In this week's earnings webcast, CEO Brad Smith also pointed to the strong growth in QB Self-Employed. "This is a secular trend that continues to grow," he said. "There are hundreds of millions of these prospects around the world." Growth continues to come from new customers, not from conversions from QB desktop. There are 132,000 conversions during the first nine months of fiscal 2017, a 25 percent increase over last year's corresponding period. And the rate of new customers coming to Intuit has accelerated because of the combination of QBO and QB Self-employed. "Now over 90 percent are new to the franchise," Smith said. He also noted that internationally the company plans to encourage taxpayers who use tax products that are not from Intuit to link up with QB Self-employed. The two companies remain strong in their own territory—Intuit's sales have been overwhelmingly in the United States; Xero's in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. However, Intuit is beginning to change that. Outside this country, Intuit reached 433,000 subscribers on April 30, up 70 percent over the year earlier figure. That compared to 61-percent growth in Q2. Xero reached 92,000 North American subscribers by March 31, up 48 percent year-over-year.