Fair Isaac Corporation (NYSE:FICO) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

William Lansing: Look, I think Steve said it well. I mean, we try to return free cash flow every year. And then periodically, we do more than that. So for the last two years, we’ve done considerably more than that. And it’s because the stock price was depressed, like really, in our minds, quite depressed relative to its value, and also it was a lower interest rate environment. Now we have higher interest rate environment. The stock is a little bit price here. I still think it’s a bargain, but it’s more expensive than it was. And so we’re back to thinking about stock repurchase in terms of our free cash flow, our annual free cash flow. So I would say that things have changed. I mean we were really piling up the debt to buy in the shares over the last two years, and we will not be quite as aggressive in the future, at least right now under these circumstances.

Steve Weber: And again, two-thirds of our debt is fixed. So we have no rate risk there at all, so even with the rates increasing. So we’re just talking about the variable rate, and we’re happy with where it is right now, but we continue to monitor it. And if rates were to go up significantly, then we’d probably pair back the buybacks. But it’s always just the calculus we have to do.

Kyle Peterson: Yes. Makes ton of sense. Thanks guys. Nice quarter.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question is from Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Please go ahead your line is open.

Manav Patnaik: Thank you. On the Auto and Card side, you gave us €“ you showed some healthy revenue increases. But I was hoping you could just help us parse down what volumes are doing in those two categories? And the flat volume assumption for overall volumes in Scores, I guess what are you assuming for Auto and Card to get to that flat number?

Steve Weber: Yes. So right now, Auto is relatively flat. It’s up some months and down some months, but it’s relatively flat. Card is still up. It’s been probably decelerating, but it’s still up. So most of the increase year-over-year on revenues on the Auto side came from pricing. Most of the increase on the Card side came from volumes. Not 100%, but most of it was. So as we go forward now, next quarter, we’ll have the benefit of the new price increases. So it €“ there’s a lot of different variables in there. So it’s hard to really say what we’re expecting in terms of overall volumes because there’s a lot of different tiers involved, and there’s different pricing tiers. So you have to really dig under the covers to see all of that.

But we’re not seeing anything in the market that’s really changing the way we looked at it when we issued guidance three months ago. Mortgage is probably a little bit weaker than it was then, but we knew it was going to be weak. So none of that really surprises us. We’ll see how things progress in the next couple of quarters. If housing pricing comes down and the rates are down a little bit and that market picks up, then we’ll get some more acceleration there. But right now, we’re pretty much tracking to what we thought we would see three months ago.

Manav Patnaik: Got it. Helpful. And then, Will, just on the Software side, the platform business always had a five handle. Next is, in terms of growth, I know it’s probably just nitpicking. This time, it’s 46%, but even in your prepared remarks, you said 40% plus type growth. Is it just the law of large numbers? Is there something timing-wise? Just talk to us a little bit around that, please?