Intuit’s 4th-Quarter Profit Exceeds Expectations
Intuit Inc.’s fourth-quarter profit beat expectations as the top maker of personal finance software benefited from sales of its new QuickBooks program for small businesses.
Profit before a charge was $1.60 million, or 3 cents a share, for the period ending July 31, contrasted with a pro forma loss of $9.08 million, or 19 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts had expected the company to earn a penny a share, according to First Call Corp.
Mountain View-based Intuit, the maker of TurboTax and the popular Quicken personal finance program, has been trying to increase revenue from its Web site and its finance software for businesses. The company boosted sales by introducing a multiple-user version of QuickBooks to help small companies track their finances.
“Multiuser QuickBooks did really well out of the blocks,” said Steven Horen, an analyst at NationsBanc Montgomery Securities.
Revenue climbed 48%, to $117.3 million from $79.1 million pro forma.
Intuit shares fell $2.81 to close at $45.25 on Nasdaq in a broad market sell-off. It reported earnings after the close of regular U.S. trading.
The company’s small-business products unit, which includes QuickBooks, accounts for a third of the company’s revenue.
The company saw strong performance across its product line, said Raymond Stern, senior vice president of strategy, finance and administration. Quicken, which had seen sales slow, had its most profitable year in its 15-year history, he said.
The company’s revenue from its online business more than doubled for the fiscal year, Stern said. Intuit’s online revenue comes from transactions and advertising on its Web site and made up 6% of its total revenue, he said.
The company’s Quicken.com Web site had 90 million page views in July, up from 16 million a year ago. A page view is one electronic page of information displayed in response to a user’s request.
The company’s total costs and expenses rose 24%, to $119.8 million. The company’s research and development costs increased 28%. Sales and marketing expenses rose 22%, while general and administrative costs climbed 67%.
Intuit’s biggest weakness was its international business, as revenue fell 3% because of the Asian economic slump, said David Farina, an analyst at William Blair & Co.
