C3.ai (AI) 2027 會計年度第一季財報電話會議：聯邦訂單激增，成本下降

C3.ai 2027 財年第一季法說會重點聚焦於公司營運轉型的初期進展、大幅削減成本以及強勁的聯邦政府訂單。營收為 5,240 萬美元，自由現金流轉正至 210 萬美元。

核心要點

• 2027 財年第一季營收為 5,240 萬美元。訂閱營收貢獻 4,920 萬美元，佔總營收的 94%。
• 新簽約額 (Bookings) 年增 73%，其中聯邦政府訂單金額年增 138%。C3.ai 本季共簽署 22 份企業合約。
• Non-GAAP 營業損失為 3,620 萬美元，比管理層指引中點高出 830 萬美元。
• 自由現金流從去年同期的負 3,430 萬美元及上一季的負 5,480 萬美元改善至正 210 萬美元。
• C3.ai 年化成本削減達約 1.35 億美元，其中包括全公司精簡約 40% 的員工人數。
• 管理層維持 2027 財年營收指引於 2.1 億至 2.4 億美元，並強調維持持續的營收季成長、自由現金流與 Non-GAAP 獲利能力為其核心目標。

核心財務數據

業務與營運表現

執行長 Thomas Siebel 表示，C3.ai 在轉型的前三個月內重組了銷售、產品與服務團隊。公司還重塑了成本結構，並引進更嚴格的客戶管理、推廣管道開發與營運審查機制。

C3.ai 簽署了 22 份企業合約，客戶包含海德堡水泥 (Heidelberg Materials)、嬌生 (Johnson & Johnson)、福特汽車 (Ford Motor Company)、C-SPAN、豪瑞 (Holcim)、美國國防部、國防後勤局與美國農業部。

聯邦政府業務是主要的成長動力，簽約額年增 138%。管理層表示，在競品替換與全新項目機會的支撐下，聯邦業務的潛在案件管道依然強勁，特別是在國防與情報領域。

公司正將產品策略集中於 C3.ai Agentic AI Platform、C3.ai Generative AI、C3.ai Studio 及 C3.ai Code。管理層將 C3.ai Code 描述為未來的核心成長產品，無需人工編碼即可透過自然語言提示生成企業 AI 應用程式。

公司也正轉向更廣泛的平台模式。現有的企業 AI 應用程式已被拆分為嵌入平台內的特有可複用元件，讓客戶能夠按需組合應用程式。

管理層引述 Forrester Research 的研究指出，C3.ai 在資料建模、代理 (Agent) 開發、應用程式開發工具、治理控制、平台管理和安全認證等領域均名列第一。

管理層指引

管理層預計，隨著 C3.ai 對工程領域進行選擇性投資，第二財季 Non-GAAP 毛利率將回落至 40% 中段水平。

在 2027 財年的剩餘時間裡，管理層預計自由現金流將大致符合其 Non-GAAP 營業損失指引區間。預計自 2027 財年下半年起，部分重組節約的成本將全面實現。

風險與觀察重點

執行力仍是 C3.ai 營運轉型的核心問題。Siebel 表示，公司先前表現不佳反映的是執行問題，而非其產品、市場機會或資產負債表有問題。

達到全年營收預測的高標將需要大幅加速。管理層表示，其核心重點是建立從第三財季開始實現穩定季增所需的銷售管道與銷售團隊，而非盲目追求指引範圍的高標。

近期在工程方面的投資預計將使第二財季的毛利率從 50% 下降至 40% 中段水平。C3.ai 計劃在前線部署工程師上投入更多資源以支援現有客戶，儘管管理層預計中長期來看 C3.ai Code 將減少此類資源需求。

重組已接近完成，但其規模（包括裁員約 40%）使得銷售、產品和服務部門持續強調嚴格的執行力。

分析師問答亮點

• 聯邦市場機會：管理層表示，機會包括取代大型既有廠商以及競爭全新的項目。管理層將部分潛在需求歸因於客戶對既有廠商的產品及商業做法感到不滿。
• 前線部署工程：C3.ai 將增加近期的部署支援投資，以協助現有客戶實現預期回報。管理層認為，隨著時間推移，透過 C3.ai Code 的自動化可以抵消部分人力需求。
• C3.ai Code 採用情況：該產品仍處於市場推廣初期。管理層表示，客戶可以從較小規模的部署開始並隨著時間擴展，無需在一開始就購買數百萬美元的產品。
• 平台策略：管理層證實 C3.ai 正朝向更以平台為導向的模式發展，其中可複用元件可以組裝成預測性維護、需求預測與供應鏈最佳化等應用程式。
• 成長優先事項：相較於不惜代價達成 2027 財年指引高標，管理層將持續的營收季成長、自由現金流以及最終實現 Non-GAAP 獲利能力視為優先事項。

法說會完整逐字稿

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

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.

分析師問答

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.