With the increased use of NHIs and AI agents, especially with machine identities, there is a huge opportunity for Okta. This goes the same for the Total addressable market (TAM). As of now, Okta (NASDAQ: NASDAQ: OKTA ) is amongAnalyst’s Disclosure:I/we have a beneficial long position in the shares of OKTA either through stock ownership, options, or other derivatives. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have ...

So robot body process automation is literally if human had to do something you basically open some browser or whatever take some data put into some other system click some button and all that stuff. So it records that human clicks on that desktop and tries to keep repeating it. So you kind of like get that automated and the hard part that they had is you can't do robotic process for unstructured data because it's not fixed they change it.So anything will be very very brutal. The bet that we are taking is th ...

Core Insights - IDT Corporation reported strong financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2025, with significant year-over-year increases in gross profit, income from operations, and earnings per share [1][4][30]. Financial Performance - Gross profit increased by 15% year-over-year to $112 million, achieving a record gross profit margin of 37.1% [1][3]. - Income from operations rose by 133% to $27 million, while adjusted EBITDA increased by 57% to $32 million [1][3]. - GAAP EPS increased to $0.86 from $0.22, and non-GAAP EPS rose to $0.90 from $0.38 [1][3]. Segment Performance National Retail Solutions (NRS) - Recurring revenue grew by 23% to $29.4 million, driven by a 37% increase in Merchant Services revenue and a 33% rise in SaaS fees [2][5]. - Income from operations and adjusted EBITDA both increased by 29% year-over-year [2][5]. BOSS Money / Fintech Segment - BOSS Money transactions increased by 27% to 6 million, with revenue rising by 25% to $34.4 million [2][7]. - The fintech segment's gross profit grew by 31% to $22.6 million, and income from operations reached $4.3 million [2][7]. net2phone - Subscription revenue increased by 7% to $21.5 million, with income from operations surging by 188% to $1.4 million [3][26]. - Adjusted EBITDA for net2phone rose by 50% to $3.2 million [3][26]. Traditional Communications - Gross profit increased by 5% to $43.4 million, with income from operations rising by 39% to $17.3 million [3][9]. - Adjusted EBITDA for this segment grew by 30% to $19.3 million [3][9]. Cash Flow and Capital Expenditures - Net cash provided by operating activities was $75.7 million in 3Q25, compared to $9.5 million in 3Q24 [30]. - Capital expenditures increased by 14% to $5.4 million [3][31]. Future Outlook - The company is focusing on developing new offerings to enhance the competitiveness of independent retailers against larger chains [6]. - BOSS Money is working on initiatives to drive long-term growth and reduce cross-border transaction friction [7].

Core Insights - Workday has launched the Workday Agent Partner Network, a global ecosystem that connects AI agents from various industry leaders to its Agent System of Record (ASOR), enhancing productivity and collaboration [1][6][12] - The introduction of the Agent Gateway will facilitate seamless integration of AI agents from Workday and its partners, streamlining workflows across platforms [2][8] - Workday's platform aims to manage people, money, and AI agents together, reflecting the evolving nature of the workforce that now includes both humans and AI [3][4] Company Developments - Workday's ASOR will provide tools for hiring, onboarding, and managing AI agents, ensuring they operate securely and efficiently [5][6] - The Workday Marketplace now features agents from Workday and its partners, allowing customers to easily discover and deploy AI solutions tailored to their business needs [10] - Workday Illuminate, the next generation of its AI, leverages extensive HR and financial data to enhance business operations and decision-making [11][14] Industry Trends - The workforce is increasingly composed of both human employees and AI agents, necessitating a rethinking of management practices and compliance measures [4][5] - Major partners like AWS, Deloitte, and PwC are collaborating with Workday to develop AI agents that can transform enterprise workflows and improve decision-making across various functions [12][12][12] - The integration of AI agents into business processes is seen as a critical step towards managing the future workforce effectively [6][12]

Core Insights - The article discusses the potential of AI Agents, emphasizing their evolution from tools to colleagues in business applications and future organizational changes [2][10][15]. Group 1: AI Day Overview - The AI Day event, themed "AI Agents: From Copilot to Colleague," gathered over 200 CEOs and tech executives to explore AI Agents' commercial applications and technological advancements [2]. - New benchmarking tool xbench was introduced to address the evaluation of AI capabilities and their practical utility in real-world scenarios [7][8]. Group 2: xbench Tool Features - xbench aims to redefine AI capability assessment with a dual-track evaluation system: AGI track for basic AI capabilities and Profession Aligned for practical business applications [8]. - The tool incorporates a long-lasting evaluation system that transforms fluctuating scores into a monotonic growth curve, allowing for clearer tracking of AI capability development [8]. Group 3: AI Agent Evolution - Key characteristics of AI Agents include generalization, enabling them to perform tasks beyond traditional models, and the integration of model intelligence, expert knowledge, and user feedback [10][11]. - The discussion highlighted the importance of economic value and production costs in AI Agent projects, with a focus on abstracting production methods for scalability [10]. Group 4: Future Organizational Changes - The rise of AI Agents is likened to the mobile internet boom, with optimistic funding sentiments in early-stage companies [15]. - Future enterprises may trend towards smaller, flatter organizational structures, enhancing employee efficiency but increasing management complexity [16]. Group 5: Insights from Industry Leaders - Google Cloud and AWS representatives shared insights on AI strategies, emphasizing the need for companies to redefine their value propositions in the evolving tech landscape [18][19]. - The importance of continuous interaction with users and maintaining brand identity in the AI era was also discussed, highlighting the need for precise audience engagement [15].

Prompt Engineering & Metaprompting - Metaprompting is emerging as a powerful tool, likened to coding in 1995 due to the evolving nature of the tools [1] - The best prompts often start by defining the role of the LLM, detailing the task, and outlining a step-by-step plan, often using markdown-style formatting [1] - Vertical AI agent companies are exploring how to balance flexibility for customer-specific logic with maintaining a general-purpose product, considering forking and merging prompts [1] - An emerging architecture involves defining a system prompt (company API), a developer prompt (customer-specific context), and a user prompt (end-user input) [1] - Worked examples are crucial for improving output quality, and automating the process of extracting and ingesting these examples from customer data is a valuable opportunity [2] - Prompt folding allows a prompt to dynamically generate better versions of itself by feeding it examples where it failed [2] - When LLMs lack sufficient information, it's important to provide them with an "escape hatch" to avoid hallucinations, either by allowing them to ask for more information or by providing debug info in the response [2] Evaluation & Model Personalities - Evals are considered the "crown jewels" for AI companies, essential for understanding why a prompt was written a certain way and for improving it [3] - Different LLMs exhibit distinct personalities; for example, Claude is considered more steerable, while Llama 4 requires more steering and prompting [5] - When using LLMs to generate numerical scores, providing rubrics is best practice, but models may interpret and apply these rubrics with varying degrees of rigidity and flexibility [5] Founder Role & Forward Deployed Engineer - Founders need to deeply understand their users and codify these insights into specific evals to ensure the software works for them [3] - Founders should act as "forward deployed engineers," directly engaging with users to understand their needs and rapidly iterate on the product [4] - The forward deployed engineer model, combined with AI, enables faster iteration and closing of significant deals with large enterprises [5]

Investment Rating - The report maintains a Buy rating for Okta, indicating confidence in the company's potential for growth stabilization and execution on its go-to-market strategy [3][17]. Core Insights - Okta's 1QFY revenue was 1% above expectations, with a cRPO (current Remaining Performance Obligations) 2% above and EBIT margin approximately 200 basis points above [1]. - The company is experiencing a sequential decline in subscription revenue growth and cRPO, which has raised concerns about future performance [1][15]. - Despite these challenges, Okta is well-positioned to benefit from the increasing adoption of AI technologies among its customers, with initiatives like Auth for GenAI expected to enhance its offerings [3][15]. Financial Performance - For FY26, revenue guidance remains unchanged at $2,859 million, with EBIT margin guidance also maintained [1][17]. - The company reported a net revenue retention (NRR) rate of 106%, slightly down from 107% in the previous quarter, and is expected to remain within the 106-108% range for the remainder of FY26 [1][15]. - cRPO bookings grew 9% year-over-year, but this represents a 23% quarter-over-quarter decline, indicating volatility in forward subscription revenue [15]. Valuation Metrics - The adjusted 12-month price target for Okta is set at $137, based on a valuation of 25 times EV/uFCF [17]. - Key financial metrics include projected revenue growth rates of 15.3% for FY25, 9.5% for FY26, and 10.5% for FY27 [9]. - The report highlights a free cash flow yield of 4.9% for FY25, decreasing to 3.4% by FY26 [9]. Market Context - Okta's market capitalization is approximately $22.9 billion, with an enterprise value of $20.5 billion [4]. - The company is positioned within the Americas Emerging Software sector, ranking 3rd in M&A activity [4].

Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL ) shares are down roughly 5% in the last year and nearly 11% year-to-date. At one time earlier this year, shares of Alphabet were briefly above $200, more properly reflecting what, IThis account is managed by Noah's Arc Capital Management. Our goal is provide Wall Street level insights to main street investors. Our research focus is mainly on 20th century stocks (old economy) undergoing a 21st century transformation, but occasionally we'll write on companies that help transform 20th ...

AI Development & Application - The industry is currently using outdated software development techniques for AI features, hindering the full potential of AI, which should enable users to program software using natural language [1][18] - AI application development is often approached by trying to fit AI into existing applications, rather than redesigning tools from the ground up to automate repetitive tasks [18][62] - The industry needs to move beyond the chatbot paradigm and focus on AI's capability to automate work and accomplish tasks on behalf of users [58][60] - A key element is providing users with "tools" that agents can use to accomplish tasks, such as labeling emails, archiving them, or writing drafts [53][54] System Prompts & User Control - Current AI applications often hide the "system prompt" (instructions given to the AI) from the user, limiting customization and personalization [1][11] - The industry should allow users to view and edit system prompts, enabling them to tailor the AI's behavior to their specific needs and preferences [8][10] - Allowing users to control system prompts shifts the responsibility for the AI's output from the developer to the user [35] - While not everyone may want to write system prompts from scratch, the option should be available, and AI could assist in generating and customizing prompts based on user history and feedback [41][42][48] Future of AI Development - The industry needs to develop better tooling and UI conventions for interacting with and teaching AI, potentially including AI-assisted system prompt writers [45][46] - AI models are good at processing instructions and turning them into text output, making them particularly effective for coding agents [31][32] - Founders should rethink existing tools from the ground up with AI, focusing on offloading repetitive work from users [61][62]

Financial Data and Key Metrics Changes - In Q1 2025, Appian's cloud subscription revenue grew 15% year over year to $99.8 million, while total revenue increased 11% year over year to $166.4 million [4][30] - Adjusted EBITDA was $16.8 million, a significant improvement from an adjusted EBITDA loss of $1.3 million in the same quarter last year [34] - Non-GAAP net income was $9.8 million or $0.13 per diluted share, compared to a non-GAAP net loss of $4.9 million or $0.07 per share for Q1 2024 [34] Business Line Data and Key Metrics Changes - Cloud subscriptions revenue represented 81% of total revenue, up from 79% in the year-ago period [31] - Professional services revenue was flat at $32.1 million compared to Q1 2024, with expectations for a long-term decline as a percentage of total revenue [31][32] - The cloud subscription revenue retention rate was 112%, down from 120% a year ago [32] Market Data and Key Metrics Changes - International operations contributed 36% of total revenue, slightly down from 37% in the previous year [32] - Federal government bookings grew 59% year over year, indicating strong performance in the public sector [20][104] Company Strategy and Development Direction - The company is focusing on AI integration within its processes, emphasizing practical applications over hype [5][7] - Appian aims to monetize AI features, with revenue from AI-inclusive tiers more than doubling to $9 million in Q1 [11][62] - The introduction of a multi-tiered pricing model allows for better monetization of AI and exclusive features [10] Management's Comments on Operating Environment and Future Outlook - Management expressed cautious optimism regarding the evolving opportunities in the federal government sector despite macroeconomic uncertainties [20][38] - The company is taking a prudent approach to guidance for the remainder of 2025, with expected cloud subscriptions revenue growth between 14-16% for Q2 [38][39] - Management highlighted the importance of maintaining sales and marketing efficiency, with net new bookings per sales rep rising over 30% compared to the previous year [27][81] Other Important Information - Appian's new Chief Financial Officer, Serge Tanga, is expected to contribute significantly to the company's strategy and financial planning [29] - The company plans to report on a new metric called "weighted rule of 40," which combines growth and margin metrics [26] Q&A Session Summary Question: Was there any pull forward in government performance due to uncertainty around ordering patterns? - Management indicated that pull forwards were not a meaningful factor in Q1 and expressed cautious optimism for Q3 [42][44] Question: What drove the decline in cloud net retention rates? - Management explained that the decline was due to down sells from the previous year and leveling off of revenue growth from some customers [46][48] Question: How does Appian differentiate itself in the AI and agentic space? - Management emphasized the importance of practical applications of AI and the need for structured processes to support AI deployment [52][56] Question: What is the expected contribution from AI in 2025? - Management is optimistic about the willingness of customers to spend on AI and plans to transition away from per seat pricing [78][80] Question: How durable are the recent sales productivity gains? - Management believes the productivity gains are durable and stem from recent innovations and improved sales practices [82][84] Question: What is the impact of narrowing the channel focus on go-to-market efficiency? - Management noted that focusing on trusted partners has significantly expanded the partner-generated pipeline [88][90]