Feb 26 (Reuters) - Intuit forecast third-quarter profit below Wall Street estimates on Thursday, as it anticipates higher marketing spending to attract more customers during the U.S. tax season.
Shares of the company fell around 4% in extended trading.
The third quarter is typically Intuit's strongest, as the tax season boosts demand for the company's financial management tools such as TurboTax, Credit Karma, and QuickBooks.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. federal government agency, began accepting federal tax returns on January 26 this year, with the filing deadline set for April 15.
Intuit CFO Sandeep Aujla told Reuters that increased marketing and customer support spending are deployed in the third quarter to capitalize on the tax season and drive growth in the assisted tax and QuickBooks segments.
The company forecast adjusted earnings per share of $12.45 to $12.51 for the third quarter ending April 30, compared with analysts' average estimate of $12.95, according to data compiled by LSEG.
Intuit, which competes with rivals such as H&R Block and Oracle's NetSuite, expects about 10% revenue growth in the quarter, largely in line with analysts' average estimate of 9.9% growth.
The forecasts come amid market fears that the growing use of AI tools would erode demand for traditional software, as customers increasingly seek personalized financial guidance and automated solutions for tasks such as bookkeeping.
The company has signed multi-year deals with AI startups Anthropic and OpenAI to integrate their frontier models into its software and to add Intuit's personalized tax, finance, accounting and marketing capabilities into Claude and ChatGPT.
"We're paying OpenAI and Anthropic for the capabilities. We're not paying them revenue share," Aujla said, adding that more than 3 million clients engage with the company's AI agents.
Intuit reiterated its fiscal 2026 forecasts and said its second-quarter revenue grew 17% to $4.65 billion, beating analysts' average estimate of $4.53 billion.
(Reporting by Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
