Freshworks - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Freshworks delivered a strong Q1 2025: revenue $196.3M (+19% y/y), non-GAAP operating margin 23.6%, and non-GAAP diluted EPS $0.18; all outperformed internal estimates and consensus, with FY25 guidance raised across revenue, non-GAAP operating income, and EPS.
• Consensus beat: revenue $196.3M vs $191.9M (+$4.4M, +2.3%); EPS $0.18 vs $0.129 (+$0.051, +39.5%) as operating discipline, upmarket EX momentum, and AI attach drove upside; billings also healthy at $203.3M. Values retrieved from S&P Global*.
• Guidance: Freshworks raised FY25 revenue to $815.3–$824.3M (from $809–$821M), non-GAAP op income to $139.5–$147.5M (from $131–$139M), and EPS to $0.56–$0.58 (from $0.52–$0.54); Q2 guide introduced (rev $197.3–$200.3M; EPS $0.10–$0.12) with a margin step-down on seasonal comp/expense timing.
• Stock narrative catalysts: EX ARR “>$420M” (+33% y/y cc), stable NDR at 105%, accelerating AI monetization (2,700 Copilot customers; 1,600+ AI Agent customers), and a more leverageable partner model; watch Q2 margin step-down and second-half growth deceleration as Device42 laps.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

• What Went Well

  • Upmarket EX momentum: EX ARR surpassed $420M (+33% y/y cc), with ~18,700 EX customers and notable competitive displacements of legacy vendors, elevating mix and ARPA.
  • AI adoption and monetization: ~2,700 Copilot customers (+500 q/q) and >1,600 AI Agent customers; AI products cited as improving productivity 40–45% and deflecting 50–70% of L1 inquiries; launched Freddy AI Insights (beta).
  • Profitability/FCF: Non-GAAP op margin 23.6% and adjusted FCF $55.4M (28.2% margin), aided by operational discipline and timing; Rule of 47 (growth + FCF margin) achieved.

• What Went Wrong

  • Seasonality/timing to pressure Q2 margins: Management flagged annual compensation resets and spend shifts into Q2 and H2, guiding a sequential margin step-down despite efficiency progress.
  • CX growth slower than EX: CX at “>$370M” ARR grew ~7% y/y cc; management continues to push cross-sell and AI attach to offset seat-driven deceleration.
  • Reinvestment vs. near-term leverage: While Q1 margins outperformed, management plans to “lean in” on S&M in volatile macro to capture share, moderating near-term operating leverage.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Welcome to Freshworks First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'll now hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Joon Huh, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Joon Huh (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to Freshworks First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Dennis Woodside, Freshworks Chief Executive Officer and President, and Tyler Sloat, Freshworks Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. The primary purpose of today's call is to provide you with information regarding our First Quarter 2025 performance and our financial outlook for our second quarter and full year 2025. Some of our discussion and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on our management's beliefs about our business and industry, including our financial expectations and estimates, uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment in which we operate, and market volatility, the timing of future repurchases of our Class A common stock, and certain other assumptions made by the company, all of which are subject to change.

These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such risks include, but are not limited to, our ability to sustain our growth rate, to innovate, to reach our long-term revenue goals, to meet customer demand, and to control costs and improve operating efficiency. For discussion of additional material risks and other important factors that could affect our results, please refer to today's earnings release, our most recently filed Form 10-K, and other periodic filings with the SEC. Freshworks assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call, except as required by law. During the course of today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures for historical periods are included in our earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at irfreshworks.com. I encourage you to visit our Investor Relations site to access our earnings release, supplemental earnings slides, periodic SEC reports, a replay of today's call, or to learn more about Freshworks. With that, let me turn it over to Dennis.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Thank you, Jim. Freshworks had another fantastic quarter. We outperformed all our financial metrics for growth and profitability in Q1. We continue to see that our uncomplicated customer and employee service solutions are winning against outdated legacy software vendors. Companies are choosing our AI-powered solutions to remove complexity, improve efficiency, and unlock growth. We continue to demonstrate our ability to drive growth and profitability for the business. In Q1, revenue grew 19% year over year to $196.3 million, and we delivered a non-GAAP operating margin of 24% and adjusted free cash flow margin of 28%, beating our financial estimates once again. Adding our revenue growth and adjusted free cash flow margin for Q1, we achieved a rule of 47 in the quarter. In driving profitability, we significantly expanded our non-GAAP operating margin by more than 10% points compared to last year.

We added over 1,000 net customers in the quarter, including large customers such as Freudenberg Group and All3Media. We also expanded with our customers as we maintained a net dollar retention of 105% on a constant currency basis in line with the last two quarters. We ended the quarter with over 73,300 customers. We've continued to deliver strong revenue growth each quarter and drive profitability as we execute on our strategy. As a reminder, our three strategic imperatives are: one, investing in employee experience or EX, which is our largest, fastest-growing business, and ITSM, ITAM, ITOM, and ESM; two, delivering AI capabilities across our products and platform that drive productivity improvements for our customers; three, accelerating growth for our customer experience or CX solutions. Here's how ongoing execution of our strategy led to strong Q1 results.

First, on employee experience, our focus to drive upmarket growth is paying off. Q1 was another strong quarter for our EX business. We surpassed $420 million in ARR and grew 33% year over year on a constant currency basis. We ended the quarter with approximately 18,700 customers in EX. We believe that several factors are driving growth in EX: our continued upmarket success, our expansion with employee service management, the ongoing demand for Device42 from our accounts, and our success in specific industry verticals such as professional sports and educational institutions. More than 75% of the ARR in our EX business comes from mid-market and enterprise companies. Large companies and organizations like Dave & Buster's, ITV in Europe, the State of Hawaii, and Dynatrace have cited the fast time to value that our Freshservice products deliver.

New mid-market and enterprise companies like Travis Perkins and the largest home building supply wholesaler in the U.K. are turning to Freshworks and leaving our IT competitors on a regular basis. Sophos, All3Media, Nexstar Media Group, Kayak all chose Freshworks over legacy solutions. For example, cybersecurity leader Sophos needed a user-friendly ITSM solution with less complexity and a lower total cost of ownership. These differentiators, coupled with the ability to procure via AWS Marketplace, made switching from the legacy provider to our uncomplicated solution an easy decision. Another example, the largest title company in the U.S. chose Freshservice to replace ServiceNow, which was their legacy provider of nearly a decade. Frustrated with poor user experience, low adoption, and manual inefficiencies, they opted for our uncomplicated, intuitive solution that could be easily managed and trusted by internal teams.

Since switching to Freshworks, they have noted achieving faster ticket resolution, improved SLA compliance through modular workflows, and significant cost savings. The second factor driving our EX business is success in enterprise service management. ESM has become a key lever for expansion and an important component in new and existing deals. Customer adoption for Freshservice for business teams has nearly doubled over the past 12 months. Customers are using Freshservice in other areas of their businesses, including HR, marketing, and finance, to deliver amazing service experiences. For example, EDF Renewables, a leading power provider with more than 35 years in renewable energy and nearly 5,000 employees in over 20 countries, wanted to streamline their IT service management, asset management, and change management processes. EDF chose Freshservice because of its ease of use, seamless integrations, and codeless customization.

They are leveraging workspaces within Freshservice to manage different departments outside of IT, like facilities, ensuring that each department has a tailored environment to operate in. The integration with Microsoft Teams and the use of AI agents reduced manual intervention in routine tasks, resulting in higher employee satisfaction. The third EX growth driver is our advanced ITAM offering with Device42. In Q1, two of the top five largest deals had a Device42 component. For example, a large multinational tech company recently chose Device42 with Freshservice for business teams and Freddie AI agents over ServiceNow. They wanted a scalable, agile, AI-native offering that would deliver faster time to value. Our integrated platform, powered by Freshservice and Device42, provides a unified, modern experience for IT and employees. Our EX success is also being driven by our momentum in specific industries.

We're expanding our professional sports leadership position outside of the US to include top Bundesliga football clubs in Germany: VfB Stuttgart, VfL Bochum, and TSG Hoffenheim. In education, we added Kent State, who has achieved a 95% CSAT with Freshservice, and De Yuville University, who has seen improved asset management accuracy and reduced average resolution times to under 24 hours since using our solutions. Simply put, Freshworks helps mid-size and larger enterprise organizations scale and compete at a global level. Next, on AI adoption, customers have moved from AI experimentation to realizing tangible business value and returns on their investments. Freddie Copilot was included in three of the top 10 new deals in Q1. Nearly half of all new large deals over $30,000 ARR had Copilot attached in Q1. For new SMB customers, we continue to see double-digit attach rates with increases quarter over quarter.

We ended the quarter with more than 2,700 Copilot customers, reflecting quarterly net adds of more than 500, or 23% growth quarter over quarter. Organizations are adopting Freddie AI because they see Freshworks successfully taking customers from AI experimentation to execution. Bensons for Beds, which uses Copilot with both Freshdesk and Freshservice, saw a 54% improvement in resolution times. Our AI offering has proven to be rapid, measurable, and transformative for a business balancing growth with seamless customer and employee experiences. In education, school administrations are increasingly using AI to handle repetitive tasks and streamline operations so that they can improve student outcomes. San Ramon Valley High, for example, uses Copilot with Freshservice to save 50% of their IT management time every year. Freddie AI agent became generally available for CX customers in Q1 and represents the next generation of self-service capabilities.

We added approximately 250 customers and finished the quarter with over 1,600 customers using Freddie AI agent. In CX, AI agents were instrumental in the deflection of L1 queries and creating triage of multiple issues to help improve overall customer service operations for our customers. As Freddie AI agents became generally available for EX customers in Q2, we expect to see improved momentum in these numbers going forward. We already have approximately 1,000 customers using Freddie AI agent for EX needs. A leader from a top healthcare company shared that AI agents cut response times in half, from four minutes to just two, while autonomously handling over 70% of inquiries. This allowed human agents to focus on complex issues, boosting first call resolution by 30% and raising CSAT from 82% to 94%, all while cutting operational costs by 25%.

Finally, for managers, we launched Freddie AI Insights into public beta at the end of Q1. Freddie AI Insights is an AI-powered intelligence partner for leaders, delivering fast, proactive, and actionable insights, enabling smarter decisions, agility, and sustained growth. I look forward to sharing more in upcoming quarters. Here at Freshworks, we use AI to drive performance and accelerate results across our own business. Our finance team uses AI to analyze our cloud infrastructure spend and identify savings opportunities. Our billing team uses Freddie Copilot to summarize billing inquiries. Our engineering teams have developed an AI agent specifically for highly technical escalations. We continue to push the boundaries on what's possible today because AI is delivering results and driving efficiency, and we were recently recognized by Gartner once again as an emerging leader in their innovation guide for generative AI.

We are in the next stage of generative AI and have moved from output to outcome. While some other vendors may sell vaporware, Freshworks is the ROI-driven AI solution, turning AI hype into real results. Turning to CX, we saw growth and retention in our flagship business and one of our two core offerings. We ended the quarter with approximately 59,000 CX customers, generating over $370 million in ARR, reflecting 7% year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis, similar to the prior two quarters. Our CX win rate against competitors like Zendesk increased sequentially over the prior quarter. We know that exceptional customer experiences drive loyalty, while complexity drives them away. Customers are choosing Freshdesk over others because our product is easy to use, provides a lower total cost of ownership, and delivers new AI features to improve productivity and efficiency.

Companies of all sizes, such as Two Cows, Maison du Monde, Landmark Group, and Cineworld, are leaving legacy software competitors and coming to us. Nasdaq Europe has relied on Freshdesk for over four years to deliver high-quality support to clients across multiple countries. With several Freshdesk instances, their teams depend on the core automation features and SLA policies to consistently meet their high customer service standards. In 2024, Nasdaq Europe achieved a 97% resolution SLA and a 93% CSAT. Freshdesk's uncomplicated and efficient platform continues to be a critical part of their support infrastructure as they scale and serve complex cross-border markets. Our CX products are expanding in numerous ways. First, CX customers are adopting our AI products. Customers have seen a 40%-45% productivity improvement due to reduction in ticket resolution and response times from Freddie AI agents.

For example, Panasonic North America chose Freshworks as part of their strategy to drive continuous improvement. Freddie AI agent handles over 75% of their customer queries, a path to reduce customer effort scores and increase customer satisfaction. Another CX customer, Drive, uses Freddie AI agents to deliver detailed explanations, relevant article links, and clear and actionable information to their customers, which has significantly reduced response times. Another expansion path is CX customers also buying our CX solutions and vice versa. We continue to see cross-sell success with customers like Trinity College, finance company Premfina, and the popular German football club VfB Stuttgart, who initially used Freshdesk to provide stellar customer experiences, then expanded to EX. On the product front, we launched several improvements to FreshChat in Q1, including enhanced integration with Apple Messaging for Business.

Customers can now use Apple Messaging for Business as a support channel and provide exceptional customer service with FreshChat, Freshdesk, and Freddie AI agents. We also released the FreshChat OAuth authorization, which makes it easy to integrate apps and reduces security risks. We believe these product improvements drive improved customer experience and retention. We recently announced enhancements to our global partner program with expanded reseller and services offerings designed to give partners more predictability in building long-term Freshworks practices. We have more than 500 transacting partners, including global partners such as Gorilla Services, SHI International, Unisys, Accession, and Climb. In recognition of our growth and innovation, Climb recently named Freshworks its strategic vendor of the year. We're leveraging partners at every step of the customer relationship. For example, we teamed up with a preferred partner to help one of our longtime EX customers drive a major IT operations initiative.

Our collaborative approach helped reduce our customers' resolution times by 30%. As partners become a larger part of our business, we expect to see increased efficiencies in our go-to-market efforts and overall business. Once again, I'm excited to capture the opportunity in front of us. Particularly in the current economic environment, we expect our enterprise-grade software to be a strong competitive advantage because it delivers results fast and has a lower total cost of ownership. We'll provide more product updates at our virtual Refresh summit in June and updates to our long-term strategic plan at Investor Day in September, where we will expound on our vision to help customers realize their full potential with the transformative power of AI. Thank you to our customers, partners, employees, and shareholders for your ongoing support. Now, let me turn it over to Tyler to go through the operational and financial details.

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Thanks, Dennis, and thanks to everyone for joining on the call and via webcast today. As you just heard, we had a strong start to the year in Q1 with robust financial performance that reflects our operational discipline and focused execution of our strategic initiatives. We once again exceeded our revenue growth estimates and improved our profitability measures as we expanded our non-GAAP operating margin nearly 300 basis points quarter over quarter to 24% and grew our adjusted free cash flow 43% year-over-year to $55.4 million, which resulted in a strong adjusted free cash flow margin of 28%. For our call today, I'll cover the Q1 2025 financial results, provide background on the key metrics, and close with our forward-looking commentary and expectations for Q2 and full year 2025.

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, and other adjustments. We will also talk about adjusted free cash flow, which excludes the cash outlay related to the restructuring costs. First, in contrast to the prior quarter, FX changes were a tailwind in the quarter driven by a weaker US dollar. While Q1 revenue impact was minimal, there was a 1 percentage point positive impact to ARR growth, or a $7 million increase to ARR. During the call today, we will include constant currency comparisons to provide a clear view of our underlying business trends. Starting with the income statement, Q1 total revenue increased to $196.3 million, growing 19% on an as-reported and constant currency basis.

Professional services revenue contributed $2.1 million in the quarter, reflecting the ongoing shift of services revenue to our growing partner network. Our EX business has increased to over $420 million in ARR, representing growth of 33% year-over-year for both as-reported and constant currency, and as we continue to drive our up-market strategy. Our CX business increased to over $370 million in ARR, reflecting growth of 8% on an as-reported basis and 7% year-over-year on a constant currency basis, in large part due to steady execution and positive momentum from our S&B customers to start the year. Moving to margins, we maintained a strong non-GAAP gross margin in Q1 of 86%, as we made ongoing improvements in delivering our solutions efficiently and scaling our business. This represents an improvement of approximately 100 basis points compared to the prior year.

Our non-GAAP operating income for Q1 came in at $46.4 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 24% and ahead of prior expectations. The improvement in profitability was driven by our top-line outperformance, as well as lower personnel-related expenses, as some of these costs moved to future quarters. We also had favorable timing of expenses, with specific spend expected for later this year. Moving to operating metrics, our two key business metrics are net dollar retention and customers contributing more than $5,000 in ARR. Net dollar retention performed better than our expectations, coming in at 105% on both an as-reported and constant currency basis. Looking ahead, we estimate our net dollar retention of approximately 105% on an as-reported basis and 104% on a constant currency basis for Q2.

For our second key business metric of number of customers contributing more than $5,000 in ARR as of the end of Q1, this metric grew 13% year-over-year on both an as-reported basis and constant currency basis to 23,275 customers. This customer cohort continues to represent 90% of our ARR. For our larger customer cohort contributing more than $50,000 in ARR as of the end of Q1, we saw growth of 24% year-over-year on both an as-reported and constant currency basis to 3,217 customers. This cohort represents 50% of our ARR. For total customers, we added over 1,000 net new customers in the quarter, as we saw a partial benefit from our free-to-paid initiatives that we began towards the end of last year. We ended Q1 with over 73,300 customers. Now, let's turn to calculated billings, balance sheet, and cash items.

Our calculated billings grew to $203.3 million in Q1, representing an as-reported growth of 16% year-over-year and 17% growth on a constant currency basis. We saw higher bookings performance and increased pulling activity that contributed approximately 2% points of growth in Q1. Looking ahead to Q2 2025, our initial estimate for calculated billings growth is 11%-12% on both an as-reported and constant currency basis. For the full year 2025, we expect calculated billings growth to be approximately 13% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 14% on a constant currency basis, which is in line with our expectations from last quarter. Moving to our cash items, we generated $55.4 million in adjusted free cash flow in Q1, outperforming our estimates thanks to strong collection activities and continued improvements in our operational efficiencies.

This resulted in an adjusted free cash flow margin of 28%, which represents a 5 percentage point improvement year-over-year. As a reminder, these results do not include a one-time use of cash of $1.5 million related to restructuring costs. For the full year 2025, we are expecting to generate approximately $210 million of adjusted free cash flow with approximately $50 million in Q2 and slightly higher amounts in Q3 and Q4. In Q1, we repurchased an additional $111.8 million of our shares at an average price of $16.60 per share. Since the beginning of the program, we have repurchased more than 7.7 million shares using $127.3 million through Q1. We remain committed to executing on an appropriate capital allocation strategy and delivering long-term value for our shareholders.

In addition to the repurchase program, we continue to manage and offset share account dilution by net settling vested equity amounts by using approximately $17 million during the quarter. This activity is reflected in our financing activities and is excluded from our free cash flow calculations. Looking ahead, we will continue to net settle vested equity amounts and expect Q2 cash usage of approximately $13 million at current stock price levels. For the full year, we expect to use approximately $55 million to net settle vested equity amounts. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities of $1 billion. Turning to our share account as of March 31, 2025, we had approximately 325 million fully diluted shares, which represents growth of less than 1% year-over-year. The fully diluted calculation includes 298 million shares outstanding, which is a slight reduction compared to the prior year and quarter.

This calculation also includes 24 million shares related to unvested RSUs and PRSUs and 2 million shares related to outstanding options. We plan to thoughtfully manage share count dilution with net settle activities and share repurchases into the future. Now, on to our forward-looking estimates. For the second quarter of 2025, we expect revenue to be in the range of $197.3 million-$200.3 million, growing 13%-15% year-over-year on an as-reported and constant currency basis. We expect non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of $27.8 million-$29.8 million, and non-GAAP net income per share to be in the range of $0.10-$0.12, assuming weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 299.7 million shares.

For the full year 2025, we are raising our revenue expectations to be in the range of $815.3 million-$824.3 million, growing 13%-14% year-over-year, adjusting for constant currency using FX rates from Q2 of last year. This reflects growth of 13%-15% year-over-year. We expect non-GAAP income from operations to be in the range of $139.5 million-$147.5 million, and non-GAAP net income per share to be in the range of $0.56-$0.58, assuming weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 299.1 million. Our financial outlook is based on a few assumptions that we would like to call out. First, our forward-looking estimates are based on FX rates as of April 25, 2025, so any future currency moves are not factored in. Second, as a reminder, we will anniversary the Device42 acquisition in early June.

As such, we anticipate revenue growth rates will be higher in the first half of the year compared to the second half. For operating metrics, including customer numbers and net dollar retention, we will anniversary these comparisons in our Q2 results. In addition, and consistent with prior years, we expect Q2 expenses to increase in connection with our annual merit cycle, as well as shifting of investments in sales and marketing, which will impact our operating margin quarter to quarter. Lastly, we acknowledge that we're in a period of market volatility and economic uncertainty. While we have not seen meaningful impact to our business from these factors to date, we continue to monitor things closely. If parts of the economy do turn worse, we believe we are well-positioned given our value proposition to customers.

To summarize, we are pleased with our strong performance in Q1, which reflects effective execution of our strategic initiatives and the dedication of our teams. We are focused on creating uncomplicated and innovative products for our customers while driving long-term profitable growth for the business. Thank you for your continued support, and we look forward to updating you on our progress for the rest of the year. Let us take your questions, Operator.

Thank you. At this time, we'll conduct a question-and-answer session. As a reminder to ask a question, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from a line of Rob Oliver of Baird. Your line is now open. Great. Thank you.

Rob Oliver (Managing Director, Software Research Analyst)

Good afternoon. Appreciate it. Dennis, it seems like from the early software reports here that the resiliency of software as a business model, but also as adding efficiency here in tough times, is kind of playing out. It sounds like that's really playing out for you guys. A couple parts of my question. One is on Device42. It seems that's now really driving platform wins. Last quarter, you said that the pipeline there had doubled sequentially. I don't know if I caught a comment relative to pipeline, so would love to get an update there. On CX, I know you made some changes in CX as well, and it sounds like that's really starting to pick up also.

I'd be curious if you are still seeing in that business both growth in agents as well as seats, or if you're starting to see some of the efficiency created by the agent purchases start to offset some of the seat purchases. I realize that's a lot. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Thanks, Rob. Let me just go tick through those. I think, first of all, in terms of the overall demand and our positioning, we did not see any material change in demand in Q1 from Q4. Trends pretty much the same, I would say, beginning part of the quarter. This quarter, same thing. If you think about our value proposition and what customers need in tighter times, businesses are going to need to get more efficient, and our AI solutions absolutely help them do that. We've got over 30% improvement in productivity from Copilot.

We're seeing deflection rates of 50%-70% from AI agents. That's a positive for us. They want lower cost overall. If you look at our positioning, our products in general are about half the total cost of a ServiceNow deployment or a Zendesk deployment or a Salesforce deployment. That's when you take into consideration the time it takes to get the value, consultants you need to get a product up and running, and then maintaining the product over time. As those deployments come up for renewal, we're seeing it in our big wins. Customers are looking for an alternative. They're looking to bring us in, and we're winning our fair share of deals there. They want uncomplicated solutions that scale and that are enterprise-grade, and we've clearly built that. Regardless of the demand environment, we think we're going to be in good shape.

On Device42, we had a great quarter for Device42. I would say that the majority of the business there is coming from us selling Device42 into our existing base at renewal for upsell, as well as new deals. We bought the company to help us win new business, and we're seeing that. Two of our top five deals were Device42 deals and to enhance the value proposition for our existing customers. Really, the best quarter in terms of number of deals that we've seen, we've really only been selling together for two quarters, two and a half. Increasingly, it's an integrated sale, which is why going forward, we're not really going to be speaking about it as a completely separate business. On the third point, CX, we continue to see agent count go up.

We continue to see adoption of our AI solutions increase, both for Copilot and for AI agent. We're very optimistic about where AI agent is going. Insights, as I mentioned, has over 500 customers in the beta. I think we had close to 1,000 customers at the latest point. We're pretty excited about how those products are going to continue to add value for us. I'm really proud about the investment that we've made and the results we're seeing in AI. Thank you.

Rob Oliver (Managing Director, Software Research Analyst)

Great. Really appreciate it. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from a line of Elizabeth Porter of Morgan Stanley. Your line is now open.

Elizabeth Porter (Executive Director)

Great. Thank you so much. You mentioned some interesting OpEx efficiencies driven by some of the internal use of AI.

I was wondering if you could provide kind of more granular color on what you're seeing and how you might be changing your own internal spending plans, if at all, based on the efficiencies you're seeing today. Just lastly, just confidence in expanding the margin in that uncertain macro.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Sure. Thanks, Elizabeth. We've been on an AI journey for a number of years now, and today we have over 70 instances of AI products, our own products, third-party products that are enhancing our team's productivity and helping drive productivity and margin. I mean, if you look back at the last—we were looking at this earlier—last two years in terms of our cash flow margin, we've gone from sort of mid-single digits to where we are today over the last 18 to 24 months.

If you look at headcount in aggregate, headcounts actually come down by close to 20%. None of that's explicitly driven from any single project. It's really about optimizing the business overall. AI plays a huge part in that. We're using AI in engineering for coding. We're using it all throughout our support operations. We're seeing the kind of high deflection rate in the 80%+ range for certain classes of queries. We're seeing our Copilot product assist us in areas like billing and customer support. We are going to continue to press AI across our entire operation, and we think that will continue to drive margin expansion. You see that in the guide. Tyler, anything else that you would add on that?

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Yeah. I think your second part of your question, Elizabeth, was just spending in general.

We've always prided ourselves on being relatively efficient. In fact, we took actions last year to really drive a lot of efficiency into the business, and we're going to continue to do that. I think we might be a little bit of an anomaly that we said, "Hey, we expect some increases in spend and some timing into Q2 and 3 and 4." Part of the reason for that is we actually think when times get really uncertain, we actually—that might be an advantage for us. We will lean into opportunities to try to grow faster, specifically investing in sales and marketing.

Elizabeth Porter (Executive Director)

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from a line of Scott Berg of Needham & Company. Your line is now open.

Scott Berg (Analyst)

Hi, everyone. Really nice quarter. Thanks for taking my questions.

I have two—I do not know if Dennis or Tyler want to take it, but there was a quote in your press release talking about kind of a new global partner program with expanded offerings for resellers. I did not hear much of the commentary on that. Can you help us understand maybe what changes you are making to your partner program and any potential impacts for fiscal 2025 here? Thank you.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Yeah, I will take it. We made a change to the program overall at the request of the vast majority of our partners, where we are moving to something that is much more industry standard, where we basically have a transfer pricing model for our resellers, and then they can build services around that. They can price as they wish. If they want to price on a per-seat basis, they can. If they want to add services into that, they can.

That's what we were hearing that we needed to do across the board to create more opportunities for our partners to build businesses on an ongoing basis around our products. I think the things that we're seeing, we continue to see a lot of interest from the partners across the board that are bringing us into mid-market companies. In Q1, we signed a deal with Unisys, which we've already been working with throughout the quarter. We've got a nice pipeline of mid-market customers for our EX set of solutions there. I think we have a lot of opportunity in partners. I'm excited about where that's going, and we'll continue to invest there.

Scott Berg (Analyst)

Got it. Very helpful. Your operating margins guidance, Tyler, I know you talked about timing of some expenses was favorable in the quarter moving to the back half of the year.

The operating margin step down to Q2 is, I guess, a little bit more significant than anything we've seen in the model the last several years. Is it purely just based on timing, or are there some other maybe investments going on in the model that's maybe worth noting in the quarter? Thank you.

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Yeah, it's a combination of both, Scott. I think there's always timing from Q1 to Q2, but mainly changes in our compensation. So our annual focal process hits at the end of Q1, so we get kind of an uplift. That happens every single year. Secondarily, we did have some timing just on spend and some expenses that just got pushed out of Q1 into kind of Q2 in the back half. Some of those are related to sales and marketing.

It's nothing. We're really actually quite pleased with how we're doing from the efficiency perspective. We had a really significant beat against what our forecast was for Q1, but some of that was timing.

Scott Berg (Analyst)

Excellent. Thank you. Nice quarter again.

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Thanks, Scott.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from a line of Panjalam Borough of JP Morgan. Your line is now open.

Panjalam Borough (Analyst)

Oh, great. Thanks for taking the question. Congrats on the quarter. Dennis, maybe talk about the—I think I heard you launched Freddie Insights at the end of Q1. I don't think we are—at least I'm not aware of kind of the pricing for that product. Maybe talk about how you're thinking about pricing and monetizing Freddie Insights. And overall, if you take a step back, it seems like you're being successful fairly on the AI side.

When do we start hearing kind of the contribution from AI to the business overall, to the kind of the growth in ARR or any of the business metrics? I have a follow-up for Tyler.

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Thanks, Panjalam. Let me just refresh you on the overall pricing model for AI that we have today. We have AI agent, and AI agent, most of the queries today are coming on the CX side. For CX, we monetize on a consumption basis. Remember, you buy session packs, 100 session packs, or 1,000 session packs. As you consume them, you purchase more. For AI agent, that's an adder, a seat adder. The sticker price is $29 a seat per month on top of the regular license price. For AI insights, we're incorporating that. Today, that's available in beta for EX.

We're incorporating that into our enterprise plan to encourage adoption of the enterprise plan, which, of course, is the highest price plan. We expect that we'll have a mix of monetization methods for different aspects of AI. We also expect that we'll experiment with different methods as we hear feedback from customers. Some customers appreciate the certainty of a seat license model. Others are much more comfortable with consumption because they are used to that in other services. I think in terms of when will we be able to talk about it separately, right now, AI is such an integral part of our sale. People aren't buying or making decisions on switching from a legacy provider without really having a good understanding of the AI roadmap and AI capabilities. It is really driving the business overall.

I think we'll have to give some thought into how we, if we do, break it out, how we talk about it. We'll have more to say in September at the Investor Day.

Panjalam Borough (Analyst)

Understood. Kind of on the NRR dynamic, it seems like it's been stable. That's great to see. When I think about kind of the four-quarter average calculation on that, you're kind of giving up some of the higher numbers but still able to maintain a stable NRR, which makes me feel like your in-quarter probably is expanding faster than your reported number. Any way to understand what is that in quarter at this point, or am I theoretically correct in that direction? ITSM, I think you talked about 110% a couple of quarters back. Has that been holding up in that general zone?

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Yeah. Hey, Panjalam. Yeah.

Obviously, you know how it's calculated, right? It's a four-quarter look back on the net dollar retention. We continue to make really good progress on churn, and that's just kind of been steady. You're right. On net dollar retention, we have kind of seen it level. 105 was a little bit better than what we had forecasted. We had said 104. We're saying 104 to Q2. Again, it's an estimate of we know the churn. We have three quarters of data, but the expansion rates and churn are just the ones we have to wait for in the quarter to get to. In general, we're actually pleased with the progress that we've made, and we see some good results. Expansion motion on agent addition, we've been talking about that for years in terms of that coming down.

We're starting to see offsets in terms of the other products that we have to bring to our customers to offset the agent addition expansion, which is also going positive. The second piece of your question, Panjalam, remind me.

Panjalam Borough (Analyst)

The ITSM of the solution.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Yeah. Sorry. The byproduct. Yeah. I'm sorry. The byproduct. We haven't updated that in the last couple of quarters. That's, again, something we will talk about at Investor Day in terms of looking kind of deeper into the byproduct information, both and net dollar retention will be part of that.

Panjalam Borough (Analyst)

Understood. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from a line of Alex Zilkin of Wolf Research. Your line is now open. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question.

Alex Zukin (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

I guess, Dennis, I mean, outside of the mentioning maybe some pull forwards and billings or pull-ins and billings that you saw, you really aren't seeing any of the macro changes yet. I guess, why is that? How do you see that playing out? What are you maybe hearing in conversations around macro for the full year? Tyler, maybe just go a bit deeper on those pull-ins. Were they from Q2? Were they from later in the year? Maybe just qualify how, if at all, you've included kind of more risk adjustment around macro uncertainty in the guidance.

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Thanks, Alex. First of all, we operate in must-have categories. If you have a customer support team, if you have an IT team, you have to automate their operations. You have to bring AI in and get as much out of the people as you can.

It is just not optional. A lot of software categories are optional, so it is easier to defer decisions or not have something or survive with whatever old legacy system you have. I would say that is one. I think the second is a lot of our competitors are way more expensive. You see that with these big wins that we have, like Travis Perkins, which is equivalent to the Home Depot of the U.K. It is a big, sophisticated customer. They were a customer of ServiceNow for 10 years plus, and they are looking for something that is easier for them to manage themselves without having experts on staff that just understand the system and can babysit it. That is what our product does. You can manage it without the kind of overhead that other systems require.

When they're looking to save money, when they're looking to become more efficient, of course, they're going to look at alternatives to their existing providers. Three years ago, two years ago, maybe when they signed their renewal, our product was not as robust and mature as it is today. We actually think that that's a great position to be in going into kind of a tighter time. I think that that's just true across the business. That can change. As of now, we really didn't see anything that's recognizable that indicates that the macro's having a big effect on us so far. Yeah.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

The question on kind of the timing of billings, Alex, we say, "Hey, we got about 2% benefit in Q1 from both overperformance, but also pull-in," and that pull-in really is from Q2. Some of that stuff happens every quarter.

It really has to do with kind of when expansions are happening during contract terms and things like that. That is relatively unpredictable. Sometimes early renewals take away from a little bit of the forecast from Q2. For the full year, we're still seeing the same. We got it to the same number in terms of the billings forecast that we had already done coming into the year. The second part of that question is what's derisked. Everything that we're talking about is based on the full information that we have today. That would include kind of any of the uncertainty that's out there. Now, if things get considerably worse or buying behaviors change from anything new, obviously, we'll update that. We're not seeing that right now.

Alex Zukin (Managing Director and Senior Analyst)

Perfect. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question.

Our next question comes from a line of Brent of Jefferies. Your line is now open.

Brent Thill (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, Dennis. Can you address the market strength? You called out a number of these enterprise wins. What are you seeing? How would you characterize the pipeline? Just give us an overall sense of what you're seeing in that. I had a quick follow-up.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

The pipeline looks good. You see it in the numbers from last quarter or just some of the examples in terms of our wins. Kayak, they replaced Jira. Kent State, big public university, they came in with Freshservice. As I said, Travis Perkins replaced ServiceNow. We had a big US technology player, 10-year customer of ServiceNow. They replaced them. AmEx Business Travel upgraded to Device42. Coherent, Alterra Mountain Company, ChampionX, all of these are replacing legacy players with our product. We have great momentum.

If I look at our pipeline, it looks kind of like the last quarter, right? It's strong both on the upsell and on the new business side. I'm not really seeing much change from what we started seeing Q3, Q4 last year. It's just building. I think for that mid-market customer, the ideal is 5,000 person, but it ranges up to 20,000 people. That segment is not well served by the big enterprise players or the legacy players. They haven't historically had a choice. Now they do. I think that momentum is starting to build. The customers are starting to talk to one another. They're starting to recognize that there is a choice out there and that we're it. That's fantastic on that side of the business. We look to continue that.

Brent Thill (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Just a quick follow-up.

Some of your partners have called out some changes in the sales team with Abe departing. Can you just refresh us on what is happening there? Is this a distraction? How do you think about managing that transition?

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Sure. Abe left the company earlier this month for personal reasons, and we respect that. Throughout, he landed the quarter. Obviously, we did well in Q1. Ian Tickle, who is our head of international, has stepped in on an interim basis and has picked up the mantle with no real loss. He's been a fantastic leader who joined us last year. He was a CRO of Domo and has had a long career in enterprise sales. We continue to see the progress that we've made in the go-to-market motion across the board. We really didn't see any disruption, and I don't anticipate any. Okay.

Brent Thill (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Dennis, I just want to clarify. This change, this is an interim change, and you're looking for a full-time head of sales. Is that correct?

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

That's correct. That's correct.

Brent Thill (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from a line of David Hynes of KeyBanc Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

David Hynes (Analyst)

Hey. Thank you, guys. Dennis, AI attached on new deals is obviously doing really well based on the stats you've shared. Maybe you could touch on the strategy for driving even better adoption in the installed base, particularly on the CX side, and just how you think you're positioned for that opportunity. Yeah.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

I think it's, on the one hand, we can look at the business and say, "Hey, 2,700 customers, up 500 year over year for Copilot, 1,500 plus for AI agent." What I say, I keep reminding the team, we've got 73,000 customers. There's a long way to go. I think part of that is just how businesses are adopting AI. It's very similar to any other new technology where you're going to have the early adopters who are comfortable experimenting, and they're comfortable trying new technology. Also, those that have a bigger opportunity are the ones to jump in first. Like PhonePe is a big customer of ours in India that's a big early adopter of all things AI. You're going to have other customers that have other issues, regulatory issues. They want to get comfortable with how we're treating information.

They want to test the product. They want to deploy in a POC before rolling out more broadly. We are working through all that with our customers. Where they are seeing success, they are broadening out and broadening their deployments. That is really the work that is ahead of us as a team. I think that adoption curve, we are going to continue to work on. We have got several exciting products that are coming out in June at our June 11 Refresh event. There will be a virtual for those who cannot attend, the event is going to occur in London. There will be a virtual version of it on the 12th where we will share a bunch of new product introductions, which we think will accelerate AI adoption even further across that base. Every quarter, we are getting better at selling in AI, at demonstrating success.

We have more and more success stories to talk about with prospects and with our existing customers who have not yet adopted. I think it is really just a matter of time before we kind of continue to drive those numbers up and see broader and broader adoption of our AI products. Yep.

David Hynes (Analyst)

Okay. Makes sense.

Then, Tyler, follow-up for you. Do you have an organic growth rate on that EX ARR number? I think you have shared that with us in the past. I am not sure I caught it this quarter.

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Yeah. David, hey, coming into the year, we actually said we are not going to be breaking out organic and inorganic. The main reason is actually a positive reason. The Device42 kind of co-sell motion has been doing really, really well. The majority of the business that we are closing now is all combined.

Some of those numbers do not make sense to break out anymore. We called that out coming into the year that kind of Q4 was the last time we are going to do that. Okay. I forgot. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from a line of Patrick Walravens of Citizens. Your line is now open.

Patrick Walravens (Analyst)

Oh, great. Thank you. Let me add my congratulations. Dennis, I had another CEO yesterday tell me something. I would love to hear your reaction to it and see if this is similar for you. He said he has never seen anything go as fast in technology as AI. Four months ago, a lot of the functionality was sort of like science fiction, but now it is table stakes.

In particular, he said the RFPs that are coming through now have got all these AI functionality requirements in the RFPs that were not there four months ago. Are you seeing the same sort of thing in your space? Do you even have RFPs?

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

We absolutely do have RFPs. Typically, in CX or in EX, any customer that is looking for a new solution to replace their existing solution, or maybe they do not have a solution, every customer is asking about AI because they understand it is integral to what these platforms need to deliver. Yes, we do have lots of RFPs all the time. I do not know the exact number, but I would hazard a guess that 80%+ AI is a consideration.

I can't remember a conversation I've had in a sales situation or an upsell where AI is not a topic that our customers want to understand. They want to understand the roadmap. They want to understand what we're going to be offering and how we can help benefit their business over time. It's absolutely table stakes. That's why I'm excited about how we've been able to monetize it here and how we've been able to drive from a year, year and a half ago where we first launched that Copilot SKU into GA, we've been able to drive pretty broad adoption. It's totally table stakes in this space, and I suspect most of the software. All right. Great.

And then the follow-up is I had a different CEO tell me that one thing that's made life more difficult for him is that he used the word vaporware from his competitors. Obviously, they're pitching his own book a little bit there. He's like, "It's just gotten so noisy because everyone's using the same words. Everyone's talking about agentic AI and agentic workflows. And we really have it, but other people don't really have it. It's just gotten harder because it's really noisy." Sounds like you guys are managing through that. Are you seeing the same thing in terms of the noisiness, and how do you get through it? I think a couple of things. For our existing customers, we are one of the first places that they're going to turn for AI related to service automation.

That's the job of our teams to make sure that they understand what solutions they already have or they already have access to, in some cases they're already paying for, that they can get value from. There, we have an unfair advantage in that kind of noisy environment. For a new customer coming in, again, think about the motivation for a new customer coming to us today, whether it's CX or EX. They're not satisfied with their existing platform, typically, for some reason. They're looking for a modern AI-first platform that is going to help them scale. Typically, these decisions are multi-year decisions. You're not going to want to switch your ITSM or your customer support platform every year.

They want to understand what's the history of innovation, what kind of innovation should I expect going forward, do I believe in the roadmap, do I believe they can deliver. They're going to want to talk to customers that are seeing real value from the AI. That's why the fact that we've got 1,500 on AI agent, close to 1,000 on Insights, and 2,700 on Copilot, that is a huge advantage for us now because we have real customers with real value, tons of case studies that we can point them to. What I do is I just connect them with the CIO. Don't take my word for it, but talk to our customers because they're seeing the value.

We think we're at that point in terms of our scale where we have a real advantage over some startup coming in that has, like you said, one or two customers and a demo. That's where we have a real advantage, and we're seeing it. Awesome. All right. Thank you.

Brent Braceland (Analyst)

Thank you. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from a line of Brent Braceland of Piper Sandler. Your line is now open. Thank you. Good afternoon. Dennis, new customer logos, I think, more than doubled what you saw during Q1 last year. You've had now three quarters where the net retention, trailing metrics stabilized, end period improved. How much of the strength that you're seeing here would you attribute to the external environment getting better versus maybe some internal things, company-specific things that you're doing around go-to-market, new product, AI?

Just trying to better understand the strength you kind of saw the last two quarters and how much of it's external versus internal things.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Yeah. I've been CEO now for a little under a year. I think the external environment's been somewhat constant, if not maybe there's, if you just read the headlines, negativity in the last couple of months. I don't think it's the external environment that's changed. We've very much been focused on continuing to move the company up market and to build products that appeal to that mid-market customer, again, 5,000-20,000 employees, not well served by the existing incumbents. We built the go-to-market to go after that, built the partner network to go after that. That's paying off. You see it in ARPA, which is up meaningfully year over year as well, as well as customer count. That's one.

I think the second focus internally that we've had is on creating AI products that actually work out of the box, easy to use, easy to deploy, and fast time to value, consistent with our overall value proposition. That is resonating as well. You see it in all the monetization metrics that I was sharing before, the customer count that I was sharing before. Those two things, I think, matter more than the environment. I do not think the environment has gotten better in the last 12 months. There are signs that going forward, it might get worse.

Brent Braceland (Analyst)

Very clear there. Tyler, just a quick follow-up for you. OpEx has actually been down on an absolute basis for two consecutive quarters. That has helped push margins above 20% here for two quarters.

You did mention the change and appetite to maybe lean in as this external environment maybe gets a little more challenging, try to accelerate share gains. Walk me through how closely you're going to be managing expenses. It sounds like you have an appetite to lean in, but also an appetite to watch things closely. Are you watching things on a monthly basis, a weekly basis? Just walk me through where you're going to lean in and how closely you're watching it. Thanks.

Tyler Sloat (CFO)

Yeah. We are watching it pretty closely. I think some of the bets that we plan to make, they don't have overnight returns. Those are things where you're laying a groundwork versus some of the pipeline things we can do actually have pretty near-term returns. We will place bets across the field. I said there's two things happening. One is timing, right?

We had some expenses that are just getting pushed, but we're still going to make them. The other is that we have our annual compensation kind of uplift that kicks in in Q2. The lean-in part that I was talking about is, yes, we do think that when times are kind of volatile and companies are really looking to have the must-have products, but at a great value, this is our opportunity to lean in. We will continue to invest in sales and marketing. We do look at making sure we're trying to make efficient investments. We'll be monitoring that on a regular basis.

Brent Braceland (Analyst)

Got it. Great. Great to hear. Thank you.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

Thanks. Great. Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us. We'll see you next time. Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. This concludes the question-and-answer session. Thank you for your participation in today's conference.

Dennis Woodside (CEO and President)

To just conclude the program, you may now disconnect.