eGain Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
September 4, 2025

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: eGain delivered Q4 revenue of $23.2 M, up 3% YoY and 11% sequentially—the first year-over-year growth in eight quarters—while non-GAAP operating costs declined 2% and adjusted EBITDA margin rose to 19%.
  • Positive Sentiment: The company secured its third win at JPMorgan Chase, expanding its AI Knowledge Hub to all US Chase employees, issued warrants, and added a Chase executive as a board observer to deepen this strategic partnership.
  • Positive Sentiment: eGain’s AI Knowledge ARR grew 25% in fiscal 2025 and is expected to expand by ~20% in fiscal 2026, supported by a planned 6% increase in R&D investment to enhance its AI agent and knowledge infrastructure.
  • Negative Sentiment: The firm will sunset its legacy messaging products in fiscal 2026—representing an ARR headwind of approximately $4.7 M—as it refocuses resources on core AI Knowledge solutions.
  • Positive Sentiment: For fiscal 2026, eGain projects revenue of $90.5 M–$92 M, gross margins of 74–75%, and a 20–40% increase in adjusted EBITDA, reflecting confidence in its AI knowledge market opportunity.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
eGain Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00
Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the eGain Fiscal 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full-year Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jim Byers, PondelWilkinson Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Operator

Thank you, Operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to eGain's Fiscal 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full-year Financial Results Conference Call. On the call today are eGain's Chief Executive Officer, Ashu Roy, and Chief Financial Officer, Eric Smit. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that during this conference call, management will make certain forward-looking statements, which convey management's expectations, beliefs, plans, and objectives regarding future financial and operational performance. Forward-looking statements are generally preceded by words such as believe, plan, intend, expect, anticipate, or similar expressions. Forward-looking statements are protected by safe harbor provisions contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to a wide range of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ in material respects.

Operator

Information on various factors that could affect eGain's results are detailed in the company's reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. eGain is making these statements as of today, September 4th, 2025, and assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any of the forward-looking information in this conference call. In addition to GAAP results, we will also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, such as non-GAAP operating income. The tables included with the earnings press release include reconciliation of the historical non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures. eGain's earnings press release can be found by clicking the press release's link on the investor relations page of eGain's website at egain.com. Along with the earnings release, we will post an updated investor presentation to theinvestor relations page of eGain's website.

Operator

Lastly, a phone replay of this conference call will be available for one week. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to eGain's CEO, Ashu Roy.

Operator

Thank you, Jim, and good afternoon, everyone. We finished fiscal 2025 with strong bookings, good revenue growth, and improved profitability in the fourth quarter, ahead of our projections and street consensus. I note that our fourth quarter results also include a one-time tax benefit from the release of our full income tax valuation allowance. Let me start with some business highlights. Last quarter, we signed up the largest nonprofit healthcare network in New Jersey as a client. They run 18 hospitals and have 36,000 team members. This client faced an urgent need to unify their knowledge management with strong governance because it was critical to support their rapid growth.

Operator

They chose our solution to unify these knowledge assets, and these direct, consistent, compliant answers now coming out of the Knowledge Hub will be delivered to their contact center agents on the desktop provided by Cisco in the flow of the conversation with the patients. Another new client we won was one of the nation's largest credit unions. They set out to implement an enterprise knowledge management system and in the past had had a challenging experience with another vendor. They recognized the value of our AI Knowledge Hub, and now they'll be using it to deliver trusted answers to all employees, including contact center agents who are using a Genesys CCaaS desktop. Another great win for us last quarter was a deal we signed with an existing client. This is a global leader in workforce services. They support employees of over 4,300 businesses, including 70% of the Fortune 100.

Operator

They will be deploying our AI Agent for contact center. As you know, this is a new product we launched last quarter. This solution will help their service associates better handle over 15 million phone calls every year. This will scale up next year to that level with proactive real-time guidance powered by trusted answers from our Knowledge Hub. It's very exciting for us to see the early interest in our AI Agent products. We are now engaged with many CX leaders who we note have been unsuccessful as they have tried to implement agent-assist solutions from other providers over the past couple of years. They seem to now understand that without a trusted knowledge infrastructure, all the AI-powered agent tools cannot deliver value because you cannot rely on those answers.

Operator

Stepping back, I also want to share what I think is an important update to the large deal news that we shared, we talked about last quarter at the earnings calls. As you may recall, we signed one of our largest deals in company history in April with a U.S. mega bank. That bank is JPMorgan Chase. This deal was our third win inside the bank, building on our success in their travel group and their international business unit. Our AI Knowledge Hub will now serve all bank employees in their U.S. Chase business. What is exciting for us is that we are now actively partnering with JPMorgan Chase to improve customer experience and drive AI efficiencies across their business. To strengthen this partnership, we issued warrants to JPMC in August, and they agreed to nominate a Senior Executive to join our eGain board as an observer.

Operator

He will be a great addition to our strategic brain trust. I'm super excited about our innovative partnership with JPMC. As we know, they are one of the most tech-savvy banks in America. They understand the criticality of a trusted knowledge infrastructure to scale their AI ambitions. They bet on eGain. We will deliver, and we will also benefit from their strategic insights and needs as we partner with them to design our next-generation products. Looking at the market, AI is starting to move down from what we would all agree is the hype peak toward more pragmatic pastures. Most of you probably read the recent MIT study. Based on an extensive survey of businesses, it reported that 95% of AI investments are not showing significant ROI. We know one big reason why. Without trusted knowledge, generative AI is stuck in the rut of garbage in, garbage out.

Operator

No amount of language model improvement and deep reasoning solves this problem. A student can do only so well as the book she reads. Increasingly, businesses are recognizing this foundational need for trusted knowledge to deliver AI ROI. Our bookings in fiscal 2025 have started to reflect this growing demand. Our total AI knowledge ARR grew by 25% year-over-year. We expect that our total AI knowledge ARR will grow by 20% or so in fiscal 2026. To continue to extend our product leadership in this critical AI infrastructure market, we will continue to invest and, in fact, modestly increase our product development investments. Our R&D spend in fiscal 2026 will grow by roughly 6% year-over-year. At the same time, we are defocusing from less strategic products in our portfolio.

Operator

Our messaging products, which have been in sustained mode for a few years, will now be sunset in fiscal 2026. On the operational front, we are streamlining our business with AI. This is improving productivity and quality, and we are deploying some of those savings into R&D, and the rest goes to the bottom line. Thanks to increased investment in R&D in fiscal 2025, we launched our new AI Agent products, one for customer self-service in March and the other for contact centers in June. Since then, we have enhanced the products with deep connectors to enterprise platforms like SharePoint, Genesys, and Salesforce. These products are well received now in the CX market, where businesses are looking for solutions that deliver real ROI. We saw this interest firsthand at our eGain Solve customer event in London this June.

Operator

Our demo lounge and the AI Agent workshop were packed with attendees who wanted to play with the product and configure their own use cases. New pipeline opportunities have started to grow out of those engagements. Our next eGain Solve customer event will be held in Chicago on October 14th and 15th at the Hyatt Regency O'Hare. In addition to customer success stories, new product intros, demos, and workshops, we will also host an Analyst Day at the event. We look forward to seeing some of you there. To conclude, I believe we have made good progress in fiscal 2025. With a sharp focus on the AI knowledge opportunity in customer service, we invested early and heavily in R&D. We launched eGain AI Agent, a new product set that effectively leverages our deep differentiation in knowledge management.

Operator

We also acquired good logos in our target market, including JPMC, a marquee client and now a design partner in our journey to deliver the most trusted knowledge infrastructure for AI. With that, I'll hand it over to Eric Smit, our CFO, to provide more detail on the financials. Eric.

Operator

Thanks, Ashu, and thanks everyone for joining us today. Before I begin, I want to mention that this is the first time we are using slides to support our earnings call. We believe this will provide helpful context and make it easier for you to follow our results and outlook. In addition to the webcast, you can find the slides in the investor relations section of the website under the updated investor presentation, and I will refer to them throughout my remarks today. As Ashu noted, we finished the year with solid bookings, a return to revenue growth, and strong profitability in the fourth quarter. Let me share more details about our financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year for fiscal 2025 before discussing our outlook and guidance for fiscal 2026.

Operator

Looking at our revenue, total revenue for the fourth quarter was $23.2 million, up 11% sequentially and up 3% year-over-year. This represents our first year-over-year increase in revenue in eight quarters. We believe we are now poised for growth in the coming fiscal year with momentum building in our AI knowledge business. Looking at non-GAAP gross profits and gross margins, total gross margin for the quarter was 73%, up from 71% a year ago. Sales gross margin for the quarter was 80%, up from 76% a year ago. Now turning to our operations, non-GAAP operating costs for the fourth quarter were $13.3 million, down 3% sequentially and down 2% year-over-year.

Operator

Looking at our bottom line, in the quarter we recorded an income tax valuation allowance of approximately $29 million, which resulted in GAAP net income of $30.9 million for $1.13 per share on a basic basis and $1.11 on a diluted basis. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 19%, up from 11% in the year-ago quarter. For Q4, non-GAAP net income, excluding the valuation allowance, was $2.4 million or $0.09 per share compared to non-GAAP net income of $2.5 million or $0.08 per share in the year-ago quarter. Last note on the quarter, we brought back $3.8 million in stock at an average price of $5.97 per share.

Operator

Turning to the full-year results, looking at our revenue for the full year, total revenue was $88.4 million, down 5% year-over-year, mainly due to the churn in our messaging business at the end of fiscal year 2024, which we had previously discussed. For the full year, sales revenue was $81.9 million, accounting for 93% of total revenue. Looking at non-GAAP gross profits and gross margins for fiscal 2025, sales gross margin was 78%, up from 77% in fiscal 2024, and total gross margin was 71% compared to 72% in fiscal 2024. Now turning to our operations, non-GAAP operating costs for the full fiscal year were $56 million, flat compared to the prior year. R&D for the full fiscal year was up 15% year-over-year, reflecting our investment in product innovation to capitalize on the significant AI knowledge market opportunity.

Operator

Looking at our bottom line, adjusted EBITDA margin for the fiscal year was 10% compared to 12% in the prior fiscal year. For the full fiscal year, non-GAAP net income, excluding the tax benefit, was $5.7 million or $0.20 per share compared to non-GAAP net income of $4.3 million or $0.40 per share on a basic and $0.39 per share on a diluted basis in the prior fiscal year. Turning to our balance sheet and cash flows, for the full fiscal year, we generated $5.3 million in cash flow from operations or 6% operating cash flow margin compared to $12.5 million or a 13% operating cash flow margin generated in fiscal 2024. Our balance sheet remains very strong. Total cash and cash equivalents at the end of the year were $62.9 million compared to $70 million as of June 30, 2024.

Operator

During fiscal 2025, under our share repurchase program, we repurchased 2.6 million shares at an average price of $6.03 per share, totaling $15.8 million. Of the $40 million authorized, $1.2 million remain available under the program at year end. As we announced today in a separate press release, our Board of Directors approved a $20 million increase in our stock repurchase program, bringing the aggregate amount we may purchase from $40 million to $60 million of our outstanding common stock. This reflects our belief that our shares are undervalued and we are confident in our AI knowledge market opportunity. Now turning to our customer metrics, I've broken out the ARR knowledge metrics from total metrics to highlight the momentum in our knowledge business.

Operator

Also, before sharing the metrics, one additional point is I will share actual and constant currency numbers, where on previous calls, the ARR numbers shared were only in constant currency. Looking at ARR first, sales ARR for knowledge customers increased 25% year-over-year, or 22% in constant currency, while sales ARR for all customers increased 11% year-over-year, or 9% in constant currency. Turning to our net retention rates, LTM dollar-based sales net retention for knowledge customers was 115% or 104% in constant currency, up from 98% a year ago, while net retention for all customers was 105% or 103% in constant currency, up from 88% a year ago. Our LTM dollar-based sales net expansion rate was 121% or 118% in constant currency for our knowledge customers and 114% or 111% in constant currency for all our customers.

Operator

Looking at our remaining performance obligations, total RPO increased 17% year-over-year, and our short-term RPO of $63 million was up 4% year-over-year. Now turning to guidance, for the first quarter of fiscal 2026, we expect total revenue of between $23 million-$23.5 million. Turning to the bottom line for Q1, we expect GAAP net income of $900,000-$1.6 million or $0.03-0.06 per share, which includes stock-based compensation expense of approximately $800,000 and warrant expense of approximately $1.4 million. The estimated warrant expense is in connection with the warrant we issued to JPMorgan as discussed by Ashu. For more details, please refer to the 8K we filed August 18th, 2025.

Operator

We expect non-GAAP net income of $3.1 million-$3.8 million or $0.11-$0.14 per share and adjusted EBITDA of $3.7 million-$4.4 million or a margin of 16%-19%. Looking at fiscal 2026 full year ending June 30th, 2026, total revenue is expected to return to growth for the full fiscal year and be between $90.5 million and $92 million. GAAP net income of $3.5 million-$5 million or $0.13-$0.18 per share. Non-GAAP net income of $8.3 million-$9.8 million or $0.30-$0.36 per share, where we estimate stock-based comp expense of approximately $3.4 million and warrant expense of approximately $1.4 million. Adjusted EBITDA of $10.4 million-$11.9 million or a margin of 11%-13%. Looking at weighted average shares outstanding, we expect approximately 27.5 million shares for the first quarter and for the full year.

Operator

In closing, our fiscal 2026 guidance reflects our excitement in the market opportunity as increasingly businesses are recognizing the foundational need of the Knowledge Hub to feed trusted knowledge to AI Agents. Based on this, we are targeting 20%+ growth in ARR from our core AI knowledge offering. This growth will be partially offset by the sunsetting of our non-core messaging product, as Ashu mentioned. As this will take place through fiscal 2026, and the current ARR impact of that is approximately $4.7 million. We expect to see gross margin expansion to be between 74% and 75% for the year, up from 71% in fiscal 2025, driven by streamlining our business with AI automation.

Operator

To extend our product leadership in the AI infrastructure market, we plan to redeploy some of the savings into R&D investment with an increase of 6% year-over-year, while still targeting an adjusted EBITDA increase of between 20%-40% year-over-year. Lastly, we will be hosting an Investor and Analyst Day event in conjunction with our upcoming eGain Solve customer events on October 14th and 15th in Chicago. This event is a great opportunity for prospective investors and analysts to meet with customers and learn more about our business. You can register for the event on our website. We hope you can join us. In November, eGain will be meeting with investors at the Roth Conference taking place on November 19th in New York.

Operator

We'll be providing more details as we get closer to that date and hope to see some of you there in person. With that, I would like to open the call for questions. Operator?

Operator

We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Our first question today is from Richard Baldry with Roth Capital. Please go ahead.

Operator

Thanks. Curious about the timing on the sunsetting of the messaging products. It looks like you'd be queued up for a pretty good year, and instead, that's going to be a pretty meaningful optic headwind. What really drives that choice heading into fiscal 2026?

Operator

Good question there, Rich. Two things. One, we realized that because we are not investing as much in that, we are not investing much at all in new product capability. We are coming under increasing pressure trying to hold on to clients, and these clients are looking for new solutions. They're looking for new capability, and we have a choice to make. We believe that focusing on AI knowledge, which is what we are doing now, will have a much bigger sort of ROI for us.

Operator

Can you talk about sort of the pacing on what you expect that to come out of the numbers so that we get an idea for, you know, you've guided for first quarter, but you know how should we look at that headwind versus the other side coming up as an offset throughout the year?

Operator

Yeah, Rich, I'll take that. I think the expectation is that we will see the impact begin in Q2, where the run rate will reduce by roughly 50%. By the end of fiscal 2026, as we get into the first quarter of fiscal 2027, we'd expect that to go down to zero.

Operator

Got it. On the JPMorgan side, can you talk about the thought process around structures, around intentions on that, you know the board seat, the warrant, $1.4 million in compensation for that? It's sort of a one-off event. The more you could flesh that out, I think the better for us. Thanks.

Operator

Yeah, I mean, look, we see JPMorgan as not just a great client, but also given how much they are investing in AI and automation, we see them as an amazing design partner for us and a thought partner. This is our way of kind of strengthening that relationship so that, of course, we are still vendors to them. That is important to keep in mind. We do have to deliver. At the same time, I think we'll be able to get ahead of a lot of other providers in terms of knowing what the needs are and how best to address them, especially in the financial services vertical. I see it as a strategic opportunity for us to get an unfair advantage to build on top of the core technology that we have.

Operator

We're hearing a lot of people are sort of tire-kicking on the AI-type solutions. Can you talk how much you're sort of working on active betas and how the sort of conversion to live deals, paid deals, active deals is working, how that's trending?

Operator

Yeah, no, that's, you're right. I think pure AI solutions are getting, you know, kick-tested and pressure-tested. I would say we are getting the same treatment, right? People are running pilots with us, and we are happy to run them for them using our innovation in 30 days. Now we have the self-sign-up model as well, so people can sign up and play with solutions. Of course, they can't build complex use cases without some guidance from us. What we are seeing is that our AI pilot to conversion to deal rate, in the beginning, I would say a year ago, it was very volatile because we were learning how to make the solution work really well. There was also managing the expectation and understanding the expectation of the customer. Now I think we are in a better place.

Operator

I'd say the two out of three conversion still stands even on AI solutions for us now. I'm feeling good about that.

Operator

Last for me, back to sort of the P&L, you know there's a pretty good increase in or decrease to the OpEx side and the COG side. How do we think about whether each of those lines are one-off or more sustainable in nature, maybe particularly on the COG side? If there's some cost coming out as you sunset the messaging product, you know where would those typically be coming out of? Thanks.

Operator

I'll make a couple of comments maybe because they do go deep into the way we are organized. Two things have happened on the COG side, I'll focus on that. One is that we completed our migration of all clients over to the new architecture, the new platform, the cloud platform that we have been working on for a few years now. We mentioned that in the past. That is one in place where we are seeing benefits, which now will continue to be there, right? That's one. The second one is, with not just AI, but also our ability to develop new product and capabilities faster, we are automating the process of supporting and operating our cloud, and being much more efficient on the cloud resources that we are using, all three of those.

Operator

That is another big chunk of improvement that we are able to create on a sustainable basis.

Operator

Great. Thanks. Congrats on the big step up to the EBITDA.

Operator

Thank you.

Operator

The next question is from Jeff Van Rhee with Craig-Hallum. Please go ahead. Jeff, your line is open on our end. Please go ahead.

Operator

Can you hear me?

Operator

Now we can.

Operator

Oh, wow. Okay, great. Weird on my end. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe I missed it, but Eric, in terms of the SaaS, the ARR related to the SaaS side, if you could break it up, knowledge, I think you gave last quarter was 54%. Just break down the components because it sounds like the messaging is going away, but I'm a little hazy on what the breakup of the ARR is.

Operator

Yeah, I think the 54%, we're almost up to 60% now of the total ARR is for the AI knowledge. That's considered.

Operator

Of the remaining 40%, we've got messaging, which you're sunsetting. What's the remainder?

Operator

The remainder is then broken up between the Analytics Hub and the Conversation Hub components, making up the balance of that.

Operator

Yep. Obviously, you've got some pretty good momentum on the knowledge side, and congratulations. I mean, it sounds like you're definitely tapping into a real need there. On the Analytics and Conversation Hub, how do you feel there? I know messaging, you can see that with LivePerson and others, has been really difficult and has changed pretty dramatically. How do you feel about your competitive position on the Conversation Hub, to the degree you're leaning in there on product development? Just a little thoughts on Conversation and Analytics and what you're seeing there.

Operator

Yeah. Let me start with Analytics. I would say that Analytics, while we continue to have a lot of focus on Analytics as it is integrated into the Knowledge Hub and the Conversation Hub, the part that Eric is talking about for Analytics Hub revenue, that's really a standalone for contact center Analytics and particularly around large voice contact centers and Cisco contact centers, right? That was a business we had acquired and then we kind of built it up a little bit. I feel that Analytics Hub revenue stream will be a cash cow for us and will slowly probably go away. I think that trajectory is going to be fairly slow in terms of the reduction.

Operator

On the Conversation Hub, I'm actually a little, I'm optimistic because I feel like as the AI Knowledge Hub, and we are seeing that a little bit now, as the AI Knowledge Hub business grows, that will pull in more and more of what I would call now the escalation management because the front end is being automated. I feel like there'll be some positive win there, not necessarily in fiscal 2026, but I feel that in fiscal 2027, we'll see some upside in that.

Operator

Helpful. On the pipeline on the knowledge side, obviously, JPMorgan, you know, huge win, kind of big flag waver to help you, you know, drive other business. When you look at the pipeline and you look specifically at mega deals that you're working on, just give us some color. Are there others of that caliber in the pipeline and any other color on the pipeline would be helpful?

Operator

I'll say a couple of things. First of all, at this point, I don't think we have a JPMC-sized deal in the pipeline. We do have a good set of what I would call seven-figure opportunities, which are also very attractive, and we want to get more of those. That is happening for two reasons. I would say one is, of course, the core AI pool, which is there. The second one, which is a good one for us, is that these deals are starting out in the contact center, but they are encompassing the rest of the employees as part of the sale, and that ups the size of these opportunities.

Operator

Okay. Eric, on the numbers side, you gave a glimpse into the overall gross margins. I'm just curious, your thinking on the services gross margins, you know, obviously not the focus of the business going forward. Should we just think of it as a continued sort of -15%, -20%, or how do you think about service margins?

Operator

No, thanks for the question. I think our goal, along the lines of the optimization and efficiencies that we've been driving, is we expect to get the services margins closer to break even, maybe slightly positive as the year progresses.

Operator

Yeah, got it. Very helpful. Thanks so much.

Operator

Welcome.

Operator

This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Operator

Thanks again for joining us today. Hopefully, we see some of you at some of the upcoming events, and we'll catch up at the next earnings call. Thank you.

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.

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