Verisk Analytics (VRSK) — Company Research

Last Updated: 10 July 2026

Verisk Analytics is a data-analytics company built almost entirely around one industry: property and casualty insurance. It sells the rating models, catastrophe simulations, loss-cost tables, claims-estimating tools and anti-fraud data that insurers rely on to price policies and settle claims. Most of that revenue is subscription-based and renews year after year, giving Verisk software-like margins — adjusted EBITDA margins run around 56%. After selling off its financial-services and energy businesses in 2022–2023 to become a pure-play insurance data firm, Verisk grew fiscal 2025 revenue 6.6% to $3.07bn. Yet the shares have fallen roughly 38% from their 52-week high as revenue growth decelerated to 3.9% in the first quarter of 2026. This report examines the numbers, the valuation and the risks.

1. Company Snapshot

2. Bull & Bear Case

Bull Case

• Recurring, mission-critical data: The bulk of Verisk's revenue is subscription-based and deeply embedded in insurers' underwriting and claims workflows, giving very high renewal rates and pricing power.
• Software-like margins: Adjusted EBITDA margins of roughly 56% and strong free cash flow ($1.19bn in FY2025) reflect the scalability of a data business with low incremental cost.
• Focused pure-play: After divesting financial services and energy, Verisk is a clean insurance-data franchise with a dominant position in US property and casualty rating and claims data.
• Aggressive capital returns: Verisk executed a $1.5bn accelerated share repurchase in Q1 2026 and raised its dividend 11%, signalling management confidence and shrinking the share count.

Bear Case

• Growth is decelerating: Revenue growth slowed to 3.9% year over year in Q1 2026 (4.7% organic constant currency), well below the high-single-digit pace investors had paid a premium for.
• Still not cheap: Even after a ~38% fall from its high, the stock trades near 27x adjusted earnings and around 25x forward earnings — a full multiple for mid-single-digit growth.
• Single-industry concentration: Verisk's fortunes are tied almost entirely to the health and IT budgets of the P&C insurance industry; a downturn or in-sourcing shift there hits the whole business.
• De-rating momentum: The shares have fallen sharply from $307.91 to around $191, and short interest has risen to nearly 7% of float — the market is repricing the growth story.

3. Business Segments

Verisk now reports as a single Insurance segment, split into two revenue categories:

4. How It Makes Money

Subscriptions, not one-off sales. The core of Verisk's model is long-term subscription and transactional contracts with insurers who plug its data and models directly into their pricing and claims systems. Because switching would mean re-engineering core underwriting processes, renewal rates are high and revenue is highly visible year to year.

Data as a compounding asset. Verisk's advantage is the depth of its historical loss and policy datasets, which it enriches over decades. New products — catastrophe models, anti-fraud tools, life-insurance analytics — are built on the same underlying data, so incremental margins are high and the moat widens as the dataset grows.

Cash returned to owners. With modest capital needs, Verisk converts most of its profit into free cash flow and returns it via buybacks and a growing dividend, including a $1.5bn accelerated repurchase and an 11% dividend increase in 2026.

5. Financial Health

All figures below come from Verisk's audited annual reports and quarterly earnings releases (SEC filings). GAAP EPS in 2022 and 2024 was inflated by one-off gains on the sale of divested businesses, so adjusted EPS gives a cleaner view of the underlying trend.

¹ 2022 and 2024 GAAP EPS were boosted by gains on the sale of divested businesses. ² 2024 adjusted EPS implied from the +7.8% growth to the 2025 figure of $7.16.

Balance sheet at 31 Dec 2025: total debt $4.77bn against cash of $2.18bn (the company raised debt and held cash ahead of buybacks). Operating cash flow was $1.44bn in FY2025 and free cash flow $1.19bn (operating CF $1.436bn less capex $0.244bn).

6. Valuation

Raw metrics, July 2026. Not opinions on whether the stock is cheap or expensive.

7. What Are They Building

Verisk's growth agenda centres on extending its data franchise into faster-growing adjacencies and layering analytics on top of its core datasets. Recent bolt-on acquisitions — SuranceBay in the underwriting category and AccuLynx in claims — expand its reach into life-insurance distribution and contractor claims workflows. Management is also weaving generative-AI tooling into its products to help insurers extract insight from unstructured claims and policy documents.

The second theme is catastrophe and climate risk. As extreme-weather losses mount, Verisk's catastrophe-modelling and risk-scoring products become more valuable to insurers repricing exposure, and the company continues to invest in higher-resolution models. You can follow the broader market backdrop on the ChartsView Live Charts page and the Economic Calendar.

8. Peer Comparison

9. Insider Activity

Recent Form 4 filings show routine director option-exercise sales and small officer disposals under trading plans; directors also receive quarterly equity retainers. No open-market accumulation by chief executive Lee M. Shavel or other insiders was disclosed.

10. Key Risks

• Growth deceleration: Q1 2026 revenue rose just 3.9% year over year; if organic growth stays in the mid-single digits, the premium multiple is hard to justify.
• Customer concentration: Verisk depends almost entirely on the P&C insurance industry; consolidation, budget cuts or a decision by large insurers to build in-house would hit revenue directly.
• Valuation risk: Even after a steep de-rating the shares trade at a full multiple, leaving limited margin for error on execution.
• Regulatory and data risk: As a large holder of insurance and consumer data, Verisk faces evolving privacy, antitrust and data-use regulation that could raise costs or limit products.
• Leverage rose in 2025: Total debt increased to $4.77bn to fund buybacks; higher interest costs reduce flexibility if cash generation slows.
• Competition and disruption: Larger data peers and AI-native entrants could erode pricing power in parts of the underwriting and claims stack.

11. Recent Developments

• 29 Apr 2026 — Q1 2026 results. Revenue of $783.0m (+3.9% YoY, +4.7% organic constant currency) and adjusted EPS of $1.82 beat consensus; the company executed a $1.5bn accelerated share repurchase and reaffirmed full-year guidance.
• 27 Apr 2026 — Dividend raised 11%. The Board declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.50 per share, up from $0.45, taking the annualised payout to $2.00.
• 18 Feb 2026 — FY2025 results. Full-year revenue of $3.073bn (+6.6%), adjusted EPS of $7.16 (+7.8%) and adjusted EBITDA of $1.727bn (+9.6%), with free cash flow up nearly 30%.
• 2025 — Bolt-on acquisitions. Verisk added SuranceBay (life-insurance distribution) to underwriting and agreed to acquire AccuLynx (contractor claims software) to expand its claims offering.

12. Key Dates

• 29 Jul 2026 — Q2 2026 earnings release (before market open)
• Expected 28 Oct 2026 — Q3 2026 earnings release
• Expected 30 Sep 2026 — next quarterly dividend payment ($0.50 per share)

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