ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (GTM) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Access earnings results, analyst expectations, report, slides, earnings call, and transcript.

Overview

The earnings call summary and Q&A reflect strong financial performance, with upmarket retention above 100%, growth in operations, and successful AI integration. Despite weaker billings due to high comparison base, optimistic guidance and strong cRPO growth suggest positive momentum. The focus on AI-driven strategies and customer engagement, alongside a commitment to revenue growth and margin expansion, indicates a positive outlook. However, management's lack of specific details in certain areas tempers enthusiasm. Overall, the sentiment is positive, suggesting a likely stock price increase in the short term.

Key Financial Performance

GAAP Revenue $318 million, up 5% year-over-year. The increase was attributed to the company's focus on upmarket growth and improved net revenue retention.

Adjusted Operating Income $118 million, a margin of 37%, which is the highest level since Q4 2024. This improvement was due to disciplined investments and operational efficiency.

Net Revenue Retention 90%, up 5 percentage points year-over-year. This improvement reflects the company's success in entrenching itself as a mission-critical solution for scaled businesses.

Customers with more than $100,000 in ACV 1,887 customers, a 4% year-over-year increase. Growth in this cohort was driven by strong ACV growth and upmarket strategy.

ACV for $1 million cohort Accelerated in the quarter, up more than 30% year-over-year. This growth was attributed to the company's focus on upmarket opportunities.

Operating Cash Flow $94 million in Q3. This reflects consistent seasonality and operational efficiency.

Unlevered Free Cash Flow $95 million, an 81% conversion from adjusted operating income, representing a margin of 30%. This was consistent with prior seasonal trends.

Unearned Revenue $432 million at the end of the quarter. This reflects the company's ongoing contractual obligations.

Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) $1.17 billion, with $824 million expected to be recognized in the next 12 months. This indicates strong future revenue visibility.

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Operating Highlights

AI and workflow products: Aggressively expanding the product portfolio with innovative go-to-market AI and workflow products, including Copilot, GTM Workspace, and GTM Studio.

Operations suite: Grew more than 20% year-over-year, driven by proprietary data assets critical to AI-driven initiatives.

Account-based marketing platform: Recognized as the only vendor in the Customers' Choice quadrant in the 2025 Gartner Voice of the Customer Report for ABM platforms, adding millions of ACV.

Salesforce partnership: ZoomInfo Revenue Agent integrates B2B data and agents into Salesforce workflows, enabling natural language queries for sales teams.

Upmarket growth: Accelerated upmarket growth with 73% of total ACV from upmarket business, up 10 percentage points in 2 years.

Customer wins: Closed deals with major companies like Ryder System, BrightView, Circle K, and a global professional services firm, highlighting a move upmarket.

Data advantage: Demonstrated superior data coverage, leading to upmarket displacement opportunities from legacy vendors.

Net revenue retention: Improved for the fifth straight quarter, reaching 90%, the highest since Q2 2023.

Operational efficiencies: Reduced invoice write-offs by 45% since 2024 using proprietary data for risk prediction and collection models.

Cash flow and share repurchases: Generated $94 million in operating cash flow and repurchased 8.3 million shares, reducing outstanding shares by 80 million over 2 years.

AI-driven initiatives: Positioning ZoomInfo as synonymous with AI and go-to-market through proprietary data assets and innovative platforms.

Shift upmarket: Focused on larger customers with longer-term contracts, improving renewal outcomes and driving efficiency.

Financial discipline: Maintained low stock compensation relative to revenue and focused on performance-based equity.

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Risk or Challenges

Market Conditions: The company is facing increasingly competitive markets, which require unique and proprietary data assets to stand out. This highlights the challenge of maintaining differentiation and relevance in a crowded market.

Regulatory and Compliance Risks: Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of SEC filings. This indicates potential regulatory hurdles or compliance challenges.

Economic Uncertainties: The company has highlighted the importance of stabilizing and improving its downmarket business, which has been declining year-over-year. This reflects potential economic pressures impacting smaller customers.

Strategic Execution Risks: The company is undergoing a strategic shift upmarket, which involves risks such as maintaining customer retention, ensuring smooth transitions, and achieving expected growth in the upmarket segment.

Supply Chain and Operational Risks: The company has implemented models to identify payment risks among smaller customers, indicating challenges in managing collections and reducing invoice write-offs.

Customer Retention and Revenue Risks: Net revenue retention improved to 90%, but the company still faces challenges in retaining customers, particularly in the downmarket segment, which has declined 10% year-over-year.

Seasonality and Revenue Fluctuations: The business is becoming more seasonal, with sequential revenue growth expected to fluctuate. This could lead to periods of inconsistent financial performance.

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Guidance & Outlook

Revenue Expectations: For Q4 2025, GAAP revenue is expected to be in the range of $307 million to $310 million. For the full year 2025, GAAP revenue is projected to be in the range of $1.237 billion to $1.240 billion, representing 2% annual revenue growth at the midpoint of guidance.

Margin Projections: Adjusted operating income margin for Q4 2025 is expected to be in the range of $117 million to $120 million. For the full year 2025, the adjusted operating income margin is projected to be 36% at the midpoint of guidance.

Capital Expenditures and Cash Flow: Unlevered free cash flow for 2025 is expected to be in the range of $424 million to $444 million. The company plans to continue using the majority of its free cash flow for share repurchases.

Market Trends and Business Segment Performance: The company is focusing on upmarket growth, which now represents 73% of total ACV, with a 6% upmarket ACV growth in Q3 2025. Operations growth accelerated, continuing to grow greater than 20% year-over-year. Copilot renewals showed a mid- to high single-digit improvement on initial renewal compared to Sales OS renewals.

Strategic Plans and Future Implications: ZoomInfo is expanding its product portfolio with AI-driven solutions like Copilot, GTM Workspace, and GTM Studio. The company is focusing on integrating proprietary data assets into AI-ready systems to enhance customer engagement and operational efficiency. The company is also shifting customers to longer-term contracts, with over 50% of the book of business on contracts longer than one year.

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Shareholder Return Plan

Share Repurchase Program: The company is committed to using the majority of its free cash flow to repurchase shares of ZoomInfo stock. During Q3, the company repurchased 8.3 million shares at an average price of $10.46, totaling $87 million. Since the start of 2024, 116% of the unlevered free cash flow generated has been used for share repurchases, reducing the weighted average shares outstanding by approximately 80 million shares over the last two years. The company plans to continue this strategy, emphasizing that share repurchases at a deep discount to intrinsic value will generate the best possible long-term return for shareholders.

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Key Q&A

Q:What fueled the extra revenue strength in Q3?

A:The revenue upside in Q3 was driven by better renewal outcomes, a mid-to-high single-digit uplift on initial renewal from Copilot, the largest TCV deal in history closed early in Q3, a shift upmarket contributing to higher quality revenue, and a $3 million year-over-year increase in usage-based and other revenue.

Q:What is the early customer feedback on GTM Studio?

A:The early feedback on GTM Studio has been very positive. It is seen as an innovative solution that unifies data from various sources into a dynamic workspace, enabling revenue operations professionals to build AI-ready views of target markets and execute campaigns effectively. It is considered a white space opportunity with significant upside potential.

Q:How has upmarket retention been trending and what is driving NRR growth?

A:Upmarket net retention was above 100% in Q3, driven by improved retention, upsell opportunities with Copilot and GTM Workspace, and growth in the operations business. Downmarket net retention also improved sequentially. The $100,000 cohort showed strong ACV growth, with a focus on moving customers into higher spending brackets.

Q:What is the opportunity with Agentforce integration?

A:Agentforce integration is seen as a proof point that AI and go-to-market should be grounded by ZoomInfo. The partnership with Salesforce includes co-selling incentives and plans for more products, such as a prospecting agent. It highlights the importance of ZoomInfo Intelligence in AI-driven go-to-market strategies.

Q:What is the delta between strong cRPO subscription bookings growth and weaker billings growth?

A:The cRPO subscription bookings growth of 18% reflects strong performance, while billings growth appeared weaker due to a high comparison base from Q3 last year. The impact of balance sheet reserves changes in Q3 last year created noise in the year-over-year comparison, affecting billings growth.

Q:What are the assumptions behind the Q4 revenue guide and seasonality?

A:The Q4 revenue guide assumes consistent guidance philosophy, with year-over-year growth as the key metric. Q3 was front-end loaded, while Q4 is expected to be back-end loaded. Sequential trends may fluctuate, but year-over-year growth remains the focus.

Q:What are the geographic and vertical trends in performance?

A:Upmarket ACV acceleration, improved retention, and growth in operations and Copilot were key positive trends. Software retention improved for the sixth consecutive quarter, with strong performance in telecom, manufacturing, and business services.

Q:How much of the upmarket segment is on Copilot, and is the pricing optimized?

A:A significant portion of the upmarket segment is on Copilot, though exact figures are not disclosed. Pricing is designed for customer simplicity and adoption, with a platform fee and prepaid AI action credits. The focus is on driving early adoption and learning customer usage trends.

Q:How did the sales process go for the private unified data and AI company win?

A:The company was an existing customer, and the sales process leveraged established trust and cleared security and data privacy reviews. The account was grown through merit, and there remains significant opportunity for further growth within the account.

Q:What is the current level of resourcing in ZoomInfo's go-to-market organization?

A:ZoomInfo has sufficient capacity to support growth, with a focus on leveraging strong customer relationships and trust. The organization is positioned to bring innovative products to market and capitalize on customers leaning back into outbound SDR motions.

Q:What is the impact of changing SEO and AI search trends on ZoomInfo?

A:The shift in SEO and AI search trends has had a mitigated impact due to ZoomInfo's focus on upmarket customers. The PLG motion continues to perform as expected, and the business is less exposed to these changes due to its upmarket focus.

Q:How is ZoomInfo leveraging AI internally to maintain its data advantage?

A:ZoomInfo uses AI extensively across its organization, including sales, finance, product, and marketing. AI drives efficiency, improves customer engagement, and supports internal operations. The company is a leader in leveraging AI for internal and customer-facing solutions.

Q:What are the building blocks for achieving Rule of 40 in 2026?

A:The building blocks include revenue growth, margin expansion, and aggressive share repurchases. The focus is on accelerating free cash flow per share growth in 2026 relative to 2025.

Q:How is sales productivity performing, and what are the trends in Copilot adoption?

A:Sales productivity trends are consistent, with deliberate resource shifts upmarket. Copilot adoption has expanded to new personas, including account executives, account managers, and customer success managers, driving broader use cases and increased engagement.

Q:What is the impact of outbound versus inbound shifts on ZoomInfo's business?

A:The shift to outbound motions has increased demand for ZoomInfo's solutions, as customers hire more SDRs and account executives. The company is well-positioned to support these outbound efforts with data, signals, and AI-driven tools.

Q:Review of Unclear Management Responses

A:Management avoided providing specific details on the percentage of upmarket customers using Copilot, the exact impact of SEO and AI search trends on the business, and the precise assumptions behind the Q4 revenue guide. Responses often focused on general trends and positive sentiment rather than concrete data or specifics.

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Earnings Word Cloud

The most frequently occurring keywords in this quarter's earning call

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