FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS): History, Ownership, Mission, How It Works & Makes Money

When you need to cut through market noise to find alpha, do you rely on a financial platform with a proven track record, like FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS)? This data and analytics powerhouse, which posted a fiscal year 2025 revenue of over $2.32 billion and added $127 million in organic Annual Subscription Value (ASV), is much more than just a terminal; it's the engine for thousands of investment professionals globally. You need to understand how a company that drives an approximate $15.82 billion market cap business-and is heavily owned by institutional giants like BlackRock Inc.-continues to innovate with new AI tools and maintain over 95% client retention, especially as the competitive landscape shifts.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) History

FactSet Research Systems Inc. didn't start as the global financial powerhouse you know today; it began as a simple idea to use new computer technology to deliver consolidated financial data to Wall Street, which was defintely a novel concept in the late 70s. The company's history is a story of consistent, subscription-driven growth, punctuated by strategic acquisitions that transformed it from a data integrator into a full-service financial digital platform.

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Founding Timeline

Year established

The company was established in September 1978, initially as FactSet Research Corporation.

Original location

FactSet started in New York City, the heart of the financial world, before moving its headquarters to Greenwich, Connecticut, in 1990, and then to Norwalk, Connecticut, in 2004.

Founding team members

The company was founded by two Wall Street veterans who saw the potential of computer-based data delivery:

• Howard Wille (CEO)
• Charles J. 'Chuck' Snyder
• Elizabeth (Betsy) Gannett

Initial capital/funding

The initial funding for the venture amounted to approximately $250,000, a modest sum for a company that would eventually achieve a market capitalization of around $15.82 billion by August 2025.

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Evolution Milestones

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Transformative Moments

The company's trajectory has been defined by a deep commitment to integrating data and workflow tools, not just selling raw information. This has allowed them to maintain a strong competitive moat against giants like Bloomberg L.P. and LSEG.

Here's the quick math on their success: for the fiscal year ending August 31, 2025, FactSet reported annual revenue of approximately $2.322 billion, marking a 5.4% increase from the prior year, with net income surging to $597.0 million. That kind of consistent growth is a direct result of key strategic shifts:

• The Shift to Workflow Solutions: The company moved beyond simply aggregating data, starting with the 1989 release of the Private Database Service, which let users integrate their own data for custom analysis. This client-centric approach turned FactSet into a comprehensive platform rather than just a data vendor.
• The Platform Consolidation: In 2009, FactSet combined its core platforms (DIRECTIONS, Marquee, and IBCentral) into a single, unified product called FactSet. This move created a seamless user experience and faster analytics, which is crucial for investment professionals.
• The 2025 AI Push: The launch of tools like Pitch Creator in 2025, an AI-powered solution to streamline pitchbook creation for investment banks, shows the company's ongoing commitment to embedding artificial intelligence into client workflows. This focus on enhancing productivity is a clear near-term opportunity.
• The CUSIP Acquisition: The 2022 acquisition of CUSIP Global Services for over $1.9 billion was a massive, transformative decision. It instantly made FactSet a key utility in the global capital markets, giving it control over the unique identification of over 17 million financial instruments.

What this estimate hides is the power of their subscription-based model; their Organic Annual Subscription Value (ASV) reached $2,370.9 million in fiscal 2025, which gives them highly predictable revenue streams. If you're interested in who is betting on this model, you should be Exploring FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Ownership Structure

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) is overwhelmingly controlled by institutional investors, meaning its strategic direction is heavily influenced by large asset managers like Vanguard Group and BlackRock, Inc. This concentration of power, with institutions holding over 95% of shares, is a key factor in understanding the company's governance and long-term stability.

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Current Status

FactSet Research Systems Inc. is a publicly traded company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker FDS, and is a component of the S&P 500 index. This status means its ownership is distributed among a vast number of public shareholders, but the voting power is highly concentrated among institutional funds, as is common for stable, large-cap technology companies.

The company delivered strong results for fiscal year 2025, reporting full-year revenue of approximately $2.3 billion, with an adjusted operating margin of 36.3%. This performance helped drive adjusted Earnings Per Share (EPS) to $16.98 for the year. The company also returned a significant amount of capital to shareholders in 2025, totaling $460 million through dividends and share repurchases, which is defintely a positive sign for investors. You can dive deeper into the major stakeholders and their motivations in Exploring FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?.

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Ownership Breakdown

The table below breaks down the shareholder types as of November 2025. You can see how little of the company's stock is held by current executives and directors, and how dominant the institutional block is. It's a classic institutional favorite.

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Leadership

The company's strategy is steered by a seasoned executive team, with a recent transition in the top role. This leadership group is responsible for navigating the competitive financial data landscape, especially as the company increases investments in AI and data initiatives.

• Sanoke Viswanathan: Chief Executive Officer.
• Helen Shan: Chief Financial Officer. She oversees the financial strategy and capital allocation, including the $400 million share buyback program started in 2025.
• Goran Skoko: Chief Revenue Officer. Focuses on driving sales and client engagement globally.
• Kate Stepp: Chief Technology Officer. Leads the development of the core platform and new solutions, like the focus on wealth management and private markets.
• Catrina Harding: Chief People Officer.
• John Costigan: Chief Data Officer.
• Christopher McLoughlin: Chief Legal Officer.

The former CEO, Philip Snow, transitioned to a Senior Advisor role, ensuring continuity and experience remain available to the new leadership.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Mission and Values

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) defines its purpose by focusing on empowering the global investment community with superior data and analytics, aiming to be their most valued partner. This cultural DNA is backed by a commitment to innovation and client success, which is reflected in their fiscal year 2025 revenue of over $2.32 billion.

Their mission and values are the blueprint for how they operate, ensuring that every solution, from data feeds to AI-powered tools like Pitch Creator, helps clients make better, faster decisions.

FactSet's Core Purpose

Official mission statement

FactSet's mission is clear and direct: to be the leading provider of insight and analytics to the global investment community. This goes beyond just selling data; it's about delivering actionable intelligence. They strive to be the single, powerful information system that tens of thousands of investment professionals rely on daily.

• Be the leading provider of insight and analytics.
• Equip the global investment community to see more, know more, and do more.
• Combine hundreds of industry-leading databases with clients' proprietary data into one system.

Honestly, their mission is simple: make the world's best investors even better.

Vision statement

The company's long-term aspiration is to be the world's most valued partner to the global investment community. This vision is supported by their strategic focus on an open platform and integrating new technologies, like Generative AI, to reshape financial workflows. This is a defintely a high bar for a company that reported adjusted diluted EPS of $16.98 in fiscal year 2025.

• Anticipate and meet the evolving needs of clients.
• Invest in innovative technologies and open solutions.
• Cultivate a culture of excellence and collaboration.

You can see how this commitment to client value translates into their bottom line by reviewing Breaking Down FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

FactSet's Core Values

FactSet's values are the foundation for how they treat each other, their clients, and their communities. They are grouped around action and impact, ensuring the company maintains its long-term approach while consistently delivering in the short term.

• Always Inclusive: Build an inclusive community where the best ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time.
• Client-Obsessed: Relentlessly seek value for clients, recognizing that their success is FactSet's success.
• Future-Focused: Continuously look ahead to advance the future of the industry, taking calculated risks to innovate.
• Go Above and Beyond: Roll up their sleeves to solve tough problems together and exceed client expectations.

Here's the quick math: their dedication to these values helps drive client retention rates, which for asset managers is often cited around 91%.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) How It Works

FactSet Research Systems Inc. operates as a critical digital platform, integrating vast, disparate financial data with proprietary analytics and workflow solutions to help investment professionals make faster, data-driven decisions.

The company essentially sells time and certainty: it aggregates and normalizes content from over 800 data sources, then delivers it through a connected, open ecosystem, enabling clients to streamline complex tasks like portfolio modeling, risk analysis, and client reporting.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. Product/Service Portfolio

FactSet Research Systems Inc. Operational Framework

FactSet's operational process is built on a high-touch, subscription-based model that ensures predictable, recurring revenue, reflected by its focus on Annual Subscription Value (ASV), which was $2,258.8 million in Q1 2025. This model allows for continuous, strategic investment in data and technology.

Here's the quick math: the company's core business is selling access to its proprietary data and software. With approximately 8,996 clients and over 237,324 users as of Q4 2025, the high client retention rate-historically over 95%-means growth is driven by both new client wins and expanding services (upselling) to existing ones.

• Global Data Collection: Operates a 24/7 global content collection and validation process, leveraging offshore offices in places like the Philippines, Latvia, and India to ensure timely updates across all time zones.
• Shift to Managed Services: The company is moving away from project-based Professional Services toward providing more managed services, which drives higher-margin, recurring revenue.
• AI-Centric Development: Development focuses on embedding Generative AI (GenAI) into workflows-like the Transcript Assistant and Pitch Creator-to automate manual tasks, directly increasing client productivity and defintely strengthening the product stickiness.

If you want to dive deeper into the financials, you should check out Breaking Down FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Financial Health: Key Insights for Investors.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. Strategic Advantages

FactSet's market success comes down to three non-clichéd advantages: its deeply embedded ecosystem, high switching costs, and first-mover advantage in workflow-integrated AI.

• Deep Client Integration: The platform is an enterprise partner, serving 95 of the top 100 asset managers globally. This deep integration makes the platform part of the client's core infrastructure, not just a tool.
• Proprietary Content and Symbology: It connects over 100 third-party and 40+ proprietary datasets using robust, proprietary symbology (a system for uniquely identifying securities and entities), which is difficult and costly for competitors to replicate.
• High Switching Costs: Once a firm's entire research, portfolio management, and reporting workflow is built on FactSet's APIs, data feeds, and desktop solutions, the cost (in time, training, and data migration) to switch to a competitor like Bloomberg or Refinitiv becomes prohibitively high. That's a powerful moat.
• Workflow AI Differentiation: FactSet's 2025 Intelligent Platform initiative, which embeds conversational AI (FactSet Mercury) directly into the workflow, creates a competitive edge by immediately translating complex data into actionable insights, unlike competitors that may offer AI as a separate, less-integrated feature.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) How It Makes Money

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) generates almost all of its revenue through a high-retention, subscription-based model, providing financial data, analytics, and workflow solutions to investment professionals globally. This recurring revenue stream, tracked by its Annual Subscription Value (ASV), is the core financial engine that drives the company's consistent growth and strong margins.

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Revenue Breakdown

The company's business model is fundamentally a recurring subscription service, which is why the most critical breakdown is by the type of client subscribing to its platform and data feeds. For fiscal year 2025, the total GAAP revenue was $2.32 billion, up 5.4% year-over-year. The forward-looking Annual Subscription Value (ASV) reached $2,405.6 million at the end of the fiscal year, with the vast majority coming from the buy-side.

Here's the quick math: The buy-side, which includes asset managers, wealth managers, and corporate clients, accounted for 82.0% of the organic ASV as of August 31, 2025, growing at 5.5% year-over-year. The sell-side, covering investment banks and brokerages, made up the remaining 18.0%, with a growth rate of 4.3%. This shows the company's successful pivot toward serving the asset and wealth management industry.

Business Economics

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s economic fundamentals are built on a powerful combination of high switching costs and a land-and-expand strategy within a non-discretionary spending category for its clients. Once a firm integrates FactSet's data and analytics into its daily workflow, pulling it out is defintely a painful, expensive process.

• High Retention: Annual ASV retention is consistently strong, holding at greater than 95% as of August 31, 2025. That's a sticky product.
• Pricing Power: The average cost for FactSet software is approximately $45,000 annually, but pricing is highly customized, ranging from a minimum of $4,200 to a maximum of $155,850 based on the number of users and the complexity of the data and solutions required.
• Geographic Concentration: The Americas segment is the primary revenue driver, contributing 65% of the company's total ASV, followed by EMEA at 25% and Asia Pacific at 10% (as of Q2 2025 data).
• User Growth: The total user count grew to 237,324 by the end of fiscal 2025, an increase of 9.7% year-over-year, with wealth management users driving the bulk of that growth.

The company is intentionally shifting its offerings toward more managed services and away from project-based professional services, which further emphasizes the recurring, high-margin subscription revenue. You can dive deeper into who is driving this demand by Exploring FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?

FactSet Research Systems Inc.'s Financial Performance

Fiscal year 2025 demonstrated continued growth, though it also highlighted the ongoing pressure on margins due to strategic investments in technology and content, plus higher employee costs. The company's financial health is best assessed by looking at both GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and adjusted metrics, which strip out non-recurring items.

• Total Revenue: GAAP revenues for FY 2025 were $2.32 billion, marking the company's 45th consecutive year of revenue growth.
• Profitability: The GAAP operating margin for the full year was 32.2%, while the adjusted operating margin, which analysts often focus on, was 36.3%. This adjusted margin was down slightly from the prior year, signaling the cost of technology investments and increased employee compensation.
• Earnings Per Share (EPS): GAAP diluted EPS was $15.55, and adjusted diluted EPS was $16.98. The adjusted EPS growth of 3.2% year-over-year was driven by revenue growth and a lower tax rate, offsetting the margin compression.
• Cash Generation: Net cash provided by operating activities in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 increased 30.0% year-over-year to $212.1 million, showing strong operational cash flow.

What this estimate hides is the strategic investment in artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities and cloud spending, which is necessary to maintain market leadership but puts near-term pressure on the adjusted operating margin. FactSet is balancing this investment with a commitment to returning capital, having increased its quarterly cash dividend by 6% in May 2025.

FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Market Position & Future Outlook

FactSet Research Systems Inc. maintains a strong, defensible position in the financial data and analytics market, driven by its high client retention and strategic investments in artificial intelligence (AI) and the wealth segment. The company finished fiscal year 2025 with revenue of over $2.32 billion, but still faces margin pressure from the necessary technology spending to stay competitive.

Competitive Landscape

You need to remember this market is dominated by a few giants, so FactSet's competitive edge isn't about volume; it's about the depth and connectivity of its data, especially through its API (Application Programming Interface) library. FactSet's market share is smaller, but its focus on granular, high-value data for specialized workflows keeps it sticky with institutional clients.

Opportunities & Challenges

The near-term outlook for FactSet is a balancing act: you have clear growth opportunities in new market segments, but you also have to manage the cost of building next-generation technology. Honestly, the biggest challenge is funding the AI race while dealing with slower sales cycles in the core banking sector.

Industry Position

FactSet's industry standing is defined by its quality of recurring revenue and client loyalty. For fiscal year 2025, the company reported an impressive client retention rate of 91%, which is a testament to the platform's embedded nature in client workflows. The focus on expanding beyond the traditional institutional buy-side is clearly working, especially in the Wealth segment, which saw the strongest Annual Subscription Value (ASV) growth.

• FY2025 total revenue reached $2.32 billion, marking its 45th consecutive year of top-line growth.
• Organic ASV growth was $127 million, near the top of its guidance range, showing consistent demand.
• The Americas segment remains the largest revenue driver, accounting for over $1.5 billion in FY2025.
• New leadership, including a CEO transition in September 2025, signals a strategic pivot to navigate the evolving data landscape.

If you want to dig deeper into the ownership structure behind these numbers, you can read Exploring FactSet Research Systems Inc. (FDS) Investor Profile: Who's Buying and Why?