Conferencia de resultados del 3T de 2026 de Dropbox (DBX): previsiones al alza y expansión de la IA

Puntos clave

• Dropbox (NASDAQ: DBX) registró unos ingresos de 637,3 millones de dólares en el tercer trimestre de 2026, lo que representa un aumento interanual del 0,5%. Sin incluir FormSwift, los ingresos crecieron un 1,0%, marcando un quinto trimestre consecutivo de crecimiento interanual bajo esa base de cálculo.
• El margen operativo no GAAP alcanzó el 42,2%, situándose por encima de las previsiones de la empresa de aproximadamente el 38,5%, impulsado por mayores ingresos, menores costes de plantilla y el aplazamiento de gastos de marketing.
• Dropbox cerró el trimestre con 18,2 millones de usuarios de pago, sumando unos 20.000 de forma secuencial. Sin contar FormSwift, las incorporaciones netas fueron de aproximadamente 60.000.
• La adopción inicial de la versión de Dropbox impulsada por IA fue positiva. Casi el 90% de los usuarios que tuvieron acceso a esta experiencia la prefirieron, mientras que más del 20% de los equipos aptos comenzaron a utilizar los créditos de IA incluidos.
• La empresa anunció DBX Agent Cloud y su plan de adquisición de Tigris, un proveedor de almacenamiento de objetos compatible con S3 que presta servicio a miles de clientes. La dirección prevé que la operación se cierre en el cuarto trimestre de 2026, sujeta a las condiciones habituales.
• Dropbox elevó sus previsiones de ingresos y de flujo de caja libre no apalancado para todo el año 2026. Sin incluir Tigris, las expectativas preliminares de la dirección apuntan a unos ingresos prácticamente estables y una expansión del margen operativo de aproximadamente 150 puntos básicos en 2027.

Principales resultados financieros

Dropbox recompró aproximadamente 4,7 millones de acciones por unos 150 millones de dólares durante el trimestre. Quedaban cerca de 1.235 millones de dólares en el marco de su autorización de recompra.

Evolución operativa y del negocio

Los equipos de autoservicio fueron el principal motor de la superación de las previsiones de ingresos, ya que la simplificación de tarifas y paquetes comerciales impulsó mayores ventas adicionales. El negocio de ventas gestionadas de Norteamérica también registró su trimestre más sólido en dos años.

El crecimiento del plan Simple, de menor precio, lastró el ingreso medio por usuario de pago, mientras que el impacto negativo de los tipos de cambio y la preferencia hacia planes mensuales también afectaron a esta métrica.

Las eficiencias en infraestructura y la migración de un mayor volumen de almacenamiento a centros de datos propios de Dropbox compensaron con creces los costes informáticos adicionales de la IA. Estos factores impulsaron el margen bruto a pesar del despliegue de la nueva experiencia de Dropbox.

Dropbox señaló que más de 1,4 millones de usuarios habían conectado la plataforma con integraciones de IA, entre ellas ChatGPT y Claude, frente a los 150.000 del trimestre anterior. Las subidas semanales desde herramientas de IA hacia Dropbox aumentaron de más de 600.000 en septiembre a más de 2 millones.

La empresa también está rediseñando Dropbox Replay como un producto nativo de IA para la revisión y aprobación de vídeo. La dirección indicó que clientes seleccionados comenzarían a recibir la nueva versión poco después de la conferencia de resultados.

DBX Agent Cloud ofrecerá inicialmente almacenamiento de objetos independiente y compatible con S3. A través de Tigris, Dropbox prevé incorporar capacidades de almacenamiento orientadas a la IA y expandirse hacia sistemas de archivos, procesamiento de contenidos y herramientas de gobernanza para aplicaciones y agentes. La dirección señaló que la capacidad de infraestructura existente debería bastar para atender a los clientes actuales de Tigris y el crecimiento previsto para 2027 sin requerir adquisiciones sustanciales de capacidad a corto plazo.

Dropbox redujo su plantilla aproximadamente un 9% al consolidar equipos, reajustar los recursos comerciales y priorizar su estrategia de crecimiento en tres frentes.

Previsiones de la dirección

4T de 2026

• Ingresos de entre 630 y 633 millones de dólares.
• Ingresos a tipo de cambio constante de entre 627 y 630 millones de dólares.
• Crecimiento interanual de los ingresos de aproximadamente el 0,2% en el punto medio, excluyendo FormSwift.
• Margen operativo no GAAP de aproximadamente el 40%.
• Promedio ponderado de acciones diluidas de entre 224 y 229 millones.

Las perspectivas para el cuarto trimestre excluyen a Tigris. FormSwift no aportará ingresos en el cuarto trimestre, frente a los aproximadamente 3 millones de dólares del tercer trimestre. La dirección prevé un viento de cola por tipo de cambio de unos 3 millones de dólares.

La previsión del margen operativo solo incluye un beneficio parcial del trimestre derivado de la reducción de plantilla y excluye aproximadamente 22,5 millones de dólares en gastos relacionados. Se espera que el gasto en marketing aplazado en el tercer trimestre se traslade al cuarto, junto con el despliegue a mayor escala de la versión de Dropbox con IA.

Año completo 2026

• Ingresos de entre 2.528 y 2.531 millones de dólares, lo que eleva el punto medio en 12 millones de dólares.
• Ingresos a tipo de cambio constante de entre 2.500 y 2.503 millones de dólares, lo que eleva el punto medio en 15 millones de dólares.
• Crecimiento interanual de los ingresos de aproximadamente el 1,2% en el punto medio, excluyendo FormSwift.
• Margen bruto no GAAP de aproximadamente el 81,5%.
• Margen operativo no GAAP del 40,5%, un incremento de 25 puntos básicos respecto al punto medio de la previsión anterior.
• Flujo de caja libre no apalancado de al menos 1.075 millones de dólares.
• Inversiones de capital de entre 20 y 25 millones de dólares.
• Promedio ponderado de acciones diluidas de entre 228 y 233 millones.

Dropbox prevé aproximadamente 30 millones de dólares en pagos por indemnizaciones y prestaciones asociados a la reducción de plantilla, de los cuales cerca de 20 millones de dólares se abonarán en 2026 y el resto en 2027.

Perspectivas preliminares para 2027

Excluyendo a Tigris, la dirección espera que los ingresos de 2027 se mantengan prácticamente estables. Esta estimación preliminar refleja la ausencia de la aportación de 13 millones de dólares de FormSwift a los ingresos de 2026, la moderación de los vientos de cola por tipos de cambio y un despegue gradual de la monetización de los nuevos productos de IA y flujos de trabajo.

La dirección anticipa una expansión del margen operativo de aproximadamente 150 puntos básicos y un crecimiento del flujo de caja libre no apalancado ampliamente en línea con dicha mejora. Las previsiones oficiales para 2027, que incluirán a Tigris si se concreta la adquisición, se esperan para febrero.

Riesgos y aspectos a vigilar

• La versión de Dropbox con IA, Replay y DBX Agent Cloud continúan en etapas tempranas, y la dirección afirmó que aún queda por demostrar un crecimiento sostenido.
• Una adopción más generalizada de la nueva experiencia de Dropbox aumentará los costes informáticos de IA, lo que podría generar volatilidad en el margen bruto de un trimestre a otro.
• La adquisición de Tigris sigue sujeta a las condiciones habituales de cierre. No está contemplada en las previsiones actuales, y Dropbox podría reinvertir parte de sus ahorros de eficiencia tras el cierre de la operación.
• La descontinuación de FormSwift supone un lastre de 13 millones de dólares en los ingresos de 2027 en comparación con 2026.
• La dirección prevé que los vientos de cola del tipo de cambio continúen moderándose.
• Se espera que el margen operativo del cuarto trimestre descienda ligeramente respecto al del tercer trimestre debido al aplazamiento del gasto en marketing y a que solo se contabilizará una parte del trimestre de ahorro por el recorte de plantilla.

Puntos clave de la sesión de preguntas y respuestas con analistas

Los analistas centraron gran parte de su atención en la incursión de Dropbox en la infraestructura para desarrolladores. La dirección señaló que las conversaciones con clientes, los proyectos de prueba de concepto, la demanda entrante y un acuerdo inicial firmado respaldaron su decisión de lanzar DBX Agent Cloud. Tigris aporta miles de clientes desarrolladores y funciones de almacenamiento de objetos diseñadas para cargas de trabajo de IA.

La dirección describió Agent Cloud como un motor de crecimiento diferenciado que combina la adopción en autoservicio por parte de desarrolladores con ventas a empresas. El almacenamiento de objetos es el producto inicial, mientras que los servicios de gobernanza, permisos, procesamiento de contenidos y sistemas de archivos podrían aportar posteriormente ingresos por software con márgenes más elevados.

En cuanto a la monetización de la IA, Dropbox tiene previsto vender paquetes adicionales de créditos de IA a medida que crezca el uso. La dirección también espera que la experiencia mejorada favorezca la retención, la venta adicional y la conversión, aunque no cuantificó la aportación prevista a los ingresos.

En lo relativo a los clientes de pequeñas y medianas empresas, la dirección indicó que no observaba un impacto macroeconómico directo en el negocio. Su prioridad sigue centrada en generar un ahorro de tiempo cuantificable y automatizar tareas rutinarias, en lugar de exigir a los clientes que utilicen la IA de una manera determinada.

Respecto a Tigris, Dropbox declinó proporcionar cifras detalladas de ingresos o ARR antes del cierre de la adquisición. La dirección describió el negocio como pequeño, de rápido crecimiento y con un consumo moderado de efectivo. La continuidad de la inversión dependerá principalmente de si el negocio genera crecimiento tanto en el canal de desarrolladores como en el corporativo.

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Transcripción completa de la conferencia de resultados

Comentarios de la dirección

Operator

1-1 on your telephone. If your question has been answered and you'd like to remove yourself from the queue, simply press star 1-1 again. And now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Sarah Shuba, Chief Accounting Officer and Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Sarah Schubach

Good afternoon and welcome to Dropbox's third quarter 2026 earnings call. As a reminder, we will discuss non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Definitions and reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP results can be found in our earnings release and our earnings presentation posted on our IR website at investors.dropbox.com. We will also make forward-looking statements on this call, including statements about our future outlook for our fourth quarter and fiscal year 2026, as well as our expectations regarding fiscal year 2027, our business, assets, strategies, and the macroeconomic environment, and the planned acquisition of Tigris data, which remains subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain customary closing conditions. Such statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described. Many of those risks and uncertainties are described in our SEC filings, including our most recent report on Form 10-K and forthcoming report on Form 10-Q. Forward-looking statements represent our beliefs and assumptions only as of the date such statements are made.

We disclaim any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. I will now turn the call over to Dropbox's co-CEO, Ashraf Alkarmi.

Unknown Speaker

Thanks Sarah and good afternoon everyone. I'm proud of what this team delivered in Q3. Five months into this role, I'm more convinced than ever that Dropbox is on the right path, and this quarter showed why. Q3 was another beat and raise quarter. We delivered revenue of 637 million and operating margin of over 42%. ahead of our guidance as well as our fifth straight quarter of year-over-year revenue growth excluding FormSwift. We added approximately 20,000 net new paying users, our fourth consecutive quarter of paying user growth. In our upmarket managed sales motion, North America had its strongest quarter in two years.

Today, we also took two major steps forward. We rolled out AI-powered Dropbox, which now takes action directly on the content customers already keep with us. and we announced DBX Agent Cloud, our new infrastructure business for companies and developers building AI applications, together with our planned acquisition of Tigris, an already proven player in object storage. both move us forward toward our vision. Dropbox as the trusted, independent content foundation for the AI era. Last quarter, I laid out a three pillar strategy to get there. First, restore durable growth in our core business through foundational improvements, including bringing AI and context directly into Dropbox. Second, use that stronger foundation to build intelligent workflows that automate critical work for our customers. And third, put the platform we've built to work across the broader AI ecosystem.

This quarter, we made progress on all three. Let me walk you through each. First, Dropbox now brings AI directly to the content customers already keep with us. And we've continued to expand the rollout. This changes what Dropbox is for our customers. It's no longer just where their work is stored, but it's where their work gets done. And it does that with the controls that make customers comfortable handing AI a shared folder.

Dropbox works within existing permissions shows its plan before anything changes and customers can roll back anything with one click. With a new desktop experience, we're also bringing these capabilities to the many customers who work primarily in their Dropbox folders. Here's one example. A customer had a catch-all folder of more than 1,200 images with file names that made no sense. and it has simply never gotten organized. Dropbox sorted them into folders in about 10 minutes. And that's just one use case. Customers are using Dropbox to find old files and images just by describing them. project drawings and documents together into single PDFs transcribe recordings create and refine video clips all from the content they already keep with us That's what we mean by one secure home for content and context. Dropbox does the work, but the customer always stays in control.

Early signals are encouraging. Almost 90% of users who've received the experience preferred it. And of the teams that have received the new experience, over 20% have started using the AI credits included in their plan. As an independent, neutral platform, Dropbox also lets customers choose how they want to bring AI into their work. They can switch models within Dropbox or work on their Dropbox content in ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Muse, and other tools. Last quarter, 150,000 users had connected Dropbox to ChatGPT and Claude. Today, more than 1.4 million have connected Dropbox to our AI integrations. And that work comes back to Dropbox.

Since September, weekly uploads from these AI tools into Dropbox have grown from over 600,000 to more than 2 million. more agents, better Dropbox. Second, we're bringing intelligent workflows that automate critical work for our customers. Dropbox Replay is a prime example. It's a video review and approval tool for creative teams, We rebuilt from the ground up this year as an AI native application. Teams can review, approve, and deliver work to clients in one place built on the content they already keep in Dropbox. Next week, we'll begin putting the new replay in the hands of select customers. Third, Dash Agent Cloud, which opens an entirely new growth opportunity for Dropbox.

Every company's need for storage keeps growing and AI applications and agents are accelerating that demand. data sets, model artifacts, images and video they depend on need a reliable, portable home that works across clouds, works across models and compute environments, and agents need persistent access to their files across tasks and sessions. Keeping content reliable, protected, and accessible at scale is what Dropbox has done for nearly two decades. DBX Agent Cloud brings that expertise to companies and developers, starting with a standalone S3 compatible object storage they can buy independently and use with the tools they already know. Our planned acquisition of Tigris gets us there faster. Tigris has thousands of customers who depend on it to keep their applications running, and a developer business that would take us substantially longer to build ourselves. we see four clear ways to make the business stronger. First, capability. When the acquisition is complete, Tigris will bring features built for AI workloads, and we can add Dropbox's strength in organizing governing content. Second, reach. Tigris's rapid growth has come from developers, and we expect our enterprise sales motion and relationships with larger customers will open up use cases it can't easily reach on its own today. backup, disaster recovery, and media archives.

Third, scale. Demand for Tigris's storage is growing quickly, and we plan to bring efficient, exabyte-scale infrastructure to support it. And fourth, the team. The combination would bring together a proven leadership team with a deep developer focus and experience building for AI workloads. Together, we can support larger workloads while keeping Tigris' focus on reliability and developer experience. We expect the acquisition to close in Q4, 2026. And object storage is the entry point, not the destination. Agents need what people need, a place to keep their work, the right permissions, history, and a way to recover when something goes wrong. We plan to add file system and content processing capabilities next, giving applications and agents a persistent place to manage files and continue their work across sessions.

Over time, we see DBX agent cloud becoming a portable content and data foundation for AI applications and agents across models and compute environments. Executing this strategy requires focus. This year, we brought our Dash and Dropbox teams together. We balanced our go-to market organization and step back from work outside our priorities. And most recently, as we tightened our focus and shifted resources to align with our new strategy, We made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by approximately 9%. I want to thank the colleagues who are leaving us for everything they've contributed. Together, these changes put our resources behind the three pillars where we have the strongest right to win, and let us invest in our strategy while expanding margins. Everything we're doing points in one direction.

Dropbox is becoming the trusted, independent content foundation for the AI era. For people and teams, that's AI-powered Dropbox. For companies and developers, it's DBX Agent Cloud. In both, customers keep control of their content and it stays portable across the AI models, tools, and compute they choose as AI evolves. We're still early, and the measure of this strategy is whether it shows up in growth. That's the standard I'm holding us to. but Q3 gives me confidence. Another beat and raise quarter, AI powered drop-offs in customers' hands and an entirely new avenue of growth with DBX Agent Cloud and Tigris.

I'm excited about what's ahead. With that, I'll turn it over to Ross. Thank you Ashraf. Ashraf laid out our vision for Dropbox to be the trusted, independent content foundation for the AI era. We're building on our durable storage foundation with AI-powered capabilities that bring intelligence to the content our customers already keep with us, creating a smarter Dropbox experience. And DBX Agent Cloud, accelerated by our planned acquisition of Tigris data, builds on our storage heritage to provide object storage and the content infrastructure, governance, and developer capabilities companies need to build AI applications. Q3 was another beat and raise quarter. We delivered our fifth straight quarter of revenue growth, excluding FormSwift, Another quarter of net new paying user growth and operating margin nearly four points ahead of our guidance. And we're again raising our full year outlook.

Our three pillar growth strategy is taking shape. With the new Dropbox experience and Dropbox agent Cloud, supported by our planned acquisition of Tigris, we're opening an entirely new avenue of growth in object storage, built on top of a profitable, cash generative core business. We're also building a more efficient Dropbox to support it. This year, we consolidated our Dash and Core FSS teams as we brought Dash intelligence into Dropbox. We rebalanced our go-to-market organization in Q3, and we've now announced a workforce reduction to further de-duplicate resources investments and concentrate more intensely on our three-pillar strategy. Together, these actions allow us to invest behind our strategy while expanding operating margin, and I'll quantify that impact when I discuss 2027. These initiatives are exciting, but they're early, and we'll scale our investment in step with the results they deliver.

That same discipline shaped how we are approaching our acquisition of Tigris. Tigris is small but growing rapidly. They are already a proven player in object storage, have an established AI developer flywheel, have landed thousands of customers including large AI native platforms, an experienced team already operating this market. This acquisition enables us to accelerate our Pillar 3 infrastructure strategy and capitalize on its emerging opportunity now. With that, let me turn to our Q3 results. Unless otherwise indicated, all income statement figures mentioned are non-GAAP and exclude stock-based compensation, amortization of purchase intangibles, certain acquisition related expenses, workforce reduction expenses, and net gains on equity investments. Our non-GAAP net income also includes the income tax effect of the aforementioned adjustments.

In Q3, revenue increased 0.5% year-over-year to $637.3 million. Excluding Form SWIFT, revenue grew 1% year-over-year ahead ahead of the roughly flat growth implied by our guidance. On a constant currency basis, revenue excluding Form SWIFT increased 0.2%. outperformance was driven primarily by self-serve teams where simplified pricing and packaging drove stronger upsells. Total ARR was 2.555 billion up 0.8% year over year, and no longer includes any forms with ARR following its sunset at the end of the quarter. As a result, ARR declined 10 million sequentially. Excluding FormSwift, ARR grew 1.9% year-over-year, or 0.4% on a constant currency basis. Excluding FormSwift, ARR grew $5 million sequentially, led by self-serve teams.

We exited the quarter with 18.2 million paying users, a sequential increase of approximately 20,000 users. Excluding FormSwift, we added approximately 60,000 paying users, led by our simple plan and self-serve teams. average revenue per paying user was $138.76. compared to $139.07 in the year-ago quarter, as growth in our lower-price simple plan was largely offset by FX headwinds and a mix shift to monthly plans. Gross margin was 81.8% up roughly 40 basis points year over year. infrastructure efficiencies, and the move of more of our storage onto our own data centers more than offset the added AI compute costs of rolling out the new Dropbox experience. operating margin was 42.2% ahead of our guidance of approximately 38.5% driven by higher revenue, lower headcount costs following our go-to-market changes and the timing of marketing spend, which will shift to Q4 alongside the new Dropbox experience launch. Net income was $197.8 million compared to $196.7 million in the year ago quarter. Diluted EPS was 88 cents compared to 74 cents in the year ago quarter based on 225.1 million diluted diluted weighted average shares outstanding compared to 265.1 million in the year ago Cash flow from operations was $259.2 million compared to $302.1 million in the year-ago period, primarily reflecting higher interest payments related to our term loan facility. Capital expenditures was $7.4 million. Unlevered free cash flow was $303.9 million. And unlevered free cash flow per share was $1.35, 14% year over year.

We ended the quarter with cash and short-term investments of $1.142 billion and our $400 million revolving credit facility remains undrawn. In Q3, we repurchased approximately 4.7 million shares for approximately $150 million and we had approximately $1.235 billion remaining under our authorization. I'll now offer our outlook for Q4 and the full year 2026. Please note that our outlook excludes the announced acquisition of Tigris because we have not yet closed the transaction. For the fourth quarter of 2026, we expect total revenue to be in the range of 630 to $633 million. As a reminder, we fully discontinued Form Swift at the end of Q3, so it contributes no revenue in Q4, compared to approximately 3 million in Q3. Excluding Form Swift, our Q4 guidance implies 0.2% year-over-year growth at the midpoint.

We are expecting a currency tailwind of approximately 3 million as we have continued to see FX tailwinds moderate. On a constant currency basis, we expect total revenue to be in the range of 627 to 630 million. We expect our non-GAAP operating margin to be approximately 40%. This includes a partial quarters benefit from the reduction in force action announced last week and excludes approximately $22.5 million of expenses related to our workforce reduction. As additional context to our expectations for Q4, when we provided our Q3 guidance, we expected operating margin to step up sequentially from Q3 to Q4. However, as I mentioned, we saw delayed spending Q3, particularly marketing spend, which we now plan to spend in Q4 as we continue to expand the rollout of our new Dropbox experience. And Q4 reflects only a partial quarter of savings from our workforce reduction.

As a result, we expect Q4 operating margin to be slightly lower than Q3. And finally, we expect diluted weighted average shares outstanding to be in the range of 224 to 229 million shares. For the full year of 2026, we are raising the midpoint of our as reported revenue guidance range by $12 million, now expecting a range of 2.528 to $2.531 billion, excluding form slip, this implies 120 basis points of year-over-year growth at the midpoint. we are expecting a currency tailwind of approximately $28 million. On a constant currency basis, raising the midpoint by 15 million, now expecting a range of 2.5 to 2.503 billion. We expect gross margin to be approximately 81.5%. We are raising our non-GAAP operating margin guidance to 40.5%, up 25 basis points from the midpoint of our prior guidance. Our prior guidance already assumed savings from our workforce reduction.

So this increase reflects our Q3 outperformance. We're also raising our unlevered free cash flow guidance, which we now expect to be at or above $1.075 billion, an increase of $5 million. This accounts for our severance expectations, where we ultimately expect to pay approximately $30M in severance and benefits as related to our workforce reduction, with roughly 20M expected to be paid in 2026 and the remainder to be paid in 2027. We continue to expect CapEx to be in the range of $20 to $25 million, and additions to finance leased lines to be approximately 4% of revenue. Finally, we expect diluted weighted average shares outstanding to be in the range of 228 to 233 million shares, which reflects our 30-day trailing average stock price. Now I'll provide additional context as it relates to guidance. We continue to expect positive net new paying user growth for 2026.

Regarding gross margin, our Q4 outlook reflects rolling out the new Dropbox experience to all eligible self-serve teams by year-end, which increases AI compute costs, partially offset by the infrastructure efficiencies we have been delivering. We expect some quarter-to-quarter variability as rollout and adoption progress. And finally, some early thoughts on 2027. We'll provide formal guidance, including for Tigris in February. Excluding the acquisition of Tigris, we expect 2027 revenue to be roughly flat. First, we have now fully discontinued the sale of FormSwift, which contributed $13 million to revenue in 2026 and will thus have no contribution in 2027. Second, the new Dropbox experience and workflow products are early in the rollout, and we believe monetization will build gradually.

Finally, we have continued to see FX tailwinds moderate and expect this to continue. We will also be more prepared to guide the contribution from our new initiatives when we have more evidence in February. We expect approximately 150 basis points of operating margin expansion in 2027, reflecting the full-year benefit of the efficiency measures I described, consolidating our DASH and core FSS teams, rebalancing our go-to-market organization, and our recently announced workforce reductions. That expansion is net of reinvesting a portion of those savings behind our three pillar growth strategy. As a reminder, TIGRIS has not yet closed and isn't included in these expectations. If it does close, we may reinvest some of these savings to support it and we'll reflect that in our guidance in February. Our workforce reduction will also lower stock-based compensation, and beyond that, we continue to look for ways to use our equity more efficiently and bring stock-based compensation down as a percentage of revenue.

We expect unlevered free cash flow to expand in line with operating margin driven by the same efficiency measures. Turning to Tigris, the transaction hasn't closed yet and will provide a more fulsome update when we report in February. Tigris is a small but fast-growing business that is not material to our total revenue in the trailing 12-month period. They already serve thousands of customers, including several large companies and AI native platform players. Tigris runs at a modest burn, and given how quickly this market is moving, we see it as a time-sensitive opportunity to accelerate our time to market as we extend our infrastructure to sell object storage and power AI workloads. As it relates to their capacity needs, we expect our recent and ongoing infrastructure efficiency initiatives will unlock sufficient storage capacity to absorb Tigris' existing customer footprint and support its expected growth in 2027. To bring it together, Q3 was another beat and raise quarter.

With the new AI-powered Dropbox experience, DBX Agent Cloud, and the acquisition of Tigris, we've opened an entirely new avenue of growth as a trusted, independent content foundation for the AI era. And we've rebalanced our resources to invest behind that strategy while expanding margins and cash flow. We still need to demonstrate sustained growth, and that's the standard we're holding ourselves to. But we believe we are well positioned to pursue the opportunity ahead. With that, operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

Certainly, and our first question for today comes from on the line of Brett Huff from Stevens Inc. Your question, please.

Preguntas y respuestas

Brett Huff

Awesome. Hey, guys. Nice to finally be covering you all. Appreciate the question and congrats on a good quarter. So on Tigris and Agent Cloud, we've gone through a few questions already about the rationale for Dropbox entering the developer storage market. You kind of walk us through what the customer problem, Agent Cloud is built to serve and why existing options kind of fall short of serving those customers today.

Unknown Speaker

Thank you for the question. First of all, we're really excited about this. acquisition with Tigris. When we look at the opportunity, we see fundamentally that more agents and more AI means more storage needs, whether you're building applications and that's requiring images and videos to training data to really building any application that has needs for larger. amounts of storage. We see this when we look at our own infrastructure. And when we looked at this opportunity, we found a really incredible synergy here. We have a company with Tigris that has a big developer motion. They have thousands of customers. These customers range from self-serve customers all the way to some of the most known AI companies that use their product. And we believe that our combination together with the exabyte scale efficient storage that we have and their capabilities, we can actually provide something really differentiated, first and foremost, for the companies and developers using it.

Tigris has done an incredible job of building something from day one in intended for AI, for object storage. So they have example features like snapshots and forking. What this means is if you build an AI application, your agents will do things faster, with lower latency and better. We also believe in the neutrality. We're a company that really doesn't tie you to any specific cloud. You can take your content anywhere. So when we talk about us being a trusted, independent, secure, reliable content foundation layer for the AI era, we believe that's the way to do it.

Brett Huff

That's super helpful. We appreciate it. And then if I could just sneak a follow-up in there. So we've seen some from some other software companies at SMBs. their customers are getting a little bit more price sensitive. That doesn't seem to be the case for you all, but just kind of curious on what you're seeing in the health of your paying user base and what are some of the things getting those paying users over the hump to get on the Dropbox platform? Is it specifically around AI usage? Yes, just what are some of the AI ROI proof points that customers are seeing where it's an easy button to click to get on Dropbox?.

Unknown Speaker

I think I'll start by just giving a little bit of context. Fundamentally, we believe in giving customers the choice. We believe that you can use Dropbox without AI, you could use Dropbox inside Claude or ChatGPT, or you could use AI within Dropbox. So customer choice for us is choice. first and foremost very important. And we believe that our biggest focus is to deliver value. We see this more of as a value equation. The more we provide meaningful time savings, if we provide these SMBs with the ability to build their business or unlock more potential or save time from the mundane tasks, we believe that value translates into monetization.

And that's our biggest focus right now, which is how do we actually tangibly take things that are mundane and take time from these SMBs and say, we've automated a lot of it with AI and as a result they find value. So our focus is actually first and foremost on value creation. Whether they do that within Dropbox or within ChatGPT and Claude, we believe that we're there to support them.

Ross Tennenbaum

Colby, hey, it's Ross. Thanks for joining the call. I just wanted to add, we're not able to discern a macro impact on our business right now. And as Ashraf talked about, for us it's really about execution to our strategy that drives more value for our customers, that allow us to really capitalize on our flywheel, 700 million registered users, 18 plus million paying users, all the sharing, all the monthly actives. And so it's really incumbent on us to deliver more value on our products to drive more conversion, to drive more upsell, to drive more retention, and that's all part of the strategy. But, you know, seeing some of the macro things that you alluded to, we haven't seen that pattern directly impacting our business.

Operator

Thanks, guys. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Rishi Jaluria from RBC. Your question, please.

Rishi Jaluria

Oh, wonderful. Hey Anshul, Sharvil, thanks so much for taking my questions. Maybe I wanna think about 2027 and kind of the preliminary outlook there with all the moving pieces. Appreciate you giving us a little bit of an early look. Maybe can you talk to us about how we should be thinking about contribution from the new AI tooling ramp? What is the shape of that look like? Kind of any new pricing methodology alongside that, just trying to kind of get comfort around some of the building blocks. Obviously, you've turned the corner on stopping declines in growth, but obviously looking for kind of the building blocks to get to future growth from here. So maybe walk us through that, and then I've got a question.

Unknown Speaker

quick follow-up. Of course, and thank you for the question. Maybe I'll start with a little bit of a recap. Last quarter we talked about our three pillars for growth. The first pillar is about continuously working on our foundation, driving that funnel improvement, while also adding AI capabilities within Dropbox to unlock more value. for our customers. The second pillar is about actually unlocking more workflows for specific customer segments that present themselves in an additional product that they can buy. And the third one is unlocking all the infrastructure we built with the APIs for developers and companies. And today where we are is with pillar one, we're on our fifth consecutive quarter of growth, fourth consecutive quarter of customer growth, and we're basically saying we're achieving that consistently.

That's part of one pillar. So as you look at the first pillar, we still need to enable AI for the rest of customers and drive adoption and drive value. And we're launching the first application of the second pillar, as I mentioned, for select customers next week. And we just announced the acquisition of Tigris to kick off our DBX agent cloud. Now, when we look at it, we see that we've planted all the... seeds for a lot of amazing opportunities that we fundamentally believe will drive growth. So as we look at next year, we're not going to speculate early how these bets will pan out. We do believe in them. We do believe they're going to drive growth. But do expect as time goes by, we'll have more concrete data to share. but I believe we have the right bets.

It's the bets we talked about and I believe they'll drive growth for the company. Yeah, and Rishi, hi, it's Ross, I can add a little bit there.

Ross Tennenbaum

because you're probably going to ask about, you know, 2027, we said, Earl, color to think about flat revenue growth. And I just want to give you our philosophy. Number one is a reminder that FormSwift was sunset in Q3, and therefore there'll be $0 of FormSwift in 27. So this year we had three quarters of FormSwift, next year we'll have zero. Also, we're seeing moderating ad spend. FX tailwinds this year and expect that to moderate further next year, so that'll have some headwinds. And then I'll just echo what Ashraf said, we're really excited about the strategy, multi-pillared, multi-vectored approach that gives us confidence that we can execute on growth, and our philosophy is to drive growth and also sustain or improve our margins.

And as we talked about, we're giving more color on margins by talking about adding 150 basis points next year. So we just want to stick to our philosophy of the seeds are planted, we really like where we are, but we don't want to get too excited and carried away on building that in just yet. When we get to February, we'll give you a more formal guidance that's influenced by everything we know at that time.

Rishi Jaluria

All right, very helpful. And then maybe I just, you know, Ashraf, as you think about that third pillar, you know, can you maybe talk a little bit about, you know, I get it's early, obviously a really exciting opportunity, but how should we be thinking about what those conversations that you've been having look like, any potential kind of use cases, you know, and I know you've been talking about this a lot, but I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. You just announced the Aptitude's acquisition this morning. Is that something that fits more broadly into that strategy? Thank you.

Unknown Speaker

Yes, I'll give you a little bit of color, a little bit beyond this specific acquisition and more about the CBX agent cloud that we've been talking about. We spent 20 years building infrastructure that is enabling humans to interact, collaborate, govern, secure their content, apply permissions. and really do that at scale in a multiplayer way. And what we envision in the future is more agents means they need more of that for them to be able to produce results. And so what we believe is that object storage is the start, and what we're really excited about is Tigris's vision and our vision matched. When we kicked off these conversations, we believe that object storage is a start and it's a thing that exists, but where we've taken it is a governance layer of content. So agents don't just store stuff. They're able to know who has permissions to it, who's able to share it, can they share apply security on top of it.

So as you think about the additional layers on top of content, we have a lot of capabilities and APIs that we can add, and it becomes a new flywheel. We think of Tigris, they have thousands of developers. We have APIs that we can offer to these developers and companies. And what it means is more value to these developers by hosting your content in one place. You can now govern it, you can process it, you can edit it, and we believe that that expands the value for Tigris and for ourselves combined.

Operator

All right, very helpful. Thank you, guys. Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Matthew Bullock from Bank of America. Your question, please.

Matthew Bullock

Great, thanks for the question. Maybe just to start on pricing and packaging, would be great to get an updated strategy for the new Dropbox experience you're rolling out and the agent cloud, assuming that the Tigris deal closes. Can you just help us think through how, if successful, those initiatives could influence user growth, ARPU, and whether or not the best metrics to evaluate the health of the business change at all? post acquisition.

Ross Tennenbaum

Yes, hey Matt, it's Ross. So first, new drop-off DBX experience. The way we're looking at it, so we've got that rolled out to about 70,000 teams. We expect to roll that out to the majority teams by the end of Q4. We talked a little bit about what we're seeing in our early metrics. More than 90% are staying in the new experience, so you give the option to roll back. But more than 90% are staying in the experience. And we talked about more than 20% began using AI tokens.

We've also sold AI token packs. So, again, it's early. It's been a limited time in market, but we're really pleased with executing to where we want to go. And the goal there is, I would say, twofold. One is as adoption rises and value is proven, we want to sell AI token packs to our customers. And then two, it's one of the biggest upgrades to the Dropbox platform. we've had in many years, it enriches the platform alongside other things we're doing, like our replay solution, the pillar three stuff, all the strategy stuff, and we think that that helps accrue to retention as well. So better monetization through selling AI tokens, as well as through retention. Those are the big things on the Dropbox experience.

And then on agent cloud, so So this will be a separate flywheel that we're building now, and it'll be a sales-led motion, We already were out in the market for the last couple quarters talking to prospects and customers. We actually were able to build pipeline, get POCs. We even signed up a deal. That was before we acquired Tigris. And our goal there is to now plug Tigris in, which is a rapidly growing company, thousands of customers. It's got some of the large AI platforms like Railway and Fal. it's doing really well and that would be from pricing and packaging is selling object storage, but also we have a vision of adding other services on top to create this file system for agents and that type of offering would have software on top that would come at a higher gross margin. So that's an overview of what we're looking to do with Agent Cloud and the new Dropbox experience.

Matthew Bullock

Really, really helpful. Thank you for laying that all out. And then maybe just one housekeeping question. On the early look at 2027, we're backing out the FormSwift contribution and currency, but could you just help us think through what that implies for kind of an adjusted contribution? constant currency growth rate in terms of the early look pre-Tigris.

Ross Tennenbaum

Yes, I think so. Again, it's an early signal on 2027. And a reminder to everybody, we're not including Tigris acquisition because it hasn't closed. What we said earlier was expect flat growth, and we're talking about margin expansion. And yes, you got the point about FormSwift and FX. I would say that right now, what we're trying to convey is we're feeling really good about the strategy. We delivered five quarters of growth ex-FormSwift. We flipped net new paying users to positive.

We're growing teams again. feel really good about that and we feel really good about this multi-pillar strategy and where we can take it. But just like right now, this morning we launched Agent Cloud, this morning before we launched the new experience, we talked about rolling out replay to a select base of customers. And so we just want to get a few more months down the road into February when we provide formal guidance to be able to bake that in. So we'll provide more detail specific to 2027 when we get there, but for now, know our philosophies are focused on growth and we're focused on sustaining or improving margin. And right now, we're giving an extra 150 basis points of margin next year. Excellent. Thanks very much.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jayden Patel from JPMorgan. Your question, please.

Unknown Speaker

Hey, thanks for taking the question. On Tigris, you mentioned thousands of customers and rapid growth from developers. Can you help us size the business? And then as you bring it into Dropbox's infrastructure, how should we think about the margin and potentially capital intensity of AIGC cloud relative to the core?.

Ross Tennenbaum

Yes, thanks, Jayden. So, I'm just going to be careful about sizing the business just yet, again, because we're limited in what we can say, given we haven't closed it yet, and we will provide more details appropriately when we get to February. And, you know, I'll just reiterate, they are rapidly growing. ARR, of course, revenue, you know, is catching up to the rapid growth of ARR. There are thousands of customers. They do include some of the big AI natives, Railway and Fal, other big customers, lots of AI native customers. So we're very impressed with the solution that they put in market, the developer motion that's targeted AI natives, the differentiated technology, and how it accelerates our Pillar 3 storage infrastructure strategy. and we'll provide more on how to think about growth and ARR when we get to February. On the second part of the question, which was around capital intensity, the other thing we were very impressed is So there's about a little bit over 20 employees and very low burn, very low burn on the business. And, you know, as we look at bringing it in, we do look at investing areas.

We think this is a big market opportunity. We want to capture that market opportunity. So we think about investing more, but even in the aggregate with that additional value. investment, we still think it will be a modest burn. And the good news is all the work that we've done on our infrastructure has freed up pretty significant capacity. So we have capacity just kind of sitting there that we we want to go out and sell. You know, it's like gold in there that everybody wants, and we want to get out there and sell it. And so what I'm trying to say is – We don't have to go out like next year and go procure a bunch of new capacity like a new startup would.

We have significant scale. We have significant excess capacity that we can put to work to support Tigris' growth. Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of George Karasawa from Citi. Your question, please.

George Michael Kurosawa

Okay, great. I'm on for Steve Enders. Thanks for taking the questions here. You know, I wanna dig in on this Pillar 3 strategy. rewind the clock, you know, earlier in this year, this was very, felt very much exploratory at the time. You know, obviously since then, you know, if this acquisition goes through, this will be the largest acquisition you guys have done. So if you could just talk through the work that you guys have done, the signals you've seen that give you the confidence to make this move.

Unknown Speaker

Thanks for the question. So earlier we talked about how we're exploring this. What we did was we actually built pipeline. We talked to customers. We actually built proof of concepts with some of these customers with the capabilities that we have. And just to be clear, Tiger, has a lot more capabilities when it comes to object storage because they built it from scratch for AI-native developers. And so despite not having that, we were able to build a pipeline, we built proof of concepts, we actually got inbound requests from customers, and we got really excited. Obviously, there's... There was a lot of really good signal that got us to believe that it was the right move for us. But also as we started exploring further the Tigris data, what we found is they have built an incredible business with, like we talked about, it's growing. and they have both a developer motion and an upmarket motion where they have large customers as well.

So the synergy here is A, we're able to add APIs to the developer motion and unlock more potential out of infrastructure and APIs we already built, two, They wanted to go more and do more in GTM and upmarket, and we have a team that can help with that. And third, we have capacity, like Ross mentioned, that is sitting there that we freed up from all our efficiency work, and we believe we can unlock that and drive growth with that. And so when we looked at it, It was a match and a really big kind of synergy from what we're seeing and what they're seeing. And we got excited both about the signal we got and looking at the data they have.

George Michael Kurosawa

Okay, that's great color. And then as a follow-up, you know, if we think, and this is a little early, we haven't closed the deal yet, but if we just think about maybe qualitatively, what signals or milestones would you be looking to see, kind of gates that you'd be passing through that would give you confidence to continue investing behind this opportunity versus... versus maybe, you know, where this isn't the right fit for the business going forward? like what are the uh gateposts you guys are looking to see as we progress to next year?.

Unknown Speaker

I think the answer is pretty simple. We want to see growth from this pillar. We believe in it. We believe growth will come. We believe we'll be able to unlock both a self-serve developer motion and an upmarket motion. Sells not just one API, but many. And we believe that that's the signal. We want to see growth come from that pillar.

Great. Thanks for taking the questions.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to Sarah Shuba for any further remarks.

Unknown Speaker

Thanks everyone for joining us today. Looking forward to speaking with you next quarter.

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect. Good day.

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