Zoom Video Communications (ZM) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

Zoom Video Communications (ZM 3.67%)
Q3 2025 Earnings Call
Nov 25, 2024, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Zoom’s Q3 FY ’25 earnings release webinar. As a reminder, today’s webinar is being recorded. And now, I will hand things over to Charles Eveslage, head of investor relations. Charles, over to you.

Charles Eveslage — Head of Investor Relations

Thank you, Kelcey. Hello, everyone, and welcome to Zoom’s earnings video webinar for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025. I’m joined today by Zoom’s founder and CEO, Eric Yuan; and Zoom’s CFO, Michelle Chang. Our earnings release was issued today after the market closed and may be downloaded from the investor relations page at investors.zoom.us.

Also, on this page you’ll be able to find a copy of today’s prepared remarks and a slide deck with financial highlights that, along with our earnings release, include a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results.These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP. During this call we will make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our financial outlook for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2025; our expectations regarding financial and business trends; impacts from the macroeconomic environment, our market position, stock repurchase program, opportunities, go-to-market initiatives, growth strategy, and business aspirations; and product initiatives, including future product and feature releases, and the expected benefits of such initiatives. These statements are only predictions that are based on what we believe today, and actual results may differ materially. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and other factors that could affect our performance and financial results, which we discuss in detail in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.

Zoom assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements we may make on today’s webinar. And with that, let me turn the discussion over to Eric.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Charles. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. In early October, we hosted Zoomtopia, our annual customer and innovation event. And it was an amazing opportunity to showcase all that we’ve been working on for our customers.

We had record breaking virtual attendance and unveiled our new vision, AI-first work platform for human connection. This update marks an exciting milestone as we extend our strengths as a unified communication and collaboration platform into becoming an AI-first work platform. Our goal is to empower customers to navigate today’s work challenges, streamlining information, prioritizing tasks, and making smart use of time. At Zoomtopia, we took meaningful steps toward that vision with the release of AI Companion 2.0, further showcasing all the things that customers have come to expect from Zoom a breakneck pace of innovation, customer obsession, and reliable, easy-to-use products.

This release builds upon the awesome quality of Zoom AI Companion 1.0 across features like meeting summary, meeting query, and smart compose, and brings it together in a way that evolves beyond task-specific AI toward agentic AI. This major update allows the AI Companion to see a broader window of context, synthesize information from internal and external sources, and orchestrate action across the platform. AI Companion 2.0 raises the bar for AI and demonstrates to customers that we understand their needs. They want AI to enhance their existing workflows, not disrupt them.

They want AI to deliver exceptional results for their entire teams. And they want to experience the value firsthand before incurring additional spend. We highlighted many customers at Zoomtopia. Praniti Lakhwara, CIO of Zscaler, provided a great example of how Zoom AI Companion helped democratize AI and enhance productivity across the organization without sacrificing security and privacy.

And it wasn’t just Zscaler, the RealReal, HSBC, ExxonMobil, and Lake Flato architects shared similar stories about Zoom’s secure, easy-to-use solutions, helping them thrive in the age of AI and flexible work. Building on our vision for democratizing AI, we introduced a roadmap of TAM-expanding AI products that create additional business value through customization, personalization, and alignment to specific industries or use cases. Custom AI Companion add-on, which will be released in the first half of next year, aims to meet our customers where they are in their AI journey by plugging into knowledge bases, integrating with third-party apps and personalizing experiences like custom AI avatars and AI coaching. Additionally, we announced that we’ll also have Custom AI Companion paid add-ons for healthcare and education available as early as the first quarter of next year.

These AI-first industry-tailored solutions will build upon the remarkable traction and customer love we have in these industries and allow us to deliver AI solutions that meet these customers’ unique needs from the lecture hall to the doctor’s office. We also announced Zoom Workplace for frontline workers available in the first half of 2025 with the goal of extending our success in Zoom Workplace further into the extremely large but underserved frontline worker market. We will first target frontline-rich industries where we have a strong install base and have gained substantial learnings, such as retail, healthcare, and manufacturing. This mobile-centric solution will address the unique work style of frontline workers with features like AI Companion-generated shift summaries, on-shift communications, work management, insights, and more.

Contact Center and Workvivo are key pillars of our strategy to extend from our core strengths into natural adjacencies, and I’m pleased to share that both had amazing quarters. We secured our largest ever Contact Center customer at over 20,000 seats, demonstrating our ability to compete at the high-end, expand further into the EMEA market and win with the channel. In fact, our top four Contact Center deals in the quarter came from the channel, which speaks to our progress leveraging this amazing resource to extend our success across geographies and industries. We also saw incredible traction with Workvivo as we landed three net new Workvivo customers with over $1 million in ARR, including the largest deal to date with a Fortune 10 company.

We are happy to see that both Contact Center and Workvivo benefit as a natural upsell to our massive base of Zoom Workplace customers. And we are encouraged to see these products bring in brand-new customers to Zoom and become beachheads for Zoom Workplace to expand. The success of this bidirectional land-and-expand motion demonstrates our better together platform vision is resonating well with customers looking for a full AI-first work platform, bridging the worlds of customer and employee experience. Now, let me recognize some of our amazing customers.

Thank you Agencia Tributaria, Spain’s national revenue service, for their extraordinary expansion in Q3. Over two years ago, Agencia, like many other customers, became convinced of the constraints of their on-prem phone system and deployed 30,000 Zoom Phone seats. After Zoom Phone rapidly delivered value at scale to enhance efficiency and service quality during a demanding tax season in 2022, they moved to consider our total experience, omni-channel solutions to further elevate their taxpayer services. This resulted in an incredible record-setting Zoom Contact Center deal with over 20,000 seats, in conjunction with Zoom Workplace, delivering a complete Zoom experience for both employees and taxpayers.

Thank you, Agencia, for your trust and partnership. Thank you to ServiceNow, the AI Platform for business transformation, for expanding its relationship with Zoom. Already a power user of Zoom Workplace, in Q3, ServiceNow adopted Workvivo and expanded its Zoom Phone footprint. As announced at Zoomtopia, we’re deepening the integration of ServiceNow’s Now Assist with Zoom AI Companion to bolster our generative AI product offerings and deliver advanced workflow synergies for our customers.

It was an honor having chairman and CEO, Bill McDermott, who is also a member of Zoom’s board of directors, join us at Zoomtopia. Thanks, Bill. We look forward to continuing our strong partnership. Let me also thank Redpin, a leading international fintech and prop tech company, for choosing Zoom.

They came to us as a brand-new customer through a trusted channel partner, and identified Zoom as the best solution to transform the way they engage customers with their innovative property payments software and services. Redpin opted for the Zoom total experience, including Zoom Contact Center Elite, Zoom Revenue Accelerator, and Zoom Workplace Business Plus, in order to enhance customer experience, elevate agent productivity and happiness, and realize major cost efficiencies from streamlining operations. Finally, let me thank athenahealth, a leading provider of network-enabled software and services for medical practices and health systems, for integrating Zoom’s Meeting SDK into their athenaOne electronic health record. By leveraging Zoom’s cutting-edge video technology, athenahealth is empowering its network of over 160,000 providers to deliver seamless virtual care through telehealth.

We are so pleased to see more customers adopting our Zoom Workplace and Business Services products in order to reap the benefits of our modern, natively integrated AI-powered technologies. Before handing it off to Michelle, I’m excited to share that earlier today, we announced our new corporate name: Zoom Communications Inc. This change reflects our evolution into an AI-first work platform for human connection and our vision for long-term growth. Now, over to our new CFO, Michelle Chang.

Thank you.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Thank you, Eric, and hello, everyone. It was great to meet many of you at Zoomtopia. I am excited to be taking you through our earnings for the first time and look forward to partnering with all of you going forward. T o kick us off, I am pleased to announce that we beat our top-line and profitability guidance in Q3.

In line with our previous statements, year-over-year revenue growth troughed in Q2 and showed improvement in Q3, driven by positive trends in both enterprise and online. Here are a few highlights from the quarter. We saw progress toward our AI-first vision with Zoom AI Companion monthly active users growing 59% quarter over quarter. And as Eric mentioned, we saw great traction expanding into adjacent markets with growth in Workvivo and Contact Center.

The number of Workvivo customers grew 72% year over year, driven in part by the strength of the Meta partnership. And the number of Zoom Contact Center customers surpassed 1,250, up more than 82% year over year. Now, let’s dive into the financial results. In Q3, total revenue grew approximately 4% year over year to $1.178 billion.

This result was $13 million above the high end of our guidance. Our enterprise revenue grew approximately 6% year over year, reflecting a continued shift to enterprise, which now makes up 59% of our total revenue, up 1 point year over year. We’re pleased with the continued stabilization in online amid ongoing macro conditions. In Q3 we saw improvement in average monthly churn, which decreased to 2.7%, down 30 basis points year over year.

This is our lowest ever reported churn. In our enterprise business, we saw 7% year-over-year customer growth in the up-market as we ended the quarter with just shy of 4,000 customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing twelve month revenue. These customers now make up 31% of our revenue, up 2 points year over year. Our trailing twelve month net dollar expansion rate for enterprise customers in Q3 came in at 98%.

The number of enterprise customers at the end of Q3 was approximately 192,400. As we have mentioned in prior quarters the number of enterprise customers distinguishes between our two go-to-market motions and will fluctuate with shifts in focus, and as such has become a less valuable measurement of company performance over time. Pivoting to our growth internationally. Our Americas revenue grew 4% year over year, EMEA grew 5%, and APAC was flat.

On a constant currency basis, EMEA grew 3% and APAC grew 2% year over year. Moving to our non-GAAP results, which, as a reminder, exclude stock-based compensation expense and associated payroll taxes, acquisition-related expenses, net gains on strategic investments, net litigation settlements, and all associated tax effects. Non-GAAP gross margin in Q3 was 78.9% as compared to 79.7% in Q3 of last year. The year-over-year reduction was primarily due to investments in AI.

For the full year of FY ’25, we continue to expect our gross margin to be approximately 79%. Non-GAAP income from operations came in at $458 million, exceeding the high end of our guidance of $443 million, as we continued to make progress managing expenses while investing in AI, our platform, and emerging products. This translates to a 38.9% non-GAAP operating margin for Q3 as compared to 39.3% in Q3 of last year. Non-GAAP diluted net income per share in Q3 was $1.38 on approximately 314 million non-GAAP diluted weighted average shares outstanding.

This result was $0.07 above the high end of our guidance and $0.9 higher than Q3 of last year. Turning to the balance sheet. Deferred revenue at the end of the period grew 5% year over year to $1.38 billion, driven by the continued refinement of discounting practices, as well as lengthening billing terms. For Q4, we expect deferred revenue to be up 5% to 6% year over year.

Looking at both our billed and unbilled contracts, our RPO increased 5% year over year to approximately $3.74 billion. We expect to recognize 61% of the total RPO as revenue over the next 12 months, up from 58% in Q3 of last year. Operating cash flow in the quarter decreased 2% year over year to $483 million. Free cash flow grew 1% year over year to $458 million.

Operating cash flow and free cash flow margins in the quarter were 41% and 38.9%, respectively. We ended the quarter with approximately $7.7 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, excluding restricted cash. Under the pre-existing $1.5 billion share buy-back plan, in Q3, we purchased 4.4 million shares for $302 million, increasing our repurchases quarter over quarter by $14 million. And at the end of Q3, we repurchased 11.6 million shares for $739 million.

Turning to guidance. For Q4, we expect revenue to be in the range of $1.175 billion to $1.18 billion, which, at the midpoint, represents approximately 2.7% year-over-year growth. We expect non-GAAP operating income to be in the range of $443 million to $448 million, representing an operating margin of 37.8% at the midpoint, as we continue to prioritize efficiency across our operations. Our outlook for non-GAAP earnings per share is $1.29 to $1.30 based on approximately 315 million shares outstanding.

We are also pleased to raise our top-line and profitability outlook for the full year of FY ’25. We now expect revenue to be in the range of $4.656 billion to $4.661 billion, which, at the midpoint, represents approximately 2.9% year-over-year growth. Our total revenue guidance assumes a continuation of the mixed macroeconomic environment. We expect our non-GAAP operating income to be in the range of $1.813 billion to $1.818 billion, representing an operating margin of 39%, at the midpoint.

Our outlook for non-GAAP earnings per share for FY ’25 is $5.41 to $5.43 based on approximately 315 million shares outstanding. With the free cash flow results in Q3 and increased outlook for operating income in FY ’25, we now expect free cash flow to be toward the high end of our previously provided range of $1.58 billion to $1.62 billion for the full year. As indicated in our earnings press release today, we are also excited to announce our board has authorized an incremental $1.2 billion share repurchase. This reinforces our board and management team’s confidence in Zoom, enabling us to further leverage our strong cash flow and balance sheet to drive shareholder returns.

The incremental authorization brings our total unexecuted buy-back to approximately $2 billion, which we expect to execute by the end of FY ’26. In conclusion, we believe our results and guidance underscore the progress we have made driving top-line growth, strong financial management, and shareholder returns. We are excited about our differentiated AI-first platform vision to deliver value for our customers and incredibly grateful for the trust and support of the entire Zoom team, our customers, and our investors. Kelcey, please queue up the first question.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Thank you so much, Michelle. And as Michelle mentioned, we will now move into the Q&A session. So, when I call your name, please turn on your video and unmute yourselves. And as a reminder, in an effort to hear from everyone, we please ask that you limit yourself to one question.

And our first question will come from Meta Marshall with Morgan Stanley.

Meta Marshall — Analyst

Great, thanks so much. Congrats on the quarter. Maybe for you, Eric, I just wanted to get a sense coming out of Zoomtopia. You know, what you were hearing from customers just about where their strongest interest is on AI and kind of where they’re looking for you to kind of take the roadmap to address kind of some of their needs?

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, so Meta, this is a great question. That’s the theme of Zoomtopia this year is really about AI. You know, we launched the AI Companion 1.0 last year. And with more and more customers, they enable AI, and also at Zoomtopia, we mentioned there are over 4 million accounts who are already enabled AI Companion.

Given the quality, ease-of-use, and no additional cost, the customers really like Zoom AI Companion. However, after one year later, they also want to understand, what’s the direction? Are there any new things from us? And the feedback from our customers at Zoomtopia about Zoom AI Companion 2.0 were extremely positive. Because, you know, first of all, they look at our innovation, you know, the speed, right? And, you know, a lot of features built into the AI Companion 2.0. Again, at a new additional cost, right? At the same time, enterprise customers also wanted to have some flexibility.

That’s why we also introduced a customized AI Companion and also AI Companion Studio. And that will be available first half of next year, and also we can monetize. Overall, the customers really trust Zoom, right? As we continue improving the AI quality, like meeting summary, you compare the Zoom meeting summary quality versus any other competitors, I have a high confidence customer like our solution, like our quality and also a lot of innovative features. And the customer really enjoy AI Companion 2.0.

And by the way, you look at the last three months, look at our AI, you know, look at our monthly active users, it’s already up, you know, almost 60%. Right? And so, that’s very, very, very — you know, the positive side. So, overall, the customer really like Zoom AI Companion. And also, they really appreciate us.

See, we are not going to charge a customer for AI Companion at a new additional cost. So, that’s very good news for us.

Meta Marshall — Analyst

Great, thanks.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

We will now hear from Kash Rangan with Goldman Sachs.

Kash Rangan — Analyst

Hi. Thank you very much. I’ll echo the congratulations, and congrats to you, Michelle, on your first earnings conference call with Zoom. Eric, we had the pleasure of attending Zoomtopia as well.

I’m curious, where are the budgets for AI coming from? Is it from a separate pool from your customers? Or are they taking the budgets out of budgets — or AI money out of budgets that were designed for Zoom? And also, a follow-up question on the macro, a tone of customer conversations post the elections, do you sense that there’s slightly higher animal spirits, better appetite to spend in tech — on tech and on Zoom’s products in particular? Thank you so much.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, Kash, thank you. And looks like you are driving. So, I think look at AI, the cost, right? So, every company, I think now, they’re always thinking about where they should allocate the budget, right? Where should they get more money or fund, right, to support AI? I think every company is different. And some, you know, with customers, they have a new budget.

Some customers, they consolidated into the field vendors. And some customers, they just want to say, “Hey, you know, maybe actually saving the money from other areas, you know, and to shift the budget toward embracing AI.” And given our strengths on the quality plus at no additional cost, Zoom is much better positioned. In particular, customers look at all the vendors when they try to consult and look at — again, AI cost is not small, right? You look at some of the competitors, per user per month, $30, right? And look at Zoom, better quality at new additional cost. You know, that’s the reason why it comes to total cost of ownership.

Customers look at Zoom, I think, much better positioned. You are so right. Otherwise, customers say, if they are good — again, almost every business is. They subscribe to multiple software services.

If each software service vendors they are going to charge a customer with AI, guess what, every business is — they have to spend more. That’s the reason why they trusted Zoom, and I think we are much better positioned. And back to your second question, I think it’s too early to tell. And every company, they look at, you know, the macroeconomic, I think as we all know is getting better.

And also, in terms of regulation of AI, it’s — also, it’s way too early to tell. But overall, I think that every company, they are very optimistic about doubling down embracing AI. They look at the windows who they trust with better quality, also with the better, you know, total cost of ownership. I think that’s the reason why I truly believe Zoom is in a much better position.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

And maybe if I can add in, Kash, maybe unasked, but an important note is our forecast sort of assumes like macro conditions and like spending conditions relative to what we saw in Q3.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yep.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

All right, we’ll go ahead and move on to Arjun Bhatia with William Blair.

Arjun Bhatia — Analyst

Perfect. Thank you and congrats on the reacceleration here. Eric, maybe if we can switch gears a little bit to Contact Center. You have that 20,000-seat deal with the Spanish revenue service, I believe, this quarter.

That’s a very large deal, very impressive. Can you just maybe elaborate a little bit on what were some of the major factors that drove Zoom to win a deal like that? What was the process like? How competitive was it? And, you know, what were some of the maybe differentiating factors that you saw in that that you can maybe replicate in other Contact Center deals?

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, yeah, great question. So, given that, I still wear the head of Zoom Contact Center general manager. I really like your question. I think a few things.

First of all, they are already our customer. They deploy, I think, if I recall correctly, more than 30,000 Zoom Phone seats, you know, before. You know, in a very busy tax season, Zoom delivered a greater performance. They really trust the Zoom.

And when they look at the Zoom Contact Center, you know, they know actually our back-end architecture, very scalable, right? And they also look at our — all the feature set, right? As I mentioned, over the past few quarters, we support PCI, FedRAMP, and the workforce management, quality management, and also social channel. They know our piece of innovation is amazing. And because the architecture, because of trust, because of the features. And also look at our scalability, and we have no problem from very beginning kind of support, you know, very large contact center agent deployment.

Again, when we build an architecture from day one, not like other vendors, right, they had to have a surgery, right, to support up to the 10,000 or 20,000 from day one. Our architecture are very scalable. That’s the reason why the customers, they are very, very happy, you know, to deploy the Zoom Contact Center. Again, from an order side perspective, we feel like, wow, that’s a large deal 20,000 agents.

But you’re talking with our product engineering team and say, “Hey, we already support that deal, you know, from an architectural perspective on day one,” right? So, given more and more customers recognize the potential of Zoom and, you know, look at our piece of innovation, I think — especially the AI, I think we are very well positioned to win more deals like that.

Arjun Bhatia — Analyst

Perfect. Thank you.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Our next question is going to come from Patrick Walravens with JMP Securities.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Patrick, you are muted.

Pat Walravens — Analyst

Hopefully, I’m unmuted now. Can you hear me?

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yes.

Pat Walravens — Analyst

OK, great. Congratulations. Michelle, I think I’m going to focus on you, if that’s all right. So, can you just tell us again, you know, why you — I asked you this question at the analyst day, but I think a bigger venue would be helpful.

Why you took this job, what you found so far. And then, maybe, you obviously haven’t guided for next year yet and you’re early in your tenure, but maybe any points that you would share with us in terms of how to think about next year?

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, great. Thanks, Pat, for the question. Let me kind of go back and just remind people. I came to Zoom, I think, in part, at the beginning because of the iconic brand and the established leadership in meetings.

But as Eric and I began our conversations over the interview process, I got more and more excited about where I saw Zoom going to an AI-first platform company and could see a lot of the seeds, if you will, of growth being planted and starting to come to fruition. So, got very excited about that. And maybe, you know, my learning sense has been delightful, honestly, to see the customer love and the pace of innovation. I think you’d heard about it before, but to be among it, I think, has been a delight.

And so, you know, my focus as a CFO is really going to be on top line as you noted, getting the top-line revenue growth further accelerating, certainly continuing to manage margins and expenses as Kelly has. And then, maybe the last part I’d say that I think you saw is reupped here today is capital allocation with our buyback. And in terms of how to guide for FY ’26, look, we will officially guide, as we always have, in the next guidance period. So, I’ll save my comments until then.

Pat Walravens — Analyst

OK, great. Thank you.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

James Fish with Piper Sandler has the next question.

Jim Fish — Analyst

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. Maybe, Eric, for you on the AI side, you guys were talking about AI investments obviously impacting the gross margins. You talked about that last quarter.

But is this — where do you think about the AI investments actually going into? Is it sort of the backend infrastructure, or thinking about it more on companion side and more modules? How are you feeling about the AI portfolio for Contact Center generally? And then, just, Michelle, for you, on the — you talked about lengthening billing terms. We’re starting to see though a difference between on RPO and billings for sure, but a big divergence really on the current and noncurrent RPO trends this quarter. Can you just kind of walk us through what happened there despite the comment on lengthening billing terms? Thanks.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah, James, great question. I can address your first one. So, if you look at AI, right? So, we have to invest more, right? And, you know, I think a few areas, right? One is look at our Zoom Workplace platform, right? You know, we have to invent more talents, you know, deploy more GPUs and also use more of the cloud, basically GPUs as well, as we keep improving the AI quality and innovate on AI features. That’s for Workplace.

And at the same time, you know, we are going to introduce the customized AI Companion, also AI Studio next year. Not only do we offer the free service for AI Companion, but those enterprise customization certainly can help us in terms of monetization. At the same time, we leveraged the technology we build for the workplace, apply that to the Contact Center, like Zoom Virtual Agent, right and also some other contact center features. We can share the same AI infrastructure, and also lot of technology components and also can be shared with Zoom Contact Center.

Where the AI Companion is not free, the Contact Center is different, right? We also can monetize. Essentially, we build the same common AI infrastructure architecture and Workplace — customized work AI Companion, we can monetize. Contact Center, also can monetize. I think more and more — you know, now like, today, you keep investing more and more.

And soon, we can also monetize more as well. That’s why I think we do not worry about the cost in the long run at all — I mean, the AI investment because, you know, with the monetization coming in certainly can help us more. So, far, we feel very comfortable.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

And, James, maybe to answer your question on RPO and specifically why we see the current piece go up, we are seeing just a confirmed lengthening billing terms. So, we’re encouraged by that of an indicator, both in online and enterprise, of our customers’ dedication to Zoom. In particular, current, as you know, went up 10%. And the way that I would have you think about that is when we have coterminous contracts, we tend to see as we sell outside of that expiry cycle, that current volume go up temporarily before it goes to long term.

So, net-net, a positive thing as to expanding portfolio with our customers.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

And we will now hear from Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research.

Alex Zukin — Analyst

Hey, guys. Congratulations on a solid quarter. Maybe just, I’ll say one and a half questions. On the monetization side, Eric, as you’re starting to see AI Companion additions and interactions start to scale, as you think about the ultimate monetization opportunity of AI in terms of the broader portfolio, how, when, where should we see it? Is it through selling Contact Center that’s more AI native into the overall base? Is it the verticalization of the AI Companion 2.0? Is it better AI Companion expanding? Just give us a flavor for the how and the when.

And, Michelle, if I look at from a kind of forward KPIs, I see enterprise billings growing double digits again. I see cRPO growing double digits again. I see churn for the online business basically getting lower every quarter by 20 to 30 basis points. Why shouldn’t we kind of extrapolate that as the online business stable flat enterprise business accelerating from here?

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. Eric, do you want to go on the monetization? I’m happy to tag in, too, on the AI front.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

You can address the second one because it’s just — asked of this, if you want.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

OK.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Then, I can address the first one later.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so to answer your question, and, Alex, obviously we’re not going to guide to ’26 until February, but I would say we feel good about the beat to forecast. We feel good about the implied raise to Q4. And we feel good about the overall acceleration. If you look at our H2 growth, it’s above H1.

So, net-net, in terms of what we’ve said and what we’ve guided, it’s delivering on what we said. And then, you kind of go to the underlying KPIs and you look at it. And I think there’s a lot of strong fundamentals. So, look, I’m not going to confirm the numbers that you gave, but I think maybe one way to think about the models for revenue is we’ve given a Q4 revenue growth guide.

I believe the midpoint of that growth rate probably represents a reasonable proxy for how to think about revenue growth into FY ’26.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Alex, by the way, we will share more in detail in the Q4 earnings call, if we see at FY ’26. By the way, you mentioned online. Remember, you know, two years ago, FY ’23, right, I look at online business, it declined by 8%.

A year ago, 4%. Now, this year, flat, right?

Alex Zukin — Analyst

Yeah.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

You see the trend is very positive. So, back to your question of AI monetization, we already monetized AI today, but not for the Workplace products, for upgraded services like Contact Center, like Zoom Revenue Accelerator, right? And like the newly coming services, like Zoom Workplace for frontline workers, for educators, for healthcare, those, you know, products tailored for vertical industries. At the same time, we’ve also focused on enterprise, you know, I think it’s some — maybe second half of next year and for the — because the customized AI Companion and AI Companion Studio will not be available in the first half of next calendar year, right? I think a lot of, you know, monetization opportunities. But also, at the same time, you know, not only do we monetize AI Companion, but also, we leverage AI Companion to further build the relationship with customer, you know, like a customer look at today to Zoom platform.

On the one hand, ease-of-use, stable, secure, plus AI, you know, a greater performance quality at no additional cost, right? I think more and more — we do see some customers last two quarters. You know, they switched to Zoom platform, right? I gave one example, right, why in Q3, we were a very large insurance company. And if I recall correctly, they’re only 20,000 seats, right? They switched to Zoom Workplace platform. You know, for sure, there are some big competitors there, so-called for free.

But when they analyze — their employees like our Zoom service, they analyze the total cost Zoom AI Companion also at no additional cost. That’s one of the key reasons why, you know, they select Zoom as their collaboration platform. So, that’s a very big win, right, in Q3, so —

Alex Zukin — Analyst

Perfect. Thank you, guys.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Alex.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

And then, Alex —

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Moving — oh.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Going back, sorry, to your question. In online, the way that I would think about the Q4 is sort of flat to slightly down. And then, certainly, because I get this question a lot, the ambition for online is growth. I just want to make sure I answered your online questions.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Thanks again, Alex. And we will move on to Siti Panigrahi with Mizuho.

Siti Panigrahi — Analyst

Great. Thank you. Michelle, congrats on your first earnings call. And you talked about your focus to reaccelerate top-line growth.

Can you guys hear me?

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah.

Siti Panigrahi — Analyst

OK. So, it’s good to see the platform mostly your NRR stabilizing, and now you talk about multiple products, like Phone, Contact Center, Workvivo, customized AI Companion, a lot of different products you are talking about that will layer in growth. So, as you look forward to next year, which products you are more excited about? And how do you rack out of these products when it comes to layering the growth to the core platform?

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. It’s such a great question. I guess I would start with just sort of the foundation of Zoom, and then I’ll kind of build out in my answer. So, look, the foundation of Zoom was obviously the meetings we’re working very hard to move that to platform.

And we’re excited by the deceleration of seat down sells that we’re seeing. We’re excited by the competitive wins that we’re seeing. We’re excited by the online churn rate. So, kind of in our foundation as we bring in AI, as Eric has said many times, at no additional cost, or we bring — you know, we build out the portfolio of Workplace, we’re excited at sort of what that could mean to the foundation of our business.

And then, certainly, as we think about the growth sectors from there, part of that Workplace platform is a shift to Phone, which has been a significant growth driver to us. We’ll certainly — that will certainly continue. And then, I would say, the products that we’re seeing, the momentum in today — we call them — or I call them our emerging products in Contact Center and Workvivo, you know, I think we’ll continue to be durable elements for product growth going forward. And then, over time, I think you’ll see more of that AI monetization and some of the things that we announced at Zoomtopia.

But like any products, those will come in with time. And you asked a lot about product growth. But I guess I would also call out that I think there’s a lot of growth vectors that we still can grow from in terms of our international growth or our channel expansion are continuing to go up market. There’s a lot of really great proof points of when we get customers in on the workplace, decreases churn, you know, that accelerates revenue growth with our land and expand.

So, I think there’s a lot of, you know, beyond sort of the traditional product levers of growth, a lot more we can do.

Siti Panigrahi — Analyst

Thank you. Thanks for that color.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Allan Verkhovski with Scotiabank has the next question.

Allan Verkhovski — Analyst

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the questions here, and I’ll echo the congrats on a strong quarter. Michelle, it looks like the deferred revenue growth in the quarter came in right as you guys were expecting, which is a slight change of pace from the beats we’ve seen there. There are a number of large deals you highlighted in the quarter, like the Contact Center deal with over 20,000 seats.

Can you just walk us through the puts and takes there in the quarter? And, perhaps, give us a refresh about the level of conservatism you’re embedding in your Q4 guide of deferred revenue growth being 5% to 6%.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Yeah. So, first of all, I would say, you know, we guided that it will be in that — it grew 5% in Q3, and we guided to 5% to 6%. So, just to reorient everyone. The dynamics of what’s driving that are tightening of discounting and lengthening of billing terms, and we expect those to obviously continue into Q4.

So, you know, in terms of what may be — you know, how to think about it in terms of our guidance philosophy, I would say, it’s very much the same. So, I’ve continued a guidance philosophy is similar to what has been had historically at Zoom.

Allan Verkhovski — Analyst

OK. Thanks, guys.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

The other thing that I would mention, nothing different to what Zoom has said historically is that revenue is ultimately the better measure and indicator for our business, you know, given some fluctuations that you’ll see from quarter to quarter in deferred revenue. So, that’s really what I would point people to.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

And Bank of America’s Michael Funk has the next question.

Michael Funk — Analyst

Yeah. Great. Thank you all for the time. One for you, Eric.

So, you really create an iconic brand with Zoom Video, you know, on that point solution space and have now expanded into other areas, the new names Zoom Communications not captures at all. You know, you have Phone now, you have Contact Center, adding AI on top, arguably even edging into work management with some of the products that you’re rolling out. So, you know, the delineation is less clear now between yourself and competitors in other areas. So, how do you think about attacking the market? Is it purely based on product? Or how important is price as you try to win new business?

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. So, it’s a great question. I think, our philosophy, you know, from day one, always the better product, the better price, and better service, right? First of all, our core strength is really about the product experience and make sure, you know, the customers like us. Look at recently Gartner Peer Insights report, right? Zoom is the only one in the leader section.

You know, what’s the reason why the customer likes us and because they truly like our product. Because of that, you know, we introduced a lot of other new products, essentially give a customer suite, and we call that, you know, Workplace, the AI-first work platform. At the same time, if you look at price, you know, a year ago, if I recall correctly, right, it maybe more than that now, we increased price for online, and we do not see any issues. You know, and the users really like our product.

Now, actually, used to be customers, they bought other pointed solutions like many years ago, Meetings and Phone, and also the Whiteboard allows also point of product. Now, they prefer our platform approach, right? And look at the entire platform. You know, they can leverage more service from Zoom. And at the same time, and with the AI at no additional costs, the customer tries to have Zoom brand more sticky and down the road with the customized AI Companion or other innovations for sure, and, you know, we can monetize more.

Essentially, we do not want to do something similar to some competitors, right? The kind of stuck with our competitors. They call that for free. And then, every year, they increase price, increase price. We don’t want to do that.

We want to build a long-term trust. Given some time, the customer realized Zoom not only very stable ease of use, and also, we introduced more and more services, they would like to consolidate it into the Zoom platform. From that perspective, I think more opportunities for us to monetize as a platform player and in order to mention AI as well. So, that’s our strategy.

Yeah.

Michael Funk — Analyst

Great. Thank you, Eric.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Michael. Appreciate it.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

We will now hear from Samad Samana with Jefferies.

Samad Samana — Analyst

Hi. Good evening. And I’ll echo the congrats on the next quarter. Maybe on Workvivo.

I know Meta announced that it would be sunsetting the Meta Workplace product, and it would be in stages over ’25 and ’26 in the — to you customers toward Workvivo. Can you guys help us think about how you’re thinking about that ramp? You’ve had good momentum there. Customers grew 72% year over year. Can you quantify maybe how much of the growth is coming from Meta and how we should think about that momentum going forward?

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. Great question. So, Michelle, feel free to chime in.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

OK.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

I think we acquired Workvivo, I think, two years ago. And because you look at the employee engagement, that’s very important. This will be part of a Zoom Work platform. I think that the company, the team is much better positioned.

They have very scalable vertical — you know, the product. That’s the reason why we acquired them. And also, a few quarters ago, right, and Meta, you know, focused on the AI, a lot of other things. They decided to — and retire Workplace product.

For sure, there are some other vendors out there as well. But based on the customer feedback, because the product maturity, right, they decided to go with Zoom as a partnership, right? So, meaning, you know, Workvivo is an exclusive partner, right? They also build the migration tools right to have customers who deploy Workplace, the product, for Meta and replaced that with Workvivo. If you look at our top deals, I think almost all of those deals and because of Meta migration — and also, I think we have also a very strong pipeline as well. Again, that’s not a small company.

We do not focus on SMB. This is a very large integrated customer. Some of the Zoom Workplace customer already, some are not even Workplace customer, but they also deployed Workvivo. I think the pipeline is very strong and very promising.

And also, we also want to innovate more on Workvivo. Doubling on that, I think, gives us more opportunity, and it will further grow that business. You know, I think if you at the growth rate and quarter over quarter, year over year, it’s pretty, you know, exciting. And I think that business can contribute more to our business down the road.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Maybe just to add in from my standpoint, yes, the Meta partnership is driving the growth. We’re not going to quantify it or speak to it. But I think if you look at a lot of the underlying metrics that we said in our prepared remarks, they tell a more holistic story for Workvivo growth and a lot of the things that we’ve been focused on, you know, from geo-expansion to partner dynamics to. you know, getting those large customers, as well as breadth.

And they build up a lot of the natural things that Zoom has strengthen certain industries like retail, as well as frontline. So, I think, yes, the Meta partnership is part of that, and there are some durable dynamics to underscore a lot of the things that Eric talked about.

Samad Samana — Analyst

Great. Thank you both so much for the time.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

The next question will come from Tyler Radke with Citi.

Tyler Radke — Analyst

Thank you. Hey, Eric. Hey, Michelle. I wanted to direct my question to Michelle.

Congrats again on the first earnings call here as CFO of Zoom. I wanted to ask how you think about margins. So, if we look at Q3, the operating margins were down very slightly year over year. I think Q4, they’re guided to be down about 1 point year over year, if you round up.

How should we think about the path to long-term operating margins? I think you’re still a couple of points above the high end of that long-term guide that you put out at analyst day. Should we expect to get back to that long-term operating margins next year? Just give us a sense for the path there. And then, maybe just if you could give your own philosophy, too, around how you evaluate expenses. What are some of the things that you look for just in terms of ROI, you know, in case your framework is maybe different than how things were done at Zoom before? Thank you.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Perfect. Great question, and thank you very much, Tyler. So, I would say, I think it’s important just to reemphasize what we are investing in. We’re investing in AI, we’re investing in our emerging growth businesses, and we’re investing in the platform.

As I think it sort of sets up the frame that I’ll have, I don’t think it’s different than maybe the frame that Kelly and Eric had before, which is we’re going to invest for top-line growth and we are going to invest for our strategy going forward. And so, look, our guidance approach remains the same. I said that before. We gave, as you noted, long-term guidance that had that operating margin lower than where we are today because of those investments.

I just want to emphasize that as a long-term margin scenario and so not something that you should take for FY ’26. And again, we’ll come back in FY ’26 and — or we’ll come back in February and give FY ’26 guidance. But in terms of my philosophy, I think it’s going to be — you know, a lot of where Eric and I, are going to spend our time is, how do we really make sure that every dollar that Zoom is spending is going toward those things that I mentioned and going toward top-line growth? And so, look, we’ll employ other ways of capital allocation. But in terms of, you know, internal capital allocation, I think it is going through each thing, questioning the return, questioning the alignment to strategic value, and making sure that, you know, as a culture, we have a disciplined approach of really looking at our expenses and having a culture of driving savings to offset the investments that we know we’re going to need to make.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yeah. Just to quickly add on to what Michelle said, Tyler, I think if you look at our company’s track record, especially as the way for us to manage the cost, a very disciplined approach, even one or two quarters, you see like more investment, you know, on, let’s say, on COGS side. You know, I’m very, very proud of our world-class DevOps team, led by our president of product, Velchamy. He and his team always know how to automate, further optimize a lot of the cost savings.

That’s one area. I — normally, I do not spend any time because I have a high confidence as a team, they can always come up with some ways and to further reduce the COGS, right? And even for AI, they know where to optimize. I think I have a very high confidence, you know, even one or two quarters more investment, something like that. I personally feel like the team can, you know, come up with some better ideas to further reduce the cost, so —

Tyler Radke — Analyst

Thank you.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Tyler.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Michelle and Eric, we have time for one additional question. It’s going to come from Mark Murphy with JPMorgan.

Mark Murphy — Analyst

Thank you so much. Great to see you. Eric, I was wondering if you can, perhaps, speak to the customer interest that you’re seeing to integrate data from their own internal repositories into AI Companion because I believe that triggers the $12, you know, per user per month monetization — or it’s one of the important triggers. I would think that that is also going to drive some real product stickiness and, you know, value that would ratchet higher.

So, I’m just curious how many customers are showing that interest? What kind of scenarios they can design and, therefore, maybe how to think through the monetization potential at that price point?

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Yes. So, Mark, it’s a great, great question. So, that’s the reason why we introduced the, you know, customized AI Companion or AI Companion Studio because, you know, a few quarters ago, and we’re talking to many enterprise customers, they share with us feedback, right? So, they like AI Companion. Also, they want to make sure, hey, you know, some customers, they already build their own AI large language model, how to federate that into our federated AI approach.

And some customers, they have very large content, you know, like an ordinary base, you know, how to connect with that. You know, some customers, they have with other beginning systems, right? Like ServiceNow, Atlassian, and Workday, a lot of — Box and HubSpot, how to connect those data sources, right? And also, even from an employee perspective, right, they won’t have, you know, a customized avatar, in the live with AI to — as a personal culture as well. So, meaning, those customers, they have customized requirements. To support those customized requirements, we need to make sure we have AI infrastructure and technology ready, right? That’s the reason why, you know, we introduced the AI Companion, a customized AI Companion.

The goal is really working together with integrated customers to tailor for each enterprise customer. That’s the reason why it’s not free. I think the feedback from Zoomtopia is very positive because, again, those features are not, you know, built by our, you know, just these several product managers, engineers and think about let’s build that. We already solicited feedback from our enterprise content before, you know, those features that I think can truly satisfy their needs.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

And maybe, Mark, if I could add in. I think that Zoom have some really powerful differentials here in terms of our approach. The democratization of AI and kind of the core SKUs and letting people kind of try it and get to experience it, I think we’ll — will provide an important on-ramp. And then, I would say our open-platform approach.

You know, when you start looking at bringing in custom things or connecting with other data sources, I think that, in addition to a price point, which is very — which is more reachable, if you will, for customers, are going to be important competitive differentiators for us going forward.

Mark Murphy — Analyst

Excellent. Thank you so much.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

So, Kelsey, this is — is this the last of the question?

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

That was the last question, Eric. I’ll turn it back to you for closing if you’d like.

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

I think, first of all, thank you all for your time. This is the first earnings call — Michelle’s first earnings call. I think it’s very similar in, you know, the transition from Kelly and to Michelle. And I feel — Michelle, this feels like it’s not your first earnings call, feels like you already joined Zoom earning call for many times before, right? So, thank you for, you know, Kelly’s great work over the past many years.

Michelle, thank you. And again, thank you for all the investors. I really appreciate your time. See you all in the next earnings call in February.

Thank you.

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

All right. Thank you.

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Thanks, Eric and Michelle. And again, everyone, this concludes today’s earnings release. We always thank you all for your participation. And again, from our family to yours, may you and yours have a safe and happy holiday season.

Take care. Until next quarter.

Duration: 0 minutes

Call participants:

Kelcey McKinley — Event Consultant

Charles Eveslage — Head of Investor Relations

Eric Yuan — Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Michelle Chang — Chief Financial Officer

Meta Marshall — Analyst

Kash Rangan — Analyst

Arjun Bhatia — Analyst

Pat Walravens — Analyst

Jim Fish — Analyst

Alex Zukin — Analyst

Siti Panigrahi — Analyst

Allan Verkhovski — Analyst

Michael Funk — Analyst

Samad Samana — Analyst

Tyler Radke — Analyst

Mark Murphy — Analyst

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