Factset Research Systems Inc Q1 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Kelsey Zhu - Autonomous Research - Analyst : Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I feel like recently there's been a lot of discussion around FactSet as competitive positioning versus AI startups. I'm actually more curious to hear your perspective on how FactSet is position amounts the Big Four data incumbents. I think everyone's investing in AI infrastructure, everyone's launching new AI products and the fact that is a smaller one of the bunch. So just curious to hear your strategy to maintain share or gain share within the incumbents.

Question: Faiza Alwy - Deutsche Bank AG - Analyst : Great. Thank you so much. Good morning. So no thank you for your detailed comments regarding your priorities. A few things stuck out to me regarding, commercial excellence. You talked about sort of simplifying pricing, packaging, pricing to value and some of the changes around. You know sales incentives and it sounds like you're saying it's already led to, faster, sales motion and a richer pipeline so we just love to hear a little bit more sort of bring to light some of the changes that you will have either already incorporated and the early results that you're seeing.

Question: Manav Patnaik - Barclays Services Corp - Analyst : Thank you. Good morning. I just had a question on the, on, in the slide you had on the margin impact for the '26 investments. Just, kind of following up the, what is the cadence, I guess by quarter we should be expecting on that 250 days of our gross investment, like how much LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 18, 2025 / 2:00PM, FDS.N - Q1 2026 Factset Research Systems Inc Earnings Call is done this quarter, for example. And then, are these one-time investments or should we anticipate like '27, '28, et cetera. Having more of these as well?

Question: Shlomo Rosenbaum - Stifel, Nicolaus & Company Inc - Analyst : Hi, thank you very much. I had a broader question just on the environment. It seems like during the quarter, the company took a step forward in the organic growth in each of the geographic units. And what I'm trying to understand is how much of that is from the, Snno maybe you're lighting a fire under people more, over the near term in terms of closing some of the business and getting things done. And how much of it is that you're really seeing an improvement out there in the environment in general, and I know that's not, it's very hard to quantify it, but maybe, you can give us some thoughts on what you're seeing with the environment versus how much of it is company specific success.

Question: George Tong - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : Hi, thanks. Good morning. You talked about leaning into productivity initiatives like ingesting data better, modernizing your tech platform and driving service team efficiencies. At the same time, you're investing in the sales and tech infrastructure and that's causing operating margins to decline about 150 bits for the full year fiscal '26 just based on guidance. How do you think about balancing investments with your ability to drive margin expansion?

Question: Toni Kaplan - Morgan Stanley - Analyst : Thanks so much. The organic ASV growth has been accelerating for the past three quarters, and it's better than I was expecting in the, in this quarter. And so, just based on the guide, it looks like you're expecting it to decelerate from the current level, and this is the sort of the confidence and momentum, good pipeline and the investments. And so I was just wondering, is this just conservatism or is there something that you're seeing that would imply that growth slows towards the end of the fiscal year? Maybe it's the tough comp. Just wanted to understand what would drive the the guidance or not to be a little bit higher and sort of what factors might go into, sort of getting to the low end of the range versus the high end of the range on organic ASV. Thanks.

Question: Jeffrey Silber - BMO Capital Markets - Analyst : Thanks so much. I really appreciate, I think it was slide 7 in your deck where you try to calculate what of your products and services are proprietary versus non-proprietaryary. Can you give us a little bit bit of color, how you came up with what exactly went in each bucket?

Question: Surinder Thind - Jefferies LLC - Analyst : Thank you. Sanoke, I just wanted to kind of ask about kind of the idea around medium term targets here as you work towards establishing them and you think about the growth in the margins, like what are some of maybe the key considerations you're exploring here? It just seems that like with the pace of change, it's accelerating, how things might look out two or three years. There's just a lot of uncertainty. So would you be even able to build a medium term outlook that you can have confidence in?

Question: Jason Haas - Wells Fargo Securities LLC - Analyst : Hey, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Based on some of the comments, it sounds like you're selling more AI ready data through feeds and APIs and presumably your clients are going to be using. That data, and with their own AI solutions. And I think there's a thought out there that this would be a first step, to potentially those clients not needing as many workstation subscriptions. So I'm curious if you could comment on that. And then, it's related, so I want to also ask, are you able to talk about how the margin. On those that that like feed business compares to the margins when you sell a workstation product. Thank you.

Question: Scott Wurtzel - Wolfe Research LLC - Analyst : Hey, good morning, guys, and thank you for taking my question. Just wanted to ask on sort of private market data offering and there's been a lot of I think investment in the space from yourself and your peers as well in terms of increasing the magnitude of data that you have on private companies. Just wondering how you sort of feel about your competitive position with your private markets data and if that is a investment priority for you over the course of the next 12 months here. Thanks. LSEG STREETEVENTS | www.lseg.com | Contact Us consent of LSEG. 'LSEG' and the LSEG logo are registered trademarks of LSEG and its affiliated companies. DECEMBER 18, 2025 / 2:00PM, FDS.N - Q1 2026 Factset Research Systems Inc Earnings Call

Question: David Motemaden - Evercore ISI - Analyst : Hey, thanks, good morning. I wanted to, just ask, it sounded like the pipeline's good, the environment is getting more constructive, some of the changes to sales incentives and product investments have been gaining traction but could you just help me reconcile that with the only seven net new clients that were added this quarter?

Question: David Motemaden - Evercore ISI - Analyst : Yeah, I -- just, it sounded like the pipeline is good, the environment is constructive for your clients, the product investments have been gaining some traction but when I look at the net new clients this quarter, it's up by only seven. That's the lowest amount of net new clients ads you guys have had in quite some time. So is there, so it seems like retention is solid, but, the new logo ads, might be lagging a little bit. So I was wondering if you could just, explore that a little bit.