Small Business Demand to Drive Intuit Gains

NEW YORK, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Intuit Inc (NASDAQ:INTU), which makes personal finance applications like Quicken and TurboTax, will likely gain from a growing demand by small businesses for accounting software, according to the Sept. 13 issue of Barron’s.

The market for smaller business software is underserved and could be worth as much as $30 billion, according to the report.

Of the 26 million businesses in the very-small-business software market, only four million use Intuit’s QuickBooks accounting software, suggesting ample room for growth, Barron’s wrote, adding that there is also room for cross-selling payroll, billing, credit-card processing and website processing software.

Intuit’s broad brand recognition, a favorable demographic trend of younger people using more technology, and its ability to sell products on-demand over the Internet could also help, according to the report.

Intuit shares trade around 16 times projected fiscal 2012 earnings making them more expensive than the S&P 500’s 12 future multiple. But Intuit’s shares are cheaper than Salesforce.com’s multiple of 77 and Netsuite’s multiple of 90, Barron’s wrote. (Reporting by Clare Baldwin; Editing by Marguerita Choy)