Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Our first question comes from Adam Holt of J.P. Morgan.
Adam Holt - J.P. Morgan
Hi, guys. Congratulations on the quarter. My first questions are actually on the tax season. As you think about the market this year, it looks like the IRS is suggesting the category grew about 11%. As you look into next year, do you think this is the right sort of sustainable growth rate for the market and how do you think about your ability to grow with respect to that broader market growth?
Stephen M. Bennett
I think that the data we’ve shared has been consistent that self-prep software has grown about 10% on a compounded annual rate for the last six or seven years, so this is continued growth, right in line with what the market has been doing the last six years.
If you take the bulk price deals that we walked away from earlier in the year that drove a bunch of one of our competitor’s growth, and added that together our units would have been closer to 7% or 8%, so we would have lost a tiny bit of share but we would have more importantly held or grown share on the web.
I think that the category -- the best way to predict the future is look at the past and I still see roughly 9% to 8% to 12% category growth for self-prep software going forward.
Adam Holt - J.P. Morgan
Is it too early to talk about retention this season and what the impact of some of the price increases might have been on customer retention?
Stephen M. Bennett
It is too early. We are still tabulating all that data. We will obviously share that as we always do at investor day in September.
Adam Holt - J.P. Morgan
If I could just turn for one question to QuickBooks, obviously good numbers there on the revenue side where you had a pretty easy comparison but the acceleration in units, would you tie that to some of the new marketing programs that you went forward with in the spring, or how would you talk about qualitatively some of the drivers behind the unit acceleration?
Stephen M. Bennett
I think you hit -- the biggest single new thing we had was the advertising that we attempted for three or four years on TurboTax that had grown the category and helped us, for the first time ever we did in QuickBooks and the same thing happened. We grew the category faster and benefited from that. I think that was the single biggest thing, other than I think it’s just continued great execution by the QuickBooks team and our retail team, better performance on the web. We’ve continued to get better at our execution on our web as a channel, so I think it’s no single catalyst other than the new advertising. Just fundamental, continued strengthening our blocking and tackling execution.
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