Intuit Inc. (INTU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to our next session. Really happy to have you on here with us, Mark. Maybe just talk a little bit about yourself and your role at Intuit and then we can take it from there.

Sure. Sure. Yes. I'm Mark Notarainni. I have the pleasure of leading our consumer team within Intuit. And that really encompasses TurboTax, Credit Karma and our ProTax Group. So really serving consumers' financial needs. I've been with Intuit now for 18 years in this role for -- coming up on 3 now. Super excited to be here and really looking forward to talk about the future of our consumer platform.

The -- and it's kind of funny because like you can't go to these tech conferences, don't start on AI to talk about.

It's kind of a big deal.

We had it enough, I don't know why. Can you talk a little bit about the thinking from the interim management team and how that has evolved in terms of like what AI means for you guys?

Yes. AI is an incredible opportunity for us across all of Intuit, both our business platform and our consumer platform. It really enables us to do done-for-you experiences for customers, right? So -- we've been, in the case of TurboTax, an incredible platform that's been driven by a linear interview process and what AI has enabled us to do is ingest -- get data, ingest data, apply data and personalize an experience that basically enables us to do much more of a done-for-you experience, bringing your data, get the work done for you without having to put in information and then get you the best outcome so that you could finish and file in the case of TurboTax. In Credit Karma, it enables us to do -- be much more helpful to a customer because of the data points that we have. We have about 70,000 data points on each consumer. And that enables us to actually personalize experiences beyond credit cards into personal loans, into debt and debt management. And so really truly becoming a daily interactive product for our consumers and solving real problems every single day. That's all enabled by AI.

Yes. And then can you talk a little bit about the evolution or like the actions you guys have taken to be ready for that and then I'm thinking like there's like a harmonization of the technology, there's a data platform, et cetera. Like it sounds all very simple. It's like, yes. And reality is often kind of a bit tougher to...

It's much harder yes. So there's -- the first thing is making sure that we have the data organized, right? And that's a big part of our platform is our data and what we call our data services. So we have the ability to aggregate and collect data that's very, very important for driving your personal finances. So that's really a transformation that we had to drive. Our data was locked up in different products, and we had to organize it in a way where it could be consumed real-time by a product. And so that's been a big transformation. We also, in the case of TurboTax, right, we're a 40-year-old company. And so we had to modernize our platform across our tax product. We had to do that in QuickBooks as well because it's been around. And one of the things that is very unique, and I think this is important for anybody going through an AI transformation is you have to have the culture for change. So Intuit has been around for 40 years, amazing -- 40-plus years. We started off as a DOS company. It turns out that the technology that used for DOS doesn't work in the world of AI, and we've been able to migrate, manage through really big technology shifts. This one is super fast and more impactful than the Internet or mobile for sure, that preceded it. So it really -- like Intuit is a culture of change. And we just really leaned into it and adopted it and understood what it could do to solve customer problems. AI could do, yes.

And if you think about then the -- at least like I don't know if you had it, but like when ChatGPT came out with this horror scenarios, because ChatGPT can do your taxes, then I was like, okay, well, I don't need to do tax anymore, et cetera. Like talk a little bit about the journey that you kind of experience in the discussion internally, but like also like in terms of how you want to position yourselves?

Yes. So from -- at the core, we declared being an AI-driven platform, human platform about 7 years ago. So we've adopted AI very, very early on in that transformation and believe that it could transform our experiences. ChatGPT and other LLMs came on to the scene and drove a lot of traffic, a lot of engagement with customers. But doing taxes, managing books, accounting, payroll, all the things that we do. It's not just about general questions and answers. Data is incredibly important. Security, accuracy and confidence are all things that are incredibly important that Intuit has built into both the consumer platform and our technology platform. So what we view with the ChatGPT, and we've already -- we just announced our OpenAI agreement is we need to go where customers are. And what we love about what's happening there is, obviously, 800 million weekly active users, but it's a way to interact with the customer and get them into the right products that are best served for them, whether it's TurboTax, Credit Karma or QuickBooks, and that's what we view as the future of -- as an opportunity and less of a threat and much more about meeting customers where they are and helping them get the answers they need and then getting them into our products and solving their problems.

Yes. I mean, did you see it in the change in the ecosystem as well. If I think about the tax consultants, et cetera, that they kind of come down as well? Or were they always like...

I think there's always -- like in every transformation, I could tell you in terms of like the tax professional. When we launched the TurboTax Live 8 years ago, one of the big fears that our experts had our tax pros was video. And that was a big hurdle. And so there's change is my point is very common. And you have to manage through it. What we have, we have about 13,000 tax pros on our platform. They absolutely love it. They're a little bit afraid at first, but they're much more worried about am I able to do my job effectively and drive the accuracy for my customer. And so that's kind of the basis of their concern. And once we show the capabilities and once we started doing and removing mundane tax tasks, and actually enabling them to serve customers, which is what they really love to do and solve those problems and drive confidence for those customers, they've really adopted AI, and we really don't see that as a challenge within our platform anymore. They're kind of over the change curve on that and actually see the benefit.

And then as part of that, like let's talk a little bit about TurboTax, we want to do assisted we're kind of moving in a way up market. There seems to be like a huge opportunity because there's still so many people that are kind of doing that. Like talk a little bit about the evolution of your capabilities and where you are on that journey?

Yes. So there are about 88 million Americans that still file their taxes through what we call the assisted category. So it's a huge, huge market. It's about a $37 billion TAM. So it's an enormous opportunity for us. The technology investments that we made starting 7, 8 years ago in TurboTax Live, have only gotten better and much more advanced, which enables us to serve more customers. That's the way we see it. So it started with, I had talked about video. It started with being able to work from home and virtually, that all enabled us to start to scale. But AI and Generative AI, in particular, has accelerated our opportunities to serve those customers and move upmarket because our experts are no longer doing things that consume the time away from a consumer or away from a customer that actually empowers them to serve more and more customers because that work is being done for them. And so that's how we start to think about it. It also allowed us to branch into new types of services that we launched 2 years ago, but really last year was our first GA year was business tax, and small businesses and helping serve them because we could start to build a product using AI that was focused on our customers' behalf. AI is transformative for us in many ways, certainly in the product experience and our expert experience. But our developers are 40% more efficient with AI, right? So that enabled us to go build a biz tax platform, which would have taken us a long time before. But because of how our developers are aided by AI and much more efficient, we can build faster. On a customer success side, as an example, we see this year about $135 million of efficiency opportunities, and that efficiency translates into our ability to serve more customers, right? So it's very, very powerful for us across the board, customers experiences and our internal operations.

What is the one of the messages that came from you guys for a long, long time on tax words that had too many dropouts. So people started it, they didn't get comfortable and then kind of dropped out went to the tax guys then afterwards. Like how is Gen AI in theory helping that it should be the ability to do a lot more handholding, interact with ChatGPT at the moment, it's like there's a lot of like handholding capabilities like, is that one of the factors that you kind of consider in terms of like changing that conversion rate?

Yes, absolutely. And I like the handholding term. It really is, as I had mentioned earlier, TurboTax was a very linear interview process that required everybody to go through hundreds of questions, and that's where you saw a bunch of fatigue, right? Because many of the questions didn't really apply to you as an individual. And what AI and where we're -- what we've built now is an AI-driven experience that uses data to actually personalize that experience and only offer up the questions that are relevant to you, which shortens the time for you to actually complete your taxes. We saw a 12% reduction last year in tax prep and we expect further refinements in that. That creates confidence. And then what it also enables us to do is infuse human intelligence. We talk about AI and HI and that has been infused into our product, which really helps with the confidence factor of getting the most refund or paying the absolute requirement -- required payments that you have to make, if you owe money. So it's very, very important, the combination of AI plus HI.

Yes. And then where do you see that market in a way, ultimately play out, like is there a certain limit how much of a tax return you can do and at some point, it just gets too complex? Or is now like the ability there in theory, everything is just that inertia on the consumer side that is...

In AI. In terms of being able to do it -- driven through AI. We believe -- so AI for...

And assisted, yes.

It's the combination of the 2, AI plus HI, but also within our HI capabilities. Generative AI is a component, right? LLMs are a component of our offering or our ability to deliver, but we also have advanced machine learning in there as well, which is really also helping us drive breakthrough. And so when you look at our products next year, it will be 90% enabled by HI. And then once -- and but it's less about doing your taxes in that way. That's a great confidence builder for customers. It's also the knowledge that you have a human that can help you answer that last mile question or give you that last mile of confidence that you're doing everything right and you're maximizing your return.

Yes, yes. I mean -- and how do you think -- I'm kind of leading to that famous question from the Analyst Day of the long-term ambition of 20%. You're part of that, you're part of the organization. If you think about that, the -- like if you -- like doing more assisted drives growth, like you get more people in there and potentially at a higher price point. How do you think about that trajectory in terms of how you can kind of do that from a timing perspective, like is this kind of like a gradual uplift. Do you think like a little bit this year and then step changes because more and more people get comfortable. How do you think about that? .

Yes. Certainly, the 20% is an aspirational target internally it's meant to motivate us. What we do believe is that by focusing on the consumer problems or the small business problems, we have an opportunity to get to a 20% growth in the company. And with the advent of -- and the emergence of Generative AI plus our Human Intelligence, we have an opportunity to solve more of those problems more frequently. And so we have an incredible consumer platform that goes well beyond taxes now. Credit Karma helps customers manage their credit. It helps them get the best loan. It helps them save money. And so that flywheel within that consumer platform allows us to be a much more relevant part of our consumers' lives every single day, which then gives us opportunities to serve them and drive towards that 20% growth in the consumer platform. The same thing could be said for our business platform as well.

Talking a little bit about the different groups. So on our side, we're all focused on like, okay, we have a big assisted category, you guys move up market, more customers there that you can deal with that you never dealt with at the higher price point, thank you very much. But the low end is still kind of important because it's the younger generation often come like that, the top of the funnel. Talk a little bit about what you're seeing there in terms of trends? .

Yes. So certainly, digital native, mobile is at the forefront of our Gen Z strategy. We're also very aware of price sensitivities there. So we've launched breakthrough offers like our mobile app offer that is a free offer for new customers to file their taxes for free. But it's also what we see is that Gen Z, in particular, has a real desire and still has confidence issues and likes to engage with our expert system. And so we're trying to make that much more accessible to them through our mobile experiences, we're decomposing our services, meeting them where they are with their questions so that they can file confidently. Many of them are new, right, the first-time filers. And so it's a very daunting experience because they are -- there's a lot of fear associated with that. And for many of them, most of them, it's a very large refund. And so they want access to that. So we also look at how can we provide value-added services that are meaningful to them, things like fast access to money or 5 Days Early product was very popular because they -- no matter what they want their money as fast as possible. And so that's how we think about addressing that category. We also believe that within Credit Karma and the $140 million member base that we have there, it's a large population to be able to help because as they're engaging with Credit Karma to get credit cards or get personal loans, it's a natural extension at this time of year for them to come in and start to do taxes. And we're making that very easy for them to do that.

And then what's the -- have you seen any change in terms of who you're kind of seeing there? You used to -- the classic H&R Block that was always there at TaxAct. Like do you see any changes in terms of someone new coming up? Or is there the world changing there?

Yes. So what we do see is they love mobile. They expect everything to be on their mobile device. They embrace these new ways of engaging with our experts, right? So we're not a traditional assisted. We have a lot of capabilities that are natively embedded in their app. So the app plays a huge part of attracting that customer base. And then we do know that they're also heavily engaged in Open AI and ChatGPT. And so we need to be in those categories and helping answer their questions as they're asking them in those LLMs as well. And we're very excited about what we're doing with Open AI over the coming month here to embed our experiences for the ChatGPT users.

Yes. Yes. Okay. Perfect. And then moving on a little bit, Credit Karma. It was more cyclical than we initially can afford. Now it looks like we're kind of coming out the other end, like can you talk a little bit about your learn -- when you start to own assets to kind of now your learnings and how that's kind of influencing what you want to do with it going forward?

Yes. This is where we believe there's just an incredible opportunity to help customers make more personal finance decisions daily. And so our focus right now is to really how to -- is how do we drive that engagement on a daily basis with our Credit Karma members. So we're deploying a fleet of agents that we're calling assistance from starting with like a refund assistant. You get a $4,000 check through tax, what do you do with it, right? What do you do with that money and what's the best application for it. So our refund assistant we'll know what kind of -- what's your debt portfolio, right? 57% of Credit Karma members have revolving debt. So we can help them make better financial decisions based on that moment in time that they get that big refund, maybe pay off some of that debt, maybe rotate it into something that's more advantageous for them, how do you set up high-yield savings and really start to get them on a journey of a financial health, right? We also have the debt assistant that will be constantly working in the background for our members and surface opportunities for them to make better debt decisions on a year-round basis. We have Credit Spark. Credit is a huge problem for Gen Z, right? Not problem, but it's a -- they're new to it. And so Credit Spark is an agent that we're deploying that we'll look at where their spending habits are and make recommendations and -- for them to leverage like things like utilities or rent and to improving their credit score real time. And that will be very powerful for them as they start their financial journey. So that's how we think about Credit Karma. It's an incredible platform that has 43 million monthly active users, and that just gives us an incredible opportunity to engage every day in those everyday decisions that members have to make.

And what can you do there on the on the product side or the offering side to kind of maybe remove some of the cyclicality. Remember, we kind of started with like 25% plus growth, then we went kind of -- then we went down. Now we're coming back up again. Like Is there anything to -- way to smooth it out? Or is that kind of something that we kind of need to appreciate it -- appreciate as a kind of what it is, yes.

Yes. No, it's a great question. So one, there is experience. And that's really solving more problems for customers, right, and members, right? So that's all the agent work that we're doing that I had talked about. And that's all based on the data that we have on customers and their connected accounts, and that allows us to spread our -- many years ago, we were largely a credit card business. Now we've expanded verticals as well, right? We've got personal loans that's growing significantly. We've got insurance. We've got new markets and new opportunities in other areas like home and we have Credit Karma money that we need to invest in. That's a daily app. So there's also an expansion of the services that we can offer for customers. And that will spread out risk and also enable us in good times, right, in good macro times or maybe bad macro times, be able to offer the financial advice that they need and take action against. And that's really the promise that we see within the Credit Karma platform.

Yes, yes. And then is there -- if you think about Credit Karma connects to TurboTax, if you think about it also go to the other side of QuickBooks like how was that connection -- is there -- yes.

There is a cohort of small businesses within Credit Karma that we can offer business loans, too, for sure. And that's actively worked. But what we're really excited is with our business tax offering, right? Because that job to be done taxes for a small business is very difficult and can be very impactful to the operations of their business. And so we deployed biz tax last year at scale, and we were very excited about the breakthrough that we got there. What we have an opportunity to do is that moment in time that, they're filing their taxes, is to start to establish a relationship with them through QuickBooks on a year-round basis. And there's a lot of opportunity because not all of our customers are already QuickBooks customers that are coming in. That allows us to then really get them into a QuickBooks product that's right for them, that helps them manage their finances year-round versus coming to us with a spreadsheet, and saying, what do I do? How do I file my taxes. And so that's another flywheel, if you will, within our -- within the broader Intuit ecosystem that we're really excited about.

Yes. Okay. Last few minutes I want to spend like as we're moving closer towards the tax season now, we're in December. Like you talked a little bit about making your onboarding easier. Like how do you think about the new tax season if you kind of plan it out? Like is it kind of what I learned last time around, I tried to change it, or like how does that process work for you? .

Yes. So there was a lot that we learned through last tax season that carries forward in this year. And there's a lot more new innovation that we're deploying. So we're very excited about this tax season. One, we have been deeply embedded within Credit Karma and those monthly interactions are helping us smooth that onboarding experience and really make it much more natural to go from Credit Karma into TurboTax data experiences. The other is we're going big with our local presence, right? We're opening up 600 service centers, 20 retail stores, roughly 20 and 1 flagship. And what that does is it unlocks the whole category of customers that are interested and someone doing their taxes that's close to them. And when we did that last year, and we did it towards the tail end of last year, we saw a 5x engagement rate with our experts. And so we've really refined and built some incredible new innovation that's going to allow us to meet those customers in the communities that they're in with the best expert network that's out there in the industry.

What's the -- I mean the counter argument for that is like you're rebuilding what was there before. Like what's different about this local versus...

One, is our brand. Our brand is super powerful. Two, is that we're a technology-first view. So -- in our platform. And so you don't have to come in with papers. You don't have to come in with anything, you just show up and then we can engage with you and then we connect all your accounts, and that's when the magic happens, and it's much faster. So that we really focus on experience. Our price points are very attractive for our full service, and then you get fast access to money, right? Again, it all comes down to the money and how fast can I get it into my account for a vast majority of Americans. And that's where we're really uniquely positioned over any other service. And then now with Credit Karma, we can take that refund and make it go much further, right? And so that's the last step that keeps us engaged and they come back to us. And with every -- the 5x engagement was a massive breakthrough for us because it was within a 50-mile radius, right, of an expert. We're like, okay, that means a lot, right? Being local means a lot to consumers. And so we're doubling down on that.

Yes. Yes. That's kind of -- yes, after all these years, there's a new learning, yes.

Yes, that's what's fun about experimenting.

Yes. No, okay, that's interesting. Then last question for me. So there is growth, and you kind of guide for that. There's also then the profitability envelope that you have to kind of achieve those things. Talk a little bit about that dynamic of growth versus margins that you have to live with. .

Yes. It's -- we manage at a portfolio level, right? We have many different ways that customers monetize with us, and that gives us a lot of flexibility to lean in and look at it at a portfolio level. It is something that we as a team in the consumer group, and I know they do in the business team as well, look at every day and how do we make those investments and how do we model those investments that may show monetization somewhere else. But we get -- engage a customer is really what we need to stay focused on.

Yes. Yes, yes. Okay. Perfect. I think that's a good closing statement, actually. Perfect. Thank you, Mark. Really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you.