Fair Isaac Corporation FICO

The business

FICO sells two things. Scores is the franchise: the FICO credit score, licensed business-to-business through the three credit bureaus to lenders, and sold direct to consumers through myFICO. Scores carried 59% of FY2025 revenue ($1.17B of $1.99B) and close to all of the operating profit, running roughly 90% segment margins, because the score is not a product a buyer selects on merit. It is a common reference two counterparties who do not trust each other both accept. Applications, reported as Software until the FY2025 renaming, is the FICO Platform decisioning suite sold on recurring enterprise subscriptions: 41% of FY2025 revenue at ordinary software economics. In the March 2026 quarter the gap between the two widened into a chasm. Scores revenue rose 60% to $475.0M, with business-to-business scoring up 72%, while Applications rose 7% to $216.7M on annual recurring revenue up 10%.

What the statements do not show is where that 60% came from. It is price, not units. FICO lifted its mortgage-score royalty from a few dollars toward roughly $10 per score over four years and layered a direct-license program on top, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency answered by certifying VantageScore 4.0 for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans, with the Federal Housing Administration following for FHA-insured mortgages. On July 1, 2026 the two government-sponsored enterprises published more than a decade of loan-level performance data for FICO Score 10T, the step that lets lenders evaluate the newer model. The toll went up, and the body that gave the toll its authority opened a lane beside it. That sequence is the drawdown.