Verisk Analytics VRSK

Technology · Software - Services · Synthos Deep Dive · 2026-07-03

$191.77

Buy — Core

—

The Overview

Verisk is the company almost every U.S. home-and-car insurer quietly pays to help decide how much to charge you and whether a claim is legit. It owns decades of insurance data nobody else has, so insurers basically have to buy from it — that's a fantastic, sticky business that keeps about 29 cents of profit out of every sales dollar.

The catch is two-fold. First, it's a slow grower — sales rise only about 6–7% a year, which is fine but not exciting. Second, even after the stock fell about 40% over the past year, it's still not cheap — you pay roughly $28 for every $1 of annual profit. Great company, full-ish price, slow growth, and no expert on our panel banging the table for it. So our verdict is Watch — keep it on the list, but wait for a better entry price or proof it can grow faster.

Here's what our three scores mean in everyday terms:

Downside Risk 4/10 (fairly safe). The business barely notices recessions (insurers pay in good times and bad) and the stock is low-drama, but the price already dropped a lot and could keep sliding if growth disappoints.
Growth Quality 7/10 (good). A superb, hard-to-attack business with fat margins — held back only by its modest growth speed.
Exponential Potential 3/10 (low). Don't expect fireworks; this is a steady tortoise, not a rocket. A lot of the profit growth comes from the company buying back its own shares, not from selling much more.

The one big worry: Verisk is now a one-trick pony — it sold off its energy and financial-services arms, so it lives or dies on U.S. insurance analytics. If that ~7% growth ever stalls, a stock this richly priced has room to fall further.

Putting a number on it: our fair-value estimate is $208 against a current price of $191.77 — real upside if our numbers are right.

Target entry zone $189 – $192 accumulate in this band; ideal adds on a dip toward the 50-day average near $189, keeping roughly a 8% margin below our $208 base-case fair value

Our summary metrics

Downside Risk (lower = safer)4/10Moderate

Low beta (0.70) & recession-proof subscription model, but 28× trailing on ~6.5% revenue growth and net-debt/EBITDA 2.5× TTM.

Growth Quality7/10High

Elite regulatory-grade moat, 67% GM, 54% EBITDA margin, ~29% ROIC — but revenue only compounds ~6.5%.

Exponential Potential3/10Low

Mid-single-digit, non-accelerating top line; most EPS growth is buyback-driven. No multibagger runway.

Fair value$208 $144–$248

What does “fair value” mean?

Fair value is Synthos’s estimate of what one share is worth today, based on our model of the company’s future cash generation and the risks to it. It is not a price target or a prediction of where the stock trades next quarter — it’s the price where we think risk and reward are balanced. Above it, you’re paying for outcomes better than our base case; below it, the market is offering a margin of safety.

The model’s inputs and weightings are proprietary — they’re the product. What we publish is the output, plus an independent, public-math cross-check further down the page (“Check our number”) so you can judge it for yourself.

What do the 5 tiers mean? (Core · Tactical · Watch · Hold · Avoid)

Buy — CoreOwn it as a foundation — start or add now, size it for years, let dips be gifts.

Buy — TacticalGood price + confirmed trend + a defined exit — buy the setup, not a marriage.

WatchWe want the business, just not at this price/setup — act only when the listed trigger hits.

HoldFine to keep if you own it — no reason to buy more; new money does better elsewhere.

AvoidDon't own it — the problem is the business or the expectations, so a cheaper price won't fix it.

Exponential Potential

Exponential Potential3/10Low

Mid-single-digit, non-accelerating top line; most EPS growth is buyback-driven. No multibagger runway.

What could take this further than the base case — and where the market may be underpricing it. Full forward-growth and acceleration math in Deeper analysis, §4 below.

Deeper analysis

Technicals, fundamentals, valuation, and the full expert-claim evidence panel — the detail behind the numbers above.

Check our number Market-implied growth ≈ 15%/yr This isn’t how we calculate fair value — it’s public math you can verify yourself. To justify today’s $192, earnings would have to compound roughly 15% a year for 10 years (9% discount rate). Analysts forecast ~11%/yr, so the market is pricing in MORE than what the Street expects.

Reference table

Street consensus	$226 (high $260 / low $185; 1 Strong Buy · 8 Buy · 15 Hold · 1 Sell — consensus Hold) — context, not our anchor
Valuation	28.6× trailing EPS · 24.6× FY26E · 21.7× FY27E · 15.3× FY30E · EV/S 9.3× · EV/EBITDA 17.2×
Technicals	Downtrend — $188, −39% off 52-wk high, below the 200-DMA, RSI 57, −40% 12-mo (SPY +21%)
Conviction	Low breadth — 0 expert voices in the KB; call rests on fundamentals + quant
Position sizing	Watch-list; a starter ≤1–2% only on a deeper pullback or a re-acceleration signal

What the experts actually said

No independent expert claims in the Synthos knowledge base yet for VRSK — this dive is fundamentals- and technicals-driven, not panel-driven.

Price & moving averages 12 months · 50 & 200-day averages · 52-week range

Solid line = price · dashed line = 50-day average · dotted line = 200-day average · the two thin horizontal lines mark the 52-week high and low. Price above both averages is an uptrend.

Bollinger Bands 20-day average ± 2 standard deviations

The shaded band widens when the stock gets more volatile. Riding the upper edge = strong momentum (sometimes stretched); the lower edge = weak / potentially oversold.

RSI (14) momentum gauge · 0–100

Above 70 (overbought zone, shaded) = overbought, below 30 (oversold zone, shaded) = oversold. Currently 54.

MACD 12 / 26 / 9 · trend & momentum

The MACD line crossing above the signal line (bars flip to the up color) = momentum turning up; crossing below (bars flip to the down color) = turning down. Bar height = the size of that gap.

Relative performance vs S&P 500 & its sector (XLK (sector)), set to 100 a year ago

Solid = VRSK · dashed = S&P 500 · dotted = XLK (sector). A rising line means it is beating that benchmark — the sector line shows whether it is a leader or laggard within its own group.

Forward revenue & earnings actual → estimate · "FY" = fiscal year, "E" = estimate

Darker bars = actual results, brighter = analyst estimates. Taller bars to the right = expected growth.

Key stats an RIA wants

Price$191.77

Market cap$25B

P/E trailing28×

P/E FY26E / FY27E25× / 22×

EV / Sales9.3×

EV / EBITDA17.5×

Gross margin67.7%

Net margin28.2%

Dividend yield0.99%

Beta0.664

52-wk range$157 – $273

RSI(14)64

50 / 200-DMA$189 / $195

12-mo return+-28% (SPY +19%)

Street target$230 ($185–$260)

Analyst grades8 Buy · 15 Hold · 1 Sell

FMP ratingB-

Next earnings2026-07-29 (Q2'26 earnings; Street EPS est $1.95, revenue ~$804M)

1. What it is

Verisk Analytics (NASDAQ: VRSK) is a Jersey City–based data-analytics company, founded 1971, that sells predictive models, risk scores, and decision tools primarily to the U.S. property-and-casualty (P&C) insurance industry — rating, underwriting, catastrophe/weather modeling, claims and anti-fraud analytics. Its data assets (industry-pooled loss data, ISO rating information, catastrophe models) are effectively a regulatory-grade utility: insurers file rates built on Verisk's data with state regulators, which makes the product deeply embedded and recurring (subscription/long-term contracts). Fiscal year ends December 31; CEO Lee Shavel; ~7,800 employees.

Important structural note — Verisk is now essentially a pure-play. Over 2022–2023 Verisk divested its Energy & Specialized Markets and Financial Services segments to become a focused insurance-analytics company. That shows up in the data: FMP's product segmentation reports only an "Insurance" segment from FY2023 onward (the FY2025 "Insurance" line of $2.18B appears to be a partial/mislabeled sub-total; the audited FY2025 total revenue is $3.07B — use the consolidated income statement, not the segment line). Treat VRSK as a single-segment business.

Revenue mix (FY2025, from filings):

By segment: effectively 100% Insurance analytics (post-divestitures).
By geography: United States $2.52B (~82%) · United Kingdom $250M (~8%) · other countries $300M (~10%). Heavily U.S.-centric — a pricing-power strength and a concentration risk.

2. The expert thesis — why the panel is bullish (traceable)

There is no expert coverage of VRSK in the Synthos knowledge base: total_claims = 0, breadth 0, net conviction 0. No net-bullish or cautionary voice in our distilled panel has spoken on this name, so there is no traceable claim_id to cite, and we will not manufacture one. honesty comes first: this verdict is fundamentals- and quant-driven only.

What that means in practice: the bull/base/bear below rest entirely on (a) the reported financials, (b) live FMP analyst consensus (labeled as estimates), and (c) our own valuation model — with none of the extra conviction weight a broad expert panel would add. A name with a genuinely elite moat but zero independent conviction and a slow growth rate is exactly the kind of name that belongs on a Watch list rather than in a high-conviction buy sleeve.

3. Synthos scores & the Bull / Base / Bear cases

The one-glance judgment — three scores, 0–10, each anchored to real metrics (not probabilities we can't honestly calibrate):

Score	0–10	The read
Downside Risk (lower = safer)	4 · Low–Moderate	Beta 0.70 and a recession-proof, subscription-based utility model make it structurally sturdy; against that, 28.6× trailing on ~6.5% revenue growth is rich-for-the-growth, net-debt/EBITDA is 2.5× TTM (~1.7× on FY25 EBITDA), and single-segment concentration adds fragility. The 40% drawdown has already partly de-risked valuation.
Growth Quality	7 · High	67% gross margin, 54% EBITDA margin, ~29% ROIC, and a regulatory-grade moat — elite quality — but revenue compounds only ~6.5%, so it can't earn the 8–9 reserved for high-margin and fast-growing names.
Exponential Potential	3 · Low	Mid-single-digit revenue growth that is not accelerating (FY26E +5% → FY30E +7%, roughly flat), a mature U.S. P&C TAM, and EPS growth that leans heavily on buybacks. No multibagger runway.

The three cases (our own scenario model — assumptions shown; each target is a ~12–18-month fair value). We deliberately do not attach probabilities: the base case is by definition the expected path, so a weighted blend would just restate it with false precision. Instead the cases bound the range, and the scores above summarize them.

Case	Key assumptions	Fair value
Bull	Pricing power + new AI/analytics modules re-accelerate organic growth toward high-single/low-double digits; FY27E EPS beats to ~$9.2 (vs $8.67 cons); the market re-rates the quality back toward ~27×.	~$248 (+32%)
Base (our anchor)	Estimates roughly hit — FY27E EPS $8.67; a durable ~6–7% grower with elite margins holds a ~24× multiple (below its historical premium, reflecting the slower growth).	~$208 (+10%)
Bear	Organic growth slips toward ~4%, a large insurer renegotiates, or the multiple keeps compressing toward the market; FY27E EPS ~$8.0 at a de-rated ~18×.	~$144 (−24%)

Synthos fair value = the base case, ~$208 (+10%), with the full $144–$248 span as the honest range. This anchor sits below the Street's $226 consensus — we are less willing than the sell-side to pay a premium multiple for ~6.5% growth. Note the Street itself is only lukewarm here: the grade consensus is Hold (15 Hold vs 9 Buy, 1 Sell). This is a tracked call — the Forecaster Scorecard grades it once it matures.

4. Exponential Potential

Synthos separates compounders (durable high returns on capital) from exponentials (accelerating, multi-baggers-from-here). VRSK is a high-quality compounder with essentially no exponential character:

Forward growth: revenue CAGR FY25→FY30E ~6.5% ($3.07B → $4.21B); EPS CAGR ~13.7% ($6.49 → $12.35) — the gap between the two is the tell that buybacks (share-count reduction), not volume, drive much of the EPS growth.
Acceleration (the 2nd derivative) is roughly flat-to-slightly-up but low: revenue growth ~+5% (FY26E) → +6.8% (FY27E) → +7.1% (FY30E). No inflection; this is a steady mid-single-digit grower, full stop.
Room to run: the U.S. P&C analytics TAM is mature and Verisk already owns the dominant share of the regulatory-data niche — so the constraint is category size and share, not runway. At $24.7B market cap there is no law-of-large-numbers ceiling, but there is also no large, fast-growing pond to expand into after the energy/financial divestitures.
Reinvestment runway: modest capex (~8% of revenue) and heavy buyback — a return-of-capital story, not a reinvestment-for-growth story.

Exponential Potential: Low (3/10). Own it, if at all, for durable ~6–7% revenue compounding plus buyback-levered ~11–14% EPS growth and a fortress moat — not for acceleration. This is squarely a Core-quality-at-a-price name, and it is the reason the verdict is Watch rather than Buy.

5. Financials (real numbers — FMP annual/quarterly)

Revenue: FY25 $3.073B, +6.6% (FY24 $2.882B, +7.5% on FY23 $2.681B). Steady mid-single-digit organic growth; no acceleration.
Quarterly trajectory: Q1'25 $753M → Q2 $773M → Q3 $768M → Q4 $779M → Q1'26 $783M (+3.9% YoY). Smooth and recurring, but decelerating slightly at the margin.
Margins (elite): gross 67.4% TTM, EBITDA 53.9%, operating ~44.9%, net 29.3% TTM. These are top-decile software-like margins.
Earnings: net income $908M FY25 (vs $958M FY24 — FY24 was flattered by a discontinued-ops gain); diluted EPS $6.49 FY25. Q1'26 EPS $1.73 (net income $234M).
Cash flow: operating CF $1.44B, capex ~−$244M, FCF ~$1.19B FY25 (FCF margin ~39%) — cash-generative and reliable. FCF yield ~4.6%.
Balance sheet: total debt $5.04B, cash $2.18B, net debt ~$2.86B; net-debt/EBITDA ~2.5× TTM (FMP) or ~1.7× on FY25 reported EBITDA — investment-grade, easily serviceable against ~$1.7B EBITDA. Note: reported book equity is thin/near-negative because of $10.7B of cumulative treasury stock from years of buybacks — that is a return-of-capital artifact, not distress, so book-value and ROE ratios (ROE shows as negative) are not meaningful here.

6. Valuation — priced in or room?

VRSK is not cheap on an absolute basis (28.6× trailing EPS, 9.3× EV/sales, 17.2× EV/EBITDA) for a ~6.5% revenue grower — but it is far less demanding than a year ago after the ~40% drawdown. The forward path compresses the multiple: on live consensus P/E is 24.6× (FY26E) → 21.7× (FY27E) → 15.3× (FY30E) if estimates hit. The bull case is that an elite, regulatory-moated utility deserves a premium regardless of growth rate; the bear case is that ~28× trailing for ~7% growth is a PEG well north of 3, which the market has been steadily unwinding (hence the de-rate). Street targets (context): consensus $226, high $260, low $185; grade consensus Hold. Our $208 base-case fair value sits below consensus because we decline to pay up for slow growth. Verdict: a quality-at-a-fullish-price name — reasonable to own on a deeper pullback, not compelling here.

7. Technicals (computed from EOD price history)

Trend: down. $188 sits above the 50-DMA ($176) but well below the 200-DMA ($204) — the 50 under the 200 is a death-cross posture. MACD +1.7 (mildly positive, a short-term bounce off lows).
Location: −39% off the 52-week high ($308), only +20% off the 52-week low ($157) — a broken-down leadership name, with a max drawdown of −41% from peak.
Momentum: RSI(14) 57 — neutral, neither oversold nor overbought; no stretched-entry signal either way.
Relative strength (the tell): VRSK −39.8% 12-mo vs SPY +20.6% and QQQ +30.3%; even 6-mo is −16% vs SPY +8%. Persistent, severe underperformance of both the market and the Nasdaq.
Read: technicals do not confirm a buy — this is a stock in a year-long downtrend, below its 200-DMA, that has stopped falling but has not turned. A base needs to form; buying the first bounce is lower-conviction than waiting for the 200-DMA to flatten and be reclaimed.

8. Moat & competitive position

Verisk's moat is one of the widest in the S&P 500 software cohort: it is a data monopoly on U.S. P&C insurance. Insurers pool their loss experience into Verisk (ISO), Verisk turns it into rating/underwriting products, and insurers file rates with state regulators built on that data — a closed loop that is nearly impossible for a new entrant to replicate (you can't buy 50 years of industry-pooled loss data). Switching costs are high, contracts are long, and the product is mission-critical and regulatory-embedded. The trade-off for that fortress is a capped TAM — Verisk already dominates its niche, which is precisely why growth is only mid-single-digit.

Peer set (market cap) — imperfect comps: the closest analogs are the other data/analytics duopolists, Equifax $20.8B and TransUnion $15.1B (credit-data monopolies with similar moat character). FMP's remaining "peers" — EMCOR $34.5B, Hubbell $25.7B, Ingersoll Rand $31.5B, Old Dominion $45.3B, Rocket Lab $58.2B, United Airlines $43.3B, Veralto $22.7B, Wabtec $44.5B — are size-matched industrials/transports, not business-model comparables and should be ignored for valuation. Against EFX/TRU, VRSK carries the highest margins and the highest multiple.

9. Management, capital allocation & guidance

Capital allocation: disciplined return-of-capital. FY25 saw $624M of buybacks + $251M of dividends (dividend $1.90/sh, ~1.0% yield, ~28% payout) — the buyback is the primary EPS-growth lever given the slow top line. The 2022–2023 divestitures of Energy and Financial Services sharpened focus and funded large repurchases (note the 2023 cash-flow statement's ~$2.8B of buybacks). Net-debt/EBITDA held at a manageable ~1.7–2.5×.
Insider activity: routine. Most recent Form 4 is the CFO (Elizabeth Mann) selling 400 shares at $179.54 on 2026-06-15, plus director option-exercise-and-sell activity (Samuel Liss) in early June. These are small, routine diversification sales — no alarming cluster of discretionary selling.
Management's own guidance: not available. The SEC 8-K (Item 2.02) earnings-release exhibit for VRSK returned too thin to extract genuine forward guidance (revenue/outlook language), so we do not summarize management's self-interested guidance here rather than fabricate it. Investors should read management's own full-year revenue/EBITDA-margin/EPS outlook directly from the next earnings release (2026-07-29).

10. Catalysts & what to watch

Next earnings: 2026-07-29 (Q2'26; Street EPS $1.95, revenue ~$804M). The key line: organic revenue growth (is it holding ~7% or slipping toward 4–5%?) and any subscription/pricing commentary.
Organic growth re-acceleration: new AI/analytics modules, extreme-weather/catastrophe-model demand, or pricing actions that push growth back toward double digits = the core of the bull case.
Multiple re-rating: watch whether the market is willing to pay back up for the quality, or continues to compress the premium toward the peer/market multiple.
Capital return: pace of buyback (the main EPS lever) and dividend growth.
Competitive/regulatory: any large-insurer contract renegotiation, or regulatory scrutiny of Verisk's data-pooling position.

Thesis tripwires (what would change the call): organic revenue growth printing below ~4% for two straight quarters (would push toward Avoid); or the stock reclaiming and holding above its 200-DMA on re-accelerating growth (would push toward Buy — Tactical).

11. Key risks

Slow growth at a full multiple (the central risk): ~28× trailing for ~6.5% revenue growth is a rich PEG; any growth wobble invites further de-rating — exactly what the last 12 months delivered.
Single-segment concentration (structural): post-divestitures, VRSK is a pure-play on U.S. P&C insurance analytics. One end-market, one geography (82% U.S.) — no diversification cushion.
Customer concentration / bargaining power: a relatively small number of large P&C carriers; a big renewal renegotiation would sting.
Thin book equity / heavy debt-funded buyback: book equity is near-zero after $10.7B of treasury stock; the model depends on continued cash generation to service ~$5B of debt and fund repurchases.
No expert conviction: unlike our high-conviction names, zero independent voices in the KB support this thesis — the call rests entirely on fundamentals and quant, which is itself a (breadth) risk.

12. Verdict, position sizing & monitoring

Watch. Verisk is a genuinely elite, wide-moat data monopoly with top-decile margins and reliable free cash flow — but it grows revenue only ~6.5% a year, still trades at ~28× trailing earnings after a 40% de-rate, sits in a year-long technical downtrend below its 200-DMA, and carries no expert conviction in our KB. The base-case fair value (~$208, +10%) offers only modest upside and lands below the Street's own lukewarm Hold consensus. That combination — great business, full-ish price, slow growth, no conviction, broken chart — is the definition of a Watch, not a buy.

Sizing: watch-list. If an investor insists on exposure, a starter position ≤1–2% only on a deeper pullback (toward the low-$160s / prior 52-wk low) or on clear evidence of organic re-acceleration.
Monitoring: re-underwrite on the §10 tripwires; formal re-score each earnings print (next 2026-07-29). This verdict is logged as a tracked Synthos call as of 2026-07-03 at $188.35.
Single biggest risk: a single-segment, slow-growing business paying up on the multiple — de-rating risk if ~7% growth ever wobbles.

Provenance & disclosures

Traceability: 0 KB claims, breadth 0 — there is no expert coverage of VRSK in the Synthos knowledge base, so no claim_id is cited and none was fabricated. The verdict is explicitly fundamentals- and quant-driven.
Data as-of: fundamentals 2026-03-31 (Q1'26) · estimates & prices 2026-07-02/03. Forward figures are analyst consensus (FMP), labeled as estimates.
Management caveat: no usable management guidance was available from the SEC 8-K route (exhibit too thin); none was invented.
Segment caveat: FMP's product-segment line understates FY25 revenue; the consolidated income statement ($3.07B) is authoritative. VRSK is treated as a single-segment (Insurance analytics) business post-divestitures.
Not investment advice. Independent research, educational and informational only, never personalized. Hypothetical/forward figures are labeled; the only performance numbers Synthos will headline are the live, real-money Flagship's.
Version: 2026-07-03. Prior versions available via the deep-dive version dropdown ("based on the info at the time").