Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Intuit Bare Bones Reporting

Intuit announced Tuesday after market close its Q3 earnings. Revenue of $1.3 billion, a 15 percent increase over the year-ago quarter was reported. Earnings per share were up 28 percent. Growth was driven by excellent performance in the consumer and professional tax segments. End of qualitative comments. I am getting to sound like a broken record but I am becoming alarmed at how many companies are issuing press releases with just the basic numbers with little or no explanation.

Intuit had some great results. When you increase revenues by 15% and EPS grows by 28% that deserves a great pat on the back. But management does not want to offer any comments about results in the press release. They will say that they have just authorized another whopping share repurchase program.

The conference call was scheduled for 16:30 ET Tuesday about thirty minutes after the press release was issued. The company cautioned that the replay tape stays up on the web site for about a week. They also indicate that the conference call transcript will be posted on the IR portion of their website.

How different will the information be on the conference call from the press release? Are the investors interests served? Given that it is usually sell side analysts who are attempting to tease out information while protecting investment banking fees the conference call may not be as rigorous as one would expect.