Intuit FY2026 Earnings: $21.4B of Revenue and $5.5B of Buybacks in Plain Text

Intuit closed fiscal 2026 with $21.4 billion of revenue (+14%) and $4.6 billion of GAAP net income — then returned $5.5 billion to shareholders through buybacks, up 96% year over year, and raised the dividend 15%. The accounting-software incumbent's own books are modeled here in Beancount, the plain-text format its customers could switch to, period by period from FY2022 through the audited annual.

The Headline Numbers​

Intuit's fiscal year ends July 31. FY2026 is the twelve months ended July 31, 2026. GAAP figures below come from the Form 10-K filed September 9, 2026 (accession 0000896878-26-000037); they match the August 25 IR release's full-year tables.

Revenue cleared the $20B mark for the first time. Operating income grew faster than revenue (+20% vs +14%), so GAAP operating margin expanded even as the company booked $293M of restructuring in Q4. Diluted shares fell about 2% as buybacks more than offset share-based compensation dilution — capital return is doing measurable work on the per-share line.

Revenue Deep Dive​

Reportable segments from the IR release (full-year):

Ledger-exact total revenue is $21,448M. Global Business Solutions is the growth engine: +16% to $12.9B, with Online Ecosystem +19% to $9.9B. Excluding Mailchimp, GBS grew 18% and Online Ecosystem 23% — Mailchimp is a drag that Intuit will break out as its own reportable segment starting FY2027.

Inside Online Ecosystem, QuickBooks Online Accounting grew 23% for the year. In Q4 alone it grew 20%, and management attributed that print to "higher effective prices, customer growth, and mix shift" (IR release, August 25, 2026). That is the clearest pricing signal in the package — not an industry ASP cycle, a product-level effective-price lift.

Consumer grew 11% to $8.6B: TurboTax +7% to $5.3B (TurboTax Live +37%, now 53% of TurboTax), Credit Karma +20% to $2.6B, ProTax +4% to $647M. Federal TurboTax units fell 2% to 39.0M while revenue still rose — price and mix, not unit expansion, carried the tax franchise.

Management signal scan (IR release, August 25, 2026):

• Robust demand / product ramps: CEO Sasan Goodarzi: "We 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."
• Market / platform expansion: "Our strategy is to win as an AI-driven expert platform by creating a financial system of intelligence that increasingly does the work for consumers, businesses, and accountants."
• Sustained pricing (Q4 QBOA): "QuickBooks Online Accounting revenue increased 20 percent driven by higher effective prices, customer growth, and mix shift."
• Capital-return commitment (CFO): Sandeep Aujla: "We remain committed to delivering durable revenue growth, operating margin expansion, and growing capital returns to shareholders over the long term."

Absence is a finding. The release does not say demand exceeds supply, supply is tight, or that Intuit is in an industry upcycle. Those phrases belong to capacity-constrained hardware names; Intuit's language is platform adoption, Big Bets mix, and deliberate investment discipline. The Bull Case can cite the Big Bets and pricing quotes; the Bear Case has to note that unit TurboTax demand is soft and Mailchimp is being carved out after under-growing the Online Ecosystem.

The Margin Story​

Five years of operating-margin expansion: 20% → 27%. In the ledger model, FY2026 cost of revenue (service + product + acquired-technology amortization) is $4,253M, R&D $3,376M, and SG&A (selling + G&A) $7,157M. Expenses:OtherNet of $645M folds amortization of other intangibles ($485M), restructuring ($293M), and net interest/other (interest expense $256M less other income $389M).

The pricing quote above belongs here mechanically: higher effective QBOA prices show up as revenue growth outrunning unit growth, which is why Consumer can shrink TurboTax units 2% and still grow TurboTax revenue 7%. Volume is not the story; mix and price are.

The One Big Question: $5.5B of Buybacks Against a $21.4B P&L​

Capital allocation is the period's defining print. Intuit repurchased $5.5 billion of stock in FY2026 — nearly a quarter of annual revenue, up 96% versus the prior year — and still holds $7.9 billion of remaining repurchase authorization. The Board raised the quarterly dividend 15% to $1.38 per share. In June the company issued $1.75 billion of senior notes ahead of fiscal-2027 maturities; period-end cash and investments were $7.2B against $7.7B of total debt.

In the ledger, those repurchases land on Equity:CommonStockAndAPIC. FY2026 also shows a treasury-stock retirement that collapses period-end CommonStockAndAPIC to par value ($3M); retained earnings sit at $19,046M. Stockholders' equity fell from $19,710M to $18,992M even as the company earned $4,566M — buybacks and dividends consumed more equity than earnings replaced. That is a deliberate capital-structure choice, not a profitability problem.

Tracking a $21B Company in Plain Text​

Double-entry forces every dollar of the 10-K to reconcile: assets equal liabilities plus equity at every fiscal year-end, and the income-statement transaction sums to zero with net income offset into Equity:Adjustments. That is how we model every company in this series — the same chart of accounts, the same pad/balance pattern, the same zero-sum check.

FY2026's income statement in the ledger (Income credits negative, Expenses debits positive):

; Check: -21448 + 4253 + 3376 + 7157 + 645 + 1451 + 4566 = 0 ✓
 
2026-07-31 * "Intuit Inc." "FY2026 Income Statement"
  Income:Revenue                           -21448 MUSD
  Expenses:CostOfRevenue                    4253 MUSD
  Expenses:ResearchAndDevelopment           3376 MUSD
  Expenses:SellingGeneralAdministrative     7157 MUSD
  Expenses:OtherNet                          645 MUSD
  Expenses:IncomeTax                        1451 MUSD
  Equity:Adjustments                        4566 MUSD  ; reported net income offset

The balance-sheet number that carries the capital-allocation story is stockholders' equity declining to $18,992M while cash sits at $4,705M and short-term investments at $2,495M — liquidity is ample, equity is being returned. Goodwill is still $13,981M (Mailchimp / Credit Karma era), so the asset side remains acquisition-heavy even as the cash is flowing to shareholders.

The Multi-Year Arc​

Revenue compounded from $12.7B to $21.4B in four years (+68%). Net income more than doubled ($2.1B → $4.6B). Goodwill is flat — the acquisition wave is digested, not expanding. Equity peaked in FY2025 and turned down in FY2026 solely because capital return outran earnings retention. That is the arc: a scaled subscription platform that has started treating the balance sheet as a return-of-capital machine.

The Verdict: Bull vs. Bear​

Bull Case

• Big Bets at 34% growth and 30% of revenue are still early in the mix shift Goodarzi described.
• QBOA effective-price lifts plus Online Ecosystem +19% (ex-Mailchimp +23%) show pricing power inside the core franchise.
• Operating margin at 27% with further non-GAAP expansion guided for FY2027 after the share-based-comp reporting change.
• $7.9B of remaining buyback authorization plus a 15% dividend raise keeps per-share compounding explicit.
• FY2027 GAAP revenue guidance of $23.3–$23.5B (+9–10%) is a durable, not heroic, next step.

Bear Case

• TurboTax federal units fell 2%; the tax franchise is growing on price/mix, not customers.
• Mailchimp is being segmented out after under-growing Online Ecosystem — a franchise that needs its own narrative.
• $5.5B of buybacks against $21.4B of revenue is aggressive; equity is already shrinking.
• Restructuring of $293M in Q4 and "deliberate choices" language hint at cost takes that may cut growth capacity.
• The release never claimed demand exceeds supply — growth is execution and mix, not a scarcity moat.

Our Take. Intuit is a scaled cash compounder that just chose capital return over balance-sheet growth. The FY2026 ledger makes that choice visible: revenue and margins still climb, goodwill is flat, and equity falls because $5.5B left the building. For readers who keep books in plain text — including Intuit's own customers — the model is the point. The incumbent's audited numbers, asserted period by period, in the same format a QuickBooks refugee might adopt.