Earnings Scorecard

Q1 2026

MA:

Key Financial Highlights

• Net Revenue: Up 12% (non-GAAP, currency neutral)

• Net Income: Up 15% (non-GAAP, currency neutral)

• Diluted EPS: Up 18% (non-GAAP, currency neutral)

• Worldwide Gross Dollar Volume (GDV): Up 7% (local currency)

• Cross-Border Volume: Up 13% globally

• Switched Transactions: Up 9% (or 10% excluding Capital One debit portfolio migration)

• Value-Added Services and Solutions Net Revenue: Up 18% (currency neutral)

• Share Repurchases: $4 billion in Q1, with an additional $1.7 billion through April 27, 2026

Key Takeaways

Mastercard is strategically expanding its ecosystem and capabilities, particularly in emerging payment rails and value-added services. A significant development is the planned acquisition of BVNK, which aims to enhance Mastercard’s ability to send, receive, convert, and hold stablecoins, addressing interoperability challenges and securing critical licenses and compliance tools in the digital asset space. The company is also deepening its engagement in agentic commerce, reinforcing its partnership with OpenAI for Agent Pay and collaborating with Crossmint to integrate secure Mastercard transactions for AI agents, supported by the newly launched Verifiable Intent standard. In consumer payments, the Amazon Small Business co-brand card is moving to Mastercard, alongside significant portfolio wins with CIB in Egypt (over 5 million new Mastercards) and Westpac in Australia. The new World Legend card is showing strong early traction, demonstrating 3 times higher cross-border spend compared to the World Elite portfolio. Furthermore, Mastercard is doubling down on commercial payments, securing new fleet partners like Ryd in Europe and expanding B2B travel payments with partners such as Highnote and Travelsoft. The demand for Value-Added Services and Solutions remains high, with Ethoca products growing around 25% year-over-year and Mastercard Threat Intelligence (following the Recorded Future acquisition) gaining rapid adoption with over 500 customers engaged, highlighting the company’s focus on cybersecurity amidst rising AI-driven fraud.

AMZN:

Key Financial Highlights

• Q1 2026 Revenue: $181.5 billion, an increase of 17% year-over-year, or 15% excluding foreign exchange impacts.

• Operating Income: $23.9 billion, achieving a record 13.1% operating margin.

• AWS Revenue: $37.6 billion, accelerating 480 basis points to 28% year-over-year growth.

• AWS Operating Income: $14.2 billion.

• North America Segment Revenue: $104.1 billion, up 12% year-over-year, with $8.3 billion in operating income.

• International Segment Revenue: $39.8 billion, up 11% year-over-year excluding foreign exchange, with $1.4 billion in operating income.

• Amazon Ads Revenue: $17.2 billion, growing 22% year-over-year.

• Worldwide Units Growth: 15% year-over-year.

• Q1 Cash Capital Expenditures: $43.2 billion, primarily for AWS and generative AI.

• AWS Contractual Backlog: $364 billion, excluding the recent Anthropic deal.

Key Takeaways

Amazon is positioning itself as a leader in the burgeoning AI market, with AWS’s AI revenue run rate now exceeding $15 billion, growing nearly 260 times faster than AWS’s initial three years. A significant development is the availability of OpenAI’s GPT 5.4 (and soon 5.5) models on Bedrock, alongside the preview of Bedrock Managed Agents, a stateful runtime environment for generative AI applications, which is expected to rapidly accelerate agentic AI adoption. The company’s custom silicon strategy is proving highly successful, with its chips business now among the top three data center chip businesses globally, boasting an annual revenue run rate over $20 billion. Trainium2 is largely sold out, Trainium3 (offering 30-40% better price performance than Trainium2) is nearly fully subscribed, and much of Trainium4 is already reserved, with Trainium projected to save tens of billions in CapEx annually. Meta has committed to using tens of millions of Graviton cores, highlighting the increasing CPU demand driven by agentic AI workloads.

The Stores segment is demonstrating renewed vitality, with 15% unit growth, the highest since the COVID-19 lockdowns. The grocery business has become the second-largest grocer in the U.S., with over $150 billion in gross sales in 2025, and perishable sales growing over 40 times year-over-year. Agentic AI is being deeply integrated into the consumer experience, with Rufus, the AI shopping assistant, seeing monthly active users increase by 115% and engagement by nearly 400% year-over-year. Internally, AI is expected to radically transform operations, with an example cited of five people rebuilding a service in 65 days that would typically take 40-50 people a year, indicating massive potential for operating efficiency.

Amazon Leo, the satellite internet constellation, is gaining significant momentum with commercial service on track to launch in a few months, backed by substantial revenue commitments from enterprises and governments, including Delta Air Lines and NASA. The planned acquisition of Globalstar will expand Leo’s capabilities to include direct-to-device services, and an agreement with Apple will see Leo power satellite services for iPhones and Apple Watches. This venture is viewed as a multi-billion-dollar opportunity with long-term attractive free cash flow and return on invested capital, despite being capital-intensive upfront. The company acknowledges that current high growth in AWS necessitates significant CapEx investments, which challenge early-year free cash flow but are expected to yield compelling operating margins and ROIC in the long term.

SPGI:

Key Financial Highlights

• Reported revenue increased 10% year-over-year, with organic constant currency revenue up 9%.

• Adjusted diluted EPS grew 14% year-over-year.

• Adjusted operating margin expanded by 100 basis points to 51.8%.

• $1 billion was returned to shareholders through share repurchases.

• Divisional revenue growth: Ratings 13%, S&P Dow Jones Indices 17%, Market Intelligence 8%, Energy 7%, Mobility 8%.

Key Takeaways

The quarter was significantly shaped by the ongoing geopolitical conflict in Iran, which has created a substantial energy shock, driving volatility and impacting client demand, particularly within the Energy division. Despite this, S&P Global demonstrated strong resilience, partly by accelerating its AI strategy. The company is seeing early but strong monetization signals from its AI-native solutions like ChatIQ and its strategy of making proprietary data accessible via AI-ready APIs and plugins, with AI-enabled customers showing significantly higher Annual Contract Value (ACV) growth and retention rates.

A notable strategic shift occurred in the Energy division with the agreement to divest its Upstream software portfolio, representing approximately 25% of Upstream revenues, to SLB. This move aims to streamline operations and focus on high-value proprietary data and insights, with the new AI-native CERA Titan platform already generating strong customer interest and sales. Across other divisions, innovation continues with new blockchain-native indices from S&P Dow Jones Indices and the first Bitcoin-backed ABS rating from Ratings, underscoring leadership in digital asset finance.

The planned spin-off of the Mobility business is progressing on schedule for mid-2026, with key milestones like the Form 10 filing and an Investor Day approaching. Concurrently, S&P Global has increased its share repurchase target to at least 100% of adjusted free cash flow, or approximately $4.5 billion, leveraging anticipated proceeds from Mobility’s debt offering, reflecting confidence in the business’s long-term profitable growth and an attractive share price.

ADBE:

Reporting on Jun 11, 2026.

FICO:

Key Financial Highlights

• Q2 Revenue: $692 million (up 39% year-over-year)

• GAAP Net Income: $264 million (up 63% year-over-year)

• GAAP EPS: $11.14 (up 69% year-over-year)

• Non-GAAP Net Income: $297 million (up 54% year-over-year)

• Non-GAAP EPS: $12.50 (up 60% year-over-year)

• Free Cash Flow (Q2): $214 million

• Share Repurchases (Q2): $605 million (484,000 shares at an average price of $1,251 per share)

• Scores Segment Revenue: $475 million (up 60% year-over-year)

• Software Segment Revenue: $217 million (up 7% year-over-year)

• Platform Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR): $349 million (up 49% year-over-year)

• Non-Platform ARR: $440 million (down 8% year-over-year)

• Dollar-based Net Retention Rate: 109% (Platform NRR: 136%, Non-Platform NRR: 90%)

Key Takeaways

FICO has strategically adjusted its FICO Score 10T performance model pricing for the FICO Mortgage Direct License Program to $0.99 per score plus a $65 funding fee, a significant reduction from the previous $4.95 plus $33. This move is designed to encourage widespread adoption of FICO Score 10T, which incorporates rental and utility payment history to qualify more borrowers, and to achieve price parity with VantageScore in the conforming mortgage market. The company is actively working with resellers, having signed 3 of the top 5 major resellers, and anticipates the program going live once FHFA provides final sign-off on reseller score calculation.

FICO maintains a strong competitive stance against VantageScore, asserting that FICO Score 10T is the most predictive score and that VantageScore’s current market share remains trivial, estimated at approximately 2%. The company does not anticipate significant share loss in any vertical, including the conforming mortgage market, due to 10T’s superior predictiveness and competitive pricing. Concerns about “gaming” in a two-score system are acknowledged, but FICO does not foresee volume loss, noting that the securitization market is not yet ready to accept VantageScore. Furthermore, FICO views AI as a significant opportunity, having secured 137 AI-based patents, particularly in explainable and ethical AI, which is crucial for highly regulated industries like financial services where black-box underwriting faces substantial regulatory hurdles.

The FICO Platform continues its strong growth trajectory, with Platform Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) increasing 49% year-over-year, or in the mid-30% range excluding migrations. This growth is attributed to a successful “land and expand” strategy, securing new customer wins, and expanding use cases with existing clients primarily within the financial services sector. The platform’s agentic architecture and embedded domain expertise enable clients to operationalize AI at scale, driving business outcomes and fostering a self-reinforcing cycle of value generation.

FICO demonstrated a robust commitment to shareholder returns, executing its largest-ever quarterly share repurchase of $605 million in Q2, buying back 484,000 shares at an average price of $1,251 per share. This aggressive capital allocation strategy, supported by strong free cash flow and a recent $1.5 billion board authorization, signals management’s view of the stock as an opportunistic investment at current levels.

CSU:

Key Financial Highlights

• Organic Growth: Achieved 5% FX adjusted maintenance organic growth and 2-3% total organic growth for the year, consistent with historical trends.

• M&A Activity: Reported over CAD 800 million in closed and pending deals early in the year, indicating robust capital deployment.

• Capital Allocation: No National Capital Investment Board (NCIB) is planned, as management believes there are ample opportunities to deploy capital through M&A.

Key Takeaways

Constellation Software is proactively navigating the evolving software landscape, particularly concerning AI and capital deployment. The company has significantly invested in upskilling thousands of developers in AI-augmented coding throughout 2025, with AI-enabled coding becoming increasingly commonplace in 2026, leading to real and growing productivity returns. Management emphasizes that long-term differentiation will stem from deep vertical knowledge, understanding customer workflows, leveraging proprietary data, and maintaining trusted relationships, rather than merely building products faster with AI. A key long-term opportunity identified is the creation of “knowledge networks” that connect domain expertise, customer process knowledge, and data assets using AI.

In capital allocation, an explicit AI lens has been integrated into the M&A process, assessing both disruption risk and potential upside for each prospective acquisition. Furthermore, Constellation has introduced a new capital deployment strategy called the “Permanent Engaged Minority Shareholder Strategy” (PEMS). This strategy involves taking long-term, engaged minority stakes in larger businesses, with the investment in Sabre being the first meaningful expression. PEMS aims to partner with other shareholders, influence governance, management incentives, and capital allocation, and ensure the enduring institutional nature of these companies, driven by increasing cash flow and the scale of potential targets. While private company valuations remain strong, the company notes some changes in publicly traded company pricing, potentially creating new opportunities.

EFX:

Key Financial Highlights

• Reported Revenue: $1.649 billion, up 14% year-over-year.

• Organic Constant Currency Revenue Growth: 13%.

• EBITDA: $477 million, up 13% year-over-year.

• EBITDA Margin (excluding FICO): 31.2%, up 80 basis points year-over-year.

• Adjusted EPS: Up 22% year-over-year.

• Shareholder Returns: $327 million returned, including $260 million for 1.3 million share repurchases and a 12% increase in quarterly dividend to $0.56 per share.

• Vitality Index: Record 17%, reflecting new product innovation.

Key Takeaways

• Strategic Share Gains via TWN Indicator: Equifax is actively leveraging its unique Work Number (TWN) data by offering the TWN Indicator, along with cell phone, utility, and pay TV attributes, at no cost in mortgage pre-approval products. This strategy is successfully driving share gains and is being expanded to auto, card, and personal loan verticals, providing lenders with instant income and employment insights to streamline workflows and improve approval rates.

• Accelerated AI-Driven Innovation and Efficiency: The company’s cloud-native infrastructure and EFX.AI capabilities have significantly accelerated its innovation cycle, quadrupling the product innovation funnel and halving development life cycles. 100% of new models and scores in 2025 were built using EFX.AI, contributing to higher-performing products. AI is also a growing driver of internal cost productivity across operations, call centers, and technology development.

• VantageScore as a Significant Future Margin Opportunity: Despite current guidance assuming no VantageScore conversion in 2026, there is strong industry momentum. Over 240 mortgage originators are ingesting the free VantageScore, and 50+ non-GSE lenders are already using it for originations. The recent reduction in VantageScore mortgage pricing to $1 (from $4.50) is expected to further incentivize adoption, presenting a $1 billion annual savings opportunity for the industry and a potential $35 million annual margin upside for Equifax upon full conversion.

• Robust Government Growth Pipeline: The Workforce Solutions government vertical shows strong long-term growth potential, with pipelines for new and expanded services up 2x year-over-year. This is driven by new federal requirements under OB3 for income validation in Medicaid and SNAP, though significant revenue benefits are anticipated primarily in 2027 and beyond due to typical government deal closure and activation timelines.

• Proprietary Data “AI Moat”: 90% of Equifax’s revenue is generated from proprietary data sources, including its income and employment exchanges, credit exchanges, and alternative data sets. This data is not publicly available and is subject to stringent regulatory and privacy controls, creating a unique “AI moat” that differentiates Equifax’s analytical solutions.

• Impact of Macroeconomic Uncertainty: The Iran conflict and subsequent interest rate increases in March led to a slowdown in U.S. transactional activity, particularly in mortgage and, to a lesser extent, auto and banking. This ongoing uncertainty was cited as the primary reason for maintaining full-year guidance despite strong Q1 performance, indicating a cautious outlook on near-term market conditions.

• Employer Services Headwind: Revenue in employer services is expected to decline slightly in 2026 due to the non-extension of the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) legislation, though historical precedent suggests potential retroactive renewal.

V:

Key Financial Highlights

• Net revenue: $11.2 billion, up 17% year-over-year (16% in constant dollars).

• EPS: $3.31, up 20% year-over-year.

• Payments volume: $3.7 trillion, up 9% year-over-year in constant dollars.

• Processed transactions: 66 billion, up 9% year-over-year.

• Value-added services revenue: $3.3 billion, up 27% year-over-year in constant dollars, now representing 30% of net revenue.

• Commercial and money movement solutions revenue: Up 24% year-over-year in constant dollars.

• Visa Direct transactions: 3.7 billion, up 23% year-over-year.

• Share buyback: $7.9 billion in Q2, the highest quarterly buyback in Visa’s history.

• New share repurchase program: $20 billion authorized, bringing total buyback capacity to approximately $33 billion.

Key Takeaways

• Strategic Pillars Driving Growth: Visa’s “Visa as a Service” stack is effectively driving growth by winning in consumer, commercial, and money movement; expanding its addressable market through AI and agentic commerce; establishing itself as a key interoperability layer for stablecoins and blockchain; and significantly growing value-added services.

• Agentic Commerce as a Future Growth Engine: Visa anticipates AI and agentic commerce will accelerate the digitization of commerce, generate significantly more microtransactions, streamline B2B payments, and contribute to overall economic growth. Visa is leveraging its network, security, and trust, particularly through tokenization and new initiatives like Intelligent Commerce Connect and Visa CLI, to capitalize on this emerging market.

• Stablecoin and Blockchain Interoperability: Visa is positioning itself as a “hyperscaling bridge layer” for stablecoins, facilitating on-ramps and off-ramps with over 160 stablecoin-linked card programs, which saw payments volume increase by nearly 200% year-over-year. Visa’s own settlement capabilities now support 9 blockchains, with an annual run rate of $7 billion in stablecoin settlement volume, growing over 50% quarter-over-quarter. The company is also becoming a key blockchain infrastructure player by running validator nodes on Tempo and Canton Network.

• Value-Added Services (VAS) Outperformance: VAS revenue grew 27% in constant dollars, now constituting 30% of net revenue. This growth is attributed to strong underlying business drivers, increased demand for network products, and marketing services. AI-powered fraud and risk services, including the new Visa large transaction model, are demonstrating substantial impact, with early results showing up to a 5x increase in fraud value capture.

• Significant Partnerships and Acquisitions:

  • TikTok Creator Card (UK): Launched a debit card for content creators to provide faster access to income.

  • PayPay (Japan): Collaborating to expand Japanese merchant acceptance, integrate multiple payment methods via Visa Flexible Credential, and facilitate international expansion.

  • X Money (U.S.): Enabling early public access for push and pull payments via Visa Direct and Visa Flexible Credential.

  • UnionPay International (Mainland China): Connecting Visa Direct with MoneyExpress for real-time cross-border remittances to over 95% of debit cardholders.

  • Highnote (Travel): Expanded agreement to enable eight OTA platforms with Visa Commercial Choice for Travel.

  • Westpac (Fleet/Commercial): Signed a new agreement expanding the partnership and securing commercial card portfolios, leveraging Pismo for modernization.

  • Scotiabank (LatAm/Caribbean): Formed a new strategic agreement across 11 countries, consolidating the relationship and expanding into affluent and small business issuance.

  • Pismo Client Wins: Secured first clients in France, the Philippines, Paraguay, and Romania, expanding its reach to 15 new countries since the acquisition.

  • Wells Fargo & Pismo: Wells Fargo entered an agreement to migrate to Pismo’s core account ledger as part of its core banking modernization.

  • Prisma and Newpay Acquisitions (Argentina): Acquired an issuer-processor and a real-time payment services/ATM network to accelerate advanced technology deployment and grow carded and non-carded business in Argentina.

• Resilient Consumer Spending: U.S. payments volume grew 8%, with e-commerce outperforming face-to-face. Both credit (10%) and debit (7%) showed broad-based improvement, partly aided by higher tax refunds, with no observed weakening among lower-spend consumers.

• Impact of Middle East Conflict: Payments volume growth in the MEIA region experienced a 2.5-point step-down from Q1, primarily due to the conflict, although MEIA constitutes only about 6% of total payments volume. Cross-border travel was also affected, particularly in March.

DUOL:

Key Financial Highlights

• Q1 Revenue: Double-digit decelerating growth (27% YoY).

• Q1 Bookings: Decelerating growth rate from 24% in Q4’25 to 14% (9% on constant currency) this Q.

• Q1 Gross Margin: Expanded to 72.7%.

• Q1 Adjusted EBITDA: $83 million, approximately 29% of revenue.

• Cash Position: Over $1 billion in cash, no debt.

• Free Cash Flow: Expected to generate over $350 million in 2026. FCF / Net Income: 98.5%.

• Share Buyback: Repurchased about 1% of fully diluted shares outstanding.

Key Takeaways

• AI’s Transformative Impact: AI has fundamentally changed Duolingo’s capabilities, enabling the publication of 20,500 course units in Q1, a tenfold increase from two years prior. This also significantly enhances personalization and conversational fluency in features like Video Call, leading to a doubling of average words spoken per user year-over-year.

• Enhanced Free Tier and Word-of-Mouth Strategy: The company is actively improving the free user experience with new speaking features and experimenting with longer free trials (e.g., one-month trials) to boost word-of-mouth growth without conflicting with monetization efforts.

• Advanced Content Milestone: Duolingo now offers courses up to professional proficiency (B2 on the CEFR scale) across its nine most learned languages, a significant achievement that strengthens its educational offering.

• Strategic Monetization Shift: Duolingo is focused on developing monetization tactics that do not create friction for free users or impede DAU growth, moving away from past approaches that may have over-monetized certain aspects.

• Increased Marketing Investment: The company is professionalizing and increasing its performance marketing budget, particularly in under-penetrated, high-growth regions like Asia (e.g., China), where profitable user acquisition for English learners is observed.

• Product Experimentation with Paid Tiers: Experiments are underway to integrate Video Call into Super Duolingo for new subscribers, with early indications that users are willing to pay more for Super with this feature. The future strategy for the Max subscription tier is under evaluation.

• Consistent DAU Growth: Daily Active User growth is projected to remain around 20% year-over-year throughout 2026, with Asia identified as the fastest-growing region.

• Engineer Productivity Boost: AI usage is leading to a moderate but noticeable increase in engineer productivity and the number of A/B tests that can be concurrently run, marking the first such per capita increase in years.

• Expansion into Other Subjects: While AI facilitates faster development of new subjects (e.g., Chess in nine months), it is not yet trivial due to the need for interactive diagrams and specific content types. The company is currently satisfied with its existing subjects, particularly Math, which now covers grades 2-12 with explanatory features.

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Stiliyan Loukanov, Feather Fund

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