H&R Block, Inc. (HRB) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to H&R Block's Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the call over to Jessica Hazel, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to H&R Block's Fiscal 2026 financial results conference call. Joining me today are Curtis Campbell, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Tiffany Mason, our Chief Financial Officer. Earlier today, we issued a press release and presentation, which can be downloaded or viewed live on our website at investors.hrblock.com. Our call is being broadcast and webcast live, and a replay of the webcast will be available for 90 days. Before we begin, I'd like to remind listeners that comments made by management may include forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. These statements involve material risks and uncertainties and actual results could differ from those projected in any forward-looking statement due to numerous factors. For a description of these risks and uncertainties, please see H&R Block's Annual Report on Form 10-K and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q as updated periodically with our other SEC filings. Please note, some metrics we'll discuss today are presented on a non-GAAP basis. We've reconciled the comparable GAAP and non-GAAP figures in the appendix of our presentation. Finally, the content of this call contains time-sensitive information accurate only as of today, August 11, 2026. H&R Block undertakes no obligation to revise or otherwise update any statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this call. I'll now turn it over to Curtis.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Fiscal 2026 was a meaningful year for H&R Block. We delivered strong results, made significant progress against our strategic priorities and continue to strengthen the quality of the business. Revenue increased 4.9%, EBITDA increased 8.3% and adjusted EPS increased 13.9%. The growth we delivered this year was meaningfully stronger than what we've achieved in recent years. We also generated strong cash flow and returned $714 million to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases. What matters most is what drove those results. We converted more clients to completion. We retain more clients. We continued to improve the quality of our client base, and we made meaningful progress against the initiatives that matter most to the long-term durability of the business. Taken together, fiscal 2026 strengthened our belief that the strategy is working and that H&R Block is on the right path. The results we delivered this year and the evidence behind that give us greater confidence we can further accelerate long-term shareholder value. Over the past several quarters, we shared elements of the long-term strategy we're executing across H&R Block. Fiscal 2026 marked our first full year executing that strategy. And over the coming quarters, you'll hear more about where we're headed and the opportunities we have in front of us. As we look back on the year, what stands out most is the evidence that our expert-led technology-enabled strategy is showing up in stronger client outcomes and stronger business performance. One of the clearest proof points we saw this year was in the assisted category. After 2 consecutive years of improving trends, we maintained share in the assisted category in 2026. That matters because it demonstrates that the actions we're taking to bolster the client experience are helping strengthen our competitive position in our largest business. We also saw clear evidence that clients are responding to the changes we made to improve the experience. Conversion improved 200 basis points this season, which we believe is the largest single year improvement in our recorded history. That improvement was a result of deliberate refinements across the customer journey, supported by automation and product enhancements that help create a more personalized experience with fewer friction points. We saw the same pattern in retention. The rate at which clients returned this season increased 190 basis points, and Second Look continues to be a strong proof point. New clients who received Second Look returned at a rate more than 600 basis points higher than those that did not. That's because Second Look delivers something clients value deeply, expertise beyond current tax year preparation, confidence that H&R Block is working on their behalf to find every dollar they deserve and a relationship with a trusted tax pro who has their interest in mind, not only in tax season, but throughout the year. We also continue to see evidence that technology is enhancing rather than replacing the expertise that differentiates H&R Block. This season, we expanded the use of AI and automation across the business, helping tax pros focus more of their time on delivering advice, judgment and client support. Sidekick, our AI tax pro assistant launched across our offices and saw strong adoption throughout the season. While AI Tax Assist for paid DIY filers supported 4.2 million client interactions and drove nearly double the level of engagement we saw a year ago. We also automated and significantly expanded Second Look, allowing us to bring those benefits to more clients, while helping tax pros focus on the returns with the greatest opportunity. Together, these advances reinforce an important aspect of our strategy, using technology to scale expertise and deliver better outcomes for clients. Taken together, these results reinforce our confidence that our strategy is working. We're seeing stronger client outcomes, improving business quality and growing evidence that our expert-led technology-enabled strategy is translating into better performance. That combination is strengthening the durability of business today while creating a stronger foundation for future growth. A major part of our strategy is continuing to win with more complex, higher lifetime value clients. We're not focused on growth for the sake of volume alone. We're focused on attracting and retaining the type of clients that strengthen both the durability and economics of our business. We continue to see that shift in fiscal 2026. More complex clients engage with H&R Block at higher rates and our client mix continues to move towards the segment, we've been intentionally focused on. Over the last few years, the percent of clients falling within our target household AGI range of $50,000 to $200,000 has increased from 38% of our clients to 50%. Today, we're serving a higher percentage of clients with investment income, small business and sole proprietor needs and increasingly diverse income streams. That's important because it shows we're not only targeting these relationships, we're succeeding in attracting them. Research tells us that clients with more complex financial lives value assistance, expertise and trusted advice. This is exactly where H&R Block stands apart. Our brand, tax expertise, omnichannel model and growing technology capabilities allows us to serve these clients in ways that are increasingly relevant to their needs. We will continue to lean into these consumer groups rather than pursue lower lifetime value, transaction-oriented clients because volume alone doesn't create durable economic value. As a result, we'll continue to improve the quality of the business. These relationships create more opportunities to serve clients over time, support stronger retention and improve the long-term economics of our client base. Our omnichannel model is becoming an even greater competitive advantage because it's built around a simple idea. Clients don't all need the same level of assistance and their needs change over time. Some clients want to prepare their return entirely on their own. Others want occasional guidance through tools like AI Tax Assist, some want the assurance and accountability that comes from Tax Pro Review, and others prefer more guided support from a tax pro through virtual or in-office experiences. Our advantage is that we can meet clients where they are and provide the level of assistance they need when they need it. As their needs evolve, we're there every step of the way for them. We believe this flexibility is becoming increasingly important as technology changes how clients engage. Technology can simplify tasks and make assistance more accessible while human expertise provides the judgment, advice and confidence that technology alone cannot. We're not building separate digital and expert-led experiences. We're strengthening an integrated omnichannel model that operates at scale, where technology and human expertise work together to deliver the right level of assistance the way each client prefers. That's an important distinction. We're not trying to bolt technology onto a fragmented service model or bolt experts on to a digital model. We're building on a foundation that allows clients to move across DIY, virtual and in-person experiences while receiving the level of assistance that's right for them. We believe our ability to combine expertise and technology across the different needs clients have is becoming an increasingly important differentiator and expanding our opportunity for long-term growth. We saw additional evidence of this throughout the season. Clients engage with technology-enabled assistance at scale through AI Tax Assist. At the same time, Sidekick helped tax pros navigate complex tax questions more efficiently, while client experience monitors allow clients to explore products and services independently, contributing to a 550 basis point increase in product attachment. These are practical examples of our omnichannel model in action using technology to make assistance more accessible for clients while allowing our tax pros to focus on the expertise, judgment and advice that matter most. The progress we've discussed so far has strengthened our confidence in our strategy and helped us identify where to move faster. The greatest change happening at H&R Block isn't any single initiative. It's a different way of operating. Back in May, I shared that we ran more than 150 experiments during the season, exponentially more than in prior years. As we continue executing our strategy, we're experimenting more, we're learning faster and using those learnings to make better decisions about where to scale. That matters because it increases the velocity at which we can improve the client experience, strengthen execution and focus resources behind the ideas showing the greatest potential. This is an important part of building a more durable growth engine and accelerating progress against our strategy. We're not guessing at what could happen. We're testing in real-world conditions, learning from the results and scaling what works. That approach gives us greater confidence in the choices we're making allows us to move faster when evidence supports it and helps us advance our long-term strategy with greater discipline. Just as importantly, we're still in the early stages of what this approach can unlock. The progress we saw this year has increased our confidence that there are meaningful opportunities ahead and we expect the pace of learning, experimentation and innovation to continue accelerating. I'd like to share 2 examples that show how this operating model is translating learning into meaningful progress. The first example is the work that we're doing to test a more consultative expert-led technology-enabled client experience. In 5 pilot offices this past tax season, we delivered a client experience that felt less transactional and more advisory focused on strengthening the client relationship and creating incremental value both during and beyond the annual tax filing event. In these pilot offices, we saw higher client satisfaction, stronger belief in our expertise and value and increased engagement beyond tax season. These weren't data points alone. We heard it directly from clients. One client told us, I didn't know taxes could be this easy. Another said, this guidance will really make a difference for my business. Those comments matter because they reinforce a broader belief we have at H&R Block. As technology reduces the effort required to prepare a return, the value of expertise, judgment and trusted advice increases. They also reinforce our belief that clients value a trusted relationship that extends beyond the tax return itself. And we can deliver this experience because behind the scenes, technology is handling more of the administrative work, allowing our tax pros to spend less time collecting and entering information and more time providing guidance, planning and advice. Based on what we learned last tax season, we are expanding this model to a full designated market area for tax season '27. This will allow us to further test and refine the operating model, technology, talent and workflows needed to deliver this experience consistently and at scale. To enable this experience, we're transforming how work gets done inside our offices by automating away the mechanical aspects of tax prep. From using AI to eliminate manual data entry to automate the initial review of prior year returns, we're creating more capacity for tax pros to focus on delivering the personalized trusted assistance clients value most. The second example of how we're transforming is the evolution of our field leadership model. One of our clearest learnings was the critical role year-round leadership plays in developing associates, reinforcing service standards and delivering a more consistent client experience. Those learnings gave us confidence to move faster on changes that will support future phases of our strategy. As part of that effort, we're making an enterprise transition from a seasonal office leadership model to a year-round office leadership model, supported by area experience leaders to manage a small number of offices and focus on developing talent, coaching associates and driving greater consistency throughout the field. We believe delivering more consistent and consultative client experiences requires full-time leaders, who are present not just during tax season, but throughout the year. These leaders will also help deepen our presence in local communities, helping us compete more effectively against independent providers. We're also streamlining supporting functions to better enable our field teams, increase consistency of execution and accelerate our ability to scale what is working across the organization. These 2 examples, although different in detail, reflect the same principle. When testing gives us strong evidence, we act on it. That discipline allows us to accelerate progress against our strategy, reduce execution risk and build a faster-moving organization capable of compounding progress over time. Looking back at the year, what gives us confidence is not simply the results we achieved, but the evidence behind them. We're delivering stronger client outcomes, attracting higher lifetime value clients, building a more differentiated competitive position and seeing increasing proof that our strategy is working. Just as importantly, we're becoming a faster learning organization. Our ability to test, learn, adapt and scale what works continues to improve, giving us greater confidence in where we invest, where we accelerate and how we create value. While we're still early in the journey, we believe H&R Block is better positioned today than it has been in many years. We have a clear strategy, compelling opportunities ahead and significant runway to further strengthen the business, deepen client relationships and create long-term shareholder value. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Tiffany.

Thank you, Curtis, and good afternoon, everyone. In fiscal 2026, we delivered our strongest financial performance of the past 5 years. Revenue and EBITDA growth as well as margin expansion all accelerated, which reflects a year of successful execution and progress against our strategy. For the fiscal year, we delivered revenue of $3.95 billion, an increase of 4.9% over the prior year. This increase was primarily driven by higher net average charge or NAC and company-owned volume and U.S. assisted tax preparation, growth in international revenue and another year of small business momentum at Wave. As Curtis shared, we strengthened the quality of our business and as a result, maintained share in our largest category. This was supported by higher conversion, better retention, and a mix shift towards more complex clients who value confidence and expert judgment. We also continued to benefit from our ability to make low single-digit pricing adjustments while offering a strong value proposition to our clients. In the assisted category overall, we were pleased by our progress this year toward a healthier balance of volume, price and mix, which remains a key element of our strategy. Wave, an important component of our small business strategy had another very productive year. This marked Wave's second consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth, driven by our paid Pro tier subscriptions and higher payments volume. Taken together, we believe these top line results reflect a healthy and improving business. Total operating expenses for the fiscal year were $3.04 billion, an increase of 3.6% over the prior year. This increase was primarily due to higher tax professional wages as a result of the better company-owned return volumes, and an increase in occupancy costs and technology-related expenses. Fiscal 2026 EBITDA was $1.06 billion, an increase of 8.3% over the prior year resulting in 80 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion. Our effective tax rate for the fiscal year was 14% compared to 22% in the prior year. As a reminder, during the third quarter, we recognized an $84.1 million onetime noncash tax benefit related to the resolution of an IRS examination which reduced income tax expense and provided a $0.65 benefit to earnings per share. Net income from continuing operations was $736 million. And earnings per share from continuing operations were $5.69. Adjusted net income was $688 million. Adjusted earnings per share were $5.31, an increase of 13.9% over the prior year. This increase was driven by fewer shares outstanding as a result of share repurchases and higher adjusted net income. Turning to our capital structure and disciplined capital allocation practices, our liquidity position remains strong, supported by the significant and stable free cash flow generation of our business. This year, we generated $756 million of free cash flow, representing a meaningful increase year-over-year and reflecting the strength of our operating model and the quality of our earnings. This cash flow provided flexibility to execute against our capital allocation priorities. During the year, we repurchased and retired approximately 10.5 million shares, representing 7.9% of shares outstanding at an aggregate cost of $500 million. In fiscal 2026, we returned a total of $714 million to shareholders in the form of dividends and share repurchases. We remain committed to investing in the business, growing the dividend and returning excess capital to shareholders through share repurchases. We believe this disciplined approach to capital allocation continues to drive meaningful long-term shareholder value. Now turning to our fiscal 2027 outlook. I'll begin with the key assumptions underlying our expectations for the year. We expect industry growth to moderate relative to the historical norm of approximately 1%. While unemployment rates remain stable, job growth has slowed. Historically, industry growth has correlated with job growth. So our outlook reflects that backdrop. Despite the softer industry backdrop, the meaningful progress we delivered in fiscal 2026 and the continued progress against our strategy gives us confidence in our market position heading into 2027. We remain focused on achieving a healthier balance of volume, price and mix, supported by ongoing enhancements to the client experience and serving clients with increasingly complex needs. At the low end of our revenue outlook, we assume we will maintain assisted category market share. While at the high end, we assume assisted category market share growth. We will also continue to acquire franchise locations when opportunities arise at attractive EBITDA multiples. And we expect growth in small business services as we continue to enhance how we bring together our expert advice, product suite and digital capabilities to comprehensively serve small business owners. With regard to expenses, our outlook assumes continued discipline in managing our cost structure. At the same time, we expect to increase our level of investment in fiscal 2027 to support our strategic priorities. As Curtis discussed, we are scaling initiatives that have demonstrated promising results through testing and accelerating efforts where evidence has strengthened our confidence in the opportunity ahead. These investments support the next phase of our strategy and include efforts such as the expansion of our consultative client experience and technologies that enable greater automation of tax preparation and related workflows. Our continued focus on disciplined cost management allows us to make these investments and still maintain our long-term financial algorithm. As a result of these and other assumptions, our outlook for fiscal 2027 is revenue in the range of $4.11 billion to $4.16 billion, adjusted EBITDA in the range of $1.11 billion to $1.14 billion, an effective tax rate of approximately 23% and adjusted diluted earnings per share in the range of $6.04 and to $6.24. One additional expense item to note as we review the outlook we provided today in our earnings release. The transition that Curtis discussed from a seasonal office leadership model to a year-round model and the streamlining of support functions, all to better enable our field teams has resulted in an approximately $8.3 million severance charge in the first quarter of fiscal 2027. This amount has been excluded from our outlook. Durable cash flows remain one of the defining strengths of our business, and we expect fiscal 2027 to be another strong year of free cash flow generation. We will continue to use this cash flow to invest in the business, grow the dividend and return excess capital to shareholders through share repurchases. Consistent with that commitment, today, the Board approved a 10% increase in our quarterly dividend to $0.46 per share. We are proud that H&R Block has paid quarterly dividends consecutively since becoming public in 1962. Additionally, our fiscal 2027 outlook contemplates approximately $400 million of share repurchases with a plan to execute throughout the entire year subject to market conditions. We have approximately $600 million remaining under our current $1.5 billion share repurchase authorization. Taken together, these inputs underpin our fiscal 2027 outlook and reinforce our focus on disciplined execution of our strategy. We entered the new fiscal year with momentum, confidence in our strategy and a compelling financial profile that enables us to invest in strategic priorities, grow profitability and continue to deliver value to shareholders. With that, I'll turn it back over to Curtis for closing remarks.

Thank you, Tiffany. Results this year reflect the progress we've made executing our strategy. We exceeded financial expectations, further elevated the client experience and continue to strengthen the durability of our business. The evidence we saw throughout the year from stronger conversion and retention to continued improvement in the quality of our client base, reinforces our confidence that the strategy is working and that H&R Block is well positioned for the future. We have an exciting year ahead and I look forward to sharing our Q1 results in November and providing a deeper look at our strategy, execution priorities and longer-term value creation framework at our Investor Day in December. Thank you for your time and your support. And with that, operator, we'll open up the line for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Scott Schneeberger of Oppenheimer & Company.

And congratulations, really good-looking tax year. Curtis, could we talk about, obviously, conversion, retention, complexity, very good for you. Can we talk about where those can go? I mean, you mentioned conversion a record, what is the opportunity in front of you? I guess, we'll hear more at Investor Day in these categories, but you had a nice year on the kind of type of guide that we're looking at this year, which is similar to what you delivered financially this year just ended on what you have coming up, can that persist at that level or farther on these drivers?

Thank you for the question. I hope to see you in December. I know that we've talked in the past about our Block Next strategy. That's important to us. We talked quite a bit in the prepared remarks about our transition from a transactional experience that we deliver to a consultative experience that we deliver. And I'll just give everybody that's listening a little bit of history. I think this is important as we think about the H&R Block journey. When you think about the journey, it's important for us to think about as a company, what business are we actually in? And H&R Block has been around for 70 years, doing tax preparation. But if you dig underneath that, and spend enough time with our clients, Scott and folks, you really quickly discover that what clients are looking for is trust and confidence. That's the key currency in the space that we operate in. As a part of that, we stepped back as an organization and we defined what we would then call our ideal state. So what does the future look like for H&R Block, where we're delivering this level of trust and confidence for every customer that engages with us. And that future is different than what it has been historically for H&R Block. As a part of that, we identified what that would look like. And then we sat down as an organization and we identified what the critical assumptions would be that would be required for us to deliver against that. And that allowed us to create a strategic road map that takes us from today to tomorrow. That strategic road map, as we'll talk about at Investor Day, cuts across multiple phases. One of the early phases of that journey is us focused on transforming the work that our tax pros do. So you heard me talk a lot about in the last earnings call and in the prepared remarks, about transforming the work that our tax pros do and shifting that from transactional tax preparation, which consists of data collection and data entry to more consultative engagement. And that's really in our sweet spot when you think about the fact that we've been around for 70 years. We do almost [ 20 ] tax returns a year. There's really no other player in the U.S. that has the access to the data that we do, that's got the footprint that we do that's got the relationship and all the communities across America. So Phase 1 is that technical transformation. The other thing that I talked about in the prepared remarks was the transformation of our field leadership. So in order for us to deliver this consultative experience, we need to make sure that we have the system -- support system around our tax pros to enable that. So we are shifting from having seasonal field leadership to having full-time field leadership. And by doing that, we have more hands on the ground, more focused in every office where we can ensure that our tax pros are delivering the experience that we want. So all those things give us confidence that this is just the beginning of the journey. So we're really excited about the fact that we saw record results this year. But once again, this is the first phase in this transformation for H&R Block, really focused on delivering that trust and confidence that's important to our clients. Hope to see you sooner.

Appreciate that, Curt. For following up, I'm curious the Big Beautiful Bill. Can you speak now that we're in the look-back period? What type of impact did that have on this past year and the tax season? And what do you anticipate in year 2 in '27?

Yes, it's a great question. And once again, for everybody listening, I'll just share some data points here. When you look at the tax law changes from last tax season, really 3 major things resulted in -- from those changes. Number one, the increase in the number of taxpayers receiving a refund, that went up by 6%. That's a really big number in our industry. If you also take a look at the average refund amount that also went up almost 12%. That's a really big number as well. And then if you combine that with the fact that the balance due to the IRS decreased, that gave taxpayers more confidence that they can do tax on their own. Typically, when we see that in the tax industry, DIY gets a little bit of a tailwind. Now what I'll just remind everybody of is if you look at the assisted space, that represents over 55% of the market, and it has for many years. So at H&R Block, we remain incredibly confident in assisted, and we believe that that's going to continue to maintain its strength in the industry both this year and moving forward.

Our next question comes from the line of George Tong of Goldman Sachs.

You mentioned your goal of maintaining market share for assisted at the low end of the guide and then outperforming at the midpoint and at the higher end of the guide. Can you share your thoughts on how you expect to perform in the DIY category for the upcoming tax season?

Yes. George, nice to see you. And hopefully, everything is going well in the West Coast. A couple of things that I do want to emphasize, to answer your question, not all DIY market share is created equal. And at H&R Block, our focus is on attracting and retaining more complex clients with higher lifetime value rather than pursuing transactional volume. A couple of additional data points around that. So when you look at our DIY mix between paid and free, that improved 140 basis points. We also delivered DIY growth in AGI bands of $100,000 or more, which is important. All these things connect back to our focus on more complex filers. Now when you take a look at that and you also take a look at the things that are very unique to H&R Block. With our focus on our omnichannel engagement model, we also saw favorable migration of clients from DIY into assisted as their need for more assistance evolved. That reflects the strength of our omnichannel model. Now I'll also share that DIY remains an important entry point within that model, but we don't manage the business to optimize for DIY volume in isolation. And I think if you were to also step back and look at the DIY industry, in the DIY space, at the very low end, customers often focus on the lowest price or free offerings. And these customers are typically the most transient with the lowest retention and the lowest lifetime value who often move to a new provider at the moment a lower price shows up. So when you think about our focus, as we emphasize on my prepared remarks, it's on the clients who value assistance, trust and guidance. Those are the clients for us that have the longest and strongest lifetime value.

Got it. That's very helpful. And you mentioned the need to increase investments in the upcoming year as you transform the business to be less transactional, more advisory. Can you talk about the specific buckets where you intend to spend and invest and perhaps quantify how much is going into each of those buckets, for example, compensation, platform, technology, et cetera?

George, thanks for the question. So just to give you a few examples, and some of these were woven throughout Curtis's and my prepared remarks. We talked about our consultative client experience and some of the testing that we did in tax season '26, and these proofs-of-concept offices and our ability to roll those to a DMA in tax season '27 so that's one area of investment. That's primarily an investment in labor and training. So that's part of what we're looking to invest in, in fiscal '27. We're also investing in technology. So that technology allows us to do more automation of tax preparation as well as related workflows. So that's entirely a technology investment. And then the last example I would give you is around our small business strategy. And we've been hard at work integrating our Wave platform into our broader small business initiative and working to make sure that we have a unified small business strategy that supports our small business customers. We know that's a great growth opportunity for us. And so that's, again, some investment in technology and making sure that we have that unified approach. I'm not going to quantify each of those buckets of investment. I know that's something you're looking for, but that's something that we'll spend more time talking about over the next quarters. Thanks for the question, though. And I think, obviously, we're very proud of the fact that we can maintain our long-term algorithm and at the same time, make the investments. I think that's a testament to the work that we're doing internally to drive cost out in other parts of the business and still be able to invest where we need to accelerate our strategy.

Our next question comes from the line of Thomas Wendler of Stephens Inc.

Great quarter. Happy to see it. Just wanted to kick things off with a question on Second Look. It has higher retention. Could you maybe give us a little bit of color on the utilization of Second Look during this quarter?

Tom, welcome. We're happy to have you. I hope I see you in December. Great question. So let me give you a little bit of background on Second Look. Second Look has been around for many years. But historically, we've struggled because Second Look was very, very manual. It required tax pros to do quite a bit of work. And because it required tax pros to do a lot of work, tax pros were not very eager to offer Second Look to new clients. Now for everybody, listening, let me just explain again what the Second Look is. So Second Look is the service that we offer at H&R Block. It's unique to new clients. And for new clients, we can take a look at the last 3 years of tax returns to look for any untapped missed opportunities. And when we find those untapped missed opportunities, our retention rate for those clients goes up significantly. For those clients, it feels like found money. So that's a great service for new clients moving in. Over the last 18 months, we spent quite a bit of time automating Second Look, leveraging some of the newer AI capabilities that we have access to now. So instead of having a small population of our new assisted clients opting to take Second Look, we have a much higher percentage of people opting in with the goal of every one of our assisted clients that are new, getting Second Look. We're not quite there yet, but we're getting fairly and fairly close without me sharing with specific numbers. Does that help, Tom?

Yes, that definitely helps. I appreciate the color there. And then for my second question here, could you maybe just speak to the success you saw on the international front this quarter. It looks a little bit better than expectations.

Tom, I'd be happy to do that. I will tell you, keep in mind that the tax seasons for Canada and Australia are different. So Australia's tax season runs July through October. Canada's tax season looks more akin to the U.S., not exactly the same, but more akin to the U.S. So keep in mind, there's different tax season. Canada had a good tax season, though not as strong as we would have liked, just given some of the changes in regulation with the CRA. So I would say most of the benefit that we saw in fiscal '26 actually was a benefit from favorable FX rates though the Canadian tax season was good relative to our expectation, not great. And Australia had a very nice tax season, very nice end to their tax season overall, but that was earlier in the year. So a little bit of color there on international performance.

Perfect. Looking forward to seeing everyone during the Investor Day.

Thanks Tom. See you there.

Our next question comes from the line of Kartik Mehta of Northcoast Research.

Curtis, maybe if you could provide some thoughts on pricing as we go into next season. I think you said you pointed a little bit more balance on, obviously, the price and volume metrics. So I'm wondering if you think you'd be able to achieve the same level of price? Or do you think that mix will be a little bit different?