One company met our criteria from the one 10-K annual report filed with the SEC on 6 November 2026. To qualify, a company must have filed an annual 10-K report on the target date and have a prior-year 10-K available for a direct year-over-year comparison.
SEC What Changed Methodology
Each company is scored on how similar its current annual filing text is to the prior year. Scores run from 0 to 1 — a score of 1 means the language is essentially unchanged; a lower score means more has changed. We flag three sections that carry the most disclosure signal: Business, Risk Factors, and MD&A. Recent research suggests that lower scores indicate that a company has made significant changes to their filings, these changes are often buried in the filings. If a company was to report positive news, they would likely do so in the form of a press release or statement on their website. The large changers have often underperformed in the market, while the stable-language filers have earned positive abnormal returns.
Key Takeaways
- FAIR ISAAC CORP (Medium) — FICO is signaling that mortgage-score adoption and recurring revenue metrics are now central to the investment story.
Ranking Table
| Rank | Company | CIK | Full Filing Similarity | Business Similarity | Risk Factors Similarity | MD&A Similarity | Most Changed Section | Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | FAIR ISAAC CORP | 814547 | 0.994 | 0.995 | 0.998 | 0.999 | Business | medium |
FAIR ISAAC CORP
| Rank | 1 |
|---|---|
| Lowest similarity section | Business |
| Assessment | medium |
| SEC filings | 2026 10-K HTML/iXBRL (SEC page, raw text) | 2025 10-K HTML/iXBRL (SEC page, raw text) |
FICO’s filing puts much more emphasis on its mortgage credit-score franchise and on recurring software-style metrics such as annual recurring revenue and retention. That suggests management wants investors to focus on the durability of the Scores business and the quality of recurring growth, not just headline revenue. The risk section itself did not add a new major threat, but the company broadened how it frames financial and market sensitivities.
Main Changes
- The forward-looking statements section now explicitly highlights "the use, validation, or approval of our credit scores and competing credit score models" by mortgage-market participants and says this could affect the "Scores segment."
- FICO added new emphasis on operating metrics, including "annual recurring revenue, dollar-based net retention rate and annual contract value bookings," signaling a more software-like reporting focus.
- The company expanded financial-risk wording to include "indebtedness and liquidity" in forward-looking statements, which was not called out in the prior filing.
- Risk factor wording was tightened in places, but the core themes remain the same: goodwill impairment, tax-law changes, and anti-takeover defenses.
Watch Items
- The mortgage-score disclosure suggests management sees regulatory or market acceptance of FICO scores as a more important swing factor for the Scores business.
- The added recurring-revenue metrics point to a stronger subscription/recurring model narrative, which investors may use to judge growth quality and retention.
- The explicit mention of liquidity and debt in forward-looking statements raises the profile of balance-sheet execution, even if no new risk factor was added.
Important Filing Changes
Reworded: FICO Platform is described as anchored by AI-supporting multi-purpose intelligent decisioning capabilities instead of stand-alone configurable software.
Our Software segment includes pre-configured analytic and decision management solutions designed for a specific type of business need or process — such as account origination, customer management, customer engagement, fraud detection, and marketing — as well as associated professional services. This segment also includes FICO ® Platform, a modular software offering designed to support advanced analytic and decision use cases, as well as stand-alone analytic and decisioning software that can be configured by our customers to address a wide variety of business use cases. Our offerings are available to our customers as software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) or as on-premises software.
Our Software segment includes decisioning capabilities, models and solutions designed to operationalize intelligence across specific types of business needs or processes — such as account origination, customer management, customer engagement, fraud detection, and marketing — as well as associated professional services. This segment is anchored by FICO ® Platform, a modern and modular set of multi-purpose intelligent decisioning capabilities that are designed to support artificial intelligence (“AI”), and advanced analytic and decisioning use cases. Our offerings are available to our customers as software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) or as on-premises software.
Reworded: The breach disclosure adds regulatory investigations or enforcement actions and other liabilities, and broadens litigation beyond individuals.
Because a successful breach of our computer systems, software, networks or other technology asset could occur and persist for an extended period of time before being detected, we may not be able to immediately address the consequences of a cybersecurity incident. Cybersecurity breaches experienced by our vendors, by our distributors, by our customers, by companies that we acquire, or by us may trigger governmental notice requirements and public disclosures, which may lead to widespread negative publicity, statutory damages, and lawsuits filed by individuals impacted by cybersecurity breaches under privacy and cybersecurity statutes that create rights of action. We may also be affected by cybersecurity breaches experienced by customers who use our products on-premises, and those breaches may occur due to factors not under our control, including a customer’s failure to timely install updates and fixes to our products, vulnerabilities in a customer’s own cybersecurity measures, and other factors.
Malicious third parties may conduct attacks designed to deny us, our customers, distributors, and vendors access to our systems and services, including through ransomware or other extortion-based attacks, and may demand payment to restore access or prevent the disclosure of sensitive information. Cybersecurity breaches affecting our vendors, distributors, customers, acquired companies, or us may trigger governmental notice requirements and public disclosures, resulting in negative publicity, regulatory investigations or enforcement actions, statutory damages, litigation by individuals or other parties, and other liabilities. We may also be affected by cybersecurity breaches experienced by customers that use our products on-premises, and those breaches may occur due to factors outside our control, including a customer’s failure to timely install updates and fixes to our products, vulnerabilities in a customer’s own cybersecurity measures, and other factors.
Added: The company disclosed a recent workforce reduction plan with $27.3 million of pre-tax charges in fiscal 2026.
Our reengineering efforts may not be successful over the long term should we fail to reduce expenses or increase revenues to anticipated levels or at all. [No corresponding passage in the 2025 filing.] If our reengineering efforts are not successful over the long term, our revenues, results of operations and business may suffer.
These efforts may not be successful over the long term should we fail to reduce expenses or increase revenues to anticipated levels or at all. These efforts may also require us to make cash payments and incur charges, such as our recent plan of workforce reduction pursuant to which we incurred pre-tax charges of $27.3 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, substantially all of which are expected to result in future cash expenditures. If our reengineering efforts are not successful over the long term, our revenues, results of operations, and business may be adversely affected.
Why SEC Filing Changes Matter
Research by Cohen et al. (Lazy Prices, 2020) — using the complete history of SEC filings from 1995 to 2014 — shows that when firms make active changes to their annual disclosures, those changes convey an important signal about future operations and returns. A portfolio that shorted "changers" and bought "non-changers" earned over 22% per year in annual alpha historically. Changes to the Risk Factors section, Business description, and language referring to the executive team were especially informative. Critically, these returns accrued gradually as information was later revealed through news and earnings — not at the time of filing — suggesting many investors remain inattentive to these simple, public signals. This snapshot is a starting point for deeper investigation, not a buy or sell recommendation.
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