C3 AI Announces Fiscal Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – May 29, 2024 – C3.ai, Inc. (“C3 AI,” “C3,” or the “Company”) (NYSE: AI), the Enterprise AI application software company, today announced financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full fiscal year ended April 30, 2024.

“We finished a strong quarter and closed out a huge year for C3 AI. This was our fifth consecutive quarter of accelerating revenue growth. Our fourth quarter revenue grew by 20% year-over-year to $86.6 million, exceeding the top end of our guidance. Our full year revenue grew by 16% to $310.6 million, also exceeding the top end of our guidance,” said C3 AI CEO and Chairman Thomas M. Siebel. “Demand for Enterprise AI is intensifying, and our first to market advantage in Enterprise AI positions us well to capitalize on it. Our Enterprise AI applications have been adopted across 19 industries, underscoring increasing market diversity. Our federal revenue grew by more than 100% for the year. The interest we are seeing in our generative AI applications is staggering.”

Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2024 Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Total revenue for the quarter was $86.6 million, an increase of 20% compared to $72.4 million one year ago.
• Subscription Revenue: Subscription revenue for the quarter was $79.9 million, constituting 92% of total revenue, an increase of 41% compared to $56.9 million one year ago.
• Gross Profit: GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $51.6 million, representing a 60% gross margin. Non-GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $60.9 million, representing a 70% non-GAAP gross margin.
• Net Loss per Share: GAAP net loss per share was $(0.59). Non-GAAP net loss per share was $(0.11).
• Cash Reserves: $750.4 million in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities.
• Free Cash Flow: Positive free cash flow of $18.8 million.

Full Year Fiscal 2024 Financial Highlights

• Revenue: Total revenue for the fiscal year was $310.6 million, an increase of 16% compared to $266.8 million one year ago.
• Subscription Revenue: Subscription revenue for the fiscal year was $278.1 million, constituting 90% of total revenue, an increase of 21% compared to $230.4 million one year ago.
• Gross Profit: GAAP gross profit for the fiscal year was $178.6 million, representing 57% gross margin. Non-GAAP gross profit was $215.6 million, representing 69% non-GAAP gross margin.
• Net Loss per Share: GAAP net loss per share was $(2.34). Non-GAAP net loss per share was $(0.47).

Business Highlights

C3 AI is leading with Enterprise AI applications. In FY24, 88% of all bookings were driven by application sales and 12% of our bookings were driven by sales of the C3 AI Platform.

• In FY24, the Company closed 191 agreements (an increase of 52% year-over-year) including 123 pilots (an increase of 151% year-over-year).
• In the fourth quarter of FY24, the Company entered into new agreements with ExxonMobil, A.P. Moller-Maersk, General Mills, Quest Diagnostics, Flextronics, BASF Petronas, Worley Limited, Thales Group, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Intelligence Community, the U.S. National Science Foundation, The Secil Group, Cargill, Nucor Corporation, and Dow, among others.
• In State & Local Government, the Company expanded its engagement with Riverside County in California to include commercial property appraisals and entered into a new agreement with the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office.
• In the fourth quarter of FY24, the Company closed 47 agreements, including 34 new pilots and continued to diversify across industries.
  • In the fourth quarter of FY24, our bookings distribution by industry was as follows:

    Federal, Defense and Aerospace	49.5%
    Oil and Gas	15.2%
    State and Local Government	10.8%
    Manufacturing	6.7%
    Energy and Utilities	6.0%
    Consumer Packaged Goods	5.1%
    Professional Services	4.8%
    Agriculture	0.7%
    Hospitals and Healthcare	0.6%
    Others	0.6%

  • In the fourth quarter of FY24, our pilot distribution by industry was as follows:

    Manufacturing	29.4%
    Federal, Defense and Aerospace	20.6%
    Agriculture	11.8%
    Chemicals	8.8%
    Life Sciences	5.9%
    Oil and Gas	5.9%
    State and Local Government	5.9%
    Energy and Utilities	5.9%
    Logistics and Transportation	2.9%
    Construction	2.9%

Customer Success

C3 AI remains the leader in AI-powered predictive maintenance solutions, continuing to deliver significant economic value across industries, with heavy adoption in the Industrial, Manufacturing, and Energy sectors.

• Dow, one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers, is enhancing its predictive maintenance capabilities with C3 AI. Using C3 AI Reliability, Dow reduced steam cracker downtime and is now scaling out C3 AI Reliability to additional sites and assets. Additionally, Dow will install C3 Generative AI on top of C3 AI Reliability to provide equipment operators with AI insights, improve alert responses, and expedite the personnel onboarding process.

   

“C3 AI is our partner that’s working with us on predictive analytics around [steam] crackers — so a 20% reduction around [steam] cracker downtime, by looking at furnace operations and how that works, is a big outcome that we’re expecting,” said Jim Fitterling, CEO, Dow. “We’ve got it on one [steam] cracker right now and then we’ll look to scale that across the fleet.”

• Holcim, a European leader in sustainable building solutions, started with a C3 AI Reliability production pilot in May 2023 and now has 31 facilities in production, monitoring 3,000 sensors from critical equipment including vertical roller mills.

   

  “C3 AI is playing an important role in Holcim’s digital transformation, providing innovative AI solutions that drive efficiency and sustainability,” said Roze Wesby, Head of Plants of Tomorrow, Holcim. “The collaboration between C3 AI and Holcim has led to advancements in operational efficiency at scale, raising the bar for predictive maintenance in our sites. Thanks to C3 AI’s platforms, Holcim has achieved a step-change in asset lifecycle management; improving our reliability and capacity for our customers, as well as reducing environmental impact.”

• Con Edison, one of the nation’s largest energy companies that delivers electric, gas, and steam power to approximately 10 million customers, uses the C3 AI Platform to improve operational efficiency, public safety, billing performance, customer satisfaction, and energy efficiency. Starting with the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) project in 2017, Con Edison has worked with C3 AI to build out an Enterprise AI program, including applications to predict meter health issues, optimize and conserve voltage outputs, and quickly detect customer safety concerns.

   

  “The AMI project, the largest in Con Edison’s history, included the deployment of 5.3 million smart meters and resulted in significant benefits such as improved outage management and energy efficiency,” said Tom Magee, General Manager, AMI Operations & Solutions, Con Edison. “The use of AI and machine learning has enhanced public safety, optimized grid operation, and achieved substantial energy savings and emission reductions for customers.”

Federal Growth

• C3 AI’s Federal business had a remarkable year with revenue more than doubling in FY24.
• The Company closed 65 Federal agreements, an increase of 48% year-over-year and made inroads to 10 new Federal organizations.
• In the fourth quarter of FY24, the Company entered into new and expansion agreements with the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Marine Corps, the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, the Chief Digital Artificial Intelligence Office, Thales Group, and the National Science Foundation.
• The U.S. Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office (RSO) entered into a renewed agreement, significantly expanding their AI footprint by expanding the capabilities and increasing the number of aircraft and systems monitored on the Predictive Analytics and Decision Assistant (PANDA) application. PANDA, co-developed by the U.S. Air Force and C3 AI, optimizes fleet maintenance, increases aircraft availability, and minimizes downtime. The application, which is the designated U.S. Air Force System of Record for all predictive maintenance projects within the RSO, will now monitor systems on two new aircraft (T-7 and KC-46) and expand to include new systems of three currently monitored aircraft (B-1B, C-5, and KC-135).

   

  “C3 AI’s cutting-edge technology has been a game-changer for the U.S. Air Force, driving unparalleled advancements in predictive analytics and maintenance,” said Jimmy Lawrence, Deputy Program Executive Officer and Deputy Director for the Rapid Sustainment Office, USAF Life Cycle Management Center, USAF Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio. “The implementation of C3 AI’s solutions has revolutionized the operational capabilities of the Air Force, leading to significant improvements in aircraft readiness and efficiency.”

• The U.S. Navy entered into a new agreement that builds on the work between C3 AI and the U.S. Air Force on the Crowd-Sourced Flight Data (CSFD) Program and expands it into flight test parametric analysis of electronic emissions on the F-35. The CSFD Program enables the rapid delivery of software-defined warfighter capabilities, decreasing risks to operational forces by discovering and resolving anomalies in fielded weapon systems before those systems are required in combat.

Partner Network

C3 AI’s partners remain a key driver of growth and customer success.

• In FY24, C3 AI closed 115 agreements through its partner network, an increase of 62% year-over-year. This includes 91 agreements with AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure.
• The joint 12-month qualified opportunity pipeline with partners increased by 63% year-over-year.
• In the fourth quarter of FY24, partner supported bookings grew by 76% year-over-year with the Company closing 28 agreements through its partner network, including AWS, Baker Hughes, Booz Allen, Google Cloud, and Microsoft.
• The Company deepened its partnership with Fractal and Paradyme to support Version 8 upgrades, customer service engagements, and pilot delivery. These organizations have established dedicated practices around C3 AI and are committed to training over 200 C3 AI–qualified engineers and data scientists in FY25.

C3 Generative AI

The broad applicability of C3 Generative AI is driving the Company into new verticals and accelerating industry diversification.

• In FY24, the Company closed 58 pilot agreements for C3 Generative AI across 15 different industries. The distribution by industry was as follows:

  Federal, Defense and Aerospace	20.7%
  Manufacturing	12.1%
  Agriculture	10.3%
  State and Local Government	10.3%
  Financial Services	6.9%
  Chemicals	5.2%
  Construction	5.2%
  Consumer Packaged Goods	5.2%
  Energy and Utilities	5.2%
  Oil and Gas	5.2%
  Pharmaceuticals and Life Sciences	5.2%
  Others	8.5%

• In the fourth quarter of FY24, the Company closed 13 C3 Generative AI pilots with ExxonMobil, Cargill, Dow, Hunter Engineering, Norfolk Iron & Metal, Revvity, and the National Science Foundation, among others.
• The Company further differentiated C3 Generative AI from other market offerings with:
  • Streamlined omni-modal data integration through a visual administrative interface, allowing queries across multiple sources such as Snowflake, Oracle, Databricks tables, and documents in Amazon S3 and Google Cloud.
  • Proprietary, fine-tuned large language models (LLMs) for more capable, accurate, and faster structured data queries.
  • Automatic support for questions and answers in over 130 languages.
  • Dynamic swapping of LLMs and retrievers with a single click, including automatic updates to related retrieval configurations, baseline prompts, and orchestration parameters.
  • Advanced support for querying images and data tables embedded in documents.
  • Enhanced accuracy with automated topic modeling of data contained in documents.
  • Availability of all core product features in air-gapped environments.
  • Advanced orchestration for complex queries involving multiple LLMs and retrieval tools.
  • Improved C3 Generative AI Co-Pilot LLM to accelerate the productivity of developers and data scientists on the C3 AI Platform.

Financial Outlook:

We are expecting additional acceleration of C3 AI revenue growth to approximately 23% in FY25. We plan to continue to invest in growth to build a long-term cash generating profitable market leader in Enterprise AI.

The Company’s guidance includes GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.

The following table summarizes C3 AI’s guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2025 and full-year fiscal 2025:

A reconciliation of non-GAAP guidance measures to corresponding GAAP measures is not available on a forward-looking basis without unreasonable effort due to the uncertainty regarding, and the potential variability of, expenses that may be incurred in the future. Stock-based compensation expense-related charges, including employer payroll tax-related items on employee stock transactions, are impacted by the timing of employee stock transactions, the future fair market value of our common stock, and our future hiring and retention needs, all of which are difficult to predict and subject to constant change. We have provided a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures in the financial statement tables for our historical non-GAAP results included in this press release. Our fiscal year ends April 30, and numbers are rounded for presentation purposes.

Conference Call Details

What:C3 AI Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal Year 2024 Financial Results Conference Call
When:Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Time:2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET
Participant Registration: https://register.vevent.com/register/BIa4098dae2ede4f80a85f5a3a50b873e3 (live call)
Webcast: https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/zjmvtizr (live and replay)

Investor Presentation Details

An investor presentation providing additional information and analysis can be found at our investor relations page at ir.c3.ai.

Statement Regarding Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The Company reports the following non-GAAP financial measures, which have not been prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP), in addition to, and not as a substitute for, or superior to, financial measures calculated in accordance with GAAP.

• Non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP loss from operations, and non-GAAP net loss per share. Our non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP loss from operations, and non-GAAP net loss per share exclude the effect of stock-based compensation expense-related charges and employer payroll tax expense related to employee stock-based compensation. We believe the presentation of operating results that exclude these non-cash items provides useful supplemental information to investors and facilitates the analysis of our operating results and comparison of operating results across reporting periods.
• Free cash flow. We believe free cash flow, a non-GAAP financial measure, is useful in evaluating liquidity and provides information to management and investors about our ability to fund future operating needs and strategic initiatives. We calculate free cash flow as net cash provided by (used in) operating activities less purchases of property and equipment and capitalized software development costs. This non-GAAP financial measure may be different than similarly titled measures used by other companies. Additionally, the utility of free cash flow is further limited as it does not represent the total increase or decrease in our cash balances for a given period.

We use these non-GAAP financial measures internally for financial and operational decision-making purposes and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Non-GAAP financial measures are not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for comparable GAAP financial measures and should be read only in conjunction with our condensed consolidated financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP. Our presentation of non-GAAP financial measures may not be comparable to similar measures used by other companies. We encourage investors to carefully consider our results under GAAP, as well as our supplemental non-GAAP information and the reconciliation between these presentations, to more fully understand our business. Please see the tables included at the end of this release for the reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP financial measures.

Use of Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “will” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding our market leadership position, anticipated benefits from our partnerships, financial outlook, our sales and customer opportunity pipeline including our industry diversification, the expected benefits of our offerings (including the potential benefits of our C3 Generative AI offerings), and our business strategies, plans, and objectives for future operations. We have based these forward-looking statements largely on our current expectations and projections about future events and trends that we believe may affect our financial condition, results of operations, business strategy, short-term and long-term business operations and objectives, and financial needs. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including our history of losses and ability to achieve and maintain profitability in the future, our historic dependence on a limited number of existing customers that account for a substantial portion of our revenue, our ability to attract new customers and retain existing customers, market awareness and acceptance of enterprise AI solutions in general and our products in particular, the length and unpredictability of our sales cycles and the time and expense required for our sales efforts. Some of these risks are described in greater detail in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended July 31, 2023, October 31, 2023 and January 31, 2024, and other filings and reports we make with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time, including our Form 10-K that will be filed for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2024, although new and unanticipated risks may arise. The future events and trends discussed in this press release may not occur and actual results could differ materially and adversely from those anticipated or implied in the forward-looking statements. Although we believe that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance, achievements, or events and circumstances reflected in the forward-looking statements will occur. Except to the extent required by law, we do not undertake to update any of these forward-looking statements after the date of this press release to conform these statements to actual results or revised expectations.