Good afternoon, thank you for joining FICO's fourth quarter earnings call. I'm Steven Weber, Vice President of Investor Relations, and I'm joined today by William Lansing, our CEO, and Michael Pung, our CFO. Today, we issued a press release that describes financial results compared to the prior year. On this call, management will also discuss results in comparison to the prior quarter in order to facilitate understanding of the run rate of our business. Certain statements made in this presentation may be characterized as forward-looking under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Those statements involve many uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. Information concerning these uncertainties is contained in the company's filings with the SEC, in particular in the risk factors and forward-looking statements portions of such filings. Copies are available from the SEC, from the FICO website, or from our investor relations team.
This call will also include statements regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures. Please refer to the company's earnings release and Regulation G schedule issued today for a reconciliation of each of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measure. The earnings release and Regulation G schedule are available on the investor relations page of the company's website at fico.com or on the SEC's website at sec.gov. A replay of this webcast will be available through November 1st, 2019. Now I'll turn the call over to William Lansing.
Thanks, Steve. Thank you everyone for joining us for our fourth quarter earning call. Today, we've reported the results of a strong fourth quarter with record revenue and earnings and have finished a year in which we topped $1 billion in revenue for the first time. In our fourth quarter, we reported revenues of $280 million, an increase of more than 10% over the same period last year. For the full fiscal year, we recorded $1,032 million of revenue, up 11% from 2017. We delivered $50 million of GAAP net income and GAAP earnings of $1.64 per share. Results that included a number of one-time puts and takes that Mike will describe. On a non-GAAP basis, the $1.89 earnings per share was up 14% from last year. We were able to drive this growth as we continue our shift to the cloud.
In our software business, we were able to grow revenues by 4% for the full year, even as upfront license sales were down 10%. This was possible because the significant bookings we've been reporting led to an increase in recurring revenues of 9% in software. We had a strong year with our compliance, customer communications, originations, and customer management solutions. We're seeing opportunities with these solutions in areas we haven't served in the past, in many cases because the cloud-enabled solutions are increasing our addressable market. These solutions have been refreshed over the last few years and are now driving growth. Strategy Director, for instance, is a product we introduced in fiscal 2018 in the customer management space. It's generating a lot of customer interest, and we're already closing deals as we build out a healthy pipeline of potential deals. We are committed to our cloud-first strategy.
We now have an incredible suite of products, and our decisioning solutions are proving their value to customers every day. Those solutions are drawing interest from new customers and also from industry analysts. Forrester recently evaluated and ranked the top 11 participants in the decisioning platform market. Each competitor was evaluated on 10 criteria. FICO was recognized as a leader and received the highest possible marks in six of those criteria. Forrester's selection of FICO as its top vendor of choice is a strong validation of the FICO Decision Management Suite vision, development, and direction. It confirms the technological and business vision we've been advocating for our customers for many years, long before most of our competitors. We're happy to be recognized for our innovation, but we're happier when we see market demand for that innovation. And we are seeing that demand turn into sales.
Our cloud revenues were up 19% in fiscal 2018, and our cloud bookings were up 47%, which means we're building more backlog as we head into 2019. In our scores business, we had another very successful year. Scores were up 29% in the fourth quarter versus the prior year, and also up 29% for the full year. We continue to see positive volume trends on B2B, which was up 38% over the previous year, as well as the effects of our repricing efforts. For the full year, B2B revenues were up 36%. Our B2C revenues were up 12% versus the previous year and were up 16% for the full year. We continue to see positive trends as we look forward.
In next year's guidance, which I discuss later, we expect the scores business to grow nearly 10%, which includes some volume and regular pricing increases but does not include any special pricing increases. We'll be implementing some special pricing, but like last year, because it's difficult to estimate the timing and the magnitude, we're not including it in our guidance. As we look to 2019, we're excited about the many opportunities ahead for us and the innovation we're driving. One such initiative is the UltraFICO Score, which we announced last month. FICO, along with our partners Experian and Finicity, are first to market with a score based on consumer-contributed DDA data, which empowers consumers to engage and have more control in the credit scoring process.
This score also enables lenders to shift the customer dialogue from a no into, "Tell us more about yourself, and let's see if we can get you qualified for a yes or for better terms." This approach drastically changes the broader consumer lending system, benefiting consumers and lenders alike. With UltraFICO Score, a consumer grants permission to contribute information from banking statements, including the length of time accounts have been open, frequency of activity, and evidence of saving, which can be electronically read by Finicity and combined with consumer credit information from Experian to provide an enhanced view of positive financial behavior.
We estimate this new score has the potential to improve credit access for the majority of Americans and is particularly relevant for those who fall in the gray area in terms of credit scores or fall just below a lender score cutoff. While there's still a lot of work ahead to operationalize this offering, we're very excited about its prospects and look forward to discussing the progress throughout fiscal 2019. As we move into 2019, we remain focused on executing against our opportunities. We'll continue to prioritize areas where we see the greatest growth potential, and we'll continue on providing long-term shareholder value. In fiscal 2018, we generated $192 million in free cash flow and spent that and more retiring 1.9 million shares. We are extremely well-positioned as we enter a new fiscal year, and we look forward to delivering on those opportunities and reporting on our progress.
I'll talk more about our outlook for 2019, first, let me turn the call over to Mike for further financial details.
Thanks, Will. Good afternoon, everyone. Today, I'll emphasize three points in my prepared comments. First, we delivered $280 million of revenue this quarter and $1,032 million for the year, which is an increase of $100 million from last year. Our recurring revenue grew 17% from last year. Second, we delivered $1.64 per share of EPS this quarter and $4.57 per share for the year, up 31% and 15% respectively. Finally, we delivered $53 million of free cash flow in the quarter and $192 million for the fiscal year. We repurchased 1.9 million shares during the year or 6% of our outstanding shares. I'll begin by reviewing the results in each of our three reporting segments. Our applications revenue were $156 million, up 10% from last quarter and up 4% versus the same period last year. Full-year revenues for applications were $586 million or up 6% from last year.
The increase in revenue was driven from our recurring businesses as our license revenues for the year were down slightly. We had particularly a strong year in compliance, originations, and customer management solutions. In our decision management software segment, revenues were $31 million, up 21% from last quarter and flat with the same period last year. Full year DMS revenues were $104 million, down 7% from last year due to the shift in business model away from upfront licenses. DMS bookings were $24 million this quarter, up 11% from the previous year. Finally, our Scores segments revenues were $93 million, up 1% from last quarter and up 29% from the same period last year. B2B was up 38% over the same period last year, and B2C revenues were up 12% from the same period last year.
For the full year, scores revenues were $343 million or up 29% from last year. Looking at our revenue by region this quarter, 76% of total revenues were derived from our Americas region. Our EMEIA region generated 16%, and the remaining 8% was from Asia Pacific. Recurring revenues derived from transactional and maintenance sources for the quarter represented 72% of total revenue. Consulting and implementation revenues were 16% of total, and license revenues were 12%. For the full year, 74% of our revenues were recurring, compared to 70% last year. Our cloud revenue topped $242 million for the year, which is up 19% from the prior year. We generated $15 million of current period revenue on bookings of $134 million, an 11% yield. The reduced yield is due to an increase in cloud bookings and essentially means that more of the revenue will be recurring.
It was our second-highest bookings quarter ever and the third straight quarter above $100 million. The weighted average term for our bookings was 31 months this quarter. For the full year, bookings were $437 million, up 2% from the prior year. Cloud bookings, though, were $151 million for the year, which is up 47% from the prior year. Our operating expenses totaled $210 million this quarter, which is down $1 million from last quarter. As you can see in our Reg G schedule, non-GAAP operating margin was 33% for the quarter and 28% for the full year. We delivered margin expansion of 50 basis points for the full fiscal year. We expect the operating margin will be between 27%-29% in 2019. GAAP net income this quarter was $50 million, which is up 26% from the prior year.
The current quarter net income includes a pre-tax non-operating gain of $10 million, or $0.23 per share after tax, related to the divestiture of a minority interest investment. In addition, the company recorded an additional charge of $6.8 million, or $0.22 per share, related to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. This charge encompasses the impact of recently issued tax reform guidance. Our non-GAAP net income was $58 million for the quarter, up 10% from last year. For the full year, net income was $142 million, including $22 million in reduced tax from excess tax benefits, and also included $22 million in charges related to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Non-GAAP net income was $194 million, which is up 23% from the prior year.
Our effective tax rate for the full year was 24%. We expect our 2019 recurring tax rate to be around 26%-27% before the excess tax benefit of an estimated $25 million, which results in a net effective tax rate of about 14%. Free cash flow for the quarter was $53 million, compared to $49 million in the same period last year. For the full year, free cash flow was $192 million, compared to $205 million last year. Looking at the balance sheet, we had $90 million in cash on the balance sheet at the end of the quarter. It's down $30 million from last quarter due to share repurchases, partially offset by cash generated from operations. Our total debt is $770 million, with a weighted average interest rate of 4.7%. Our ratio of total net debt to adjusted EBITDA is 2.3 times.
We bought back 502,000 shares in the fourth quarter at an average price of $210. In fiscal 2018, we repurchased a total of 1.9 million shares at an average price of $181, for a total of about $337 million. At the end of September, we had $200 million remaining on the board authorization. We continue to view share repurchases as an attractive use of cash. We also continue to actively evaluate opportunities to acquire relevant technologies and products that advance our strategy or strengthen our portfolio and competitive position. With that, I'll turn it back to Will for his thoughts on next year.
Thanks, Mike. As I said, I'm proud of our results to date. I'm excited about our prospects for 2019 and beyond. On the software side, we're making steady progress with our cloud-first strategy. We're seeing growth in our revenue, our pipeline, and our backlog. Like last year, strong software bookings give us more visibility into future revenues. That predictable, reliable backlog continues to build as we put more customers into the cloud. In Scores, we're finding new ways to extract even more value out of that incredible franchise through increased usage, repricing, and innovation. With all this in mind, we're providing the following guidance for fiscal 2019. We are guiding revenues of approximately $1,125,000,000, an increase of about 9% versus fiscal 2018. We are guiding GAAP net income of approximately $168 million, up 18% over 2018. GAAP earnings per share of approximately $5.53.
Non-GAAP net income of $209 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share of $6.88. I'll now turn the call back to Steve for Q&A.
Thanks, Will. This concludes our prepared remarks. We're now ready to take your questions. Operator, please open the line.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, to register a question, press the one followed by the four on your telephone. First question is from Manav Patnaik from Barclays. Please go ahead.
Hi, this is actually Greg calling on for Manav. Just wanted to ask about the software business growth implied in the 2019 guidance. I think you said Scores is expected to be up 10%, which implies a decent acceleration on the software business. Maybe just walk us through the moving pieces there, please.
Yeah, Greg, the software business right now we're expecting to grow somewhere around the 9% range, with a similar mix that we had this year, meaning our cloud business is growing roughly at a 20% rate, and our on-prem legacy business is modestly up in the 2%-3% range. As it relates to Scores, both B2B and B2C are roughly growing between 9%-10%.
Okay. Maybe on the B2B or B2C Scores business, can you just talk through how you guys are thinking about the ability to continue to grow that business in that high single digit, low double digit range, and what's going to drive that going forward?
Yeah, sure. I'll start, and I'll let Will finish. A lot of the growth that we've built into the guidance number is frankly coming from deals that we have signed this year that have not gone live yet. Similar to what we did in this past year's guidance, we take a look at volume growth both on myFICO, which we see growing in the mid-single digits, and on our partner programs, which have been growing obviously faster than that. Based upon that and the growth of what we've already signed in the pipeline, we're comfortable with the numbers that we included herein.
Okay. Last one from me, maybe on the margins, I guess at the midpoint implies roughly flat. Can you just walk us through the areas of investment focus this year versus last year? Thanks.
Yeah. I would say the investment focus is the same as what we had last year. There are no real new items that we're putting money into. It's been a combination for the last couple of years of operations, network security, and some sales and distribution. We provide, obviously, a big range in terms of margin outcomes because it's really highly dependent upon how we end up with a mix of revenue. Is it licensed revenue that comes at 100% margin, or is it more heavily skewed towards cloud revenue, which is ratable, and the revenue and expenses don't necessarily match up all that cleanly? There's a little bit of noise in there related to the new revenue standard, which we have to implement here effective October 1st.
Even if you put that on the side, we saw basis growth of 50% or 50 basis points on our margin this year, we're looking at something quite similar for fiscal 2019, again, dependent upon the mix.
Our next question comes from Bill Warmington, from Wells Fargo. The line's open.
Good afternoon, everyone.
Hey, Bill.
I was hoping you could give us some color on the strength in CCS and the customer management solutions and the banking fraud that you referenced in the release.
Absolutely. Our top-performing products are the three, of course, that we mentioned. CCS is still growing in the teens. It's a volume-driven business based upon deals that we sign, bookings that we sign, and getting those bookings up and live. We have a very strong pipeline in CCS, to go on top of the existing recurring revenue base. Revenue for the year for that product line was somewhere around $109 million, $110 million, again, growing in the teens. Customer management or really, the new Strategy Director product is just starting to pick up for us. Last quarter three, we signed probably four deals in excess of $1 million. We signed another one over $3 million this quarter, and the pipeline for that is big and growing. I would say on our collections and recovery product, which we didn't mention, that's becoming the new engine around cloud.
In fact, of all the application products we have, our collections and recovery bookings were the largest across the entire portfolio. The entirety of it, almost, was cloud-related. Deals that we signed and booked in fiscal 2018, but really the revenue hasn't been recognized yet. It'll start to flow in fiscal 2019, and it's part of what provides us with the optimistic view of a high single digit, close to 10% growth in the software side. There's nothing new to the story other than we're executing very well on the pipeline. We're winning a lot of deals. Many of them are cloud, and they help us enter fiscal 2019 with a greater run rate, certainly than what we had when we entered fiscal 2018.
I had a question for you on the Scores side. You mentioned that a lot of visibility that you have into 2019 is based on deals signed in 2018. Are there some deals there that you guys maybe haven't discussed? I'd say, maybe give a little color on what's actually in that pipeline of deals that you guys have signed that is giving you the visibility into Scores.
My comment was specifically on the consumer side. It relates primarily to some smaller deals that we have signed with some existing resellers, some expansions, if you will. It also includes some deals that we have not announced yet, but we are in the process of wrapping up this quarter. We'll begin to go live at some point, we believe, in our first quarter of fiscal 2019. Most of them are already in the bag, but some of them are very close to that.
Got it. With the growth in Scores, which has very high incremental margins, and the relatively limited margin expansion that's in the guidance for next year, that would imply that there's a lot of investment going into, I would assume, the software business. Maybe you could talk a little bit about where that's going, and I guess, the timeframe for when you think you're going to get some leverage on that business and start to see the margins in the software business expand.
Bill, that's right, that we are continuing to invest in the business. The things we're spending the money on have not changed much from last year. We're very focused on improving our operations, our network operations, our cloud infrastructure, the signaling and alerting, all of the things that you have to wrap that kind of an offering with. We're getting better and better every day. I think you have to recognize where we started as we made our transition to the cloud. We started with a lift and shift strategy where we literally took our on-premise software, and put it into our own data centers and then provided it as a cloud service. We have now, for several years, been in this transition to more standardized, highly configurable, multi-tenant code base. We have a lot of progress on that front, but we're not finished.
We probably won't be finished a year from now either. I think there's still work to be done. That said, we do have a lot of control over the R&D dollars that we spend, and we elect to spend them holding software margin more or less flat because we think the opportunity's so great. We think we're in a little bit of a land grab. You saw in the Forrester report that we're on the leading edge for analytics platforms and decisioning platforms. It's a commanding lead that we want to maintain. I think you're going to continue to see a year or two of investment at this level.
Got it. I have to ask about the UltraFICO Score. Has that been adopted or in beta with any clients? How long do you think it'll be before you actually start to see it rolled out commercially?
Thanks for asking the question. We are extremely excited about UltraFICO. For the benefit of those not so familiar, we had a lot of fanfare over the announcement last week at Money20/20.
Bringing consumer data to the equation is attractive to regulators, attractive to lenders, and attractive to consumers. Giving consumers the opportunity to improve their FICO score is a huge deal. The value proposition is strong. Operationally, it's not simple. We're working closely with our partners, Experian and Finicity, to make this a reality, and it will be operational in 2019. We have some pilot clients already lined up, and I think we'd be prepared to take one or two more. We're feeling pretty good about it. We'll see what the uptake is once it's out there.
Well, thank you very much.
Thank you.
ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, press the one followed by the four to register a question. Our next question is from Brett Huff with Stephens. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. I think you guys mentioned a B2B pricing that was normal in 2019, kind of like normal tweaking and things like that. Then you gave us some volume views. Will, I think you said that there could be another sort of not typical price increase, but you're not including that in guidance just because you're not sure if or when. First of all, did I hear that right? Any more color on that would be helpful.
Yeah. I think the way to think about our business is that we have kind of ordinary course price increases that are probably a little more than inflation. Then we have all of the volume expansion kinds of initiatives that go on. What's not included is the impact of what we call special pricing situations. What that really is a recognition that in some segments where we haven't changed pricing in many, many years, that there's an opportunity to move more than 5% or 7%. We don't have the timing of it completely lined up. It's not completely in our control. It's a function of the length of contracts that our bureau partners have with their customers. We're not really in a position to say it's going to be dollars X in 2019.
What we do know is that there's some of these opportunities, and we'll be working on them.
All right. That's helpful. When you guys think about the investments, I know that a lot of it is around the cloud infrastructure. As I recall, the network security was sort of a general, you're just making sure you have capacity and make sure that the security is upgraded. There was also some specific development associated with the cloud products that I know you're re-platforming some of your old products and building some of the new. Is that investment kind of split evenly, or is there an emphasis on one or the other, or how should we think about that investment?
Yeah. Brett, this is Mike. I would say the majority of the spend around the cloud is spent on development. There's one big kind of project we're working on right now we plan to deliver in FY 2019, and it's a successor product to our Falcon product, along with a combination of our anti-money laundering and compliance products. It's basically, and said another way, we're using the Decision Management Platform to bring out the next generation of Falcon, which will have a lot more capability on it. That's a pretty big undertaking that was started this last year and flows a little bit into 2019.
That being said, on the operations side, if you think about it, our cloud bookings are growing 50% almost year-over-year, which means we have lots of customers to stand up and lots of demands on the operations side of our business. Last year, we built out a network operations center that operates 7 by 24 worldwide. We don't have a lot of incremental investments around that, but obviously as volume goes up, there is some element of additional investment that goes along with the volume. When the volume is booked, it doesn't get claimed as revenue but for a period of 2-3 years. There's this mismatch that happens with all cloud companies, including our own, around that.
I would say this year we don't have any step function investments in our numbers or planned, but it'll all be dependent upon the continued demand for the cloud product.
I would add a couple of things. I'd say that we have a lot of dedicated security spending under the very capable leadership of our CISO, Hilik Kotler. That continues, and we're pretty happy with where that stands. Beyond that, I think that we've got a lot of initiative from Hilik and from Claus Moldt, our CIO, to move to more of a DevSecOps model. I think that's the new gold standard in how to develop software, so we are very much adopting that. You'll see security built into all of our products from the get-go and not added as an afterthought. Some of the security dollars are actually being spent in development.
Okay. Last question from me is just a guidance question. I want to make sure I got the tax benefit. In the pro forma EPS you gave us, that does not include the $0.82 tax benefit. Can you just describe what that benefit is so that we know if we think it's kind of a one-timer or if it's a normal course of business kind of thing? I just want to make sure I understand what that was, if you called it out.
Yeah. Think about our income tax as two separate pieces that net to what we report, okay? The first piece of the two are just the normal recurring tax rate in accordance with worldwide tax rules. That's the 26%-27% rate that we see worldwide. There's an offset to that number, which basically decreases tax expense, that's been around for a couple of years called excess tax benefits associated with stock-based compensation. In the past, as you may recall, that used to flow through equity. Beginning last year, it began to flow through income tax expense. That's the $25 million or $0.82 a share benefit that offsets that 26%-27% cost. The net of all that, which is what we report on the face of the income statement, we believe is going to be around 14%.
For simplicity, when you're modeling your tax rate for us, take pre-tax net income and multiply it by 14%, that's roughly what we believe our tax expense will be for the year.
Comparability to the number we just reported on a pro forma basis, I can't remember what it was for the year. Which is the most comparable number? The guided 688, or should we add that $0.82 to get, I think it was 770. Which one of those two is more comparable to the number that you guys just reported from a pro forma EPS point of view?
Yeah. To further complicate it, the tax expense that we recorded on the face of the income statement this year was around 27%. If we were to have excluded the one-time cost that we had in fiscal 2018 to implement tax reform, it would've been around 14%, which is about what we're guiding next year. In fiscal 2018, we had to charge the income statement by over $22 million for the toll tax charge and the recalculation of the deferred tax assets we had on the balance sheet. That's just yet one more piece of noise, if you will, in the tax rate. If you separate it all out, the reported rate was 27% in 2018. It's going to go down to 14% in fiscal 2019.
If you want to make it apples and apples and pull out the one-timer in fiscal 2018, it's roughly the same, 14% for both years. I hope that helps.
That is helpful. Then going forward, do you guys sort of see that tax floating-- If you look at the 14%, does that slowly deteriorate or, I guess, get less favorable and go back up to the, call it, mid-20s, or does it stay kind of at 14% for the long term? I'm just trying to make sure I get the cash flows right.
At this point, our long-term models, we keep it pretty static. The benefit that I described, the excess tax benefit, will go up and down depending upon our stock price.
Right.
Once you've got that figured out, then you'll have the model completely figured out for the next five years.
Okay.
For our benefit, we just kind of hold it static so that we aren't introducing yet another variable that confuses this already confusing area.
The static is sort of that mid to high or, I think you said 25%, 26%, 27%. That's a better place to start, and then sometimes you get more benefit than not.
Yeah
from the additional tax thing. Okay. Sorry to ask so many questions.
There you go. You figured it out.
I just want to make sure we got it.
Nope, you figured it out.
All right.
As a reminder, to register a question, press the one followed by the four on your telephone. Next question is from Adam Klauber with William Blair. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Good afternoon.
Hi, Adam.
In Scores B2B, if you include the price increase in mortgage, what would've been the growth rate this year?
Well, we don't really break that out. The majority of the growth rate, of course, came from the mortgage repricing. We did see volume increases, I'd say, in the mid to higher single digits. Higher single digits at the beginning of the year, and it tapered off a bit towards the end. The fourth quarter.
Okay
was quite strong volume-wise.
Okay. As far as the guidance next year, what are you assuming for just volume? Is that low, mid-single digits for next year?
Yeah, that's a great question. You're absolutely right. We have one more quarter's worth of price increase for mortgage that shows up here in quarter one, then it becomes apples and apples beginning January 1st with last year. A part of the growth is the fact that we have mortgage for four full quarters in 2019 versus three in 2018. The rest of it is related to volume growth, a little bit in the U.S., but some outside the U.S., in particular in our China market.
Okay. In DMS, you may have said this, but do you think most of the transition is over at this point? Should we see revenue growth in that segment next year?
I think we've said before that trying to distinguish between DMS and the rest of our applications business is a hard thing to do because it's the same IP that underlies the solutions as well as the platform. It's a little bit of an artifact that the DMS numbers look the way they do, I don't think it's particularly useful to look at the growth rate in that alone. I really think you got to look at it on a combined basis.
Okay. That's helpful. As far as the nature of the bookings, how are the amount of million, $3 million plus deals compared to a year ago?
More. Yeah. For the fourth quarter, we had slightly fewer than last year because we had a record fourth quarter last year. Our bookings were $146. This year, they were $134. It included a couple of additional deals last year. For the full year, I'm just looking at the numbers now. It was pretty comparable fiscal 2018 versus fiscal 2017 for deals in excess of $1 million and in excess of $3. Call it about the same amount as last year.
Okay. How about the, again, the rough breakdown versus existing verticals, your existing core financial versus non-financial verticals. Has that been around the same too?
Yeah. It's, of course, heavily weighted on financial services.
Okay. Thanks a lot. That's helpful.
No further questions at this time.
All right. That concludes today's call. Thank you all for joining.