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FactSet sells financial data and analysis software that helps investors and bankers make better decisions.
FactSet is a subscription business that sells financial data and software to people who work with money. Its customers are portfolio managers, research analysts, investment bankers, and wealth advisors at banks, asset managers, and hedge funds. They log into FactSet's platform every day to check stock prices, read company filings, build financial models, and screen for investment ideas. Think of it as a giant, constantly updated spreadsheet with the world's financial information built in, plus tools that help you analyze it. Almost all revenue comes from annual subscriptions, billed monthly or yearly, and it renews because ripping out a system that hundreds of analysts use daily is painful.
The company makes money in two main ways: selling access to its data and analytics platform (the bulk of revenue), and selling add-on products like research management, trading tools, and portfolio analytics. Roughly 90% of revenue is recurring subscription revenue, and the company brings in about $2.2 billion a year, growing in the mid-single digits. It earns high margins because once the data is licensed and the software is built, adding one more user costs almost nothing. FactSet also uses its strong free cash flow to buy back shares and pay a small dividend, and it has been buying smaller companies to add new capabilities, like AI-powered research tools and private markets data.
FactSet was founded in 1978 by a former IBM salesman named Howard Wille and a programmer named Charles Snyder, originally selling a terminal that delivered financial data faster than the competition. It went public in 1996 and grew steadily by expanding from basic market data into deeper analytics, risk models, and workflow tools. Today it competes mainly with Bloomberg, S&P Global, and MSCI, but it wins on price, openness (it plays nicely with other systems), and customer service. The biggest recent push is embedding AI into its products so clients can ask questions in plain English and get answers fast, which it hopes keeps subscriptions sticky as data becomes more commoditized.
Saved answer · last researched 11 Oct 2026