GitLab (GTLB.US) 2026财年第三季度业绩电话会
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会议摘要
Company delivers robust Q3 fiscal year 2026 results with 25% revenue growth to $244 million and non-GAAP operating margin of 18%, surpassing guidance. Highlights AI's role in software lifecycle and progress on Duo Agent platform. CFO forecasts Q4 revenue of $251M-$252M, 19% growth, with strategies for AI monetization and capital allocation, acknowledging potential headwinds.
会议速览
GitLab's Q3 FY2026 Financial Results Call: Overview, Q&A, and Forward-Looking GuidanceThe call, moderated by Yaoz, opens with a reminder of the recording and introduces GitLab's leadership, Bill and James. It outlines the agenda: business overview, Q3 results, and FY2026 guidance. A safe harbor statement is emphasized, covering forward-looking statements and non-GAAP measures. Participants are invited to ask questions via Zoom or phone, ensuring transparency and engagement.
GitLab's CEO Highlights Growth, AI's Role, and Platform's Criticality in Software DevelopmentThe CEO discusses GitLab's strong third-quarter results, emphasizing AI's impact on expanding the company's market. The unified platform automates software delivery, addressing quality, security, and governance. This approach is crucial as AI transforms software creation, reducing barriers and costs while increasing the need for robust processes.
GitLab's Duo Agent Platform: Addressing the AI Paradox in Software DevelopmentDespite AI's role in accelerating coding, GitLab's Duo Agent Platform focuses on delivering high-quality, secure software through intelligent orchestration across the software lifecycle, addressing the AI paradox and driving meaningful business outcomes. This platform, set for general availability, leverages rich context from code collaboration to enhance software delivery and validation, ensuring alignment with complex business requirements.
GitLab's Q2 Highlights: Growth in Ultimate, International Expansion, and Platform RecognitionGitLab reports increased sales in GitLab Ultimate, international growth, and third-party validations as a leader in DevOps and AI coding assistance platforms, despite US public sector softness.
GitLab's Strategic Growth: Expanding Customer Base, Enhancing Platform Value, and Accelerating InnovationThe dialogue outlines GitLab's strategic objectives to increase new paying customers, particularly in mid-market and enterprise segments, by leveraging AI mandates and cohesive workflows. It highlights successful case studies, such as Media Metri France and a global consumer tech platform, showcasing GitLab's value in replacing multiple tools and ensuring business continuity. The discussion also emphasizes helping customers realize platform value faster through AI tooling integration and expanding revenue through existing customer bases. Additionally, GitLab is accelerating innovation in core DevOps, security, and AI, with new features like the AI Catalog and Security Analyst agent. The dialogue concludes with an introduction of the new CFO, Jessica Ross, and anticipation for upcoming product events.
Strong Q3 Performance with Revenue Growth and Healthy MarginsRevenue hit $244 million, up 25% YoY, with a diversified customer base. Achieved 119% dollar-based net retention rate, $1 billion RPO growth, and 36% SaaS growth. Non-GAAP operating margin expanded to 17.9%, up 470 bps YoY.
GitLab's Q3 FY26 Results and FY26 Guidance Highlight Strong Growth and Strategic InvestmentsDiscussed Q3 FY26 financials, including $27.2M adjusted free cash flow, $1.2B cash and investments, and guidance for Q4 and FY26, emphasizing strategic investments in AI, platform, and market presence amid SMB softness and government shutdown impacts.
Q&A on Revenue Growth, Demand Environment, and Business ProgressThe dialogue revolves around questions about revenue growth, specifically subscription revenue, for the fourth quarter. Concerns are raised regarding the deceleration in growth rates and the lingering effects of the U.S. government shutdown on guidance. Progress in the first order business is noted as improved but not yet optimal, with a focus on continued efforts for improvement.
Global Team for New Business Acquisition and Product Enhancements to Boost Customer Journey EfficiencyA global leader was hired to focus on acquiring new business, with a team ramping up for global operations. Efforts are being made to improve the customer journey from free to paid products, with early results promising. These initiatives aim to accelerate new customer acquisition, with expected outcomes in the latter half of FY 27.
Fed Impact on License Line and Retention Rates Amid Government ChallengesThe dialogue discusses the Federal impact on license lines and retention rates, noting disruptions from a government shutdown and ongoing effects. The company reassures its strong position with federal agencies, emphasizing partnership to overcome challenges, without quantifying specific headwinds.
Converging Platform Activity with Revenue Growth: Strategies for Future MonetizationThe dialogue discusses strategies to align platform activity with revenue growth, focusing on transitioning to a hybrid subscription model, integrating AI acceleration across the software lifecycle, and introducing incremental innovations on premium SKUs to create new monetization opportunities.
Monetizing Duo Capabilities and Addressing SMB Market ChallengesThe dialogue explores the monetization strategies for Duo's AI capabilities, emphasizing a platform-driven approach and upcoming usage-based pricing. It also discusses the company's strategy for the SMB market, focusing on free products and potential AI-driven paid engagements post Duo Agent platform's general availability.
Analysis of Public Sector Impact on Quarterly Growth and Seed Count TrendsThe dialogue explores the impact of public sector headwinds, particularly shutdown effects, on quarterly growth, questioning if these impacts will intensify in upcoming periods. Additionally, it revisits the trend of seed count growth, excluding one-time disclosures, to gauge ongoing performance indicators.
Assessing Duo Agent's Market Impact and Readiness for General AvailabilityDiscussion revolves around the lingering effects of government shutdown on Q3 to Q4 deal renewals, signaling cautious optimism for Duo Agent's market readiness and adoption ramp in fiscal 27, highlighting product proof points for GA preparedness.
Investor Excitement on Duo Agent's Market Impact and General Availability ReadinessInvestors are enthusiastic about the Duo agent's potential market influence. The company evaluates readiness through reliability, performance, security, and customer satisfaction. General availability is expected soon, with a gradual adoption due to the nature of self-upgrading clients. Opportunities in the public sector are highlighted, leveraging the platform's unique capabilities.
Analysis of Net Revenue Rate Mix and Impact of Large Expansion DealThe discussion focused on the composition of net revenue rate, emphasizing seats, yield, and tier upgrades, with a review of a significant expansion deal's influence on net revenue as it enters its anniversarial year, highlighting the transition towards a more diversified billing model.
GitLab's Strategy Shift: Embracing Usage-Based Pricing for AI-Driven DevOpsGitLab aims to adopt a usage-based pricing model, allowing customers to pre-commit for usage and earn better rates, shared across all users, emphasizing value-driven pricing over seat-based models.
Transitioning Between Presentations: Handover from CBA to Macquarie RepresentativesA formal handover occurs between two representatives, moving from a discussion led by someone associated with CBA to another from Macquarie, ensuring a smooth transition in the dialogue's focus.
AI's Impact on Software Development and Platform Deployment InsightsDiscusses the role of AI in enhancing software development efficiency and productivity, focusing on AI's influence on the entire software lifecycle, including code generation, testing, and deployment. Highlights the platform's value across the development lifecycle and anticipates the most immediate impacts of AI adoption, particularly with Du agent deployment. Also touches on challenges faced in SMB markets, attributing softness to both macroeconomic factors and execution issues.
Revolutionizing Software Engineering: AI-Driven Dual Agent Platform for Enhanced Efficiency and AutomationThe dialogue highlights the transformative impact of an AI-native dual agent platform in software engineering. It streamlines processes from code analysis and bug triage to security scanning and compliance, automating tasks traditionally requiring manual intervention. This approach significantly enhances efficiency, enabling automatic recovery from failures, debugging, and even automated fixes, thereby offering substantial value to users.
GitLab's Pervasive AI Tool Usage and SMB Segment ChallengesThe dialogue highlights the widespread adoption of AI tools among GitLab's customer base, emphasizing their complementary role rather than competition. It also addresses ongoing challenges in the SMB segment, marked by price sensitivity and license scrutiny, impacting around 8% of ARR. GitLab's strategy to leverage its strong free offering and AI integration is discussed, aiming to capture market demand while navigating segment-specific weaknesses.
Big Players Enhance DevOps with AI: Trends in Tech IndustryThe dialogue highlights the trend of larger tech companies integrating more DevOps capabilities with AI, alongside smaller AI-focused firms, showcasing the evolving landscape in technology services.
Strategic Deployment of Cash for GitLab's Lifecycle DifferentiationThe dialogue explores the strategic use of substantial cash and free cash flow to enhance GitLab's differentiation across the software development lifecycle, aiming to widen its competitive edge.
GitLab's Competitive Edge in AI with Unified Context and Action ToolsGitLab emphasizes its unique strengths in AI through a comprehensive context of software lifecycle data and advanced action tools, distinguishing itself from competitors. The company's robust cash position supports strategic investments, and it is set to introduce a hybrid pricing model for its AI platform, enhancing value delivery to customers. GitLab remains committed to responsible growth, driving shareholder value.
要点回答
Q：How much did non GAAP operating margin exceed the guidance for the third quarter?
A：Non GAAP operating margin reached 18%, which is a full five points above the Q3 guidance.
Q：What is Bill's perspective on the role of AI in software development and the role of Gitlab within that process?
A：Bill believes that AI drastically reduces barriers to software creation but emphasizes that software, including business processes and sensitive data, is business-critical. He views Gitlab as essential in ensuring quality assurance, security, compliance, and governance in software development and delivery, especially as teams adopt AI and autoregression. Gitlab's platform is architectured to remain mission-critical and to deliver increasing value as markets evolve.
Q：Why does Bill believe human oversight is required in software development despite advancements in AI?
A：Bill acknowledges that AI can generate code non-deterministically and that every business has unique requirements that AI cannot guess. Therefore, external validation and human oversight are necessary to ensure the code meets complex human requirements for doing business.
Q：What is the key differentiator of Gitlab according to Bill?
A：The key differentiator of Gitlab is its automation of the end-to-end software delivery flow, including quality, security, compliance, and governance, as part of a unified platform.
Q：How has the adoption of AI tools affected Gitlab's business and engagement?
A：Gitlab's engagement has grown significantly across its SaaS customer base, with key activity metrics such as CI pipelines, deployments, and releases up about 35% to 45% year over year. Additionally, the number of deployments and CI pipelines on a per seat basis are up 20% to 40% annually.
Q：What is the purpose of the Gitlab Duo Agent platform and when is it expected to become generally available?
A：The purpose of the Gitlab Duo Agent platform is to extend Gitlab's capabilities to agents, providing shared context for both humans and agents to facilitate greater trust and accuracy and to accelerate the end-to-end software delivery process. It is expected to be on track for general availability in the coming weeks.
Q：What percentage of total ARR is now represented by Gitlab Ultimate and what notable deals were observed?
A：Gitlab Ultimate now represents 54% of total ARR and was featured in 7 of the company's top 10 Net ARR deals. Notable expansions were observed at customers like Indeed, SBI Securities, and Curries.
Q：What were the outcomes of the company's initiatives discussed in the previous quarter?
A：The company successfully executed on initiatives that strengthened its foundation, saw the completion of the first order build-out and rollout of Gitlab's dual platform, and experienced stronger international results with consistent sales cycles and win rates despite softness in the U.S. public sector.
Q：How was Gitlab recognized in the Gartner reports?
A：Gitlab was named a leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for DevOps platforms for the third consecutive year and a leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Squadron for AI coding assistance for the second consecutive year.
Q：What are the key growth objectives outlined by the company?
A：The company's key growth objectives include adding more new paying customers, especially in the mid-market and enterprise segments, catalyzed by AI mandates. The company aims to provide a cohesive workflow on a unified platform across developers, security, and operations teams.
Q：What kind of deal did the company aim to close with a global consumer tech platform?
A：The company aimed to close a landmark deal with a global consumer tech platform, which chose Gitlab after experiencing critical reliability issues with their incumbent source code management provider. The customer, with over 5000 developers, required high standards of reliability, responsiveness, and technical excellence.
Q：What is the status of the company's first order versus expansion efforts and what new strategy has been implemented?
A：The company's mix of first order versus expansion efforts has slightly improved but is still not at the desired level. A new business leader has been hired to build out the global First Order team with a focus on acquiring new logos, emphasizing the urgency to win every new customer for their lifetime value.
Q：What is the company's second objective regarding customer value realization?
A：The company's second objective is to help customers realize the value of the platform more quickly, thereby driving revenue expansion.
Q：What are the recent patterns observed in the company's biggest expansions?
A：The company's recent patterns in biggest expansions show that customers are spending on some form of AI tooling in their engineering org while continuing to use Gitlab as the backbone of their SLC. There is strong potential for up-selling and attaching within the existing customer base.
Q：What is the new AI catalog and what does it offer to teams?
A：The new AI catalog is a central place where teams can discover foundational Gitlab Duo agents, best-in-class external agents like Cloud, OpenAI Codex, Google Gemini CLI, as well as create, share, and collaborate their own custom-built agents for any software engineering task.
Q：What is the significance of the customer feedback mentioned and what are the upcoming plans for the company?
A：The customer feedback has been strong, with many indicating that Gitlab is ahead of its peers in vision and rapidly evolving capability. The company closed its first few Gitlab Duo Agent platform-based expansions even before general availability. Future plans include a live streaming product-specific event in February to provide more details and to continue as the only pure play cloud and model-neutral independent public company delivering diverse ecosystems.
Q：What were the revenue and customer growth results for the third quarter?
A：Third quarter revenue reached $244 million, a 25% increase from Q3 of the prior year. There were 10,475 customers with an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of at least $5,000, contributing over 95% of total ARR. The number of customers with an ARR of $100,000 or more increased 23% year over year to 1,405. The company ended the quarter with a DBN RR of 119%, total RPO grew 27% year over year to $1 billion, and CRPO grew 28% year over year to $659 million.
Q：What were the financial performance and growth rates mentioned for the third quarter?
A：Q3 non GAAP operating income was $43.7 million, a 71.5% increase from $25.9 million in Q3 of the prior year, with a non GAAP operating margin of 17.9%, an increase of approximately 470 basis points year over year. The non GAAP growth margin was 89% for the quarter.
Q：What are the revenue growth expectations for the fourth quarter and the full year, and what is the projected non GAAP operating income and net income per share?
A：For the fourth quarter of FY 26, the company expects total revenue of $251 million to $252 million, a year-over-year growth rate of approximately 19%. The projected non GAAP operating income is $38 million to $39 million, with a projected non GAAP net income per share of 22 cents to 23 cents, assuming 172 million weighted average diluted shares outstanding. For the full year, they expect total revenue of $946 million to $947 million, a growth rate of approximately 25% year over year, with a non GAAP operating income of $147 million to $148 million, and a non GAAP net income per share of 95 cents to 96 cents, assuming 171 million weighted average diluted shares outstanding.
Q：What is the status of the joint venture with Jihu and what are the forecasted expenses related to it?
A：The company aims to deconsolidate the China joint venture (Jihu) but cannot predict the likelihood or timing of this event. For FY 26 modeling purposes, they forecast approximately $16 million of expenses related to Jihu, compared to $13 million from last year.
Q：Can you provide an outlook on subscription revenue growth for the fourth quarter and the factors influencing it?
A：The guidance for the fourth quarter implies total revenue growth of 19%, which includes the impact of public sector softness and lingering effects from the recent U.S. government shutdown. The subscription revenue growth rate decelerated from 30% in the prior quarter. The guidance reflects the company's best view of the business considering known factors, and while some uncertainty remains, they are optimistic about the performance heading into Q4.
Q：What progress has been made in acquiring new business and what is the expected timeline for full benefits?
A：The company has hired a global leader focused on acquiring new business, who will report to the Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). The onboarding process for this new team is underway, and the team is expected to begin reporting results in the back half of FY 27. Early feedback from customers indicates promising improvements in the funnel efficiency and customer journey, with an expectation to see new customer acquisition acceleration in the latter half of FY 27.
Q：What is the impact of the government shutdown and ongoing effects of DODGE on the company's business?
A：The company's business has been impacted by the disruption caused by the government shutdown and the ongoing effects of DODGE (presumably an error for 'DODGE' and actually meaning 'DODGE' or 'Distributed Open-source Government Engineering and Development Environment' which is a project or initiative the company is involved with) that are continuing to roll through the government.
Q：What is the company's strategy to align platform activity with revenue growth?
A：The company's strategy to align platform activity with revenue growth in the medium to long term involves shifting from a pure seat-based subscription business model to a hybrid seats plus usage-based business model. This strategy includes monetizing activities from AI code generation and bringing AI acceleration across the software lifecycle to solve the AI paradox mentioned in their prepared remarks. Additionally, the company is exploring incremental innovation on top of their premium and ultimate SKUs to provide customers with additive value and new monetization opportunities.
Q：How are the monetization of Duo specific capabilities tracked, and what percentage of new ACV includes Duo or Duo-related features?
A：The monetization of Duo specific capabilities is tracked through seat-based add-ons. Although the company has not shared the specifics of the revenue contribution of these products, they have been in the early stages. The shift from a use case-driven innovation agenda to a platform-driven agenda has augmented the core platform with AI capabilities at every layer, allowing for usage-based pricing for the monetization of these capabilities. It's still in the early stages, but the company is optimistic about the future opportunity to bring new value to customers and convert free product users into first paid engagements with paid services as Duo agent platform reaches general availability.
Q：What can be done to improve the company's performance in the SMB market?
A：While the company doesn't optimize its business strategy and go-to-market approach for the SMB segment, it recognizes the importance of startups and smaller companies on the growth path. The company's primary approach for now is to deliver a free product in the form of open-source packages and a free tier on gitlab.com, which has seen healthy adoption and a broad community. The company believes that the introduction of the Duo agent platform will bring new opportunities to convert these free product users into first paid engagements with paid services in the coming year.
Q：Does the trend of increasing seed count still hold, and how does it look when excluding Dodo seats?
A：The trend of increasing seed count is still held, but the company prefers not to comment on the specifics of the growth when excluding Dodo seats. The information provided last quarter was a one-time disclosure to help understand the state dynamics in the business, and the company is happy with the seed growth this quarter.
Q：What is the expected impact of the public sector headwind from the shutdown and DODGE in the upcoming January quarter?
A：The company is experiencing lingering effects from the shutdown of the U.S. federal government, which didn't turn on overnight. They are working with customers on deals and renewals that have been pushed from Q3 into Q4. The company does not comment on the specific magnitude of these effects, but acknowledges the ongoing impact and is closely working with customers through these deals and renewals.
Q：What is the impact of the Duo agent platform on revenue based on self-emancipation?
A：The impact of the Duo agent platform on revenue is that 70% of the company's revenue is based on self-emancipation, which requires an upgrade to take advantage of the dual agent platform. This often takes multiple quarters to get the majority of the customer base onto a new version, leading to potential slowness in revenue growth compared to a pure cloud SaaS business.
Q：What criteria are being used to evaluate the readiness of the Duo agent for general availability?
A：The criteria used to evaluate the readiness of the Duo agent include the reliability, performance, and overall stability of the platform in meeting customer expectations, the quality of the responsiveness and responses of the agents built, the ability of customers to build their own custom agents and get quality responses, and meeting high security standards to avoid shipping vulnerabilities.
Q：What differentiates the dual agent platform from other AI tools in the market?
A：The dual agent platform differentiates itself from other AI tools by offering the ability to run both in-cloud and on-premises models, which is a configuration that many public sector customers have requested.
Q：What was the mix within the net revenue rate for this quarter, and what is the expectation for future disclosures on this topic?
A：The mix of NRR for this quarter was predominantly from seats contributing slightly over 80%, with yield about 10%, and the remaining from up-tary. The expectation is that disclosures on this mix will become less relevant as the business evolves into having multiple SKUs and augmenting the seat-based business with usage-based business.
Q：How does the company plan to approach pricing for AI features in its premium plans?
A：The company plans to capture the value through a usage-based pricing model rather than a seat-based price. This approach allows customers to prepay for usage to earn the best rates, with a pool of usage that can be shared across all users.
Q：What factors are driving the observed increase in deployment activity on the platform?
A：The increase in deployment activity on the platform is driven by a mix of factors including the downstream effects of AI and coding tools on software development, which is leading to better productivity and more innovation being delivered to customers.
Q：How is the dual agent platform expected to impact the productivity of the software development lifecycle?
A：The dual agent platform is expected to make an immediate impact on improving productivity throughout the software development lifecycle by accelerating code generation and the entire software delivery process, thus enhancing efficiency and allowing teams to take on more projects.
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