ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:GTM) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

**ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: GTM) Q3 2025 Earnings Call Transcript**

*November 4, 2025*

—

**Operator:**
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to ZoomInfo Third Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jerry Sisitsky, Vice President of Investor Relations. Jerry, please go ahead.

—

**Jeremiah Sisitsky:**
Thanks, Michelle. Welcome to ZoomInfo’s Financial Results Conference Call for the third quarter 2025. With me on the call today are Henry Schuck, Founder and CEO of ZoomInfo; and Graham O’Brien, our Chief Financial Officer.

During this call, any forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of U.S. securities laws. Expressions of future goals, including business outlook, expectations for future financial performance and similar items, including, without limitation, expressions using the terminology “may,” “will,” “expect,” “anticipate,” and “believe,” and expressions which reflect something other than historical facts, are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in the Risk Factors section of our SEC filings. Actual results may differ materially from any forward-looking statements.

The company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements to reflect events that may arise after this conference call, except as required by law. For more information, please refer to the forward-looking statements and the slides posted to our Investor Relations website at [ir.zoominfo.com](https://ir.zoominfo.com). All metrics on this call are non-GAAP, unless otherwise noted. A reconciliation can be found in the financial results press release or in the slides posted to our IR website.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Henry.

—

**Henry Schuck, Founder and CEO:**
Thank you, Jerry, and welcome, everyone.

We are executing well and capitalizing on a rapidly growing AI opportunity in go-to-market. In Q3, we continued to improve the business across every metric. **GAAP revenue was a record $318 million, up 5% year-over-year, and adjusted operating income was $118 million, a margin of 37%**—both were above the high end of our guidance. This represents the highest level of AOI margin we’ve reported since Q4 of 2024, and the first time we exceeded the Rule of 40 since Q1 of 2024.

During the quarter, we accelerated upmarket growth, improved net revenue retention for the fifth straight quarter, delivered another quarter of strong profitability, and are again raising our financial guidance for the year. We are aggressively expanding the product portfolio with innovative go-to-market AI and workflow products as we continue our shift upmarket.

I believe we are building and delivering the best solutions we’ve ever put in front of customers, which is driving stronger daily engagement from a diverse set of go-to-market personas. Our Operations Suite, again, grew more than 20% year-over-year as our proprietary data asset continues to prove mission-critical to any AI-driven initiative that touches go-to-market. This is our fastest-growing product, and it’s accelerating as it gets bigger.

With the launch of Copilot last year, its expansion into GTM Workspace this quarter, and the evolution of our GTM Studio platform, we’ve begun to play offense again. Through this innovation, I believe it is only a matter of time before ZoomInfo is synonymous with AI and go-to-market.

Our unique and proprietary data assets put us in the winners’ column as AI proliferates across go-to-market teams. While LLMs can reliably deliver data points available through the second or third page of online search, it is unique data not available on the public web that go-to-market teams require to stand out in increasingly competitive markets. If a customer is looking for every residential or commercial roofer in the U.S., every company with at least three vehicles in their fleet, or every non-franchised quick service restaurant in a certain ZIP code, or to identify the buyers visiting their website or researching their competitors—they come to us. Not just for this unique data, but for our ability to tie that data asset to our contact and signal data, positioning them to execute a sales or marketing workflow around these attributes.

By using Copilot and GTM Workspace, frontline go-to-market professionals get a single pane of glass to execute their daily workflows. GTM Studio is already generating strong interest from operations leaders and frontline sales leadership as they look to close the gap between idea and execution. We’re also winning with our account-based marketing (ABM) platform; ZoomInfo is recognized as the only vendor positioned in the Customers’ Choice quadrant in the 2025 Gartner Voice of the Customer Report for ABM platforms. We added millions in ACV this quarter as customers like EmployBridge, Ciena, and MasterControl migrated from legacy ABM providers to our integrated platform.

With our Salesforce partnership, ZoomInfo Revenue Agent is now bringing the industry’s most comprehensive B2B data and agents directly into Agentforce. Our data enables sales teams to use natural language queries to uncover hidden opportunities and engage the right contacts at the right time within existing Salesforce workflows. Our expanded platform, unique proprietary data asset, and recently released partner integrations mean our pace of innovation continues to accelerate.

During the quarter, we closed upmarket opportunities with companies like insightsoftware (fast-growing software provider to the office of the CFO), Ryder System ($12 billion transportation and logistics company), BrightView (multibillion-dollar commercial landscaper), and Circle K (multinational convenience store brand). These wins highlight our focused move upmarket and the large total addressable market we have across a wide range of industries.

A global professional services firm expanded ZoomInfo enterprise-wide, adding sales seats, data, and our marketing and talent solutions. Their CMO called it a “no-brainer” to improve sales pipeline generation, identify active buying signals, reduce wasted time on unproductive leads, and connect with the right decision-makers. A large private unified data and AI company now leverages our sales intelligence platform to power its land-and-expand sales motion across enterprise accounts, while also using us to penetrate new verticals. We demonstrated to one of the largest companies in the world how our data provided a 25% improvement in coverage rates compared to their existing data provider, including far superior coverage in SMB and start-up spaces.

Through company data initiatives, we’ve increased match rates for customers by more than 20% over the last 6 months. This data advantage is increasingly creating upmarket displacement opportunities from legacy vendors that provide stale and low-quality data. And many of the world’s fastest-growing and most innovative AI-native companies like Levelpath, Harvey, Pano.ai, and TiLT choose ZoomInfo as they scale their sales teams and need data signals and workflow to scale in the enterprise.

To continue to win, we are providing our customers more than just another fragmented tool or buzzy solution. We provide the unified data foundation that connects CRM data, engagement signals, intent data, call transcripts, and market intelligence into one AI-ready system, giving sellers AI to allow them to focus away from time-consuming, low-value tasks like building decks, account plans, filling out CRM fields, prioritizing prospecting lists, writing follow-ups—and on to the art of sales: building relationships, adding consultative value, and closing deals.

For 20 years, ZoomInfo has been the trusted source of truth for company and contact data. That foundation isn’t going away—it’s becoming the launch pad for something much bigger. Today, our master data management capabilities unify fragmented go-to-market data across systems into a single intelligence layer: clean, connected, constantly updated. Now we turn that intelligence into action. With GTM Studio and GTM Workspace, execution becomes automatic. Sellers, operators, leaders—even their AI agents—know exactly where to focus, what to do next, and how to move the number. We’re moving from powering decisions to powering outcomes; from informing go-to-market to executing it.

As we innovate for our customers, we continue to be focused capital allocators for our shareholders. In the quarter, we delivered a nearly 300 basis point sequential improvement in margins and are raising our growth expectations for the year. We remain confident in our ability to sustainably deliver revenue growth and expanding margins. We continue to be aggressive buyers of our stock, increasingly confident in the trajectory of the business, giving us more conviction that ongoing share repurchases will drive substantial shareholder value. We will continue to put the majority of the cash we generate into repurchasing ZoomInfo shares for as long as that is the best and highest-return use of our free cash flow.

AI presents an opportunity to capitalize on our proprietary data assets. We are building stickier user engagement and customer relationships and have improved net revenue retention for the fifth straight quarter.

With that, I’ll turn the call over to Graham.

—

**Michael O’Brien, Chief Financial Officer:**

Thanks, Henry.

Q3 GAAP revenue was $318 million, up 5% year-over-year. Adjusted operating income was $118 million, yielding a margin of 37%, above the guidance ranges we provided. Over the last few quarters, we have highlighted the stabilization we have seen in the business. This quarter, I’m excited to share several places where I now see signs of improvement.

We sharpened our focus on our upmarket business, which now represents 73% of our total ACV, up 10 percentage points in 2 years. This continued focus drove a 2-point acceleration upmarket, with 6% upmarket ACV growth, coupled with a sequential improvement down market, which declined 10% year-over-year as compared to 11% in the prior quarter.

Net revenue retention improved to 90% in the quarter, up 5 points in the year and the highest level since Q2 2023. In-period net revenue retention for upmarket customers is again over 100%, as we further entrench ZoomInfo as mission-critical for how scaled businesses go to market.

We have always operated efficiently with disciplined investments driving high levels of profitability, and am pleased to report a 37% adjusted operating income margin this quarter, delivering year-over-year margin improvement. Combined with our revenue growth, this has returned us to a Rule of 40 company for the first time in 6 quarters.

We now have 1,887 customers with more than $100,000 in ACV—a 4% year-over-year increase, with ACV growth from that cohort materially outpacing customer growth. ACV growth in the quarter was particularly strong for this cohort, second only to Q4 last year. ACV for the $1 million cohort accelerated in the quarter, up more than 30% year-over-year.

We delivered strong results and are again raising our expectations for the full year. Our upmarket strategy is working. Our innovation engine is accelerating, and our execution has been consistent. We are now guiding to low single-digit revenue growth for 2025, with an AOI margin of 36%. We are confident in our opportunity to return to delivering Rule of 40 results on an annual basis as we drive a combination of revenue growth and expanding margins.

Our stock compensation relative to revenue runs well below software industry norms and continues declining, with an increasing shift toward performance-based equity. As a result, our Rule of 40 reflects a high-quality mix of strong operating performance and financial discipline.

Operations growth accelerated in the quarter, continuing to grow greater than 20% year-over-year, and Copilot had another strong quarter. While still early, Copilot renewals are very promising, with a mid- to high single-digit improvement in uplift on initial renewal compared to renewals on Sales OS.

As we drive growth upmarket, we remain steadfastly focused on making our downmarket business healthier, making it easier for smaller customers to buy the packages they need while reducing our cost of selling to the right customers in this segment. Our internal teams have leveraged ZoomInfo’s proprietary data asset to engineer this shift.

We built models to identify payment risk among smaller customers, integrating them directly with our Salesforce instance and fueled by our data to provide real-time risk assessments. Leveraging these, we successfully reduced invoice write-offs by 45% since launching in 2024. The quality of our customer base is improving, leading to better conversion to revenue and improving collection trends.

As our business shifts upmarket, seasonality is increasing. Year-over-year growth is becoming a more important lens through which to evaluate the business than sequential growth, which may fluctuate due to upmarket or downmarket activity and ACV linearity.

With operations acceleration, positive Copilot renewal outcomes, a smaller downmarket business and improved upmarket NRR, overall net revenue retention continues to be on a positive trajectory, up 5 percentage points in the year. More than 50% of our overall book of business is now on a contract length greater than one year, enabling reps to be more consultative and driving efficiency in the renewal process.

**Cash and Share Repurchases**

Operating cash flow was $94 million in Q3. Unlevered free cash flow was $95 million (81% conversion from adjusted operating income), representing a margin of 30%. In Q3, we repurchased 8.3 million shares at an average price of $10.46 for an aggregate $87 million. We have used 116% of unlevered free cash generated since the start of 2024 to repurchase stock, reducing our weighted average shares outstanding by approximately 80 million shares over the past 2 years.

We ended the quarter with $135 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments, and carried $1.3 billion in gross debt. Net leverage ratio stands at 2.6x trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA and 2.4x trailing cash EBITDA.

**Revenue and Guidance**

Unearned revenue at quarter-end was $432 million; remaining performance obligations (RPO) were $1.17 billion, of which $824 million are expected to be recognized in the next 12 months.

For Q4, we expect:
– GAAP revenue: $307 million to $310 million
– Adjusted operating income: $117 million to $120 million
– Non-GAAP net income: $0.27 to $0.29 per share

For the full year 2025, we now expect:
– GAAP revenue: $1.237 billion to $1.240 billion (+2% annual growth at the midpoint)
– Adjusted operating income: $440 million to $443 million (36% margin at midpoint)
– Non-GAAP net income: $1.04 to $1.06 per share (based on 341 million weighted average diluted shares)
– Unlevered free cash flow: $424 million to $444 million

We remain committed to managing expectations using a guidance framework consistent with prior quarters and aim to deliver revenue growth, margin expansion, and aggressive share repurchases in 2026, which support our expectation of accelerating free cash flow per share growth in 2026 relative to 2025.

With that, I’ll turn it over to the operator for questions.

—

## Q&A Session

### Mark Murphy (JPMorgan):

**Q:** The magnitude of revenue upside is noticeably larger for Q3. What fueled that extra strength—Copilot, returning customers, or changes in outbound SDR hiring?

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
By every metric, Q3 was strong. Better renewal outcomes, especially with Copilot, contributed to revenue upside. Shifting the business upmarket means higher quality revenue—upmarket now comprises 73% of ACV. Additionally, usage-based and other revenue was up $3 million year-over-year, all contributing to the outsized revenue beat.

—

### Elizabeth Porter (Morgan Stanley):

**Q:** Early feedback on GTM Studio, and what’s the balance between greenfield adoptions and existing customers replacing legacy tools?

**A (Henry Schuck):**
Early feedback on GTM Studio has been very positive—it’s one of the most innovative solutions we’ve ever built. GTM Studio is a data management platform giving RevOps and sales leaders the ability to organize and architect go-to-market strategies, unifying diverse data sources into one dynamic workspace. We view this as a large whitespace opportunity with incredible upside.

—

### Siti Panigrahi (Mizuho):

**Q:** On NRR improvement—how has upmarket retention been trending, and what’s driving it (seat count vs. cross-selling)?

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
Upmarket net retention was again above 100% in Q3, with improving retention trends in upmarket and sequential improvement downmarket. Growth comes from higher retention, cross-sell opportunities (Copilot, GTM Workspace, Ops), and deeper engagement and persona expansion especially within the $100K+ customer cohort.

**A (Henry Schuck):**
Copilot customers are more engaged and showing higher net retention outcomes compared to those not using Copilot. We expect this trend to continue as we roll out more workflow-centric products.

—

### Brad Zelnick (Deutsche Bank):

**Q:** Can you expand on the Agentforce integration opportunity with Salesforce?

**A (Henry Schuck):**
At Dreamforce, Salesforce showcased a set of Agentforce agents. Our partnership is strong—ZoomInfo Revenue Agent is now in the Salesforce marketplace, with featured placement and co-selling incentives. There are more collaborations planned, including a prospecting agent. The key message: AI for go-to-market needs to be grounded in ZoomInfo’s intelligence.

—

### Aleksandr Zukin (Wolfe Research):

**Q:** Addressing the delta between cRPO subscription bookings growth and billings growth. Any guidance for Q4 exit rate and implications for 2026?

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
Some noise in bookings due to calculation methods, but RPO growth is a good proxy for performance. Q3 billings last year included factors boosting growth, making this year’s comparison look weaker. Our focus remains on delivering solid Q4 results and will provide 2026 guidance next quarter.

—

### Taylor McGinnis (UBS):

**Q:** On seasonality—4Q revenue guide doesn’t seem to imply greater seasonality. What assumptions are embedded in the guide?

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
Guidance philosophy is consistent; best to measure growth year-over-year, as sequential trends can fluctuate due to booking linearity. Q3 was more front-end loaded than usual; Q4 is expected to be back-end loaded.

**A (Henry Schuck):**
Momentum feels better than in years, but we continue to manage expectations prudently.

—

### Raimo Lenschow (Barclays):

**Q:** Any geographic or vertical nuances for where things are notably improving vs. stable or weak?

**A (Henry Schuck):**
Negative trends are turning positive—upmarket ACV acceleration, company-wide retention improving for the fifth straight quarter, accelerating operations growth, Copilot growth, and strong feedback on GTM Studio. We’re confident that as AI transformations continue, our role as a data foundation will be critical.

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
Notable improvements in software (6th consecutive quarter of better retention), telecom, manufacturing, and business services.

—

### David Hynes (Canaccord):

**Q:** How much of the upmarket segment is on Copilot, and is pricing right for Copilot?

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
We haven’t disclosed the exact percentage, but a significant portion of upmarket is on Copilot. There’s a diverse mix of products and pricing optimized for customer adoption and value.

**A (Henry Schuck):**
We aim for customer simplicity and frictionless adoption, focusing on delivering value. With GTM Studio and Workspace, there are more opportunities for customers to consume our data and AI, which will be reflected in net retention.

—

### Koji Ikeda (Bank of America):

**Q:** On the private unified data/AI company win—describe the sales process and whether it was typical or more involved.

**A (Henry Schuck):**
This was an existing customer we grew over time. As they move business upmarket and target new personas, we’re well positioned—trusted from security and data privacy perspectives. We continue to see tremendous opportunity across the enterprise base, although sales cycles are longer as deals get larger.

—

### J. Lane (Stifel):

**Q:** With the current level of resourcing in your own go-to-market organization, are you equipped to play offense? Any changes to inorganic priorities?

**A (Henry Schuck):**
We have strong customer relationships and organizational capacity to grow faster. Customers are also hiring more SDRs and AEs as inbound declines due to AI search shifts. We are the trusted partner to equip these teams with the right data and AI.

—

### Tyler Radke (Citi):

**Q:** On Rule of 40—should we expect this for next year, and what’s driving it?

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
On a quarterly basis, we’ve achieved Rule of 40. For the full-year 2025, guiding to 2% revenue growth and 36% margin, so less likely to hit Rule of 40 for 2025. We’re committed to revenue growth, margin expansion, and aggressive share repurchases in 2026, aiming for accelerated free cash flow per share growth.

—

### Johnathan McCary (Raymond James):

**Q:** On net new business, sales productivity, and expanding Copilot use to new personas—what are you seeing there?

**A (Henry Schuck):**
Copilot has allowed us to expand beyond SDRs into account executives, managers, CSMs, and RevOps, enabling broader engagement. GTM Studio and Workspace will extend this further, deepening our reach with existing and new personas.

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
With resources shifted upmarket, pro rep productivity remains consistent, and we’re now fully ramped to run separate upmarket vs. down market motions.

—

### Rishi Jaluria (RBC):

**Q:** With AI impacting the search landscape, how does that affect your own product-led growth (PLG) strategy and business exposure?

**A (Henry Schuck):**
We’re less exposed to AI-driven SEO shifts due to our increased upmarket focus. PLG continues to deliver as expected, but our primary focus is on serving the enterprise. The upmarket shift has protected the business and opened new opportunities for AI-driven solutions.

—

### Clark Wright (D. A. Davidson):

**Q:** How is ZoomInfo leveraging AI internally to maintain its data advantage?

**A (Henry Schuck):**
We are “customer zero” on all our AI solutions. Thousands of our salespeople use these tools before customer release. AI drives efficiency, better engagement, automates content, and improves productivity across sales, finance, and product marketing teams. We regularly share our best practices with clients, and will continue to invest to drive meaningful efficiency with AI.

—

### Jackson Ader (KeyBanc):

**Q:** For 2026, how should we think about free cash flow per share growth—operational improvement versus buybacks?

**A (Michael O’Brien):**
We see all three levers—top-line growth, margin improvement, and aggressive buybacks—as contributors to accelerating free cash flow per share growth in 2026.

—

*End of Transcript*
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