Intuit

Intuit sells financial software in two segments. Global Business Solutions, the larger, is QuickBooks and what surrounds it: accounting, payments, payroll and HR (QuickBooks Workforce), a business checking account, bill pay, small-business loans, Intuit Enterprise Suite for mid-market companies, tools for accountants, and Mailchimp. Consumer is TurboTax, Credit Karma, and ProTax, the professional tax software accountants use (Lacerte, ProSeries, ProConnect).

The products share three things. They hold a customer's financial data: a business's every transaction, a household's tax returns, a person's credit file. They turn rules that most people find hard (tax law, double-entry bookkeeping, payroll tax) into software that asks plain questions. And they connect: TurboTax refunds flow into Credit Karma Money, QuickBooks data decides QuickBooks loans, and accountants work on clients' books and returns in Intuit's tools.

Intuit's strategy, in its own words, is an "AI-driven expert platform". It has built its own system for running AI models (GenOS) and now ships agents that categorize transactions, chase invoices, prepare parts of a tax return and flag cash problems. Behind them is a network of tax experts and bookkeepers, so a customer can hand the work to a person: TurboTax Live and Full Service, QuickBooks Live bookkeeping.

The users are mostly American: individual filers, small and mid-market businesses, and the accountants who serve both; only a small share of revenue comes from other countries. TurboTax's and ProTax's sales come between November and April, which makes Intuit's quarters uneven.

Revenue was $21.4B in fiscal 2026 (the year to July 31, 2026), up 13.9%, and has grown about 17.4% a year over five years, helped by the purchases of Credit Karma (2020) and Mailchimp (2021).

QuickBooks customers stay because their books are in it. Years of transactions, categorization rules, bank connections, invoices and reports live there, and moving to Xero or NetSuite means converting that history and retraining the owner. The bigger tie is the people and services around it: the accountant who works in QuickBooks, the payroll that runs every two weeks, the payments that reconcile themselves, the loan that was decided on its data. Each service added makes leaving harder, since each would need its own replacement.

TurboTax relies on habit and carried-over data. Last year's return, with its addresses, dependents, depreciation schedules and carryovers, is already there, and a filer who trusts the result rarely shops around; the move, when it happens, is to H&R Block, FreeTaxUSA, Cash App Taxes or an accountant, usually over price.

Credit Karma keeps users with frequent, free score updates, but switching costs are low: bank apps and the bureaus offer free scores too. Mailchimp has the weakest ties; a list can be exported and imported into Klaviyo, Brevo or HubSpot in an afternoon, so it competes on product and price every month.

Software that customers rent or pay for each year costs little to deliver, and Intuit runs few data centers of its own: capital spending was $0.17B in fiscal 2026, under 1% of revenue. Operating margin was 27.4%, with operating income of $5.88B and net income of $4.57B.

The acquisitions show in the record. Revenue jumped 25.4% in fiscal 2021 and 32.1% in fiscal 2022 as Credit Karma and Mailchimp joined, operating margin fell from 26.0% in fiscal 2021 to 20.2% in fiscal 2022 with the costs of buying and integrating them, and debt rose from $2.0B to $6.9B. Margin has since climbed back above where it started, to 27.4%.

Tax season pays up front and the subscriptions renew, so cash runs well ahead of profit. Operating cash flow was $8.84B and free cash flow $8.66B in fiscal 2026 (40.4% of revenue), or $6.61B after equity pay of $2.06B (9.6% of revenue). Intuit ended the year with $7.67B of debt against $4.71B of cash.

Intuit is moving from software people use to software that does the work for them. Its fiscal 2026 10-K describes AI agents in QuickBooks that run bookkeeping, payments and cash flow tasks on their own, and AI-enabled human experts for the decisions customers want a person to make. In tax, that means TurboTax growing its assisted tiers (Live and Full Service), which compete with H&R Block's offices and with local accountants, not just with other software.

In business software the direction is up and outward. Intuit Enterprise Suite is built to keep growing companies from leaving QuickBooks for NetSuite or Sage Intacct; money services (payments, checking, bill pay, capital) aim to make Intuit the place a small business's cash moves, not only where it is recorded; and Intuit Accountant Suite gives accounting firms one platform for their whole practice.

In consumer, Credit Karma and TurboTax are being joined into a year-round relationship: a refund deposited into Credit Karma Money, credit building, and offers in between filing seasons.

Mailchimp becomes its own reportable segment in fiscal 2027, a separate operating segment since August 1, 2026, which will show its own results apart from QuickBooks.

• AI that does taxes and books for free. General AI assistants can already explain tax rules and read receipts. If they can prepare a return or categorize a ledger reliably, much of what TurboTax and QuickBooks charge for becomes cheaper to copy. Intuit's answer is its data, its accuracy guarantees and its human experts.
• Government and regulation. Free filing options from tax authorities, scrutiny of how TurboTax advertised "free", and rules on lending, payments and consumer credit all touch its largest products.
• Moving up to the mid-market. NetSuite, Sage Intacct and Microsoft are entrenched with larger companies, which buy through finance teams and implementation partners, not the self-service way QuickBooks grew.
• Specialists on every flank. Gusto in payroll, Square and Stripe in payments, Klaviyo in email, Xero outside the US.
• Mailchimp. It has grown slower than the rest of Intuit and faces sharper competitors; separating it as a segment will show how it does on its own.
• Credit risk and credit cycles. Credit Karma earns less when lenders pull back, and QuickBooks Capital lends Intuit's own money to small businesses.