Cognyte Software (ETR:SOWGn) Ltd (CGNT) reported its third-quarter 2024 earnings, revealing a miss in earnings per share (EPS) compared to forecasts, which led to a decline in its stock price. The company posted an EPS of $0.02 against a forecast of $0.07, resulting in a 2.09% drop in pre-market trading. Despite this, Cognyte achieved a 12% year-over-year revenue growth, reaching $89 million.
Key Takeaways
- Revenue increased by 12% year-over-year, reaching $89 million.
- Adjusted EBITDA grew by 42% year-over-year to $7 million.
- EPS missed expectations, coming in at $0.02 versus a forecast of $0.07.
- Stock price fell by 2.09% in pre-market trading following the earnings release.
- Full-year revenue guidance was raised to $349 million.
Company Performance
Cognyte Software demonstrated robust revenue growth with a 12% increase compared to the same quarter last year, driven by strong sales in its software segment. However, the EPS miss indicates potential challenges in managing costs or unexpected expenses, which could have impacted profitability.
Financial Highlights
- Revenue: $89 million, up 12% year-over-year.
- Adjusted EBITDA: $7 million, up 42% year-over-year.
- Non-GAAP gross margin: 70.1%.
- Software revenue: $75.3 million, accounting for 85% of total revenue.
- Recurring revenue: $46.9 million, 53% of total revenue.
Earnings vs. Forecast
Cognyte reported an EPS of $0.02, falling short of the $0.07 forecast, a miss of approximately 71%. This significant miss contrasts with previous quarters where earnings were closer to expectations, highlighting potential operational challenges.
Market Reaction
Following the earnings release, Cognyte's stock price decreased by 2.09%, reflecting investor concerns over the EPS miss. This decline positions the stock closer to its 52-week low of $5.12, indicating a cautious market sentiment despite positive revenue growth.
Company Outlook
Cognyte raised its full-year revenue guidance to $349 million, representing an 11% growth, and adjusted EBITDA guidance to $26 million. The company remains confident in its long-term growth prospects, supported by its focus on AI-powered solutions and expanding market presence.
Executive Commentary
CEO Elad Doron emphasized, "Our mission to make the world a safer place drives everything we do," highlighting the company's commitment to innovation in threat detection technologies. CFO David Abadi added, "We believe that we are well positioned for sustainable growth," reflecting confidence in the company's strategic direction.
Q&A
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the dynamics of large customer deals and the company's expansion strategy in the U.S. Cognyte confirmed a healthy budget environment and growing demand for advanced analytics.
Risks and Challenges
- Continued EPS misses could impact investor confidence.
- Market volatility may affect share buyback plans.
- Increasing competition in the software analytics space.
- Potential macroeconomic pressures impacting customer budgets.
- Execution risks in expanding North American operations.
Full transcript - Cognyte Software Ltd (CGNT) Q3 2025:
Conference Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Cognite Third Quarter Fiscal Year 20 25 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session.
Please note that today's conference may be recorded. I will now hand the conference over to your speaker host, Dean Ridland, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Dean Ridland, Head of Investor Relations, Cognite: Thank you, operator. Hello, everyone. I'm Dean Ridland, Cognite's Head of Investor Relations. Thank you for joining us today. I'm here with Aladj Doron, Cognite's CEO and David Abadi, Cognite's CFO.
Before getting started, I would like to mention that accompanying our call today is a presentation. If you'd like to view these slides in real time during the call, please visit the Investors section of our website at cognite.com. Click on upcoming events, then the webcast link for today's conference call. I would also like to draw your attention to the fact that certain matters discussed on this call may contain forward looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and other provisions of the federal securities laws. These forward looking statements are based on management's current expectations and are not guarantees of future performance.
Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in or implied by these forward looking statements. The forward looking statements are made as of the date of this call and except as required by law, Cognite assumes no obligation to update or revise them. Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward looking statements. For a more detailed discussion of how these and other risks and uncertainties could cause Cognite's actual results to differ materially from those indicated in these forward looking statements, please see our annual report on Form 20 F for the fiscal year ended January 31, 2024 and other filings we make with the SEC. The financial measures discussed today include non GAAP measures.
We believe investors focus on non GAAP financial measures in comparing results between periods and among our peer companies that publish similar non GAAP measures. Please see today's presentation slides, our earnings release and the Investors section of our website at cognite.com for a reconciliation of non GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures. Non GAAP financial information should not be considered in isolation from, as a substitute for, or superior to GAAP financial information, but is included because management believes it provides meaningful information about the financial performance of our business and is useful to investors for informational and comparative purposes. The non GAAP financial measures that the company uses have limitations and may differ from those used by other companies. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Allaah.
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: Thank you, Dean. Welcome everyone to our Q3 conference call. This was another quarter of solid execution for Cognite. We continue to deliver on our business plan, advanced our growth initiatives and drive improved profitability. The market for our solutions remain robust and is evolving as anticipated, driving predictable and sustainable growth.
Our execution resulted in another quarter of double digit revenue growth with adjusted EBITDA expanding more rapidly than revenue. Our year to date performance combined with solid visibility and sustained demand reinforces our confidence in the business. As a result, we are pleased to again raise our full year outlook. During Q3, we grew revenue by 12% year over year to $89,000,000 Non GAAP gross profit increased by 12% year over year. We generated approximately $7,000,000 of positive adjusted EBITDA for the quarter, representing 42% year over year growth, highlighting the strength of our financial model, and we believe our momentum remained strong, fueled by significant deal wins during the quarter.
These results and deal wins validate the strength of our technology, the differentiated value we provide to our customers and the substantial opportunities that we believe lie ahead. A key pillar of our growth strategy is deepening and broadening engagements with our existing customers. We achieved this by increasing the number of groups and the number of users leveraging our solutions and by offering additional capabilities to address emerging threats and evolving priorities. One of the trends that is driving expansions is enabling our customers to handle the rapidly growing volume and variety of data they need to analyze. An example is the explosion in mobile data driven by the transition to 5 gs, which has significantly increased the complexity and scale of their challenges.
According to a report recently issued by Rexon, mobile data traffic is growing at an annual rate exceeding 20%. This surge in data volumes and diversity underscores the need for advanced analytics, including AI powered solutions to extract actionable and timely insights from the expanding data landscape. By delivering the solutions that address these needs, we strengthened our customers' relationships and drive sustained demand. In Q3, we secured 4 significant orders from existing customers. 2 deals are valued
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: at more than
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: $20,000,000 the other 2 were valued at over $10,000,000 We issued press releases announcing these notable deals over the past few weeks. These long standing customers have consistently derived substantial value from our solutions over the years. We believe this demonstrates this indispensable role our solutions play in addressing our customers' evolving challenges, delivering the quality, reliability and power such customers require to operate effectively in complex environments. We continue to expand our customer base, signing 9 new customers this quarter alone. This includes 5 contracts valued at over $1,000,000 each and one significant contract worth $5,000,000 These new customers spend across different regions and segments, highlighting the broad opportunity in the market.
Additional wins in North America underscored our steady progress in establishing our foothold in this market. A few weeks ago, we announced a follow on order valued at over $2,000,000 from a highly respected and influential North American law enforcement agency. This agency initially selected our solution just over a year ago to replace their incumbent provider solution. Since then, the agency has recognized the superior operational intelligence value our solutions deliver. With this latest order, the customer's total investment exceeds $3,000,000 highlighting their trust in Cognite and our solutions' ability to meet their critical operational needs.
We anticipate that future potential North American customers will likely follow a similar trajectory, starting with smaller initial orders and expanding the investments over time as they realize measurable improvements in efficiency and outcomes. We continue to actively pursue opportunities in North American federal markets. Federal customers explore and rigorously test potential new solutions for long periods of time to validate their effectiveness before making the purchase. As a result, the sales cycle with these customers is expected to be longer than what you have experienced with state and local enforcement agencies. Nonetheless, we are pleased with the level of engagement we have with these potential customers in this important market segment.
To further strengthen our efforts in the U. S, we recently welcomed Timothy O'Callaghan, a retired U. S. Marshals Branch Chief to help lead our initiatives aimed at expanding our presence. This extensive experience and deep understanding of operations will be invaluable as we build our momentum in this market.
We continuously engage with our customers around the globe to understand better and help them address their challenges. Recently, we hosted our Global Cognite Intelligence Summit in Europe, a landmark event where we introduced our latest AI powered innovations. Over 300 attendees from about 70 countries representing law enforcement, National Intelligence and National Security Agencies explore today's critical security challenges and the transformative role of our technology. The event featured a keynote by retired Admiral Mike Rogers (NYSE:ROG), former Commander of the United States Cyber Command, Director of the NSA and Chief of the Central Security Service, who shared insights into the intersection of intelligence and technology. The Admiral underscored the challenges agencies face are not getting any easier.
However, adversaries must engage with a broader environment. They need to communicate, they need to move, and they need to access and transfer money. He highlighted that with the right technology, these interactions present opportunities. And this is recognized Advantage Life, leveraging technology to transform these interactions into actionable intelligence. He also noted, AGST's work to generate deep knowledge about the environment and operational landscape, transforming information into actionable outcomes.
He emphasized 2 things, excelling in addressing present challenges, while proactively positioning themselves for future success with the right tools and technology. These are the exact principles that we use to align our focus in product development, advanced tools for actionable insights and future readiness. At the Summit, we also hosted 10 external speakers, including former head of agencies, counterterrorism experts and representatives from global think tanks, both reinforcing our position as a thought leader and fostering discussions on the evolving threat landscape. The key insight from the summit underscores how the world's challenges are becoming more complex and the lines between different types of crime are increasingly blurred. Criminals and terrorists adopting each other's tactics, creating diversified and globalized networks that evade traditional defenses.
Bad actors exploit advanced technologies like encrypted communications, dark web networks and cryptocurrency to evade detection. Increasingly, they are leveraging AI to obscure their operations, creating unprecedented challenges for security agencies tasked with protecting citizens and combating crime. This quarter, I want to highlight how our technology addresses the critical challenges posed by organized crime. Agencies face the task of identifying members of criminal organizations and mapping their networks, including leadership structures, funding sources and intentions. Despite our efforts to conceal activities, this group inevitably leave behind valuable digital footprints.
However, as the volume and diversity of digital information grow exponentially, extracting actionable insights becomes increasingly complex. This is where leveraging advanced technology is no longer optional, it is essential. With the right solutions like ours, agencies can efficiently analyze vast amounts of structured and unstructured data, uncover hidden connections and accelerate investigations to achieve successful outcomes. To illustrate, a few months ago in Central America, our solutions enabled authorities to dismantle 1 of the continent's largest drug trafficking network. By providing the right insights at the right time, security agencies intercepted 7 tons of cocaine off the coast.
This example demonstrates the decisive impact our solutions have been combating Gorgon as crime on a global scale. We are making a meaningful difference for our customers, empowering them to address significant and evolving threats. Our mission to make the world a safer place drives everything we do. By combining cutting edge technology with proven methodologies, we enable faster decision making, accelerate investigations and help mitigate a wide range of threats. This is why customers around the globe continue to place their trust in our solution.
In summary, we continue to grow by introducing new advanced capabilities, deepening our relationships with existing customers as well as expanding our reach with new ones. These accomplishments strengthen our ability to deliver growth. With solid execution during the 1st 3 quarters of fiscal 2025, we're once again in a position to raise our full year outlook for revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We now expect revenue to be approximately $349,000,000 plus or minus 1%, representing about 11% year over year growth at the midpoint of the range. Given the leverage in our financial model, we increased our adjusted EBITDA guidance and we now expect it to be about $26,000,000 at the midpoint of the revenue range, almost 3 times what we generated in fiscal 2024.
Looking beyond this year, our focus remains on driving resilient growth for the long term, increased profitability, operational excellence and deepening our market leadership. We believe that our strategy positions us well to capitalize on the further market conditions and create value for both our customers and shareholders. Now let me turn the call over to David to provide more details about our Q3 results and updated fiscal 2025 outlook. David?
David Abadi, CFO, Cognite: Thank you, Elad, and hello, everyone. We continue to deliver results that underscore our disciplined execution and strategic focus. Q2 revenue grew by 12.1% year over year and was $89,000,000 This quarter, software revenue was $30,000,000 slight year over year with more subscription revenue than we had in the same quarter last year. Software service revenue was $45,300,000 an increase of $3,900,000 over the last year. Total (EPA:TTEF) software revenue, which includes software and software services, was $75,300,000 an increase of $3,700,000 compared to last year, representing about 85% of total revenue.
It is noteworthy that approximately 40% of total software revenue growth came from incremental subscription revenue, underscoring the strength of our strong recurring revenue base. Recurring revenue remains a key strength and was $46,900,000 or 53 percent of total revenue in Q3 compared to $42,000,000 in the same period last year. Retiring revenue comprised primarily of support contracts and some subscription offering is the cornerstone of our business. It provides strong visibility and support long term growth. Professional services revenue was $13,700,000 an increase of $5,900,000 over last year.
Professional services as a percentage of revenue in Q3 was high due to the timing of revenue recognition. We expect that its share on an annual basis will be lower and land at about 13% of total revenue. Later on this call, I will provide additional insight into our different revenue stream and our FY 2020 5 revenue mix outlook. Non GAAP gross margin for the quarter was 70.1%. Our total non GAAP software gross margin improved to 80.3% versus 78.9% last year, a year over year improvement of 140 basis points.
Our non GAAP professional services gross margin was 14.4% versus negative 9.7% last year. Our strong gross margin highlights the value and competitive differentiation of our solutions as well as the benefit of an optimized cost structure. Non GAAP operating income and adjusted EBITDA grew faster than revenue, reflecting the strength of our financial model. In Q3, we generated $3,400,000 of non GAAP operating income, an increase of 180% versus last year and $6,600,000 of adjusted EBITDA, an increase of about 42% versus last year, resulting in positive non GAAP EPS of $0.02 Looking at our year to date results, our revenue was $266,100,000 up 11.5% year over year with non GAAP gross profit growing 13.9 percent outpacing revenue growth. Total revenue year to date was $88,400,000 an increase of 7.6% versus last year.
Software services revenue year to date was $135,000,000 an increase of 10% versus last year. About 30% of total software revenue growth of $18,500,000 or 9% was driven by incremental subscription revenue supporting our recurring revenue growth. Professional services and other revenue year to date was $32,800,000 an increase of 31.7% versus last year. Total software revenue was 87% of our revenue during the 1st 9 months of the year. The inherent leverage in our business model drove significant year over year improvements in profitability, underscoring our ability to scale efficiently while delivering strong financial results.
Our year to date non GAAP operating income was $9,700,000 an improvement of $14,900,000 compared to a non GAAP operating loss of $5,200,000 during the 1st 9 months of last fiscal year. Similarly, our year to date adjusted EBITDA was $19,900,000 an increase of $15,200,000 compared to $4,700,000 in the same period of the previous year. The strong performance this year combined with the leverage inherent in our business model has enabled us to strengthen our balance sheet. Our short- and long term contract liabilities, commonly referred to as deferred revenue, remained robust at $132,200,000 at the end of Q3, reflecting a significant increase versus previous periods driven by strong billings performance during the quarter. Our cash position remains strong at $107,300,000 an increase of over $24,000,000 since year end with no debt.
This growth in our cash balance was primarily fueled by cash flow from operations during the 1st 9 months of the year. During Q3, we generated $12,300,000 in cash from operations and $7,600,000 in free cash flow, reflecting the strength of our financial model and operational efficiency. Over the past few quarters, we have introduced new KPIs to provide greater transparency and demonstrate how our business is progressing. Let me walk you through our performance against each of these key indicators. RPO or remaining performance obligations, which represent contracted revenue to be recognized in future periods, are influenced by factors such as sales cycle, deployment timelines, contract length, renewal timing and seasonality.
Total RPO is the sum of deferred revenue of $132,200,000 and backlog of $435,400,000 At the end of Q3, total RPO was $567,600,000 consistent with previous quarter. Long term RPO, which also includes multi year support contracts, is expected to continue to fluctuate due to renewal timing. Changes in RPO in a given quarter are not necessarily indicative of future revenue growth rates. Short term RPO at the end of Q3 increased to $325,900,000 providing solid visibility into revenue over the next 12 months. We believe these healthy RPO levels support our growth expectations, further validating the strength and the resilience of our business model.
During Q3, we secured several significant deals and achieved key billings milestones, resulting in billings of $104,700,000 significantly higher than our revenue for the quarter. This strong performance reflects the impact of both ongoing business and a few larger deals that may not occur every quarter, making this figure higher than what might typically be expected. Billings are calculated as revenue plus the change in contract liabilities, contract assets and unbilled balances. This strong billing performance contributed to an increase in deferred revenue, which stood at $132,200,000 at the end of the quarter, further strengthening our financial foundation and revenue visibility. Our non GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $62,400,000 an increase of $6,700,000 or 12% year over year.
Q3 non GAAP operating expenses were $59,000,000 aligned with our expectations. The combination of revenue growth, improved margins and effective cost structure drove a notable increase in profitability. During Q3, we achieved $6,600,000 of adjusted EBITDA and $3,400,000 in non GAAP operating income. We remained focused on driving further financial improvements and continuing to expand our margins. Before I turn to our improved FY 2025 outlook, I want to provide additional insight into our revenue streams.
We generate revenue from 3 main streams. Software revenue is primarily perpetual licenses and appliances with some term licenses subscription. Software services, which largely supports contracts and to a lesser extent cloud based SaaS subscription offering and professional services and other revenue reflecting mainly deployment, development, hardware selling and training. All revenue streams can fluctuate from quarter to quarter, mainly due to timing of revenue recognition related to customer readiness and percentage of completion accounting. In addition, the signing of new or renewed support of subscription contracts may impact revenue recognition timing.
We manage and evaluate the business by focusing on total software revenue, which combines software and software services. This holistic approach reflects the value we deliver through our technology and the services that support and enhance its adoption. This metric better reflects sales performance as it capture the full revenue contribution from a customer. It includes perpetual licenses, appliances and subscription as well as support contracts. On an annual basis, we expect total software revenue to continue to be a growth driver.
Professional services revenue, which we target to be in the low teens as a percentage of total revenue is crucial. These services help customers extract greater value from our solutions and enable them to operationalize more quickly, ultimately driving additional opportunities with those customers. It's important to point out that professional services revenue varies quarter to quarter due to several factors, including the timing and the scale of deployments. These fluctuations are natural, and we look at the overall share of professional services revenue on an annual basis to ensure it aligns with our strategic and financial goals. Turning to guidance.
Based on our strong year to date performance and favorable market conditions, we are raising our full year outlook for fiscal 2025. We now expect full year revenue to be approximately $349,000,000 plus or minus 1%, representing year over year growth of approximately 11% at the midpoint of the range. Out of this revenue outlook, we expect total software revenue to be about $304,000,000 representing approximately 87% of total revenue and professional services revenue to represent about 13% of total revenue, aligned with our strategic goals. We now expect adjusted EBITDA to be about $26,000,000 at the midpoint of the revenue range, up from $9,000,000 last year, reflecting the inherent leverage in our business model. We have made progress with our strategic tax planning and now expect non GAAP tax expenses to be about $6,000,000 an improvement from our initial estimate of $10,000,000 With this updated improved outlook, we now project annual non GAAP EPS to be positive $0.05 at the midpoint of the revenue range.
Finally, we continue to expect to generate about $37,000,000 of cash from operations for this year, reflecting the strong cash generating capability of our business. In November, our Board of Directors approved a share buyback program of up to $20,000,000 in ordinary shares over the next 18 months, reaffirming our commitment to delivering value to shareholders. Following the required 30 day notice period at the daily low, share repurchases can begin on Friday, December 15. To summarize, we have demonstrated consistent execution, delivering strong results through the 1st 9 months of the year. Our ongoing commitment to innovation and expanding our advanced solutions, leveraging the latest technologies, including AI, continues to enhance the value we provide for customers.
Reflecting this progress, we have again raised revenue and profitability outlook for fiscal 2025. Looking beyond this year, we anticipate meaningful growth, significant improvement in profitability and strong cash flow from operations. We believe that we are well positioned for sustainable growth. With additional leverage in our business model, we expect revenue and gross profit to continue growing faster than operating expenses. We also expect to continue to generate meaningful positive free cash flow.
In closing, this quarter as a result, driven by positive momentum across key indicators, reflecting the health of our business and the opportunities that lie ahead. Our visibility into future revenue and robust balance sheet, including a solid cash position, ensure financial flexibility. With this strong foundation, we are well positioned to seize opportunities ahead and deliver sustainable growth. With that, I would like to hand the call over to the operator to open the lines for questions. Operator?
Conference Operator: Thank you. Our first question coming from the line of Mike Sicos with Needham and Company. Your line is now open.
Mike Sicos, Analyst, Needham and Company: Great. Thank you for taking the questions guys. And congrats on the quarter as well. Wanted to first come back to the large customer announcements that came through the quarter. You announced some $10,000,000 $20,000,000 agreements with some of these customers.
Can you just talk about the profile of these customers? If a customer is signing a $10,000,000 or $20,000,000 deal with you guys, do the features or products that they're looking at from Cognite differ materially from other customers or not necessarily?
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: Yes. Thanks, Mike. So actually, the complexity customers are facing are similar to in the market. So if you look at the demand drivers, the demand drivers are related to the complexity of finding the bad guys, which is related to them being able to better hide. It's related to the data that is growing in volume and diversity.
And actually, it's more difficult now to put your hands on them. So customers have to do 2 things. The first one is to expand in terms of capacity to allow more users to use the solution, which means more licenses and also to increase capacity in terms of data volumes and diversity and also to improve functionality, which means that if you increase data sources and you have to uncover more hidden insights, You also need to modernize the solution with more analytics, including AI driven capabilities. And by that, uncover even more hidden insights, some of them are predictive insights, to allow you actually not just to investigate backward, but to find anomalies that are going into the future and intentions and prevent and neutralize threats. So this is something that is relevant for many customers, not only for those.
Obviously, national security customers sometimes are larger than law enforcement, for example. So in certain segments, it is more relevant. And it depends also in the capacity of the data customers have. We don't expect it to come every quarter this kind of 4 large deals, but we do expect the demand drivers to continue and intensify and more and more customers to upgrade either in expansion or in functionality or both.
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: This is something that we expect also in the future.
Mike Sicos, Analyst, Needham and Company: Thanks for that a lot. And I just wanted to build on that last point, starting to touch on macro there. But can you help us think it sounds like the secular demand drivers remain intact, it's not accelerating from where we stand today. But what are you hearing from customers as far as budgets? Are these budgets significantly expanding from where we stand today?
Are there incremental dollars flowing into this area from other pockets? Can you help us think about that budget item?
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: Yes, sure, Mike. So maybe I'll give you a wider view on what we see in the market. So it will give you data points and also our judgment on how we see the market. So first of all, we see a very healthy demand from existing and new customers. If you look at the new logos, year to date, we added about 30 new customers compared to 29 in full fiscal 2024.
So we do see more new logos this year already. We see that more customers are budgeting with higher budgets, and this is reflected in the larger upgrades and expansions that we see. We also discussed the intensified demand drivers that I've just mentioned earlier. And we continuously engage with customers. And what we hear is that the challenges are growing and increasing and they're asking for budgets and we do see that the momentum is healthy and we see a tailwind in terms of demand.
Another data point that can help you understand where we stand is the Cognite Intelligence Summit, which we discussed earlier in the call and also in the press release. This is not an industry general event. This is an event for Cognite only. And you can imagine that 300 attendees from almost 70 countries, about 70 countries came to listen to what we have to say, to see the solutions, to see the innovation, to see the ad revenue and new solutions that we have. So it means that the demand is there.
Customers are willing to listen and to get more insights of what's new. They're willing to put orders for expansions and upgrades and new logos are coming to us. So overall, we feel very good about the market health. And if you look overall, the demand drivers combined with our advanced technology and high value and what we hear from the customers that we engage frequently in general and also in the summary that we recently had and recent large deals, all of it together give us a very high confidence that we are well positioned for future growth.
Mike Sicos, Analyst, Needham and Company: Terrific. Thank you very much guys.
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: Thanks Mike.
Conference Operator: Thank you. And our next question coming from the line of Peter Levine with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.
Peter Levine, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Great. Thank you for taking my question. Elad, you mentioned in your prepared remarks mobile data traffic becoming top of mind, meaning the need for advanced data analytics. I know there's a lot you can't say around your product, but maybe talk about like some of the R and D initiatives from your summit. Like what are your customers asking?
What are you building? And I'll start with that one.
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: Yes, Shu Pin. So I mentioned the 5 gs as a demand driver because actually what our customers are doing is trying to convert certain activities of the adversaries into insights. So adversaries, they have to move, they have to transfer money and to get money. They have to put their hands on material. They have to communicate between themselves and all of it is actually digital data.
So 5 gs in this respect actually is increasing the bandwidth of data. So customers have to deal with vast amounts of data that are increasing. And then also mentioned that Ericsson (BS:ERICAs) shared with us that actually in their report that the data is growing more than 20% year over year. So this is a significant challenge for our customers because when the bandwidth is growing, it means that they have to do with more data. It means that new applications will be launched, that now the bandwidth is increasing, so new applications will come.
So they can communicate in different and more varied ways. They have to hide they can hide better. And for our customer, this is a challenge. So in order for them to be able to address it, first of all, they need to expand the capacity of the solutions to get more data. And second thing, they have to improve the AI capabilities and analytics in order to uncover more hidden insights out of the same data sets that they have.
And by that being able, 1st of all, to prioritize and to predict and later on to neutralize threats before they unfold. So 5 gs is one example of how the demand drivers are evolving in the market, driving demand for expansions and functionality at the upgrade and analytics.
Peter Levine, Analyst, Evercore ISI: David, you mentioned you didn't give a guide for fiscal 'twenty six next year, but you mentioned meaningful growth, faster than operating expenses, call it, I think operating expense growth in Q3 here was 7%. Can you just kind of provide some guardrails around how you're thinking about next year? Could we see double digit growth? Are you on track to do that? Kind of just walk us through how you're thinking about next year, obviously factoring in the environment, but would love to know if you can give us a little bit more guidance on how you're thinking about next year?
David Abadi, CFO, Cognite: Thank you, Peter. So if you look at about our performance, you can see that in the last quarter, quarter over quarter, we were able to drive more and more profitability. If you look at the year to date result, we grew our top line by 11.5%. Our gross profit grew by 14% on a 9 month basis and OpEx only grew by 4.5%. So you can see that there is a lot of leverage.
We started the year with a certain guidance and then we increased incremental $9,000,000 to the top line, while $7,000,000 out of the $9,000,000 went to profitability. So the leverage exists in the model. Looking ahead, we are very well positioned for the future. We have very strong CRPO and total RPO, which are giving us the confidence that we can grow in the future. And we believe that we'll be able to go faster than revenue and gross profit in the profitability, meaning that the revenue and the gross profit will go in a much faster pace versus OpEx, and that will drive a strong result and better profitability also next year.
Peter Levine, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Thanks. And sorry, if I can squeeze one last one. Last quarter, you talked a lot about U. S. Expanding to the U.
S. Go to market.
David Abadi, CFO, Cognite: Can you maybe just give us
Peter Levine, Analyst, Evercore ISI: an update on how that kind of trended in the quarter? And then maybe plans for calendar 2025 in terms of further evolving or expanding your reach here in the U. S? Thank you.
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: Yes, sure. So first of all, we continue to believe that North American market presents a good opportunity for us. Obviously, there are many potential customers and it's a wealthy market. So we are focusing on expanding presence there. And we execute our plan.
We'll make progress. I can tell you that I continue visiting existing and potential customer in the U. S. And I get very, very good feedback on our technology. Some of the customers became already reference customers.
For some customers, we just we got already follow on orders, which is another testimonial that it's not just a honeymoon. They don't just come to us for the first deal, but they're happy with what they get. They generate lots of value compared to competition. And for that reason, they come to us and expand. And I mentioned it also in the earlier in the call.
I can also tell you that a few weeks ago, I visited another law enforcement agency, a very significant one in the U. S. And I got very good feedback also in their in a very significant success story using our technology. So given the execution so far, the recent wins we see, customers' feedback that I get, I do expect that North American business will continue to grow in fiscal 2026 and beyond and become
Elad Doron, CEO, Cognite: a most significant business for Cognite.
Peter Levine, Analyst, Evercore ISI: Thank you very much.
Conference Operator: Thank you. I'm showing no further questions in the queue at this time. I will now turn the call back over to Dean for any closing remarks.
Dean Ridland, Head of Investor Relations, Cognite: Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for joining us on today's call. Allad, David and I will be in New York in January to meet with investors and hope to see some of you then. In the meantime, please feel free to reach out to me should you have any questions, and we look forward to speaking with you again next quarter. Thank you all for joining us.
Conference Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect.
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