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AGING Analysis Report
Aug 15, 2026
8 days ago · 100% complete
NOT DEPENDABLE This report predates a filing — its financial basis has been replaced.
Report generated: Aug 15, 2026 · Filing on record since: Aug 22, 2026 · 7 days after
For AI assistants & researchers — machine-readable summary of this page

What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Verisk Analytics, Inc. (VRSK) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.

Our current read (analysis of 2026-08-23): Designation Watch · Gem Score -5 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 69 · Value -66 · Sentiment 10 (timing only, not weighted)

Page map (sections in order; each card carries a stable reference-name attribute you can cite):

  • profile-header / price-overview — company profile, live quote, market cap
  • extended-analysisthe core: three AI lens reads with findings, scores, and the analyst memo
  • future-predictions — our forward price-band predictions
  • market-narrative / ai-findings / gpt-critique — narrative context, cross-model findings, and an adversarial critique of our own analysis (near the end of the document)
  • Members-only sections (render as login gates for anonymous readers): price-history, income-trend, key-metrics, financials (statement tables), insider-trading. The analysis above is public; the raw data tables require a free account.

More for machine readers: site briefing at /llms.txt · any ticker resolves at delvantic.com/stock/TICKER · raw inputs are public-company filings and market data (via licensed data feeds); every model, score, lens read, and prediction on this page is Delvantic's own analysis.

Verisk Analytics, Inc.

VRSK NASDAQ
Industrials · Consulting Services
Jersey City, NJ 07310-1686, United States verisk.com Updated Aug 15, 10:34am
Price
$181.67
Market Cap
$23.6B
Employees
8,000
Beta
0.66
Avg Volume
1,693,290
Last Dividend
$1.95
CEO
Mr. Lee M. Shavel

Verisk Analytics, Inc. is a data analytics and risk assessment company that provides technology-enabled solutions to organizations worldwide. The firm focuses primarily on the insurance industry, offering underwriting tools such as policy forms, rating rules, loss cost estimation, and workflow optimization to support more consistent risk selection and pricing. Verisk Analytics also delivers extensive claims-related services, including property repair estimating platforms and anti-fraud analytics that help insurers detect suspicious activity and improve claims handling efficiency. Beyond core insurance workflows, Verisk Analytics develops predictive analytics and decision-support solutions for areas such as catastrophe and weather risk, global risk analytics, and natural resources intelligence, serving clients in insurance, energy, financial services, government, and broader risk management sectors. Its offerings are typically delivered through subscription-based or long-term arrangements, embedding Verisk’s data and models directly into customers’ operational processes. Founded in 1971 and headquartered in Jersey City, New Jersey, Verisk Analytics today plays a central role in helping institutions quantify, manage, and analyze risk using proprietary datasets, advanced models, and industry-specific expertise.

Runs with full report Generated: Aug 15, 2026 10:40am
Price Overview
Price at report time
$181.67
as of Aug 15, 10:41am (8d ago)
Change · Aug 15
-4.27 (-2.30%)
Day Range
$180.74 – $187.54
52-Week Range
$155.94 – $276.19
50-Day MA
$187.86
200-Day MA
$196.72
Volume
638,100.00
Right now · live
Log in to get the live feed
Members see the real-time price and the move since this report (over 8d).
Share Structure
Outstanding 260,272,432.00
Float 129,723,894.00
Free Float 49.8%
Moderate free float — 49.8% of shares trade freely, ~50.2% held by insiders/institutions
Reasonable but insiders still hold a significant stake. This can be positive (skin in the game) but may limit liquidity during sell-offs.
Price History (1 Year)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 10:49am (8d ago)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
The directional story — useful even when net income is negative.
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 10:49am (8d ago)
Revenue
The top line — total sales before any costs or taxes are subtracted. A measure of how much business the company is doing.
Net Income
The bottom line — profit left after subtracting all expenses, interest, and taxes from revenue. Reflects accounting profitability, but includes non-cash items like depreciation, so it isn't the same as cash earned.
Operating Cash Flow
The real cash generated by the day-to-day business — selling products, paying suppliers, collecting from customers. Calculated from net income by adding back non-cash items and adjusting for timing (unpaid bills, unsold inventory). When OCF consistently lags net income, the reported profit may not be converting to real money.
Period Revenue Net Income Net Margin YoY/QoQ
Key Metrics
TD Twelve Data statement HEX SEC filing
Industry comparison last run: Aug 15, 2026 10:37am
P/E Ratio (Price per dollar of earnings)
HEX
Stock Price / EPS (Diluted)
28.04
Stock Price: $181.67
EPS (Diluted): 6.48
P/B Ratio (Price vs net asset value)
HEX
Stock Price / Book Value Per Share
82.15
Stock Price: $181.67
Total Equity: $309.80M
Shares: 140,082,773
EV/EBITDA (Total value vs operating profit)
HEX
Enterprise Value / EBITDA
18.39
Market Cap: $23.65B
Total Debt: $6.28B
Cash: $2.18B
EBITDA: $1.60B
Enterprise Value (Takeover price (cap + debt - cash))
HEX
Market Cap + Total Debt - Cash
$29.5B
Market Cap: $23.65B
Total Debt: $6.28B
Cash: $2.18B
Gross Margin (Revenue left after direct costs)
HEX
Gross Profit / Revenue
69.9%
Gross Profit: $2.15B
Revenue: $3.07B
Operating Margin (Revenue left after all operations)
HEX
Operating Income / Revenue
43.7%
Operating Income: $1.34B
Revenue: $3.07B
Net Margin (Revenue left as actual profit)
HEX
Net Income / Revenue
29.6%
Net Income: $908.30M
Revenue: $3.07B
ROE (Profit from shareholder equity)
HEX
Net Income / Total Equity
293.2%
Net Income: $908.30M
Total Equity: $309.80M
ROIC (Profit from all invested capital)
HEX
NOPAT / Invested Capital
23.6%
Operating Income: $1.34B
Tax Rate: 22.5%
Equity: $309.80M
Total Debt: $6.28B
Cash: $2.18B
Current Ratio (Can it pay short-term bills)
HEX
Current Assets / Current Liabilities
1.20
Current Assets: $2.77B
Current Liabilities: $2.30B
Debt/Equity (Leverage — debt vs equity)
HEX
Total Debt / Total Equity
20.28
Short-Term Debt: $1.51B
Long-Term Debt: $4.77B
Total Debt: $6.28B
Total Equity: $309.80M
Rev/Share (Top-line per share)
HEX
Revenue / Shares Outstanding
$21.93
Revenue: $3.07B
Shares: 140,082,773
Book Value/Share (Net assets per share)
HEX
(Total Assets - Total Liabilities) / Shares
$2.21
Total Equity: $309.80M
Shares: 140,082,773
FCF/Share (Real cash generated per share)
HEX
(Operating Cash Flow + CapEx) / Shares
$8.51
Operating CF: $1.44B
CapEx: -$244.10M
Shares: 140,082,773
CapEx is negative (outflow) — added to OCF to get FCF
Div Yield (Annual income from holding)
TD
Last Annual Dividend / Stock Price
1.1%
Last Dividend: $1.95
Stock Price: $181.67
Payout Ratio (Earnings paid out as dividends)
HEX
Dividends Paid / Net Income
27.6%
Dividends Paid: -$251.10M
Net Income: $908.30M
Industry Benchmarks
Last run: Aug 15, 2026 10:37am
Compares VRSK against LLM-researched typical ranges for its industry. One research call per industry, cached indefinitely — every stock in the same industry reuses the same baseline.
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 10:49am (8d ago)
Metric 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Revenue $3.0B $2.5B $2.7B $2.9B $3.1B
Cost of Revenue $1.1B $824.6M $876.5M $901.1M $925.5M
Gross Profit $1.9B $1.7B $1.8B $2.0B $2.1B
Operating Expenses $940.3M $265.9M $673.2M $726.7M $803.3M
Operating Income $1.0B $1.4B $1.1B $1.3B $1.3B
Net Income $666.2M $953.9M $614.6M $958.2M $908.3M
EBITDA $1.2B $1.6B $1.3B $1.5B $1.6B
EPS $4.12 $6.04 $4.19 $6.74 $6.50
EPS (Diluted) $4.08 $6.00 $4.17 $6.71 $6.48
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 10:33am (8d ago)
Metric 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Cash & Equivalents $280.3M $112.5M $302.7M $291.2M $2.2B
Total Current Assets $902.6M $925.1M $810.1M $911.6M $2.8B
Total Assets $7.8B $7.0B $4.4B $4.3B $6.2B
Current Liabilities $1.8B $2.3B $771.4M $1.2B $2.3B
Long-Term Debt $3.3B $3.7B $2.9B $3.1B $4.8B
Total Liabilities $5.0B $5.2B $4.0B $4.2B $5.9B
Total Equity $2.8B $1.8B $322.2M $105.0M $309.8M
Retained Earnings $5.2B $6.0B $6.4B $7.2B $7.8B
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 10:49am (8d ago)
Metric 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025
Operating Cash Flow $1.2B $1.1B $1.1B $1.1B $1.4B
Capital Expenditure -$268.4M -$274.7M -$230.0M -$223.9M -$244.1M
Free Cash Flow $887.3M $784.3M $830.7M $920.1M $1.2B
Acquisitions (net) -$289.8M -$448.9M -$83.3M
Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) $0 $0 $495.2M $590.2M $698.3M
Dividends Paid -$188.2M -$195.2M -$196.8M -$221.3M -$251.1M
Stock Buybacks -$475.0M -$1.7B -$2.8B -$1.0B -$624.0M
Net Change in Cash $61.5M $12.4M $10.0M -$11.5M $1.9B
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 10:49am (8d ago)
Metric 2022 2023 2024 2025
Revenue Growth -16.7% +7.4% +7.5% +6.6%
Gross Profit Growth -13.8% +7.9% +9.7% +8.4%
Operating Income Growth +40.6% -19.5% +10.8% +7.2%
Net Income Growth +43.2% -35.6% +55.9% -5.2%
EBITDA Growth +32.8% -16.5% +11.1% +7.8%
Dividend History (Last 20)
Last updated: Aug 15, 2026 10:33am (8d ago)
Date Dividend Declaration Record Payment
2026-09-15 $0.50
2026-06-15 $0.50
2026-03-13 $0.50
2025-12-15 $0.45
2025-09-15 $0.45
2025-06-13 $0.45
2025-03-14 $0.45
2024-12-13 $0.39
2024-09-13 $0.39
2024-06-14 $0.39
2024-03-14 $0.39
2023-12-14 $0.34
2023-09-14 $0.34
2023-06-14 $0.34
2023-03-14 $0.34
2022-12-14 $0.31
2022-09-14 $0.31
2022-06-14 $0.31
2022-03-14 $0.31
2021-12-14 $0.29
0Company Classification 1Industry Landscape 2Company Momentum 3Forward Projection 4aDCF Valuation 4bEarnings Power Value 4cAnchored PE 4dReverse DCF 4eRevenue-Based DCF 4fAnchored P/S 4gScenario Analysis 4hDividend Discount Model 4iBook Value Analysis 4jInsider Activity 4fCash Flow Quality 4gDebt Maturity Risk 4hMacro Environment 4iSector Intelligence 4jRevenue Confidence 4kSensitivity Analysis 4lSector Demand Cycle 5AI Investigation 5bThesis Evaluation 6Valuation Synthesis
computed not applicable not yet run 12 computed · 6 not applicable · 6 not yet run
Narrative Economics
The story the market is telling about this stock — the intangible X-factor (founder mythology, cult dynamics, TAM-of-imagination) that moves price beyond what cash flows alone explain. After Shiller, Narrative Economics.
No narrative profile yet for VRSK — it's generated by the pipeline (market-narrative step).
AI Lens 4th lens · how AI reaches this business · 5-yr
2026-08-15
The creme is there an opportunity here? Opportunity
Verisk is one of the cleaner AI beneficiaries hiding in an Industrials label: it sells the scarce data cheap models need, bills on premium not seats, and can convert AI savings into a 70%-plus gross margin.
Position 71 with exposure 63 — the tailwind is scarcity migration (83) and data leverage (88): pooled contributory loss data is the one insurance input that compute cannot manufacture, and AI headcount cuts at carriers don't touch a revenue unit tied to exposure (durability 75). The danger is narrower than the bear case implies — it's Xactimate versus photo-to-scope estimating (solution persistence 72, entrant compression 57), plus top-tier carriers internalizing modelling (DIY 57). Watch two things ahead of the tape: Xactimate transaction volume and renewal pricing, and any sign of a large carrier reducing contributory data submission — the moat degrades from the supply side long before it shows up in revenue.
71
AI Position
Favorable — the pooled-data layer gets scarcer, but Xactimate is contested
Cheap intelligence raises the value of Verisk's non-reproducible pooled insurer data and regulator-filed content while cutting its own curation cost, with the real exposure concentrated in claims estimating rather than underwriting.
Exposure 63 Confidence 70 50 = neutral
Primary Tailwind

Verisk's core asset — loss-cost and contributory claims data pooled from competing carriers under a decades-old antitrust-blessed arrangement, plus ISO policy forms filed across 50 state regulators — is exactly the input insurer AI models need and exactly the thing no amount of compute can synthesize. Cheap models make the data more valuable, not less.

Primary Pressure

Computer-vision and LLM-based property estimating (photo-to-scope) attacks the Xactimate workflow, and large carriers with their own credible loss experience can use cheap model-building to reduce dependence on ISO advisory loss costs and analytics modules.

Critical Hinge

Whether the claims/estimating franchise defends on the underlying labor-and-materials price database rather than the interface — observable in Xactimate transaction volumes, renewal pricing, and contractor-side adoption versus CCC/Hover/EagleView-style AI estimators.

Hard to Reproduce

Cross-carrier contributory databases that require competitors' voluntary data submission, regulator-filed policy language embedded in millions of contracts, and monthly ZIP-level repair cost data accepted as neutral arbiter by insurers and contractors alike.

Forensic fingerprint same 11 factors for every stock · 0 unfavorable · 50 neutral · 100 favorable
Underlying Need Persistence do people still need this at all? 93
Insurers must price risk, file rates and settle claims regardless of how cheap intelligence gets.
The need is statutory and actuarial — rate filings, policy language, loss reserving and claims settlement persist as long as regulated insurance exists, and catastrophe frequency raises the stakes.
P&C premium and policy-count growth · state rate-filing activity levels · claim frequency trends
relevance 82 · confidence 88
Solution Persistence will they still solve it this way? 72
Underwriting content persists as the industry standard; claims estimating is the piece that could be solved differently.
ISO forms and loss costs are embedded in regulatory filings and legacy systems, but photo-to-estimate AI offers a genuinely different way to produce a repair scope than a human working in Xactimate.
Xactimate estimate volume trend · carrier pilots with AI estimators · ISO form adoption in new filings
relevance 85 · confidence 68
Intelligence Commoditization does cheap AI power them or copy them? 67
Cheap models mostly amplify Verisk's data rather than replicate it, but they commoditize the analytics wrapper.
Model-building skill is no longer scarce, so Verisk's premium for 'the model' compresses; its premium for the training data underneath does not, because carriers cannot buy competitors' loss experience elsewhere.
pricing on analytics vs data feeds · share of revenue from raw data licensing · competitor model launches on public data
relevance 80 · confidence 68
Responsibility Transfer are they paid to take the blame? 75
Verisk is partly paid to be the neutral, regulator-acceptable authority carriers cite when defending rates and settlements.
An ISO-filed form or advisory loss cost carries defensibility in a rate hearing or coverage dispute that an internally generated LLM output does not; Xactimate similarly functions as the accepted arbiter in contractor disputes.
regulator acceptance of AI-derived rates · litigation citing Xactimate pricing · state scrutiny of insurer AI models
relevance 72 · confidence 70
Scarcity Migration do their assets get rarer or more common? 83
Cross-carrier contributory data becomes rarer and more valuable as everyone else's modelling gets cheap.
When models are abundant, differentiated proprietary training data is the binding constraint, and Verisk's pool exists only because competitors agreed to contribute under a structure new entrants cannot recreate.
carrier data contribution participation · new contributory database launches · antitrust or privacy rule changes
relevance 88 · confidence 74
Customer DIY Preference will customers just build it themselves? 57
Large carriers can and will internalize more modelling; mid-tier carriers structurally cannot.
Cheap AI lowers the build cost for the top carriers who already own credible loss experience, but the long tail depends on pooled data precisely because their own volume is statistically thin.
top-10 carrier contract renewals · in-house analytics hiring at insurers · revenue concentration disclosures
relevance 80 · confidence 63
AI Intermediation Position do AI agents go through them or around them? 68
Agents in underwriting and claims workflows should call Verisk data rather than route around it.
An autonomous underwriting agent still needs authoritative, auditable reference data and repair pricing; the risk is that Verisk sells the interface and an agent-native rival sells the API more cleanly.
API/consumption pricing rollout · integration into carrier core systems · agent-native insurtech partnerships
relevance 70 · confidence 62
Data Leverage does their data make AI better? 88
Verisk's data is a genuine AI input asset, not a marketing claim — longitudinal, structured, and exclusively sourced.
Decades of coded claims and loss-cost records across competing carriers is exactly the corpus that makes an insurance model better and cannot be scraped or synthesized.
data-licensing revenue growth · new AI products priced off the pool · carrier data-sharing terms renegotiated
relevance 90 · confidence 78
AI Margin Conversion do the AI savings become profit? 72
High-margin structure means AI-driven cost reduction in content production can reach the operating line.
Gross margin already climbed 64.7%→69.9% and FCF hit $1.19B; actuarial coding, form maintenance and support are labor lines AI compresses, and subscription pricing is not obviously forced to reflect the savings.
gross margin above 70% · headcount vs revenue per employee · cost-of-revenue commentary
relevance 72 · confidence 66
Revenue Unit Durability does the thing they charge for survive? 75
Billing tied to premium volume, lines of business and claim counts — not seats — survives AI headcount cuts at customers.
Unlike per-seat software, Verisk's unit tracks the insurer's exposure base, so AI shrinking underwriter and adjuster headcount does not mechanically shrink Verisk revenue; transactional claims units track claim volume instead.
subscription vs transactional mix · organic growth by segment · pricing escalators at renewal
relevance 85 · confidence 70
Entrant Compression how easily can newcomers copy them? 57
Software is now cheap to build; the pooled data, regulatory filings and dual-sided acceptance are not.
An AI-native estimating or rating startup can produce a credible product far faster than five years ago, and claims estimating is the beachhead where a rival needs pricing data but not the ISO regulatory apparatus.
insurtech funding into claims estimating · carrier RFPs naming new vendors · competitor repair-cost database builds
relevance 78 · confidence 64

AI Lens thesis

Verisk is not sold by the seat and not sold as labor, so AI-driven headcount reduction inside insurers does not mechanically shrink its revenue base — subscriptions track lines of business, premium and claim volume, which persist. AI reaches the company on three channels: it raises the marginal value of proprietary, structured, longitudinal risk data (Verisk owns a genuinely unobtainable pool); it lowers Verisk's own cost of producing content — form drafting, actuarial coding, claims tagging, support — against 70% gross and 44% operating margins where savings can drop through; and it lowers the build cost for adjacent attackers in claims estimating and for large carriers doing in-house modelling. The underwriting/ISO side is the responsibility-shielded, regulator-anchored core and should strengthen; the claims-estimating side is where cheap vision models genuinely change who owns the workflow. Net: structurally favorable, with the dispersion sitting in one segment rather than the whole franchise.

Thesis breaker A top-10 carrier publicly dropping ISO advisory loss costs or contributory data participation, or Xactimate losing a major carrier to an AI-native estimating vendor, would break the scarcity read; conversely, API/agent-callable data revenue growing faster than legacy subscriptions confirms it.
What the market may be underestimating

Upside Agentic underwriting and claims workflows need machine-callable, auditable, regulator-defensible reference data — Verisk can reprice from seat/module subscriptions to per-call data consumption, and higher AI-driven query volume expands rather than cannibalizes the unit.

Downside Contributory data is a cooperative asset: if a few large carriers conclude their own AI makes shared pooling a competitive giveaway and withhold submissions, the pool degrades for everyone and the moat erodes from the supply side, not the customer side.

Outcome range spread 46 · unresolved

39Bear case
69Central case
85Bull case
Three headline numbers, deliberately never blended: Position (which way), Exposure (how much it matters at all), Confidence (how sure). The fingerprint asks every stock the same 11 questions so companies a sector label would lump together get told apart. Not an input to GEM/Coal or the Q/V/S lenses.
Growth Outlook
Analyzed 2026-08-17 16:18

The question every valuation on this page silently assumes: is this company likely to grow? Judged forward — the business, its category, the world — against what's already printed.

Growing Verisk keeps compounding on contractual, subscription insurance data revenue with margin-led EPS leverage, but the growth rate is decaying toward the low-to-mid single digits and now trails its category — durable growth, not accelerating growth. conf 7/10
Inline with category Category growing · The data-analytics/consulting cohort is growing (11.1% revenue CAGR, 7.9% median recent growth) with expanding margins; Verisk is growing but slower — 7.1% multi-year, 3.9% most recent quarter. The comparison is imperfect because much of the cohort is project-based consulting while Verisk's demand base is insurer IT/underwriting budgets, which grow nearer to premium growth than to analytics-market growth.
Next 2 quarters
Growing
Subscription renewals and escalators are already contracted for the period, and the cost/repurchase machine reliably converts modest revenue growth into faster EPS growth. Expect low-to-mid single-digit revenue with high-single-digit EPS; nothing in the base suggests a break in the next two prints.
↑ above expectations
Year 1
Growing
Full-year organic growth should hold in the mid-single digits with margin expansion carrying EPS to high single digits, but the decelerating quarterly trend and fading insurance-pricing tailwind cap upside — this is compounding, not inflection.
≈ inline with expectations
Years 2–3
Growing
The earnings power is structurally intact and grows: switching costs on embedded underwriting and claims workflows are real, and cat/regulatory complexity keeps willingness-to-pay rising. But the mechanism supports roughly 5-7% revenue and high-single to low-double-digit EPS, not an acceleration; in-housing by large carriers and a softer premium cycle keep the ceiling on.
↓ below expectations
The creme: each rung's call measured against what's already printed (vs analyst estimates · vs guidance / FY consensus · vs price-implied growth) — expectations in print are already in the price, so only the variant margin can pay. Hover a rung's chip for the margin read.
Growth drivers
75 Contractual subscription base with escalators — Roughly four-fifths of revenue is recurring, multi-year subscription with very high renewal; ISO forms/rating rules and Xactimate are embedded in insurer underwriting and claims workflows, so annual price escalators plus modest volume convert to reliable mid-single-digit organic revenue almost regardless of the insurance cycle. This is why the multi-year record shows every year positive with 0.42% volatility.
61 Margin and buyback leverage over revenue — Operating income +6.7% on revenue +3.9% in the newest quarter, and a 21.6% multi-year earnings CAGR against a 7.1% revenue CAGR. Cost discipline, cloud migration completion and heavy share repurchase mean EPS grows several points faster than the top line — the mechanism behind four straight EPS beats (+3% to +13%).
41 Rising catastrophe frequency and regulatory complexity — Insurers face more severe/volatile cat exposure and thickening state and international regulatory requirements; both raise willingness-to-pay for third-party cat models, forms compliance and anti-fraud analytics that are uneconomic to rebuild in-house. Supports pricing power on renewals rather than new unit volume.
24 Industry-wide margin and earnings expansion — Landscape signals show +2.2pp net margin expansion and 20.5% earnings CAGR across the data/analytics-consulting cohort — a permissive backdrop in which Verisk's own margin path is not an outlier assumption.
Growth risks
63 Visible top-line deceleration — Newest matched-quarter revenue is +3.9% versus a 7.1% multi-year CAGR and a 6.6% recent-year rate; the revenue-confidence read explicitly flags a decelerating quarterly trend. If 4% is the new run-rate rather than a soft print, the mid-single-digit organic framing breaks and only cost actions carry EPS.
41 Net income conversion breaking down — Net income only +0.8% versus operating income +6.7% — interest expense on repurchase-funded leverage and tax/other items are eating the operating gain. Margin-led EPS growth is less durable if the below-the-line drag persists.
36 Insurer cost scrutiny and in-housing — Carrier consolidation concentrates buying power, and larger insurers increasingly have the data science capacity to substitute pieces of the stack (especially in claims estimating adjacencies and marketing/analytics tails). Erosion shows up as slower renewal uplift and lost non-core modules, not sudden churn.
32 Softening insurance pricing cycle — Property/casualty rate hardening is fading; when carriers' premium growth slows, discretionary transactional and consulting-adjacent spend (the non-subscription slice) gets trimmed first, which is exactly where recent shortfalls appear.
29 Growth trails the category — Category median recent growth is 7.9% and industry revenue CAGR 11.1%, versus Verisk's 3.9% latest quarter — the company is not capturing the cohort's growth, so relative positioning is drifting even while absolute growth stays positive.
The world is getting riskier and more data-mediated: cat volatility, litigation-driven severity and multiplying insurance regulation all push insurers toward outsourced risk data rather than in-house rebuilds — structurally favorable for Verisk's moat. But the same world is dampening the growth rate: the hard-market premium surge that lifted carrier spending is fading, macro conditions are tight (10y at 4.63%), and 4.6%-cost debt makes buyback-funded EPS growth more expensive. AI cuts both ways — it lowers the cost for large carriers to build substitutes, while raising the value of proprietary, permissioned historical loss data that models cannot synthesize. Net: the demand for what Verisk sells is secure; the rate at which insurers grow their spend on it is decelerating.
Growth position composite +14
ShrinkingStallingHoldingGrowingAccelerating
70Next 2 quarters · Growing
70Year 1 · Growing
70Years 2–3 · Growing
+14Composite (−100…+100)
A research prediction, not advice. Forward-graded: each rung is scored against the prints that follow it. Not an input to the GEM designation — track record first.
Claude Reading
Independent analyst synthesis · claude-opus-4-7 · generated 2026-08-15 10:48:22
Verdict Modestly overvalued — fair value $150-160 vs $181.67; trim on strength, buyers wait for sub-$160, no short case given moat durability.

Looking at the raw quarterly tape first: revenue has moved $716.8M → $725.3M → $735.6M → $753.0M → $772.6M → $768.3M → $778.8M → $782.6M. That's ~9% over seven quarters, or roughly 5-6% annualized — decelerating, not accelerating. The Q2'25 spike to $253M NI (32.8% margin) and Q2'24's $308M (43%!) look like one-time items rather than run-rate; strip them and net income is bouncing $197-234M on a slow uptrend. Trailing four quarters: revenue ~$3.10B, NI ~$910M, FCF ~$1.19B run-rate. At $23.65B market cap that's ~26x earnings and ~20x FCF, and on EV of ~$27.75B (adding $6.28B debt net of $2.18B cash), ~23x FCF and ~18x EBITDA. Not egregious for a monopoly, but not cheap for 6% top-line.

The synthesis model's $138.96 composite fair value implies ~22x FCF compression to ~$16.5B EV — that requires the market to accept mid-single-digit growth in perpetuity with no multiple support from the moat. I think that's too harsh. Verisk's ISO/AIR datasets are genuinely embedded in insurance workflows; regulators cite their loss cost estimates. A fair range is closer to $150-165 (25-27x FCF), not $135. That still means overvalued at $181.67, just less so — maybe 10-15% rather than 26%. The market-forces narrative that this is a "platform-monopoly, anchored, durable" story is right, and durable moats deserve a premium — but a premium over what growth rate? 6% revenue and -5% recent earnings YoY is the answer that matters, and it doesn't justify 28x.

The contrarian case worth taking seriously: earnings CAGR of 21.6% and FCF CAGR of 19.8% vastly exceed revenue CAGR of 7.1%, meaning the business has been compounding value via margin expansion, buybacks (equity is only $310M against $23.65B cap — massive share retirement), and divestitures (the 2022 financial services sale distorts comps). If operating margins can push from 43.7% toward 47-48% via AI-driven product mix, EPS grows double digits on single-digit revenue. That's the bull thesis and it's not crazy — gross margin is already 69.9% and rising. But the recent -5.2% earnings YoY and Q4'25's 25.3% margin (lowest in the series) suggest the margin expansion story is stalling exactly when the multiple demands it accelerate. Insider activity is net selling on small volumes — neutral to slightly negative, consistent with "no one's rushing to buy at $181." The pb_ratio of 82 is a red herring: it reflects aggressive buybacks eating equity, not distress. Debt/equity of 20x similarly is optical — $6.28B debt against $1.44B OCF is 4.4x, elevated but manageable for this cash profile.

I partially agree with the synthesis "overvalued" call but dissent on magnitude. Fair value $150-160, current $181.67, so ~13-17% overvalued — meaningful but not a scream. The stock has already drawn down 34% from highs per the pre-flight note, so much of the froth is out. What would change my mind: (a) evidence Q1'26's $782.6M is inflecting toward 8%+ growth rather than the 5-6% trend, (b) sustained 30%+ net margins for three consecutive quarters proving the AI/pricing story, or (c) a re-rating catalyst like a major new vertical. What would confirm the bear: another quarter of flat sequential revenue and a print below 27% net margin. The models converge on "overvalued" and I concur directionally, but the market-forces framework correctly notes the narrative is durable — this isn't a story that breaks, it's one that slowly compresses. Sizing matters: this is a "trim, don't short" setup for existing holders and a "wait for $155-160" setup for new buyers, not a table-pound short.

GPT Reading
Independent reading · gpt-5.4 · generated 2026-08-15 10:48:37
Verdict Slightly overvalued at $181.67 — superb business, but fair value looks closer to $150-160 unless revenue growth reaccelerates above 7% with margins holding above 43%.

Verisk looks like exactly what the market thinks it is: a very high-quality, very predictable information-services franchise serving insurance, but one whose valuation still asks for more than the underlying growth really supports. The operating profile is excellent. In 2025, revenue grew to $3.07B from $2.88B, up 6.6%, while operating income reached $1.34B for a 43.7% operating margin and free cash flow hit $1.19B, or nearly 39% of sales. Quarterly revenue has also been impressively steady, rising from $716.8M in 2024-06 to $782.6M in 2026-03, with no real air pockets. Net margins mostly sit around 29-33%, aside from one outsized 43% quarter in mid-2024, which looks non-recurring rather than a new baseline. This is an elite business model with recurring-like economics, strong pricing power, and real embeddedness in customer workflows.

The problem is not quality; it is the mismatch between quality and growth at $181.67. On trailing numbers, the stock trades around 28x earnings, 8.3x sales, and 18.4x EV/EBITDA. Those are not absurd multiples for a mission-critical data asset, but they are full for a company whose recent revenue growth is mid-single-digit and whose quarterly top line appears to be flattening in the high-$760Ms to high-$770Ms range. Q1 2026 revenue of $782.6M was only 3.9% above Q1 2025’s $753.0M, slower than the full-year 2025 growth rate. More importantly, earnings quality is good but not obviously accelerating: 2025 net income of $908.3M was actually below 2024’s $958.2M despite higher revenue, and the latest quarter’s net income of $234.2M was down from $232.3M only marginally up in dollars but down in margin versus the stronger 2025-06 and 2025-09 periods. You can justify a premium multiple for stability and returns, but not a premium that quietly assumes a reacceleration.

The balance sheet also deserves more skepticism than this type of “compounder” often gets. Total debt is $6.28B against $2.18B of cash, leaving roughly $4.1B of net debt, while equity is only $309.8M. The 82x P/B is meaningless in an economic sense because book value is tiny, but it does remind you this is a heavily levered, asset-light model where financial engineering and buybacks can flatter per-share metrics. The better lens is cash generation versus enterprise value. With a $23.65B market cap and roughly $4.1B net debt, enterprise value is about $27.8B. Against $1.19B of free cash flow, that is roughly a 4.3% FCF yield. For a business growing revenue 4-7% and already running at very high margins, that is not cheap; it is the valuation of a scarce, defensive asset with very little room for operational disappointment.

The strongest counterargument is that Verisk may simply deserve this kind of price because there are very few businesses with this combination of resilience, margin structure, and customer stickiness. Gross margin is nearly 70%, operating cash flow is $1.44B, ROIC is a strong 23.6%, and the quarter-to-quarter revenue progression shows none of the cyclicality you would expect from a typical consulting or industrial name. If the insurance ecosystem becomes more dependent on external risk data, catastrophe modeling, and workflow analytics, then 6% growth today may understate the durability of cash flows over the next decade. In that framework, paying 28x earnings for a company that can keep converting around 40% of revenue into free cash flow and steadily repurchase stock is not obviously excessive. I weigh that argument less heavily because the stock already reflects it; I do not see evidence in these numbers that growth is inflecting upward enough to earn multiple expansion from here.

What would change my mind is straightforward. If Verisk can show two or three consecutive quarters of revenue growth reaccelerating into the 7-9% range while sustaining operating margins above 43% and pushing annual free cash flow materially above $1.3B, then today’s multiple would look more defensible and perhaps even modest. Likewise, meaningful deleveraging without sacrificing buyback support would improve the quality of the equity story. On the other hand, if quarterly revenue stays stuck below a $790M run rate, annual revenue growth slips toward 4-5%, or margins drift from the high-20s net / low-40s operating range, the premium should compress. My base case is that this remains an excellent company priced as though excellence alone is enough.

Grok Reading
Independent reading · grok-4.5 · generated 2026-08-15 10:49:16
Verdict Overvalued quality compounder — great 70%/44% margins and ~$1.2B FCF, but 28× P/E and ~$182 price embed more growth than the 6–7% revenue reality; fair value nearer $135–150

Verisk’s numbers describe a high-quality franchise that has already matured into a mid-single-digit grower while the multiple still prices something closer to a growth compounder. Annual revenue climbed from $2.88B in 2024 to $3.07B in 2025 (+6.6%), consistent with the 7.1% revenue CAGR and the recent quarterly run-rate of roughly $753–783M; that is steady, subscription-like progression, not acceleration. Operating margin sits at an elite 43.7% and net margin near 30%, with free cash flow of $1.19B on only $244M of capex—an FCF margin around 39% and an FCF yield of roughly 5% at the $23.65B enterprise. The catch is earnings: net income fell from $958M to $908M year-over-year, and the trailing P/E of 28× is being asked to underwrite decelerating top-line growth and slightly negative earnings momentum. EV/EBITDA of 18.4× and EV/revenue of 9.6× embed the same optimism. The balance-sheet optics are distorted rather than broken—$6.28B of debt against $309.8M of equity produces a 20× debt-to-equity and an 82× P/B, but that equity base is the residue of buybacks and an intangibles-heavy model; net debt of about $4.1B is comfortably covered by more than a billion dollars of annual FCF and a 23.6% ROIC. The quantitative composite fair value near $134–139 versus $181.67 is directionally right: the market is paying for durability and incremental AI/pricing leverage that the recent 6–7% growth tape has not yet delivered.

The cleanest contradiction with a pure “overvalued” label is the durability of the cash engine and the structural moat the narrative layer correctly flags. Gross margin near 70% has held across the post-divestiture perimeter, operating cash flow of $1.44B is high-quality, and the insurance data franchise really does sit inside claims and underwriting workflows where switching costs are material. Climate severity, regulatory complexity, and incremental analytics modules give a plausible path to mid-teens FCF growth even if headline revenue stays high-single-digit; the 21.6% earnings CAGR and 19.8% FCF CAGR over the measured window show that operating leverage and capital returns have already done heavy lifting. A smart opponent would also note that 28× for a 40%+ EBITDA-margin infrastructure name with a 1.1% dividend and sub-30% payout is not outrageous if the “platform monopoly” story holds and if any reacceleration into new verticals or AI attach rates appears. Insider activity is noise—routine awards and option-related sales—not a signal. Against that, I weigh the hard print more heavily: revenue confidence is already tagged decelerating, recent earnings are down 5%, and a 35% premium to DCF that assumes perpetual margin or multiple expansion is exactly the setup that compresses when growth stays at 6–7%.

I would flip toward fairly valued or modestly undervalued on two concrete triggers: sustained quarterly revenue growth back above 10% with operating margin holding or expanding past the current 43–44% band, or a clean print that shows AI/new-vertical contribution large enough to lift the forward growth algorithm into double digits while FCF stays above $1.2B. A drop in the multiple toward the low-20s P/E without fundamental deterioration would also reset the risk/reward. Until one of those arrives, the stock at $181.67 looks like a great business priced for a better growth tape than it is delivering.

Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Each AI above independently stated a direction (undervalued, fairly valued, or overvalued) and how strongly it believes it (conviction, 0–5). We combine those into a Bull-Bear Index on a 0–10 scale: 5 is neutral, 10 is maximum bullish (undervalued at full conviction), 0 is maximum bearish. We compute the score ourselves with the same arithmetic for every seat — the models never grade their own bullishness — so the three are directly comparable. Δ shows how far each seat sits from the panel average of 1.3; a large Δ marks the dissenting voice, usually the one worth reading.
Claude claude-opus-4-7 2.0
overvalued · conviction 3/5 · Δ +0.7 vs panel · self: 4.0
GPT gpt-5.4 1.0
overvalued · conviction 4/5 · Δ -0.3 vs panel · self: 4.0
Grok grok-4.5 1.0
overvalued · conviction 4/5 · Δ -0.3 vs panel · self: 3.0
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
Separate reads — Company Quality (is it a great business?), Valuation (is it mispriced?), and General Sentiment (how macro + narrative are pushing it), plus AI Impact (how the AI wave reshapes it), kept deliberately apart · 2026-08-15 10:58:55
Delvantic - Cairn AI
Quality - wait for a dip 8/10
Elite data-monopoly at a full price - own the business, refuse the price; wait for the low $150s.
The cruxWhether the market gives back the AI-narrative premium enough to enter in the $150s, or forces me to keep waiting while it compounds above me.
Forensic checks Derived mechanically from VRSK's filed financials — not from the AI lenses
Liquidity & RunwaySelf-Funding
DilutionShare Count Shrinking
Earnings QualityHigh Earnings Quality
The four lensesswitch a tab for its full read — score + evidence
Company Quality
+69
Strong
edge √Σ 134 · risk √Σ 50 · conf 8/10

Verisk runs at the top end of software-like economics for a data/analytics business: gross margin has climbed steadily from 64.7% in 2021 to 69.9% in 2025, operating margin sits at 43.7%, and FCF hit $1.19B in 2025 with OCF/NI of 1.47x. Earnings integrity looks clean - Beneish M at -3.04, Altman Z at 5.48, and accruals of -6.2% of assets all point to reported profit being backed by cash. Revenue growth is modest but consistent post-divestitures (roughly 7% in 2025), and margins are expanding, suggesting real operating leverage on an entrenched subscription base.

Strengths 4
m78
Elite margin structure with expansion
GM rose 64.7% to 69.9% across 2021-2025; OpM held above 42% for four straight years and hit 43.7% in 2025. This is a hallmark of a data franchise with pricing power.
m72
Strong cash conversion
2025 FCF of $1.19B exceeds net income of $908M; OCF/NI at 1.47x and negative accruals (-6.2% of assets) indicate high earnings quality.
m68
Aggressive per-share value concentration
Diluted shares fell from 163.3M to 140.1M (-3.8% CAGR); buybacks are 24x SBC and SBC is a modest 1.8% of revenue - unusually disciplined dilution management.
m45
Clean forensic checks
Beneish M -3.04 and Altman Z 5.48 both sit firmly in safe zones with no red flags across mechanical earnings-quality tests.
Concerns 3
m42
Net debt position
Net cash is -$4.10B against $2.18B liquid cash; the balance sheet is a constraint rather than a cushion, though $1.19B annual FCF services it comfortably.
m20
Insider selling only, no buying
6 sales totaling $3.0M and zero open-market buys in the last 12 months; mostly option-exercise-and-sell patterns, so not alarming but no conviction signal either.
m18
Revenue base reset in 2022
Revenue dropped from $3.00B (2021) to $2.50B (2022), reflecting divestitures; only in 2025 has revenue ($3.07B) recovered above 2021 levels, so multi-year top-line growth is optically muted.
This is a high-quality mature earner - a data-monopoly-style business throwing off real cash, expanding margins into the high 60s gross and mid-40s operating, and running an aggressive net buyback rather than diluting shareholders. The forensic modules are all clean and I see nothing in the raw financials that contradicts them. The only genuine knock on business quality is the leveraged balance sheet, which is a strategic choice funded by reliable FCF rather than a survival issue. Insider selling is routine option-exercise behavior, not a signal. Solidly in the 'Strong' bucket but not 'Fortress' because of the net debt and the modest organic growth profile.
Verify before trusting this (5)
  • Debt maturity ladder and covenants behind the $4.1B net debt position
  • Organic revenue growth rate excluding divestiture effects (2022 revenue reset)
  • Customer concentration and subscription renewal rates in insurance analytics segment
  • Whether the 2022 OpM spike to 56.3% reflects divestiture gains vs. underlying operations
  • Nature of the 10b5-1 plans behind insider option-exercise-and-sell activity
Valuation / Mispricing
-66
Rich
edge √Σ 25 · risk √Σ 104 · conf 7/10
Price $181.67 vs composite deserved ~$139 (quality-adjusted ~$150-160) - roughly 15-30% overvalued, no margin of safety. attractive below $150.00

The e2e composite fair value lands at $138.96 and the signal-adjusted FV at $134.31, implying roughly -26% downside from $181.67. Even the most generous method in the stack, the anchored P/E at $179.74, only just touches the current price, while the DCF ($143.84) and EPV floor ($88.40) sit well below. That means the price is being justified almost entirely by paying a premium multiple on today's earnings power - there is no method here that says VRSK is cheap. Earnings quality is high (no haircut needed) and the business is genuinely strong (quality 69, data-monopoly economics, mid-40s operating margin, real FCF, aggressive buyback). Those deserve a premium multiple, and I am willing to lift deserved value toward the anchored-PE read of ~$180 rather than the DCF. But even a quality-generous deserved value of ~$150-160 leaves today's price full to modestly rich, not attractive. The bull case requires perpetual margin expansion and pricing power to already be earned in the multiple; the bear case (cyclicality, in-house alternatives, decelerating growth) is not priced in at all. Net: this is a good business trading at a price that already reflects the good business. No margin of safety.

Cheap signals 1
m25
Quality justifies a premium to raw DCF
Data-monopoly economics, ~65%+ gross and ~45% operating margins, and disciplined buybacks legitimately raise deserved value above the $139 composite - closing, but not eliminating, the gap.
Rich / priced-in 4
m70
Composite FV ~24% below price
Signal-adjusted FV $134.31 and composite $138.96 imply -26% downside from $181.67. Two of three methods (DCF $143.84, EPV $88.40) sit far below the market.
m55
Only the multiple-anchored method touches the price
Anchored P/E at $179.74 essentially equals the market price - meaning the stock is priced at, not below, a premium peer multiple. Nothing here suggests undervaluation.
m45
EPV floor at $88 highlights how much is growth-dependent
The EPV of $88.40 is less than half the current price; over 50% of today's market cap is capitalized future growth and pricing power, which is exactly the bear's contested assumption.
m30
Priced for perpetual expansion
Bear framing is right that continued margin expansion and pricing power are effectively required to justify the multiple; any cyclical insurance slowdown removes the premium quickly.
This is the textbook case of a great business at a full price. Every method except a premium-multiple anchor says it is expensive, and even quality-adjusting deserved value up to the $150s still leaves me paying up rather than getting a discount. I want it in the low $150s or below before valuation gets interesting - until then it is a hold-if-owned, not a buy.
Verify before trusting this (5)
  • Forward organic revenue growth guidance and whether subscription mix is still expanding
  • Incremental margin trajectory - is operating margin still stepping up or plateauing
  • Client concentration and any signs of large insurers insourcing analytics
  • Buyback pace vs FCF and net-debt trajectory
  • Any one-time items inflating recent EPS that anchored-PE relies on
General Sentiment
+10
Tailwind
tail √Σ 76 · head √Σ 66 · conf 6/10

The macro tape is mildly supportive - VIX at 14.3, S&P near highs, established risk-on regime - but with beta 0.66 VRSK barely feels it either way; this is a low-torque name that neither rips on risk-on nor gets mauled on risk-off. What actually presses on the stock is the narrative layer, and here the story is working: a platform-monopoly framing with durable characteristics, fresh AI-adoption headlines (XactAI traction, Core Lines Reimagine, subscription strength) that fit neatly into the market's current willingness to pay up for 'AI-enabled data monopolies.' Momentum confirms it - shares up 12% in three months, outpacing commercial services peers. Countervailing it is a persistent analyst/media chorus flagging premium valuation (one headline literally says '142% above fair value'), plus a Delaware ruling forcing VRSK back into a $2.35B deal it tried to walk from - a discrete, name-specific overhang that dents optics on capital discipline. Net: story and tape both lean positive, valuation chatter and the deal ruling temper it. Modest tailwind, not a shove.

Tailwinds 3
m55
AI-infrastructure narrative catching bid
XactAI adoption and Core Lines Reimagine give VRSK a credible AI story inside a market that is actively paying up for AI-enabled data monopolies. Durable, moderate-intensity narrative that the tape is currently rewarding.
m35
Risk-on tape, but muted by low beta
Regime score +52 with VIX 14.3 is a supportive backdrop, but at beta 0.66 VRSK captures only a fraction of the lift. Helpful, not decisive.
m40
Recent momentum and subscription framing
Up 12% over three months with news flow emphasizing recurring revenue and SaaS demand. Momentum begets flows in a calm tape.
Headwinds 3
m50
Premium-valuation drumbeat in the press
Multiple headlines in the last 72h explicitly flag VRSK as expensive ('142% above fair value', 'premium valuation warrants selectivity'). This kind of coverage caps multiple expansion and invites profit-taking on any wobble.
m35
Delaware ruling forces $2.35B deal back on
Judge ordering VRSK to complete a deal it tried to abandon is a discrete, name-specific overhang - raises questions on capital allocation discipline and adds near-term leverage/integration noise (D/E already trending up).
m25
Rates/PE macro friction
10y at 4.63% and market PE 26.2 are ambient headwinds for premium-multiple compounders. Modest but persistent pressure on the highest-multiple names in the group.
Net leans positive but softly. The story is working - AI-infrastructure framing is a live tailwind and the tape is calm - but VRSK's low beta means the macro lift is small, and the valuation-is-stretched chorus plus a forced M&A close are real, name-specific brakes. This is a Tailwind, not a Strong Tailwind: the pressure is gentle upward drift, easily flipped by any crack in the subscription growth story or a sharper valuation reset in the compounder cohort.
Verify before trusting this (4)
  • Whether analyst target revisions turn negative after the Delaware ruling and forced deal close
  • Any deceleration in XactAI/subscription metrics that would crack the AI-adoption narrative
  • Sector rotation out of premium data/analytics compounders if rates back up further
  • Integration/leverage commentary once the forced acquisition closes
The market-wide tape + this name's exposure to it (beta / sector / narrative durability). Context on the non-fundamental pressure — not a call on the business or the price. processId: detail-general-sentiment
AI Impact
+48
Favorable — the pooled-data layer gets scarcer, but Xactimate is contested
opp √Σ 141 · thr √Σ 0 · conf 7/10

Verisk is not sold by the seat and not sold as labor, so AI-driven headcount reduction inside insurers does not mechanically shrink its revenue base — subscriptions track lines of business, premium and claim volume, which persist. AI reaches the company on three channels: it raises the marginal value of proprietary, structured, longitudinal risk data (Verisk owns a genuinely unobtainable pool); it lowers Verisk's own cost of producing content — form drafting, actuarial coding, claims tagging, support — against 70% gross and 44% operating margins where savings can drop through; and it lowers the build cost for adjacent attackers in claims estimating and for large carriers doing in-house modelling. The underwriting/ISO side is the responsibility-shielded, regulator-anchored core and should strengthen; the claims-estimating side is where cheap vision models genuinely change who owns the workflow. Net: structurally favorable, with the dispersion sitting in one segment rather than the whole franchise.

AI opportunities 9
m71
Underlying Need Persistence
Insurers must price risk, file rates and settle claims regardless of how cheap intelligence gets.
m37
Solution Persistence
Underwriting content persists as the industry standard; claims estimating is the piece that could be solved differently.
m27
Intelligence Commoditization
Cheap models mostly amplify Verisk's data rather than replicate it, but they commoditize the analytics wrapper.
m36
Responsibility Transfer
Verisk is partly paid to be the neutral, regulator-acceptable authority carriers cite when defending rates and settlements.
m58
Scarcity Migration
Cross-carrier contributory data becomes rarer and more valuable as everyone else's modelling gets cheap.
m25
AI Intermediation Position
Agents in underwriting and claims workflows should call Verisk data rather than route around it.
m68
Data Leverage
Verisk's data is a genuine AI input asset, not a marketing claim — longitudinal, structured, and exclusively sourced.
m32
AI Margin Conversion
High-margin structure means AI-driven cost reduction in content production can reach the operating line.
m43
Revenue Unit Durability
Billing tied to premium volume, lines of business and claim counts — not seats — survives AI headcount cuts at customers.
AI threats 0

None surfaced.

Verisk is one of the cleaner AI beneficiaries hiding in an Industrials label: it sells the scarce data cheap models need, bills on premium not seats, and can convert AI savings into a 70%-plus gross margin. Position 71 with exposure 63 — the tailwind is scarcity migration (83) and data leverage (88): pooled contributory loss data is the one insurance input that compute cannot manufacture, and AI headcount cuts at carriers don't touch a revenue unit tied to exposure (durability 75). The danger is narrower than the bear case implies — it's Xactimate versus photo-to-scope estimating (solution persistence 72, entrant compression 57), plus top-tier carriers internalizing modelling (DIY 57). Watch two things ahead of the tape: Xactimate transaction volume and renewal pricing, and any sign of a large carrier reducing contributory data submission — the moat degrades from the supply side long before it shows up in revenue.
Verify before trusting this (8)
  • data-licensing revenue growth
  • new AI products priced off the pool
  • carrier data-sharing terms renegotiated
  • carrier data contribution participation
  • new contributory database launches
  • antitrust or privacy rule changes
  • Xactimate estimate volume trend
  • carrier pilots with AI estimators
The structural effect of the AI wave on this specific business over the next ~5 years — demand, cost leverage, moat, barriers to entry, position in the AI stack. The reality beneath the AI story, not the story's market pressure (General Sentiment owns that) — and not a call on the business today or the price.
Growth Outlook
+14
Growing
edge √Σ 108 · risk √Σ 94 · conf 7/10

The world is getting riskier and more data-mediated: cat volatility, litigation-driven severity and multiplying insurance regulation all push insurers toward outsourced risk data rather than in-house rebuilds — structurally favorable for Verisk's moat. But the same world is dampening the growth rate: the hard-market premium surge that lifted carrier spending is fading, macro conditions are tight (10y at 4.63%), and 4.6%-cost debt makes buyback-funded EPS growth more expensive. AI cuts both ways — it lowers the cost for large carriers to build substitutes, while raising the value of proprietary, permissioned historical loss data that models cannot synthesize. Net: the demand for what Verisk sells is secure; the rate at which insurers grow their spend on it is decelerating.

Growth drivers 4
m75
Contractual subscription base with escalators
Roughly four-fifths of revenue is recurring, multi-year subscription with very high renewal; ISO forms/rating rules and Xactimate are embedded in insurer underwriting and claims workflows, so annual price escalators plus modest volume convert to reliable mid-single-digit organic revenue almost regardless of the insurance cycle. This is why the multi-year record shows every year positive with 0.42% volatility.
m61
Margin and buyback leverage over revenue
Operating income +6.7% on revenue +3.9% in the newest quarter, and a 21.6% multi-year earnings CAGR against a 7.1% revenue CAGR. Cost discipline, cloud migration completion and heavy share repurchase mean EPS grows several points faster than the top line — the mechanism behind four straight EPS beats (+3% to +13%).
m41
Rising catastrophe frequency and regulatory complexity
Insurers face more severe/volatile cat exposure and thickening state and international regulatory requirements; both raise willingness-to-pay for third-party cat models, forms compliance and anti-fraud analytics that are uneconomic to rebuild in-house. Supports pricing power on renewals rather than new unit volume.
m24
Industry-wide margin and earnings expansion
Landscape signals show +2.2pp net margin expansion and 20.5% earnings CAGR across the data/analytics-consulting cohort — a permissive backdrop in which Verisk's own margin path is not an outlier assumption.
Growth risks 5
m63
Visible top-line deceleration
Newest matched-quarter revenue is +3.9% versus a 7.1% multi-year CAGR and a 6.6% recent-year rate; the revenue-confidence read explicitly flags a decelerating quarterly trend. If 4% is the new run-rate rather than a soft print, the mid-single-digit organic framing breaks and only cost actions carry EPS.
m41
Net income conversion breaking down
Net income only +0.8% versus operating income +6.7% — interest expense on repurchase-funded leverage and tax/other items are eating the operating gain. Margin-led EPS growth is less durable if the below-the-line drag persists.
m36
Insurer cost scrutiny and in-housing
Carrier consolidation concentrates buying power, and larger insurers increasingly have the data science capacity to substitute pieces of the stack (especially in claims estimating adjacencies and marketing/analytics tails). Erosion shows up as slower renewal uplift and lost non-core modules, not sudden churn.
m32
Softening insurance pricing cycle
Property/casualty rate hardening is fading; when carriers' premium growth slows, discretionary transactional and consulting-adjacent spend (the non-subscription slice) gets trimmed first, which is exactly where recent shortfalls appear.
m29
Growth trails the category
Category median recent growth is 7.9% and industry revenue CAGR 11.1%, versus Verisk's 3.9% latest quarter — the company is not capturing the cohort's growth, so relative positioning is drifting even while absolute growth stays positive.
vs expectations: ~6m above · 1y inline · 2-3y below
The forward growth verdict — is the business itself likely to grow (next 2 quarters / year 1 / years 2–3), judged against its category and against printed expectations. The full horizon ladder + creme renders on the Growth Outlook card above. Not a call on the price (Valuation owns that) or the tape (Sentiment owns that).
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Lenses kept deliberately separate — Company Quality (price-agnostic), Valuation (price-conditional), General Sentiment (non-fundamental macro/narrative pressure), AI Impact (structural ~5yr AI exposure), and Growth Outlook (the forward growth verdict). The scores are not blended. Filing-level items (convertibles, lock-ups, customer concentration) are v2 — see each lens's "verify."
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v1.1.562 · 9b2927c4 · 2026-08-22 16:52:06