Intuit closed out its fiscal year with a beat on nearly every headline number, and its stock still fell sharply once trading resumed after the close. The reason has more to do with a new accounting rule than a new problem.
For the quarter ended July 31, revenue reached $4.35 billion, up roughly 14% from a year earlier and ahead of the roughly $4.27 billion analysts expected. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $4.03, well above the roughly $3.58 analysts had penciled in and up 47% from a year ago. For the full fiscal year, revenue topped $21.4 billion, also up 14%, and adjusted earnings per share reached $24.27, up 20%. On paper, this is a company still growing at a healthy double-digit clip with margins expanding across the board.
Underneath that headline strength sits a wrinkle that most of the initial market reaction did not have time to fully absorb. On a strict GAAP basis, which counts costs that adjusted figures exclude, Intuit's quarterly earnings per share were essentially flat, at $1.34 versus $1.35 a year earlier, despite double-digit revenue growth. Much of that gap traces to a one-time $293 million restructuring charge recognized this quarter, worth $1.08 per share on its own, along with a large stock-based compensation add-back of $1.86 per share that adjusted earnings exclude but GAAP earnings do not. Neither figure is hidden or disputed. Both are disclosed line items in Intuit's own reconciliation table. But they explain why a headline non-GAAP beat and a nearly flat GAAP result can coexist in the same quarter.
That reconciliation matters even more looking forward, because Intuit is changing how it defines adjusted earnings starting with the new fiscal year. Beginning August 1, stock-based compensation will no longer be excluded from the company's non-GAAP figures, a shift Intuit disclosed directly in this release. The practical effect is that every adjusted number Intuit reports from here forward will run lower than it would have under the old convention, purely because of how the calculation is built, independent of how the underlying business actually performs.
That accounting shift lands directly on top of Intuit's initial guidance for fiscal 2027, and it is likely the biggest single reason the stock sold off. Intuit guided to full-year revenue of $23.3 billion to $23.5 billion, growth of 9% to 10%, a real deceleration from this year's 14% pace but not a dramatic one. Adjusted earnings per share guidance, however, landed at $22.88 to $23.12, badly missing the roughly $27.30 analysts had modeled heading into the print, a gap of nearly 16%. That is the number driving headlines about a disappointing outlook. But that Street estimate was almost certainly built under the old accounting convention, the one that excludes stock-based compensation, while Intuit's guidance is stated under the new one, which includes it. Consider the scale of that expense on its own terms: this year's fourth quarter alone carried a $1.86 per share stock-compensation add-back, and Intuit says the new convention will add roughly $1.48 per share of expense in just the first quarter of fiscal 2027 alone. If a comparable cost recurs each quarter through the year, the accounting change alone could account for $4 to $6 per share, enough on its own to close most or all of the gap between guidance and the old consensus, without requiring any real slowdown in the underlying business beyond the revenue deceleration Intuit has already disclosed.
None of that erases the fact that revenue growth is genuinely slowing. Guidance calls for Intuit's Consumer segment, which includes TurboTax and Credit Karma, to grow just 4% to 6% in fiscal 2027, down sharply from 11% this year. TurboTax itself grew only 3% in the fourth quarter and 7% for the full year, a noticeably slower pace than the rest of the business, in a category where free and low-cost tax-filing competitors have been a persistent competitive backdrop. Credit Karma remains the stronger consumer performer, up 16% in the quarter and 20% for the year, though its own guided growth for next year, 11% to 13%, is also a step down. The company's small-business platform, grouped under what Intuit calls Global Business Solutions, remains the strongest part of the portfolio, up 14% in the quarter and guided to 13% to 14% growth next year, a pace closer to holding steady than decelerating.
CEO Sasan Goodarzi framed the year around what the company calls its Big Bets, telling investors the company "surpassed $20 billion in revenue for the full year with growth fueled by our Big Bets which collectively grew 34 percent and represented 30 percent of full-year revenue."
Intuit's capital return also expanded meaningfully this year. The company repurchased $5.5 billion of stock in fiscal 2026, up 96% from the prior year, and still has $7.9 billion of authorization remaining. The board raised the quarterly dividend 15% to $1.38 per share. Both moves reflect a company generating substantial free cash flow even as it absorbs restructuring costs and an accounting redefinition in the same year.
The stock's initial reaction was unambiguous in direction and unsettled in size. Shares had already slipped modestly during the regular session before the earnings release crossed the wire right at the closing bell. Once the numbers and guidance were digested in extended trading, the decline deepened, and shares were down roughly 9% to 10% from the regular-session close in the hours that followed, having touched declines as steep as 11% at some points in the after-hours session. That move came against a broader market that was modestly positive the same day, underscoring that this was a company-specific reaction, not a market-wide one.
What investors should watch next is whether Intuit, or the analysts who cover it, offer an explicit like-for-like bridge showing exactly how much of the FY2027 guidance gap is the accounting change and how much, if any, is a genuine reassessment of demand. Until that bridge exists, the size of the headline miss should be treated with real skepticism. What would validate the more bearish reading is continued deceleration in TurboTax specifically, since that is the one segment already showing single-digit growth well before the accounting shift complicates the picture. What would support the more benign reading is a fiscal 2027 that, once measured consistently, tracks closer to the mid-teens growth Intuit has delivered in recent years than the low-double-digit growth the raw guidance numbers currently imply.