How much a stock's price changes over time is important for most investors, since price performance can both impact your investment portfolio and help you compare investment results across sectors and industries.
Another thing that can drive investing is the fear of missing out, or FOMO. This particularly applies to tech giants and popular consumer-facing stocks.
What if you'd invested in Fair Isaac (FICO) ten years ago? It may not have been easy to hold on to FICO for all that time, but if you did, how much would your investment be worth today?
Fair Isaac's Business In-Depth
With that in mind, let's take a look at Fair Isaac's main business drivers.
Fair Isaac Corporation, better known as FICO, offers analytical tools, software and solutions that help in making informed decisions.
Bozeman, MT-based FICO serves a diversified end-market that includes the likes of banks, credit card issuers, insurers, retailers, telecommunication providers, automotive lenders, consumer reporting agencies and public agencies.
Through FICO’s online services consumers can access and understand their FICO Scores, which is a standard measure of consumer credit risk in the United States. The FICO Score, which is a three-digit number ranging from 300-850, helps consumers manage their financial health.
FICO reported revenues of $1.9 billion in fiscal 2025. It has two operating segments, Scores and Software.
The Scores segment includes business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) scoring solutions. While B2B Scores are distributed through major consumer reporting agencies globally, B2C is sold directly to consumers through myFICO.com and other direct-to-consumer channels.
FICO Scores are generated by using FICO’s proprietary analytic algorithms on credit data collected and maintained by the three U.S. national consumer reporting agencies, Experian, TransUnion and Equifax. This score is then used across the credit lifecycle. Users of the Scores generally pay the consumer reporting agencies a fee, while the consumer reporting agencies pay an associate fee to FICO.
FICO launched its updated Scores, FICO Score 10 and 10T, in January 2020. FICO Score 9 and FICO Score 8 remain the most distributed scores currently.
The Software segment addresses business consumer needs in terms of customer engagement, including acquisition and pricing, onboarding, servicing and management, and fraud protections in more than 100 countries. FICO Software can be deployed in the cloud using third-party cloud services or on-premise using clients’ IT infrastructure.
Most of FICO’s solutions run on the FICO Platform, which offers an analytic and decisioning environment and is based on a modular cloud architecture. Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) from FICO Platform-based products was $227 million as of Sep 30, 2024, which accounted for 31% of FICO’s total software ARR.
Bottom Line
While anyone can invest, building a lucrative investment portfolio takes research, patience, and a little bit of risk. If you had invested in Fair Isaac ten years ago, you're probably feeling pretty good about your investment today.
According to our calculations, a $1000 investment made in May 2016 would be worth $10,643.18, or a gain of 964.32%, as of May 8, 2026, and this return excludes dividends but includes price increases.
Compare this to the S&P 500's rally of 256.67% and gold's return of 250.45% over the same time frame.
Analysts are anticipating more upside for FICO.
FICO continues to benefit from demand for its Scores, with mortgage-related volumes and unit pricing supporting segment growth and margin expansion. Momentum in the FICO Platform remains an important offset to softness in legacy non-platform products, as platform ARR and retention stay elevated and SaaS mix rises. Management raised fiscal 2026 guidance and continues to return capital through sizable buybacks, supported by recurring cash generation. At the same time, the shift to performance-model pricing for FICO Score 10T aims to defend share, but keeps outcomes tied to the pace of mortgage activity and the timing of score modernization. Non-platform declines and a leveraged balance sheet remain key constraints on valuation and investor sentiment.
The stock is up 5.23% over the past four weeks, and no earnings estimate has gone lower in the past two months, compared to 5 higher, for fiscal 2026. The consensus estimate has moved up as well.
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Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO): Free Stock Analysis Report
This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).