The call in brief
Read the Q1 2026 earnings summary ↗monday.com opened fiscal 2026 with Q1 revenue up 24% year-over-year to $351 million, a record $49 million in operating profit, and a 29% adjusted free cash flow margin, while gross retention hit historical highs and $50K-plus customers reached 42% of ARR. The company repositioned its core product from monday Work Management to the monday AI Work Platform, launched mondaydb 3.0 with a 100x scale increase, introduced a seats-plus-credits consumption pricing model for new customers, and agreed to acquire voice-agent company One AI. AI drove roughly 10% of net new ARR even before the new agents product contributed. Management raised full-year revenue guidance to $1.466-$1.474 billion (19-20% growth) and lifted operating income guidance, but flagged that overall NDR should slightly decline, gross margin will drift toward the mid-80s on AI compute costs, and the guide implies some second-half moderation. Headwinds included soft paid-search top-of-funnel demand and an approximately 190 basis point FX drag from shekel appreciation.
- Q1 fiscal 2026 revenue grew 24% year-over-year to $351 million, reflecting sustained demand as enterprises consolidate their work infrastructure onto the platform.
- monday.com generated a record $49 million in operating profit, up from $40.8 million in the year-ago quarter.
- Adjusted free cash flow was $102.8 million and adjusted free cash flow margin expanded to 29%.
- Gross retention continued to improve and reached historical highs for the company.
- Customers with over $50,000 in ARR now represent 42% of total ARR, and the company delivered a record number of new customers with over $500,000 in ARR.
- Approximately 10% of net new ARR in Q1 was driven by AI products such as Vibe, AI Blocks, and Sidekick, even before the newly released agents product contributed.
- AI is delivering internal gains, driving a 32% increase in output per developer and a 38% reduction in product time to market since 2025.
- 34% of the $50,000-plus ARR cohort has adopted more than one product, up from 29% in Q4.
- New products now account for over 11% of ARR, and monday CRM surpassed $100 million in ARR.
- Average contract value grew 22% year-over-year, with double-digit seat growth in both mid-market and enterprise segments.
- March was described as one of the strongest months the company has ever had, and pipeline remained very strong.
- The company launched the monday AI Work Platform and mondaydb 3.0, delivering a 100x increase in scale from 100,000 items per board to over 10 million.
- The top-of-funnel environment remained soft, particularly in paid search, in line with expectations set at the start of the year.
- Overall NDR was 110% in Q1 and management now expects it to slightly decline by the end of fiscal year 2026.
- Management expects 1% to 2% of temporary pressure on upmarket NDR metrics for the remainder of fiscal 2026 as it laps prior pricing benefit.
- The 100K customer NDR is running slightly below the 50K cohort NDR because larger customers land bigger on multi-year deals rather than expanding over time.
- Operating margin absorbed an approximately 190 basis points negative FX impact, mainly from appreciation of the Israeli shekel against the US dollar.
- Net income declined to $56 million from $58.4 million in the year-ago quarter, and gross margin declined to 89% from 90%.
- The accelerated share buyback executed during Q1 is expected to reduce full-year 2026 adjusted free cash flow by approximately $20 million.
- Full-year guidance implies some moderation in the second half, reflecting expected increases in AI compute costs and uncertainty in how AI revenue ramps.
Management Commentary
Read the Q1 2026 summary ↗Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's conference call to discuss the financial results for monday.com's first quarter fiscal year 2026. Joining me today are Roy Mann and Eran Zinman, Co-CEOs of monday.com, Eliran Glazer, monday.com CFO, and Casey George, monday.com CRO. We released our results for the first quarter fiscal year 2026 earlier today. You can find our quarterly shareholder letter along with the investor presentation and a replay of today's webcast under the News and Events section of our IR website at ir.monday.com. Certain statements made on the call today will be forward-looking statements, which reflect management's best judgment based on currently available information. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from our expectations.
Please refer to our earnings release for more information on the specific factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from our forward-looking statements. Additionally, non-GAAP financial measures will be discussed on the call. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures are available in the earnings release and the earnings presentation for today's call, which are posted on our investor relations website. Now, let me turn the call over to Roy.
Thank you, Byron, and thank you everyone for joining us today. monday.com delivered a strong start to 2026. Q1 revenue grew 24% year-over-year, reflecting sustained demand for our platform as enterprises consolidate their work infrastructures. We generated a record $49 million in operating profit, demonstrating that our growth is increasingly efficient. Adjusted free cash flow margin expanded to 29%, underscoring the financial durability of our business model. Gross retention continued to improve in Q1, reaching historical highs for the company, reflecting how deeply monday.com is embedded in how our customers run their businesses. Enterprise momentum continued to build with 42% of ARR coming from our customers with over $50,000 in ARR.
A record number of new customers with over 500K in ARR and average contract values continued to expand, reinforcing that the consolidation of work infrastructure onto monday.com is a durable enterprise-led trend. The market is also responding to our AI product. Approximately 10% of our net new ARR in Q1 was driven by AI, a figure we expect to grow as our AI offering expand and mature. We are also seeing the benefits of AI play out inside monday.com itself. Since 2025, AI has driven a 32% increase in our output per developer and a 38% reduction in product time to market. AI gives our engineers the bandwidth to be more rigorous about the architecture, edge cases, and long-term maintainability. The result is a team that ships more and breaks less.
We believe this is an early but meaningful signal of what AI-native engineering looks like in practice, and we intend to keep pushing on that frontier. Now, let me turn it over to Eran to walk you through some of the significant progress we've made in our AI-driven products during the quarter.
Thank you, Roy. At our Investor Day last September, we laid out a fundamental shift in how we see monday.com. Not a platform that helps teams manage work, but one that actually does the work for them. Last week, we took the most significant step in that journey, changing our core offering from monday Work Management to monday AI Work Platform. This is not a feature release or a rebrand. We have re-architectured the core of our platform around a single belief that work should be orchestrated between humans and AI agents at scale from a single system of records. AI agents that execute work, flexible software that adapts to how teams operate, and enterprise-grade governance, all grounded in mondaydb, our single source of truth that give AI the context to drive real outcomes.
This quarter, we took that foundation further with mondaydb 3.0, delivering a 100x increase in scale from 100,000 items per board to over 10 million with high performance, low latency execution designed to accelerate AI adoption rather than constrain it. A standalone AI tool that can automate a task, monday.com can run an entire operation. With more than 250,000 customers already running their work inside monday.com, we have a data advantage that no point solution can replicate. Alongside the platform launch, we're making an equally important change to how customers pay for monday.com. We recently introduced a new seats plus credits pricing structure for new customers, moving to consumption-based pricing that aligns what customers pay with the value AI actually delivers. As AI agents takes on more work across organizations, revenue expands naturally without requiring additional seats purchases.
We plan to allow existing customers to opt in to this new model, with enterprise customers receiving complimentary AI packages to support adoption at scale. In addition to that, we are excited to announce our agreement to acquire One AI. Their team has spent years solving one of the hardest problems in enterprise AI, making voice agents that actually work in production environments. With this acquisition, we are bringing native voice capabilities directly into the AI Work Platform, extending the ways agents can engage with customers and teams. We're not managing monday.com as a company defending its position. We are rebuilding it as the company that defines what an AI Work Platform means for businesses. Q1 was a strong step in that direction. We remain focused on execution, and we look forward to demonstrating continued progress throughout 2026.
With that, I'll turn it over to Eliran to cover our financial and guidance.
Thank you, Eran, and thank you to everyone for joining our call. Today, I'll review our first quarter fiscal year 2026 results in detail and provide updated fiscal year 2026 guidance. As Roy mentioned, we have had a strong start to 2026. Total revenue in Q1 came in at $351 million, up 24% from the year-ago quarter. Our overall NDR was 110% in Q1. We now expect overall NDR to slightly decline by the end of fiscal year 2026. As a reminder, our NDR is a trailing four-quarter weighted average calculation. For the reminder of the financial metrics disclosed, unless otherwise noted, I will be referencing a non-GAAP financial measures. We have provided a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial in our earnings release.
First quarter gross margin was 89% compared to 90% in the year-ago quarter. Research and development expense was $78.4 million in Q1, or 22% of revenue, up from 19% in the year-ago quarter. Sales and marketing expense was $158.2 million in Q1, or 45% in revenue, compared to 48% in the year-ago quarter. General and administrative expense was $28.6 million in Q1, or 8% of revenue, compared to 9% in the year-ago quarter. Operating income was $49 million in Q1, up from $40.8 million from the year-ago quarter, and operating margin was 14%, similar to the year-ago quarter. Operating margin in Q1 had an approximately 190 basis points negative FX impact, mainly from the appreciation of the Israeli shekel compared to the US dollar.
Net income was $56 million in Q1, compared to $58.4 million from the year-ago quarter. Diluted net income per share was $1.15 in Q1, based on 48.9 million fully diluted shares outstanding. Total employee headcount was 3,211, an increase of 56 employees since Q4 2025. For the remainder of fiscal year 2026, we expect headcount to stay largely flat, reflecting the productivity gains AI is already delivering across our organization. Moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow. We ended the quarter with $1.21 billion in cash equivalents and marketable securities, compared to $1.67 billion at the end of Q4 2025, reflecting $553 million of shares repurchase executed during the quarter.
As of the end of Q1, approximately $182 million remained available under our existing share repurchase authorization program. Adjusted free cash flow for Q1 was $102.8 million, and adjusted free cash flow margin was 29%. We now estimate that the accelerated share buyback executed during Q1 will reduce full year 2026 adjusted free cash flow by approximately $20 million. Adjusted free cash flow is defined as net cash from operating activities, less cash used for property and equipment and capitalized software cost, plus cost associated with the build-out and expansion of our corporate headquarters. Let's now turn to our updated outlook for fiscal year 2026.
For the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, we expect our revenue to be in the range of $354 million-$356 million, representing growth rate of 18%-19% year-over-year. We expect non-GAAP operating income of $46 million-$48 million, with an operating margin of 13%-14%, which assumes a negative FX impact of 100-200 basis points. For the full year 2026, we expect revenue to be in the range of $1.466 billion-$1.474 billion, representing growth of 19%-20% year-over-year.
We expect full year non-GAAP operating income of $185 million to $191 million, with an operating margin of approximately 13%, which assume a negative FX impact of 100 to 200 basis points. We expect full year adjusted free cash flow of $280 million to $290 million, with adjusted free cash flow margin of 19%-20%, which assume a negative FX impact of 100 to 200 basis points. Let me now turn it over to the operator for your questions.
Analyst Q&A
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