Freshworks Inc. Q3 FY2025 Earnings Call

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Freshworks Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Brian Lan, Director of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, and welcome to Freshworks Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Dennis Woodside, Freshworks' Chief Executive Officer and President; and Tyler Sloat, Freshworks' Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer. The primary purpose of today's call is to provide you with information regarding our third quarter 2025 performance and our financial outlook for our fourth quarter and full year 2025. Some of our discussion and responses to your questions may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on our management's beliefs about our business and industry, including our financial expectations and estimates, uncertainties in the macroeconomic environment in which we operate and market volatility, and certain other assumptions made by the company, all of which are subject to change. These statements are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Such risks include, but are not limited to, our ability to sustain our growth, to innovate, to reach our long-term revenue goals, to meet customer demand, and to control costs and improve operating efficiency. For a discussion of additional material risks and other important factors that could affect our results, please refer to today's earnings release, our most recently filed Form 10-K, and other periodic filings with the SEC. Freshworks assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances that may arise after the date of this call, except as required by law. During the course of today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures for historical periods are included in our earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations website at ir.freshworks.com. I'd encourage you to visit our Investor Relations site to access our earnings release, supplemental earnings slides, periodic SEC reports, and a replay of today's call or to learn more about Freshworks. And with that, let me turn it over to Dennis.

Thank you, Brian. Freshworks delivered an outstanding Q3, marking the third consecutive quarter this year that we surpassed our estimates across growth and profitability metrics. We grew Q3 revenue 15% year-over-year to $215.1 million on both an as-reported and constant currency basis, approximately 3 points above the high end of our previously issued estimates. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 21%, 5 points above our estimate. Our free cash flow margin was 27%, and we added a fifth straight quarter of Rule of 40 plus. We ended the quarter with nearly 75,000 customers, including new logos such as global auto manufacturer, Stellantis; multinational bank, Societe Generale; the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board; and Travis Perkins plc, the U.K.'s leading distributor of building materials. Our positive results also reflect significant expansion deals with existing customers like Wiley, The Access Group, and iRhythm Technologies. In Q3, we saw a more than 40% year-over-year increase in the number of new and expansion deals with greater than $50,000 in ARR. Our strategy has focused on 3 key growth drivers: investing in Employee Experience, delivering AI capabilities across our products, and accelerating adoption and driving continued expansion in customer experience. At our Investor Day in September, we outlined our path to $1.3 billion in ARR in the next 3 years, and we continue to make progress towards our goal of ESM, AI, and ITAM, each generating over $100 million in ARR. Before we dive into the results, I want to speak to the transformative AI opportunity ahead for Freshworks. We have over 50 AI-driven applications in the hands of customers right now, and the direct monetization of these products demonstrates that we are driving incremental growth and that customers are realizing tangible outcomes from our AI. The headline here is that businesses need the right foundation, workflow, data, and security that all work together, and that's what we provide. Companies will continue to rely on us because we have the operational context, data connections, and governance needed to manage full-service functions like customer support and IT service at scale. Security, privacy, and compliance are already built into our architecture. That's what makes our AI enterprise-ready compared to general-purpose AI. Employee Experience continues to lead in durable growth, achieving over $480 million in ARR. That represents 24% year-over-year growth on an as-reported basis and 23% year-over-year growth on a constant currency basis, an acceleration from Q2. Three primary growth drivers that contributed to these results include expansion into departments outside of IT, continued growth upmarket, and deepening our foothold in IT asset management with Device42. Enterprise service management continues to be an important expansion lever as customers increasingly use Freshservice in areas of their business outside of IT. Our ESM solution, Freshservice for Business Teams has doubled its annual recurring revenue in the past year and exceeded $35 million in ARR in Q3. Customers like Databricks, RingCentral, and Qualcomm are using our ESM offering to automate workflows and deliver more personalized Employee Experiences at scale. As of Q3, 1 in every 4 eligible Freshservice customers are using Freshservice for business teams. To meet this surging customer demand, today, we announced that we are expanding enterprise service management access by making Freshservice for Business Teams available as an independent product for non-IT functions. With a stand-alone product, we are no longer limited to using IT as our entry point, and we can now sell directly to HR, finance, facilities, and legal, even if an organization is already locked into another ITSM tool. Second, we continue to move upmarket with midsized and enterprise customers. In Q3, ARR from customers who spend more than $100,000 with us grew 25% year-over-year. The steady flow of new product innovations like employee journeys, our AI-powered onboarding and offboarding capability, and increased adoption of business teams contributed to the momentum of these larger customers. Freshworks is positioned as a clear alternative to legacy players, and we continue to displace incumbents. In Q3, we delivered our highest ITSM competitive win rates in 2 years as customers selected Freshservice for its ease of use, fast deployment, and lower total cost of ownership. Freshworks has an established track record in ITSM. Mid-market and enterprise organizations want speed and simplicity, and Freshworks delivers. One example is HOLT CAT, the largest U.S. dealer of Caterpillar equipment, who saw significant improvement in efficiency and productivity as agents were able to handle nearly 10,000 tickets within 6 months and bring their average ticket resolution time to under 5 hours. The third growth lever in Employee Experience is our advanced IT asset management offering expansion with Device42. In Q3, we closed our biggest Device42 new deal to date with the largest U.S.-based sporting goods retailer. Device42's deep integration with Freshservice and its differentiated discovery engine made it the clear choice for enterprises that are seeking real-time visibility and control. The momentum is evident as half of our top 10 largest deals in the quarter included a Device42 component. In addition to these 3 growth drivers, we're deepening our presence across key verticals. For example, in Q3, we doubled our law firm customer count reaching over 1,000. In sports, we want to congratulate the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of several Major League Baseball teams that rely on Freshservice on winning back-to-back World Series, and also the McLaren Formula 1 team for winning back-to-back constructors championships. Finally, we continue to drive greater efficiency and focus on our go-to-market motion. On the leadership front, we welcomed Enrique Ortegon as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Americas Field Sales. Enrique's experience leading high-performing sales organizations will help sharpen our execution, accelerate growth, and strengthen our go-to-market discipline across North and South America. Now let's talk about our AI tailwind. Freddy AI continues to be a growth driver and expansion opportunity across Employee Experience and Customer Experience and is delivering exceptional results for thousands of customers who are seeing tangible business value and returns quickly after adoption. As we stated before, we believe this can be a $100 million stand-alone revenue stream over the next 3 years. AI is becoming a core productivity engine for every team, not just for IT. And here's why Freshworks is winning. Our products sit where real work happens in customer support, IT, HR, and operations, helping businesses automate tasks, resolve issues faster, and deliver better experiences with less effort. Our AI is deeply embedded in how our customers work every day. It's writing replies, classifying tickets, generating insights, and increasingly taking action on behalf of employees and customers. The results speak for themselves. AI ARR has doubled year-over-year. Customers are now using Freddy AI to resolve millions of problems every week. And our new AI agents are performing real work across industries from handling returns in e-commerce to managing employee requests in HR. As a testament to our AI momentum, we have seen AI Agent usage expand more than sixfold in the past 7 months, while our existing AI Copilot solutions continue to double in usage year-over-year. Freddy Copilot's ARR grew 160% year-over-year and was included in over 60% of our new customer deals over $30,000, a 5-point increase from the prior quarter. We also saw double-digit attach rates again for new SMB customers in Q3. The number of customers using Copilot grew significantly, too, by over 130% year-over-year. Travis Perkins plc upgraded from legacy complexities to service efficiency with Freshservice and Freddy AI Copilot. Travis Perkins is now able to provide best-in-class IT service management to 17,000 employees across 1,400 locations while improving operational execution, optimizing costs, and increasing productivity for HR and IT teams. These Freddy Copilot customers stick with us. Their net retention rate is 112% in Q3 for both CX and EX, higher than our overall base and a tangible sign that AI is driving deeper engagement and long-term value. We believe this tailwind will continue to strengthen our growth trajectory. The number of Freddy AI Agent sessions grew over 70% in Q3, and we have seen 650,000 sessions per month since launch. Freddy AI Agent deflected more than 50% of tickets for CX and EX customers. Those who had early access to Agentic workflows that we launched in June are seeing their average deflection rate jump to 65%, with a handful of customers seeing 80% of service issues resolved by AI Agent. We're seeing positive feedback from customers who have had early access in Q3 to several products we announced at our June refresh event. For example, GAIL's Bakery, a midsized U.K. cafe chain with over 170 locations, used Freddy AI Agent Studio for Freshdesk to build AI agents. These Freddy AI agents now handle 1,000 inquiries per month to deflect more than 1/3 of the total volume. Employees are freed from repetitive work and can dedicate more time to more complex customer cases like allergies, ingredients, or complaints that require personal care. Next week, we'll share new product announcements across our entire portfolio at Refresh North America on November 13 in San Francisco and at our Virtual Summit on November 18. This includes new vertical Agentic AI agents that bring our growth strategy to life, demonstrating how we're executing through AI innovation that expands our addressable market and deepens customer value. Our third imperative, Customer Experience, grew to over $390 million in ARR, representing 8% growth year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 7% on a constant currency basis. Q3 growth was driven by deeper product adoption and customer sentiment that Freshdesk is easier to implement and use than the legacy alternatives. To build momentum, we refocused our CX products and we'll be announcing a new unified experience at Refresh next week, a single workspace that consolidates Freshdesk, Freshchat, and all of our Freddy AI products for customer support teams. This hub centralizes all conversations, context, and tools to help agents resolve inquiries and get work done more efficiently. This will be a force multiplier for frontline support teams, helping them improve the speed and quality of customer service. Freddy AI continues to be an expansion driver for CX with measurable impact for customers using Freddy AI agents in Freshdesk. For example, BirdsEye, a leading German outdoor retailer, uses Freddy AI agents to automatically retrieve real-time order data and provide status updates, return labels, and invoices to customers in seconds. This has significantly reduced ticket volume and improved response times, driving higher satisfaction and greater trust in the Birds Eye brand. The potential of Agentic workflows is tremendous. Traditionally, building AI agents like this took months, designing customer support workflows, training data, and endless testing. Our prebuilt AI agents help our customers deploy on day 1 to handle tasks like expediting orders, processing returns, or checking delivery status. That means faster setup, faster results, and a better customer experience from the start. While SMB and commercial segments continue to turn to Freshdesk, we are also seeing larger implementations with midsized and enterprise organizations like the University of Pennsylvania, which consolidated its finance support into a single hub with Freshworks. In just 6 months, the university processed more than 30,000 service tickets, streamlining workflows and improving stakeholder satisfaction. We believe customers of all sizes continue to choose Freshworks CX solutions for their AI-driven efficiency and uncomplicated customer support experience. Around the world, businesses are choosing software that delivers real outcomes, speed, simplicity, and measurable ROI, and that's exactly where we stand out. Our enterprise-grade products deliver faster time to value and lower total cost of ownership, aligning perfectly with what today's buyers demand. With solid momentum behind us, we're leaning into the global opportunity ahead to expand our pipeline, acquire new customers, and fuel durable growth. Thank you to our customers, partners, employees and shareholders for your ongoing support. Now let me turn it over to Tyler to go through the operational and financial details.

Thanks, Dennis, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call and via webcast today. We are very pleased that we continued our streak of outperforming across both growth and profitability during the third quarter. We once again exceeded our revenue, non-GAAP operating income, and adjusted free cash flow expectations. This strong overperformance reflects the continued demand for our AI-powered and uncomplicated Employee Experience and Customer Experience solutions. Our consistent execution and financial discipline position us well to capture the significant long-term opportunities ahead. For our call today, I'll cover the Q3 2025 financial results, provide background on the key metrics, and close with our forward-looking commentary and updated expectations for Q4 and the full year 2025. As a reminder, most of our discussion will be focused on non-GAAP financial results, which exclude the impact of stock-based compensation expenses, restructuring charges, and other adjustments. We will also talk about our adjusted free cash flow, which excludes the cash outlay related to restructuring costs. To provide greater transparency into our underlying business performance, we will also include constant currency comparisons throughout today's call. Starting with the income statement. Q3 total revenue increased to $215.1 million, growing 15% year-over-year on both an as-reported and constant currency basis. Revenue outperformance includes a one-time $1 million contribution coming from our on-premise Device42 business. Professional Services revenue modestly declined quarter-over-quarter to just over $2 million, consistent with our ongoing shift in leveraging our partner network as we scale our business. In 2025, we saw partner involvement expand significantly across our largest deals. Partners helped to lead implementations for over half of our ARR deals greater than $50,000, a notable increase from last year, underscoring the success of our robust and growing partner ecosystem. Our Employee Experience business accelerated in Q3, growing to over $480 million in ARR, representing growth of 24% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 23% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. Our faster growth was driven by strength across our entire Employee Experience portfolio as we saw positive momentum in not only IT Service Management, but also meaningful progress in Enterprise Service Management, advanced IT asset management, and AI, each of which we believe can eventually be $100 million ARR businesses. Our Customer Experience business increased to over $390 million in ARR, reflecting growth of 8% on an as-reported basis and 7% year-over-year on a constant currency basis. We continue to see healthy and predictable demand for our Freshdesk products. Moving to margins. We maintained a non-GAAP gross margin of 86% in Q3 as we continue to scale our business efficiently. Our non-GAAP operating income for Q3 came in at $45.2 million, representing a non-GAAP operating margin of 21% and ahead of our prior expectations, reflecting our continued top-line momentum and effective cost management. Moving to operating metrics. Our net dollar retention came in at 105% on an as-reported basis and 104% on a constant currency basis, both in line with our expectations. Just like last quarter, Device42 represented a small drag of 60 basis points to net dollar retention. We expect Device42 retention to improve gradually as we continue to scale the business with our ITSM offering. Looking ahead, we estimate net dollar retention of approximately 105% on an as-reported basis and 104% on a constant currency basis for Q4. As of the end of Q3, the number of customers contributing more than $5,000 in ARR grew 9% year-over-year on both an as-reported and constant currency basis to 24,377 customers. This customer cohort continues to represent over 90% of our ARR. For our larger customer cohort, as of the end of Q3, the number of customers contributing more than $50,000 in ARR grew 20% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 19% on a constant currency basis to 3,612 customers. This cohort represents over 50% of our ARR if we have continued to move upmarket successfully. For total customers, we added over 260 net new customers in the quarter and have nearly 75,000 customers as of the end of September 30. Given the continued success of our upmarket strategy and our focus on mid-market and enterprise customers, we believe total customer count is no longer a meaningful indicator of our performance. Starting with the release of Q1 results next year, we will discontinue reporting this metric on a quarterly basis and shift our focus to larger customer measures that better reflect how we manage the business and its trajectory. Now let's turn to calculated billings, balance sheet, and cash items. Our calculated billings grew to $224 million in Q3, representing growth of 14% year-over-year on both an as-reported and constant currency basis, matching our prior expectation on an as-reported basis and coming in ahead of our constant currency forecast of 13%. Looking ahead to Q4 2025, our initial estimate for calculated billings growth is 17.5% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 14% on a constant currency basis. For the full year 2025, we expect calculated billings growth to be approximately 16% year-over-year on an as-reported basis and 14% on a constant currency basis, both of which are in line with our expectations from last quarter. Moving to our cash items. We generated $57.2 million in adjusted free cash flow in Q3, driven by continued operational discipline and strong collections. This resulted in an adjusted free cash flow margin of 27%, which represents an over 5 percentage point improvement year-over-year. For the full year 2025, we now expect to generate approximately $222 million of adjusted free cash flow with approximately $55 million in Q4. As a reminder, we successfully completed our inaugural $400 million share repurchase program after buying back an additional 12 million shares in Q3 at an average price of $13.28 per share. In total, we repurchased approximately 27.9 million shares at an average price of $14.35. We continue to manage and offset share count dilution by net settling vested equity amounts. During Q3, we used approximately $15 million for that purpose. This activity is reflected in our financing activities and is excluded from our adjusted free cash flow calculations. Looking ahead, we will continue to net settle vested equity amounts and expect Q4 cash usage of approximately $12 million at current stock price levels. For the full year, we expect to use approximately $58 million to net settle vested equity amounts. We ended the quarter with cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities of approximately $813 million. Turning to our share count as of September 30, 2025, we had approximately 309 million fully diluted shares, which represents a decrease of 7% year-over-year. The fully diluted calculation includes 282 million basic shares outstanding, which represents a decrease compared to both the prior year and quarter. It also includes 24.5 million shares related to unvested RSUs and PRSUs and over 2 million shares related to outstanding options. We remain committed to thoughtfully managing our share count dilution over time. Now on to our forward-looking estimates. For the fourth quarter of 2025, we expect revenue to be in the range of $217 million to $220 million, growing 12% to 13% year-over-year. Adjusting for constant currency using FX rates from Q4 of last year, this reflects growth of 11% to 13% year-over-year. Non-GAAP income from operations is expected to be in the range of $30.6 million to $32.6 million, and non-GAAP net income per share is expected to be in the range of $0.10 to $0.12, assuming weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 284.5 million shares. For the full year 2025, we expect revenue to be in the range of $833.1 million to $836.1 million, growing approximately 16% year-over-year on both an as-reported and constant currency basis. Non-GAAP income from operations is expected to be in the range of $167 million to $169 million, and non-GAAP net income per share is expected to be in the range of $0.62 to $0.64, assuming weighted average shares outstanding of approximately 293.9 million shares. Our financial outlook is based on a few assumptions that we would like to call out. First, our forward-looking estimates are based on FX rates as of October 31, 2025, and do not take into account any impact from currency moves. As a reminder, we had a $1 million revenue benefit in Q3 related to a large Device42 deal that we would not expect to repeat in Q4. Secondly, given our strong operating and go-to-market execution this year, we are strategically reinvesting a portion of our earnings outperformance to further build on that momentum. As such, we anticipate a one-time increase in spending during Q4 to expand our pipeline and drive customer acquisition with a modest corresponding impact on operating margins. These planned investments are reflected in our financial outlook and position us well for continued growth. Looking beyond Q4, we are reaffirming the long-term model we outlined at our Investor Day in September. Based on our current forecast, we continue to expect full year 2026 revenue growth of 13% to 14%, and we remain on track to achieve GAAP profitability by the end of the year. As a reminder, the fourth quarter has historically been our largest bookings quarter and a good indicator for us. So we will follow our typical cadence of providing a more detailed outlook for 2026 on our next earnings call. With that said, let me provide some additional color on our operating margin linearity for the full fiscal year 2026. We anticipate that our Q1 2026 operating margin will be slightly better than Q4 2025 and represent the low point for next year. This is driven by the strategic decision to move the timing of our annual merit increase process from April to January, as well as the reset of U.S. payroll taxes and the start of new benefit plans. Following this Q1 low point, we project a subsequent linear ramp-up throughout the remainder of fiscal year 2026, culminating in an operating margin exiting Q4 2026 at over 23%. Our results underscore the exceptional execution and financial discipline our global team has demonstrated throughout the year. As we get ready to close out 2025, we remain focused on continuing that momentum and thoughtfully reinvesting in our growth to capture the multitude of significant opportunities ahead. We appreciate your continued confidence in Freshworks as we execute on our strategy to deliver long-term profitable growth. And with that, let us take your questions.

Our first question will be coming from Scott Berg of Needham & Company.

Really nice results here in the quarter. Dennis, I wanted to talk about the announcement today; you're selling ESM as a stand-alone solution. That's certainly not news to us that we're paying attention at the Analyst Day. I just want to hear kind of, I guess, how you're thinking about that solution. Is this going to be sold with a, I guess, a separate sales force now as you're selling it stand-alone? It's going to be sold with the same sales folks that you're using? And any changes to, I don't know, pricing or I guess, whatever the marketing message looks like around that in the stand-alone environment?

Thank you, Scott. We launched Freshservice for Business Teams in 2022 due to significant demand beyond core IT departments for a service desk solution, which has become a major driver for us. We surpassed $35 million in ARR, and this business has doubled year-over-year. Approximately 25% of our Freshservice customers are utilizing it for business teams in various capacities, highlighting its strong value proposition. We've encountered prospects who may be tied to a contract with their Core ITSM from a larger provider, and they’re hesitant to deepen their vendor dependency. They want to maintain the option to potentially switch to us later. However, they require a solution for teams outside of IT now, which is why we introduced this offering. We can engage with them now, preserving that future optionality while allowing them to become familiar with our services. When their Core ITSM contract comes up for renewal, we will be well-positioned as they’ve had a positive experience with us. We do not plan to have a separate sales force for this; we will use our existing team, which is already effective in acquiring many customers. Our usual outbound and inbound marketing strategies will apply here. We anticipate achieving significant scale with this approach. This initiative complements our existing Core ESM business associated with Freshservice. We previously discussed at Analyst Day that this alone has the potential to reach $100 million, and this new offering adds to that. We’re launching it today and will provide updates next quarter regarding early traction, but we’re optimistic about its potential given the success of our existing products in the market.

Excellent. And then from a follow-up perspective, maybe this is for Tyler; is it's around your buyback program expired in the quarter. You've certainly been buying back some shares at higher levels. I didn't see that repeated here, which I kind of almost expected, I guess, in the quarter or at least an expansion of those efforts. Should we take that as maybe an indication or a shift in your capital allocation strategy? Or maybe there's something more just on a timing basis there? Any details there would be great.

Yes. Thanks, Scott. Yes, so we finished the inaugural buyback in Q2. So we just finished it 1.5 months ago. That was authorized a year ago for $400 million, and we completed that and we were happy to get that done. I think the weighted average price is just over $14. We are committed to working with the Board on a continued capital allocation strategy. We've always said we've been open to M&A if that comes forward. We're obviously going to invest in the business where that's needed, but we're producing a lot of cash flow now. And we'll continue to talk about the Board about other uses of capital, including other buybacks. We are still doing our net settles, and we provide the data there. And so we're still spending money every single quarter on net settlements, and that's been outside of the buyback. So that will be a continual discussion that we will have with the Board.

And our next question will be coming from Alex Zukin of Wolfe Research.

This is Mark Heatzig, on for Alex Zukin at Wolfe. Congrats on great results. Can you just give us a little bit more color on how you're balancing the monetization versus adoption play with the Freddy AI suite of tools? Any way we should think about how that might change with the new agent capabilities?

Yes. So just to recap our strategy, we have Freddy AI Agent, which is a consumption-based model for CX, where our customers pay us on a per-session basis. We have Freddy Copilot, which is a per-seat license adder. And then we have our Freddy Insights, which is only available in the enterprise plan. So different products have different monetization levers and paths. For AI agents, we've historically priced those based on sessions with our Agentic AI agents coming out in a matter of weeks. We have revisited pricing. We're not revealing that now, but we are going to be more in line with industry pricing, which is considerably higher than where our pricing historically has been. We think that the market will support that based on what we've seen in early access with some customers seeing up to 80% deflection rates based on their use of AI agents. What's coming in a couple of weeks are agents that are focused on very specific verticals like fintech, like travel, logistics, and e-commerce that take action on behalf of the end customer, and we know that those interactions are quite valuable. We're not quite at the point of moving to full resolution-based pricing, and frankly, neither are our customers. So the session-based pricing makes a lot of sense for where we are now, but we're always open to evolving that as our customers ask us to, and as customer demand warrants, but you will see a meaningful price change with the launch of those products, which will allow us to monetize it quite well.

And our next question will be coming from Patrick Walravens of Citizens Bank.

Congratulations on the third quarter in a row this year. So the big question I still get, Dennis, believe it or not, is for investors who are just looking at Freshworks; they still want to know, is it an AI winner or an AI loser? And I see lots of evidence that it should be in the winner's camp, including your $100 million target and what you just talked about actually is really interesting about the specific verticals for agents. But just to make it easier for people, if you're going to boil it down to 2 or 3 key points that you would make on that topic, why Freshworks is an AI winner? What are they? What would you lay out?

So first of all, look, we are the system of record for our customers in IT and in customer support. We have the native workflows that they're running their business off of. And that is super important for all of what we're focused on. The products that we ship have ready-made skills, guardrails, governance, things that our customers all need in order to run their support and IT departments, and that's what they demand. So there's a meme that, "Oh, everybody is going to go directly to OpenAI or to Anthropic to build their solutions." That's just not going to happen in such complex environments as Seagate's IT department or some of these others. The customers need the AI to be integrated into their workflow. They need the security. And we can tap into the best-of-breed models as the LLMs evolve by tapping into Anthropic for coding or Gemini for image and so forth. So we think that we're actually really well positioned as the market evolves and as customers continue to adopt AI to succeed there.

Our next question will be coming from Elizabeth Porter of Morgan Stanley.

This is Oscar, on for Elizabeth. Congrats on the great quarter. I wanted to ask in terms of government exposure for Freshworks tends to be more state and local. But I just wanted to check if you have seen any impact from the government shutdown, either in the form of longer sales cycles or smaller deals and either directly or indirectly, if it has pressured any small businesses within CX?

Yes, it's Dennis. So we've seen no impact whatsoever. We do not have large federal government exposure. Our government business comes from state and local entities, municipalities, universities, none of which we've seen at least any kind of change. We actually landed quite a few governments and universities this last quarter, and we've seen quite a bit of expansion there. So we really just have not seen any impact at all from the shutdown or any of the federal issues.

Our next question will be coming from Brent Thill of Jefferies.

Tyler, I apologize if you covered this, but this one-time investment you're talking about in Q4; can you articulate a little in more detail what that is?

Yes, Brent. This reflects the fact that we have achieved four excellent quarters and are experiencing strong demand for our Employee Experience products in the field. Additionally, we've performed well with our efficiencies this year, surpassing our operating margin goals each quarter. We've indicated that part of this was due to timing and that we would reinvest. However, we've continued to exceed our goals and, at the beginning of this quarter, we allocated funds specifically to develop our Employee Experience offerings in the field due to the market opportunity. Although we are still surpassing our targets, we decided to release that spending for the year. This is a one-time expense planned for Q4 and not expected to be repeated, which is why we have also provided guidance on the operating margins for next year.

And I'm sorry, where does that go into reps, marketing? Like what's the...

Yes, the majority of it is marketing, focused on pipeline and demand generation efforts.

I have some good ideas and we can discuss the campaign related to Rogers and Freddy Fresh later. Dennis, when you mention the 25% growth over $100,000, it seems like our referenceability is improving. What are the next milestones you see? Things have been progressing well, and it appears we're on the right track. What hurdles do you hope to overcome next to confirm that we're continuing on this positive trajectory?

Yes. Look, I think we've got a really good sweet spot in customers ranging from 5,000 to 20,000 employees. That's where there's a ton of business out there that's looking for a solution that is enterprise-grade, that is faster time to value, that's got AI built in, and we're going to continue focusing there. I think in terms of where we're headed, we talked in the Analyst Day about continuing to drive our Employee Experience business in the low to mid-20s in terms of growth. You saw a slight tick up in growth on a constant currency basis this quarter. We're going to keep pressing these larger and larger deals every single quarter. For us, the attach rate for Device42, that's an important metric that we look at, how many of our larger deals are including Device42. We have a big milestone coming up in Q1, where we expect to release Device42 on cloud. Once we do that, we'll be able to tap into another segment of the market that doesn't want to go on-prem with any solution. They want everything to be in the cloud. It will also make it easier for us to upsell our existing customers into Device42 as a product. That's going to be another accelerant to growth. So we've got a lot of positive, I would say, momentum and positive accelerants to that business. And Tyler was just talking about the demand generation investment we're making in Q4. That's all going into the Employee Experience business and into AI, but that really is a huge driver for us as well. So I think Employee Experience has a lot of kind of positive momentum behind it, and we're just going to keep leaning into it every single quarter.

Our next question will be coming from Brian Peterson of Raymond James.

This is Johnathan McCary, on for Brian. So I wanted to ask on some of the AI deployments in your customer base. Can you talk about the appetite for that and how that may differ between the SMB and then the more mid-market enterprise customers? I'm curious specifically if you're seeing that it's more important piece of the conversation in certain parts of the customer base or SMBs versus enterprises are moving from pilots to kind of forward deployments quickly. Just I'd be curious how that differs across the different customer sizes?

Yes. Our AI adoption is fairly balanced across SMB, mid-market, and enterprise segments, showing traction in all three. Companies are at different levels of understanding and adopting AI. The leading product for us has been Copilot, which is the most developed functionally. From a customer's perspective, it provides a human element, allowing them to feel more secure as they interact with it. Recently, we've observed a significant increase in AI Agent usage, and with the introduction of our Agentic capabilities particularly in customer experience, we expect substantial growth and are committed to investing in it. Additionally, we plan to monetize our AI agent capabilities at a higher rate than before, as we have been underpricing relative to the market. This presents a significant opportunity for us in the upcoming year. Overall, our customer base doesn't show a preference for one vertical over another; the monetization prospects are fairly uniform between customer experience and employee experience. We believe all our customers will increasingly require the AI solutions we provide. Currently, over 5,000 customers are paying for AI, and this number will continue to rise as it becomes a fundamental aspect of our sales strategy.

Very helpful. And then maybe one for Tyler here. It's good to see the continued strength in Employee Experience, the slight acceleration there. Just hoping, can you unpack the growth a little bit in terms of what's trending, how NRR is trending there versus net new, and kind of where you think that should head longer term as you look to continue the low 20s growth profile?

Yes, we are experiencing growth across all business segments. Our ITSM core remains strong, and the ESM segment has now exceeded $35 million. We also mentioned Device42 and the Copilot components as part of our offerings. Regarding net revenue retention, our Employee Experience products have consistently demonstrated strong performance. Although Device42 is currently a bit of a challenge due to the issues we inherited from the acquisition, we believe it will improve over time. Employee Experience has historically maintained high single-digit churn rates, and that trend continues, making it a robust product.

And our next question will be coming from Rob Oliver of Baird.

Dennis, I wanted to go back to the ITSM win rates that you called out, I think the best in 2 years, and that's also coming, I think, as you've really pivoted the business up towards that mid-market or upper end of mid-market. And just wanted to get a sense from you for kind of what the biggest key differentiators have been there in terms of repositioning for that opportunity? And then as you look at kind of your pipeline today, how you feel about the pipeline as it sets up relative to the competition and kind of what's winning when you go head-to-head with some potentially bigger players at the low end of their stack? And then I had a quick follow-up question.

Certainly. Over the past few years, we have developed a comprehensive enterprise-level solution that empowers IT departments to manage their operations and provide excellent service to employees. This product is gaining traction in the market due to its robust security and flexibility, which are essential for larger clients. Customers often seek an integrated approach to IT service management and asset management, which is exactly what we offer. Additionally, we provide functionalities that extend beyond traditional IT services, a factor that is increasingly important in decision-making. A couple of years ago, we did not have the product capabilities we now possess, but we have recently gained significant momentum. The market is in need of more options, especially since the largest provider tends to focus primarily on the largest companies. This creates an opportunity for us to compete effectively in the lower end of the enterprise sector and the upper end of the mid-market, such as companies like New Balance or Seagate with thousands of employees. These clients have advanced IT departments seeking modern, flexible solutions that incorporate enterprise-grade AI, which we can deliver. We plan to keep investing in our ability to improve our offerings. Next week, we will host our Customer Advisory Board with 40 customers to gather feedback, share our roadmap, and discuss ways we can enhance our operations. Last year, we gained numerous insights that were implemented and successfully launched, helping us move upmarket. Likewise, our go-to-market strategy has evolved, which gives us confidence to invest more in demand generation in Q4. We now have a clearer understanding of how demand generation spending correlates with returns, and we believe that investing now will give us an advantage for Q1, especially since we have a strong pipeline heading into the final quarter. Looking at the pipeline, what stood as a significant deal 18 months ago is now commonplace; deals worth $100,000 are frequent, while larger deals around $500,000 are becoming more common. In the past, we were often involved in $500,000 RFPs but frequently lost, settling instead for smaller deals. However, in the last quarter, we couldn’t recall losing any deals over $200,000 that we were part of. This indicates that we are improving our competitiveness for larger deals, and we possess the capabilities and features necessary for success.

Great. That's really helpful. And then, Tyler, I apologize if you touched on this at all, but that net revenue retention number is kind of really stabilized in that kind of 104% to 105% range on a constant currency basis for the last 3 quarters, and you guys are getting some market momentum. I realize a trailing indicator, but how you think about that kind of leveling off and potentially starting to improve and what kind of visibility you have into that?

Yes. We're pleased with the progress we've made there, both on the expansion products we've introduced, and we think ESM is going to be a new land, but then have a much bigger expansion opportunity once we start landing with that if we can bring in Freshservice, but obviously, with Device42 and others and on what we've been doing on churn. We've been talking about churn for a year now, how we've just been getting a little bit better incrementally, and that's not something that moves really quickly. We guided to essentially the same amount for Q4, which is stable. And obviously, at the end of the year, based on what we learned this quarter in terms of expansion in the pipe, we'll guide for next year. But yes, I feel like it's heading in the right direction. And then we've been talking about this. As the mix shift of our business continues to move more towards Employee Experience, and that is the majority of our business now, the attributes of that business are much better, and we will get a tailwind from that at some point.

This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect.