Intuit reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings, reflecting strong tax season demand for its TurboTax software, and raised its outlook for the full year.
The company earned an adjusted $5.55 a share on sales of $3.27 billion in the third quarter ended April 30. Analysts had expected earnings of $5.39 a share on sales of $3.235 billion, according to Zacks Investment Research.
On a year-over-year basis, Intuit’s earnings rose 16% while sales climbed 12%.
“We had a great tax season, growing the do-it-yourself (DIY) category overall as well as our share within the category driven by our innovation and significantly improved customer experience,” CEO Sasan Goodarzi said in a news release. “We produced our most robust free offering yet and made significant progress in our effort to transform the assisted category.”
In the DIY category, TurboTax Online units grew 7% and customers using TurboTax Live more than tripled year over year. The Turbo platform now has more than 14 million registered users, up from 5 million last year.
Intuit also said TurboTax Online’s share of the DIY market rose by an estimated half a point in the third quarter.
For fiscal 2019, Intuit is now calling for adjusted earnings in the range of $6.67 to $6.69 per share, with sales growing 12% to between $6.74 billion and $6.76 billion.
The strong performance of the TurboTax unit came amid mounting legislative and regulatory scrutiny of its business practices. On Wednesday, a group of federal lawmakers accused the company of using the IRS’s Free File program as a way to steer low-income taxpayers to TurboTax paying products.
Intuit denied wrongdoing, saying, “Any suggestion that Intuit does not support the IRS Free File Program is flat wrong.”
