Published on: 2026-08-26
Updated on: 2026-08-26
Intuit beat Q4 expectations, then fell about 10% in overnight trading as FY2027 revenue growth was forecast to slow from 14% to 9%-10%. The reaction extends a 2026 decline that had already erased roughly 46% of the stock’s value by Tuesday’s close. A strong quarter was no longer enough to protect a valuation built on durable double-digit growth.
Q4 adjusted EPS reached $4.03 versus $3.58 expected, yet INTU fell about 10% after the report as attention shifted to FY2027.
Revenue growth is expected to slow from 14% to 9%-10%, below Wall Street’s roughly 11% expectation.
TurboTax growth is guided at only 2%-3% as Intuit lowers entry pricing to rebuild customer acquisition.
Global Business Solutions is still expected to grow 13%-14%, leaving major parts of Intuit firmly in double-digit growth.
Online paying customers grew only 3% to 8.9 million, making customer acquisition one of the clearest tests of the FY2027 strategy.
The selloff came from the size of Intuit’s FY2027 slowdown. Revenue is expected to grow 9%-10% versus roughly 11% expected, making the weaker forward outlook more important than Q4 revenue of $4.35 billion and adjusted EPS of $4.03, both of which beat consensus.
The headline forecast also hides a wide gap between Intuit’s businesses.
| Business | FY2026 | FY2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Intuit | 14% | 9%-10% |
| Global Business Solutions | 16% | 13%-14% |
| TurboTax | 7% | 2%-3% |
| Credit Karma | 20% | 11%-13% |
TurboTax shows the sharpest strategic reset, while Global Business Solutions remains firmly in double-digit growth. Intuit is dealing with specific weak points rather than a collapse across every business.
Intuit expects first-quarter revenue of $4.294 billion to $4.313 billion, about 11% higher year over year but below the roughly $4.35 billion consensus. Q1 adjusted EPS is guided to $2.44-$2.48 under Intuit’s new non-GAAP reporting basis.
The revenue outlook gives the cleaner signal. Growth begins FY2027 near 11% before the full-year rate falls toward 9%-10%, showing that the reset starts immediately rather than being pushed into the second half.
TurboTax revenue grew 7% to $5.3 billion in FY2026 even as total US TurboTax units fell 2% to 39 million. TurboTax Live helped offset that weakness, with revenue rising 37%.
Price has become the leading reason customers leave TurboTax, prompting Intuit to make entry pricing more competitive and accept lower initial DIY revenue per customer. FY2027 TurboTax growth is consequently expected to slow to just 2%-3%, leaving customer growth to prove whether the trade-off works.
QuickBooks Online Accounting revenue rose 23% in FY2026, while mid-market revenue expanded 39% as more customers moved into higher-value products.
The customer base grew much more slowly. Online paying customers reached 8.9 million, up only 3% and around two percentage points slower than the previous year.
Intuit is using QuickBooks Free and QuickBooks Lite to bring in more new customers. Revenue from the existing base is expanding faster than the customer count, making the 3% growth rate one of the clearest numbers to watch in FY2027. A meaningful acceleration would support Intuit’s strategy, while another year near 3% would make slower company growth look increasingly structural.
That slowdown helps explain why concerns around Intuit had been building well before the latest earnings report.
Intuit’s 2026 decline began months before the latest report. Shares suffered a roughly 20% drop following May’s fiscal Q3 results after TurboTax growth expectations were cut to about 7% from 8%-10% and Intuit announced plans to reduce its workforce by roughly 17%.
By June, the pressure had moved beyond broad software and AI concerns. Goldman Sachs downgraded Intuit to Sell and cut its price target to $276 from $519, citing heightened tax competition and doubts over longer-term growth expectations. Mailchimp has since entered FY2027 with revenue guided between a 1% decline and no growth, while Desktop remains another source of pressure.
The FY2027 outlook did not create those concerns. It pushed them into Intuit’s headline growth forecast.
INTU closed August 25 at $357.46 before trading at $321.65 overnight, deepening its 2026 decline from roughly 46% at the regular close to about 51% from the December 31, 2025 close of $656.26.
At about $322, the stock trades near 14 times the midpoint of Intuit’s FY2027 adjusted EPS guidance on its new non-GAAP basis. That multiple reflects a much lower growth assumption than the mid-teens revenue pace Intuit delivered in FY2026.
The valuation only looks compelling if growth reaccelerates. If revenue remains near 9%-10% and customer growth stays weak, the lower multiple may simply be the price of a slower business.
The apparent miss is largely a comparison issue. Intuit now includes share-based compensation in non-GAAP earnings, reducing FY2027 adjusted EPS by about $5.81 per share. On the old basis, adjusted EPS would be roughly $28.81 versus prior consensus near $27.34, leaving slower revenue growth as the bigger disappointment.
AI becomes a serious threat if tax and bookkeeping tasks shift into general-purpose assistants without requiring users to open TurboTax or QuickBooks. Intuit still controls harder-to-replace financial data, compliance, payments and execution capabilities, but faces greater risk if AI platforms become the primary customer interface.
Yes. A steep decline does not create a valuation floor if Intuit’s long-term growth rate keeps falling. Sub-10% revenue growth, continued TurboTax unit losses, weak customer additions or deeper Mailchimp contraction could justify a lower earnings multiple.
Intuit’s Investor Day on September 17, 2026 is the next major test. Customer-acquisition targets, TurboTax pricing, AI adoption and any clearer path back toward faster revenue growth will be the key signals.
Intuit no longer needs to prove it can beat a quarter. It needs to show that sacrificing some near-term revenue can rebuild customer growth without permanently weakening the business.
If customer growth fails to respond, the 2026 selloff will look less like an overreaction and more like a repricing of Intuit’s long-term growth rate.
