The answer comes in a number - calculated quietly in the background - that shapes financial lives every day. For most people, that number is a mystery. For banks and lenders, it’s a signal they rely on. Behind it all stands a company that turned raw data into one of the most powerful decision-making tools in modern finance.

Founded on the belief that mathematics could predict behavior more fairly than human judgment alone, they spent nearly seventy years changing how the world measures risk. This is the story of FICO, that didn’t seek the spotlight, but became essential to the functioning of the global financial system.

A Meeting of Minds: How it Began

The year was 1956. America was booming, but credit markets were still surprisingly crude. Lending decisions often relied on gut feeling, personal relationships, or inconsistent local practices. There was no standard, no scientific way to assess creditworthiness.

Bill Fair, an engineer, and Earl Isaac, a mathematician, met while working at the Stanford Research Institute. Both shared a radical idea for their time: that cold, hard data could outperform human instinct when it came to predicting financial behavior.

Armed with $400 and a conviction that algorithms could change business decision-making, they founded Fair, Isaac and Company in California.
Their goal was simple but ambitious - build statistical models that helped lenders replace guesswork with objective analysis.

Early on, progress was slow. Banks and finance companies, steeped in tradition, were reluctant to trade human judgment for machine-driven scores. But Fair and Isaac were patient.

Breaking Through: When Data beat Instinct

The breakthrough came in the late 1960s. Retailers, facing rising volumes of consumer credit applications, needed a faster, more consistent way to screen customers. Fair Isaac introduced scoring models that allowed lenders to automate parts of the approval process, reducing subjectivity and speeding up decisions.

In 1970, the passage of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) legitimized the use of credit scoring and credit reporting, giving Fair Isaac a major regulatory tailwind. Banks and credit card issuers began adopting FICO models to streamline underwriting. It wasn't flashy work - it was back-end, technical - but it reshaped the foundation of modern consumer finance.

By the 1980s, Fair Isaac’s credit scoring models were used widely across banking, auto lending and retail. Lenders valued the consistency and borrowers appreciated that decisions were becoming less arbitrary. In 1987, FICO went public, listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The IPO marked the start of a new era of expansion.

Becoming FICO: From Scorekeeper to System Builder

Through the 1990s and early 2000s, Fair Isaac evolved into more than just a credit scoring company. It built decision engines - software systems that automated fraud detection, mortgage underwriting and other complex decisions. It expanded into analytics consulting, helping businesses in insurance, telecom or healthcare better predict customer behavior.

While FICO scoring models had been in use for years, the branded FICO Score was first introduced in 1989 and became the gold standard for measuring creditworthiness in the U.S. By the early 2000s, 90 percent of U.S. lending decisions involved a FICO Score. Three major credit bureaus - Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion - standardized on FICO models, further embedding the brand into the financial system.

Despite occasional competition and alternative models, FICO’s brand remained dominant for one simple reason: trust. Lenders trusted its models. Regulators trusted its consistency. Consumers trusted that improving their score would unlock financial opportunity. In 2009, the company officially rebranded to FICO, reflecting its broader role across analytics, risk management and decision science.

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Leadership and the Pursuit of Predictability

Over the decades, FICO’s leadership emphasized precision, adaptability and customer trust. CEOs like Larry Rosenberger (1991–1999) and Will Lansing (2012–present) expanded the company beyond traditional credit scoring into areas like cybersecurity, AI-driven analytics, and financial inclusion.

In the 1990s, Larry Rosenberger, a statistician by training, took over as CEO. He had joined FICO in the 1970s as a software engineer and helped shape some of the company’s most influential early models. During his tenure as CEO, Rosenberger was instrumental in deepening FICO’s analytical capabilities and expanding its product offerings beyond credit scoring into decision support software and risk modeling for financial institutions. He helped embed the company more deeply into the infrastructure of U.S. consumer lending.

After Rosenberger, FICO cycled through several leaders during the dot-com and post-financial crisis years. But it was the appointment of Will Lansing in 2012 that marked the beginning of FICO’s modern phase. Lansing steered FICO toward becoming a full-fledged enterprise analytics and decision platform company.

Under Lansing, FICO doubled down on building:

• Alternative data models that aim to expand credit access to underserved consumers

• Machine learning infrastructure for smarter, continuously adapting scoring

• Cloud-based decision platforms that help banks, insurers, and governments make millions of decisions per day - faster and more accurately

Product innovation stayed steady:

• FICO Score 8 (2009) and FICO Score 9 (2014) introduced stronger predictive power and adjustments to reflect medical debt and rental payment histories.

• FICO Score 10 and 10T (2020) added trended data, allowing lenders to see not just where a consumer is, but where they’re headed - a subtle but powerful shift in how credit risk is modeled.

This leadership vision - combining scientific rigor with a practical understanding of risk - has allowed FICO to remain not just relevant, but essential, in a rapidly evolving financial landscape.

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Where FICO Stands Today

Today, FICO is a global leader in predictive analytics and decision management. The company operates in over 90 countries, employs approximately 3,400 people and generates more than $1.7 billion in annual revenue. Its flagship credit score underpins approximately 90 percent of U.S. lending decisions, making it a near-universal checkpoint for American consumers seeking credit.

Its customer base includes:

• Banks, Mortgage lenders, Credit card issuers,

• Insurance companies,

• Retailers, Telecommunications providers, Healthcare organizations,

• …

Despite the rise of VantageScore (an alternative scoring system) and pressures for more inclusive scoring models, FICO has maintained its leadership by improving its core offerings and expanding into adjacent decision science fields. The strength of FICO lies not only in the quality of its models but in the trust it has earned over decades - a rare and powerful asset in financial services.

FICO’s business model is built on high-margin, recurring revenue streams. A significant portion of its income comes from licensing its credit scoring models, analytics software, and decisioning platforms to financial institutions on long-term contracts. Many of these relationships are deeply embedded in their customers' core infrastructure, creating high switching costs and long-term stability.

The Future is Data-Driven and Decentralized

Looking ahead, FICO is positioning itself for a future shaped by AI and real-time decision-making.

Key growth areas include:

• Expanding into new geographies, especially emerging markets where traditional credit scoring is less developed

• Building AI-powered decision platforms to help businesses react smarter and faster to customer needs

• Enhancing fraud prevention with advanced machine learning algorithms that adapt to evolving threats

As financial services become more global, digital and personalized, FICO aims to stay ahead by making decisions faster, smarter and fairer - all while maintaining the trust that has quietly underpinned its success.

Bill Fair and Earl Isaac didn’t set out to become household names. They set out to solve a problem. In doing so, they created a company that changed the way the world evaluates risk - and built one of the most enduring, trusted franchises in modern finance.

Write-Ups from investors to dive deeper

Summit Stocks

FICO: The Business Behind Your Credit Score

Dear reader…

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2 years ago · 8 likes · Summit Stocks

This is the story of EVS: a journey built on innovation, resilience and the people who believed live storytelling could be transformed forever.

A Vision Sparks in Belgium

In 1994, two engineers from Liège, Belgium, Pierre L’Hoest and Laurent Minguet, saw a future that few others did. At the time, live television production was slow, clunky and limited. Instant replays had to be manually queued from videotape - a tedious and risky process during a live broadcast.

L’Hoest and Minguet, both with strong technical backgrounds, believed live video could be handled differently. They founded EVS Broadcast with one mission: to build a system that could instantly capture, slow down and replay live action - seamlessly, without disrupting the flow of broadcast.

Their first invention, the LSM (Live Slow Motion) system, changed everything. It allowed operators to instantly play back high-quality replays during live broadcasts - something broadcasters had only dreamed of. Suddenly, the action wasn’t just live. It was capturable, replayable, sharable - almost as fast as it happened.

Early Wins and a Breakout on the World Stage

The big breakthrough came in 1998, when FIFA World Cup broadcasters used EVS systems for the first time to deliver real-time replays during matches. The audience impact was immediate. For viewers, it was like magic: crisp slow-motion shots, instant reactions, no lag. For broadcasters, it solved one of live television’s biggest headaches - how to deliver high-quality replays without disrupting the live feed.

The success at the World Cup marked a turning point. From that tournament onward, instant replay became a global standard and EVS became a name whispered with respect in technical production rooms worldwide.

Pierre L’Hoest, then CEO, often credited EVS’s success not to selling hardware, but to solving broadcasters’ nightmares:

Broadcasters didn’t just buy servers - they bought confidence that, under the brightest lights and biggest audiences, the technology would never let them down.
In 1998 EVS listed on Euronext Brussels, raising capital to fuel its growing ambitions.

Growth Fueled by Relentless Innovation

Riding the momentum of global sports events, EVS expanded quickly. Throughout the 2000s, EVS branched out from sports into newsrooms, entertainment broadcasts and other live event coverage.

It wasn’t just about making better replay machines anymore. It was about creating a complete ecosystem of solutions: servers, switchers, storage, and content management tools - all designed to handle the unforgiving demands of live production without missing a beat.

As the industry evolved, EVS stayed ahead by making bold bets at the right times:

• Moving early into HD and 4K workflows, setting new standards for image quality at live events

• Embracing IP-based production before most of the industry, enabling faster, more flexible setups across multiple locations

• Developing cloud and remote production tools years before they became necessities - anticipating a future where speed and scalability would outweigh static infrastructures

While many competitors focused on squeezing margins or playing it safe, EVS kept innovating close to its users - talking directly with operators, directors and engineers to understand what they really needed in the field.

The result wasn’t just technical leadership. It was a reputation: the company you trusted when the moment had to be perfect.

By the end of the decade, EVS was not just powering sporting moments - it was deeply embedded in live news, elections, concerts, and emerging digital media productions around the world.

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Leadership Changes and Expanding the Playbook

After nearly two decades of growth, internal tensions and strategic disagreements led to the departure of both Pierre L’Hoest and Laurent Minguet in 2011.
Their exit marked the end of EVS’s founding era - but not the end of its ambitions.

Both founders stayed deeply entrepreneurial after their departure:
L’Hoest remained active in digital technology and media innovation, while Minguet shifted his energy into real estate and environmental sustainability projects.

The leadership handover set EVS on a new course. Joop Janssen, an executive with international experience, stepped in as CEO in 2012. Under Janssen’s leadership, EVS expanded into new markets and continued pushing technological boundaries, particularly around remote production and IP workflows. He guided early moves toward more flexible, decentralized live production, recognizing that speed and connectivity would define the next era of broadcasting.

After Janssen’s departure in 2014, Muriel De Lathouwer, previously EVS’s Chief Marketing Officer, took over as Managing Director and later full CEO. De Lathouwer steered EVS through a critical digital transition, focusing on cloud-based infrastructure, content management systems and AI-assisted workflows.
Her tenure marked EVS’s early bets on technologies like:

• Tagging and editing live content in real-time

• Remote contribution and decentralized production

• Cloud-native live broadcast environments

While the company maintained its leadership in live sports and event production, the competition was heating up. Technology was moving fast, and EVS needed a stronger, more unified strategy to stay ahead.

In 2019, Serge Van Herck was appointed CEO. Van Herck brought a sharpened focus on operational discipline, customer partnerships and scaling EVS’s innovation globally. Under his leadership, EVS consolidated its product ecosystems into three strategic pillars:

• LiveCeption for live production and replays

• MediaCeption for content management and storytelling

• MediaInfra for flexible, IP-based broadcast infrastructure

He also accelerated investments into AI, cloud-based production, and remote workflows, ensuring EVS stayed at the cutting edge of a rapidly changing media landscape. By the end of the 2010s, EVS was no longer just a company known for replay systems - it had evolved into a full live production technology partner, powering:

• The FIFA World Cup

• The Olympic Games

• The NFL Super Bowl

• Major newsrooms like BBC, CNN, and CCTV

• Concerts, esports tournaments, and global entertainment events

EVS technology wasn’t just used at the world’s biggest events - it enabled them.

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Where EVS Stands Today

Today, EVS is a global leader in live video technology with more than 600 employees and generated €198 million in revenue in 2024 with an EBIT of €45 million, maintaining a strong and profitable business model.

EVS has evolved far beyond replay systems. It also provides:

• MediaCeption®: media asset management and cloud-based distribution platforms

• MediaInfra®: next-generation broadcast infrastructure management and IP routing

Through strategic acquisitions like MOG Technologies and partnerships like TinkerList, EVS is expanding its footprint into news production, cloud workflows, and modular journalism solutions.

Despite a fast-changing media landscape, EVS remains the trusted standard for live reliability, now strengthened by innovations in Generative AI, remote production, and cloud orchestration.

The Future is Live - and Smart

Looking ahead, EVS has set a bold ambition:
to grow revenues to €350 million by 2030 - growing 75% from current levels.

The strategy rests on four pillars:

• Consolidate leadership in LiveCeption (replay and live production)

• Expand MediaCeption into news, sports, and entertainment

• Grow MediaInfra solutions and double market share in broadcast infrastructure

• Accelerate in North America, expanding the strategic accounts and channel partner networks

In a world moving toward modular, hybrid and AI-accelerated media production, EVS is no longer just behind every replay - it’s helping redefine the entire future of live media.

And true to its roots, EVS will continue to do what it does best: deliver the moments that matter, with precision that audiences never have to think about - but always feel.

Write-Ups from investors to dive deeper

Memyselfandi007’s Substack

EVS Broadcast SA - A Hidden Global Champion “Breaking free from the Van” with Software & AI at a Bargain Price

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH …

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2 years ago · 12 likes · Memyselfandi007

Microcapexpert’s Substack

EVS Broadcast Equipment: live events are here to stay

Since two companies will soon be acquired, it’s time for a new name…

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2 years ago · Microcapexpert

Other sources I want to highlight:

L’Echo: L’Hoest and Minguet, post-EVS

EVS Investor Day 2024

Humble Beginnings in a Changing World

The year was 1932. The Great Depression had wrapped its cold fingers around the American economy. Factories were closing, unemployment was soaring, and hope was a scarce commodity. But amidst the economic gloom, a man named Arthur J. Schmitt saw opportunity. With a vision and a modest investment, he founded the American Phenolic Corporation in Chicago. The company’s original purpose? To manufacture radio frequency (RF) connectors for the nascent radio industry.

It wasn’t long before the company shortened its name to Amphenol, a blend of "American" and "phenolic" - the insulating material used in early connectors. The timing was serendipitous. As the world inched toward World War II, demand for robust communication equipment exploded. Amphenol’s connectors became critical components in military radios, aircraft, and radar systems.

Wartime Growth and Post-War Expansion

World War II was a crucible that forged many of today’s industrial giants. For Amphenol, the war brought exponential growth. The company's products were trusted on the front lines, embedded in the machinery of war where failure was not an option. After the war, instead of retreating into obscurity, Amphenol pivoted.

The post-war era saw a boom in commercial aviation, telecommunications, and consumer electronics. Amphenol adapted its product line and embraced new markets. It wasn’t just about military contracts anymore; it was about becoming indispensable to a broader technological ecosystem.

One of the company’s early innovations was the development of the circular connector. Known for its reliability and durability, the circular connector became a gold standard in both military and industrial applications. These were not just widgets; they were lifelines for communication and data.

Diversification and Global Footprint

Through the 1960s and 1970s, Amphenol continued to evolve. The company expanded its portfolio to include connectors for cable television, fiber optics, automotive systems, and more. Each new product category represented a foothold in a rapidly changing world. When the first satellites were launched, Amphenol components went with them. When fiber optics began to revolutionize telecommunications, Amphenol connectors made the links possible.

By the 1980s, globalization was reshaping industry. Amphenol didn’t hesitate. It began expanding its manufacturing and engineering footprint around the globe. Strategic acquisitions brought in new technologies and market access. Localized production enabled quicker delivery times and closer collaboration with customers. While other companies chased short-term gains, Amphenol invested in long-term relationships.

A key milestone was the company’s initial public offering in 1991. Listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol $APH, Amphenol now had access to the capital needed to fuel its ambitions. The 1990s also marked the dawn of the internet age. Once again, Amphenol was ready.

Riding the Wave of Digital Transformation

As data became the new currency, the demand for faster, smaller, and more reliable connectors surged. Amphenol responded with a blend of aggressive innovation and customer-centric engineering. It became a preferred partner for tech giants, telecom providers, automotive manufacturers, and defense contractors.

From the connectors that link servers in hyperscale data centers to those enabling autonomous vehicles, Amphenol became the invisible glue that held the digital world together. Its expertise wasn’t just in making connectors, but in understanding the systems they served. That systems-level thinking became a hallmark of the brand.

Amphenol’s rise wasn’t always smooth. The company faced economic downturns, supply chain disruptions, and intense global competition. But time and again, it leaned on its core strengths: engineering excellence, decentralized management, and a relentless focus on the customer.

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Leanings from the Amphenol Journey

The story of Amphenol offers more than just a history lesson. It provides enduring business insights:

1. Stay Close to the Customer: Amphenol’s decentralized model allows its divisions to act independently, tailoring solutions to customer needs. This agility is a major competitive advantage.

2. Resilience is a Strategic Asset: Through wars, recessions, and pandemics, Amphenol has shown an extraordinary ability to adapt and thrive.

3. Invisible Doesn’t Mean Unimportant: You may never see an Amphenol product, but your life is touched by them every day. There’s power in being the critical component that quietly makes everything work.

Where Amphenol Stands Today

Today, Amphenol is a $12+ billion revenue enterprise with operations in more than 40 countries and over 90,000 employees. Its portfolio includes interconnect solutions for virtually every market: aerospace, automotive, mobile devices, IT and data communications, industrial automation, medical technology, and more.

The company is organized into multiple business segments, each operating with a high degree of autonomy. This decentralized approach allows Amphenol to stay nimble and customer-focused, even at a global scale. The firm’s ability to integrate acquired companies without diluting its culture is widely admired.

Sustainability and innovation remain at the core of its strategy. As the world moves toward electric vehicles, renewable energy, 5G, and advanced robotics, Amphenol is already providing the essential infrastructure. Its connectors are enabling faster charging, more efficient power distribution, and smarter communication between devices.

Despite its success, Amphenol maintains a relatively low profile. It doesn't seek the spotlight. Instead, it lets its products - and its partners - shine.

The Future is Connected

In an increasingly connected world, the need for reliable, high-performance connectors will only grow. Amphenol, with its legacy of engineering excellence and customer focus, is uniquely positioned to lead. But perhaps its greatest strength is its humility. It doesn’t need to be the name on the billboard. It’s content being the force behind the curtain, the thread that weaves technologies together.

So next time you make a call, stream a movie, fly on a plane, or drive your car - remember that somewhere, silently doing its job, there’s probably an Amphenol connector making it all possible.

In a world full of noise, Amphenol speaks through action. And that might just be the loudest message of all.

Write-Ups from investors to dive deeper

TQI capital (Typical quality investor)

$APH: Enable the Electronics Revolution

Company: Amphenol…

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3 years ago · TQI capital