Tyler Sloat
Analyst · Canaccord
Thanks, Dennis, and thanks, everyone, for joining on the call and via webcast today. We closed 2025 with a strong fourth quarter, exceeding expectations across both revenue and profitability. These results capped a year of significant financial progress and continued innovation that reinforces our confidence in our long-term strategy. As we build meaningful momentum into 2026, we are well positioned to drive top line growth with a clear focus on winning in a very large EX market, executing an efficient operating model and delivering strong cash generation. For our call today, I'll cover the Q4 and full year 2025 financial results, provide background on the key metrics and close with our forward-looking commentary and expectations for Q1 and full year 2026. As a reminder, most of our discussion will be focused on non-GAAP financial results, which exclude the impact of stock-based compensation expenses, restructuring charges, the release of our deferred tax asset valuation allowance and other adjustments. We will also talk about our adjusted free cash flow, which excludes the cash outlay related to restructuring costs. To provide greater transparency into our underlying business performance, we will also include constant currency comparisons throughout today's call. Starting with the income statement. Q4 total revenue increased to $222.7 million, growing 14% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 13% on a constant currency basis. Professional services revenue ticked up modestly quarter-over-quarter to $2.5 million as a result of strong bookings and earlier-than-expected project kickoffs and milestones achieved in the fourth quarter. Our EX business crossed the $0.5 billion ARR mark in Q4, reaching approximately $510 million in ARR, representing 26% year-over-year growth on an as-reported basis and 22% on a constant currency basis. We finished the year strong across the EX portfolio with both ESM and Advanced ITAM each exceeding $40 million in ARR. Our CX business is at $395 million in ARR, reflecting year-over-year growth of 9% on an as-reported basis and 5% on a constant currency basis. We continue to drive solid growth in CX as we focus on unifying our technology and customer base around our AI-led Freshdesk Omni platform. Moving to margins. We maintained a non-GAAP gross margin of 86.8% in Q4. Included in the Q4 cost of services is a $1.5 million credit from our AWS contract. Excluding this item, non-GAAP gross margin for Q4 was in line with prior quarters in 2025. Non-GAAP operating income for Q4 was $41.6 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of nearly 19%, which was ahead of our prior expectations. These strong results were driven by top line outperformance and continued gains in operational efficiency. GAAP net income for Q4 was $191.4 million. In Q4, our GAAP net income was favorably impacted by 2 items. First, there was a favorable impact of $41.1 million from a onetime reduction for fiscal year 2025 stock-based compensation related to our Executive Chairman's departure. Additionally, there was a favorable impact of $151.7 million from a onetime income tax benefit for the release of a valuation allowance on our U.S. deferred tax assets. This is a result of our improved profitability over the course of fiscal 2025, leading us to conclude that our valuation allowance on these deferred tax assets is no longer necessary. Achieving GAAP profitability for the first time in our company history is a significant milestone that demonstrates the healthy and profitable trajectory of our business. Looking ahead, we remain on track to hit sustainable GAAP profitability in Q4 of 2026. Reflecting our trajectory of consistent profitability, we are adopting a long-term projected tax rate of 24%. We believe this rate provides an accurate representation of our long-term tax profile and should be utilized for all non-GAAP financial modeling. There is no cash impact associated with these onetime benefits, and they are excluded from our non-GAAP net income. Moving to operating metrics. Net dollar retention was 108% on an as-reported basis and a strong 104% on a constant currency basis, in line with prior expectations. This includes a headwind of around 70 basis points from Device42, similar to prior quarters. As we look ahead, the strengthening demand and momentum we see within our EX business gives us increased confidence in our expansion trends. As a result, we expect net dollar retention to improve to approximately 105% on a constant currency basis in Q1 2026. We ended Q4 with nearly 75,000 total customers. As noted last quarter, we continue to focus our efforts on moving upmarket, and we'll discontinue reporting this metric on a quarterly basis as we believe larger customer measures better reflect the trajectory of how we manage our business. The number of customers contributing more than $5,000 in ARR as of the end of Q4 grew 10% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 8% on a constant currency basis to 24,762 customers. This customer cohort continues to represent over 90% of our ARR. The number of customers contributing more than $50,000 in ARR grew 23% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 19% on a constant currency basis to 3,760 customers. This cohort now represents nearly 55% of our ARR. For our larger customer cohorts, the number of customers contributing more than $100,000 in ARR grew meaningfully to over 1,500 customers, representing 28% year-over-year growth on an as-reported basis and 22% on a constant currency basis. We also closed 2025 with 15 customers paying us over $1 million in ARR. Now let's turn to calculated billings, balance sheet and cash items. Calculated billings were $259.6 million in Q4, representing strong year-over-year growth of 17% on an as-reported basis and 13% on a constant currency basis. Our calculated billings were impacted by slightly lower contract duration from Device42 and fewer pull-in renewals than we've historically seen in Q4. Looking ahead, we expect billings to be in line or slightly better than revenue growth for 2026. For Q1, we are estimating calculated billings growth of approximately 13% year-over-year on an as-reported and constant currency basis. For the full year, we are estimating calculating billings growth of approximately 14% year-over-year on an as-reported and constant currency basis. Turning to our cash items. We generated $56.2 million in free cash flow in Q4, outperforming expectations due to strong cash collections and disciplined execution. This resulted in a free cash flow margin of 25%, which represents a nearly 4 percentage point improvement year-over-year. For the year, adjusted free cash flow margin was 27%, representing an over 5 percentage point improvement compared to the prior year. We are proud of the excellent progress we have made in our cash generation over the last 3 years, going from negative free cash flow in 2022 to over $223 million in 2025. Looking ahead, we expect to generate free cash flow of $55 million for Q1 of 2026 and see linear quarter-to-quarter improvements thereafter, reflecting our focus on consistent operating performance and disciplined expense management. For the full year 2026, we expect to generate approximately $250 million of free cash flow. We expect this will represent a free cash flow margin of 25% and 26% for Q1 and full year 2026, respectively. Fully diluted share count as of December 31, 2025, was approximately 308 million shares, a decrease of 6% year-over-year. The fully diluted calculation includes 283 million basic shares outstanding, which also represents a decrease compared to the prior year. We continue to manage and offset share count dilution by net settling vested equity amounts. During Q4, we used approximately $11 million for that purpose. In 2026, we will continue to net settle vested equity amounts and expect Q1 cash usage of approximately $11 million and for the full year, cash usage of approximately $54 million at current stock price levels. This activity is reflected in our financing activities and is excluded from our adjusted free cash flow calculations. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities and restricted cash of nearly $844 million. Now on to our forward-looking estimates. As a reminder, our non-GAAP net income projections assume a tax rate of 24%. For the first quarter of 2026, we expect revenue to be in the range of $222 million to $225 million, growing 13% to 15% year-over-year; non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of $33 million to $35 million and non-GAAP net income per share to be in the range of $0.10 to $0.12, assuming weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 287.4 million shares. For the full year 2026, we expect revenue to be in the range of $952 million to $960 million, growing approximately 13.5% to 14.5% year-over-year. Non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of $181 million to $189 million. and non-GAAP net income per share to be in the range of $0.55 to $0.57, assuming weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 291.5 million shares. Our financial outlook is based on a few assumptions that we would like to call out for modeling purposes. First, we are increasing our fiscal year '26 revenue growth expectation from what we outlined at our Investor Day last September, reflecting the strength and growth opportunities we are seeing in the business, particularly in EX. We expect revenue growth to accelerate in the second half as we further build on that momentum. Using the midpoint of the range for Q1 estimates, we expect revenue growth rates of approximately 14% in Q1, Q2 and Q3 and 14.5% in Q4. As a reminder, last year's Q3 revenue had a $1 million benefit from Device42 that we do not anticipate this year. In December, we announced our acquisition of FireHydrant and closed the deal on January 1. We believe the acquisition will meaningfully enhance our ITOM capabilities, allowing our customers to quickly respond to incidents. We expect FireHydrant to have an immaterial impact on our Q1 and fiscal year 2026 revenue growth and approximately 1 point of headwind on our Q1 and fiscal year 2026 non-GAAP operating margin. We have taken these factors into account in our estimates. For our non-GAAP operating margin, we expect approximately 15% in Q1 using the midpoint of our guide. For the subsequent quarters, we expect operating margins to increase by approximately 200 basis points in Q2 and we will exit the year at roughly 23.5% in Q4. This reflects a shift in the timing of our annual merit increase process as well as other administrative changes. As we have previously mentioned, we also continue to be on track to achieve GAAP profitability exiting the year. Finally, our forward-looking estimates are based on FX rates as of February 6, 2026, and do not take into account any impact from currency moves. To close, 2025 was a year of meaningful progress as we sharpened execution and strengthened our financial foundation to support our growth engine. As we look ahead to 2026, we see a compelling opportunity to build on this progress by continuing to invest with discipline, expand our uncomplicated AI-powered EX and CX solutions and scale the business in a durable and profitable way. With a clear strategy, a strong operating model and a motivated global team, we are confident in our ability to drive sustained growth in our business. Thank you for your continued support and confidence in Freshworks. And with that, let us take your questions. Operator?