Zoom Communications, Inc.

Zoom Communications, Inc.

3,362.50
ARS
-105.00
(-3.03%)
360.96EPS
8.64P/E
41.31TMarket Cap
Nov 23Next Earn

Q4 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptFebruary 25, 2026

Operator

Hello everyone, and welcome to Zoom's Q4 FY2026 earnings release webinar. I will now hand things over to Charles Eveslage, Head of Investor Relations.

Charles, over to you.

Charles Eveslage

Thank you, Catherine. Hello everyone, and welcome to Zoom's earnings video webinar for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2026.

I'm joined today by Zoom's founder and CEO, Eric Yuan, and Zoom CFO, Michelle Chang. Our earnings release was issued today after the market closed and may be downloaded from the Investor Relations page at investors.zoom.com.

Also, on this page, you'll be able to find a copy of today's prepared remarks and a slide deck with financial highlights that, along with our earnings release, include a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial results. These measures should not be considered in isolation from or as a substitute for financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP.

During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our financial outlook for the first quarter and full fiscal year 2027, our expectations regarding financial and business trends, impacts from the macroeconomic environment, our market position, stock repurchase program, opportunities, go-to-market initiatives, growth strategy, and business aspirations, and product initiatives, including future product and feature releases, and the expected benefits of such initiatives. These statements are only predictions that are based on what we believe today, and actual results may differ materially.

These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and other factors that could affect our performance and financial results, which we discuss in detail in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10-K and quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Zoom assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements we may make on today's webinar.

With that, let me turn the discussion over to Eric, who's giving his prepared remarks via Zoom custom avatar.

Eric Yuan

Thank you, Charles. FY26 was a pivotal year for Zoom and for our industry.

We grew Q4 revenue 5.3% and full year FY26 revenue 4.4%, an acceleration of 130 basis points over FY25. These results reflect the increasing value of our platform, with innovations like AI Companion 3.0, as our platform expands and evolves into an AI-powered system of action for modern work.

The inflection in growth reflects a structural shift in the market. Organizations are moving beyond systems of record and engagement toward AI-driven systems of action that help customers and employees get real work done.

Zoom is uniquely positioned to lead this transition. We bridge work both inside and outside the organization across collaboration, customer experience, and employee experience, using AI to take conversations all the way to completion.

This directly connects to the three priorities we outlined last quarter to bring this system of action to life: first, elevate the workplace with AI; second, drive growth of new AI products; and third, scale AI-first customer experience. Let me start by speaking about scaling AI-first customer experience.

Zoom's advantage in customer experience comes from embedding it within our broader system of action, not treating it as a standalone solution, as many competitors do. Our CX platform is differentiated because it is built on the same platform that powers collaboration inside the organization, and extends seamlessly to customer engagement and other external workflows.

By unifying internal and external workflows, we eliminate traditional silos and enable customer journeys to move continuously from conversation to completion. Within customer experience itself, Zoom delivers a cohesive set of intelligent capabilities that empower both human and virtual agents, and turn live interactions into coordinated action across teams and systems to drive outcomes.

Our AI innovation across AI-assisted human agents and virtual agents is translating into improved service outcomes and cost savings for our customers, and incremental revenue for Zoom. You see this in ZCX ARR continuing to grow in high double digits, and in fact, accelerating in Q4 driven by AI monetization.

More concretely, you see it in the story our deal composition tells about why customers choose us. Every one of our top 10 deals this quarter included paid AI, and seven represented competitive displacements of leading CCaaS vendors.

Let me bring this to life with some Q4 customer wins. We welcomed Aeroflow Health, a medical device company who chose Zoom Contact Center in a major Q4 deal spanning ZCC Elite and ZVA voice plus chat to replace a leading CCaaS vendor due to our bold AI vision for CX and ability to execute.

We also saw many expansions. MLB and Openlane both began as Zoom Contact Center customers, and in Q4 bought a combination of ZCC Elite and ZVA voice to deliver reimagined AI-first human plus virtual agent customer service.

In other cases, customers are adopting the full Zoom CX suite alongside Zoom Phone and Workplace to transform service operations end-to-end. For example, in Q4, a major insurance provider decided to replace an expensive contact center stitched to an AI point solution with our unified Zoom Phone, Contact Center, and ZVA voice to automate call triage, reduce agent workload, and increase overall efficiency.

We also partnered with Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust, who administers regional NHS services, to modernize their manual, fragmented inbound call operations through a single, secure digital platform powered by Zoom Phone, Zoom Contact Center, and ZVA voice plus chat to enable AI-powered self-service, improve wait times, reduce missed appointments, and enhance overall patient outcomes and call operations efficiency. These wins also demonstrate the momentum behind Zoom Virtual Agent and the customer response to our voice AI within the CX suite.

Only a few quarters in market, ZVA voice has already been included in four of our top 10 CX deals. We are also starting to see ZVA voice bring in new customers and act as a beachhead for potential expansion into large organizations.

In Q4, we signed a nearly seven-figure ARR deal with a leading US retailer leveraging ZVA to handle inbound calls across more than 1,100 locations. ZVA 3.0, announced yesterday, builds upon this growing momentum.

It operates across voice and chat, taking action across systems, executing complex, multi-step workflows, learning continuously from how human agents resolve issues, and seamlessly bringing people into the conversation with full context when needed. That's how we are helping enterprises close the loop on customer issues at scale, and it's a powerful example of how our CX platform can drive measurable efficiency, better experiences, and real business value for our customers.

Our second priority is to grow AI revenue streams beyond customer experience, and to extend the system of action to new AI products across vertical and horizontal workflows. Zoom Revenue Accelerator, our revenue orchestration platform that uses the power of Zoom AI to drive prospecting, coaching, CRM automation, and more, is a great example of this vertical value.

ZRA had a strong quarter. The number of customers purchasing it grew 50% year-over-year, and its largest Q4 transactions spanned HR services, real estate, technology, and automotive sectors.

Another great example of vertical workflows is BrightHire, which we were very excited to close in Q4 and bring similar conversational AI value to recruiting and hiring. BrightHire is early in its growth path.

Together, we have a tremendous opportunity to combine BrightHire's domain-specific AI capabilities with Zoom's product breadth and distribution advantages to transform how organizations recruit, hire, and retain talent. We are also making progress with Custom AI Companion, which brings horizontal value to workflows across Zoom Workplace and beyond.

We're proud to welcome the following new customers, showing the breadth of what this product can unlock. Harmonic, a leader in virtualized broadband and video streaming solutions, added Custom AI Companion wall-to-wall to their Workplace deployment to integrate across multiple third-party tools and support knowledge retention, sales enablement, and employee onboarding.

Custom AI Companion also made headway in sectors like education, where AI literacy is of paramount importance for both students and administrators. In Q4, Grand Valley State University adopted it wall-to-wall alongside Zoom Workplace for Education, supporting their efforts to streamline help desk and other student-facing processes by connecting administrators and community members more seamlessly with internal knowledge bases and workflows.

At the same time, they added ZVA to their existing Zoom Contact Center to provide students with more responsive, omnichannel support. Last, the foundation of our system of action sits within Zoom Workplace, spanning the full meetings and work lifecycle where context is created and work moves forward.

By evolving collaboration into an engine of action while preserving the flexibility of an open ecosystem, Zoom Workplace remains simple, reliable, and deeply preferred by solopreneurs and Fortune 10 companies alike. Q4 marked a big step forward with the launch of AI Companion 3.0, advancing our system of action by turning meetings from one-off events into engines of ongoing work.

As innovation accelerates, adoption continues to grow and broaden. In Q4, AI Companion monthly active users more than tripled year-over-year.

MAUs engaging AI through the side panel more than doubled quarter-over-quarter, and within Zoom Phone, MAUs using AI features increased 35% sequentially. This momentum reflects not only scale, but expanding depth of engagement across workflows.

We also revitalized our core Zoom Workplace client, simplifying the user experience with refreshed interfaces and streamlined navigation to make action even more intuitive. Our product mastery continues to translate into competitive wins and meaningful displacements across meetings, phone, chat, and beyond.

Zoom Phone had some great competitive wins, and Phone ARR continues to grow in the mid-teens. Let me highlight some customer wins to bring this to life.

In Q4, we landed a Fortune 10 customer on Zoom Phone in a large and competitive deal for 140,000 seats, replacing Cisco Calling. We also secured two major US financial institutions on Zoom Workplace and Phone, displacing Teams and Cisco Calling.

Additionally, we significantly expanded our footprint with a leading global bank, adding nearly 50,000 Zoom Phone seats in Q4 and bringing their total deployment to an incredible 150,000 seats. These financial sector wins highlight our ability to meet the complex, highly regulated needs of the industry.

Our customer-centric approach to innovation, particularly around AI and security, enables institutions to ensure compliance, mitigate regulatory risk, and modernize operations. The momentum is similar in healthcare, where we witnessed a growing number of Workplace and Phone wins that also added customer experience.

They are choosing Zoom not only for sector-specific capabilities, but for the differentiation offered by our cohesive, AI-first system of action spanning patient engagement, care coordination, and back-office collaboration. In the age of AI, Zoom becomes more essential.

We are building the system of action that turns conversations into coordinated execution across work inside the organization and with the world outside, including customer engagement, sales, recruiting, and more. By connecting collaboration to action, Zoom drives measurable outcomes, and we're still early in what this system can unlock.

Now, let me turn it over to Michelle to take us through the financials. Michelle?

Michelle Chang

Thank you, Eric, and hello everyone. I'm excited to be with you today to share Zoom's Q4 and full FY2026 financial performance.

In Q4, total revenue grew 5.3% year-over-year to $1.25 billion, or 4.8% in constant currency. This result was $12 million above the high end of our guidance.

Our Enterprise business continues to be strong, with revenue growing 7.1% year-over-year, representing 61% of our total revenue, up 1 point year-over-year. Our Online business continues to show signs of stabilizing.

In Q4, average monthly churn was 2.9%, as compared to 2.8% in Q4 of FY2025. In our Enterprise business, we saw 9% year-over-year growth in the number of customers contributing more than $100,000 in trailing 12-month revenue.

These customers now make up 33% of our total revenue, up 2 points year-over-year. Our trailing 12-month net dollar expansion rate for Enterprise customers in Q4 continues to hold steady at 98%.

Pivoting to our growth internationally, our Americas revenue grew 6% year-over-year, EMEA grew 5%, and APAC grew 3%. Moving to our non-GAAP results, which as a reminder exclude stock-based compensation expense and associated payroll taxes, net litigation settlements, acquisition-related expenses, impairments of assets, charitable donations of common stock, tax benefits from discrete activities, net gains on strategic investments, and all associated tax effects.

Non-GAAP gross margin in Q4 was 79.8%, up 1 point from Q4 of last year, primarily due to continued cost optimization efforts while we remain focused on investing in AI. Non-GAAP income from operations grew 4.6% year-over-year to $490 million, exceeding the high end of our guidance by $8 million.

Non-GAAP operating margin for Q4 was 39.3%, as compared to 39.5% in the prior year period. The slight margin decline was due to changes in our bonus structure and investments in AI.

Non-GAAP diluted net income per share in Q4 increased by 3 cents year-over-year to $1.44 on approximately 303 million non-GAAP diluted weighted average shares outstanding. This result included a headwind of approximately 11 cents from higher than expected taxes, due in part to tax true-ups discrete to the quarter.

Turning to the balance sheet. Deferred revenue at the end of Q4 grew 5% year-over-year to $1.42 billion, above the high end of our previously provided range.

For Q1, we expect deferred revenue to be up 1% to 2% year-over-year, which takes into account the recent trend of larger and longer duration competitive takeouts in phone and contact center that often include credits to defray transition costs. Looking at both our billed and unbilled contracts, our RPO increased over 10% year-over-year to approximately $4.2 billion.

We expect to recognize 57% of the total RPO as revenue over the next 12 months, down 2 points year-over-year. In Q4, we had operating cash flow of $355 million, as compared to $425 million in the prior year period.

Free cash flow was $338 million, as compared to $416 million in the prior year period. Our Q4 operating cash flow and free cash flow margins were 28.4% and 27.1%, respectively.

We ended the quarter with $7.8 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities, excluding restricted cash. Under the current $3.7 billion share buyback plan, in Q4, we repurchased 3.8 million shares for approximately $324 million.

That brought our total repurchased under the plan to 36.3 million shares for $2.7 billion at the end of Q4. Looking into FY2027 and beyond, we intend to leverage buybacks to, at a minimum, offset dilution on a yearly basis, reflecting management's confidence and long-term commitment to shareholder value creation.

Pivoting from Q4, I'd like to highlight some of the major financial milestones for the full FY2026. Total revenue for FY2026 grew 4.4%, and our Enterprise revenue grew 6.5%, both accelerating 130 basis points year-over-year.

Along with the top-line progress, we also improved margins. We reached a non-GAAP gross margin of 79.7%, up 80 basis points from the prior year, and a non-GAAP operating margin of 40.4%, up 100 basis points from the prior year.

Free cash flow grew 6.4% to $1.9 billion. Finally, we continue to be strong stewards of shareholder capital.

We reduced stock-based compensation expense by 18% in FY2026. That, combined with the continued execution of our buyback, allowed us to reduce our diluted weighted average shares outstanding by 2.5%.

Turning to guidance. In Q1, we expect revenue to be in the range of $1.22 to $1.225 billion.

This represents 4.1% year-over-year growth at the midpoint. We expect non-GAAP operating income to be in the range of $487 to $492 million, representing an operating margin of 40% at the midpoint.

Our outlook for non-GAAP earnings per share is $1.40 to $1.42, based on approximately 304 million shares outstanding. For FY2027, we expect revenue to cross the $5 billion milestone and land in the range of $5.065 to $5.075 billion, which at the midpoint represents 4.1% year-over-year growth.

We expect our non-GAAP operating income to be in the range of $2.05 to $2.06 billion, representing an operating margin of 40.5% at the midpoint. This margin guidance includes a temporal tailwind of 180 basis points related to an accounting amortization change, offset by 70 basis points of pressure from the second year of our shift from SBC to cash bonus compensation.

In addition, our outlook for non-GAAP earnings per share in FY2027 is $5.77 to $5.81, based on approximately 308 million shares outstanding. Included in this guidance is an interest income headwind of approximately $50 million in FY2027 due to lower yields in a declining rate environment.

As a reminder, future share repurchases are not reflected in the share count and our EPS guidance. For FY2027, we expect free cash flow to be in the range of $1.7 to $1.74 billion, which includes approximately $75 million of incremental CapEx related to the post-pandemic refreshment cycle of assets across our US data centers, as well as similar interest income headwinds previously mentioned.

As we end FY2026 and we move into FY2027, we're thrilled with our progress, and we're excited about our differentiated vision as an AI-first system of action. This success gives us confidence in our ability to grow durably beyond $5 billion in revenue across progress in meetings, continued growth in phone, scaling our AI-first customer experience, and in introducing new AI revenue streams.

We're excited to do all of this and still maintain our focus on profitability, cash flow generation, and shareholder returns. Thank you to our customers, investors, and of course, the entire Zoom team for your trust and your support.

With that, Catherine, please queue up the first question.

Operator

Thank you, Michelle. We'll now begin the Q&A portion of the call.

When I read your name, please turn on your video and unmute. As a reminder, in an effort to hear from everyone, please limit yourself to one question.

Our first question will come from Arjun Bhatia with William Blair.

Arjun Bhatia

Great. Thank you so much.

Eric, maybe one for you. We'll start.

I'm just curious how you think about AI monetization progress in fiscal 2027. You called out a couple examples of customers adopting Custom AI Companion and going wall-to-wall.

How do you think that and your broader portfolio of sort of AI products evolves in terms of adoption and contribution to revenue next year?

Eric Yuan

Yes. Great question.

We're very optimistic about our AI technology monetization in FY2027, driven by first of all, and Customizer AI Companion. More and more enterprise customers, they see the value and they like, because AI Companion all built in for free.

Customizer AI Companion is different. We can monetize.

That's on one aspect, right? To drive the AI monetization.

At the same time, we have very solid AI Companion 3.0 foundation, and the team working so hard to innovate. We leverage that technology to empower other use cases, like ZVA, Zoom Contact Center, Zoom Phone, and ZRA, almost every those product lines, right?

For customer experience or for sales experience, even for webinar, right? We can leverage AI to empower those vertical use cases.

Also, we can monetize. Again, take the ZCX for example, right?

Look at top 10 ZCX deals we closed in Q4, four of them already attached with Zoom Voice Agent, right? Zoom Voice Agent built upon our AI technology.

We see more and more opportunity like that. I cannot be more excited than before, right?

Because of AI and because of our monetization strategy for AI.

Arjun Bhatia

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Allan Verkhovski from BTIG.

Allan Verkhovski

Hey guys, can you hear me? Mhm.

Eric Yuan

Yep.

Allan Verkhovski

Awesome. Congrats on the strong quarter here.

Great to see the acceleration in Zoom customer experience. Michelle, I wanted to ask you, and I'll stick to a question here, but on the Q1 deferred revenue growth guidance of 1.5% at the midpoint, can you just quantify the impact from the larger competitive takeouts?

For the fiscal 2027 revenue guidance, can you just give some color like what you're assuming for Enterprise and Online revenue growth?

Michelle Chang

Sure, no problem. Let me touch on the deferred revenue one, because I think this is one that's really important for investors to understand, and maybe not read into it as you traditionally might.

It's important to note this is a billing dynamic and not sort of a rev rec thing. What we saw was a recent trend that's actually great for Zoom's business of wins in large and longer competitive platforms where we're providing a grace period to our customers to help them with that transition.

This is good for Zoom. This is intentional.

I think maybe just one other piece for investors: you can see that the fruits of that so much in Eric's script, and you can see it in the long-term RPO that's up 15% relative to 3% in Q3. A couple thoughts on deferred revenue.

In terms of the guide at 4, 4.1%, one other thing that I want to make sure we call out to investors is included in that guide is a 40 basis headwind of pressure from a single, large competitor white labeling that churned at the end of FY2026. Setting that aside to your broader question, we expect Online to have slight growth, sort of in the range of what they had this year, and really it's going to be Enterprise that's the headline for the growth.

It's going to be the sorts of things that we talked about on this earnings, and that frankly we've been talking about with investors, which is progress in AI monetization, progress in product diversification, and building out new routes to market up-market and with our channel.

Allan Verkhovski

Awesome. Congrats on the strong quarter, guys.

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question will come from Peter Levine from Evercore.

Peter Levine

Great. Thank you for taking my question.

Eric, one for you. I think in a world where AI model providers are essentially controlling the intelligence layer and theoretically could build AI-native collaboration suites on top of their capability.

I guess questions like what in terms of technology or what structural barriers I think prevent them from disintermediating Zoom? What's the moat that you feel will defend your market?

Is it the data, the infrastructure? Is it the enterprise relationships, brand equity, or is it something deeper?

I guess how do you think about that risk, and how would you debunk the concerns that AI could ultimately replace you guys?

Eric Yuan

Wonderful question. I think if you think about the mission-critical communication like Zoom, reliability is extremely important, right?

It got to work every time. You cannot say, "Today's meeting may not work, tomorrow might work."

No one's going to use that, right? Security also extremely important, right?

You need all kinds of security features also need to be built in, plus ease of use. That's the reason why the customer they choose to use Zoom.

Back to the AI, I think, yeah, I'm an engineer, right? Also now starting writing code as well with AI coding tools.

I think it's extremely hard to replicate what we built over the past many years, because first of all, a lot of the code is still C++ code. To operate on the video, audio, a lot of things, right?

Today, look at the AI coding tools, it's so hard to build a very scalable and leverage the native OS to build all kind of code. It's not as straightforward.

You can build a very easy system, higher the tools, but it's more like a toy. Nobody's going to use that, because this is collaboration.

It's not of a system of record or database or may install information. Even UI don't work, you know how to use that, right?

It's fine. When it comes to mission-critical real-time collaboration tools like Zoom, it's really hard to leverage the AI coding tools to replicate what we achieved.

I have very high confidence. By the way, no matter what we do, we still need tools like Zoom, right?

Human-to-human connection, interaction still very important, so. Good.

Peter Levine

Michelle, follow up on the net retention, 98%. Can you maybe just help us bridge again all the new products that you're seeing upsell, Contact Center, Voice.

When can we see that in the model? Thank you.

Michelle Chang

Great question on NDE. Look, we've said that it will rebound in the long term.

We've not put guidance, and when it rebounds, it's going to be off of so many of the drivers that we're talking about here: progress in churn, Phone in mid-teens, Contact Center in high double digits, and obviously the onset of AI monetization. Look, we're going to run the business sort of to revenue growth, and you have our '27 guidance there.

A couple of notes maybe for investors about headwinds relative to NDE. Just wanted to go back to that white label churn that we talked about, a competitive white label churn, that will obviously put some pressure.

Then the other thing that I'd call out for investors is actually good pressure, which is with Workvivo and Contact Center, we're seeing them bring in new customers to Zoom. Look, in the fullness of time, that will replicate through our net dollar expansion, but obviously it'll take a little bit more time.

Just two more mechanical things to take into consideration.

Peter Levine

Thank you. Thank you, Eric.

Thank you, Michelle.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Siti Panigrahi from Mizuho.

Hey guys, thank you for taking the question. Chad on here for Siti.

I think the Americas revenue growth trend has been pretty clear and quite strong throughout this fiscal year. I was wondering if you could dive a little bit into the trends you're seeing internationally, and sort of any key initiatives there for the current year to reaccelerate growth there.

Michelle Chang

Eric, do you want to take that one, or do you want me to?

Eric Yuan

Go ahead, please.

Michelle Chang

Look, we're pleased, I think we gave the constant currency growth rates, but they're up and growing across our international business. Maybe the thing that I would call out is I think as we move into areas like Contact Center, and Phone, as well as Workvivo, that's giving us, together with investments in channel, an opportunity really to break into international market.

It is something that we're investing in. We've also done maybe more local investments like UK data center, but it's something that we're focused on, and with our broader product expansion, AI monetization, as well as channel investments, it's something we think will grow in the future.

Operator

Next up, we have a question from Alex Zukin with Wolfe Research.

Alex Zukin

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. I'll maybe make mine pretty quick.

There's been a lot of questions around, I think just your ownership structure of some of the larger foundation model companies. I know we haven't talked about it or asked about it, but given it's such a wide-ranging topic, maybe I'll let you address it to the extent that you want to, specifically maybe on the Anthropic stake.

Then, Michelle, for you, just any comments about how clearly the growth on Phone, Contact Center was really, really strong this year. As you look at the guide implicit, I know you don't give product-level guidance, but as we think about the sustainability of mid-teens growth in Phone, the sustainability of whatever very high rates of growth are in Zoom Contact Center, how should we think about those, particularly since you don't want us to pull any kind of forward-looking dimension from the deferreds?

Michelle Chang

Perfect. Let me hit Anthropic first, and then we'll round Alex with the product question.

Look, in our results, you will see a total strategic investments. Zoom has a Zoom Ventures fund that we use to strategically invest in tech that we feel like is important to Zoom, and you'll see the total balance of that at $1.6 billion.

In Q4, you'll see a gain of $532 million pretax. This is due mainly, of course, to the change in the valuation of Anthropic after their last round.

Look, we have a minority stake, but Anthropic is a critical partner. Zoom has long-standing talked about our federated approach to AI, and Anthropic is key to our roadmap and a great partner in our federated approach.

On the sort of durability, if I get your question right, Alex, on Phone, I'm going to hit Phone, and then I'll wrap with Contact Center. Phone, we've been seen very durable mid-teens growth.

Look, we haven't updated our penetration stats in Zoom, but in Zoomtopia, I think in '24, we said it was 19% of our meetings base. I think that just both speaks to progress and opportunity going forward.

Then look, on the Phone side, I just look at all the examples that Eric talked about: leading insurance, Cisco win; in F10, a Cisco win; major fast food chain, RingCentral win; and really to a major US bank, Microsoft Cisco win. We feel great about the share gains on Phone.

On Contact Center, what I would point to there is just multiple quarters now, four quarters at high double-digit, and actually Q4 accelerating off that. Really, and I think, Alex, you've been a great noter of this, is to look at the make-up of Contact Center as reflective of where we will go.

For many quarters, we've been talking about the majority of the top 10 deals being large displacements. We've been talking for quarters about the value really coming in AI, now 10 of 10.

To Eric's point, four of 10 in voice, which has been a new entrant for Zoom. In the summer, we did a 2.0 refresh, and even yesterday, we announced 3.0.

Really, maybe if I could wrap with one stat, which is how often times these things come together. I think it's a great example of what Eric introduced in the system of action of both inside the organization and outside, just what a powerful element that is, and six of our 10 largest Contact Center deals, as an example, pulled through Phone as well.

Eric Yuan

Just quickly, Alex, such a great question to add on to what Michelle said. We talk about the top 10 Zoom Phone deals, Zoom Contact Center deals doing very well.

It's more like a large enterprise. I think this year, if you look at SMB, also a huge opportunity.

The reason why, because AI. Our AI is very affordable, federated AI approach, right?

Look at last December, look at the human HLE test, Zoom rank number one for a while, right? Because of those investment, because of the price and also the latency of the technology, I think we have a huge opportunity for all of those SMB customers as well, because of AI, so.

Michelle Chang

Especially true, just to mark Eric's comment because it's such a good one, that is especially true in ZVA. Great to see the new product value, which will really open up new opportunities down-market.

Alex Zukin

Thank you both.

Michelle Chang

Yep.

Eric Yuan

Thank you, Alex.

Operator

Up next, we have a question from Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley.

Josh Baer

Great. Thank you very much for the question.

Congrats on a strong quarter. You obviously have the horizontal tools that every single knowledge worker in the world can use, but you're also building this portfolio of very departmental solutions: marketing, sales, HR, contact center.

Strategy question for you, Eric: how do you balance addressing additional departments and roles with new products versus going deep into these areas, rolling out more solutions in these departments that you're already in, and balancing all of that with the horizontal play? Thanks.

Eric Yuan

Josh, wonderful question. Speaking of vertical solutions, I love my AI avatar, right?

I use that for three quarters already. As you can see, the quality is getting better and better, right?

It's kind of one of the vertical use case for marketing team. Having said that, I think given the AI evolution, AI coding tools, I think we have foundational technology.

Now we can do both on horizontal front, right? We keep innovating, add more features and services, right?

Deliver happiness to our customers. You see the AI Companion 3.0 announced in last December, and also in terms of innovation, a lot of things we're going to announce, new innovations announced at Enterprise Connect.

That's on the horizontal front. Look at each vertical use case.

Is that departmental use case or vertical market use cases? I think, because of AI, I think we can monetize.

That's why we also want to double down on those use cases. Customer support is one example, ZRA, webinar, BrightHire, almost every vertical use case.

I think we can leverage AI to quickly penetrate into those market we never thought about before. That's why we are very excited, because of AI.

Josh Baer

Thank you.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Operator

We have a question from Tyler Radke with Citi.

Tyler Radke

Hi, thank you. I wanted to ask you about the Custom AI Companion.

You noted some good wins, I think, in higher education and some other verticals in the quarter, but how are you thinking about that in terms of a driver for FY2027? Is this something where you're seeing list price sort of be realized in the field, or is there still sort of heavy discounting?

Just give us an understanding of sort of how that rolls out from a go-to-market perspective. Thank you.

Eric Yuan

Yeah. You look at Custom AI Companion, again, AI Companion is part of our offering.

It's for free, it's become more and more powerful, but the way for us to monetize AI Companion is to go through the Custom AI Companion, in particular for medium and large enterprise customers, because with the third-party applications, connectors, and also we build in a workflow and no-code workflow to build an agent, and that's kind of our vision, right? From conversation to completion.

If you do not have very flexible workflow builder to help you build an agent, how can you complete a task, right? Because used to be all Zoom just collaboration, now with Zoom Custom AI Companion, with workflow, connecting with all the third-party applications, more skills, more agent, and then we can achieve from conversation to completion.

Also not only workflow, but also Custom AI Companion also can give you the enterprise knowledge retrieval functionality, right? You can connect so many third-party applications, right?

I do not need to log into different system. Within the Zoom AI Companion interface, I can search for any information and help you write a document to achieve the task.

Essentially, Custom AI Companion is a customized workflow builder, and also the information search capabilities to connect with all kinds of third-party enterprise applications. It's extremely powerful, and we can monetize for targeted enterprise customers.

Operator

Up next--

Eric Yuan

Tyler, go ahead. I think Tyler maybe

Tyler Radke

have Can you hear me?

Eric Yuan

Yeah.

Tyler Radke

Oh, sorry. Is that going to be a contributor to FY2027, or is it still kind of early days in terms of that monetization of the premium AI, Custom Companion?

Eric Yuan

It's already a contributor, right? To our growth.

I already closed, the the big Custom AI Companion deals, in the, quarter in Q3 and Q4. With more innovations, for sure, it's going to help us more in FY2027.

Great.

Tyler Radke

Thank you.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Operator

Up next, we have a question from Seth Gilbert with UBS.

Seth Gilbert

Hey, thanks for the question. Maybe just one if I hold the Online year-over-year growth at about 1.2% for fiscal 2027, that would imply that the Enterprise decelerates by about 1 point from the 4Q exit rate of 7%.

Maybe a question for you, Michelle. Can you talk about some of the puts and takes here that could cause Enterprise to outperform?

Thank you.

Michelle Chang

Is your question on Q4, or is more on guiding going forward?

Seth Gilbert

Oh, it's more on guiding going forward, so, yeah, sorry.

Michelle Chang

Look, let me talk about Online, and then I'll finish with Enterprise. I think Online, pleased to see a return to growth.

It was the first time we've had growth since fiscal '22. Look, that growth comes off of adding value in our Workplace portfolio as well as AI, and that's why we're able to realize a price increase as well as keep record low churn.

Our guide assumes an additional price increase on the annual SKU. In line with monthly, it's really just intended to do the same thing as the prior, but bring them into value.

Look, Seth, to your more meta-question, Enterprise is going to be the durable driver for growth going forward. I'll just continue to hit home the components: it's making progress in meeting churn; it's keeping Phone in that sort of mid-teens growth range; it's continuing with that 'better together' story to pull along Contact Center and realize the AI value, that is by far where we are seeing the most immediate pulls of the incremental AI monetization in both agent-assisted AI as well as the ZVA that Eric and I talked about; and then look, there's so much coming on from an AI monetization perspective, both in-product, Workvivo, Phone, but additionally beyond that in new SKUs.

We've now opened up a note-taker SKU to our free base, as well as making continually products like ZRA even better. We look out to the forward, and we're excited about the progress that we made this year, 130 bips kind of up year-over-year, and we're equally excited, if not more, on the '27 go-forward.

Seth Gilbert

Got it. Thank you.

Operator

Up next, we have a question from Tom Blakey with Cantor Fitzgerald.

Tom Blakey

Hey guys, thanks for taking my question. Eric, I or Michelle, I'd like to hear about maybe some quantifying of these credits that you called out.

That was interesting. Even if you can't call it out numerically, just how they're trending.

I think the numerical help would help us as a group understand what kind of headwinds we're talking about that, as I know, Eric, you're managing this business for a multi-year basis here, as you guys are innovating and taking share, when they come off, what that would look like. I have a follow-up, if you may.

Michelle Chang

I can take that. Look, it's in line with what I said earlier, which is, again, I just want to continue to emphasize to investors: don't read into this as normal.

These are great, competitive wins where we're providing a grace period in exchange for a larger and longer-term competitive platform win. Think of this, it's helpful in sizing, Tom, as really the primary driver between the decel in Q4 relative to the guide in Q1.

It's helpful on the other side maybe what I'd point to is connecting to that uptick in long-term RPO as help for sizing. The 15%.

Tom Blakey

Yeah. That would be helpful.

Then, Eric, just combining you and Michelle's comments here, Michelle's guiding us to grow Online kind of relatively flat, but you seem awfully excited about the SMBs opportunity to maybe equally do as well. I know it's early days in terms of maybe tackling the successes that you've had in the enterprise side with CX and Phone, but is it safe to assume that that's maybe not implied or imputed in that one, kind of 1% guide for fiscal '27 Online?

Eric Yuan

When I mentioned SMB customers, more like a high-end, for

Tom Blakey

Higher end,

Eric Yuan

yeah. Not online buyers, like SMB customers, right?

Used to be, they say look at multiple solutions. Now because of our power of AI, and also, I think we have a huge opportunity to serve those SMB customers, because our very rich product portfolio, with great AI capabilities.

It's not about individual online buyers and, yeah.

Tom Blakey

Michelle, could you comment on BrightHire? Anything on the top or bottom-line impact in fiscal '27, and that's it for me.

Thank you.

Michelle Chang

It closed mid-Q4, I think if the impact to Q4 is sort of de minimis. The guide reflects, obviously, BrightHire, and I would just say that it's a perfect example, I think, of what Eric laid out and the earlier question with regards to vertical and horizontal value.

This is a business where we share common customers, there's sort of mutual benefits. This is a product where we have similarities with really taking AI value to rethink the hiring kind of approach, more insights, efficiencies, as well as then you have Workvivo on the other side of sort of thinking about the lifecycle of kind of human talent.

It's something that they use Zoom in all of their interviews, and so we look at it and there's natural synergies, and they're relatively small. This is a small acquisition.

You can see the size of it, sub-100, helpful.

Tom Blakey

Excellent. Very helpful.

Thank you, guys.

Eric Yuan

Thank you, Tom.

Operator

Our next question comes from Samad Samana with Jefferies.

Samad Samana

Hi, good evening. Thanks for taking my question.

I want to ask about pricing. You guys have continued to create a lot of value.

Obviously, part of it is to drive better retention, which we've seen over the years. Some of it is to be expressed in kind of monetary terms.

How are you thinking about that balance for fiscal 2027, Michelle? What are you assuming in the guidance, if anything, from a price increase perspective?

I'm sorry for the 11-part question, I'm learning from some of my peers, but can you give us a sense of timing around that assumption as well? Yeah.

Thank you so much.

Michelle Chang

All right, let me hit explicitly the Online and then I'll move and talk about our Enterprise, because I think the dynamics look a little bit different. Our Online guide includes a price increase of 6% to go in effective mid-March to our annual SKU.

Think of this as really the flip side of what we did last year. I would really encourage investors not to think about it as a price increase.

Price increase is just one mechanism for realizing incremental value to customer. Price increase ongoing, if you will, is not something that Zoom is going to use.

It's going to come with incremental value. In this case, it came with much more value across chat, calendar, meetings, whiteboard, etc., etc., in our Workplace as well as AI value.

That's really what's behind that. That's sort of how to think about the Online side.

On the Enterprise side as well, one important to note that those prices then impact the Enterprise. Look, there we're going to focus much more on total contract value, things like discounting, and contract duration.

Those would be baked into our guide given.

Samad Samana

Great. Thank you so much, appreciate it.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ryan MacWilliams with Wells Fargo.

Hey guys, this is Chris on for Ryan. Thanks for taking our question.

Eric, you've mentioned in the past doubling down on the product side, and so we were curious if in the last few months you've seen any product velocity improvements from agentic coding tools like you're mentioning, and if you're thinking about product investments any different this year compared to last year?

Eric Yuan

A while back, right, we already adopt AI coding tools. It's getting more and more powerful, and especially for the new product development, right, or new service, right, suddenly accelerated our pace of innovation.

At the same time, we also have a lot of the existing services, right, and a lot of code written by our engineers, right? I do not think that the AI coding tools is powerful enough, right, to maintain all those millions of the lines of code yet, right?

Having said that, you look at not only for engineers, but also the UI designers, product managers, almost everywhere, right, we can leverage the AI coding tools to improve our productivity, essentially to drive the innovation, the speed. Look at the product area we invest, like a ZVA for sure is a great example, and we kind of built in a lot of new features, and it's probably in terms of speed and better than any time in our company history, right?

That's the reason why over the past few months, the customer feedback, "Wow, you add this feature, that feature, much better position." This is a great example, because the AI coding tools and also because the way we embrace the AI.

Again, not only for engineers, but entire the product development the lifecycle, so.

Awesome. Thank you, guys.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Jackson Ader with KeyBanc.

Jackson Ader

Great. Evening, guys.

Thanks for taking our questions. The question I have is around the channel, and I think you guys have made a bunch of improvements and enhancements to the channel partner program the last few quarters and last year.

I'm curious, number one, any kind of continued enhancements that you definitely know are going to be implemented here that should help for growth in 2027? Then also, it seems like, I understand there are some kind of headwinds, tailwinds to the margin for fiscal 2027, and I'm just curious, is that due to the mix of the type of investments you're making, meaning channel versus direct, or is it just the overall amount of investments that you're making?

Thank you.

Michelle Chang

Let me go ahead and take that, and then, Eric, you can pepper in as you see fit. Look, channel, if you think about sort of those durable elements of revenue growth, is going to be essential to things like a Phone business and the Contact Center.

It's just how customers procure in that space. Also, it just speaks to, beyond just the software, the consulting, the deployment, just how customers interact with partners.

Look, this is something we've been very intentional about, and I think you can see it in our revenue growth inflection. Look, in terms of quick couple of stats and things of why we feel great about our investments, you can see it in our large Contact Center wins: 9 of 10 in channel.

Our channel base continues to grow, and frankly, the proportion of new customers coming from channel to me is especially exciting. The kinds of things that we're investing in, to your question, look, it's around incentives.

We made, starting last year, a lot of system capabilities and portals so that we really help enable, especially to all of the product value that Eric mentioned in things like ZVA coming out at incrementally fast levels, we want to make sure that our ecosystem is ready there with us, and so we'll invest in that. Then maybe the last channel investment that I would mention is we're bridging that into things like systems providers, which we think is going to be really important going forward.

On the operating margin guide, let me make some comments because I want to make sure that people really understand the bigger picture here. We guided to 40.5% at the midpoint.

Want to obviously beyond the mechanics of reminding that we've used as a consistent forecast methodology, really want to make sure that investors understand the two dynamics which are not channel: we're up 180 basis points due to the amortization change that we referenced in script; and then that's offset in part by the comp changes, we're in our second year of shifting from stock-based compensation to cash. Those are really the headlines to think about in terms of the op margin versus anything channel.

Jackson Ader

Got it. Thank you very much, guys.

Yep.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from William Power with Baird.

William Power

Great, thanks for taking the question. Eric, really encouraging to see continued progress on Zoom Phone, obviously the broader ARR growth trends, but I'm particularly interested in the Cisco displacements.

I think historically there's just been a lot of inertia with some of these legacy phone systems, especially that large enterprises have. I'm just kind of curious, is this just a function of working through the sales cycle?

Is it a function of enterprises just becoming that much more comfortable with Zoom Phone quality? What's kind of putting you over top here, and maybe just help us kind of understand the sustainability of some of these large opportunities?

Eric Yuan

Yes, that's a wonderful question. Believe it or not, actually, look at the total phone deployment, a lot of, I think probably still more than 50%, I did not get the new number, still on-prem deployment.

For large enterprise customer, right? They deployed the on-prem phone system for long time.

They said, "Yeah, it's okay. It's not great.

Why they want to hurry to migrate to the cloud?" Right, this is kind of a solid mentality before.

Now, with AI, that's a strong reason for those that are very large enterprise customer, they cannot leverage AI for the on-prem, right? That's why I would say we will have an acceleration for those large enterprise customers migrate away from on-prem to cloud.

Zoom is in much better position. We've winner quite a few very large, very complicated phone deployment for on-prem to the cloud.

Again, AI is the driver, and for those customer to migrate to the AI-first cloud phone system. That's, yeah, that's the driver, yeah.

Michelle Chang

Maybe just to add the numbers to what Eric said, it's about 130-plus million seats in the cloud and about 150-ish on-prem. Eric's spot on on the rough 50/50.

William Power

Lots of opportunity.

Eric Yuan

Yeah. Huge, because if not because of AI, it's hard to convince them.

They say, "Oh, it's okay. I use it for 20 years.

It's okay." Now, it's great opportunity ahead of us.

Thank you.

Michelle Chang

Maybe the last thing that I'd mention is just increasingly how the deals reflect it's not just Phone alone as a workload, it's that sort of wanting that whole system of action. I think that's why you see so many Contact Center, Phone deals coming together, and so, as we think about large competitive displacements, I think the inability to kind of have that full portfolio is one of the reasons.

William Power

Thank you.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Operator

Our last question for today comes from Catharine Trebnick with Rosenblatt Securities.

Catharine Trebnick

Okay. Thanks for squeezing me in.

Quick question on the channel. I get the fact that you go direct with the Phone and Contact Center, and you did mention systems, and you did talk this quarter that you had many more deals that were bundled.

Are you seeing a different buying pattern from the enterprise and the SMBs that are forcing you or the system integrators are more attractive to you? Can you peel that back a bit for me?

Thanks.

Michelle Chang

Your question, Catherine, is are we seeing, I would say

Catharine Trebnick

What are you seeing? It seems like you had more bundles this quarter than you have typically discussed.

How is that changing your go-to-market motion and your working with the different partners? Because most of the partners typically just sell the Phone or the Contact Center, it seems to me if it's a more complex deal that you're going to need either direct loyal sales force or more of a system integrator.

Michelle Chang

I would say what we saw in Q4 was just an intensification of a pattern that we've seen previously, which is just what a natural sale it is for Phone and Contact Center to come together, and then frequently that also comes with a Meetings portfolio. Look, in a lot of the deals, did they also include other great Zoom products?

Yes. I think it speaks to sort of where the market is going, that system of action that we talked about, also stitching the AI value in.

Then certainly, Catharine, investments that you've noted in your step about investments in the channel.

Catharine Trebnick

The other part is, are you seeing the enterprise want to move more towards a platform, like they are in security, and that you're feeling you have enough product pieces now to be part of that platform play?

Michelle Chang

I'll jump in, and then, Eric, you should certainly jump in as well. I do think, and you're seeing in a lot of those large deals, those platform things, I don't think it means all of them.

I don't think, like anything, there's a binary answer. Maybe just as a quick data point, if you look at our top 10 deals in Contact Center, six of 10 included Phone, I think it's just an indicator that there is both those that really want that platform, that whole system of action stitched together with AI, and then there's others that are just going to have their own technology and come at it in different ways.

Look, I think maybe just to the deferred revenue conversation, I see that as a great sign. It's these all-in with Zoom, large, longer-term deals, I think there's some really great things on the future for our Contact Center business.

Eric Yuan

Just quickly to add on to what Michelle said. The Zoom Workplace is our UCaaS, the platform.

Contact Center is a CCaaS, especially for those large enterprise customers, right? When they look at it from on-prem to cloud, or maybe from the pre-AI solutions to AI solutions, if they can combine those two, consolidate those two systems into one platform, one vendor, why not?

They see the great ROI. That's the reason why quite often you see, hey, both UCaaS and CCaaS are winning together.

That's the reason,

Catharine Trebnick

so.

Eric Yuan

Thank you.

Michelle Chang

Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the Q&A portion of today's call.

I'll now turn it back over to Eric for closing remarks.

Eric Yuan

Thank you for Zoom employees, customers, partners, and our investors for your great support, and we truly appreciate. We're very, very optimistic about FY2027, see you next quarter.

Thank you.

Michelle Chang

Take care.

Charles Eveslage

This concludes today's earnings call. Thank you all for attending, and have a great rest of your day.

Eric Yuan

Thank you all.