Intuit Inc (INTU) — Q3 2018 Earnings Call Transcript

Thanks, Latif. Good afternoon and welcome to Intuit’s third quarter fiscal 2018 conference call. I am here with Brad Smith, our Chairman and CEO, and Michelle Clatterbuck, our CFO. Before we start, I would 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 2017, 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 have 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. With that, I will turn the call over to Brad.

Thanks, Jerry, and thanks to all of you for joining us. We delivered very strong results in our third fiscal quarter, with overall revenue growth of 15%, fueled by 15% growth in the Consumer Group and 16% growth in the Small Business and Self-Employed Group. Because of this strength and the continued momentum across the company, we are raising our revenue, operating income, and earnings per share guidance for fiscal year 2018. With that headline, let me share some observations on our business overall and I will start with tax and our consumer business. Heading into tax season, we foreshadowed that this year’s primary drivers of revenue would be do-it-yourself category growth and higher average revenue per return. That’s indeed how the season played out, producing very strong results. As we have communicated over the years, there are four primary drivers in our Consumer business. The first is the total number of returns filed with the IRS and the latest IRS data indicates total returns grew about 1% in line with our expectations. The second is the percentage of those returns that were filed using do-it-yourself software. As a reminder, the DIY category growth is our largest lever of revenue growth. To-date, the DIY category share has grown just over 0.5 points, again outpacing the assisted tax prep category. As the leader, we view it as our responsibility to help drive category awareness and growth. So, we are pleased with this result. The third is our share within DIY. We competed well and earned a modest increase in our share of the category this season. When you look beyond DIY to total returns, we also gained 0.5 points of total market share. The fourth is the average revenue per return, which increased quite nicely this season. The growth was driven by a combination of attachments, mix shift to the higher end of our product line, which includes TurboTax Live, and pricing for value. Bottom line, it was a successful tax season. As we shared at Investor Day last fall, in addition to extending our lead in DIY, we are increasingly focused on transforming assisted tax prep and expanding our business beyond tax. We made encouraging progress behind each of these strategic priorities this season. In support of transforming assisted tax prep, we are pleased with the results of our TurboTax Live offering in its first season. We delivered an innovative experience that enabled filers who are seeking more confidence in their personal tax situation to do so by accessing a tax pro with the touch of a screen. Feedback from the nearly 2,000 pros and the many customers they served reinforced our confidence that TurboTax Live has the potential to be transformative to our consumer business in the years to come. It opens up the $20 billion assisted tax prep category and it provides us with an opportunity to grow our dollar share while increasing our average revenue per return. Michelle will share some additional data around our progress in a moment. This season was also the first for our Turbo offering, the consumer financial platform that expands our portfolio beyond tax. Turbo provides customers with a full view of their overall financial health by combining their credit score, verified income data, and a debt-to-income ratio to show customers where they truly stand. This year, TurboTax customers had the option to transfer their tax data into a Turbo account when they completed their return. Nearly 5 million TurboTax customers registered for Turbo in year one, providing us with a strong foundation to extend our business beyond today’s user-paid model. The real value of this offering will come as customers engage with it on an ongoing basis. Overall, we feel good about our results this tax season and I want to congratulate all the employees throughout the company who played a role in delivering that performance. We are just getting started with TurboTax Live and we are looking forward to what we can deliver next season.

Thanks, Brad, and good afternoon everyone. For the third quarter of fiscal 2018, we delivered revenue of $2.9 billion, up 15% year-over-year, GAAP operating income of $1.6 billion versus $1.4 billion a year ago, non-GAAP operating income of $1.7 billion versus $1.5 billion last year, GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.59, up 24% year-over-year, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $4.82, up 24% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP tax rate is 26.3%, which is lower than the 27% rate we anticipated earlier this year. The reduction is a result of our continued analysis of the impacts from the new U.S. tax legislation. This lower tax rate contributed $0.05 to non-GAAP earnings in the third quarter. Turning to the business segments, Consumer Group revenue grew 15% in the quarter and is up 14% year-to-date exceeding the annual guidance of 7% to 9% we gave at the beginning of the fiscal year. We now expect 14% revenue growth for the year. TurboTax Online units grew 6% this season, while total TurboTax units grew 4%. This unit performance was driven by faster growth in both our paid and free offerings. As Brad mentioned earlier, our share within the DIY category was up slightly, while our share of the total tax preparation market grew 0.5 points. We are pleased with the performance of TurboTax Live in its first season. We scaled the offering from an in-market test during extension filing last fall to a meaningful contributor this season. This is great progress for a new offering in its first year and we are encouraged by the positive feedback we have received. Customers who used our final review feature rated their care experience nearly 20 points higher than those who did not. And TurboTax Live had the highest product recommendation score of any of our consumer tax paid offerings. Additionally, feedback was positive from CPAs, enrolled agents, and tax attorneys serving clients on our platform. We look forward to applying what we learned to scale this offering further in the future. Turning to the Strategic Partner Group, we reported $131 million of professional tax revenue for the third quarter, up 4% year-to-date. We now expect revenue to grow 2% to 3% in fiscal 2018, slightly better than the 0% to 2% growth we guided previously. Total Small Business and Self-Employed revenue grew 16% in the quarter. Online Ecosystem revenue grew 41%, up from 39% in the second quarter. We continue to expect Online Ecosystem revenue to grow better than 30%. QuickBooks Online subscribers grew 45%, ending the quarter with over 3.2 million subscribers. TurboTax was a significant channel for QuickBooks Self-Employed and a total of 330,000 subscribers have come through that channel. We now expect to end the year with 3.35 to 3.375 million subscribers, equating to approximately 41% to 42% growth. Desktop Ecosystem revenue grew 3% in the quarter and is up 7% year-to-date. For fiscal 2018, we expect QuickBooks Desktop units to decline mid to high teens and Desktop Ecosystem revenue to be up mid single digits. Turning to our financial principles, we continue to take a disciplined approach to capital management, investing the cash we generate in opportunities that yield a return on investment greater than 15%. We finished the quarter with $1.9 billion in cash and investments on our balance sheet. Our first priority for that cash remains investing in the business to drive customer and revenue growth. Next, we use acquisitions to accelerate our growth and fill out our product roadmap. We return cash that we can’t invest profitably in the business to shareholders via both share repurchases and dividends. We repurchased $19 million of shares in the third quarter. Approximately $1.2 billion remains on our authorization. The board approved a quarterly dividend of $0.39 per share payable July 18, 2018. Our fourth quarter fiscal 2018 guidance includes revenue growth of 12% to 14%, GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.04 to $0.06, and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $0.22 to $0.24. We now expect a GAAP tax rate of 24% and a non-GAAP tax rate of 26.3% for fiscal 2018. You can find our Q4 and updated fiscal 2018 guidance details in our press release and on our fact sheet. With that, I will turn it back to Brad to close.

Thank you, Michelle. Before closing, I’d like to set some context for the management changes in our Consumer Group that we shared in our earnings release today. Effective at the end of the fiscal year, Dan Wernikoff, General Manager of our Consumer Group, will step down as the leader of Intuit’s consumer business, but he will remain at Intuit working with me on strategic projects. Greg Johnson, Senior Vice President of Marketing, will succeed Dan as General Manager of the Consumer Group. Dan has done a tremendous job leading the team and I couldn’t be more proud of the foundation that he has built. Under his leadership, we extended our lead in the do-it-yourself category. We advanced our efforts to disrupt the assisted tax prep category and we expanded our business beyond tax. I want to thank him for an outstanding tax season and for repositioning the business for continued growth for years to come. At the same time, I couldn’t be more confident in Greg’s ability to lead the Consumer Group into the next chapter. Greg has spent the last 5 years as a key member of the Consumer Group senior leadership team. He has been leading our go-to-market initiatives, commercial innovation, analytics, and marketing capabilities that have accelerated the growth of Intuit’s tax business. He has been a driving force in the reinvention of our consumer business model, spearheading the introduction of Absolute Zero, helping bring TurboTax Self-Employed and QuickBooks Self-Employed together, and was a key member of the team that brought TurboTax Live and Turbo to market this season. For those of you who have followed Intuit for a while, you know that we pride ourselves on building a deep talent bench. And this change is reflective of those efforts. I am excited to watch our momentum continue as Greg takes the baton from Dan to lead the Consumer Group. And to sum it up overall, we delivered a very strong quarter and we feel good about where we stand at this point in the year. While we remain focused on closing out the fiscal year on a high note, we already have our sights set on next year and beyond as we pursue our mission of powering prosperity around the world. But for now, we will continue to keep our heads down and focus on execution with the finish line in sight. And with that, Latif, let’s open it up and hear what’s on everyone’s mind.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Brad, the Consumer business you started with 7% to 9% guidance. You are ending that almost doubled. I was just curious if you could just bridge the outperformance and what you think the primary reasons were? And if you could also highlight a little bit of TurboTax Live, if there are any more numbers or financial impacts for that, that would be helpful to get some color on that?

Sure, Brent, happy to do that. Really, as I mentioned in my opening comments, the season played out the way we anticipated. The two primary growth drivers this year were an acceleration in DIY category growth and our ability to pick up a little bit of share in that category. The second was obviously average revenue per customer, which came as a result of increased attach services. We saw a mix shift to the higher end of the product line really brought on by TurboTax Live to a large extent, and then we again had some pricing opportunities that we strategically took in key areas where we saw an opportunity to price for value. Net-net, when you looked at it overall, it was just a well-executed plan. The team was able to go out and compete effectively in the free category while also introducing two new products, TurboTax Live and Turbo. And then I will click down on TurboTax Live for a minute and say that if you remember the strategic context, tens of millions of people each year end up going to an assisted tax prep method because they have a nagging question. They lost confidence in their situation because something changed year-over-year, and we lose about 3 million customers a year because of that in addition to the tens of millions who are in a tax store or a CPA and if they simply had that question answered, they would file taxes on the road using software. What we saw this year was really encouraging with TurboTax Live. Michelle mentioned the fact that those that went through the final review, those consumers who actually went for a final review with the Pro had a 20 point higher product recommendation score. We also saw very high product recommendation scores from the Pros on the other side of that network. The other piece that we were looking for was improved retention, and we did see improved retention. We will talk more about that at Investor Day. Last but not least, the sources of new customers are exactly the ones we wanted to see, first-time filers entering our category because there is also a Pro available, and we also saw a 10 point higher conversion from assisted tax prep methods for those who signed up for Live versus those who just did TTO. So, those are the kinds of numbers that we are willing to share at this point. We are not going to break down the actual number of customers or revenue, but you should hear in our tone a high degree of confidence and excitement about next year.

And just a quick follow-up for Michelle, given the outperformance on the top line, we are really not seeing the flow-through as meaningful when you look at the margin structure over the last couple of years. I am just curious if you could talk to when you think you can open up the bottom line margin a little more relative to what you have seen in the last couple of years?

I go back to our financial principles. When we think about how we want to use the additional money that we have, it really is first and foremost we want to invest in the business and continue to do that, so we can drive customer and revenue growth. And that’s actually one of the things that we had pointed out earlier this year that we were doing, specifically investing in our transition to AWS and additional AI ML competencies. We also were investing more in our engineering area helping with software development and then marketing efficiencies in our corporate brand. And so we will continue to look at opportunities to invest, to grow the company and then obviously as we get closer to Investor Day we will update you as to what that might look like going forward.

Yes, thank you. Just wanted to follow-up on the last question around Live, Brad, did you see enough out of the product that you feel like you are going to put your foot on the gas from a marketing perspective for next tax season? And I guess how does marketing Live change or differ versus marketing your lower SKUs?

Yes, Jesse, I want to be cautious not to give much of next year’s game plan away, but what I will say is we are confident enough we are going to put our foot on the gas with TurboTax Live. In terms of the messaging, our team actually got a little bit of practice in this year. We had dual campaigns going. One was helping people understand that they could move into free with at least your taxes are free and the other side was there is nothing to be afraid of which began to introduce the fact you can have an expert at the touch of a screen. We learned a lot and we have been running tests in the back half of the season. So, I feel very confident that we can go to market and have a message that basically says we are here for you regardless of your tax situation. And if you have any reason to need someone to work with, we have got somebody right there ahead waiting to connect with you. So, I feel pretty good that we figured out this year how to go out with the campaign to speak to the entire spectrum of tax filers.

Got it. And I guess as kind of an extension of that question or response, how comfortable do you feel with, I guess, price and mix in higher end products being the core driver of the consumer business going forward?

Yes, thank you for the question. We have a principle inside the company that has been a great guiding principle across all of our businesses for years and that is to grow our customers and monetization will follow. Many times that’s translated into growing customers faster than revenue, and that is true when you are converting non-consumption. So, you are getting a small business out of a spreadsheet or a shoebox or you are even getting somewhat off a paper and pencil from a tax filing situation and maybe get them into free. Those often come with lower priced products, so many times our customer growth outpaces revenue. In the case of tax right now, you have very few people left on paper and pencil, about 5 million people in total. So, it means we are now converting people who already adopted a method and with TurboTax Live we are converting them from higher-priced alternatives. So, when they come into our category, we are getting 3x the average revenue per customer for those customers that come in with TurboTax Live. So, we are in an interesting situation right now in tax in that we are able to grow customers and share and grow average revenue per customer, which is accelerating our revenue growth. So, we are not in a trade-off situation there. I think we are actually in a pretty good situation in being able to do both expand share and grow revenue faster. So, I feel good about the strategy and the way it’s playing out.

Okay. Thanks, Brad.

Great, thank you. I wanted to drill in on the QuickBooks Self-Employed number, particularly those attached to TurboTax, and it looks like that slightly more than doubled year-over-year. I know there was some questions about what the renewal rate might look like given that, that was sort of the first experience renewing those types of customers. Can you just give us a little more color on the strength there, how much of that was maybe better renewals, how much of that was better gross adds, what are sort of the major pieces there?

Yes. Thanks, Jennifer. First of all, we did see better renewal rates and retention than we had in our original forecasts. So, we are encouraged by that. The second is we got better at executing converting customers at the end of their tax filing process, the TurboTax into the product itself and the customer experience in the net promoter scores continue to improve. So it was really strength across the board. It was stronger renewals and retention. It was stronger top-of-funnel conversion, and it was also a better quality experience that had the customers actively engaging with the products. So we are feeling good about this particular product combination and we are looking forward to next year as well.

Okay, great. And one more from me, so looking at the 5 million Turbo customers that you had registered post-tax season, I think in the past you have talked about sort of longer-term monetization opportunities around targeting financial offers to those customers and things like that. At this point, what’s sort of the monetization status of that business? Is it really user acquisition mode at this point or are there certain near-term opportunities to drive revenue there as well?

We are actually executing both, but the priority is customer acquisition and then turning those customers into active daily users or monthly users depending upon their particular financial situation. So we were really encouraged to have 5 million people registered in its first year. That was a number beyond what we had expected and we had some pretty lofty goals ourselves. The monetization strategy, as you know, was similar to Mint, which is this is one of the products in our portfolio, and in addition to Mint, the only two products where less money the customer spends, the more money we make. So, said another way, we introduced them to other financial products to give them better deals and lower fees and then those particular companies pay us to reach those customers. And we are seeing a very nice monetization strategy with half a dozen partners we have now, and they are seeing very nice conversion rates unqualifiedly, which gives us a reason to lean in as we look ahead to next year. But I would say the priority right now was more active users and customers. The monetization we proved out this year for us and for our partners is there and we will start leaning into that as we head into next year.

Thanks so much. Brad, just I know it’s early, but as we go into next tax season, I guess the big change is that with the new tax legislation it’s very possible that we will see a much higher percentage of the filing population do simple standard deduction and not itemized deduction. And I wondered if you had any high-level thoughts at this point as to how that might impact the DIY category growth. And then I had one follow-up.

Sure. Thanks, Ross. We spend a lot of time studying the behaviors this year and then working with customers post the end of the tax season to better understand their psychology heading into next year. When you know there are some facts, the facts are more people will qualify for standardized deductions, which means they have the opportunity to move to the lower-priced products in the DIY category, but it also means we have the opportunity to move out of the assisted tax prep category and into DIY. And when we put all that math together, we see this as a catalyst to grow the do-it-yourself category, especially when you introduce services like TurboTax Live, which does enforce the binary choice between doing it yourself or having an expert ready to help you. So we are really encouraged. We think this is going to be a tailwind for the category and an opportunity for us as we head into next season.

Great. And my follow-up was actually just a clarification on the 330,000 QBSE TurboTax unit. Is that a base number or is that a net add number year-to-date? Because I had read that as a total number which implies that the net adds were about flat year-over-year, but Jennifer’s question suggested it might be a net add number. So, could you just clarify that? Thanks.

Yes, Ross. You are correct, 330,000 is the base number out of the 683,000 active customers today, so that includes both stronger renewal rates than we had originally anticipated as well as the net adds.

Hi, thanks. Two questions on QuickBooks Desktop. It looks like that business decelerated quite a bit on the desktop side, it grew to sort of a couple of percent year-over-year. I am wondering you have seen some really good growth there on sort of similar unit performance early in the year. Could you talk about what drove the difference in growth? And I just had a follow-up on subs?

Walter, you cut out on the first part of the question. I heard the desktop question, but I wasn’t sure what product line was it QuickBooks that you are asking about?

No, I was trying to ask you if these desktop, the unit growth has been pretty similar, the unit declines have been pretty similar, you have seen stronger revenue performance I think on a year-over-year basis earlier in the year and this quarter is sort of just slight growth. I am wondering what explains the discrepancy in that drove the revenue deceleration in QuickBooks Desktop?

Sure. Got it, Walter. Really, it’s an anomaly of a discontinued product that last year in the third quarter recognized some revenue that had been deferred for a period of time. Let me tell you what that product was. You may recall a couple of years ago, we introduced a version of QuickBooks Desktop that included an option we called it the Chooser SKU. When you bought desktop at retail, you could go in and either choose QuickBooks Desktop or you can opt into a subscription of QuickBooks Online. And because of accounting rules, we had to defer the revenue on anyone who purchased that product and carried out over the extent of the license. So, what happened was we found that not a lot of customers were taking that product, but the ones who did, that revenue got recognized last year in the third quarter. So, we had a little bit of a balloon payment, if you will, we had to grow over this quarter. If you actually pull that product out, QuickBooks Desktop revenue would have grown 9%, which is in line with the prior quarter. So, it really was a one-time anomaly based upon a discontinued product from a couple of years ago.

Got it. Okay, that’s helpful. And then just on subs for next quarter, the guide at the high end, even 3.375 implies fewer net adds than a year ago and all year you have been seeing growth in the net adds over last year. I am wondering if that’s just conservatism or something else that would explain why you might see a more significant deceleration in the net adds?

Walter, conservatism is in the eyes of the holder. We are clearly leaning in and thinking about how do we continue to accelerate our QuickBooks Online subscriber growth both here and in the international markets? And I do still give the momentum we have. We are testing right now in this fourth quarter of our fiscal year different promotional approaches, different discounting rates. And so we give ourselves a little bit of an opportunity to experiment so that when we head into peak season in the fall, we really have a game plan we feel confident in. So, you should probably consider that as a little bit of hedge for us as we are testing things as we wrap up this fiscal year and get ready for next year.

Thanks. Hey, Brad. I have a two-parter for you and then a follow-up for Michelle. When you list revenue per return, you mentioned in order attach then mix shift then strategic price increase. And I am just curious, is that the rank order? Were they all three equal or was one a little bit more? And then the follow-up is on that, could you elaborate a little bit on attach, particularly if it is truly the number one?

Yes, I appreciate it. We will unpack a little more of this at Investor Day, but I would give you this: I would put it in the order of mix shift, attach, and then price, and it’s just by small percentage points, so there isn’t significant variation across those. In terms of attach, we have different bundles, we have a plus bundle you can come in and purchase, we have some security features, we have the ability to do audit defense if you decide that you want to have some protection against being audited by the IRS. We had the refund transfer, which is the ability for you as we call it refund. What is it called now, refund some conservatism? The ability to pay for the software out of your refund, and it’s a combination of those that basically had to attach. There wasn’t really anything that we did this year that was a breakthrough new offering in attach; it was just continuing to find better ways to expose customers to those products when they have a point of need.

Great. Thanks for that. And Michelle, just have the guidance on CapEx down $50 million for the full year, could you just remind us how we should think about that, not just this year, but kind of going forward? Thank you.

Sure. Thanks, Scott. Our CapEx for this year, if you look at where we are for the year-to-date, actually, there are a couple of different things that are impacting that. And as we have talked about transitioning to AWS, what that means then is we don’t have to do all of the refreshing in our data centers, and so that’s having an impact there. One of the other things is we do have some lower software capitalization. And then last year at this time we were still doing some of the renovation and construction on our Mountain View campus, and so that had inflated last year. We will continue to look at that. We will give you some more insights into that as we think about going forward at Investor Day, but those are the big drivers of the decrease that you are seeing right now.

Great, thanks very much. Michelle, if we go back to some of the margin commentary, if we think about it from a high level, is this situation where the gross profit dollars should continue to outpace OpEx dollar growth, so cash flow should be a net-net benefit going forward?

I am sorry, Brad, could you repeat the question? She wasn’t clear about the question.

Yes, sure, absolutely. So, should we think about gross profit dollars growing faster than OpEx dollars, so while the margin may go down in the future, the cash flow benefit is still positive?

I am not sure if that is actually, I am trying to think through that right now, I don’t know I haven’t thought about it that way.

So I can jump in. I mean, if you assume that the cost of goods sold is going to be relatively stable at about 15%, then gross margin is going to be about the same rate of growth as revenue and our operating margin dollars usually, we’re just a little bit faster than revenue. They are not this year, but that’s typically what they do. So Brad, I think you will back into an answer that’s pretty much what you are expecting.

No, I was just going to say thanks. Go ahead, Brad.

Well, what I was going to do, I know this came up earlier and Michelle answered it and then this question came up just now and I thought I’d unpack for you a couple of points that I thought Michelle did a really nice job of putting out there. The first is our financial principles in the company remain enduring, and we just reviewed them with the board a couple of weeks ago, which is double-digit organic growth on the top line, grow revenue faster than expense which allows us to grow operating income dollars in the mid-teens. As we entered this year, we saw four opportunities that we wanted to lean in to invest that we said would both accelerate our top line growth this year but would set the foundation for a stronger multi-year growth opportunity ahead. Those were the areas that Michelle walked through. We saw accelerated top line growth this year and we also saw strong operating income growth of 13%. We will come back and talk about our financial principles again in August at Investor Day. But you should hear our anticipation that we are going to not continue to get good operating leverage out of this company in terms of growing our operating income dollars. This was a strategic choice. This is not a business model question. We sell opportunities to invest in technology, data sciences, and we are excited about the momentum we have driving forward.

Excellent. Nice quarter guys and thank you for taking the question. Again, I tried to sort of attack head-on and I think the question that like everybody is trying to get at, the consumer had a great quarter this quarter and a great year-to-date. I don’t think 14% is the highest I have seen in my model. Is there anything one-time in nature that we should be thinking about in this year versus prior years that makes this special, if you will, or non-repeatable? Or can we potentially see a higher durable rate of consumer growth on a going forward basis given sort of how you expanded the product portfolio there?

Yes. Thanks, Keith. We will talk about what we think the durable growth opportunity is in this business when we get into the fall. We have historically said at the 5% to 10% grower, and we are fully aware that the last couple of years have been double digits this year versus even further up into the teens. But what I do think is different is what I touched on a few minutes ago: historically, when we tried to grow the category and grow customers, they often came in with a free offering around the lower end of our product lineup. Now, as we are getting customers to come in with TurboTax Live, we are getting customers out of the assisted tax prep method. They are coming in at a higher average revenue per customer. So, as we expand the category and grow customers, we are also growing revenue. And so, I don’t believe you see a one-time event here; I think you are starting to see a structural shift in the business economics that if we can continue to execute should give us a really good sustainable growth rate as we look ahead, but we will talk much more about what that looks like when we get into the fall.

Hi, Brad.

Hi, Kartik.

The TurboTax Live product this year, what was the primary objective for you for this year, and what would you say the primary objective will be for that product next year?

So, what we did seek this year to do was to say if we could impact the 3 million customers on average that we tend to lose when something changes in their tax situation - they either have a child, they get married, they move between states, they sell stock. They have that nagging question, and we wanted to see it by introducing a Pro we could actually improve our retention in our existing customer base as the primary objective. As I mentioned earlier, we will talk more about what the results look like as we get into the fall, but we did achieve that. The other thing we wanted to say is that we could change the source of new customers coming into the category. And if we could begin to bring people into the category as first-time filers who may have gone to an assisted method or actually get people out of our tax stores and CPAs. So far, the mix of new customers as we finished this season also looks like we have been successful in improving that hypothesis. So, as we lean into next year, the primary objective is going to be to transform the $20 billion assisted tax prep category and begin to bring more of them into the do-it-yourself category. We think that will be the big opportunity for us over the long run.

And then, Brad, as you talk about on the tax side maybe getting some pricing, do you think the market changed? And do you believe there is an opportunity for you to maybe raise prices more than you have in the past? Because maybe consumers are seeing the value a little bit more now than they have in the past?

Well, Kartik, as you know, you follow the space really closely. It’s a hypercompetitive market when you get into the free category. And as we mentioned a few minutes ago, tax legislation will give more people the opportunity to qualify for standardized deductions, so they could move into lower-end products, lower-priced products, or even free, but we have also seen that consumers are willing to pay for value and the ability to have someone answer their question is convenience of coming through the software and being there at the point of need, and they can schedule when they want to talk to that person is something that customers are willing to pay for. So, we do feel like with the right strategic value proposition that we can continue to grow revenue while also growing the category. In terms of taking price, if there is not value-add relative to a competitor, that becomes difficult, and so we have to be able to differentiate and deliver more than our competitors can for us to earn a higher price.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Yes, thanks, Latif, and I want to thank everybody for your time and for your questions today. I hope everyone has a great Memorial Day weekend. We are looking forward to speaking with you soon, and until then take care.