TTO platform revenue totaled $4.8 billion in fiscal year 2020, growing 22% year-over-year. With our AI-driven expert platform strategy and the focus on our 5 big bets, we're building momentum and accelerating innovation in the current environment, which we believe positions us well for durable growth in the future.

Since we just finished tax season, let's start there. This tax season was like no other, and our team delivered a strong season in uncertain environment by executing on our strategy of expanding our lead in the do-it-yourself category, transforming the assisted category and disrupting consumer finance.

Based on our estimates, excluding stimulus filings of approximately $7 million to $8 million, the do-it-yourself category share grew over 2 points this season. We grew our share of total returns and posted 11% customer growth, the strongest in 4 years, while growing revenue double digits for the third year in a row. We grew the base of customers paying us nothing just over 20%, posted double-digit growth of new customers across underpenetrated segments, including Latinx, self-employed and customers with investments, and grew TurboTax Live customers nearly 70%.

Now turning to Small Business. Revenue for the Small Business and Self-Employed Group grew 16% in the fourth quarter and 15% for the year. Online Ecosystem revenue grew 29% in the fourth quarter, including 4 points of nonrecurring revenue from the Paycheck Protection Program and 31% for the year. We are seeing the resiliency of our platform following a dip in demand earlier this year when shelter in place shut down many small businesses. We're now seeing recovering trends across our platform, including improved retention rates, payments volume and employees paid with our payroll offerings, as customers continue to allow on QuickBooks as the source of truth for their business. With that said, there remains a great deal of uncertainty in the market, particularly for small businesses, as the pandemic continues to run its course.

Next, I'll turn to the progress of our AI-driven expert platform strategy and how we are executing against our 5 big bets. These big bets focus on the largest problems our customers face and represent durable growth opportunities for Intuit. I will cover big bet #1 last as it accelerates innovation across our platform and is foundational to the other bets.

Big bet #2 is connect people to experts. One of the largest problems our customers face is lack of confidence to do their own taxes and to manage their business. We're connecting customers to experts on our platform to solve this problem with TurboTax Live and QuickBooks Live, allowing us to reach more customers, deepen our engagement and grow ARPC.

Within TurboTax Live, we had a terrific season. The number of TurboTax Live customers grew nearly 70%. We provided new ways for customers to access an expert throughout the filing process, contributing to first-year retention and conversion rates increasing several points. And almost 70% of new TurboTax customers who use our Live offering came from an assisted method the prior year, a higher percentage than TurboTax Online. For experts on our platform, we saw higher satisfaction scores and lower attrition as we focus on improving the expert experience.

For QuickBooks Live, we're proud of the progress we've made this year, building on the virtual expert platform we created for TurboTax Live. With the rapid adoption of virtual solutions, we continue to see encouraging early signs for QuickBooks Live as we further develop the offering with a higher percentage than expected of customers upgrading to a monthly subscription from our setup offering we introduced in January.

Our third big bet is to unlock smart money decisions by connecting customers with financial offerings that help put more money in their pockets. In its third season, we more than doubled monthly active use for Turbo and increased customer retention rates as we grew registered users by 8 million to 22 million. This suggests customers are finding value from our recently introduced innovations, such as refund tracking and bill setting. We expect our pending acquisition of Credit Karma to be more important than ever in this challenging environment as we work to help consumers save money, get out of debt and have faster access to money. We continue to expect the transaction to close the second half of calendar year 2020.

Our fourth big bet is to become the center of small business growth by helping our customers get paid fast, manage capital, pay employees with confidence and grow in an omnichannel world.

We recently launched QuickBooks Cash, a small business bank account that provides full visibility into small businesses' current and future financial picture, with the ability to move money instantly and to ensure this money is working for them while leveraging the built-in accounting capabilities of QuickBooks. The Cash account earns an attractive interest rate, enables small businesses to set aside funds for upcoming expenses and envelopes and comes with a debit card. It's fully integrated with QuickBooks Payments and Payroll, enabling a small business to pay a worker or vendor the same day they receive the funds from a customer. It also includes an integrated cash flow planner to predict future cash needs. We're very excited to learn fast and scale this new innovation.

We continue to support our small business customers by helping them access the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, through QuickBooks Capital. As of July 31, Intuit helped make available just over $1.2 billion of approved small business loans to customers. We've helped approximately 37,000 small businesses access loans, with an average loan of nearly $38,000, keeping over 220,000 employees on payrolls.

Finally, following the announced acquisition of TradeGecko's robust inventory and order management system, we look forward to sharing more with you at Investor Day about how we will integrate these capabilities into QuickBooks to help small businesses manage and grow in an omnichannel environment.

Our fifth big bet is to disrupt the small business mid-market with QuickBooks Online Advanced, designed to address the needs of small businesses with 10 to 100 employees. Throughout the last year, we introduced features to help customers individually tailor the offerings to their needs, including workflow automation, build your own dashboard, custom fields for expense transactions and batch invoicing and payments. We also continue to work closely with partners to establish deeper integrations with premium apps, with the goal to save our customers' time by personalizing the offering and improving their experience. Now more than ever, a simple, flexible cloud offering is needed by mid-market customers at a disruptive price.

Let me wrap up our big bets by circling back to big bet #1, which is our foundational bet to revolutionize speed to benefit for our customers. Our goal is to put more money in our customers' pockets, eliminate friction and deliver confidence at every touch point by using AI and customer insight.

Here are a couple of examples of the progress that we're making. First, we accelerated use of AI and increased the number of models deployed across our platform by over 50% this year. This increased use of AI drove a variety of customer benefits including saving customers 25,000 hours with self-help and cutting expert review time in half, improving customer confidence.

Second, we completed the migration of our data centers to the cloud while expanding our core technology capabilities. This enabled us to decrease downtime by 30%, triple the speed of delivery on our modern development platform and increased mobile application deployments by 60%. We can now launch new features in a fraction of the time it once took and deliver customer benefit with even greater speed.

As I shared earlier, we believe the current environment is acting as an accelerant to these bets. Most everyone is looking for virtual solutions. Small businesses are accelerating their shift to online and omnichannel commerce. And both consumers and small businesses are looking for ways to put more money in their pockets.

To wrap up, I am incredibly proud of our accomplishments this year. We remain focused on what matters most to our customers and what we can control during this time of uncertainty.

Now let me hand it over to Michelle.

Thanks, Sasan. Good afternoon, everyone. We are successfully executing on the principles we laid out last quarter for operating in a downturn. These principles are designed to accelerate our execution and help both our customers and Intuit emerge from a downturn stronger than ever.

Let me now turn to our results. As a reminder, fourth quarter reflects -- fourth quarter results reflect a shift of a significant portion of tax filings out of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter.

For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2020, we delivered revenue of $1.8 billion, GAAP operating income of $483 million versus a loss of $153 million last year, non-GAAP operating income of $616 million versus a loss of $47 million last year, GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.68 versus a loss per share of $0.17 a year ago and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.81 versus a loss per share of $0.09 last year.

Turning to the business segments. Consumer Group revenue grew 13% in fiscal 2020. TurboTax units grew 11%, and our retention rate increased again this year for our online tax customers.

There are 4 primary drivers in our Consumer business. The first is the total number of returns filed with the IRS. Based on the latest IRS data through July 24, we estimate total returns, including paper filings, grew 3% to 4%. This excludes approximately $7 million to $8 million stimulus-only filings.

The second is the percentage of those returns filed using do-it-yourself software. Excluding stimulus-only filings, we estimate category share grew over 2 points this season, the fastest pace in 15 years. As a reminder, DIY category growth is our largest revenue growth lever.

The third driver is our share within DIY. Excluding stimulus-only filings, we estimate our share of total tax returns grew over 1.5 points, and our share of the category was flat.

The fourth is average revenue per return, which increased again this season. The growth reflects the stronger contribution by TurboTax Live and minor price increases in the Premier product and state attach.

Turning to the Strategic Partner Group. We reported $493 million of professional tax revenue in fiscal 2020, up 4%.

In the Small Business and Self-Employed Group, revenue grew 16% during the quarter and 15% in fiscal 2020 including nonrecurring PPP revenue. Excluding PPP, Small Business and Self-Employed Group revenue grew 13% during the quarter and 14% in fiscal 2020, reflecting the impact of the pandemic on small businesses.

Online Ecosystem revenue remained resilient with growth of 29% during the quarter and 31% during the year including nonrecurring PPP revenue. Excluding PPP, online ecosystem revenue grew 25% in fiscal Q4, and 30% in fiscal 2020.

Our strategic focus within Small Business and Self-Employed is to grow the core, connect the ecosystem and expand globally. Last quarter, I shared recent business trends, and I'd like to update you on those same trends compared to pre-COVID levels in the first half of the third quarter.

First, we continue to focus on growing the core. QuickBooks Online accounting revenue grew 34% in fiscal Q4, driven mainly by customer growth, higher effective prices and, to a lesser extent, mix shift. During the fourth quarter, QBO new customer acquisition accelerated by approximately 10 points versus the second half of the third quarter but is still down 5 points from pre-COVID levels. Retention within the existing customer base improved during Q4, but full year QBO retention is down 2 points to 77%.

Second, we continue to focus on connecting the ecosystem. Online services revenue grew 21% in fiscal Q4, driven by payments, PPP loans, payroll and time tracking. Excluding nonrecurring PPP revenue, online services revenue grew 12%.

Within payroll, we continue to see revenue tailwinds during the quarter from a mix shift to our full-service offering. The number of workers paid was roughly flat year-over-year in the fourth quarter, improving from a 10% year-over-year decrease during the second half of the third quarter but still 20 points below pre-COVID levels.

Similarly, the number of companies running payroll grew approximately 10% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, improving from flat year-over-year in the second half of the third quarter. This is still 5 points below pre-COVID levels.

Within payments, revenue growth reflects continued customer growth along with an increase in charge volume per customer. Payment charge volume grew 15% in the fourth quarter, improving from flat year-over-year in the second half of the third quarter. This is still 15 points below pre-COVID levels.

Third, our progress expanding globally added to the growth of Online Ecosystem revenue during fiscal Q4. Total international online revenue grew 31%, reflecting subscriber and ARPC growth earlier in the fiscal year.

Desktop Ecosystem revenue was up 3% in the fourth quarter and roughly flat for the year. Excluding nonrecurring PPP revenue, Desktop Ecosystem revenue was flat in the fourth quarter. The decline in desktop units moderated in the fourth quarter, and QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise revenue grew mid-single digits.

Intuit helped facilitate more than $1.2 billion in small business loans from the Paycheck Protection Program through QuickBooks Capital. This resulted in approximately $30 million in nonrecurring revenue in the fourth quarter.

Turning to our financial principles. We remain committed to growing organic revenue double digits and growing operating income dollars faster than revenue. We take a disciplined approach to capital management, investing the cash we generate in opportunities that yield an expected return on investment greater than 15%. We continue to focus on reallocating resources to top priorities with an emphasis on becoming an AI-driven expert platform. These principles remain our long-term commitment, though we recognize that we may not be able to achieve them in the current environment.

During the fourth quarter, we refocused our investments to ensure our capabilities are aligned against our AI-driven expert platform strategy and big bets. This resulted in the departure of over 700 employees and a onetime charge of $43 million in both GAAP and non-GAAP results. We plan to hire about 700 employees in our most strategic areas, including systems, full stack and data engineering, data science, customer success and sales.

Turning back to our financial principles. Our first priority for the cash we generate is investing in the business to drive customer and revenue growth. We consider acquisitions to accelerate our growth and fill out our product road map. We return excess cash that we can't invest profitably in the business to shareholders via both share repurchases and dividends. We finished the quarter with approximately $7.1 billion in cash and investments on our balance sheet.

In June, we issued $2 billion in senior notes to fund a portion of the Credit Karma acquisition and for other general corporate purposes. These notes carry a blended coupon rate of 1.15%. Following the end of the quarter, we repaid the $1 billion balance on our revolver.

We did not repurchase any stock during the fourth quarter as we have temporarily suspended share purchases in conjunction with the Credit Karma acquisition. We have approximately $2.4 billion remaining on our authorization, and we expect to be in the market in the future.

The Board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.59 per share, payable October 19, 2020. This represents an 11% increase versus last year.

Looking ahead to fiscal 2021. While we are not providing company-level guidance today, reflecting uncertainty in small business trends, we believe the current environment accelerated our consumer results this season, creating a more challenging comparison for next year.

We see several scenarios for how the economic recovery may impact our Small Business performance and that we are considering as we run the business. The first scenario is that the pace of economic recovery continues at its current pace, reaching normalized growth in the spring of 2021. Under this scenario, we could see Small Business and Self-Employed Group revenue grow high single digits.

The second scenario is a more gradual opening of the economy, including ongoing headwinds from small business failures. This W-shaped recovery assumes cases increase during the winter months, coinciding with our peak season in the U.S. Under this scenario, we could see Small Business and Self-Employed Group revenue grow mid-single digits.

The third scenario is a choppy recovery and more than one wave of small business failures or shutdowns, creating a double W-shaped recovery. Under this scenario, we could see Small Business and Self-Employed Group revenue flat to up low single digits.

In addition, we expect slower Small Business and Self-Employed revenue growth in the first half as compared to the second half of fiscal 2021. We supported customers during the second half of 2020 by delaying price increases, migration to our new payroll offerings and upgrades to QBO Advanced.

As a reminder, we began rolling out a QBO price increase in first quarter of fiscal 2020, and we'll start lapping the full impact of that increase in the second quarter of fiscal 2021. Keep in mind that there's also a lagging impact to QuickBooks Online accounting revenue from the slower customer acquisition and higher attrition we experienced during third quarter.

To reiterate, our long-term expectations include revenue growth of 8% to 12% for the Consumer Group and 10% to 15% for the Small Business and Self-Employed Group. We continue to expect Online Ecosystem revenue growth of more than 30% longer term. Lastly, we expect the GAAP and non-GAAP tax rate of 23% for fiscal 2021.

And with that, I'll turn it back over to Sasan.

Great. Thanks, Michelle. I'm very proud of the team and all that we've accomplished together in fiscal year 2020. We're uniquely positioned to make a positive impact on the world as our mission has never been more meaningful than now: to power prosperity around the world.

I look forward to sharing with you how our strategy of an AI-driven expert platform and our 5 big bets are accelerating innovation at our Virtual Investor Day on September 23.

Let's now open it up to your questions.

(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Brad Zelnick of Crédit Suisse.

Excellent. Congrats on a really strong finish to the year. Sasan, I wanted to get your take on some recent forecasts that have been made by the IRS that there would be about 37 million fewer W-2 employee-classified jobs in 2021 with this lower level of employment persisting through 2027. And they also see fewer filings of 1099 forms and about 1.6 million more gig workers. So number one, how important or accurate do you think these forecasts are? And two, does this reality or environment impact how you'll be thinking about the medium-term growth algorithm of the tax business, especially as it relates to overall filings?

Sure. Thanks, Brad. I hope all is well with you, my friend. So let me -- I'm aware of the stats. Maybe if I can just touch on history and touch on how we think about the future. If I take us back to the recession in 2008 and the way that played out in '08 and '09, what we in essence saw with filings that were kind of flat to down just a little bit. And so even in very tough times, you saw a general flat environment when it came to a number of filings. Now these times are a bit different than '08 and '09, but history is always important to look at.

When we look ahead, a couple of things. One is unemployment was very low at the beginning of this fiscal year, and unemployment also gets taxed. And so when we think about 2021 and beyond, they're maybe -- the filings may be down a bit, or they're maybe close to flat. It does not at all change our strategic focus. And just as a refresher, we're really focused on expanding our lead in the do-it-yourself category. There's still a massive opportunity that I believe we're just getting started in transforming the assisted category. And so when you look at our penetration in the assisted category, when you look at the opportunity we still have in expanding the do-it-yourself category, we believe that the long-term expectations of what we've set around 8% to 12% Consumer Group revenue growth still stands. But that's how we think about the couple of years that are upcoming given the number of folks that are unemployed.

And Michelle, if I could just follow-up with you on your comments about a difficult compare and tax into this year, specifically, if we think about the very strong penetration and growth in TTO. Is it fair to say that investors should expect slowing of the penetration rate just because -- I mean this year seems to have been clearly a perfect storm if anybody were to enter the category and especially to try TTO. How are you thinking about that?

Brad, I hope you're doing well, too. I would say a couple of things. I mean what Sasan just said applies to your question. Our strategic focus is not changing. We continue to focus on expanding our lead in DIY and also transforming assisted with the TurboTax Live product. There may have been some -- a little bit more of a challenge this year, more people filing from home. But we think that there's just a large opportunity for us to continue to focus on our strategy of bringing folks into the category and bringing folks into TurboTax Live. We're really proud of the progress we made this year with the 70% increase in customers. And we do believe that we will continue to build on the tailwinds from this year.

Thank you so much...

Yes, one thing I would add -- oh, sorry, Brad. Just one thing I would add that's complementary to what Michelle just shared, the facts are always friendly, right? And when you think about those 86 million folks that are in the assisted category, it's a $20 billion TAM, and this is now heading into our sort of fourth year in transforming the category. We've not really even hit the inflection point of what's possible. So just -- it's an important reminder that we're in the early days of transforming the assisted category.

Your next question comes from the line of Ken Wong of Guggenheim Securities.

Great. This first question is for you, Sasan. In the past, you've mentioned e-commerce as being a top priority. You guys made the acquisition of TradeGecko earlier. Just wondering kind of where we are in terms of that particular strategy. Anything else that needs to be tacked on here? Just would love to get some color on kind of how you're envisioning that part of your business, especially with the shift to e-commerce so evident this year.

Sure. Ken, I hope you're doing well. In terms of the question around e-commerce, I think the place I would start is one of the company's 5 big bets is about being the center of small business growth with a particular focus on transforming omnichannel commerce. And the biggest thing that we have found in our Follow-Me-Homes and the tests that we've run this past year is, for our customers, it's actually quite easy to launch on new channels, whether it's Etsy, whether it's Instagram, whether it's Facebook, Amazon. The biggest challenge they have is they actually choke their growth because they really lose sight of which customers are coming from which channels, the profitability, the connection to their inventory and, ultimately, fulfillment. So the worst thing for a small business, particularly the ones that we serve, is not being able to fulfill an order.

So really, our focus is to truly be an agnostic open platform to partner with the channels that are out there, again, the ones that I mentioned, also partner with those that provide websites and also the POS providers while really focusing on the core of what matters most to our customers and our core competency, which is around helping customers -- our customers with understanding the profitability by channel, connecting into inventory. And so our acquisition of TradeGecko is, I think, a huge first step -- and we'll share what we're launching at Investor Day -- that really focuses on inventory and order management and allows our customers to really take control of the thing that right now they don't have control of to give them the confidence to then open up across other channels.

And so we'll not only share what we are launching at Investor Day, but we'll also reiterate the vision and where we're headed and what you can expect from us in the years to come. But this is a really important first step given all the work that we've done in the last year to be positioned to go after the, I would say, the highest-order problem that our customers say.

Okay. Perfect. And then, Michelle, a quick question for you. You gave us a rough sense of what the PPP impact was on revenue. Just wondering if you could maybe give us a sense of how that might have impacted margins and earnings just so we make sure that we don't kind of rattle through profitability that might be more onetime-ish.

Thanks, Ken. Yes. We're really proud of the work that the team did: utilizing our platform and our modern technology to be able to turn so quickly to provide a $1.2 billion in access to PPP loans for our small business customers in such a rough environment. As for margins, I would say, we really do manage our margins at the company level, and that's really how we think about this $30 million of revenue.

Also, I would tell you that given the environment, the tightening of credit that we had done, this was really more of a trade-off for the QuickBooks Capital team and really putting the majority of their focus on PPP versus extending credit through QuickBooks Capital.

Our next question comes from the line of Alex Zukin of RBC.

This is Robert Simmons on for Alex. So you kind of hinted at this, but with the acquisition, can you talk about what else you need to do to deliver on your omnichannel plans?

Yes, Robert. Sure. I think the way you ought to think about it is when you put yourself in the shoes of a small business, there's a few things that they need to be able to do. They, depending on their products, may want to get set up on what we call the mega channels. Again, it could be the walmart.com, Etsy, Amazon, Instagram. They may want to be able to also have their own store setup. They may want to ensure that they have a POS provider to be able to transact with customers in a physical world.

But then they also need to be able to manage all of their finances. They need to understand the profitability of their customers. It's got to be connected to inventories so inventory can automatically remind them that they're about to run out of inventory and to order more and to be able to fulfill their orders on time and so shipment and delivery on time; and also ensuring that their accounting is done right, that they're compliant; and if they need access to money and loans, that they have that ability. And in that context of making sure -- when you think about our platform, we've really been positioned over the years to deliver for service-based businesses. And this is an area where we believe we have a right to win to deliver product-based -- for our product-based businesses when it comes to financial compliance.

So right now, our initial focus is really just nailing order management and inventory management. It's actually critical to ensuring that our customers have the confidence they can fulfill orders and actually understand their profitability while we then establish partnerships beyond that with some of the channels that I mentioned, the POS providers and even some of the website builders. We truly want to be an open, agnostic platform to focus on the problems that matter most. And we believe an open platform is necessary to be able to ensure that customers have choice in how they choose to run their business.

So initial focus is inventory and order management. And this is really about rapid testing, experimentation and scaling what works well, and that's the way we're thinking about it.

Got it. Great. That makes sense. And then you also talk about what you've seen in terms of retention so far. Is this the area -- well, it's only been not quite 4 weeks, but kind of have you seen it stabilize or has improved? And what are you expecting going forward?

Yes. We have -- as you heard Michelle talk to, we have experienced really all of our key trends improve. And retention, specific to your question, has improved from what we talked about last quarter. We do expect that it will be down approximately 2 points for the year, but we have seen an improvement over the last quarter.

And I think more broadly, I would say that being the source of truth for our customers' business has always been the case. But I think this pandemic has actually even made us more relevant because the shift to online, whether it's payments, payroll, accounting, compliance, has just become even more critical than it was 4, 5 months ago. And so that, over time, may actually even impact retention more so, but we expect to be down 2 points for the year. And again, the trends have improved.

Our next question comes from Siti Panigrahi of Mizuho.

Congratulations on a great quarter. Just want to ask you, Sasan, on your big bet #2, about connecting experts with Live platform. First on the TurboTax Live, I think the question would be retaining those Live customer, although it's too hard to say at this point. But could you share what kind of Net Promoter Score or any kind of feedback that your experts got from those new customer? That would be helpful.

Yes, sure. Good to hear from you, Siti, and thank you for your kind words. We're really proud of the progress in TurboTax Live. Just as a reminder, one of the biggest things that we learned last year is we needed to really improve the first-time experience and the first-use experience for our customers. We needed to make sure that they had really access to an expert throughout the offering and actually reminding them that they have an access to an expert along the way; and on the other side, making the experience just really drop-dead easy for our experts, making sure that at the fingertips of our experts is insight for our customers so the moment they engage them, whether through chat or through video, that they can resolve their issue. Because this is really -- this is a digital platform, and it's a service offering, so the expert plays such a critical role in the experience.

And I would tell you that across the board, the metrics that we look at, our retention, conversion, it's PRS, product recommendation score, for both the customer that is using the platform and also the expert. Because the happier the expert is, the more they feel like they can solve the customer's problem, the higher, in essence, recommendation score that they give. And then we also look at efficiency. Are they effectively able to solve the customer's problem? And across the board, across every metric, it's been up and to the right. And so we have a lot of confidence. We're better this year than we were last year, and I have every bit of confidence we'll be better a year from now.

But across all those key metrics, we significantly improved and so I would just expect our momentum and the kind of obsessive focus that our employees have on our customers to deliver better experiences both for our customers and for our experts. But that's a little bit of a snapshot as to the progress that we've made, up and to the right on all the key metrics.

And a quick follow-up on the QBO side. It's actually surprising to see that 10-point acceleration of new customer acquisition. So this is your full quarter of the pandemic impact. I'm wondering what's driving that new customer growth at this point, although it's still below pre-COVID level. Or is it more people realized the complexity of PPP or any other driver? That will be helpful.

Yes. One of the things that we have seen, and we're fortunate that our big bets are the core of the shift, which is we're seeing more and more folks shift to a virtual world. We're seeing more and more folks want to shift to online solutions and omnichannel solutions. And then third is money matters more than ever, whether you're a consumer, self-employed or a small business.

And I think the thing that we are experiencing, although, to your good point that we're not at pre-COVID level yet -- levels yet, is I think customers are seeing that using our cloud offering gives them the ability to be able to engage with customers in the cloud can help them avoid interaction in the physical world, higher usage of payments and payroll, potentially, over time and, frankly, being compliant because a lot of customers realized if they weren't compliant, it was hard for them to get access to loans.

So I think this environment has just -- we're seeing that shift to the cloud. And I think that's why we've seen an acceleration in our acquisition compared to where we were just a quarter ago, although still below the pre-COVID levels.

Our next question comes from Kirk Materne of Evercore ISI.

Sasan, I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit on the Small Business side. Just how sensitive are customers to pricing changes right now given the economic backdrop? And I guess, how does that influence your strategy around maybe some of your higher-value products like QBO Live and QBO Advanced as you go into fiscal '21? Just trying to get a sense on does the macro dynamic have an influence on your strategy around that.

Sure, Kurt. Good to hear from you, and I hope you're safe and well. Particularly, in the area that you asked the question, we're actually the low-cost alternative, both with QuickBooks Live and QuickBooks Advanced. When you look at QuickBooks Advanced, first of all, this is one of the teams that's just innovating at a very rapid pace to ensure that our mid-market customers have all the capabilities that they need to be able to run their business, whether it's something we built or other apps that our partners build on our platform, but at a very disruptive price. So I would say in some ways, QuickBooks Advanced becomes even more attractive than otherwise in this current environment because we're the low-cost provider.

And I would say the same thing for QuickBooks Live. These are folks that ultimately come to us that have been using -- bookkeepers and accountants, and they're very dialed into what they've been paying. And they really come to us because of the experience that they've had potentially with their bookkeepers and accountants, whereas we have a set of standards around what we expect in terms of experience that our bookkeepers need to deliver for our customers. And so in that case, we also tend to be the low-cost provider. And so we become even more attractive in an environment like this.

So that's the way we think about pricing. We believe that in these 2 areas, we are actually probably more attractive a choice than others.

Okay. And then just the second question for me would be just in the SMB area -- sort of area of your business. Any major changes in what you're seeing in terms of either customer acquisition or retention rate when you think about the U.S. versus some of your smaller regions, the U.K., international regions? I was just wondering if you're seeing real differences in -- from a geographic perspective.

Sure. Absolutely. From a geographic perspective, I would say the U.S. is probably holding up the strongest, probably next followed by Canada and then the U.K. But I would say U.S. has held up the strongest. And I think a lot of it just has to do with the nature of how the health crisis is being managed than how open the economy is because all these small businesses have one common need across the world. They're passionate about what they do, and it's the way they earn their living. But with that said, U.S. has been the strongest.

And of course, from the trends perspective, as you heard from Michelle, we have seen across the board our trends improve and now stabilized. They're not at pre-COVID levels, but I would say a solid improvement just in the last 3 months as the economy has opened up a bit.

Our next question comes from the line of Brent Thill of Jefferies.

Sasan, just following up on Kurt's comments on SMB. I guess you've seen such a surge in the front office with CRM, Wix, a number of the companies doing extremely well. And I think part of the logic many investors are following is that, inevitably, companies have to turn back to the back office to innovate. And if you're driving all this online traffic, you've got to drive the back office as well. And more around kind of the shape of the recovery. And do you believe that you can benefit from the surge you're seeing in the front office that, that is an indication that it's good signs for your SMB business going forward? And maybe if you could just highlight where you think the biggest opportunities are.

Yes. Sure, Brett. Good to hear from you. And again, hope you're safe and well. First of all, I would start with the point you made, which is exactly right. At the end of the day, getting a store set up to be able to do business, you have to be able to accept payments. You have to -- if you want to hire contractors or full-time employees, you have to use payroll. Especially if you're a younger, smaller business, you need access to loans. And so -- and then you need to make sure that you're compliant. And so that's where all of our services come in and why they -- why even in this environment, as we look ahead, our services become even more critical to ensure a customer can be organized, get paid and run their business profitability.

So with that as context, I think the second context I would just bring up is it is remarkable how resilient our platform and business model is. I mean you saw what happened last quarter when we talked about some of the trends and how the trends had kind of fallen off given, that we shut down the economy in the U.S. and how they have bounced back. Again, also not at pre-COVID levels, but they bounced back.

And so really to, I think, the second part of your question, the way we're thinking about the future is in context of what you heard from Michelle. If the economy continues on the track that it's on and gets to normalized levels in spring of 2021, as long as small businesses are able to do business, I think our platform is going to benefit. So a lot of our performance, because the platform is resilient, the business model is resilient, it's -- more than ever, it's times like this when customers need our platform. I think a lot of it will just depend on how the economy opens up.

Because we're in the cloud, we have capabilities in the cloud, and our customers need our capabilities. Plus, we're an agnostic platform. We believe the way you deliver for customers is to have partnerships with all these key players, and I just think that advantages our network. But that's the way we think about it.

Our next question comes from the line of Keith Weiss of Morgan Stanley.

This is Mark Rende on for Keith Weiss. Congrats on the strong results. I just wanted to ask, you discussed the TurboTax share within the -- in the DIY category was flat year-over-year compared to prior year's TurboTax gain share. So what are you seeing in the competitive environment and just like the competitive intensity in the DIY online filing market?

Yes. Very good question. And it's actually -- we think about the category very differently now than we did 4 to 5 years ago. And for us, it's about the entire category of filers, and not just about the do-it-yourself category. Because it's just -- if I could refresh us on the fact, the do-it-yourself category is about $3 billion in TAM. The assisted category is about $20 billion in TAM. And of course, what we've declared is disrupting consumer finance is north of $55 million in TAM. And so for us, what's most important is the share that we have in the entire category. And so we are very, very pleased with the fact that our share of the entire category is up 1.5 points. And that is really how we measure success, and that is really our goal line because when you think about the dollar share of the do-it-yourself category, we have the majority of the share we're focused on the assisted category where there's $20 billion of opportunity for us.

Got it. That's really helpful. And then maybe one quick one. Just in terms of -- it's been asked a couple of times but asked slightly differently. Have you seen a change in kind of the profile of new QuickBooks subscribers, maybe post-COVID versus pre-COVID? Like for instance, has there been uptick in kind of acquisitions with QuickBooks Self-Employed? And kind of if so, like, what kind of impact could that have on ARPC moving forward?

So a couple of things I would say. One is it is inspirational and remarkable how resilient small businesses are and how they are looking to adjust how they can still serve their customers. And I would just say that's an uber point where if one door shut for them, they open up another door to figure out if there's a different way to serve their customers. So that's really important to recognize, that as long as they can manage their cash flow, they're going to find other ways to be able to serve their customers, which really gets to the second point, and that is, I think they're -- it's become very apparent, one, how meaningful and relevant we are in this environment to help our customers operate in the cloud. If there was an element of, well, I can just manage through multiple different -- use paper and pen and my bookkeeper to run my business, I think people are now seeing, "Hey, you know what? I can be far more effective invoicing and getting paid instantly, being able to do payroll and ensure that I'm accurate in my payroll so I'm not paying penalties or ensuring that I'm organized so I understand my cash flow," especially with a lot of the launches that we talked about with our QuickBooks Cash and Cash Flow Planner to be effective.

So I think what you're seeing is I have an opportunity to be much more effective and efficient with my cash flow using Intuit's platform in the cloud. And the resiliency of our small businesses just finding new and unique ways to do business is why we're -- I think experienced the bounce back relative to last quarter, again, reminding us, though, that they are still not at the pre-COVID levels.

Our next question comes from Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer.

Yes, it was a really strong quarter in Consumer. I'm curious, kind of the high-level question is, how should we think about margin in that segment going forward? I see it was down about 100 bps year-over-year for the full year. And I'm guessing, if you could elaborate, you got some nice leverage in TurboTax Live, staffing, getting more efficient there. And clearly, you got good volume growth and revenue per return growth. But I know you spent a little higher marketing in the fiscal fourth quarter just due to the change in the year and then a lot more Free File Alliance clients this year. You addressed the percentage of folks that you serve free. So just if you could address how we would think about that going longer-term and maybe some of the puts and takes in the quarter -- or in the year, rather.

Sure. Yes. Sure, Scott. Good to hear from you. I hope you're well. I would focus on the fact that we truly manage investments and margins at the company level. What really matters most is that we delivered 13% revenue and 17% operating income, both GAAP and non-GAAP, and EPS grew to 16%. And so our leverage is more and more at the company level because we are truly more and more building services across our platform at the company level. And so margin levels moving up or down a point, I wouldn't get overly excited about at the segment level because of the fact that we're making our investment choices -- the way we're running the company is more and more as a platform across the company.

So I would really look at company-level performance and not just segment level performance because of how we're making our investment choices. And we're getting a lot of leverage because of the way we're doing it.

Okay. And on a follow-up, it's kind of a two-parter, and I'm not sure how much you're going to address. But your main tax competitor mentioned that they'd probably leave or almost definitively would leave the Free File Alliance going forward. I'm just curious your take on that program. And obviously, you addressed the free customers you serve this year.

And then also with Credit Karma, there are tax customers in that. Just any comments about that and the deal that you could comment on.

Sure. Absolutely. So let me just first share with you the objectives that we have that we've shared in previous years when it comes to taxes: One is we're a big believer in voluntary tax. Two, we're a big believer that those that are deserving, whether it's income levels and military, that we want to make sure that they can get their taxes done for free, and in some cases, it could be through philosophy. And last but not least is we always want to enhance our reputation. So that's kind of one bucket of objectives to think about.

The second is our strategy, and it's very much intertwined. When we talk about the notion of expanding our lead in the do-it-yourself category, transforming the assisted category and disrupting consumer finance, a core part of our strategy is actually for those that deserve it, to give them the ability to do their taxes for free because, over time, they can not only grow with us, but also we can solve other problems beyond tax.

So that's the way we think about our strategy, that's the way we think about our innovation, and we are very dedicated to helping those that deserve it most to get their taxes done for free. So that's the -- that's -- those are the things that ultimately inform how we think about FFA.

Our next question comes from Sterling Auty of JPmorgan.

I wonder if you could remind us, what portion of the QuickBooks users also are using payroll at this point? In other words, what visibility do you have in terms of the potential of impending business closures and when that kind of headwind might peak and start to subside for you?

Yes, Sterling. Thank you for the question. First of all, we don't break out what the percentage of our base is that uses payroll. But what I would share is some of the stats -- take you back to some of the stats that Michelle shared, which is we've actually seen a nice bounce back of companies, in essence, running payroll. It's still below pre-COVID levels, but we've seen a nice bounce back. They have less employees, but the number of companies running payroll has bounced back nicely. I think that's one indication that we look at.

I think the broader indication that we look at is really cash flow. And when we look at across our base -- and remember, 70% of our base of service-based businesses. Whether it's real estate, landscaping, bookkeeping, computer and software, we look across who we serve, and we also look by state, which is very different. We're seeing a nice bounce back in places like North Carolina, Georgia and New Jersey and Arizona. But on the other hand, states that are recovering slower are New York, California and Michigan, just to give a couple of examples.

And when we look across industries and across those states -- this is based on our own analysis of those that have connected to QuickBooks their bank accounts -- we see their bank averages could range from being down 10% to up towards of 20%. So what we really monitor is cash flow because that is ultimately the biggest indication as to whether or not they going to be able to make it through these times. And that is really what we're -- what some of the indicators that you heard Michelle talk to.

And then last but not least, we expect our retention to be down about 2 points this year given some of what we experienced with our customers being shut down.

Our next question comes from the line of Jennifer Lowe of UBS.

I just wanted to touch quickly on TurboTax Live. And you gave a stat earlier about the very strong adoption. You saw TurboTax Live within customers that had converted off of Pro this tax season. This season was obviously a very unusual one all around. But I'm curious if that uptake or that experience -- and you've always had sort of this weighting between increased retention of existing customers and not having them go to Pro versus pulling customers away from Pro. Does that give you any conviction that maybe it's -- there's more opportunity to put a marketing push behind getting customers away from Pro and onto TurboTax Live than maybe you would have thought before the season?

Yes, Jen, thank you for your question and hope you're well and safe. We have never lacked conviction around TurboTax Live. We believe that we are just at the beginning of really creating a platform that goes viral because the more people that do their taxes digitally with help coming to them in any frame that they need it, whether it's in their home or in their office, the more they're going to tell others and the more this will go viral. And I think as I've shared before, based on the research and work that we've done out of the 86 million folks that use an assisted method, about 70 million or so are willing to switch.

So our focus has been experimenting, learning, looking at our results both in terms of how we raise awareness, how we bring folks into consideration and then the experience that we deliver on the platform. And I would just tell you that a year later, we're a lot better than we were this time last year. Particularly this extended tax season, albeit we all wish it would have ended in April given the tax that it put on our employees, we were able to actually experiment for another 3 months. And so we ran a lot of test on our platform and both in terms of how to raise awareness but also how to really nail the experience when customers come in. And as I mentioned earlier, all of our metrics, conversion, retention, PRS for both customers and our experts were all up and to the right.

So based on what we learned this year, not just the results but, more importantly, the learnings, it actually gives us a lot more conviction what we need to do for this coming tax season and even beyond. And so we feel blessed with the insights and learnings, and we will absolutely be leaning in but not just because of our results. We've got a lot of conviction, but just because of our learnings, it allows us to be clear in terms of where we point our innovation.

Our next question comes from Michael Millman of Millman Research.

So do you believe that assuming businesses have a tough time going forward, virus continues, that many of those unemployed will turn to being self-employed and, in fact, yes, that your numbers will actually increase?

And also, on the tax, do you believe that people who've done their taxes at home this year are unlikely to switch back if, indeed, they are physically able to switch back?

Yes, Michael. Thank you for your question, and I also hope you are safe and well. Let me hit on 2 things. I mean, I think, one, what I would say, based on history, we know that we are a globe of entrepreneurs. And sometimes, it's not a passion for the idea that you have. Sometimes, it's because you need to figure out a way to create income. And so at the end of the day, we don't build our business on hoping that there will be a lot of SMB new starts. But certainly, an environment like this could be a trigger for new self-employed and small businesses, and we certainly want to be there for them the moment they have an idea and passion to pursue something. And as you heard from Michelle earlier, just a lot of it depends on just how we see the health crisis play out and, therefore, the impact on the economy.

On the tax side and your question about the experience that folks that may have gotten whether or not they would be unlikely to switch back to the old method. The thing that we have learned over the years, this isn't the first year that we have gotten a lot of our customers from the assisted segment. It all comes down to the experience and the confidence that they have in doing their taxes right, the confidence that they have in getting their maximum refund. And we feel good about the experience that we delivered this year for customers based on our product recommendation scores.

And so -- by the way, we also learned a lot in terms of what we need to do to continue to improve our platform. So we would hope that our retention rates play out next year the way they have in previous years, but it's primarily because of the type of experience that we delivered and, of course, this time next year will be far better in terms of the experiences that we will deliver than we are even now given our rapid testing and learning mindset.

So that's the way I would think about your 2 questions.

Our next question comes from the line of Michael Turrin of Wells Fargo.

We've touched on margin a few times, but we were impressed you were able to actually expand margin this year given the extended tax filing season even with the PPP offset. Was that within your own internal expectations given the spillover on the tax side? And is there any additional color you can add around whether that improvement could prove more durable as you continue to drive towards delivering higher value on both segments?

Yes, Michael. Thank you for your question. First of all, I would start with the principles that Michelle talked about earlier, and I'll just touch on a few of them as a starting point to answer your question because it is how we run the company. And ultimately, our principles are we want to grow revenue double digits, we want to grow operating income faster than revenue and we want to make sure that we get 15% return on our investments and ensure that we solve our customers' most important problems.

In that context, and you've heard Michelle and I talked about it in the last year, that we're really just continuing to be at the beginning of our platform journey. And that journey really means that we're going to continue to get better at building services once so that they can be reused across the company. You heard some of our metrics around 50% increase in the number of AI models we deployed this year, our velocity being up 3x compared to last year. That's on innovation, but that's also efficiency and effectiveness. And although we don't set out a specific goal of increasing operating margins because we want to make sure that we can simply deliver against the principle of operating income growing faster than revenue, I think the result of becoming more effective and efficient could suggest that, over time, our operating margin will expand.

And as you said yourself, we did actually spend more money in tax this year because of the extended season. It was both in marketing and customer success because we wanted to be there for our customers because, in essence, we had 2 tax seasons in 1. So we actually did spend more money. And as you saw, we expanded our operating margins because I think we're starting to see the leverage of our platform, and that was not by accident.

Our next question comes from the line of Josh Beck of KeyBanc.

I wanted to ask about QuickBooks Cash. It seems like an interesting extension of your services and really gets you a little bit more into banking and debit cards. So it's probably a little too early, I'm guessing, to talk about the adoption curves. But would love to hear just kind of your ambitions for this product and where it could go over a multiyear period.

Yes. Thank you for your question, Josh, and hope you are safe and well. The -- first of all, you said it. This is -- we're very, very early. We've been working on this for some time, but we're very early and -- but we're very excited. And I wouldn't think about QuickBooks Cash as a service. I would think about it as a very disruptive way for achieving this notion of truly being the source of truths for a customer's business. And just think about it in very simple terms of a place where you can receive and send money. And so when you do work for a customer and you invoice them, it automatically gets dumped into your QuickBooks Cash account where you can, in essence, have interest that you gain on your money, a place that you can just pay your employees right out of your QuickBooks Cash account, a place where you can buy inventory from your QuickBooks Cash account, a place where you can get access to capital from your from QuickBooks cash account. And by the way, while you're doing all that, because it's all happening in your QuickBooks Cash account, the accounting is actually getting done for you. And so you don't actually have to do a bunch of reconciliation.

That's really what we are focused on really creating in terms of a benefit for our customers. It's something that customers won't tell you that they need this, but when you really listen to what gets in their way, it's just kind of have something that everything gets done for me. And that's really the intent of QuickBooks Cash. We're just excited with the launch. We're excited to learn, to adjust, to test and to scale this very fast, and that's actually something we're going to talk about at our virtual gallery walk at Investor Day in September. So hopefully, that entices you to show up. It should be fun.

Yes. That's a great pitch there for the day, so excited about that. And just quickly on Live, the 70% growth -- or nearly 70% in customers seems like a really good result. So I'm just curious, was that ahead of plan? And anything that stood out there and maybe how we could think about the retention of Live customers from the prior season versus the kind of net new that you got this season?

Yes. I would tell you that, as a position we'd hold for Intuit, we always set very, very ambitious goals for ourselves for the near-term and for the long-term because it really just forces us to take bigger swings for our customers. So I won't get into how we did versus our internal goals. But what I would tell you is we feel truly terrific about the results. Because, literally, on every dimension that you look at it, new customers growing 70%, 70% coming from the assisted segment, conversion being up year-over-year, retention being up year-over-year, PRS being up for our customers, PRS being up for our experts, our experts actually being very efficient, delivering the 60 million hours that they engage with our customers, we're really happy with the end-to-end results because it was truly an end-to-end experience that the team delivered.

And we learned a ton. We learned what is not working. We learned how to be more effective. We learned how to deploy our AI models even more effectively so that we can have the insights at the fingertips of our experts so they can deliver for customers because this is truly a digital service experience. And so we're excited for next year and the next 5 years to come.

Our next question comes from the line of Kartik Mehta of Northcoast Research.

Sasan, interested in your thoughts on QBO. I think you and Michelle talked about price increases. And obviously, they're going to be a little bit more difficult in the upcoming fiscal year. And I'm wondering, at what point do you feel comfortable increasing prices on the QBO SKUs?

Yes. Kartik, good to hear your voice, and I hope you are also keeping well, my friend. So I think the uber point I would say is we are just obsessively focused on our customers. When you think about what our teams did in the last 12 weeks with PPP; with the GoFundMe platform that's funded $37 million; with our instant deposit being free through July, just to name a few; extending the deferred payment of our QuickBooks Capital customers, those that were really struggling and needed the help, we will make the right choice for our customers. And ultimately, we want to make sure that the value equation makes sense based on the rapid progress of our innovation, the fact that our speed of innovation is up 3x versus last year. So we always want to make sure the value equation makes sense.

But we're just going to see how the health crisis plays out and how the economy plays out and make our pricing decisions based on the principles that we have at the right time. And this isn't the time to share when that is because we really want to see how things play out. But that's principally, the way we think about it.

And then just as a follow-up, Sasan, would -- in the past, you've always added capabilities to QBO, making the product better and better. If the economy doesn't allow for a price increase, would you continue to add capabilities and try to capture the value at some later point?

Absolutely. And in fact, I would tell you that we play the long game here when it comes to our R&D investments. And as I mentioned earlier, I think we're just picking up momentum, truly operating as a platform company. And the innovation that we've delivered this year was just -- it got accelerated from just even a year ago. And by the way, that's been the trend we've been on as a company for the last 37 years. And so we're actually -- we use opportunities like this to accelerate innovation and become much more effective because we know one day, we're going to get the value for it, for our customers and for our shareholders. So the short answer -- or the long answer, I should say, is absolutely yes.

Our next question comes from Brian Reback of Stifel.

Great. And just following up on that last line of questioning. Sasan, from a high level, as you add more product to the QuickBooks platform, how do you decide what should be bundled and what should be charged for?

Yes. Brad, I hope you're well and safe. Ultimately, it's the test that we run. It's very similar to what we do in TurboTax and across the Live platform. At the end of the day, it comes down to understanding the benefit that you're delivering and whether or not a customer is willing to pay for it. But we also think about it relative to the impact on retention in the long term. And so based on those, in essence, levers, that informs the things that we test, inclusive of even tests to come where we may choose to have accounting be free but then charge for services. So it really comes down to the experiments that we run, and we let the data help inform strategically the choices that we make. And that's primarily the way we've operated for years across the company.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not showing any further questions.

Would you like to close with any additional remarks?

Yes, I will. I just wanted to thank everyone for your time and all the great questions today. And I want to just close by once again thanking our employees, our customers and partners. We would not be where we are without the incredible stakeholders that we serve.

And we look forward to seeing all of you at our Virtual Investor Day in September. Until then, be safe and be well.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating. This concludes today's conference call.