Five9 Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
May 1, 2025
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Emily Greenstein
Director at The Blueshirt Group

Thank you for joining us today. Certain statements made during the course of this conference call that are not historical facts, including those regarding the future financial performance and cash position of the company, expected improvements in financial and related metrics, expected ARR from certain customers, certain expected revenue mix shifts, customer growth, anticipated customer benefits from our solution, including from AI, the extent of the anticipated TAM expansion and our ability to take advantage of any such expansion, our AI revenue opportunities and current estimations regarding same, company growth, enhancements to and development of our solution, market size and trends, our expectations regarding macroeconomic conditions, company market position, initiatives and expectations, technology and product initiatives, including investment in R and D and other future events or results, are forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements are simply predictions, should not be unduly relied upon by investors, actual events or results may differ materially, and the company undertakes no obligation to update the information in such statements. These statements are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that can adversely affect Five9's future results and cause these forward looking statements to be inaccurate, including the impact of adverse economic conditions, including the impact of macroeconomic challenges, including continuing inflation, uncertainty regarding consumer spending, high interest rates, fluctuations in currency exchange rates, lower growth rates within our installed base of customers, and the other risks discussed under the caption Risk Factors and Elsewhere in Five9's annual and quarterly reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Emily Greenstein
Director at The Blueshirt Group

In addition, management will make reference to non GAAP financial measures during this call. A discussion of why we use non GAAP financial measures and information regarding reconciliation of our GAAP versus non GAAP results and guidance is currently available in our press release issued earlier this afternoon as well as in the appendix of our investor deck that can be found in the Investor Relations section on Five9's website at investors.five9.com. Also, please note that the information provided on this call speaks only to management's views as of today, 05/01/2025, and may no longer be accurate at the time of a replay. Lastly, a reminder that unless otherwise indicated, financial figures discussed are non GAAP. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Five9's Chairman and CEO, Mike Bricklands.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Thanks, Emily, and thanks everyone for joining our call this afternoon. We are pleased with our first quarter results, which exceeded our guidance across all key metrics. Subscription revenue, which now makes up 80% of total revenue, grew 14% year over year. This was primarily driven by LTM enterprise subscription revenue growing 20% year over year. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 19% for the first quarter, helping drive a Q1 record operating cash flow of $48,000,000 or 17% of revenue, and an all time record of free cash flow of $35,000,000 or 12% of revenue.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Today, I'd like to start off by providing key highlights of an extensive operational review we recently conducted across the company. We believe the transformation initiatives we're executing will help bolster our long term competitive position and reestablish ourselves as a rule of 40 company as we continue to drive profitable growth. As we pursue this evolution, our goal is to deliver increased profitability while prioritizing investment in key strategic areas, including AI and go to market initiatives to drive revenue growth and capitalize on our massive TAM that we believe is significantly expanding with AI. The transformation will take time, but we're moving quickly and driving cross functional alignment across the entire organization to achieve our goals. As a result, in 2027, we are targeting to be above the rule of 40 on an adjusted EBITDA basis and be approaching the rule of 40 on a free cash flow basis.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Brian will provide more details on this in a moment. Now I'd like to dive deeper into our AI powered platform and how it's well positioned to empower brands to elevate their CX and how they're realizing meaningful benefits through our Genius AI suite of products. As I touched on last quarter, in order to deliver personalized and accurate self-service using Gen AI, you need four key ingredients. First, you need access to LLMs and it's critical to enable brands to easily change the underlying engine to leverage the latest high performing models. We believe our engine agnostic approach allows brands to future proof their AI decision, and our AI application layer above these engines acts as the key competitive advantage.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Second, you need contextual data, which includes consumer specific and brand specific information that is distributed across a large number of backend systems. Our platform typically integrates into 20 plus systems, which enables contextual data to be fed into the LLM in real time in order to provide true context around an interaction. Third, you need historical interaction data. Our CCaaS platform is the system of record for interactions between a consumer and a brand across all channels, including those handled by AI agents, as well as human agents. And fourth, you need a platform that provides all channels such as voice, text, web chat, and social to connect consumers to an AI agent, as well as to provide a seamless escalation path to human agents.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

The market demands AI agents that work across all of these channels, but providing a voice channel globally at scale is a huge barrier to entry. These are key reasons why AI point solutions and third party AI vendors are strongly leaning into partner with us and integrate to our platform. As a result, our platform acts as a control point where we are successfully monetizing that access through our voice stream and transcript stream APIs. To further enhance the value of our platform, we announced that Five9 is deepening our Salesforce partnership with the launch of Five9 Fusion, a best in class native integration with Salesforce to deliver better AI powered customer experiences. With Five9 Fusion, we combined Five9's real time system of interaction together with Salesforce's system of customer record to create a fully integrated AI elevated solution for customer experience.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

With these new product bundles, which are available today, this enhanced integration helps businesses deliver better customer experience, hyper personalized self-service, and achieve smarter results with a future ready foundation to drive meaningful business outcomes for our joint customers. Also, we continue to see significant AI momentum driven by real ROI that we are delivering for our customers through our Genius AI suite of products. This in turn drives our subscription revenue growth as demonstrated by the following three customer examples. The first is a fast food chain with over 3,000 restaurants globally. Following the deployment of our AI agents, they experienced a nearly 40% improvement in containment rate.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Concurrently, they implemented our agent assist solution, which reduced after call work time by 35%. As a result of these efficiency gains, they estimate their labor savings to be approximately 1,100,000 per year. And since deploying agents, their ARR with Five9 increased by 37%. The second example is a global payment processing provider in The UK. They deployed our AI agents and experienced a 10% increase in self-service in the first year, as well as a 50% containment rate.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

They also recently deployed our AI insights product in the first quarter of this year to identify even more use cases to generate additional ROI with our suite of AI products. Since deploying our AI agents, their ARR with Five9 increased by 49%. The third example is a personalized healthcare company that provides patients with easy access to medical equipment and supplies covered by insurance. Following the deployment of our AI agents, they have driven a 15% reduction in call volume by automating common questions such as medical equipment delivery status and insurance guidelines. They also expanded the use of our AI solutions by adding chatbots and agent assist to gain further efficiencies.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Since deploying our AI agents, their ARR with Five9 has more than doubled. Additionally, we continue to lead the CX market with key AI innovations as demonstrated by our recent announcement of a new offering called Spotlight for AI Insights, which is designed to help brands unlock the voice of their customers hidden in troves of interaction data. AI Insights leverages GenAI to mine customer conversations at scale and understand emerging topics, top trends, and root causes of issues through a powerful visualization interface. Spotlight takes AI insights to a whole new level by harnessing the power of GenAI to discover specific trends and metrics that are typically very difficult to identify in an automated fashion. We believe this will not only provide key insights for contact center operators, but also empower lines of business leaders, valuable data and tailored intelligence to continuously improve their business through increased sales, enhanced products, elevated CX, and more.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Another AI capability that is becoming a key part of driving AI agent adoption is our dial of trust. This allows brands to scale the level of Gen AI that is incorporated into our AI enabled solutions. Gen AI is becoming more powerful and more accurate by the day. However, there is a trust spectrum for brands that will vary by different topics and different industries when using AI to confidently provide customers with accurate information and answers. Our dial of trust enables brands to manage this risk through a continuum where the level of Gen AI infusion can be modified for various use cases.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

We believe that this tooling is essential for delivering trusted AI. As a result of our leading position in AI, we continue to see significant momentum in our AI business as evidenced by virtually all of our $1,000,000 plus ARR new logos continuing to attach AI and AI making up more than 20% of enterprise new logo ACV bookings. Additionally, our enterprise AI revenue grew 32 year over year in the first quarter, making up 9% of enterprise subscription revenue. We also continue to further penetrate our installed base by leveraging our revolutionary AI blueprint program. It's still early days, but preliminary results are very promising.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

For instance, in the last several months, we have been collaborating with a growing number of our customers to help them build their AI roadmap and identify use cases to generate significant ROI with our AI solutions. 50% of customers going through the AI blueprint process have purchased our AI products. We're highly encouraged by these results and we expect this momentum to accelerate throughout the year. In addition to our AI momentum and opportunity, there remains a significant opportunity in our core CCaaS market with a $24,000,000,000 TAM as cloud migrations continue. Therefore, we remain very optimistic about our long term durable global opportunity, especially at the upper end of the market, which is the largest and least penetrated part of the market and the fastest growing category of our business.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Now I'd like to touch on the momentum we're seeing with some of our key partners. As we announced in November, Five9 and ServiceNow continue to execute on the goals of our strategic partnership. Later this quarter, Five9 Transcript Stream will integrate into ServiceNow interaction management, enabling agents to focus entirely on customer issues without the need for manual note taking. ServiceNow's Now Assist powered by GenAI will leverage these real time transcriptions to generate summaries and resolution notes, significantly reducing call wrap up activities and average handle times. Additionally, Five9's intelligent routing engine will soon route ServiceNow digital channels and cases, ensuring seamless and efficient case management.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

ServiceNow is also integrating its metadata to enrich Five9's workforce engagement management solutions. This will reduce operational overhead for managers by streamlining routing management across both platforms, making it easier to adjust staffing dynamically during peak demand periods. Additionally, last quarter we announced our launch on the Google Cloud marketplace, both in The U. S. And internationally, and we saw more than 35,000,000 in ACV pipeline added in the last two months.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

We're very pleased with the early traction and anticipate the strong momentum to continue. We also recently teamed with IBM to integrate Watson X into our Genius AI platform to bring customers the option to leverage Watson X as their preferred LLM when building AI powered CX solutions. This collaboration is designed to enhance our platform's flexibility and help drive the next wave of innovation in AI powered CX, enabling businesses to deliver more personalized, efficient and impactful customer experiences. In summary, we are pleased with our continued momentum in AI for CX and our execution against the massive core CCaaS market opportunity. We believe that our differentiated approach to accelerate AI adoption, as well as ongoing innovation of new AI offerings to support the entire customer journey from self-service AI agents to agent augmentation to operational efficiency are key drivers fueling the momentum in this fastest growing category of our business.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Additionally, I want to thank our team of Five Nighters whose passion and unwavering dedication continue to be the driving force behind transforming our business to strengthen our leadership position in the industry. We're off to a strong start in 2025 and I look forward to sharing our progress as the year unfolds. And with that, I'll turn it over to our President, Andy Digden. Andy, please go ahead.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. In the first quarter, we continued to execute well against a strong pipeline, seeing an increased volume of new logo wins year over year despite some lengthening of sales cycles on larger deals, which we attribute to the macro backdrop. From a geopolitical perspective, we are starting to see some resistance in international regions to doing business with US Vendors, but we are monitoring this very closely as we are operating in a very dynamic environment. For our installed base bookings, we had the highest year over year growth rate for any quarter in the last three years. This is a direct reflection of the investments we've made to drive upsell and cross sell motions into our customer base.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

And now, as we normally do, I will share some key examples of wins. The first example is a new business unit of our Fortune 50 financial services customer. They chose Five nine to replace legacy systems and enable scalable, compliant voice solutions integrated seamlessly with Salesforce. The solution will improve customer outreach through click to call, ensuring TCPA compliant call recording, and reducing call abandonment by routing branch calls to the right banking professionals. The solution aligns with their digital transformation goals, enhances the customer and banker experience, and positions Five9 as a trusted partner in secure enterprise scale voice modernization.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

We closed this deal in early April and anticipate this initial order to result in over 2,800,000.0 in ARR to Five nine. The second example is a leading vehicle mobility solutions provider that helps consumers with vehicle repair, replacement, fleet management, insurance, and legal services. They were using an on prem solution that was difficult to manage and did not provide holistic visibility into all of their operations. As a result, they chose Five nine for our deep integrations into their ecosystem of applications, including Microsoft Dynamics and Teams. They were also looking to maintain continuity with our partner, Verint, to avoid the retraining that would have been required on other platforms.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Most importantly, they selected Five nine for our extensive portfolio of AgenTic AI solutions and the significant ROI they expect to generate by eliminating simple tasks with our AI agents and gain further efficiencies with our agent assist transcription and summary capabilities. We anticipate this initial order to result in over 1,700,000.0 in ARR to Five nine. The third example is a nonprofit health plan serving roughly 400,000 members in California. They were using an on prem system that lacked key technology capabilities. They chose Five nine to modernize their customer experience by leveraging our comprehensive suite of AI solutions, including AI agents for self-service, agent assist for transcriptions, and AI insights to identify new AI use cases and efficiency opportunities.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

They are also looking to enhance customer experience across text, chat, email, and voice channels, integrating seamlessly with their Jeeva patient record system and HSP claim solution for efficient call handling. They also selected Five nine for our deep integration with Microsoft Teams, our WEM portfolio to optimize their operations, and our analytics capabilities to fulfill their state compliant obligations. We anticipate this initial order to result in approximately $900,000 in ARR to Five9. And now I'd like to share an example of an existing customer who expanded their business with us. This leading service provider of Medicaid and other government funded self directed care programs have been a Five nine customer for over ten years.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

This customer partnered with us to win a major state contract, resulting in a significant increase in the size of their contact center. Self-service is a major initiative with this expansion, which is why this customer selected our AI agents. With this add on order, we anticipate the ARR to Five9 will increase from 1,500,000.0 to over 5,500,000.0. And now I'd like to turn it over to Brian to take you through the financials. Brian?

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Thank you, Andy. We're pleased to report Q1 revenue growth of 13% year over year, primarily driven by subscription revenue growing 14% year over year. Subscription revenue growth was driven by first, strong revenue contributions from our backlog of new logos, which exceeded expectations. Second, highest year over year growth rate in three years for installed base bookings, which tend to turn to revenue quickly. And third, thirty two percent year over year growth in enterprise AI revenue, which continues to be the fastest growing category of our product portfolio.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

However, as anticipated, we experienced tough year over year comparisons due to a stronger downtick among seasonal customers in our consumer and healthcare verticals and significant revenue contributions from our largest customer completing its ramp throughout last year. In the first quarter, subscription revenue made up 80% of revenue, while usage revenue accounted for 13% and professional services made up the remaining 7%. Enterprise revenue from subscription, usage and PS combined made up 90% of LTM revenue. Our commercial business, which represented the remaining 10%, declined in the single digits on an LTM basis. Like many software companies, our commercial business is more exposed to the macro environment.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Also, as a reminder, this trend is partially by design driven by our ongoing focus on larger customers. Additionally, as expected, our LTM dollar based retention rate came in at 107% versus 108% last quarter, primarily driven by the two tough comparison factors I previously mentioned. Turning now to profitability. We continue to generate strong year over year margin expansions across the board, primarily due to our ongoing focus on disciplined expense management. As a result, Q1 adjusted gross margin increased approximately 160 basis points year over year to 62.4% and adjusted EBITDA margin increased approximately three sixty basis points year over year to 18.8%, which is a Q1 record.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

First quarter non GAAP EPS was $0.62 per diluted share, up $0.14 or 29% year over year. Also, based compensation decreased 12% year over year from $45,000,000 to $39,000,000 which equated to 14% of revenue in the first quarter. And we remain highly focused on continuing to moderate stock based compensation over time. Now I'd like to share some cash flow highlights. As Mike mentioned, I'm pleased to report that operating cash flow was a Q1 record at $48,400,000 or 17.3% of revenue.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

This was primarily driven by our strong adjusted EBITDA and continued strength in DSO performance, which came in at thirty three days. Also, free cash flow reached an all time high at $34,900,000 or 12.5% of revenue, achieving a free cash flow conversion rate of 66%. As a reminder, we're planning to retire the remaining $434,000,000 principal balance of our 2025 convertible notes in cash when it matures in June. The next maturity of our convertible notes is 2029, so we feel comfortable with our cash position. In addition, we expect our free cash flow generation to improve meaningfully, putting us on a path to being net cash positive.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Additionally, we've developed a holistic framework to evaluate our capital allocation alternatives. Therefore, going forward, we will have a balanced approach in assessing organic investments versus share repurchases versus opportunistic acquisitions. Before turning to guidance, I would like to provide more details on the financial impact of our transformation initiatives as well as share our perspectives on the latest macro condition and its impact on our outlook. As part of our extensive operational review, we announced a 4% reduction in our global workforce on April 3. This impacted most of our departments, mainly in The US, and it represented a net reduction of 20 to $25,000,000 in annualized compensation related non GAAP expense.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

As Mike mentioned, our goal is to increase long term profitable growth and surgically invest in key areas such as AI and go to market initiatives in order to capitalize on our massive TAM opportunity that is further expanding with AI. In combination with ongoing cost optimizations, we expect the net effect to drive at least a two percentage point improvement in annual adjusted EBITDA margin in 2025 from the 18.8% we reported in 2024. As a reminder, we expect onetime cash expenditures associated with the RIF to range between 7,000,000 to $9,000,000 and noncash expenditures of approximately 1,000,000 to $1,500,000 both of which are not accounted for in the non GAAP bottom line guidance I'll be providing shortly. With regard to the macro environment, I'd like to remind you that we started 2025 with what we believed to be conservative guidance based on the assumption that macro conditions would not change materially from what we were seeing at the beginning of the year. Given recent heightened macro uncertainty, we believe it is important to take a slightly more prudent stance in terms of our guidance.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

As a result, we are keeping our full year 2025 revenue guidance unchanged at $1,140,000,000 and for second quarter revenue, we are guiding to a midpoint of $275,000,000 As for the second half of the year, we expect revenue to increase sequentially in the third quarter and slightly more in the fourth quarter. With regards to the bottom line, we are raising the midpoint of our 2025 non GAAP EPS to $2.76, which is $0.16 higher than the guidance we provided during our last earnings call. For the second quarter, this is the first time we're guiding Q2 to a positive sequential growth for non GAAP EPS at a midpoint of $0.65 per diluted share. This is reflective of the net savings from our recent RIF as well as disciplined ongoing expense management. As for the second half of the year, we expect non GAAP EPS to increase sequentially in the third quarter and slightly more in the fourth quarter.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Please refer to the presentation posted on our Investor Relations website for additional estimates, including share count, taxes and capital expenditures, as well as GAAP to non GAAP reconciliations. In summary, we're pleased with our first quarter results. We will remain laser focused on everything we can control in order to drive strong profitability while making strategic high impact investments in key initiatives to further our leadership position. Operator, please go ahead.

Operator

Thank you. Before we begin our Q and A session, we ask that our analysts please be on camera and limit ourselves to one question to allow for as many questions as time permits. We will begin with Scott Berg from Needham.

Robert Morelli
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Hi, everyone. Thanks for taking my question. This is Rob Marilli on for Scott. Congrats on the quarter. We'd like to just touch on the the subscription revenue guide for the year.

Robert Morelli
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Do you believe one q is gonna be the trough for the year? Just like to see how that's gonna trend. Thanks.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Yeah. So I can help answer that. So we haven't given specifics around the subscription growth in terms of guidance. You have our annual total revenue guidance out there. We have it unchanged at $1,140,000,000 from what we guided to at the beginning of the year.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

And what's reflected in there is that, you know, if you kinda go back starting from q one throughout the year, in q one, we saw relatively stable macro conditions, although we did see consumer and health care seasonal downtick being stronger, which was anticipated because of the strong uptick we saw in q four. And then, going into q two, we saw the, uncertainty in macro conditions increase a bit. So we are being slightly more prudent despite the fact that we're not actually seeing material changes in our business through April so far. So with the slight prudence built into q two and the rest of the year, that's what's reflected in total revenue, and a similar type of, assumption can be made for subscription.

Robert Morelli
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Got it. That's helpful. I show color. And then when it comes to the rule 40 target you guys outlined, can you provide any color on the breakdown that you're interested in between either adjusted EBITDA and revenue growth or free cash flow and revenue growth? Thanks.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. Brian, do

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

you wanna

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

speak to the medium term loan?

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Yeah. So the medium term, what we have, assumed for revenue growth is 10 to 15%, and that's assuming a stable macro condition similar to what we saw in q one. Now from a bottom line perspective, we expect EBITDA margin in the 25% to 30% range. And if you kind of look at the different components there, the gross margin today, reported 62.4%, and we're expecting 66 to 68% in the medium term, model.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

And that's really driven by our subscription gross margin, getting deep into the seventies driven by revenue scaling against fixed and semi fixed costs. And, also, we have mix shifts happening from our usage and professional services revenue into subscription, and those have lower gross margins at fifties and breakeven levels. So that's a mix shift that helps overall gross margin. And, of course, we'll expect to continue to get operating, expense leverage as well. And that's coming from the rift that we just recently did and the transformation initiatives that Mike talked about where we'll be focused on various areas like automation, process improvement, percentage of our workforce, you know, increasing lower cost offshore locations, and so on and so forth.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

So, we're confident that we'll get to, target above rule of 40 on an EBITDA basis and approach rule of 40 on a free cash flow basis.

Robert Morelli
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Got it. That's helpful. Thanks for the color and congrats on the quarter.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. Thank you.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Thank you.

Operator

Moving on to Siti Panigrahi from Mizuho.

Siti Panigrahi
Managing Director at Mizuho Securities

Thanks for taking my question. I want to drill into the comment about longer sales cycle on the enterprise side you talked about due to macro. Could you elaborate bit on that? Is it particular like particular in the international region or U. S?

Siti Panigrahi
Managing Director at Mizuho Securities

When do you start seeing that? And is this only on the enterprise side or mid market? Any color would be helpful.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Yeah. Good good question. So, yeah, it's really focused on the large end, of the enterprise market. Just these bigger deals, just, a little bit longer sales cycles. You know, the team's still focused on them, obviously, continuing to go forward, but it's really just in that space.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

International, different reason. Right? A little bit what's going on in sort of the geopolitical landscape, some business with US Vendors. But we are focused on our installed base customers there, which which, which as you heard had a good quarter.

Siti Panigrahi
Managing Director at Mizuho Securities

Just to clarify, did it trigger any kind of deal slippage to next quarter or anything? Or is that ongoing trend you saw?

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Yes. So these deals just slipped into the next quarter, and the teams are still focused on those deals, things are looking good.

Siti Panigrahi
Managing Director at Mizuho Securities

Great. Thank you.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Thanks, CT.

Robert Morelli
Equity Research Associate at Needham & Company

Thanks, CT.

Operator

Moving on to Raimo Lenschow from Barclays.

Raimo Lenschow
Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director at Barclays

Hey. Good to see you guys again. The quick question for me, Mike. You know, you and I go way back, and we've seen uncertain times before. Like, how does Genius AI now play into kind of this environment and customers making decision?

Raimo Lenschow
Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director at Barclays

Because it does feel like delaying it or kind of showing a lot of uncertainty might have been the old good reaction, but with AI now, it it feels like we kind of actually move need to move faster. Can you speak to what you're seeing in the field there?

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. Well, it's great to see you, Raimo, and thanks for being back on the team, so to speak. Yeah. You're right. I mean, look.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Uncertain times always impact decision making of any kind. Right? But I think we're we're also benefiting from this, you know, AI revolution that is really causing a rush in a lot of ways by a lot of these companies to figure out AI. Every CIO is being told by every CEO, go figure out AI. The good news is we've come up the learning curve as a as an industry, not the vendors necessarily, because we've been we've been at this quite a long time.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

But I think the customers are coming up that learning curve. And, you know, we're seeing great momentum in terms of decision making, and it's not just in, you know, the % attach rate on new logo, million dollar plus deals that we're doing. It's also in our installed base. I mean, we have this AI blueprint program, which we've been talking about, and we came out with that, you know, a couple quarters ago, and it's really, really working well. 50%, five zero, fifty % of the customers that go through this AI blueprint program with us are purchasing our AI solutions.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

And so we're penetrating our penetrating our installed base, excuse me, as well as attaching AI to new deals. It is you know, I feel like we've unlocked the opportunity with AI, but at the same time, look, This you know, the real scale of AI use does depend on the ROI that we're delivering, and you heard about those three three, just three of many customer examples where we're delivering real tangible ROI, whether it's higher containment and self-service or whether it's reduction in after, you know, call handling time, it's it's an exciting time in the industry.

Raimo Lenschow
Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director at Barclays

Oops. And then sorry. And then, Brian, one for you. Like, if you think about the the the the transformation you started with, you know, following the review, if you think about it, how should we think about the impact on the organization in terms of the different divisions? Was that kind of a a more, like, take on the performance out, think about more what is needed in the new AI world versus where we have people kind of working on before?

Raimo Lenschow
Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director at Barclays

Like, how should we think about, like, the the implication the impact there? Is there, like, a is there gonna be, like, a period where everyone adjusts, or how should you know, how's that gonna play out for you? Thank you.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Yeah. So I can touch on it, and, Mike, you can chime in. So it was across first of all, the reduction in force was across most departments, and a majority of that was, in The US. But what we made sure is that from a sales capacity basis, you know, it's not impacted and we continue to reinvest in that area in our go to market initiatives as well as our AI initiatives as well. So that's where we're focused, and we'll we'll continue to make sure that, that's aligned, internally strategically.

Raimo Lenschow
Raimo Lenschow
Managing Director at Barclays

Okay. Thank you.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Thanks, Raimo.

Operator

Thank you. And next, moving on to Terry Tillman from Truist.

Robert Dee
Robert Dee
Equity Research Associate at Truist Securities

Great. Mike, Andy, Brian, thanks for taking the question. This is Bobby Dion for Terry. I wanted to double click on the Five nine fusion announcement with Salesforce. Specifically, the the press release mentioned that Five nine's bring your own telephony adoption has doubled in 2025.

Robert Dee
Robert Dee
Equity Research Associate at Truist Securities

What do you think is driving the growth in in BYOT, and and why now?

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Yeah. I mean, I think as as we've you know, we've long been partnered with Salesforce. Obviously, Salesforce has been heavily investing in in taking their customers on the AI journey, and we've been on that journey with them collectively. And so they've been really driving the BYOT within their customer base, within their their sales teams. And so that really, the idea behind Five nine fusion was to really simplify the go to market so that the Salesforce sellers, our sellers, and then most importantly, the customers, they really understand the value proposition and which solutions you need on both sides.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

And certainly with BYOT, when you get to the upper end of that offering, you need our voice stream or our transcript stream and voice stream to drive Einstein. And so that's really what's kinda driving a lot of the opportunities in the in the installed base with with Salesforce and new logos.

Robert Dee
Robert Dee
Equity Research Associate at Truist Securities

Thank you.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Thanks, Bobby. Moving

Operator

on to Peter Levine from Evercore.

Peter Levine
Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Great. Thank you, gentlemen, for taking my taking my questions. Maybe just to double down, Mike, on your earlier comments. Can you maybe just talk about the transformation you're going through internally? You know, one thing you mentioned in the call, go to market initiatives to drive revenue growth.

Peter Levine
Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Maybe just share with us what does that entail? Is it more partners? Do you do you are you coming across new buyers given that's more of an AI kind of world? I mean, is the sell again, you talked a lot about sales cycles, but just curious, maybe just talk about, you know, what the, you know, operational view look like and then some of the initiatives, especially on go to market that are changing.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. Great question, Peter. And, again, transformational initiatives across top line and bottom line, right, to to get on that path to rule of 40 on a free cash flow basis. And if you think about the top line and the go to market, it really is, I would say, both product as well as go to market. And so if think about from a product standpoint, we're definitely investing much heavier into AI, showing in our innovation.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Some of the products we just announced are evidence of that, and there will be more. But it's also a continuation of some of the sales execution and sales org changes we've made. But it's also top of funnel initiatives, Peter. I mean, again, I've been here seventeen years, and I can tell you right now, there is a science to sales and marketing that we've always employed, so to speak. And, you know, look, we we hire sales capacity based on our ability to grow top of funnel leads and opportunities.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

We've got a number of really exciting top of funnel initiatives that we are investing in. Again, we're being very surgical about it. We're being very scientific about it, but there are some really exciting marketing initiatives that we're in the midst of, I would say, piloting. Again, we're being careful in terms of how much we spend, but so far, the early signs are very good in terms of lead flow increases, which to me is the leading leading indicator that has to drive our bookings growth. So I would say it's, you know, everything from investments in product, top of funnel marketing initiatives, as well as sales execution initiatives, and some of the things we've been working on, as well as, I would say, upsell into our installed base as well.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

So when you think about new logos, that's really, you know, what I've already talked about. But if you think about penetrating our installed base, things like the AI blueprint program as well as some of those changes we made to our, you know, CSM and AD orgs last year.

Peter Levine
Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Okay.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

And then

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

really driving a lot of opportunities with our top partners. You know, you've heard a continuous drumbeat on new partnerships, strengthening partnerships, and so a lot of focus on Aerie as well. Yep. Also.

Peter Levine
Managing Director at Evercore ISI

And then for you, Brian, can you maybe just share with us, like, how you stress tested the the full year guide? And I do know, like, the macro sensitive, you know, segments of the market that you guys are having in consumer, you know, and that's drives a lot of upsell for you guys. And and I I think it's three q, four q in the back half. But, again, there's still a lot of uncertainty. Right?

Peter Levine
Managing Director at Evercore ISI

So if you think about what you're seeing today in the pipeline, just walk us through, like, how you stress tested these numbers to kinda reassure us that these are derisked.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Yeah. Absolutely, Peter. So if you think about it, at the beginning of the year when we set the guide, we mentioned that we were assuming the seasonal uptick in the second half of this year to be more muted than the strong seasonality that we saw in the back half of twenty twenty four. Now given the increased uncertainty, we have, assumed that that muted seasonality even slightly more muted than what we were originally, assuming at the beginning of the year. And that's if we we beat q one by $7,700,000 against the midpoint of our guidance, and essentially, we haven't put that through.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

So it gives us a little bit of that cushion. Now on the headwinds side, of course, we have the tough comparison of the largest customer that ran throughout. It's finishing its multiyear ramp throughout last year. So that still exists, but there's also positive factors like our 32% AI, enterprise AI revenue growth, and we expect that momentum to continue with some ebbs and flows throughout the year. So and also, as Andy mentioned, you know, enterprise installed base bookings coming in at the highest year over year growth rate in the last three years.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

So when you sort of net out all those positives and potential headwinds, that's how we landed at that unchanged, midpoint of 1,140,000,000.00.

Peter Levine
Managing Director at Evercore ISI

Great. Thank you for the color.

Operator

Moving on to

Willow Miller
Equity Research Associate at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

Arjun Bhatia. Hi, everyone. I'm Willa Miller on for Arjun Bhatia, and thanks for taking our question. So maybe to double click on is guidance derisked. In your prepared remarks, you talked about seeing some resistance of international companies using American vendors.

Willow Miller
Equity Research Associate at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

How much of a risk is this? And in your conversations with these customers, are you able to reassure them enough that you can still win the deal?

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. I'll start I'll start I'll start. I think the I guess, if you wanna call this a silver lining, you know, international represents about 12% of our business. So it's again, it's it's not a large portion, but it's, you know, it is greater than zero, so to speak. And, I think it's we're seeing it more on the net new side than we are on the installed base side.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

And, Andy, you could speak a little bit to that.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Yeah. I mean, I think it's it's it's not all deals. And, again, I I think I mentioned also in the installed base in international to our existing customers. There's still a lot of, obviously, confidence in us. And the other part is, I mean, we are a a strong global company.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Right? We have we have coworkers and customers across the globe. And so we treat our data, how we treat their data in terms of our architecture, we're able to have that kind of level of conversation. It seems to be right now just a little bit of a, for for lack of a better term, emotional in terms of just wanting to make sure that they fully understand what's going on. But, you know, confident that as some of that starts to dissipate over time that, you know, we'll continue to execute on the international front.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

And, also, in terms of the guidance, being derisked, whether domestically or internationally, another way to look at it is breaking down the business between new logos and installed base contribution to, the incremental revenue that we're guiding. Right? So right now in the last three quarters of twenty twenty five, our guidance implies $67,000,000 of incremental revenue. And if you look at just the recurring revenue side of that, that's 93% of it or 62,000,000. So if we assume that DVRR stays at 107%, which we just reported in q one, that implies that 52 of that 62,000,000 incremental revenue comes from our existing base.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

And then and then the remaining 10,000,000 is coming from new logos, but a vast majority of that is from new logos that are already in our backlog. So we have good visibility into the ramp of those revenue throughout the rest of the year. And a very small portion would come from the new logo GoGets that would happen in the next month or two because the rest of it will impact 2026 revenue.

Willow Miller
Equity Research Associate at William Blair & Company, L.L.C

Thank you. That's helpful.

Operator

Moving on to Katherine Trebnick from Rosenblatt.

Catharine Trebnick
Managing Director at Rosenblatt Securities

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Pressing more on international. BT, you know, that was a nice land you guys did over a year and a half ago. How is that progressing now after this April 2 with the tariff announcement?

Catharine Trebnick
Managing Director at Rosenblatt Securities

Even though you're a software vendor, I'm just curious to see if there's any different interaction. The reason I bring it up is I spoke to a company in The UK that said their business really increased dramatically because they're a contact center based in The UK. So I just, would be helpful to get more color. Thank you.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Yeah. I mean, our relationship with BT continues to be strong. A lot of good activity, continue to win deals. And, certainly, we continue to lean heavily in international on our partners. Right?

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Because they sort of help balance out that story. You know, BT making the investment with us. So, you know, I think they're just we're just gonna continue to execute with them and no real major change, I would say, in the business and the pipeline. We just gotta keep executing together.

Catharine Trebnick
Managing Director at Rosenblatt Securities

Alright. Thank you.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Thanks, Katherine.

Operator

Moving on to Samad Samana from Jefferies.

Samad Samana
Samad Samana
Managing Director at Jefferies Financial Group

Hey, guys. Good evening. Appreciate you taking my question. Maybe first, just in terms of the partners that you guys mentioned, it's obviously like a really marquee list of great companies. I'm just curious, are any of these where there's a joint co selling motion where the vendors are actually incentivizing their own sales organizations?

Samad Samana
Samad Samana
Managing Director at Jefferies Financial Group

Just trying to get a sense of how much distribution you're getting here beyond your own go to market efforts. And and then I have one follow-up question.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. I would say, Samad, that all of them have very, very healthy co sell arrangements where we're just partnering so effectively in the field with our counterparts. I mean, we've always been good at that, and we've always been great at that. And, you know, there are some incentives in some of those partnerships as well. But, Andy, if you wanna

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

provide some color. There's incentives in co selling at both sides. I mean, each company kinda has a different approach in how they do these do these deals. But, ultimately, you know, across all of them, I can say there's there's incentive on both sides to deliver. And and a lot of times what comes with these partnerships is dedicated people on both sides, you know, working together to make sure that they're getting out in front of their know, obviously, these partners that we're talking about are very large sales forces.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

And so having dedicated people on their teams to make sure that they're they're out there pitching, you know, the joint value proposition. So, yeah, great relationships and, you know, incentives and, across the board.

Samad Samana
Samad Samana
Managing Director at Jefferies Financial Group

Very helpful. And then maybe just the the medium term operating model that's in the slide deck. I think that's that's new, Brian. I'm just curious what you're thinking about in terms of what the AI revenue contribution will look like as you march toward that, maybe what assumption you've made? The reason I'm asking is maybe how the gross margin of that revenue stream looks compared to the current gross margin stream?

Samad Samana
Samad Samana
Managing Director at Jefferies Financial Group

And is that something that can maybe push gross margins even higher than where we are today?

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Yeah. No. Thanks, Samad. So for the medium term target, the 10% to 15% revenue growth, has sort of a general momentum of AI that we are seeing today. Now so there is further upside in terms of potential revenue growth if AI acceleration, really takes off.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Now from the gross margin perspective, you're right in that AI gross margin. And I you know, our our AI agent portfolio is a good representation of this because when we acquired Inference five years ago, the gross margin of that business is in the high seventies and low eighties, and we've maintained that. If anything, we've actually improved it further. So as AI becomes a bigger mix of revenue, that should have a tailwind to overall gross margin on the subscription margin side as well as the total gross margin.

Samad Samana
Samad Samana
Managing Director at Jefferies Financial Group

Great. Thank you so much.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Sumant, I'll add one other data point just to consider in the mix here relative to AI. Again, 20% plus of our ACV enterprise bookings were AI in the last few quarters. Right? So just that's a that's another good number to kinda be able to triangulate what you're asking.

Samad Samana
Samad Samana
Managing Director at Jefferies Financial Group

Great. Thank you, Mike. Appreciate it.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

You got it.

Operator

Moving on to Tom Blakey from Crater.

Thomas Blakey
Managing Director at Cantor Fitzgerald

Can't Hi, guys. Thank you very much for taking my question. I think it's on the heels of, maybe what Samad was just asking about what the what the kind of revenue looks like, you know, going further out. Obviously, no no no numbers or no, you know, kinda hard, you know, guidance here. But, you know, previously, Five nine has always kinda you know, if you go back a couple years, guided to 16%.

Thomas Blakey
Managing Director at Cantor Fitzgerald

You know, that was the that was the previous line, and then you'd beat that and, know, grow in the twenties. Now we're 10 to 15. So maybe talk about the level of, you know, kinda comfort you're in in, you know, cushion you're putting into that 10 to 15 and what the revenue looks like today in the future from a consumption perspective versus a seat perspective, from a partner perspective, you know, like Samad just asked about AI. So, you know, that's obviously gonna go up as a percentage of revenue given its growth dynamic. But any other type of color and, you know, what kind of cushion you're baking into that 10 to 15 would be I think would be helpful.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Yeah. So, you know, this is a result of the operational review that we just completed. And as Mike and Andy mentioned, you know, we will continue to invest, on the curve for our sales capacity and drive go to market initiatives. So that is what's reflected in this. The 10 to 15%, obviously, is two years out.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

You know, we've been growing in the 13% in the most recent quarter. We're guiding to 10% with slightly more prudence than in our guide than what we were originally thinking. So you can kinda triangulate using that because we haven't given specifics around, you know, what the beat level would look like and things like that, but you can triangulate using those data points. From a pricing perspective, of course, our AI portfolio is all based on some type of consumption based pricing, and that's gonna become a bigger mix of our overall revenue. And and so that will be a nice driver, going forward as well.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

And as I mentioned earlier with Samad, if there's acceleration in the adoption of AI, then that

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

would become a much bigger driver. Yep. And then, Tom, to answer your last point there about partners, look. We continue to do more and more with partners, not just the strategic partners we're talking about, but also with just traditional channel partners, especially internationally, but even domestically. And so, again, I think you'll continue to see us get more and more opportunities from partners, but also, you know, just get more reach out of those partners.

Thomas Blakey
Managing Director at Cantor Fitzgerald

Okay. And just maybe just one quick follow-up on the transcript stream deal that you did there. And I know you've mentioned this a couple times now, Mike. You seem awfully excited about it. I know you've given us a color about the AI products.

Thomas Blakey
Managing Director at Cantor Fitzgerald

Sorry for the granular questions here, but, you know, IVA and and insights and summaries are still leading the way here. Is there an anticipation that this could, this could uptick, here in the second half of calendar twenty five? That's it for me. Thank you.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. I think it's a good question, Tom. And, when it comes to transcript stream and voice stream and those API layers, they're becoming much more important, especially in some of these partners partnerships, these strategic partnerships we've been enhancing and, you know, empowering our partners to do more with our data, but making sure we monetize that along the way. Right? So, again, we'll see.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

It's a pretty small number today, but I do think that's another separate growth factor in a lot of ways. And when we think about, again, the AI pie or the AI game, it's it's a team sport. We are gonna, you know, be in accounts with Salesforce and ServiceNow and other CRM vendors, for example. And it's gonna be some of ours, some of theirs, and we're gonna monetize it when it's theirs.

Thomas Blakey
Managing Director at Cantor Fitzgerald

Thank you, Mike. Thank you, guys.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

You got it. Thanks, Tom.

Operator

Moving on to Jim Fish from Piper Sandler.

James Fish
James Fish
Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies

Hey, guys. I wanted to follow-up on Peter's question. What are some of those top of funnel initiatives you're investing in? Is there a plan to change comp structures at all either?

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. I mean, look. We're always thanks, Fish. There we're always looking at comp structures and commission plans and making sure that we've got the right incentives to, you know, drive the right behavior in terms of our go to market teams. We're always fine tuning those those comp plans.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

So on an absolute basis, you know, there's not gonna be a whole lot of change, but there may very well be, you know, new metrics or KPIs that get introduced, especially, you know, in areas like our install base sellers. Right? They're selling into our base, doing certain, you know, spiffs around AI, for example, in large enterprise, making sure that we're also incenting not just one whale, you know, per rep, but a bunch of dolphins. Right? So there are ways that we can incent the right behavior across our sales organization based on where we see the market opportunity.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

I hope that addresses

James Fish
James Fish
Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies

That's helpful. And just a follow-up, net retention rate slipped a little bit. I know it came in roughly where you were expecting, right? But for as we think about like the in period number, it's down a little bit sequentially. And it seems as though the enterprise net expansion rate was really the driver there.

James Fish
James Fish
Managing Director at Piper Sandler Companies

So I guess what's given the confidence that we're going to start to see stability here that that you walked through the guide, Brian, of the 52 out of 62 and so forth that we've actually hit bottom. Is there a way to think about cross sell, upsell mix there, even turn of seats? Thanks, guys.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

Yeah. Absolutely, Jim. So if you think about the DBR coming down to 107%, that was actually anticipated at the beginning of the quarter. So we had those tough comparisons I talked about with the mega customer and the, seasonal downtick. So those two were the key drivers.

Bryan Lee
Bryan Lee
Interim CFO at Five9

If you look forward into q two and the remainder of the year, you know, those tough comparisons still exist, but we have positives offsets as well. The momentum and the 32% revenue growth that we just reported. Also, the million plus ARR customers have a much higher DBR than the 107% that we just reported, and they're the fastest growing category of our customer base. So those if you net it all out, you know, we believe there will be fluctuations in either direction in small amounts throughout the year.

Operator

Moving on to Meta Marshall from Morgan Stanley.

Meta Marshall
Meta Marshall
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks. You know, just on the elongating deal cycle, I just wanted to see, were there initiatives that you guys were putting in place that were maybe helping kinda quicker time to to ROI for customers to kind of help offset that or just kind of, help them see that they can kind of take this in smaller bites, to maybe shrink those deal, sales evaluation cycles? And then maybe second, just on the Fusion announcement, with Salesforce. You know, it sounds like that that's kind of step one in kind of multi, product initiative kind of over time.

Meta Marshall
Meta Marshall
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Just kind of how we should see that relationship, evolving, particularly kind of as it, you know, relates to Agent Force. Thanks.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

Yeah. We've we've deployed, within the sales teams, a lot of focus around delivering AI and the the platform at the same time in the new logo business. That that's continued to to to go well. Really, when we talk about the elongation of sales cycles, it's more around just a couple extra signatures. Right?

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

They're just more focused on the spend by companies. It's not really anything we changed in our our go to market, you know, we're continuing to execute well there. On the Five nine fusion, yeah, the really, the key focus right now with this is Salesforce, like we mentioned, is driving a lot of this BYOT opportunities to drive that into Einstein. If you think about further bring your own channel to be able to allow us to route all of the channels within the the Salesforce platform and then certainly agent force. So that's kind of a journey as well.

Andy Dignan
Andy Dignan
President at Five9

So this is kind of the start of that. We you know, we're excited about it, and, you know, this is only be the only the beginning.

Meta Marshall
Meta Marshall
Managing Director at Morgan Stanley

Great. Thanks.

Operator

And now we'll be taking our final question from Rishi Jaluria from RBC.

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Oh, wonderful. Thanks so much for squeezing me in. I have two questions I wanted to ask, continuing on the theme of AI. First, look, I appreciate all the the metrics and disclosures you've given us around, AI. I think it it really helps kinda bolster the case that you can be a real AI beneficiary.

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Just for the sake of of our own clarity and investor clarity, can you remind us what exactly is included in that bucket in terms of products and SKUs? Because it could be but the pushback I've always been getting from from bears has been, oh, there's a lot of basic automation included there that's not truly AI. So I I think a reminder there would be really helpful. And then the second follow on is if we think about your your medium term target model, and, again, appreciate you putting that in the slide deck, you're guiding to a a good amount of gross margin expansion, which is great to see. To what extent should we be thinking about, increased AI usage and adoption being a potential headwind to that gross margin number just given how prohibitively expensive, these AI workloads are, you know, even post all the model efficiency that we've been seeing over the past six, nine months?

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Thanks so much.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Yeah. I'll start with the first question. Rishi, thank you for these questions. They're very good. So when it terms to in terms of which products are included in our AI revenue, look, there I don't want I want there to be no confusion.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

And I've said this before, no confusion. This does not include simple automation and other things, including WEM functionality. It is not included in that. These are just the AI products since we acquired inference and the new ones we've announced that go along with that. So whether it's AI self-service, AI agents as we call them today for either digital or voice, whether it's agent assist, summaries, transcriptions, It's all the new technologies and new products we've delivered that are AI focused, and it does not include any kind of simple automation that we had before that.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

So that's the best way I can answer that. And when it comes to, you know, the medium term model and our gross margin expansion and AI being a potential headwind, as Brian just said a few minutes ago, we actually see it just the opposite. We see AI as a tailwind. You know, we talked about the the gross margins in the rearview mirror back in the inference days. The model cost, the engine cost per interaction or cost per, you know, consumption has gone down dramatically.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

And, you know, again, we're pretty efficient the way we develop the software. So we expect that to be a tailwind, not a headwind.

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Wonderful.

Rishi Jaluria
Rishi Jaluria
Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets

Thank you so much, guys.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

You got it. Thank you, Rishi.

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

Right. I

Mike Burkland
Mike Burkland
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Five9

just want to say thank you for joining us. We look forward to keeping you apprised as we progress through the year and as we progress toward becoming a Rule of 40 company on a free cash flow basis again in the future, but we're excited about the initiatives that are underway and the progress we're making. Thanks everyone.

Operator

This now concludes our meeting. Thank you for joining.

Executives
    • Mike Burkland
      Mike Burkland
      Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
    • Andy Dignan
      Andy Dignan
      President
    • Bryan Lee
      Bryan Lee
      Interim CFO
Analysts
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Key Takeaways

  • Five9 delivered a strong first quarter, beating guidance on all key metrics with subscription revenue up 14% year-over-year, a 19% adjusted EBITDA margin, and record operating and free cash flows of $48.4M and $34.9M respectively.
  • The company announced a comprehensive transformation initiative including a 4% workforce reduction and reinvestment in AI and go-to-market, targeting Rule of 40 profitability on an EBITDA basis and approaching Rule of 40 on free cash flow by 2027.
  • AI momentum remains a growth driver, with enterprise AI revenue up 32% year-over-year, over 20% AI attach rate on seven-figure deals, and real-world ROI examples—clients reported up to 40% better containment rates and ARR increases up to 49% after deploying the Genius AI suite.
  • Strategic partnerships are expanding distribution, highlighted by Five9 Fusion with Salesforce, ServiceNow transcript-stream integration, Google Cloud Marketplace launch, and an IBM WatsonX integration to enhance AI CX solutions.
  • The full-year 2025 guidance remains unchanged at $1.14B in revenue, while non-GAAP EPS midpoint was raised to $2.76, with expectations for sequential Q2 revenue of $275M and ongoing improvements in EBITDA margin and free cash flow conversion.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Five9 Q1 2025
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