Earnings Calls

The story, as management tells it today

This tab reads all 20 of monday.com's earnings calls — from the first call after the June 2021 IPO (Q2 FY2021) through Q1 FY2026 (reported May 11, 2026) — in sequence, so you get the arc and the small tells without opening a transcript. Currency is USD ($) throughout; KPIs are management's own (non-GAAP operating margin, adjusted free cash flow, and net dollar retention measured as a trailing four-quarter weighted average).

The five-year arc is a single, legible story. monday.com IPO'd as a hyper-growth, "grab-land" SMB land-and-expand machine, rode net dollar retention to a 125% peak, then spent four years decelerating gracefully from 94% revenue growth to the low-20s while turning sharply cash-generative, climbing upmarket, launching four products, and — in the last three quarters — confronting two genuine overhangs: AI-search disruption to its self-serve funnel and the industry-wide question of whether AI agents cannibalize seat-based SaaS. The credibility inflection is recent and real: after years of beating and raising every single quarter, management posted its first-ever no-raise in Q3 FY2025 and then, on the Q4 FY2025 call, withdrew its $1.8B FY2027 revenue target entirely [1] and reset FY2026 growth guidance to 18–19%. The Q1 FY2026 call then nudged guidance back up, restoring some confidence.

Here is where the business sits on the most recent call.

Source: Q1 FY2026 earnings call — revenue $351M up 24% [2]; operating income $49M at 14% margin [3]; adjusted FCF $102.8M at 29% margin [4]; overall NDR 110% [5]; 42% of ARR from over-$50k customers and ~3% of net-new ARR from AI [6].

Growth and retention: the five-year glide path

Revenue growth has decelerated almost monotonically — from 94% in Q2 FY2021 [7] to 24% in Q1 FY2026 [8] — with the FY2026 guide implying a further step down to ~19–20%. There is no cliff in this series; it is the textbook S-curve of a scaling SaaS franchise, which is precisely why the guidance reset (rather than the deceleration itself) is what unsettled analysts.

Source: company filings, as reported; representative call figures Q2 FY2021 revenue $70.6M up 94% [9], Q1 FY2023 $162.3M up 50% [10], Q1 FY2026 $351M up 24% [11].

Source: company filings, as reported; the company crossed its first $100M quarter in Q1 FY2022 ($108.5M) [12]. ARR passed $1 billion in Q3 FY2024 [13].

Net dollar retention — the metric analysts press every single call

NDR is the thread analysts pull on every quarter, and it tells the cycle story better than revenue. In the IPO era it climbed from 111% (Q2 FY2021) to 120% (Q4 FY2021) to a 125% peak in Q1 FY2022 [14][15]. It was at that 125% peak — Q1 FY2022 — that management first disclosed the over-$50k ARR cohort NDR, at above 150% [16]. Then Europe softened, and NDR began a multi-year descent: management flagged the first NDR decline in Q3 FY2022 [17], conceded a decline in retention for its largest customers by Q4 FY2022 and guided it down a further 5–10% [18][19], bottoming around 110% through FY2023 [20].

The recovery, when it came, was pricing-led, not demand-led: a first-ever price increase to the installed base lifted reported NDR back to 111% (Q3 FY2024) and 112% (Q4 FY2024) [21][22]. As that price benefit laps, NDR is sliding back: 112% → 111% → 110%, and on the latest call management guided it to decline further by the end of FY2026 [23], confirming the price action had added 12 points to NDR and is now rolling off [24].

Source: earnings calls — NDR stable at 110% (Q1 FY2024) [25], up to 111% (Q3 FY2024) [26] and 112% (Q4 FY2024) [27], then 112%→111% in Q2 FY2025 [28] and 111%→110% in Q4 FY2025 [29].

A tell worth flagging: management gave explicit cohort-level NDR figures (over-$50k, 10-plus users) freely in FY2021–early FY2023, then quietly stopped breaking out NDR by segment from Q2 FY2023 onward, retreating to a single blended number. When a company narrows its disclosure exactly as a metric weakens, that is information. The offsetting good-news disclosure they added: gross retention for the over-$50k cohort hit a historical-high 91% by Q4 FY2025 [30].

Guidance vs delivery: the credibility record

For most of its public life monday.com was a model beat-and-raise compounder. The cleanest summary came from a frustrated analyst on the Q3 FY2025 call: "I do not think there is a time in our model where you did not raise guidance on the quarter out" [31]. Full-year revenue guidance set at the prior February has been beaten every year for which a clean initial guide survives in the transcripts.

Source: FY2024 guide $926M–$932M set on the Q4 FY2023 call [32]; FY2025 guide $1.208B–$1.221B set on the Q4 FY2024 call [33]; FY2026 reset to $1.452B–$1.462B [34] then raised to $1.466B–$1.475B [35]; $1.8B FY2027 target [36] withdrawn [37].

The mechanics of the break are worth understanding because they are not a demand collapse — they are a deliberate reset. Through Q2 FY2025 management consistently raised the full year by less than the quarterly beat (a conservatism analysts repeatedly flagged), then in Q3 FY2025 raised nothing at all, attributing the flat guide to a timing effect from the shift upmarket — longer enterprise sales cycles that back-end-load revenue [38]. One quarter later, on Q4 FY2025, they pulled the $1.8B FY2027 target and cut FY2026 operating margin guidance to 11–12% and FCF margin to 19–20% — citing FX (the Israeli shekel, where ~55% of headcount sits [39]), front-loaded AI investment, and "choppy" no-touch demand [40].

The cash story is the counterweight to the guidance wobble, and it has been a genuine, repeated over-delivery. monday.com turned adjusted-FCF-positive ahead of schedule in Q3 FY2021 ($2.9M, the first positive quarter) [43], strung together consecutive FCF-positive years [44], set a "record non-GAAP operating margin of 13%" as early as Q3 FY2023 [45], and posted its "highest-ever cash flow for a single quarter" in Q1 FY2025 [46]. The FY2026 margin reset is therefore the first real dent in an otherwise pristine profitability-and-cash trajectory.

Sentiment trajectory — how the tone moved, theme by theme

Reading the calls in sequence, management's confidence is not uniform — it varies sharply by theme. The grid below scores the dominant tone on each theme by fiscal year (+1 positive / clearly improving, 0 neutral / mixed, −1 negative / deteriorating), as a sentiment map of the franchise.

Source: synthesized from the full transcript set FY2021–FY2026; anchor points include Europe demand softness from Q2 FY2022 [47], Google/AI-search pressure from Q2 FY2025 [48], and the Q3 FY2025 no-raise [49].

The grid makes the bifurcation visible: enterprise/upmarket confidence is unbroken (the up-market motion is the company's good-news engine), AI monetization confidence is rising, but new-business/SMB demand and guidance posture have turned red in the last two years. That split — strong at the top, pressured at the bottom of the funnel — is the central tension in the live story.

Demand and the cycle: from "grab land" to "choppy"

The demand commentary is the cleanest cycle barometer in the calls. The progression, in management's own words:

• IPO euphoria (FY2021): the CFO framed it as a land-grab — "This is the time for us to grab land, to increase our market shares" [50], and management raised guidance "for the remainder of the year" [51].
• The first crack (Q2 FY2022): "we did see some softness in demand in Europe at the end of Q2" [52], and under questioning, the candid "It started in June. We also see it in July, to be honest" [53].
• The grind (FY2023): "it's not getting any better, but it's not getting any worse… Sales cycles are still taking longer" [54].
• The new structural worry (FY2025–FY2026): a Google search-algorithm/AI-search shift hitting self-serve acquisition — "we do see some pressure from Google on the new side" [55] — which management repeatedly declined to quantify (on Q2 FY2025, the co-CEO cut the topic off: "that's all the color we're going to get on that" [56]), and by Q4 FY2025 admitted of the no-touch channel, "we don't know how to predict what it will do" [57].

The consistent counter-narrative management never drops: SMB softness is a share-gain opportunity as competitors retreat upmarket, and the enterprise motion is healthy and accelerating — by Q4 FY2025 the over-$50k cohort represented 41% of total ARR [58], up to 42% in Q1 FY2026 [59].

The AI pivot — the dominant evolving thread

No theme moved more across these calls than AI, and the trajectory is a study in a SaaS company shifting from "AI as a feature we don't charge for" to "AI as a new pricing axis." For three years management talked about AI while explicitly excluding any AI revenue from guidance — a remarkably consistent refrain:

Source: AI "incorporated into our Work OS" Q1 FY2023 [60]; "monetizing the AI" too early Q4 FY2023 [61]; "big question… is always about monetization" Q2 FY2024 [62]; "not modeling for that" Q3 FY2024 [63]; no AI revenue in FY2025 plan [64]; Vibe monetization Q3 FY2025 [65]; ~3% of net-new ARR from AI Q1 FY2026 [66].

The inflection is FY2025: management reframed the company "from work management to work execution" [67], described a shift from a "system of work to a system of action" [68], and by Q4 FY2025 was casting AI as a defensive moat against the disruption thesis: "We're not running away from AI. We're embracing this and leading the market with it" [69], with Vibe the "fastest product in monday's history to surpass $1 million of ARR" [70]. On Q1 FY2026 they finally put a number on it — ~3% of net-new ARR from AI — while being unusually disciplined about what counts: "when we say AI contribution, we mean direct contribution, not contribution made possible by AI" [71]. The new "seats + credits" consumption pricing is the structural bet, pitched as low-friction for the base: "it's not a migration… it's like a click the switch kind of thing" [72]. Management also began quantifying AI's internal leverage — a 32% lift in output per developer since 2025 [73] — and acquired One AI for native voice/agent capability [74].

What changed — metrics and priorities introduced vs dropped

The disclosure cabinet itself is a source of signal. Tracking which metrics management adds, redefines, or quietly drops:

Source: over-$50k cohort NDR first disclosed Q1 FY2022 [75]; 245,000 customers with growth slowing to high-single-digits Q4 FY2024 [76]; $1.8B FY2027 target [77] withdrawn [78]; new products over 10% of ARR and only 6% multi-product Q3 FY2025 [79][80]; 34% of over-$50k cohort multi-product Q1 FY2026 [81].

The product story underneath is genuinely good and is the bull case management leans on: monday CRM reached $100M ARR in roughly three years from zero [82], monday Service emerged as the highest cross-sell and highest-ACV product in the suite [83], and with only ~6% of customers using more than one product when that was disclosed, the cross-sell runway is the company's clearest multi-year growth lever — CRO Casey George: "when we only have 6% of our customers consuming more than one product, the opportunity for us is significant" [84].

The Q&A — where the truth leaks

Analysts have pressed the same three nerves for years, and which questions get crisp answers versus deflections is itself a tell:

• NDR — pressed every single call; answered crisply (management gives the number and the price-vs-demand attribution), though cohort detail was withdrawn as it weakened.
• AI monetization timing — pressed relentlessly from FY2023; answered with consistent deferral ("too early," "not modeling for that") until real numbers finally arrived in Q1 FY2026.
• The Google/no-touch demand hit — the clearest deflection in the set: management repeatedly refused to quantify the magnitude ("almost insignificant," "that's all the color we're going to get"), which, given how hard analysts pushed, reads as a soft spot they would rather not size.
• The guidance reset — on Q4 FY2025, Mark Murphy pointedly noted the company "blasted" the ~$1.5B 2026 consensus; management's answer was that resetting was "prudent" [85] rather than a fundamental demand change.

A recurring earlier critique was conservatism itself — on Q4 FY2023 an analyst called it the "lowest magnitude beat you've had as a public company" [86], and on Q4 FY2022 the CFO conceded "good old fashioned conservatism" baked into the guide [87]. The irony an investor should hold: a team analysts spent years accusing of sandbagging is the same team that just reset a multi-year target — which makes the reset harder to dismiss as routine prudence.

Money quotes — management in its own words

Peer / industry cross-read — is the industry saying the same thing?

monday.com does not report into a vacuum. The corpus includes recent calls from six peers across two tiers: direct work-management peers (Asana, Atlassian) and the broader collaboration/SaaS and platform set (Freshworks, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Microsoft). The single question that matters most for the MNDY thesis runs through all of them: does AI cannibalize seat-based SaaS, or does it expand revenue? Reading the peer calls, the public answer is a near-consensus "AI is additive" — but the conviction behind it, and the pricing model everyone is converging on, are the real signal.

Sources: peer earnings calls — Asana NRR 95% [94]; Atlassian cloud NRR 120%+ [95]; Freshworks "not seen seat erosion" [96]; ServiceNow 50% of net-new non-seat [97]; Salesforce 29,000 Agentforce deals [98]; Microsoft 20M+ Copilot seats [99].

Theme 1 — AI vs. seats: CONSENSUS (additive), with telling nuance

Every peer sells AI publicly as a tailwind, not a cannibal — but the basis differs, and the differences matter for how to read monday.com.

• Atlassian is the strongest data-backed bull: customers using AI coding tools "expanded Jira seats 5% faster" than those who don't [100], and "we are not seeing any signal of seat compression" [101].
• Asana is the candid tell: it frames AI as a tailwind while explicitly building AI Studio to "reduce our overall reliance on per-seat monetization" [102] — the closest thing in the cohort to admitting seats are pressured.
• Freshworks answers the question head-on — an analyst literally asked "is it an AI winner or an AI loser" [103] — insists "we have not seen seat erosion" [104], yet cut its own headcount ~11% using internal AI [105] — a live demonstration of the very seat-deflation force horizontal vendors must outrun.
• The platform peers prove the bear case internally while selling additive externally: Salesforce told customers to "reduce your support heads and have an agentic layer… and make more money" [106], and Microsoft reframed the model outright: a "licensed business plus a consumption business… It will still have that per-seat license logic, but it will also have a meter, just like you see in Azure" [107].

monday.com sits squarely inside this consensus — additive framing, defensive AI-moat language, and the same seats-plus-credits model. It is not an outlier on AI strategy; if anything it is slightly behind the platform peers in monetization scale (NOW's AI ACV surpassed $600M, CRM's Agentforce ~$800M in deals), and roughly in line with the work-management peers in early-stage AI revenue.

Theme 2 — Pricing model: CONSENSUS (the whole industry is converging on hybrid)

This is the cleanest industry signal in the corpus. Every peer is migrating from pure per-seat toward a seat-floor + consumption/credit meter, and several explicitly retreated from pure usage pricing: ServiceNow now books "50% of net new business… from a non-seat-based pricing model" [108]; Microsoft reports "nearly 60% of our service customers are already purchasing usage-based credits" [109]. monday.com's Q1 FY2026 "seats + credits" launch is the company doing exactly what the industry is doing — consensus, on time, not an outlier.

Theme 3 — Demand: SPLIT, and monday.com is on the softer side

Here the peers diverge, and the divergence is unflattering for MNDY's specific exposure. The enterprise platform peers report resilient demand — ServiceNow: "IT budgets are highly resilient and increasingly focused on… AI platforms" [110] — while conceding the spend is a reallocation fight: "labor budgets are coming down… eliminating more point solutions… leaning into platform consolidation" [111]. Microsoft's CFO conceded the honest macro: "our overall IT expectations are not increasing, and GDP growth is not really increasing" [112]. Asana, the closest comp, reports the same self-serve/top-of-funnel pressure monday.com flags — "increased buyer scrutiny and elongation" [113] and an AI-search hit to low-intent traffic — which makes monday.com's no-touch/Google headwind a shared work-management phenomenon, not idiosyncratic. The platform peers, selling into protected enterprise IT budgets, simply do not have the SMB/self-serve exposure that is hurting MNDY and Asana.

Theme 4 — Net retention: CONSENSUS on a "trough-and-turn," but monday.com is mid-pack and still sliding

Across the cohort the retention story is "we bottomed and are turning": Asana NRR bottomed at 95% and held [114], Freshworks is inflecting up off ~104%, Atlassian's cloud NRR is 120%+ and rising [115], ServiceNow holds a 97–98% renewal rate. monday.com is the mild outlier on direction: at 110% it sits above Asana and Freshworks but below Atlassian and ServiceNow, and — unlike most peers calling a turn — it is guiding NDR to keep declining into FY2026 as its price increase fully laps. That is the one place the industry says "turning up" and monday.com says "still drifting down."

Risks, overhangs, and what the calls leave unsettled

• The guidance reset is fresh and unproven. A team with a near-perfect beat-and-raise record withdrew a multi-year target; whether the 18–20% FY2026 guide is the new conservative floor (which the Q1 FY2026 raise hints at) or a genuine demand reset will only be settled over the next few quarters.
• NDR is still pointed down. The pricing tailwind that rebuilt retention is fully lapping by mid-FY2026, and management has guided NDR to decline — the very metric analysts watch most.
• The no-touch/Google demand hit is unquantified by management's choice. The repeated refusal to size it is the clearest deflection in the set.
• Margin compression is now real, from FX (a strengthening shekel against a 55%-Israel cost base), AI compute pushing gross margin from 90% toward the high-80s, and front-loaded AI/go-to-market spend — the first dent in an otherwise spotless profitability record.
• The AI-vs-seats question is existential and unresolved industry-wide. monday.com's answer (seats + credits, AI moat via data gravity) is credible and consensus, but ~3% of net-new ARR from AI is an early, small number, and the peers prove both that AI can be monetized at scale and that it deflates seats internally.