Intuit Payments Sees Growth

Intuit’s first-quarter financial earnings released Thursday (Nov. 20) showed the small-business accounting software company is seeing success in attracting new clients for payroll and payments. A growth strong enough, in fact, the company said it’s poised to build the QuickBooks Online global market.

Quickbook’s earnings report showed an increased online subscriber base of 43 percent from last year’s first quarter, and was also up from last quarter’s 40 percent growth. The quarter closed with 739,000 paying subscribers worldwide. Outside the U.S., QuickBooks Online subscribers were up more than 170 percent to 103,000 subscribers. New user numbers have also contributed to a growth in Intuit payments as the company noted a 12 percent increase for payments, 31 percent for payroll. Payments is up 6 percent, year over year, and payroll users are up 20 percent for small business clients.

“We’re continuing to accelerate growth in our online ecosystem. QuickBooks Online is generating new customer acquisition, with over 75 percent of QuickBooks Online customers being new to the Intuit franchise. We are also actively marketing QuickBooks Online to desktop customers who are cloud-ready,” Intuit CEO Brad Smith said in its conference call.  “We remain squarely focused on driving customer growth and increasing market penetration. QuickBooks Online has a very low penetration when you reflect our total addressable market of more than 160 million small businesses globally. Although we are still in the early days of taking QuickBooks Online global, we are excited about the huge market opportunity.”

Small business metrics for Intuit fueled growth in its revenue as total small business group revenue grew 5 percent year over year, and small business online ecosystem revenue grew 30 percent. From small business customers, total online active payments customers grew 3 percent. Online payments charge volume grew 22 percent, the company reported. Online payroll customers grew 24 percent, and full-service payroll customers nearly doubled.

As for other earnings figures, Intuit reported a revenue of $672 million, up 8 percent year over year. Intuit finished the quarter with with cash and investments of $1.6 billion. Though revenue was up, profit was down as the company reported a Non-GAAP operating loss of $36 million and a GAAP operating loss of $144 million. The operating loss, however, is likely to be offset as the company moves into its biggest quarter at the start of tax season.

“In the professional tax business, we’re seeing strong new customer growth early in the season, and our shift to the cloud continues to pick up steam. We intend to build on our leadership position and capitalize on this once-in-a-generation shift to the cloud for accountants,” CFO Neil Williams said in the earnings call. “In a nutshell, we’re off to a great start in fiscal 2015. I’m energized by our results as we continue to accelerate customer growth in our online ecosystems. These results reinforce our confidence in the near- and long-term financial outlook we’ve provided.”