Intuit's Q1: Beat revenue target, EPS loss not as bad, weak outlook
Intuit published fiscal first quarter earnings after the bell on Thursday.
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The small business and personal finance software provider reported a loss of $77 million, or four cents per share (statement). The non-GAAP loss was six cents per share on a revenue of $622 million.
Wall Street was expecting Intuit to deliver a loss at 10 cents per share on a revenue of $603 million.
CEO Brad Smith reflected on the last three months in prepared remarks:
We are out of the gate strong in the first quarter, led by the rapid adoption of QuickBooks Online, which is accelerating our transition to the cloud and driving value for Intuit. Cloud-based offerings provide superior benefits for small businesses, so we are making it as easy as possible for our QuickBooks customers, accountants and developers to move to the cloud. We’re also gearing up for tax season and looking forward to getting our new offerings out to market in the coming weeks.
The QuickBooks Online subscriber base stands at roughly 516,000, up 29 percent. The platform appears to be gaining more appeal overseas as the subscriber count outside the U.S. surged by more than 80 percent to over 37,000.
It's been a busy week for the Mountain View, Calif.-based company. On Tuesday, Intuit introduced a revamped Apps.com to simplify the process of developing third-party apps on the QuickBooks accounting software platform.
Intuit also made the API for QuickBooks Online available for free in order to draw these third-party apps into the ecosystem in the first place.
Then just yesterday, Intuit acquired Prestwick Services, a private company specializing in payroll billing and payment solutions. The products will be used to calculate workers’ compensation insurance premiums in real-time without requiring small business owners to switch insurance carriers or agents.
Looking forward to the second fiscal quarter report, Wall Street looks like it is banking on Intuit to rebound well before tax season gets underway. Analysts expect Intuit to return with earnings of 33 cents per share on a revenue of $913.55 million.
Intuit missed those targets, instead providing revenue guidance of $890 million to $910 million with earnings of 25 to 27 cents per share.