REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – May 31, 2023 – C3.ai, Inc. (NYSE: AI), the Enterprise AI application software company, today announced financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full fiscal year ended April 30, 2023.
Fiscal Fourth Quarter 2023 Financial Highlights
- Revenue: Total revenue for the quarter was $72.4 million.
- Subscription Revenue: Subscription revenue for the quarter was $56.9 million, constituting 79% of revenue.
- Gross Profit: GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $47.5 million, representing a 66% gross margin. Non-GAAP gross profit for the quarter was $53.9 million, representing a 74% non-GAAP gross margin.
- Remaining Performance Obligations (“RPO”): GAAP RPO was $381.4 million.
- Current RPO: Current RPO of $186.3 million.
- Net Loss per Share: GAAP net loss per share was $(0.58). Non-GAAP net loss per share was $(0.13).
- Cash Reserves: $812.4 million in cash, cash equivalents, and investments.
- Free Cash Flow: Positive free cash flow $16.3 million.
Full Year Fiscal 2023 Financial Highlights
- Revenue: Total revenue for the fiscal year was $266.8 million, an increase of 5.6% compared to FY 22.
- Subscription Revenue: Subscription revenue for the fiscal year was $230.4 million, constituting 86% of revenue, representing 11.4% growth over FY 22.
- Gross Profit: GAAP gross profit for the fiscal year was $180.5 million, representing 68% gross margin. Non-GAAP gross profit was $205.2 million, representing 77% non-GAAP gross margin.
- Net Loss per Share: GAAP net loss per share was $(2.45). Non-GAAP net loss per share was $(0.42).
Overall Business Results:
We believe it is generally agreed today that the market for enterprise AI applications is substantially larger and growing at a much greater growth rate than experts predicted. C3 AI has been at the vanguard of the enterprise AI market for over a decade as that market has developed from its roots in IoT, to unsupervised learning, supervised learning, NLP, deep learning, reinforcement learning, and now generative AI.
The interest in applying AI to business processes is more active than we’ve ever seen.
C3 AI Applications:
As the enterprise AI market develops, it appears that the bulk of the demand is increasingly for turnkey enterprise AI applications, rather than development tools. An evaluation of our bookings for the past fiscal year indicates that 83% of our bookings were driven by application sales. 17% of our bookings were driven by sales of the C3 AI Platform.
C3 AI delivers over 40 enterprise AI applications today.
We are seeing increasing diversity in the industries we serve. For FY 23, an analysis of our bookings includes:
| Oil & Gas | 33.8 % |
| Federal, Defense & Aerospace | 28.9 % |
| High Tech | 13.2 % |
| Energy & Utilities | 11.4 % |
| Manufacturing | 4.2 % |
| Food Processing | 2.0 % |
| Chemicals | 1.8 % |
| Life Sciences | 1.5 % |
| Other | 3.2 % |
An important leading indicator of our increasing industry diversity is evidenced by the trial and pilot agreements closed in Q4 FY 23:
| Federal, Defense & Aerospace | 36.8 % |
| Manufacturing | 15.8 % |
| High Tech | 10.5 % |
| Oil & Gas | 10.5 % |
| Agriculture | 5.3 % |
| State and Local | 5.3 % |
| Chemicals | 5.3 % |
| Energy & Utilities | 5.3 % |
| Financial Services | 5.3 % |
As a result of increasing market demand for enterprise AI — and from our adoption of consumption-based pricing — we are seeing a substantial increase in opportunities and shorter sales cycles.
In the fourth quarter of FY 23, the company closed 43 agreements, including 19 pilots. The number of qualified enterprise opportunities targeted for closure within 12 months in our sales pipeline has increased by more than 100% in the past year. During FY 23, we closed 126 agreements, up from 83 the prior year. The average sales cycle for agreements in Q4 FY 23 was 3.7 months, down from 5 months in Q4 FY 22.
An examination of the composition of our pilot account profile suggests there is significant opportunity for growth as these accounts convert to consumption pricing. Of the 19 pilot accounts signed in Q4 FY 23:
| Pilots | Account size in revenue |
| 7 | >$100 billion |
| 7 | $10 – $100 billion |
| 4 | $1 – $10 billion |
| 0 | $100 million – $ 1 billion |
| 1 | < $100 million |
In FY 23, C3 AI expanded its application footprint at Shell, Koch Industries, U.S. Air Force Rapid Sustainment Office (“RSO”), PwC, Ball, ExxonMobil, Con Edison, Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (“DCSA”), Baker Hughes, New York Power Authority, Duke Energy, ATB, Defense Innovation Unit, Roche, Cargill, and Engie, among others.
In FY 23, we established new customer relationships with Department of Defense – Common DoD Artificial Intelligence Office; Daly City, CA; DOW; ExxonMobil; Flex; General Mills; Hexagon; Nucor; O-I; Pantaleon; Riverside County, CA; Stark County, Ohio; Telus; DoD-SOCOM; DoD-TRANSCOM; ESAB, and others. Many of these also expanded their C3 AI engagements during the year.
C3 AI Partner Network
C3 AI’s partner ecosystem is increasingly effective at opening new doors, providing prospects the assurance of success, and providing customers with the highest quality service. In FY 23, we closed 71 agreements with and through our partner network including Google Cloud, AWS, Microsoft, Baker Hughes, Booz Allen, and others. C3 AI has grown its qualified 12-month opportunity pipeline with AWS by over 24% in the last quarter, with particular focus on state and local government. With Google Cloud, our joint qualified 12-month opportunity pipeline grew from 25 opportunities at the end of FY 22 to 140 opportunities at the end of FY 23, a 460% increase. We closed 10 new oil & gas accounts in the year with Baker Hughes including ExxonMobil, ADNOC, ENI, and others.
C3 Generative AI:
In Q4 we released the C3 Generative AI solution to the market. It is distinguished from other GPT/LLM solutions in the market in that – leveraging the capabilities of the C3 AI Platform — it 1) allows enterprises access to all their enterprise data and open source data – ERP, CRM, SCADA, text, PDFs, Excel, PowerPoint, sensor data, open source, etc.; 2) provides traceable, deterministic, consistent answers; 3) enforces corporate information access controls and security protocols, 4) has no risk of LLM-caused data or IP exfiltration; and 5) is hallucination-free.
We rapidly closed three C3 Generative AI application agreements in the quarter with large enterprises, including Georgia Pacific, Flint Hills Resources, and the U.S. Department of Defense Missile Defense Agency (MDA). These applications are expected to be live in Q1 FY 24. We are currently working a substantial pipeline of additional C3 Generative AI opportunities with large corporations. The C3 Generative AI application is now available on both the AWS and Google Cloud marketplaces. It is difficult to estimate the size of the addressable market for these solutions, but it appears extraordinarily large.
C3 AI Federal Momentum:
The U.S. Federal Sector represented 29% of our bookings in FY 23.
The U.S. Air Force selected C3 AI as the System of Record for AI-enabled predictive maintenance. C3 AI’s predictive maintenance solution, Predictive Analytics & Decision Assistant (“PANDA”), has been in production use for several years at the USAF Rapid Sustainment Office (“RSO”). This designation expands C3 AI’s opportunity to all predictive maintenance applications in the U.S. Air Force.
Plan for Profitability:
The company continues on-track with its plan to profitability, with the goal of achieving a sustainably non-GAAP profitable business by the end of fiscal year 2024, ending April 30, 2024. Positive results to date, including $16.3 million positive free cash flow from business operations in Q4 FY 23.
CEO Comments:
“As we began the fiscal year on May 1, the Company has never been better positioned,” said Thomas M. Siebel, C3 AI CEO. “I believe we now have broad consensus that the addressable market for Enterprise AI is extraordinarily large and rapidly growing; we have nearly 1,000 talented, dedicated employees; the C3 AI Platform is increasingly recognized as the gold-standard in enterprise AI; we have over 40 production enterprise AI applications that offer the market rapid time to value; our C3 Generative AI offerings are being enthusiastically received; our growing market-partner ecosystem provides us extraordinary reach; with our tried, tested, and proven management team, our strong work ethic, and armed with $812 million in cash — we are well positioned to accelerate growth, gain market share, attain sustainable non-GAAP profitability, and establish a market-leading position globally in enterprise AI. FY 2024 will be exciting.”
Financial Outlook:
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 2024 and full-year fiscal 2024:
| (in millions) | First Quarter Fiscal 2024 Guidance | Full Year Fiscal 2024 Guidance |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | $70.0 – $72.5 | $295.0 – $320.0 |
| Non-GAAP loss from operations | ($25.0) – ($30.0) | ($50.0) – ($75.0) |
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.
C3 AI Investor Day – June 22, 2023:
C3 AI will be hosting an Investor Day in New York City to provide C3 AI investors a company update additional information about our product roadmap; product demonstrations; direct access to the C3 AI Executive team; updates on the partner eco-system; C3 Generative AI demonstrations; and additional company developing news. The event will be broadcast to the investor community at large via live webcast.
Conference Call Details
| What: | C3 AI Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2023 Financial Results Conference Call |
| When: | Wednesday, May 31, 2023 |
| Time: | 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET |
| Participant Registration: | https://register.vevent.com/register/BI82803676bd9a45f486a3df9d2260d9a6 (live call) |
| Webcast: | https://edge.media-server.com/mmc/p/4mip8zax (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. All statements contained in this press release other than statements of historical facts, including our market leadership position, anticipated benefits from our partnerships and investments, financial outlook, our expectations relating to our new consumption-pricing model and the impact to our results of operations, our expectation to be operating profitably on a non-GAAP basis by the end of fiscal 2024, the expected benefits of our offerings, our business strategies, plans, and objectives for future operations, are forward-looking statements. The words “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “will” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. 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 difficulties in evaluating our prospects and future results of operations given our limited operating history, our 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, and our history of operating losses. 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, 2022, October 31, 2022 and January 31, 2022, 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, 2023, 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.
