Does The Fall In Fair Isaac Stock Change Anything?

For questions about this article or underlying research, email help@trefis.com.

Fair Isaac (FICO) stock lost 52.7% from January 30 to October 27, 2026, trailing a 12.2% return for the S&P 500. Most of the fall came after the company’s July 29 quarterly report. The biggest one-day drop, 26.5% on September 29, came after the Federal Housing Finance Agency said rival VantageScore would join the same mortgage pricing framework as the FICO Score. Shares dropped again after the October 23 decision to hold the mortgage score price at $10. Yet in the quarter covered by that report, net income rose 30% from a year earlier. So what exactly have investors marked down at Fair Isaac?

You Now Pay Far Less For Fair Isaac’s Profit

Investors marked down the price of Fair Isaac’s earnings, not the earnings themselves. On September 30, 2025, the shares traded at 57.4 times the company’s earnings over the previous twelve months. On September 30, 2026, they traded at 16.5 times, the lowest at any quarter-end in the past ten years. The stock closed at a one-year low that day, though shares have risen from it since. Over the twelve months to June, earnings per share rose from $25.57 in 2025 to $34.62 in 2026.

Between the close on July 29 and October 27, the shares lost 49.6%, compared with a 5.8% gain for the S&P 500. Over the full January 30 to October 27 window, Equifax lost 12.0%, TransUnion 4.1%, and S&P Global 9.9%, meaning most of Fair Isaac’s fall was its own.

Fair Isaac Charged More For Each Mortgage Score

Revenue from scores sold to businesses rose 49% in fiscal Q3 2026, the quarter to June. Management attributed that mainly to a higher price per mortgage origination score. Mortgage originations brought in 62% of Scores revenue that quarter, and the Scores segment brought in $459 million of the company’s $674 million total revenue, about 68%. That mortgage revenue rose 97% from a year earlier, yet management said on the July 29 call that mortgage score volumes grew by only a low single-digit percentage.

The shares fell 17.0% on July 30, the first trading day after the July 29 report, and dropped another 13.2% on October 26, the first trading day after the company’s October 23 statement on its mortgage score price. With that price held, Fair Isaac would need more loans to grow mortgage score revenue from lenders in its Preferred Program. And on the July 29 call, management said that mortgage loan volumes had slowed in the quarter as rates crept up.

How Profitable Is Fair Isaac After The Fall?

Measured over twelve months, Fair Isaac is as profitable as it has been at any point in ten years. The company posted an operating margin of 52.1% over the twelve months to June 2026, up from 45.9% a year earlier. Its 34% net margin was also the highest in that time.

At the October 27 close, the shares traded at 19.2 times twelve-month earnings, against 22.6 for the S&P 500. You now pay less for each dollar of Fair Isaac’s earnings than for the market’s.

The fall has left those margins in place so far, and on October 6 the company said it would cut about 15% of its workforce to simplify its operating structure. Fair Isaac is expected to report in November 2026, and its mortgage origination revenue is the figure to watch in that report.

How To Act On FICO?

Not necessarily on Fair Isaac alone, if your goal is long-term wealth. Wealth is built by owning the companies that keep outperforming, the leaders of their industries, wherever they are. Here are two companies from Fair Isaac’s own industry that have beaten it. Over the five years to October 2026, Cadence Design Systems stock rose 108% and Agilysys stock rose 176%, while Fair Isaac stock rose 75%.

Finding companies like these takes comparison across industries and sectors, and that is what the Trefis High Quality (HQ) Portfolio does. It holds 30 quality companies in equal weight and, since its inception in September 2020, has returned more than 105%, ahead of a benchmark that combines the S&P 500, S&P Mid-cap and Russell 2000. See how we find the leaders.

Spot an error or want more like this? Tell us in 10 seconds.