RingCentral Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

RingCentral (NYSE:RNG) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

RingCentral reported strong Q3 2026 financial results, with subscription and total revenue exceeding guidance, and record GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins.

The company reduced gross debt to under $1 billion ahead of schedule and highlighted growth in its AI offerings, with AI products now accounting for 15% of ARR.

RingCentral is investing in AI innovation, evidenced by significant customer growth for its AI products like AIR and ACE, and expanding partnerships, notably with BT Business.

The company maintained high subscription gross margins above 80% and increased non-GAAP EPS by 18% year-over-year, driven by disciplined cost management and AI adoption.

Future guidance for fiscal 2026 includes raised expectations for subscription revenue, total revenue, and free cash flow, alongside continued margin expansion and share buybacks.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Good day and welcome to the RingCentral third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Steven Horwitz, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Steven Horwitz (Vice President of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome to RingCentral’s third quarter 2026 conference call. Joining me today are Vlad Shmunis, Founder, Chairman and CEO; Kira Makagon, President and COO; and Vaibhav Agarwal, Chief Financial Officer. Our remarks today include forward-looking statements regarding the company’s business operations, financial performance and outlook. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control and are not guarantees of future performance.

Actual results may differ materially from our forward-looking statements, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements after this call. If the call is replayed after today, the information presented may not contain current or accurate information. For a complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties related to our business, please refer to the information contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as today’s earnings release.

Unless otherwise indicated, all measures that follow are non-GAAP with year-over-year comparisons. A reconciliation of all GAAP to non-GAAP results is provided with our earnings release and in the slide presentation, which you can find under the Financial Results section at ir.ringcentral.com. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Vlad.

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Good afternoon and thank you for joining us. We delivered another strong quarter in Q3 with subscription and total revenue above the high end of our guidance. We also achieved record GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins. Free cash flow generation remains strong, which enabled us to reach an important milestone of reducing gross debt to under $1 billion as of today, which is ahead of schedule. These results reflect RingCentral’s leadership in agentic voice AI, healthy demand and our continued focus on expanding operating margins through disciplined execution.

We’re building on this momentum by investing in innovation that strengthens our market position and brings AI and human agents together on a complete integrated customer engagement platform. Our strong momentum with agentic voice AI has been recognized by Business Insider, which named RingCentral to its America’s Most Innovative Businesses list. Innovation has always been a driving force behind RingCentral’s success. We pioneered the shift from legacy communication systems to the cloud. The megatrend of AI represents an even larger opportunity and a powerful tailwind for RingCentral. We’re leading this next transformation with agentic voice AI, making customer interactions more efficient, intelligent and actionable.

Our AI results provide strong proof points for our building success. AI Receptionist, or AIR, now has more than 22,000 customers, up nearly 4x year over year. ACE, our AI Conversation Expert, is approaching 7,000 customers, up 60% year over year. And our newest lightweight contact center offering, CEB, or Customer Engagement Business solution, has reached more than 14,000 paying customers, growing nearly 50% quarter over quarter. Nearly two-thirds of CEB customers have also purchased one or more of our AI products.

Importantly, RingCentral AI, which we define as customers using at least one native paid AI product, now represents approximately 15% of total ARR, or over $400 million, doubling year over year. This cohort of customers also has meaningfully higher ARPU and net retention. These trends demonstrate how AI is expanding wallet share, strengthening retention and creating a more durable foundation for profitable growth. The momentum we’re seeing is rooted in our well-established position as a leader in consumer-to-business communications. Voice and SMS remain central to how consumers engage with their business providers such as doctors, bankers, insurance agents and a host of other service providers. RingCentral is a leader in consumer-to-business communications with a platform carrying approximately 40 billion minutes, 14 billion calls and 4 billion text messages annually.

Importantly, our customers can utilize the rich context in their own conversations to generate actionable insights, automate tasks and drive resolution through the use of our AI products. Our carrier-grade network, global scale, security and decades of operating expertise in voice create an opportunity for us to become a critical infrastructure layer for business communications and is a significant barrier to entry. Our ability to connect consumers with their service providers at scale well positions us to deploy AI agents across all stages of a consumer-business interaction, whether it be human-to-human, human-to-AI or human-to-AI and back to human, otherwise known as a human-in-the-loop. For a little more color, AI agents can handle routine inquiries, automate workflows and resolve issues autonomously. When judgment, empathy or specialized expertise is required, a human can step in.

In healthcare, for example, AI can help manage routine interactions while bringing in a qualified professional when a patient needs medical advice. Another strong competitive moat for us is our distribution reach. Alongside our direct sales force, we have a global ecosystem of more than 16,000 channel partners and resellers, including some of the leading global service providers such as AT&T, British Telecom, Charter Communications, Optus, Telus and Vodafone, amongst others. Our GSP and channel partners are increasingly incorporating our AI portfolio into their product lines. Their established customer relationships and local expertise create a distribution advantage that is difficult to replicate.

Let me close with three key points. First, RingCentral has a deep and defensible moat in a large and expanding market. Our global voice infrastructure, billions of calls, text messages and minutes that we process every year, and integrated customer engagement platform provide a distinct foundation for strengthening our leadership through agentic voice AI. Our partner ecosystem gives us the reach to scale these capabilities globally. Second, our investments in agentic voice AI strategy are delivering tangible results. Growing paid adoption, broader use of our AI portfolio and stronger customer economics demonstrate how AI is expanding the value of our platform and accelerating our business.

Third, our large and growing TAM, combined with disciplined execution and operating model leverage, is resulting in a strong and improving financial profile. We are growing revenue, expanding profitability and generating substantial free cash flow and free cash flow per share. With our gross debt now below our stated $1 billion target, we now have the balance sheet strength to continue investing in innovation while also delivering sustained long-term shareholder value via share buybacks and dividends.

I want to thank our employees for their innovation and execution, our customers and partners for their trust, and our shareholders for their continued support. I’m excited about the opportunity ahead and confident in our ability to deliver. With that, I will turn it over to Kira.

Kira Makagon (President & Chief Operating Officer)

Thank you, Vlad, and good afternoon, everyone. As Vlad highlighted, RingCentral brings together a complete and integrated customer engagement platform with agentic voice, AI, and humans working together. Our leadership in voice puts us at the heart of consumer-to-business conversations and gives RingCentral AI the foundation to turn those conversations into better outcomes. We are building on that foundation to meet customers wherever they work, including the LLMs they use every day.

This quarter, we introduced plugins for OpenAI’s ChatGPT and MCP connectors for Anthropic’s Claude. We were also selected as a Cloud for Small Business launch partner. RingCentral provides the conversation context and the AI models provide reasoning. It’s great to see how our innovation is helping our customers turn conversations into action as part of their everyday workflows. In less than a month, we are already seeing early traction with thousands of active customers.

Enabling humans and AI to work together is core to our strategy and where we are uniquely positioned because we bring voice, contact center, and AI into one platform so AI can either handle the entire task or hand off to humans as needed. For example, an industrial parts manufacturer and supplier replaced its fragmented call queues with AICB, our customer engagement business solution, bringing advanced call queues, SMS, live agent tracking, and virtual callbacks into one place.

Customers now spend less time on hold, get issues resolved in fewer handoffs, and report higher satisfaction, which means lower cost to serve and stronger retention. They’re also leveraging ACE, our AI conversation expert, for score calculation and coaching. Plus, they’re deploying AIR, our AI receptionist, for handling inquiries with context-aware routing. We see this in action with customers across all segments, including 1 million TCV deals such as a rapidly growing national fitness operator with millions of members already using RingGapps. This customer added ACE to identify key call drivers, then AIR to handle a high volume of return inquiries. This illustrates our AI flywheel: ACE uncovers opportunities and AIR automates interactions, giving callers immediate answers while freeing staff to build member relationships, lead club tours, and support membership roles.

As they’ve recognized value, they’ve extended their investment with us by 4x. This past quarter, we also saw strong adoption of AIR Pro. AIR Pro extends the value of our agentic voice AI, delivering voice-first, omnichannel AI agents that autonomously complete multi-step workflows and bring in human agents when judgment and empathy are needed. As an example, one of the largest technology, equipment, and procurement providers for senior living in the United States already uses RingEX, RingCX, and ACE. This quarter, they added AIR Pro to help them take their customer experience to the next level.

AIR Pro understands intent and automates more complex workflows. When a customer calls, AIR Pro verifies the caller’s identity, matches the caller to their record, and identifies the reason for the call, then takes action when needed. AIR Pro hands off to a human with full context and then follows up. In just the first month, this customer achieved an over 95% accuracy rate in end-to-end workflow completion. We’re also delighted to see our existing customer, Destination Pet, a nationwide pet care provider, extend their use case of our CAI. They started with ACE to analyze call transcripts and identify opportunities to improve service, and recently expanded to AIR Pro to automate workflows around scheduling appointments, sending confirmations, and updating records for customers across locations. This supports Destination Pet’s goal of capturing every opportunity, improving customer experience, increasing revenue, and lowering labor costs.

When our solutions work together, as they do for these customers, it creates a virtuous loop where it turns conversation context into action. That’s the value of RingCentral’s agentic voice AI. It’s changing the game for businesses, and that is something we’re really excited about. Speaking of changing the game, today we announced the expansion of our decade-long partnership with Golden State Warriors to be named the official agentic voice AI platform for fan engagement. Together, the two organizations will work to elevate fan experiences from ticket inquiries to game day questions and ongoing engagement.

We continue to expand our agentic voice AI solutions to more businesses around the world through a network of 17 global service providers. This quarter, we extended our partnership with BT Business. This expansion enables BT customers to seamlessly layer native intelligent automation over their existing telephony setups. Together, we’re empowering UK organizations to capture lost revenue and drive operational efficiency. Additionally, we added two new partners to our GSP portfolio.

Digital Island, our first partner in New Zealand, will sell, implement, and support our agentic voice AI. In Italy, Allnet Italia, our first partner there, will bring RingEX with the full suite of RC AI agents onto its network. These partnerships are key to our overall go-to-market strategy and international reach. In closing, our customer wins show our vision in action: humans and AI working together on one platform to turn conversations into better outcomes. With growing AI adoption and expanding global reach, we’re bringing that opportunity to more businesses around the world. With that, I will turn it over to Vaibhav.

Vaibhav Agarwal (EVP, Chief Financial Officer)

Thank you, Kira, and good afternoon, everyone. Q3 was a solid quarter with key metrics above the high end of our guidance, reflecting continued execution against the financial framework and commitments we have outlined. Our core business remains resilient with growing contributions from our AI portfolio. Just as importantly, we are expanding margins and free cash flow, reducing SBC, and making meaningful progress towards our target of 20% GAAP operating margin and steady-state SBC of 3% to 4% of revenue.

We also reached an important milestone, reducing gross debt to below $1 billion as of now, significantly strengthening our balance sheet while continuing to return capital to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. This combination of growth, improving profitability, and disciplined capital allocation is translating into stronger free cash flow per share growth. With that context, let me turn to our third quarter performance, starting with growth. Subscription revenue was approximately $653 million, up 6% year-over-year, while total revenue was approximately $676 million, up 5.9%. Underlying customer trends remain healthy, with steady new customer additions and monthly net retention above 99%, underscoring the mission-critical nature of our platform. Notably, our RC AI portfolio continues to gain traction, which reinforces the role of AI not only as an incremental growth driver, but also as a meaningful contributor to strong customer economics.

We believe these trends, combined with our established competitive position, provide a solid foundation for durable growth over time. Turning to profitability, we delivered another quarter of record GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins alongside further reductions in SBC. Subscription gross margin remains strong at above 80%. Non-GAAP operating margin reached 24.7%, up nearly 200 basis points, and SBC as a percent of revenue declined 50 basis points, reflecting our continued discipline around equity compensation. The combination of stronger non-GAAP margin and lower SBC drove a record GAAP operating margin of 8%, an improvement of 320 basis points.

GAAP EPS was $6.50 per share, which included a non-cash benefit of $545 million from the release of a valuation allowance against certain domestic deferred tax assets. This adjustment was driven by an improvement in GAAP profitability. The valuation allowance release had no impact on non-GAAP results, and we do not expect material changes to our near-term cash taxes as we continue to utilize deferred tax assets. Excluding this benefit, diluted EPS was $0.28, an improvement of 47% year-over-year.

Non-GAAP EPS increased about 18% to $1.33. Our margin expansion trend is driven by multiple structural drivers such as strong gross margins, operating leverage, disciplined cost management, broader internal adoption of AI, and a focus on our highest-return investments. Together with SBC reduction, these drivers reinforce our confidence in long-term sustainability and durability of margin expansion while investing in growth. Turning to cash flow, we generated $157 million in free cash flow in Q3, up 21% year-over-year. Our recurring revenue model, strong gross margins, and improving operating efficiency continue to translate into substantial cash generation. Reflecting this performance, we are raising our full-year free cash flow outlook to $625 million at the midpoint, representing nearly 24% of revenues. This represents over $7 of free cash flow per share, up about 23% year-over-year.

We believe the durability of our recurring revenue base, AI tailwinds, structural margin expansion, disciplined capital allocation, and continued reduction in SBC provide a strong foundation for sustained free cash flow generation over time. Turning to capital allocation, in Q3 we prioritized repayment of our highest-cost debt, the 8.5% high-yield notes that became callable, reducing gross debt by just over $110 million and bringing net leverage to 1.3 times. In fact, as of today, our gross debt is now below $1 billion. As a reminder, there are no debt maturities until 2030 and we have $305 million of undrawn credit capacity. We also continue to return capital to shareholders, spending approximately $18 million on share repurchases during the quarter and paying a dividend of 12.5 cents per share.

Diluted share count declined about 5% year-over-year to approximately 87.7 million shares. We have over $300 million remaining under our share repurchase authorization. Our substantial cash generation and our stronger balance sheet give us the flexibility on capital allocation while maintaining a consistent focus on long-term value creation. With that, let me turn to guidance. For fiscal 2026, we are raising subscription revenue to be $2.563 billion to $2.569 billion, representing growth of 5.6% to 5.9%; raising total revenue to $2.650 billion to $2.657 billion, representing growth of 5.4% to 5.6%; GAAP operating margin of 9.2% to 9.6%, expanding by 460 basis points; raising non-GAAP operating margin to 24% to 24.2%; raising free cash flow to $620 million to $630 million, up 18%; SBC in the range of approximately $240 million to $245 million, representing 9% of revenues; fully diluted share count of approximately 87.5 million shares; raising non-GAAP EPS to be between $5.07 to $5.12, up about 17%. This results in free cash flow per share of $7.09 to $7.20 for the year, up 23%.

So for Q4 ’26, we expect subscription revenue of approximately $653 million to $659 million; total revenue of approximately $673 million to $680 million; GAAP operating margin of 13.3% to 14.7%, up 740 basis points; non-GAAP operating margin of 25% to 25.5%, up 250 basis points; non-GAAP EPS of $1.32 to $1.37, up 14%; fully diluted share count of approximately 89 million shares. As we look ahead, our execution is delivering tangible results with a durable core business, growing momentum across our AI portfolio, and continued improvement in profitability and cash generation. Together with a stronger balance sheet and disciplined capital allocation, we believe these fundamentals position RingCentral to compound free cash flow per share and drive meaningful long-term shareholder value. With that, let’s open the call for questions.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To ask a question you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. If you’re using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star then two. The first question comes from Elizabeth Porter with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Elizabeth Porter (Analyst)

Great. Thank you so much for the question. So, and congrats on the quarter — subscription revenue growth has been modestly improving for several quarters now and the beat was more pronounced in Q3. So could you just help us unpack what drove the upside in the quarter and curious if there were any specific drivers to call out, whether it was, you know, any stronger AI-driven demand or potentially starting to see some easing of those enterprise renewal headwinds you guys previously discussed.

Vaibhav Agarwal (EVP, Chief Financial Officer)

Thanks. Thanks, Elizabeth, for the call out. And look, the beat was driven by broad-based execution across — we had a solid quarter. We delivered results on both the top line and the bottom line. Fundamentally we are executing disciplined, consistent results on all our commitments. And as you called out, we are showing a sustainable and a stabilized growth profile and that’s what’s getting reflected in our full year guide, you know, basically reflecting the confidence in the underlying growth drivers, particularly AI.

On the top line, our core business, you know, continues to be a scaled recurring revenue business that is durable, supported by strong retention metrics and steady customer demand. Usage on the platform continues to be healthy and it just underscores the mission critical nature of our solutions. And on top of the core, we are seeing growing contributions from our AI-led products as we called out in our prepared remarks. You know, adoption is strong across the board.

We are seeing strong customer engagement. Customers who are using one-plus paid AI products are now approaching 15% of ARR, doubling year over year. And within these cohorts, very importantly, we see strong customer economics in terms of increased ARPUs and over 100% net retention rate. So net-net it reinforces both the monetization opportunity as well as it demonstrates the stickiness of the base. And very importantly, we are not only growing but we are also very focused on the quality of the growth. So we delivered, you know, record GAAP and non-GAAP operating margins and a strong free cash flow profile. So you know, net-net, we have a recurring model, we have a diversified customer base from small to enterprise customers. Our solutions are mission critical.

We have a deep competitive moat that’s built on platform scale, you know, the depth of our product and differentiated GTM. And these fundamentals are frankly contributing to the durability and the sustainability of our ability to expand both margins and free cash flows.

Elizabeth Porter (Analyst)

Great. And then just as a follow up, I wanted to hit on capital allocation. It was great to see that the gross debt target was ahead of schedule and you have free cash flow growing faster than revenue. And when we think about the set of opportunities, how should we think about the case for increasing any sort of organic investment to go after AI and contact center relative to pursuing acquisitions or prioritizing further capital returns?

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, hi Elizabeth. Look, this question comes up fairly regularly. Look, fundamentally we are a very tech-heavy organization. We view ourselves as an innovator at heart. I think as you all know, my background is quite technical. You know, many of the original contributors including the CTO are still with us, which I think is not that common. So we feel we have a lot of talent now in-house and, you know, our commitment and spend on product technology continues to be quite healthy — over a quarter billion dollars per year.

So we can do a lot ourselves. Now having said that, we’re always looking out opportunistically. People are calling us, we do have an M&A function in-house, and we are evaluating multiple opportunities always. And as things clear as a bar, we consider them and then we move forward. So I’m not going to tell you that we will never do a sizable acquisition. But I’m also saying that we’re very confident in our ability to deliver on our roadmap using, you know, capacity we have at hand.

So we’ll just have to see what the future brings. But as you can see for now, we’re able to deliver the results, you know, without having to go outside.

Elizabeth Porter (Analyst)

Great, thank you.

OPERATOR

The next question comes from CT Panigrahi with Mizuho. Please go ahead.

CT Panigrahi (Analyst)

Thank you. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on a good quarter. Just wanted to ask you about the new product ARR that you guys talked about — 100 million run rate exiting ’25. How fast that’s growing in Q3 and how should we think about that exiting this year? And I have a follow up.

Vaibhav Agarwal (EVP, Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, hey Sidi, thanks for the question. This is Vaibhav. So in terms of the ARR for new products, the metric we provided this quarter was customers adopting at least one paid AI product, or as we call it RC AI. So that’s approaching 15% or 400 million and it’s doubling year over year. And as I mentioned in my previous comment, you know, the customer economics there are very healthy — ARPUs are higher, net retention rates are above 100%. And the reason that we are focused on that metric, and we manage the business frankly based on that metric, is it’s the clearest proof point of AI adoption and penetration both into the base as well as with new sales. And what that metric is clearly showing is that there is healthy customer demand. You know, customers are moving beyond experimentation. You know, they’re getting tangible ROI benefits from the use of AI and it’s leading to the base being more sticky.

So, you know, over time, this metric has been continuously growing and we provided an update on this every quarter. So our expectation is that as adoption continues to grow and as customers adopt more AI products, that this metric will continue to grow.

CT Panigrahi (Analyst)

That’s correct. Just on the margin side, I think what’s impressive is your subscription margin still holding well despite AI investment. Can you help us — how should we think about the gross margin as you ramp on AI?

Vaibhav Agarwal (EVP, Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, so look, overall gross margins, as you called out, are strong at 80% plus. And our gross margins on AI products are generally holding in line with the corporate average as well. And really we are optimizing with two levers there. One is pricing and the other one is cost. So on the pricing front relative to AI, we are being very deliberate in our pricing strategy. You know, the idea is to kind of charge customers for the value and the usage that they receive.

And, you know, customers are willing to pay because they are getting tangible ROI benefits, both from a revenue standpoint as well as a cost avoidance or cost saving standpoint. And that’s — the uplift is indicated in the metric that I just talked about. In terms of the costs, we are optimizing against model selection, call it inference efficiency, and infrastructure. So in terms of inference, as it’s getting better with different models, the price per unit is coming down. In terms of model selection, we are currently using frontier models and over time we will benefit from the use of open source models. And a very important point is that these AI products are being delivered through the same platform and engines and therefore we get, you know, very good incremental unit economics.

So I think overall our expectation is that gross margins will continue to hold at around 80%.

CT Panigrahi (Analyst)

Thank you.

OPERATOR

The next question comes from Brian Peterson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Brian Peterson (Analyst)

Hey guys, thanks for taking the question. So I wanted to hit on the AI adoption a bit. I’m curious if there’s any part of the customer segment, whether that’s enterprise or U.S. or SMB, that’s really kind of embracing some of that portfolio. And where do you think that next unlock may come, as we think about that expanding beyond the mid to high teens number you just gave us.

Kira Makagon (President & Chief Operating Officer)

Hi, this is Kira. So, we see adoption across all segments, from enterprise to customers, for AI and for all our products. So, Brian, this is really — we’re happy to see that. What was the second part of the question?

Brian Peterson (Analyst)

As we think about where the incremental adoption is coming from, is there a certain part of a geography or customer base, or maybe even thinking about some partner channels, where you could see that leverage kind of expanding beyond the number you just gave us?

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I can take that. Yeah, very good question. Look, so we’ve been on record with our — what we call golden verticals, which is fundamentally healthcare and financial services. So as we continue, we are seeing more AI within those sectors that were stronger for us to begin with. And again, as we’ve been saying for quite some time now, our best traction is in consumer-to-business interactions. Many of them, most, are by voice and text, and we are very strong in both of those channels, moving billions and tens of billions of minutes through our platform.

Okay. So that as far as verticals is concerned. On the partnership side, it’s also very interesting because we are seeing increasing adoption of our AI portfolio by the partner community and in particular global service providers. And there were some releases relatively recently, for example with British Telecom, some others. So when we say, as a maybe word of caution, when we say that it’s still pretty early, very early with AI in general for this type of an application, it is yet earlier through the channel, and in particular with GSPs they just move a little slower, but when they move, they move with very strong force.

So we’re pretty optimistic that as we get our formula down, we’ll be able to propagate it through our channel, which, as you know, is large and unique.

Brian Peterson (Analyst)

Thanks, Vlad and Vaibhav. Maybe just a follow up — I know the margins have been ramping up. Can you remind us, just from a GAAP perspective, how are you thinking about goals like stock comp and targeting that? And how should we be thinking about kind of the non-GAAP and GAAP operating margins going forward? Thanks guys.

Vaibhav Agarwal (EVP, Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, thank you, Brian. So look, we are very pleased with the work that we’ve done on both operating margins from a GAAP standpoint as well as a non-GAAP standpoint over the years. So we laid out a medium-term target of reaching 20% in GAAP operating margins and we remain confident in our ability to get there. And the proof point there is if you look at our guide for 2026, we are expanding GAAP operating margins by about, call it 400 basis points or so.

And about half of that is coming from improvements in non-GAAP operating margins. And the other half is coming from SBC. So call it 200 basis points each. And if you were to project these out into the outer years, that’s how we remain confident in our ability to reach the 20% target. In terms of the non-GAAP operating margin, look, we have a lot of structural drivers behind that. You know, we have a scaled recurring revenue model that’s producing gross margins at 80%, which is industry-leading. So we inherently get a lot of leverage in our operating model. And that’s coupled with, you know, the discipline in cost across the board that we have, resulting in material improvements in non-GAAP operating margins. And then on the SBC side, you know, we are continuing our discipline in terms of managing grants, managing SBC.

And what’s flowing through the SBC model now is also the prior grants as well as the new grants, and as the impact of the prior grants that were given at higher prices, as that kind of tails off, that gives us the confidence to continue to reduce SBC over time. And that’s where we’ve laid out a target of getting to 3% to 4% in the next three to four years. So net-net, it’s a combination of expansion in non-GAAP operating profit as well as reductions in SBC, you know, that allowed us to kind of make those targets and we remain on track to achieve that.

Brian Peterson (Analyst)

Thanks guys.

OPERATOR

The next question comes from Peter Levine with Evercore. Please go ahead.

Peter Levine (Analyst)

Great. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe the first one I have, if you think about, you know, I guess the trajectory of subscription revenue growth into ’27, I know you haven’t guided, but how should we think about, I think, distinguishing between, I think, the underlying performance of the core UCaaS business versus how much of that is coming from newer AI, you know, some of your customer engagement, consumer customer engagement products? So I’m just trying to understand how much growth is dependent on upsell/cross-sell of AI versus, you know, stabilization in your core business.

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

I think we’ve been sharing this before, that it’s roughly 50/50 — 50% from the base and the other half from new customers. And I think we were also saying that, as of new customers, about half of them take AI and the other ones do not yet take AI, but they may well be upgraded or cross-sold to AI over time. But for now those are the metrics.

Peter Levine (Analyst)

There was AI receptionist. I’m sorry, go on please.

Vaibhav Agarwal (EVP, Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah Peter, just to add on that, I think what Vlad was mentioning is the contribution on bookings from the AI product. In terms of 2027, look, we are not providing formal guidance here today, but I think the underlying growth drivers would be similar to what I talked about before, which is the core business continues to be durable. You know, margins are high, it’s a recurring revenue base and the retention metrics are strong, and AI will be a layer on the top and that is growing rapidly today and it’s becoming an increasing contributor to growth.

The thing is that it’s growing off a smaller base relative to the size of the overall subscription business. But net-net we are seeing strong adoption, to Vlad’s point, and customer engagement across the platform. And, you know, we talked about the margin expansion, the progress there in free cash flow, and we expect to continue to kind of do a lot of the same there.

Peter Levine (Analyst)

That’s a good segue. The question is, AI receptionist has gained a lot of traction. You know, how do you think about the opportunity, I guess, then to expand monetization within that installed base? Like what are other avenues, usage or use cases, pricing mechanisms that you think you could use with an AI receptionist or even AIR? Thank you.

Kira Makagon (President & Chief Operating Officer)

Yeah, so thanks for the callout on the momentum in AIR. It now has over 22,000 customers. The reason it’s kind of seeing this momentum is the ROI that we hear from customers is real. You know, customers are able to address missed calls and they’re capturing more leads, which is resulting in more revenue. So from a pricing standpoint, Peter, it’s usage-based pricing. So the more customers use the product, the more they consume it, you know, it kind of contributes to revenue.

It’s currently selling, I think, in a big part in our small business segment, and over time, you know, it’s also kind of going up-market to the mid-market and the enterprise customer. So that’s one way to think of it. In terms of the use cases, you know, customers are looking for more and more AI agents. AIR is a form of an AI agent that helps customers address missed calls and, over time, the idea is for AIR to handle more sophisticated use cases and workflows and integrate into more platforms and workflows to do more and more, if you will. And as we mentioned in our prepared remarks, we have AirPro that addresses more complex use cases. Those more complex use cases usually have more workflow attached to them and take on more turns in the conversation, so they’re more autonomous.

And the big thing for our AI — whether it’s AIR, AirPro, any of our products — is we think about human-in-the-loop. We think about handling as much as possible by AI, but also making sure that, for judgment, sentiment, or more complex questions required, those are handled off to a human being and then they work together in preserving that context. Our customers are telling us this is very important. We provided some of those scenarios in our prepared remarks where customers are finding that it’s especially valuable to be able to do the swarm handoff with context and, if necessary, take it off to a human being, then back to AI, where you kind of have this virtuous continuous loop. And those create additional use cases for us, and we see those as expansion opportunities as customers get more and more comfortable adopting AI.

What initially we went to market with as AI receptionist — no missed calls — continues to be a big driver because businesses do miss calls and miss opportunities. But then it gets into handoffs within the business and more involved use cases such as handling more complex billing inquiries, returns, appointment settings that require dips into databases, knowledge bases. Those are being handled now with AirPro, and the use cases will continue, as we see from our customers.

They will continue to grow almost incrementally, one by one, as customers are realizing value with our products.

OPERATOR

Thank you very much for the questions. Ladies and gentlemen, in the interest of time, we ask that you please limit yourself to one question. Thank you. The next question comes from Ryan McWilliams with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Ryan McWilliams (Analyst)

Thanks for your question, and this drafts off the last question. Vlad, I thought your comments on the voice AI potential for Ring were interesting. As AI agents become more of the inbound call volume for businesses, how do you think RingCentral AIR benefits from businesses lumping, like, an AI line of defense from inbound calls from other AI agents like AirPro? Seems like a good fit here — like, let’s AIR talk with a Muse agent or another voice AI agent, and if a human calls, then you can flip it over for another human in the chat.

How do you think the soon-to-be increase in voice AI means for the demand for your AI proxy? Thanks.

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, so, yeah, if I understand the question, look, there are two fundamental growth drivers for RingCentral. One is more calls and the other one is more AI. So they tend to go together — that’s the good news. So the more calls through the system, the more AI we have a chance to apply. And the larger the percentage of AI-assisted calls on the network, you know, the better off we are because obviously we’re able to extract better value, deliver better value, but also extract better value for, you know, intelligence and insight that AI brings.

So they work together. I can tell you that our traffic growth has been strong but linear. Our AI growth has been explosive, obviously. But overall penetration of AI and AI-answered calls on our network is still very, very small, percentage-wise. So we think that there is a very meaningful opportunity to simply, if you will, in the very simplest terms, have our customers assign AI to more of their traffic. And this is very much front and center — what our teams are working on — as well as, obviously, increasing overall traffic, adding new logos, new, better engagement with the base in general.

OPERATOR

The next question comes from James Fish with Piper Sandler. Please go ahead.

James Fish (Analyst)

Hey guys, wanting to work off of the last couple of questions here. Really what I’m trying to understand is what you guys view as the opportunity in terms of the ability to cross-sell CB, ACE, and AIR in terms of where we could see that penetration go over the next two, three years. And you kind of alluded to this in the one answer, but how does penetration differ between sort of major customer accounts versus the more SMB commercial customer base?

Thanks guys.

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

So, CEB — I’ll start with the second part of the question. CEB is fundamentally a smaller-business product because it is basically an informal contact center, and larger enterprises tend to have formal contact centers, so they would be more ripe to buy our RingCX product, which is a full-up contact center. Okay, now, how do we deliver it to them? You know, each and every way we can. But fundamentally, certainly our sales teams are well aware. Look, it’s been growing really, really well for us.

That means that we have lots of satisfied customers and lots of reference cases, so our sales teams are able to leverage that. And of course we are doubling down on product-led growth, PLG, and that is showing results as well. So we are also working on ways of specifically explaining to customers what CEB can do for them. And in as much as possible, we try to make them understand that RingCentral does not need to be thought of as just a cost center, but we can actually help them generate revenues, capture more leads, do better leads processing. CEB does that, and in particular the flavor of CEB that we sell with AI. That really is our most explosive new offering this year.

OPERATOR

Our next question comes from Andrew King with Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.

Andrew King (Analyst)

Hey there. Thanks for taking my question and congrats on the good quarter and guidance. Just wanted to touch base quickly on two of your partnerships. NICE obviously began reselling RingEX in July. Any early pipeline wins to share, to call out there? And then also if you could just touch base on the ACO transition — if you’re seeing any increased churn as you go through that transition, that would be great. Thanks.

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah. So I think second question is, no — it was very orderly. Remember, those customers, you know, the experience does not change. You know, it’s just a small tweak in the logo in the upper left corner and that’s about it. Not about it — that is actually it. So there is no friction whatsoever. So I’m not aware of any churn related to that. As far as partnerships in general, yeah, look, definitely there is NICE. That’s kind of new, and, you know, again it’s early, and remember they’re very much high-end enterprise, so we don’t expect, you know, many… logos there just because they don’t have that many logos basically. But we are, you know, hoping for friction for traction. Not friction traction with some, you know, whales through the rest of the channel, you know, it’s performing. Look, it’s already in the and you know, as you know, various folks are doing channel checks on the industry and us in particular and, you know, signs are pretty up at this point. I think people understand that Voice is here to stay in business.

And as long as Voice stays in business, Ring stays in business because we are the voice leader.

OPERATOR

Next question comes from Cheblis Sarafi with FBN Securities. Please go ahead.

Cheblis Sarafi (Analyst)

Yeah, thank you very much. So related to the NICE partnership, what’s your plan for RingCentral contact center when the one year NICE extension ends? And it seems to me that one year is rather small. Why wouldn’t you have like a three year extension or something like that?

Vlad Shmunis (Founder and Chief Executive Officer)

So first, I’m not sure, you know, where you got the one year from. I don’t think that we’ve ever disclosed any specifics. But be that as it may, and I’m not, you know, suggesting that this is one year, by the way, but in any case it’s an extension to the whatever term was there to begin with. So we still have very much multiple years left on this contract. But to fast forward it, you know, a number of years. Look, number of things, you know, this partnership could continue being extended as it has been for the last 10, 12 years. But also, very importantly, our Ring CS product is getting stronger and stronger. You know, we believe that we have a very robust offering already today with Ring CF for the mid market. And moving forward, we think that will be, you know, quite viable and attractive for the larger enterprise as well.

Especially if you take into account the fact that the world is changing and that these gigantic cosmos call centers that traditionally were utilized by larger enterprises, you know, the AI will, you know, bend, you know, the situation there for sure. You know, while smaller businesses very much pride themselves and differentiate on their ability to, you know, answer customer inquiries with a human being, and that is at least for the time being, basically regardless of how good AI gets, because that is part of the service that they provide.

You know, larger enterprises, you know, it is a cost center and AI can do a very good job there. And we’re seeing that as well, you know, in our own case, as well as, you know, through our customers. So net net is. We’re very confident that this base will be taken care of, well taken care of and increasingly so with AI involved while still keeping human in the loop.

OPERATOR

Next question comes from Taylor McGinnis with UBS. Please go ahead.

Taylor McGinnis (Analyst)

Yeah, yeah, hi. Thanks so much for taking my question and sorry for any background noise, but if I look at the 4Q subscription revenue guide, it’s a bit stronger than what we saw in 3Q and 2Q. So it seems like there’s a little bit more of like an unlock or an uptick growth that you guys are seeing. So could you just unpack for us what’s driving that? Is that more stability with the UCAS business, but now we’re starting to see the strength in AI revenue start to show through?

Any contribution from the NICE partnership? Maybe you could just unpack that as we think about that potential momentum going into next year. Thanks.

Vaibhav Agarwal (EVP, Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, thanks, Taylor, for the question. So I think it’s. It’s kind of most of what you said. Look, our core business continues to be durable, retention metrics that are strong. And it’s a recurring revenue base for us, which, and as Vlad said, you know, the usage metrics on the platform are very healthy, which underscore the mission criticality platform. And then on top of the core, AI is continuing to add more contributions. It’s growing off a smaller base, but it’s already additive.

And as it becomes a larger part of the mix, its contribution will grow to the overall number will grow over time. So I think it’s a combination of a durable core, growing contributions from our AI products, strong retention are kind of all the drivers for growth. And then in addition to that I called out we are growing and at the same time we are also expanding margins and free cash flow in a very meaningful way and we are being very disciplined in terms of how we are using that money and allocating that capital. So all in all the goal for us is to be a compounding free cash flow per share story and our free cash flow per share that we’ve guided to this year is over $7 and growing faster than free cash flow at above 20%.

So I think that’s how I would characterize kind of the quarter and things kind of going forward.

OPERATOR

That’s all the time we have for questions today. This concludes the question and answer session and today’s conference call. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

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