stockrowWhat it does
FactSet is a financial-data and AI-solutions provider for people who research investments, advise companies, manage portfolios, trade securities and serve wealth-management clients. Founded in 1978 and headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, it is led by Chief Executive Officer Sanoke Viswanathan.
Its platform combines information on securities, companies, industries and people with analytics and software. Clients use it to research investment and deal ideas, analyze markets and companies, construct and monitor portfolios, measure performance and risk, prepare presentations, and report to end clients. The company serves institutional asset managers, asset owners, hedge funds, investment banks, wealth managers, private-equity and venture-capital firms, corporations, and market-infrastructure participants.
FactSet delivers its capabilities through desktop and mobile applications, cloud products, data feeds, application programming interfaces, managed services and model context protocol, or MCP, servers. MCP lets clients and AI systems consume FactSet data and capabilities in automated workflows. AI is embedded in its offerings to help users find data, automate routine work and generate insights.
The company also operates CUSIP Global Services on behalf of the American Bankers Association. This business supports security-master files and is the exclusive global issuer of CUSIP and CINS identifiers. FactSet’s managed-services teams can operate as an extension of client teams for data, performance, risk, reporting and AI-enabled workflows.
How it makes money
FactSet earns most of its revenue from subscriptions that give clients access to multi-asset-class data and software over a contractual term. Its hosted platform can combine workstations, portfolio analytics, enterprise data solutions, AI agents and agentic-workflow tools. Clients can also buy data feeds, APIs, cloud-based offerings and managed services. Management said on the call that most recurring revenue remains fixed subscriptions, while a growing portion is activity-linked and consumption-based.
Annual subscription value, or ASV, is the company’s measure of forward-looking revenue from recurring services being supplied to clients over the next 12 months. Organic ASV excludes the effects of acquisitions, dispositions, discontinued businesses and currency movements. Clients can add, remove or terminate services with contractual notice and subject to limitations.
The company reports three geographic segments based on where customers contract: the Americas, EMEA, and Asia Pacific. Each sells a range of data, applications and managed services rather than operating as a separate product line. Revenue growth in fiscal 2026 came mainly from workstations and data solutions, with a smaller contribution from portfolio-management and trading solutions.
Fiscal 2026 revenue was $2,476.3 million, and Q4 revenue was over 634 million. As of August 31, 2026, organic ASV was $2,568.2 million; management said on the call that Q4 organic ASV growth was 7% year over year. Management also said on the call that renewed business is increasingly moving from seat-based contracts toward enterprise agreements, including subscription minimums and consumption components.
| Segment | Revenue, FY2026 | Share | Change on the year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Americas | $1.6 billion | 65.3% | 7.39% |
| EMEA | $605.3 million | 24.4% | 4.32% |
| Asia Pacific | $253.5 million | 10.2% | 7.70% |
Customers and how it sells
FactSet had 9,258 clients and 260,671 professional users as of August 31, 2026. Its client count includes accounts with ASV of $10,000 and above. It serves customers in more than 80 countries, ranging from large financial-services firms with multiple business lines to smaller and independent firms. Annual ASV retention was greater than 95%, and annual client retention was 90%.
The customer base includes 95 of the top 100 global asset managers, 38 of the top 40 wealth managers, and 90% of the top 50 global investment banks. Management said on the call that about three quarters of the company’s top 100 clients had been customers for more than 20 years.
Clients access FactSet through applications, data feeds, APIs, cloud services, MCP servers and managed services. Many use more than one delivery method, combining FactSet data and applications with their own systems and workflows.
The Americas generated $1.6 billion, or 65.3%, of fiscal 2026 revenue. EMEA generated $605.3 million, or 24.4%, and Asia Pacific generated $253.5 million, or 10.2%. The United States accounted for $1.5 billion, or 61.2%, of revenue.
| Region | Revenue, FY2026 | Share | Change on the year |
|---|---|---|---|
| UNITED STATES | $1.5 billion | 61.2% | 7.08% |
| All other countries | $717.6 million | 29.0% | 6.33% |
| United Kingdom (“UK”) | $242.6 million | 9.80% | 5.01% |
Suppliers and costs
FactSet collects and aggregates content from third-party data suppliers, news sources, exchanges, brokers and contributors, then places it in managed databases for client delivery. It seeks to maintain contracts with at least two providers for each major type of financial data, although some data sets have few suppliers. Two suppliers each represented more than 10% of total third-party-content costs in fiscal 2026.
Its technology model combines two redundant, physically separated U.S. data centers with several cloud providers. One supplier provided most of its cloud-computing support in fiscal 2026. This infrastructure processes and delivers data, analytics and transactions; FactSet says workloads can move automatically to unaffected sites if one physical site fails.
Employee compensation, data and content, cloud infrastructure, product development, sales and client service are central cost areas. The company had 12,444 employees at August 31, 2026, including 8,652 in Asia Pacific. Management said on the call that fiscal 2026 margins reflected infrastructure modernization, cybersecurity and resilience investments, as well as the timing mismatch between upfront performance-based compensation expense and revenue recognized over time from ASV.
- Revenue$2.5B
- Cost of revenue−$1.2B
- Selling, general and administrative−$553.2M
- Operating income$700.0M
Competitive position
FactSet competes across financial market data, analytics, workflow software, AI tools, data feeds and real-time data distribution. Named competitors include Bloomberg L.P., S&P, London Stock Exchange Group, BlackRock, MSCI Inc. and Morningstar Inc. Competition also comes from smaller specialist firms, vertical-AI providers, news and information companies, technology firms, third-party content providers and clients that develop solutions internally.
Management said on the call that clients can buy data, analytics and workflow tools separately or together, and that the company uses an open architecture approach. Management also said that it is investing in real-time data distribution and has a small market share in a large market. Advances in AI may let clients and third parties build their own tools and reduce demand for FactSet’s interfaces, applications, workflows, analytics and connectivity.
Our reading: FactSet’s connected and normalized data, including links among entities, securities and identifiers, is a meaningful moat because it supports client workflows and machine consumption; data suppliers, clients and AI systems still require reliable mapping and metadata. (item1)
Our reading: Workflow embedding and client relationships are meaningful moat sources: annual ASV retention exceeded 95%, and the company serves a large share of leading asset managers, wealth managers and investment banks. (item1; call_prepared)
Our reading: Open delivery through applications, feeds, APIs, managed services and MCP broadens how clients can use the platform, but AI-enabled internal tools and specialist competitors make this moat less durable than customer workflow integration. (item1; item1a)
| Competitor | Where they compete | Threat (our reading) |
|---|---|---|
| Bloomberg L.P. | financial data, analytics and workflow tools | High |
| S&P | financial information services | High |
| London Stock Exchange Group | financial data and market-information services | High |
| BlackRock | financial-market data and analytics | Medium |
| MSCI Inc. | financial data, analytics and index-related services | Medium |
| Morningstar Inc. | financial data and investment research | Medium |
Growth opportunities
FactSet’s growth plans center on expanding its data and analytics catalog, making data available through cloud services, APIs and MCP, and redesigning finance workflows around AI. The company is adding industry, proprietary, contributed and third-party data, including real-time market data, fund data and unstructured data. It aims to collect, map, normalize and structure information for professionals and AI systems.
The company is developing agentic tools for investment research, performance reporting, financial modeling, pitch creation, meeting preparation and advisory-client engagement. It is also building tools for clients to build, register, entitle, audit and manage AI agents. Management said on the call that it launched its first analytics MCP in Q4, extending portfolio analytics into agentic workflows.
Management said on the call that more than 650 clients were actively engaged under MCP contracts or trials at fiscal year-end, and Q4 MCP API-call volume was seven times the preceding quarter’s level. Management also said on the call that clients using AI solutions grew ASV twice as fast as the rest of the client base in Q4. The company acquired BCC Group after Q4 to add integrated entitlement management to its real-time-data offering.
Management said on the call that it expects fiscal 2027 organic ASV growth of 5% to 6.5%, reported revenue growth of 5% to 6%, and operating-margin improvement of between 25 and 75 basis points. The consensus assumes revenue grows 5.70% annually over the next few years.
- $1.8BFY2022
- $2.1BFY2023
- $2.2BFY2024
- $2.3BFY2025
- $2.5BFY2026
- $0.05FY2027 guidance
Structural risks
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Cybersecurity and data security: FactSet handles its own, supplier and client proprietary information and sensitive or confidential data. Unauthorized access, cyber-attacks or failures of cybersecurity systems could affect operations and reputation.
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Service availability and infrastructure: Clients depend on time-sensitive, accurate and current data and applications. A prolonged outage or business-continuity disruption could cause reduced or lost service, client losses and reputational harm. The company also needs data-center capacity, power and computing resources, including specialized hardware, as AI use expands.
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Technology and AI transition: The company is changing its organization, reporting lines, product-development structure, go-to-market approach, pricing models and data operations while investing in AI. AI technologies, including generative and agentic AI, may not succeed and may create business, compliance and reputational risks.
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Competition and client-built tools: Competitors range from niche single-product firms to large companies. AI advances may enable clients and other third parties to build their own solutions, potentially reducing demand for FactSet’s products and services.
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Third-party dependence: FactSet relies on vendors for cloud hosting, infrastructure, data, content, software, connectivity and other processes. Disruptions, failures or unfavorable content-contract terms could affect service delivery and costs.
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Client demand and financial-services conditions: Asset and wealth managers, banks, hedge funds and other financial clients may reduce users or spending during economic uncertainty, industry consolidation or cost cutting. Management said on the call that activity-linked and consumption-based revenue adds more forecasting and revenue-flow-through variability than traditional subscriptions.
Bottom line
Our reading
Our reading: FactSet is a recurring-revenue financial-information and workflow business whose products span data, analytics, software, managed services and AI delivery channels. Its business rests on integration into investment, banking and wealth workflows, a large global client base and recurring subscription contracts. (item1; call_prepared)
Our reading: AI and MCP offer new distribution and consumption paths, while consumption pricing, third-party data and cloud dependence, client-built tools and intense competition create execution and demand exposure. (call_prepared; item1a)