Profit Jumps at Intuit

Updated from 4:56 p.m. EDT

A strong tax season drove third-quarter revenue and profit at IntuitINTU as results topped analysts' estimates.

The tax software maker said net income for the quarter ended April 30 rose to $367.2 million, or $1.04 a share, from $298.6 million, or 84 cents a share, a year earlier.

Excluding items, Intuit earned $1.13 a share, beating Thomson Financial's analyst consensus estimate of $1.08 a share.

Revenue rose 21% to $1.15 billion, despite a tax-day system glitch that had stymied last-minute filers. Analysts had expected revenue of $1.11 billion.

Sales of professional tax software (up 32%, year over year) and QuickBooks (up 22%) showed the strongest growth. Consumer tax software revenue rose 14% to $567 million over the same period last year.

Revenue growth was attributed to price increases. "We needed to test price elasticity at retail," said CEO Steve Bennett said.

But don't look for the company to hike prices every year. "While we held unit share, we were disappointed in category growth at retail," Bennett added.

In spite of a price increase, the self-prep software held its own in market share against a competing product that had been priced aggressively, he added. "The decision to raise the price turned out to be a good one."

Needing to be address the low end of the market for tax software, Intuit also experimented by giving away a no-frills versions of TurboTax, while raising prices on the fully featured versions with new functionality, Bennett said.