What CEOs Are Saying - 5.24.25

A look at the interesting bits from three financial-sector earnings calls from Thursday.

Three financial-sector companies held earnings calls on Thursday, and each contained its own interesting tidbits. Intuit's CEO admitted his company created unnecessary website friction that drove customers away, but explained how AI agents are now automating invoice collections with 10% better conversion rates. Meanwhile, Pershing Square's Bill Ackman is betting that tariffs will inflate his Hertz investment while planning to turn a real estate company into the next mini-Berkshire Hathaway. And in private markets, StepStone Real Estate closed its fifth flagship fund, StepStone Real Estate Partners V (SREP V), with $3.77 billion in primary commitments, marking it as the largest real estate secondaries fund raised to date. Let’s get into it.

Intuit

Earnings call on May 22, 2025

Intuit, based in Mountain View, California, provides financial software like TurboTax and QuickBooks.

Call Takeaways:

• AI is doing wonders for the company. CEO Sasan Goodarzi reported Q3 revenue of $7.8 billion, up 15%, driven by AI. TurboTax Live revenue grew 47%, with 24% customer growth, while QuickBooks Online accounting revenue rose 21%. Goodarzi highlighted new AI agents: “We are launching a set of AI agents and AI-enabled human experts that are doing the work for customers… these agents talk to each other. That is not an easy thing to pull off.” These agents automate tasks like invoice reminders, achieving “more than 10% higher payment conversion rate on overdue invoices.” AI also reduced tax return times by 12%, with over 50% of customers filing in under an hour, showing a notable impact on customer experience.

• Intuit is addressing inefficiencies and too much tech in mid-market companies. “Businesses and accounting firms are over-digitized,” said Goodarzi. “They’re paying [for] too many solutions that don’t talk to each other and they’re spending too much time trying to connect data.” An 18-entity title company switched back to Intuit’s Enterprise Suite for “seamless integration with apps… and consolidated reporting.”

• “Constructively dissatisfied.” In a moment of unusual candor for an earnings call, Goodarzi detailed a key failure in Intuit’s user experience. He pointed out that when a potential customer Googled "tax pro near me" and clicked on an Intuit link, they were asked to authenticate. This created friction, and Goodarzi admits it caused a significant number of potential customers to abandon the process. But he’s “constructively dissatisfied” with this because it shows the company what it needs to fix—something it’s already working on.

“We are incredibly resilient because we’re actually the price disruptor… we have a lot of ARPC [Average Revenue Per Customer] tailwinds as we look ahead.”
—Sasan Goodarzi

Pershing Square

Earnings call on May 22, 2025

Pershing Square, a New York-based hedge fund, manages a portfolio of large-cap investments.

Call Takeaways: