Elastic(ESTC) - 2025 Q4 - Earnings Call Transcript

Financial Data and Key Metrics Changes - Total revenue in Q4 was $388 million, growing 16$362 million, also growing 16% as reported and 17% in constant currency [30] - Elastic Cloud revenue grew 23% on an as-reported and constant currency basis [30] - Non-GAAP operating margin for Q4 was 15%, with a gross margin of 77% [35][36] - Adjusted free cash flow margin improved by approximately 600 basis points to end the year at 19% [36] Business Line Data and Key Metrics Changes - The number of customers with over $1 million in annual contract value grew approximately 27$100,000 in annual contract value grew approximately 14%, adding about 180 net new customers [34] - Subscription revenue excluding Monthly Cloud was $315 million, growing 19$100,000 or more annually [12] Company Strategy and Development Direction - The company is focusing on leveraging AI to automate business processes and drive innovation, positioning itself as a strategic partner for enterprises [11][18] - Elastic aims to strengthen its position as the preferred vector database, enhancing its offerings with new technologies like better binary quantization [13][19] - The company is committed to maintaining a balance between growth and profitability while continuing to innovate and expand its product offerings [40][43] Management's Comments on Operating Environment and Future Outlook - Management acknowledged potential uncertainty in the macro environment but expressed confidence in the healthy pipeline and demand signals [39] - The company expects continued growth and strong margins in FY 2026, projecting total revenue in the range of $1.655 billion to$1.670 billion [42] Other Important Information - Elastic Cloud now accounts for over 50% of subscription revenue, with strong growth in cloud adoption [18] - The company announced a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS to enhance solution integrations and accelerate AI innovation [25] Q&A Session Summary Question: Guidance and Metrics - Inquiry about the conservativeness of guidance and leading indicators of business performance [45] - Response highlighted the balance of positive demand signals with macro uncertainty, emphasizing the importance of CRPO and subscription revenue metrics [46][49] Question: Partnerships and Market Opportunities - Question regarding the impact of recent partnerships, particularly with AWS and NVIDIA, on market opportunities [53] - Management noted the growing acceptance of Elastic as a leading vector database and the importance of partnerships for driving cloud adoption [54] Question: Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) - Inquiry about the durability of RAG architectures and Elastic's positioning [59] - Management affirmed the critical role of retrieval in enterprise data management and the growing adoption of their vector database for RAG use cases [60][61] Question: Cloud Performance and Consumption Hesitation - Question about the sequential growth in cloud performance and the impact of the leap year [62] - Management clarified that the leap year and fewer days in Q4 affected consumption rates, but normalized growth rates remained strong [64][66] Question: Go-to-Market Strategy and Changes - Inquiry about the effectiveness of go-to-market changes made in the previous fiscal year [69] - Management confirmed that the changes have settled and are yielding positive results, with plans to continue hiring sales capacity [70][72] Question: AI Commitments and Emerging Use Cases - Question about the $1 million AI commitments and emerging use cases [93] - Management clarified that 25$1 million customers are using Elastic for AI workloads, with a variety of sophisticated use cases emerging across industries [94][96]