UiPath Inc. (PATH) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

So let's start -- like to get everyone on the same page, just Ashim, you had like really healthy Q3 results last week. Shares were up a lot. So everyone is happy probably in the organization, that's nice to see as well. But to get everyone on the same page, can you talk about the highlights you saw last quarter?

Yes. I think -- so our third quarter really showed the -- to me, the confluence of really strong execution and the beginnings of what Agentic, the combination of Agentic and deterministic automation, can mean in the marketplace. So revenue of $411 million, up 16%, strong operating income, strong free cash flow continuing for the company. And it was actually our first -- our first third quarter of GAAP profitability and has put us on track to be GAAP profitable for the entire year. When you look at the top line, I always go first to our large customers and our customers greater than $100,000, more than 2,500 customers now, that's growing double digits year-over-year. And customers greater than $1 million, 330-plus customers, that's growing double digits as well year-over-year. So when you kind of step back and you look as to why, Raimo, I think very good progress around proof of concepts and POCs and pilots within Agentic. But without even a direct impact of material Agentic revenue, people are looking at our platform, the combination of deterministic automation, probabilistic or Agentic automation and process orchestration. And just the feedback has been so positive that we are a staple in people's enterprise architecture. And we'll continue to expand with them over the coming years.

And then the -- just to stay high level a little bit longer, like federal was a big discussion all year, DOGE at the beginning of the year, and there was a lot of kind of noise on -- for our industry, then the shutdown as well, like, how does it play out for you guys?

It's a dynamic environment in the public sector. I actually was just at the Pentagon on Monday. And with customer meetings, like they're going through budgets and not unlike a lot of corporations, like you go in and people are pulling their hair out in terms of challenges that they're facing and areas that are there and different dynamics. With all of that said, our teams are executing incredibly well. Like we are connected to keep people in the government under secretaries of the Department of the Defense or different functional leadership there. We closed several key deals, the Social Security Administration, a key deal that was -- that closed there, the Coast Guard. So we're relevant across a lot of major industry -- major sectors of the government. I think it's going to continue to be dynamic. And I think it's a very good long-term opportunity for us. Our goal is to stay connected, continue to drive value and execute on the projects that we're getting today. There is a lot of momentum that we can continue to capitalize on in the coming years.

And to you like for the quarter itself, did the shutdown impact you? So I mean, in the quarter negatively, it could kind of drag into the next quarter. But like was there any impact?

No. I mean the shutdown was -- it was topics of discussion, but it wasn't anything that impacted transactions both positively or negatively for us. I'll just kind of give 2 reasons as to why. The first is a lot of our software is in mission-critical areas that are protected from areas like the shutdown that is there. And then the second is the Department of Defense is a really big customer for us, and they are also somewhat shielded from a lot of the different areas. That being said, having walked through the floors of the Pentagon, like a lot of people were impacted, so we're very empathetic I think a lot when I say mission-critical areas, but our software was protected from that standpoint.

Yes. And then last question on this kind of more bigger picture subject is like beyond federal now, like what do you -- if you talk to customers in other regions, other industries, like how is end-demand kind of playing out at the moment? What are you hearing there?

The best thing I can say is variable. I mean like what we're seeing in our -- maybe I'll do it from 2 perspectives. What I see kind of from our -- hear from our field and what I hear directly from our customers in our customer visits. Directly from customers, they kind of have -- their budgets are really getting scrutinized for high ROI items. So you listen to kind of like there's not a lot of excess fat for experimentation and innovation. They're in the budgets. And people are preparing themselves for different outcomes of the economy because I don't think there's a consensus view about what the economic outlook looks like for next year. At the same time, that is also spurring really renewed interest on meaningful ROI and productivity projects. So industrial customers as they're getting their cost out targets and we're very -- we're close to them. I think that presents opportunities. I think there's other customers where there's opportunity and they're saying, listen, we at the same time, may not take as large of a bite at the apple as what we've been doing. So I think it's a dynamic environment. Then I look at our field, I look at our activity. We were really pleased in the third quarter with kind of commercial momentum in the commercial enterprises, Americas, particularly in health care and financial services. I think we did see pockets of strength in international, like Australia and New Zealand. But then there are markets that are a little bit more challenged internationally.

Yes. Okay. Perfect. And then Shifting gear a little bit, and I'm happy you are here as the CFO because I wanted to talk about AI. And I love Daniel to bit, but his explanation is almost getting too technical for me. Like how would you describe UiPath's role in this new AI now?

So a minister from really basic building blocks. AI is just unequivocally a net -- is a meaningfully net opportunity for UiPath's growth in the coming years. And I think there's a direct and an indirect basis. And I'm going to unpack it in 3 steps. The first step is I think sometimes we forget what does UiPath do. When I ask people that they'll tell me what we did in 2017, which is RPA.

Yes.

Our -- what UiPath is an AI-powered platform that helps businesses automate and transform processes. So our goal is to drive outcomes that yields productivity for companies by emulating what humans do, to automate processes and reduce the cost of transactions and process ownership within a company. Now dissect what is a process. A process is a series of 20 steps. Within those 20 steps, maybe 30% of them or 40% of them can be done on rule-based, task-based deterministic type steps. Another 40% or 50% of them can be done, but they need reasoning power. It's probabilistic in what needs to happen. You could deny this claim, you may not decline this claim. It's not a rules based. If it is above this value denied. It is -- there's multiple factors that require reasoning and probabilistic waiting to go after that. Three years ago, we automated those first 30%, and we scaled the company from next to nothing to $1 billion plus in 4 years with those steps. What is amazing is now we can go and automate those next series of steps and continue to drive that automation. What is missed -- so there's a direct impact of AI? And what is AI? The ability to reason like a human to complete process transactions, if I keep it nontechnical right?

That's why you're here.

And then the second piece of it is, though, for UiPath, three years ago, you may have looked at this 20 step process and said, "I can automate 6 steps of the process, and it's worth it." But there are also times you'd say, "If I automate 6 steps of the process, it's not worth it. I still don't get the productivity. But if I automate 12 steps of the process or 15 steps of the process, that is really worth it." So what agenetic is also doing is it's coming back around and saying, you can automate those. So it's actually pulling back through deterministic opportunities as well. So that's the second piece. The third piece is, AI has now created another element into the architecture of business processes that we all have to contend with. If you thought about years ago, you deal with infrastructure applications, right? And then you deal with integrations. And I would put RPA in kind of an integrated type technology that stitches together systems, et cetera. Now AI has another area. So what is becoming super important is process orchestration. And I want to differentiate between process orchestration and Agentic orchestration. Agentic orchestration, many people do, it's governance frameworks around agents. UiPath does that as well. But process orchestration means now you have a 15 -- a 20-step process. Realistically, it's a 200-step process. You have humans, robots and agents working together, how are you going to monitor it? How are you going to govern that? How are you going to visualize it? That is what Maestro is, a product that we GA-ed earlier this year that allows companies to do that. So AI has now unlocked a whole set of processes and opportunities for UiPath and for our customers. And what's super important is it revitalizes demand for deterministic as much as it presents an opportunity for a new revenue stream in Agentic. Does that make sense?

Yes, totally. The one question I have on that one, Agentic is where everyone wants to go. And that sounds like super cool, new, exciting -- but the one thing that I hear from the field is where customers are struggling is that Agentic, the outcomes are not as predictable as deterministic. And so in your conversation, where are customers on that journey of understanding Agentic is different and kind of having the right guard rails, et cetera, to kind of still come to outcomes that they actually kind of want?

It's the early innings, but it's the early innings with progress. So to use kind of a football metaphor or a soccer metaphor, you're not in the first -- you're not right at kickoff where players still haven't moved, but you're not near half time, right? You're not near kind of the midpoint of the game. And the reason for that, I think, is a couple of areas. One is everybody is now contending as I said, another entity into process architecture, et cetera. So there's security. There's governance. There's things that have to be unlocked with it. The second is just understanding where do they want to deploy it. Here's what I'm excited about at UiPath. We have 900 companies that are using UiPath and building agents upon UiPath, right? 750 plus companies that are doing that. So they're in the mode of experimentation. Some of those experiments have moved to pilots. Some of those pilots have moved to production, and a few of them have also converted to orders. So in my mind, kind of the spear is moving forward with customers that have like a very progressive culture, a SaaS execution culture, they are converting, and we're seeing great examples. Reputable health care customer. They're using our Agentic platform with Deterministic to clear 140,000 provider claims that are in backlog. That's real progress and a real goal that is coming forth. A cybersecurity firm is using both deterministic automation and what we call IXP, applying different models to the right documents, to get to the next level of productivity around something as -- a process that's been forever like procure to pay. But there are many customers who are still in the early stages, setting up their guardrails that are there. And I think that's healthy personally. I think that sometimes when you get the euphoric adoption, it doesn't last. But I think we're in an area of sustainable kind of a really sustainable demand trend, which is super exciting for us.

And for you as the CFO, how do you think about monetization like more -- I don't want to number I'm more thinking about the vehicles of monetization in terms of is it like a SKU model? Is it a consumption model? How do you think about that?

All of the above. I think -- and I know that drives people crazy. So I'll break it down a little bit. Our pricing model has always had -- first of all, Agentic is a form of AI. So I really look at our platform right now. It's kind of the core server-based RPA, API type offering that we did between 2017 and 2021, or in 2019, we already started with AI with things like document processing. We expanded into autopilot, semantically being able to develop faster. And we're monetizing those things through AI units and Agentic units. I think -- sorry, AI units. Now Agentic is another way that we can create a consumable in a subscription type way that's kind of a use it or lose it in terms of where it is, but then also put safeguards for COGS or for cost of goods sold on a consumption layer, if the people go crazy and want to run 1 billion agents all at once. My -- when I look at it is that is our pricing scheme. Our monetization scheme is twofold. One, lead with Agentic because it will pull forward the rest of the platform, for existing customers. For new customers, get them on to deterministic because once they automate those first 3 steps, they're going to look to the right and say, "Oh, there's an Agentic opportunity." So that is our monetization that we can go after. And then the third piece is focus on ROI. I think the more you focus on ROI, people are less worried about how am I pricing this but more is the net price of the bill of material justified against the ROI that they're getting. And that's kind of been our philosophy so far.

And just wanted to ask, and I'm not kind of trying to get the question for my sessions that I had later today. But like if I listen to the software industry at the moment, like that message of I want to be the platform, I'm going to help you, et cetera, you're going to get from quite a few players. Like how do you fit? Is it going to be competitive? Are you all working together, but for different outcomes, like how do you think about that going forward?

With different entities and different customers?

Yes. And different software vendors as well.

Yes. I think it's a great question. So let me tell you where I think we're uniquely positioned. And then I'll tell you where I think -- how we work with others that's there. Technologically, we are uniquely positioned because we are, to me, the only platform that has RPA, API, Agentic and process orchestration, underscored with AI products like document understanding, advanced document understanding like IXP, test automation, et cetera. So I think we have a really broad platform from there. Where I look at where we can play with -- where I look at automation, I look at 4 categories: personal productivity, in-app automation, cross-application, complex enterprise-grade automation and verticalization. Okay? Within kind of citizen development personal productivity, we'll cooperate with anybody. We want -- that's not our bread and butter. We can do it, but we're not really kind of moving into that area cross application, same thing. We will integrate and we will create connectors with the partnership with SAP to help people automate more even within SAP that is there, but that's not a core area for us. The third area around cross application, I think I'm going to double-click on. We want to own that area. So we want to compete. And verticalization, we want to compete. We're going to pick verticals that we are uniquely positioned to go after. So we're not going after ITSM, that's ServiceNow. But revenue cycle management, claims denials. Those are areas that we can create vertical solutions and really scale. How do we then, just to go back to the cross application area? I think on deterministic, we are the technology. On Agentic, people want to be able to build and deploy agents on our area, and we will integrate with every model provider that is there. We created our partnership with OpenAI, created partnerships with Anthropic, with Gemini. We have partnerships in place. So models can be used by anybody. The question then is how do you kind of integrate with the rest of the ecosystem we actually love -- we don't mind if people go and build agents on other platforms, where we want to win is in process orchestration, to orchestrate UiPath robust, UiPath agents, third-party agents and humans across. And in that area, honestly, there's -- we are very uniquely positioned to win in that area.

Yes. Okay. And then the -- yes, okay, makes sense. I'll leave it there. The other thing I wanted to discuss with you is like you guys from a more organizational perspective, have been on a journey, especially last year, there was a lot of disruption. It looks like it's getting better this year. But like maybe for the audience, it's good to understand like where you guys came from, what course did and then the changes you took to kind of try to solve it.

So Daniel came back into the CEO realm in May of last year, May, June of last year. I think when we look at it, it was very simple. I think we went through an era where we scaled so fast. I think we got an enamored -- UiPath got enamored by putting big company structure and big company processes across. And I don't think that's a wrong thing to do for the right company. We were just not the right company for that, for those processes. And so I think what happened well in that time frame is connecting and selling to the C level. What happened incorrectly is we created too much intermediary, both internal structure and strategically between ourselves and the users and the people driving process transformation on the ground within our customers. And we lost a little bit of that innovation. So what did we do? We have really kind of gone, I wouldn't say nuclear, but we were pretty aggressive in removing central organizations. If your hands are on a keyboard, generating code, if your hands are with -- are shaking -- or leading a customer towards transformation, we are investing heavily. Go to our website, we're hiring, we're investing. If you're in the middle of those two, there's some necessity there. But we really took a very strong restructuring mode to remove that. And that's created twofold effects. We're closer to our deals. We are closer to adoption, and we are farther ahead. We walk into a quarter, not talking about the deals this quarter, we're talking about the deals next quarter. We're talking about the renewals 6 quarters from now. And I think that operational rigor that's been brought to the company is a reason why you see net new ARR actually stabilized, which I didn't mention in the first question. It's net positive now. And so UiPath, kind of, one of the themes where we're not the same company as 2 or 3 years ago. Not just product-wise, but execution-wise, and you can start seeing that in the metrics as they begin to inflect.

And the -- if you think about it, the -- on the one hand, you kind of removed a little bit the guys to kind of create like an empire -- sorry, if I say it like that. On the other hand, your momentum up market actually continues to grow better. That almost like -- it sounds like -- I remember when you did the changes last year, it was like we're going back to our roots, et cetera. But now the momentum is coming up, like how do you explain that?

I'm still learning in the business world around things, I would say. But the one rule that I've found is if you focus on your technology and you focus on your customer, like only good things happen. And I think that has been our premise. So in my mind, it's not a question about an empire or a person or a set of activities about it's just how much of your energy and your resources are going towards innovation and helping your customers win. And I think the more that you do there, the ROI is kind of like very natural. So from our standpoint, that signal with the field, there's an example for a customer, big Agentic use case. And there were a couple of hundred thousand dollars of a pilot. They went and they ran their first set of COGS, it came in at like $150 million estimate. I think 3 years ago, that would have been lost in the system. One day later, Chief Product Officer engaged. Our 4 deployed engineers and our services team are moving into that customer. We realize that they can do things through batch coring and from there, those COGS have come down to a point where that POC is now considered a wild success. And now it's a question of obviously getting it into production and getting the order, but that's just a very practical example to say when you can move up and down from your customer to your team and solve their problems, you unlock demand. Demand is there. It just needs to be unchained.

Yes. And then just as we track the progress there, like the 1 thing we all want to know is like, okay, what's the metrics, what are we looking at? Is it -- as you said, net new ARR, is that still kind of the one you look at?

Yes. Well, net new ARR to me is the primary metric. ARR is the primary metric that drives the company. I think net new ARR is a good metric and the trajectory of what that looks like. I think the second too or is the momentum we have with our large customers. Customers between $100,000 and $1 million, their net dollar expansion rate is 113%. For me, that matters. Now why? Because when you look at kind of the lower end of the market, those are customers that we bought that we kind of -- that bought from UiPath me 4 years ago, but they don't have high propensity to buy. I'm not firing customers, but they're not going to expand at the same level. And then when you look at customers greater than $1 million, I'm super happy with the expansion of customers in that low million dollar but we have customers that are 8 figures. Those 8-figure customers with 2- or 3-year contracts, they're not going to be expanding 20% per year, right, in that way. So I would look at that $100,000 to $1 million cohort. That's a really good sign for us. And the continued momentum to push customers into the $100,000 category and the $1 million-plus category.

And then the -- is there like the one thing and then there was always kind of difficult for you is like you have 606. There's cloud and cloud mix, it kind of would make it kind of slightly easier. But how do you think -- do you think there is something that you can solve or you -- we basically -- I'm just asking for myself actually because...

It's a fair question. I think it's on us over the next period of time, like I think refreshing the models for everybody would help. That's something that's been on our mind. But ultimately, 606 revenue is done -- it's impacted by duration and deployment and volume, right? I think volume -- I think ARR is really just impacted by volume, right? And through there, there's obviously different idiosyncrasies that exist in every metric. So my view is I look at -- I still think revenue, like revenue grew 16% this quarter, right? I think when you look at it, it's looking to guide in low double digits is where consensus has us here for the year. ARR is at 11%. So I think you have to look at -- I think if you look at revenue on a quarter it's less relevant than looking at revenue for a year, and it's less relevant than looking at it on a trailing 12-month basis, right? So I think the more aperture you give to, if you look at revenue, you have to give it in its appropriate aperture, and it correlates very well with ARR. I think the myth around ARR and revenue, there are dynamics that change it. But when I look at it today, I think we've done a very good job when you look on a trailing 12-month basis of it correlating pretty well with the AR movements that you see.

Yes, yes. Okay. So no change, but like no change like in terms of what you do, but it's more like focus us more, ARR is the kind of the metric.

Exactly.

Okay. Last couple of minutes, profitability. If you think about it, there's a lot of stuff that we want to do around AI. The world is evolving everything quickly. At the same time, like we need to think about profitable growth on rule of 40, like where are you on that journey?

Yes. So one is I want to be unequivocal, like we are investing for growth. There is no doubt that should be there. I think the misnomer is that in order to invest for growth, you have to not be profitable, and that's not the case. You can eat if you exercise, right, so to speak. And you can get the right foods and enough of them if it's the right food and still be healthy. So I look at it this way. I think field sales capacity, making sure we're funding our POCs and our pilots and the success of those early areas of Agentic. We are all in, and we are aggressively investing in. I think the innovation side in R&D, we're investing in. The areas, we still have areas to leverage even within G&A and sales and marketing to fund those investments where we can fund growth but continue to drive operating leverage. You can see that in our metrics. First year of GAAP profitability, that's where we're on track for this year. I think one of the interesting things that people aren't looking at is open our stock-based compensation percentage of revenue, how it's come down and look at the trend that you've seen there. That's with the same number of people, but just being more thoughtful about how we deploy it, right? Second is cash allocation. I think we're really very mindful about what are the top customers we want to win. It's not going to say, all markets are all equal, all at the same time. So I'm actually really pleased with growth being our priority. Profitability being about discipline. And when you look at the metrics, stabilizing net new ARR, first year of net new ARR growing year-over-year, a little bit of FX in there, but overall, that trend is there. But it's also the first quarter of GAAP profitability, and third quarter of GAAP profitability. I think those 2 things are proof that you can do both simultaneously.

Okay. Perfect. And then last question for me on the last minute, like capital allocation. What should we view...

Yes. I think UiPath is in a really good, unique position for it. So we have $1.5 billion on our balance sheet. We've already shown that we will execute responsibly for stock buybacks, we're at $800 million of a buyback. The average price of our buyback was in the low $12. So just think about that relative to a stock that is $16, $17, I think we're $18 plus today. So we're very responsible on it. It's not just a lever for the marketing point. We really want to generate shareholder returns in everything that we do. And at the same time, we've got -- we're generating free cash flow. So we can continue to buy back stock opportunistically. We will always evaluate that. We can deploy and tuck-in M&A, which we've also done with the acquisition of Peak this year, and we can continue to look for opportunities to do so, where we can continue to have cash and have a big wallet for the right opportunity economically.

Yes. Okay. Perfect. 10 seconds, like I'm German, so I need to give some time. That was great closing statement as well. Good to see you again.

Thanks so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.