C3.ai (AI) Fiscal Q1 2027 Earnings Call: Federal Bookings Surge, Costs Fall

C3.ai’s fiscal Q1 2027 earnings call centered on early progress in its turnaround, substantial cost reductions and stronger federal bookings. Revenue was $52.4 million, while free cash flow turned positive at $2.1 million.

Key Takeaways

• Fiscal Q1 2027 revenue was $52.4 million. Subscription revenue contributed $49.2 million, or 94% of total revenue.
• Bookings increased 73%, while federal bookings rose 138% year over year. C3.ai closed 22 enterprise agreements during the quarter.
• Non-GAAP operating loss was $36.2 million, $8.3 million better than the midpoint of management’s guidance.
• Free cash flow improved to positive $2.1 million from negative $34.3 million a year earlier and negative $54.8 million in the prior quarter.
• C3.ai achieved approximately $135 million in annualized cost savings, including a roughly 40% headcount reduction across the organization.
• Management maintained fiscal 2027 revenue guidance of $210 million to $240 million and emphasized consistent quarter-over-quarter growth, free cash flow and non-GAAP profitability as its core objectives.

Core Financial Data

Business and Operating Performance

CEO Thomas Siebel said C3.ai had restructured its sales, product and services organizations during the first three months of the turnaround. The company also reset its cost structure and introduced tighter account management, pipeline development and operating reviews.

C3.ai signed 22 enterprise agreements, including agreements with Heidelberg Materials, Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor Company, C-SPAN, Holcim, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Defense Logistics Agency and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Federal business was a major growth driver, with bookings up 138% year over year. Management said the federal pipeline remained strong, supported by both competitive replacements and greenfield opportunities, particularly in defense and intelligence.

The company is concentrating its product strategy on the C3.ai Agentic AI Platform, C3.ai Generative AI, C3.ai Studio and C3.ai Code. Management described C3.ai Code as a central future growth product that can generate enterprise AI applications from natural-language prompts without manual coding.

The company is also shifting toward a broader platform model. Existing enterprise AI applications have been divided into reusable components embedded within the platform, allowing customers to assemble applications on demand.

Management cited a Forrester Research study that ranked C3.ai first across categories including data modeling, agent development, application development tools, governance controls, platform management and security certification.

Management Guidance

Management expects fiscal Q2 non-GAAP gross margin to moderate to the mid-40% range as C3.ai makes selective investments in engineering.

For the remainder of fiscal 2027, management expects free cash flow to broadly align with its non-GAAP operating-loss guidance range. Some restructuring savings are expected to be fully realized starting in the second half of fiscal 2027.

Risks and Watchpoints

Execution remains the central issue in C3.ai’s turnaround. Siebel said the company’s prior underperformance reflected execution rather than its products, market opportunity or balance sheet.

Reaching the upper end of the full-year revenue range would require a significant acceleration. Management said its primary focus is building the pipeline and sales organization needed to deliver consistent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth from fiscal Q3 onward, rather than specifically targeting the top of the guidance range.

Near-term engineering investment is expected to reduce gross margin from 50% to the mid-40% range in fiscal Q2. C3.ai plans to invest more in forward-deployed engineers to support existing customers, although management expects C3.ai Code to reduce this resource requirement over the medium to long term.

The restructuring is nearly complete, but its scale—including an approximately 40% workforce reduction—places continued emphasis on disciplined execution across sales, products and services.

Analyst Q&A Highlights

• Federal opportunity: Management said opportunities include replacing a large incumbent as well as competing for greenfield projects. It attributed part of the pipeline to customer dissatisfaction with the incumbent’s product and business practices.
• Forward-deployed engineering: C3.ai will increase near-term investment in deployment support to help existing customers achieve expected returns. Management believes automation through C3.ai Code can offset some of these staffing needs over time.
• C3.ai Code adoption: The product remains in the early stages of marketing. Management said customers can begin with smaller deployments and expand over time, rather than requiring an initial multimillion-dollar purchase.
• Platform strategy: Management confirmed that C3.ai is moving toward a more platform-oriented model in which reusable components can be assembled into applications such as predictive maintenance, demand forecasting and supply-chain optimization.
• Growth priorities: Management prioritized sustained sequential revenue growth, free cash flow and eventual non-GAAP profitability over reaching the high end of fiscal 2027 guidance at any cost.

Full Earnings Call Transcript

Complete Earnings Call Transcript

Management Remarks

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the C3.ai Fiscal First Quarter 2027 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. And now I'd like to hand the call over to today's host, Amit Berry. Please go ahead.

Amit Berry

Good afternoon and welcome to C3.ai's earnings call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027, which ended on July 31, 2026. My name is Amit Berry and I lead Investor Relations at C3.ai. With me on the call today are Thomas Siebel, Chief Executive Officer, and Hitesh Lath, Chief Financial Officer.

After the market closed today, we issued a press release with details regarding our first quarter results, which can be accessed through the Investor Relations section on our website at ir.c3.ai. This call is being webcast, and a replay will be available on our IR website following the conclusion of the call.

During today's call, we will make statements related to our business that may be considered forward-looking under federal securities laws. These statements reflect our views only as of today and should not be considered representative of our views as of any subsequent date. We disclaim any obligation to update forward-looking statements or outlook.

These statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations. For a further discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our filings with the SEC. All figures will be discussed on a non-GAAP basis unless otherwise noted.

Also, during today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures to the extent reasonably available is included in our press release. Finally, at times in our prepared remarks, in response to your questions, we may discuss metrics that are incremental to our usual presentation to give greater insight into the dynamics of our business or our quarterly results. We advise that we may or may not continue to provide this additional detail in the future.

And with that, let me turn the call over to Tom.

Thomas Siebel

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Three months ago, I returned as Chief Executive Officer with a mandate to turn this company around. I returned as CEO because the company was candidly underperforming despite every advantage. The product offerings are exceptional. The market is huge and rapidly growing and the balance sheet is rock solid. None of that was the problem. The problem was execution. And 1 quarter into the turnaround, I believe the company is on track.

In the past 3 months, we have restored fundamental management discipline to this business. We completely restructured the company. We restructured sales. We restructured products. We restructured services. We reset the cost structure, driving massive costs out of the business and implemented rigorous cost controls. We reinstated the fundamental management practices necessary to run a business, clear ownership, hard deadlines, weekly reviews.

We rebuilt the selling motion around disciplined account management and pipeline development rather than heroics. We now have experienced executives in charge of every aspect of the business in sales, products and services, and finance and legal. This is the leadership team that will execute the turnaround. We refocused the product offerings on our Agentic AI stack, our greatest technical strength, and the largest and most rapidly growing segment of the market.

And this quarter showed meaningful progress. We came in guidance, bookings grew at 73%, and we took real costs out of the business to narrow our operating loss and generate free cash flow in the quarter. We closed 22 enterprise agreements in the quarter, including with Heidelberg Materials, Johnson & Johnson, Ford Motor Company, C-SPAN, Holcim, the U.S. Department of Defense, the Defense Logistics Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Federal business was particularly strong, with federal bookings growing 138% year over year. These results are early evidence that the turnaround is taking hold.

The C3.ai Agentic AI platform remains the starting point of every sales engagement. It reflects over 15 years of software development in which we invested in excess of $3 billion. Last month, Forrester Research released a very significant study in which they evaluated the strengths of all the AI platform providers. And in that evaluation, they ranked C3.ai at the top of the stack.

Forrester ranked the C3.ai platform #1 in data modeling, #1 in agent development, #1 in application development tools, #1 in cohesivity, experience, #1 in governance controls, #1 in platform management, #1 in security certification, and #1 in supporting services and offerings. Other companies evaluated in the study include a who's who in software, Palantir, Google, Databricks, and 11 others. So this study is a pretty significant benchmark and really a hallmark of the technology of achievement of C3.ai in the marketplace over the last 15 years.

Our primary offerings today include the C3.ai Agentic AI Platform, C3.ai Generative AI, C3.ai Studio, and more broadly, importantly, C3.ai Code. The C3.ai Studio is our control plane for developing and operating large-scale enterprise AI applications. And C3.ai Code is our Agentic AI application builder that turns a natural language prompt into a working enterprise AI application in minutes to hours.

C3.ai Code will be at the vanguard of our growth engine going forward. This product is absolutely remarkable, and I encourage you to go onto the web, take a look at it, and take it for a try. As an example of the power of C3.ai Code, you can take a 1-hour RFP or you can take a 6-inch thick product specification. You can provide it to C3.ai Code. It assembles the data. It does the data aggregation. It autonomously builds the ontology. It develops the pipeline.

It builds machine learning models. It designs the user interface, and it autonomously delivers a working enterprise AI application without writing 1 line of manual code. This is really remarkable and you have to see it to believe it. C3.ai Code, broader platform adoption, federal systems growth, and sales discipline. At the heart of our growth engine going forward.

In closing, let me be clear about where we are going. Our priorities are clear. They are measured. The turnaround is on track. We have a well-designed plan, and this is all about execution. Return the company to quarter-over-quarter consistent revenue growth. Attain free cash flow from operations, and reach non-GAAP profitability.

Every objective in this company ties to those goals every day, every week, every month. We're not going to ask the market to underwrite a story. Our plan is to deliver results quickly, quarter over quarter, and let those results speak for themselves. And with that, let me turn the call over to Hitesh Lath to talk about the specific financial results of the quarter.

Hitesh Lath

Thank you, Tom. Total revenue for the quarter was $52.4 million. Subscription revenue was $49.2 million, representing 94% of total revenue. Professional services revenue was $3.2 million, of which $1.8 million was revenue from prioritized engineering services, or PES. Our subscription and PES revenue combined was $50.9 million and accounted for 97% of total revenue. Non-GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $26.1 million and non-GAAP gross margin improved sequentially from 37% last quarter to 50%, primarily due to cost reduction actions we've taken over the last few months.

Next quarter, as we make selective investments in engineering organization, we expect a non-GAAP gross margin to moderate to mid-40s. Non-GAAP operating loss for the quarter was $36.2 million. This was $8.3 million better than the midpoint of our guidance. Non-GAAP net loss for the quarter improved to $30.7 million and 20 cents per share. Our non-GAAP expenses for the quarter were $88.5 million. This reflects a reduction of almost $40 million as compared to the actual non-GAAP expenses of $128.1 million same quarter last year, and a reduction of over $17 million as compared to the last quarter.

Free cash flow for the quarter was positive $2.1 million as compared to negative $34.3 million same quarter last year and negative $54.8 million last quarter. This was due to a significant reduction in our quarterly cash expenses as well as strong collections. We continue to be very well capitalized and close the quarter with $651.1 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities.

Quick update on our restructuring plan. Our restructuring is almost complete and we have been able to achieve annualized cost savings of approximately $135 million across our business. This includes cost savings from approximately 40% headcount reduction across all organizations, as well as from reduction in non-employee expenses. As we said on the last quarter's earnings call, some of the cost savings will be fully realized starting with the second half of fiscal year 2027.

With a substantially improved cost structure, reorganized and focused sales services and products organizations, we are well positioned to achieve revenue growth, materially improve our operating efficiency and free cash flow, and position the company for long-term success. Now, I'll move on to our guidance for second quarter and fiscal year 2027.

Our revenue guidance for second quarter of fiscal year 2027 is $51 million to $55 million. Our guidance for non-GAAP loss from operations for second quarter is $34.5 million to $42.5 million. Our revenue guidance for fiscal year 2027 is $210 million to $240 million. Our guidance for non-GAAP loss from operations for fiscal year 2027 is $123 million to $155 million. For the remainder of fiscal year 2027, we expect our free cash flow to broadly align with a guidance range for non-GAAP loss from operations. Now I'd like to turn the call over to the operator to begin the Q&A session.

Operator

Certainly. Our first question for today comes from the line of Patrick Walravens from Citizens. Your question please.

Question-and-Answer Session

Patrick Walravens

Tom, congratulations on the beginning of the turnaround here. With federal up 138%, I think I have to start with that, which is, what was sort of the biggest thing that you won? How did you win it? And what does the pipeline look like for more things like that in federal?

Thomas Siebel

The pipeline in federal looks very good and I would say there's an incumbent there that has a large market share with very high levels of dissatisfaction, both with their product and their business practices. So a lot of that dissatisfaction is spinning off now in opportunities for us. So, in addition, I mean, you know, the government's spending a lot of money on these types of technologies, particularly in the intelligence and the defense sectors.

I think the defense budget's about to go from $1 billion to $1.5 billion like this month, and our next month, so there's, I'm sorry, $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. Thank you. So there are a lot of spending there, and we're getting a lot of traction. Thank you.

Patrick Walravens

Great, and then as a follow-up, Tom and Hitesh, you mentioned this in your remarks too. So you're going to invest more in a forward-deployed engineering organization. What does that mean for C3.ai? And did you have forward-deployed engineers before? And if not, what are you doing differently here?

Thomas Siebel

We've always had forward-deployed engineers, I think going back to about 2014, I could be wrong by a year or 2. We've always had that function. And we need to be absolutely sure that each and every 1 of our satisfied customers are achieving what they need to achieve. And so we're going to increase our investment in people to help them with these deployments.

And I think that investment in people is going to be offset in the medium run by this C3.ai Code product that you just have to see, where it's doing all of these data aggregation, pipeline building, machine learning development, user interface, without any programmers. It is way cool. So that's going to mitigate the need for forward-deployed engineers in the medium and long run. But in the near term, we're going to overinvest in existing customers to ensure they continue to realize the returns they're looking for.

Patrick Walravens

All right, great, thank you. We did see it by the way, we came in and did a demo and it was remarkable, that was a surprise. Six months ago, so I'm sure it's evolved a lot since then, but it was really pretty amazing. Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of an Unknown Analyst from UBS. Your question please.

Unknown Analyst

I guess maybe just to follow up on the Fed opportunity, I'm curious how much of that opportunity is in sort of displacing incumbents like you mentioned versus sort of greenfield work? And then what gives you confidence that you can displace that incumbent or those incumbents successfully?

Thomas Siebel

Well, we've been doing it for a while and I think it accelerated last quarter. I think they're a fine company, they make a good product, but you know, there's people who want to replace them and that creates an opportunity for us, I'd say. And then there's, you know, lots of greenfield opportunity where we, you know, compete with them and win. So that federal just has been and remains a really good business sector for us.

Unknown Analyst

Got it. And just 1 quick follow-up. If we think about the high end of the full year guide does imply a pretty steep acceleration if you hit that. And I guess like my question is fundamentally what needs to happen, what needs to go right for you to hit that high end of the guide? And I guess like what gives you, you know, what gives you confidence that could happen?

Thomas Siebel

You know, I'll be honest with you. I'm less interested in hitting the high end of that guide that I am making sure that we built the pipeline and we have the sales organization in place to demonstrate consistent quarter-over-quarter revenue growth, you know, from, you know, Q3 on into perpetuity.

And I think that if we're able to demonstrate consistent revenue growth, if we ever get to the point where we're running free cash flow operations and get the company to non-GAAP profitability, I think it's highly likely this company will not be trading at a revenue multiple of like 3.5x, it'll be trading at a revenue multiple of 10x, 15x, 20x, or 25x, and I think that will bode well for our investors.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Michael Latimore from Northland Capital Markets. Your question, please.

Mike Latimore

Yes, the C3.ai Code obviously sounds really interesting. Is that a meaningful part of the pipeline? Are you still kind of in early stages of marketing that?

Thomas Siebel

Honestly, Mike, we're in the early stages of marketing that, but hold on to your socks because it doesn't have to be a multi-million dollar acquisition. And so people could start small and then grow and grow. The initial customers who are using it just love it.

And I used it here to replace a pretty substantial piece of enterprise software that we have in place that will remain unnamed. And these guys, and we pay a lot of money for this application. It's in the kind of HR management space. And these guys built an application in 1 day that replaces an enterprise application in 1 day. I mean, it's unbelievable.

Mike Latimore

Yes, that was great. And I mean, in the past, you've sort of promoted selling enterprise AI applications. It feels like you're maybe moving more towards a little bit of a platform strategy here, or is that the wrong interpretation?

Thomas Siebel

I think you nailed it, Mike, and we weren't that explicit about it. So in the past, we have sold the AI platform, and then we have used the AI platform to build enterprise AI applications, which are kind of big applications that do things like predictive maintenance or demand forecasting or fraud detection or supply chain optimization.

Going forward, all these applications have been broken down into their atomic particles. And atomic particles are, if you will, are embedded in the AI platform. And if you want to build 1 of these applications for predictive maintenance for aircraft or process optimization in oil refining, whatever it might be, you could assemble those atomic particles in real time that become that application.

So it's not, they're just there and there are thousands of those elements that kind of reassemble on demand either because you asked them to do it or you did it through C3.ai Code. So it is, what's going forward is a little bit different. It's a good, you know, insightful what you caught there.

Mike Latimore

Great, thanks. And then just last on customer concentration, any kind of metric you can provide there? Do you have any customer, you know, over 5% or over 10% of revenue or, you know, what are your top 10 customers or percent, anything like that?

Hitesh Lath

Yes, Mike, not a meaningful change from before. We will disclose that to the extent appropriate in our 10-Q, which will be out in a few days. I don't think there's any 1 customer.

Operator

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

Thomas Siebel

Thank you everybody for your time. We appreciate it and keep your eye on the ball. We're very focused here. All of these executives have their eye on the ball. I think if they continue to execute their plans as they have been, this will bode well for C3.ai investors and that's the game we're playing.

Operator

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