The Quiet Ruler of US Debt Is Bleeding: What’s Behind the 45% Plunge in FICO
Few companies on the US stock market have managed to combine dullness with exceptionality as long as Fair Isaac Corporation $FICO . The company, whose four-letter acronym has become so ubiquitous that most Americans think the "FICO score" is a government statistic, raised prices for years, bought back its own shares, and its stock grew faster than those of technology giants. At the end of November 2024, it closed at a record $2,382, and, trading at roughly a hundred times annual earnings, it was one of the market's most expensive high-quality companies.
Key points
Revenue for the last quarter rose 39% and earnings per share by 69%, yet the stock is trading about 48% below its all-time high.
The price FICO charges for a mortgage score has climbed from tens of cents to $10 – and the Washington regulator has lost its patience.
A trio of credit bureaus has deployed a competing score against FICO for about $1, and from April 2026 it is also being accepted by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Analysts' price targets range from $1,032 to $2,400 – a spread worthy of a risky biotech firm, not a seventy-year-old company with an 80% gross margin.
Twenty months later, everything is different. In mid-July 2026 the stock is trading around $1,233, roughly 48% below its peak; this year alone it has lost over 24%, and in April it briefly dipped as low as $870. All this while the company is delivering the best results in its history: revenue for the last reported quarter jumped 39%, net income by 63%, and management raised full-year guidance mid-fiscal-year.
The gap between business and share price has a name: VantageScore. The competing credit score, jointly owned by the three major credit bureaus Equifax $EFX , Experian, and TransUnion $TRU , for the first time in history gained equal access to the mortgage market from US regulators. And because it sells for a fraction of the price of a FICO score, the market has started to re-evaluate a question that was taboo for two decades: what if one of America's best monopolies is no longer a monopoly?
Yet the answer is far from as clear-cut as the stock chart might suggest. FICO's management insists it won't lose a scrap of volume this year, the numbers so far bear it out, and the company itself has launched a price counter-offensive that nobody expected. So is the halving of the share price an overblown panic, leaving behind an exceptional company at a reasonable price – or is the market right to sense that the era of carefree price hikes is over?