Transcripts

DocuSign, Inc.'s management answers for the business every quarter. These are the exchanges that explain it best — verbatim, from the call transcripts preserved in Sources. Each link opens the full transcript at that page in a new tab.

Q1 Fiscal Year 2027 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2027

The current business in management's own words: where the AI advantage comes from, how IAM is priced, how Docusign positions against the model vendors it partners with, and why growth is still single-digit. · Open the full transcript →

The claimed AI moat, quantified: private consented agreement data for accuracy, 50x cheaper processing.

Allan Thygesen (CEO): Docusign’s significant advantage in agreement AI enables IAM to deliver superior performance. Our AI engine, Iris, harnesses frontier LLM intelligence and combines those capabilities with Docusign’s orchestration, deep domain expertise, and unmatched body of agreement data. Hundreds of millions of consented, private agreements have been ingested into IAM, with millions more flowing in every week. We continue to believe we can achieve up to a 15 percentage point improvement in precision and recall compared to our models trained on public contract data, while operating at incredible cost efficiency. We’ve optimized AI processing costs by more than 50x compared to running direct prompts on LLMs.

Our other advantages include enterprise-grade security, an expansive ecosystem of over 1,100 third-party integrations, and long-established global distribution relationships. Our deep understanding of customer workflows and context creates a significant advantage as we integrate agents that can autonomously perform tasks for customers – safely, at their direction, under their control, with Docusign providing compliance guardrails.

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The flywheel management is counting on: IAM workflows generate more signatures, which pulls eSignature consumption up.

Robbie Owens (Piper Sandler); Allan Thygesen (CEO): Could you speak in more detail around the difference you're seeing in consumption from customers who are on IAM versus those who are not? I realize it's still early IAM penetrates more of the low end. But as you're moving into enterprise customers, maybe help us understand those differences in consumption, both those on IAM versus those that aren't, and how this changes over time with those that have been using IAM. […] Yes. I'll start, and Blake, feel free to jump in afterwards. Yes, so we are seeing a lift in eSign consumption, which I assume is what you're referring to—from customers who adopted IAM relative to their prior trend line. It's significant, and we're not disclosing the exact percentage, but it's meaningful. It just reinforces the macro point that eSign is a core component of the overall IAM platform and is an enabler ,and in turn is also enabled by many of the workflow components in IAM. So for example, if you make it easier to create a new agreement workflow that culminates in a signature, then you can generate more signatures.

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The answer to why the model vendors will not simply take this market: data, cross-functional workflow, trust, distribution.

Michael Turrin (Wells Fargo Securities); Allan Thygesen (CEO): The data advantage that we are—we have access to customer agreements. They have historically trusted us with those agreements. We now have getting additional consents to process them with AI. We're well over 200 million private consented agreements that are being processed with AI and that gives additional accuracy and texture and we've cited some of the increased accuracy potential that, that data provides. Then you’ve got all the workflows to touch agreements across every function. So this isn't just about making legal more efficient—that's super important—but everybody who touches agreement, sales, procurement, HR, finance, others that do that. I think Docusign stands alone in terms of the breadth of its portfolio there.

And then lastly, there's the trust piece. People have trusted us with agreements. Historically, we have all kinds of regulatory and compliance strengths relative to other providers and that's why people choose to host their agreements on IAM and process them that way. […] In terms of the partnerships with the LLMs, we're thrilled to be partnered with Anthropic. We just announced this week a partnership with OpenAI, and we really want to make our data and workflows available wherever people want to do their work. This has always been core to Docusign's strategy. Already with Sign, more than half of our total signed volume was consumed via API through integrations with other products. We've had a 20-year partnership with Salesforce, long partnerships with the Microsofts, SAPs, Workdays and others of the world and this is really an extension of that. Now as these chat surfaces become popular, people want to consume agreement data and agreement workflows that way and trigger them there; we want to partner with where people want to be and want to do their work. And I think what you'll see is you'll see some use cases that are general purpose chat engines, like an Anthropic or an OpenAI or Google Gemini. Some that are, should we say, function-specific – Slack is a great example used in a number of companies. And then some that are specifically tailored around invoking agreement workflows and orchestrating, and I think Docusign will be a natural place for that.

But we want to be where customers want to do their work and enable the most powerful agreement suite on the market and that's why we're partnering with them. And by the way, that's why they partner with us because they come to us to get access to those agreement documents there, the agreement workflows and the trust and unique position that Docusign occupies. So in many cases, those are the result of inbound inquiries to Docusign.

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The hardest question on the call: three and a half years in, why is growth still not double-digit?

Patrick Walravens (Citizens JMP); Allan Thygesen (CEO); Blake Grayson (CFO): I would love to have seen you guys in double digits by now. IAM is clearly working. But I think on an FX adjusted basis, maybe actually decelerated a little bit quarter-to-quarter. What has been harder than you expected? IAM is clearly working, but what's been harder? […] I don't know that we ever set a timeline. I'm not disappointed with our progress. I'm actually really pleased. I think we have a—it’s an incredible transformation moment for agreements. I think we leaned into that, articulated a compelling new vision and I think we've been right about that.

When I joined, I don't think it was quite clear exactly what shape that opportunity was going to have and what technology was going to enable us to do, but it's I think become more clearer and clearer into focus that there's a very substantial opportunity there.

We are forecasting acceleration this year and I think in years to come. And so I think everyone on the management team, not just me, is feeling very bullish about that. We have an opportunity to compound growth salvation for a while here and so we're leaning into that. […] I'll just add one more thing. On the comment on the decel excluding FX, one of the things you have to look at when you compare us on a year-over-year basis is we not only obviously have FX, but we had some pretty high digital kind of, we'll call it, add-on usage last year. And so we highlighted that as part of kind of a normalized growth rate. If you normalize for those peak numbers that we had last year, I think you'll see the word—it's not actually decelerating. It's pretty similar in line. And like Allan said, that guidance into an accelerating growth rate this year on the back, one of the very large components as IAM, along with retention gains, which we continue to make, I think it's pretty exciting and it kind of a lens to the future opportunity that we have here at Docusign.

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Competitive framing: CLM is a narrower market than IAM, and functional specialists are treated as partners, not rivals.

Patrick McIlwee (William Blair); Allan Thygesen (CEO): you are pushing into a space that's relatively competitive, notably with a lot of CLM vendors in the space. Can you just talk about how you feel you're positioned relative to some of those other vendors and broader workflow platforms in the market and what your customer conversations look like when you're in some more competitive discussions? […] Yes. We do encounter other vendors in the CLM space. As you know, there's a number of vendors in the space. I think we're clearly one of the largest and best regarded ones, but there are several. I think the CLM opportunity is significantly narrower than the broader IAM opportunity, right? CLM has historically been focused on, I would say, enterprise contract-intensive use cases, B2B negotiated contracts. And you look at what we're doing and coming at it from a different angle, what some of the new legal tech players are doing, it's a very different take on what's possible with agreements. So I think the competitive set—the market opportunity is much larger than CLM has historically been and the competitive set is evolving. […] I think we are in a very good position to be the nerve center, if you will, for agreements and then call on and connect to other tools as necessary. I think the CLM market, there's still a number of customers who specifically look for CLM solutions and we want to be very competitive for that, but we also want to open their eyes to the broader opportunity with agreements across the enterprise in every function, including things that they might not historically have thought of.

I think we're in an increasingly strong position in agreement management and coexisting with new players who come at, let's say the legal space from different angles.

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Where IAM sits on the adoption curve: 40,000 IAM customers against roughly 250,000 direct and 1.9 million total.

Allan Thygesen (CEO); Blake Grayson (CFO): I think that you get some idea from the customer count that we just shared, that that's obviously predominantly commercial customers, but we announced across over 40,000 customers for IAM and we have, let's say, 250,000 direct customers, maybe a little less if you roll up entities that are legally related. So we're starting to—it’s still early. There's still a lot of headroom just in the commercial segment and in the enterprise, we're still even earlier. I think those customers represent an even larger opportunity. We can get the kind of lift that we are seeing in commercial and enterprise in the initial deal and then there's the market expansion opportunity as we go across functions into additional divisions because you typically don't go from 0 to 100% in a large company.

So we're quite bullish on the expansion opportunity that IAM offers. We've got a lot of headroom in our commercial business and even more in the enterprise side. […] I might just add on top, as far as our new customer growth goes, IAM is driving a material portion of that and so that's super exciting. It's just that when you have an installed base the size of what Docusign has with a million, almost 1.9 million customers and over 95% of the Fortune 500, that's a big area of ground for us to cover with folks that we already have relationships with.

So I would say, excited about the new company opportunity, but it's just with the size of the installed base that we have, that's a huge opportunity as well.

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Q4 and Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2026

The annual call that reset the frame: first ARR guidance and the philosophy behind it, consumption pricing, and why IAM should be modeled as a platform shift rather than a new product line. · Open the full transcript →

Guidance philosophy stated outright: ARR is a full-year call, revised only when the whole-year bookings view moves.

Blake Grayson (CFO): This is our first year guiding to ARR and I want to provide some context on our philosophy and approach around it. Our guidance represents our current best estimates for both total ARR and IAM's trajectory based on the business data and bookings forecast available today. Therefore, we intend to only revise our ARR forecast as our underlying bookings expectations evolve for the entire year and not necessarily on a quarterly basis. As you are aware, our bookings are seasonally weighted more heavily to the second half of the year, in particular, Q4, which is typically our strongest quarter. As a result, updating our full-year ARR forecast will depend on our visibility later into the year, which will take time to achieve.

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What actually drives the FY27 acceleration — expansion bookings plus retention, with IAM still too small to carry it.

Rob Owens (Piper Sandler); Allan Thygesen (CEO): Allan, in your prepared remarks, you talked about being positioned to accelerate the business, and clearly, that's reflected here in the ARR guide. And after two years of consistent growth now calling for modest acceleration. So maybe help us unpack what's underpinning that confidence. You talked about gross retention and net retention. But can you stack rank kind of the delta between the two with IAM playing a role, maybe speak to some of the top-of-funnel activity that you're seeing as well? And lastly, along those lines, the level of conservatism that you have in this guidance relative to prior years? […] Sure. Thanks for the question. Overall, I think we're really pleased with the momentum in the business. That's what's reflected in our guide. We continue to see, I think, very strong adoption of product market fit in the commercial segment and accelerating momentum in enterprise, which represents an even larger addressable opportunity. In terms of the drivers of the growth this year, it's a combination of new expansion bookings and retention. And both are very significant focus areas inside the company. On the expansion side, as I said, it cuts across segments, primarily driven by IAM. And on the retention side, of course, the bulk of the business is in design. And I think we're doing a better and better job on retention there reflected in the increasing DNR rates. We're starting to see a modest contribution from IAM as well, which has even higher retention, but it's still a very small part of the book. So that's not a huge driver this year; of course, it will become more important as we go further out.

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Pressed on why IAM's net-new dollars flatten in the guide, and what would actually restore double-digit growth.

Tyler Radke (Citigroup); Blake Grayson (CFO): When we consider the IAM component referenced in your guidance, there's very strong growth this year. You've added approximately $280 million to $285 million of net new IAM in FY '24, which is a significant increase compared to the previous year. However, if we look at your projection for FY '27, it suggests a similar amount of net new IAM. Can you help clarify why this might not continue to grow at that rate? You have several new initiatives in the pipeline, such as consumption pricing and selling to the C-suite. What additional factors do you need to see in order to return to double-digit growth? […] Sure. Thanks for the question. What we saw this year and what we're expecting to see next year, again, it's a pretty linear progression in the IAM share of ARR. You saw us go from 2.3% to 10.8% this year. We're forecasting approximately 18% by the end of next year. A lot of that has to do with renewal cycles, right? So how are we having those discussions with our customers, getting deeper into their business, and a consultative approach around what's right for them? I would just say IAM is tracking as we hoped it would. I'm excited for it to become an even larger percentage of our business over time. It absolutely is a key growth lever for us to get to that aspirational double-digit growth rate. That, combined with improvements in gross retention, which not only are we making those in eSign, but also we are seeing in IAM contribute to that in small shares today just because we're getting our very first renewal cohorts through. But the combination of those two things, I think, helps us reach that longer-term aspirational goal of reaching double-digit growth. So hopefully, that helps.

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Consumption pricing defined: service credits, not token billing, and why it is an enterprise-only model.

Allan Verkhovski (BTIG); Allan Thygesen (CEO): Why is IAM consumption-based pricing the right way of monetizing? And what were your top learnings from the quarter in conversations with your larger customers about how much of an uplift you can drive with IAM? […] Yes. Just to be clear, the consumption pricing we're referring to is consumption, if you will, of service credits. It's not a straight-up token type billing model. So you buy a certain amount of capacity. This, of course, is not new to DocuSign, as you all know, better than almost anyone. Our eSignature business has historically revolved around an envelope model. We pre-buy envelope capacity. You can take a business as sort of a generalization of that. Now with all the different ways we can deliver value with IAM, we've basically looked at how each of those products and use cases drive value and create a credit system. We've now used that with 40, 50 customers. They've been very enthusiastic. So both our customers and our sales teams appreciate that model, and so we're now rolling it out next month. And I think that will just power most of our enterprise business going forward. We still think that for commercial customers, simpler pricing model makes sense, but for enterprises where there are so many different ways to deliver value and grow value over time that a consumption-based credit model is the right approach, and that's been validated in the last six months of trialing.

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Asked to date the return to 10% growth, the CFO declines to attach a year to the aspiration.

Allan Verkhovski (BTIG); Blake Grayson (CFO): And then, Blake, is your internal timeline for when you can get to 10% top line growth sooner, unchanged or later after this quarter and why? […] Yes. Just to be frank on this, that is our long-term aspiration for us. It is for me in the long term achievable. If we can both grow expansion and accelerate gross new bookings and improve our retention rates, that's something we could do. The when on that is not as important to me at the moment. We're going to go as fast as we can at this company and provide value to our customers. I think it's something we can achieve. It's going to take some time for us, as you can see. But I'm really excited about the opportunity ahead. But as far as the timeline or anything like that, nothing really to share.

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Why IAM ARR cannot be modeled as incremental product revenue: it is a replatforming of the installed base.

Alex Zukin (Wolfe Research); Blake Grayson (CFO): If I think about the guidance around ARR, looking at the IAM flat and that implies non-IAM ARR is going to actually get guided to get a lot meaningfully better. So just curious what's driving kind of the confidence? Is that a gross retention dynamic continuing to improve? […] Yes. Let me see if I can answer the question I think in the spirit and the way you're asking it. If you look at the IAM net new ARR and you try to compare it to the company net new ARR, that can be a tricky comparison because the way to think about IAM is really not necessarily as an incremental brand new product, but it's a platform shift, right? Like we have got a lot of people in our—in our—a lot of customers in our installed base that are moving to IAM. And remember, IAM comes with the new signature offer as well. And customers are paying for that. That's part of their IAM deals that they're doing with us. So while IAM has many incremental features on top, it's also driving that platform shift. So I encourage you to think about it because of that as a platform. Use total company ARR when thinking about our absolute dollar growth. For us, retention gains are critical. IAM is one of those big levers for us to be able to do that, that we think that will play out over time, right? Because you've got to get somebody in—a customer to move into IAM, keep them getting excited about it and then renew them as well. And so this is going to play out over years for us. And I think that I'm really excited about it. But along with that, we're making gains in our company—total company retention as well, which, as Allan said earlier, and I think all of you know, it's still predominantly an eSign business. And so for us, those two things matter a lot. I'm really excited to be able to improve upon the gains that we made this year and get even bigger ones next year.

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The margin trade being made: after 20% to 30% in three years, efficiencies now fund five named investment areas.

Patrick McIlwee (William Blair); Allan Thygesen (CEO): the flat guidance for operating margins, I understand you're reinvesting some efficiencies from the go-to-market side in R&D. Is there any context you can provide on what those investments are geared towards or what capabilities you're looking at as you invest there? […] We've gone from 20% operating margins to 30% operating margins over the last three years, growing revenue 30%, while we've dropped headcount 13%. So I think DocuSign has been already on some of the improvements that you're all seeking. I think the decision we made in planning for this year is that we're rightsized for the opportunity ahead of the growth acceleration opportunity that we have. That doesn't mean that we're not reprioritizing aggressively inside the company. So we continue to seek incremental efficiency in our go-tomarket motion. We've done a lot there, and there are going to be more opportunities and then we're investing some of that in our product and technology organization. The areas that we're investing in enterprise and AI, continued acceleration of our legal tech roadmap, federal, U.S. federal is a big opportunity for us. So those are examples of things. Security continues to be a key investment area. Those are five areas that got sort of incremental funding on top of baseline, freed up by some of the efficiencies and other functions.

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Q3 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2026

The call where the scoreboard changed: billings retired, annual ARR introduced, and the reasoning for both laid out in unusual detail. · Open the full transcript →

The reporting reset explained: billings out, annual ARR in, and why quarterly ARR would be just as timing-noisy.

Blake Grayson (CFO): This quarter, we are previewing 3 future disclosure updates that will take effect in our Q4 2026 earnings call in March. These updates reflect investor feedback, and our primary goals are to provide better transparency in measuring both our long-term growth rate and IAM's role as a growth driver, as well as to focus on the underlying dynamics of growth in our business rather than those affected by timing. Please see Slide 28 in our Q3 earnings deck for a full summary of the changes. First, at the end of every fiscal year, starting this Q4 2026, we will disclose annual recurring revenue, or ARR, including historical data for recent years. We will also provide full-year ARR growth guidance for fiscal 2027, which we will update quarterly during our first, second, and third quarters. Second, we will also introduce IAM as a percentage of ARR as a quarterly reporting metric beginning in Q4 of 2026. Consistent with the approach in fiscal 2026, we will also provide guidance in fiscal 2027 for the approximate year-end IAM percentage of ARR to create greater transparency into IAM's anticipated contribution to total growth. Finally, as previously discussed, we will no longer report billings in fiscal 2027. This quarter will be the last quarter we provide billings guidance, and Q4 of 2026 will be the last quarter we report non-GAAP billings and reconciliations in earnings materials and SEC filings. We believe replacing billings as a reporting metric with ARR metrics will improve investor understanding of how DocuSign is managing its long-term growth trajectory and minimize quarter-to-quarter timing volatility in our reporting. One question we anticipate is why not report ARR on a quarterly basis? The reason is that our quarterly net new ARR, as it is relatively small compared to our book of business, is subject to timing volatility similar or even more pronounced than quarterly billings and can be highly volatile on a year-over-year basis. For example, in fiscal 2026, we are forecasting to add approximately $240 million in net new subscription revenue or around $60 million on average per quarter. With that small of an absolute figure, slight timing fluctuations on deals can have large growth rate impacts. Similar to billings, these timing fluctuations can detract from the insight that ARR provides along with our aspiration to focus on accelerating our long-term growth. Our goal through providing annual ARR guidance, updated each quarter, along with quarterly IAM disclosures, is to provide a full transparent picture of that growth.

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First IAM renewal cohorts: renewing above the eSignature base, with expansion skewed to larger customers.

Jacob Roberge (William Blair); Allan Thygesen (CEO): Could you talk more about what you're seeing with the early renewal cohorts? It sounds like retention has been strong. But for customers that may have initially started with only a portion of their base on IAM, are you starting to see those customers shift to broader and wider IAM deployments on renewal? […] Yes. Overall, we're happy with the early results. We launched IAM in June of last year for commercial customers in North America and Australia. These are the cohorts that are renewing now, and we expanded internationally into the enterprise sector toward the end of last year. The early indicators are very positive. They renew at higher rates than our traditional signed business. We will monitor this closely. Regarding expansion, I don't have additional details at this time, but you will see it reflected in our future projections for ARR. We are optimistic that IAM will continue to grow steadily within companies over time. Smaller companies have less expansion potential, but with larger companies, when deployed in individual departments or divisions, the opportunities for expansion are greater. Overall, we feel very good about both the initial sale and the adoption and follow-up.

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Q1 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2026

The quarter the transformation cost them: a billings miss caused by their own sales-comp change, and the clearest explanation on record of how renewal timing distorts the reported metrics. · Open the full transcript →

The miss disclosed in the opening minutes, with the company's own framing: timing, not demand.

Allan C. Thygesen (CEO): As discussed last quarter, in Q1, we made several foundational go-to-market changes to realize IAM's potential. Our full year guidance anticipated that these changes would lead to lower early renewal billings in fiscal '26 after Q1. Instead, the impact happened sooner than anticipated, resulting in lower Q1 early renewals. As a result, billings growth ended slightly below our guidance range of 4% year-on-year, an outcome of timing, not demand.

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What changed in the sales model — segments, territories, comp — and management accepting the forecasting error.

Allan C. Thygesen (CEO): Efficiency gains from our rapidly improving self-service channel enabled us to make broader go-to-market changes in Q1, all with the intention of maximizing IAM's long-term potential. We migrated a meaningful cohort of customers to the self-serve first digital experience, freeing up our sales team to concentrate on higher-value prospects with greater revenue potential. Sales force changes included rolling out new customer size segments, territories, and performance-based compensation. We're using our investment dollars judiciously. And in fiscal '26, we invested in greater sales capacity without expanding our team. Our initial annual guidance expected a lower rate of early renewals in fiscal '26 as reps increasingly focus on IAM expansion potential. We anticipated the impact to take place after Q1, but the reduction in early renewals began sooner than forecasted. This resulted in lower-than-expected early renewal billings in Q1. We take responsibility for not fully anticipating the timing of the shift in our guidance.

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What a healthy renewal means here: fewer flat and partial-churn early renewals, down roughly 30% year over year.

Michael James Turrin (Wells Fargo); Blake Jeffrey Grayson (CFO): you mentioned the health of early renewals in Q1 improved. Can you unpack that piece a bit more? What were you seeing last year? Was that customers renewing smaller in certain instances and as IAM something that you now have in response? Or what else are you doing to continue to improve the health of those renewals going forward? […] From the changes we made to our go-to-market strategy, we've learned that renewals can vary; they can either expand, remain flat, or occur early with some partial churn. For flat renewals or those with partial churn, we typically prefer to renew them during their natural renewal cycle, often referred to as their on-time contract date. There are various reasons why customers may choose a flat renewal with high capacity or consumption; they may not want to expand but still need to renew. The significant takeaway from the data I shared earlier is that the proportion of flat and partial churn renewals decreased by 30% year-over-year. This indicates that our approach is working as intended, with a shift towards early renewals with expansion rather than those that experience partial churn. We recognize that not every customer will expand their commitment upon renewal, which is why I emphasize that the overall health of our renewals is strengthened by focusing on those flat renewals with expansion, as they are crucial for advancing the business.

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The metric change foreshadowed two quarters early: billings called not ideal, with ARR already under discussion.

Michael James Turrin (Wells Fargo); Blake Jeffrey Grayson (CFO): So did you consider ARR as a substitute for billings at all? Or what from your perspective makes billings the right metric to focus us all in on given some of the puts and takes and questions you're feeling here? […] Yes. No, it's a great question, and it's something that we talk about a lot. Billings is clearly not ideal because of the impact of timing, right? In this quarter and the past couple of quarters, actually, the way we handle that is we try to be really clear about that. So when it's a tailwind and it provides kind of that extra growth for us, we are trying to be very clear and transparent with folks about that. And I think we did a good job of that in the second half of last year where we had that tailwind, and we're sure to highlight it. It's also part of the reason why we're talking about IAM as a percentage of recurring revenue and book of business and not billings.

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Q1 Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2025

The landmark call where the current strategy was introduced: what IAM is, how it differs from CLM, how it would be priced, and how long management said it would take to matter. · Open the full transcript →

The original definition of IAM: eSignature and CLM plus Maestro, Navigator and App Center, and the problem claimed.

Allan Thygesen (CEO): Companies experience universal friction and frustration in managing agreements, and the costs add up. According to a recent study by Deloitte, poor agreement management systems and practices cost nearly $2 trillion in global economic value annually and cost workers billions of hours in lost time. […] The DocuSign IAM platform is a significant departure from our past approach of only offering standalone products. The platform combines our current products, including our market-leading esignature and CLM products with new platform services that customers have asked for, including DocuSign Maestro, our new agreement workflow builder to automate the creation of agreements without using code. With Maestro, customers can configure custom agreement workflows in minutes, combining DocuSign capabilities like eSignature, ID verification, and data verification with third-party apps to connect to their business processes. Second, DocuSign Navigator, largely to store, manage, and analyze a customer's entire library of accumulated agreements. This includes past agreements signed using DocuSign eSignature, as well as non-DocuSign agreements. Navigator leverages AI to transform unstructured agreements into structured data, making it easy to find agreements, quickly access vital information, and gain valuable insights from agreements. Third, DocuSign App Center, to help customers easily integrate third-party applications into their agreement workflows without any coding or expensive custom development. This is particularly powerful for DocuSign Admins and Process Builders, who can easily configure IAM for their unique agreement management needs.

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Why IAM was deliberately built lighter than CLM, and the admission that it is a harder, longer sale.

Patrick Walravens (JMP Securities); Allan Thygesen (CEO): So the launch of the IAM platform is super exciting, but it does make me wonder what are you guys going to do in terms of creating a repeatable go-to-market motion, and how are you going to sell this in a consistent manner given the way it's rolling out and the old products versus the new ones? […] First of all, we designed IAM to be very broadly applicable. Historically, in the broader contract management space and specifically CLM, it was mainly accessible to large enterprises that could afford the necessary customization and integration. IAM is more lightweight and can be deployed by a wider range of companies and users. This also means it offers a natural upsell and cross-sell opportunity to our signature product, which has a broader distribution than our CLM product. I don't want to downplay that this represents an evolution in terms of scale, the number of stakeholders, and the complexity of the sales process. However, we're leveraging our entire eSignature business, which is exciting, and we are already starting to close some deals. We just made it available through channels a week ago, so I'm cautious not to draw too many conclusions from that yet. Nevertheless, I feel confident about our ability to establish a repeatable process starting in the commercial space and then progressing to our enterprise customers. We're currently seeing a significant amount of inbound interest on the platform.

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The monetization thesis at launch: seat-based pricing at a premium, betting customers will share the value created.

Josh Baer (Morgan Stanley); Allan Thygesen (CEO); Blake Grayson (CFO): I'm curious about what capabilities are lacking or need to be introduced to better serve the broader enterprise market. Also, coul you provide some insights into the economic effects as customers start adopting IAM? […] Regarding our pricing structure, our core eSignature product has traditionally been sold based on envelope capacity, meaning customers purchase a specific number of envelopes. We also provide seat configurations, and CLM has mainly been sold on a seat basis. We are transitioning IAM to be mainly sold on a seat basis with adjustments for different user profiles and additional charges for premium features. We are managing this evolution carefully to ensure that customers who only need our basic eSignature product can still purchase it in a familiar way. At the same time, customers who wish to utilize IAM and the extensive features we have introduced can do so, albeit at a premium compared to our previous packages. This is our approach to addressing these needs. […] Our overall philosophy as we think about IAM is that if we can create more value for customers, and we believe pretty strongly IAM is going to do just that, customers will agree to share in some of that value with us. And it can come in a number of different ways, right? It can come from perhaps expansion as we become more integral to a customer and their workflows and their processes, or it can also become a stickier relationship, right, where we can drive better retention trends as well.

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Expectation-setting on day one: against a roughly $3 billion book of billings, IAM would take years to move the needle.

Blake Grayson (CFO); Allan Thygesen (CEO): Yeah. I think we'll see some lift next year, but we're not ready yet to talk about the exact magnitude. But yes, that would be a reasonable expectation. […] I want to highlight that we just launched this for general availability about a week ago, so it will take time to ramp up. We also need to consider the overall size of our business and the renewal cycles involved. Our full-year guidance is around $3 billion in billings, so moving that needle is going to require some time. I'm mostly excited about getting the launch out and ensuring a positive customer experience, while also encouraging the team to iterate on these aspects. In the early stages of a new product launch, this focus, along with the goto-market strategy, is crucial. If we get these elements right, we’ll be able to generate momentum in billings moving forward.

p. 10 · Read in context →

More calls

Q2 Fiscal Year 2026 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2026 · 13 pages · The quarter after the stumble: revenue up 9% and billings up 13%, and management's account of whether the Q1 go-to-market changes actually worked. · Open →

Q4 and Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2025 · 17 pages · Where the fiscal 2026 plan was set: the one-point early-renewal billings headwind that later blew up, the rule that reps cannot sell IAM without an uplift, and why revenue lags billings by six to seven quarters. · Open →

Q3 Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Call — Q3 FY2025 · 13 pages · IAM's first quarters in market ahead of the international and enterprise launch, with dollar net retention back to 100% from the 98% trough. · Open →

Q2 Fiscal Year 2025 Earnings Call — Q2 FY2025 · 13 pages · Analysts push on why dollar net retention stays stuck at 99% through the pandemic renewal cohorts — the retention debate that preceded the IAM ramp. · Open →

Q4 and Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Call — Q4 FY2024 · 9 pages · The efficiency reset: the February 2024 restructuring of roughly 400 employees, about 6% of the base, and how much of the savings management chose to keep rather than reinvest. · Open →

Q1 Fiscal Year 2024 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2024 · 14 pages · The pre-IAM baseline against which the transformation should be judged: dollar net retention at 105% and still falling, with a different CFO at the table. · Open →

Q1 Fiscal Year 2023 Earnings Call — Q1 FY2023 · 18 pages · The last quarter under founder-era management, with revenue growing 25% and dollar net retention at 114% — the starting point for everything that followed. · Open →