Prepared remarks
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Docebo Q1 2026 Earnings Call. The operator provided instructions on how to ask questions and manage the call. I'd now like to turn the call over to Docebo's Vice President of Investor Relations, Mike McCarthy. Please go ahead, Mike.
Thank you, Sarah. Earlier this morning, Docebo issued its fully audited Q1 2026 results. The press release, which included a link to management's prepared remarks and our quarterly investor slide deck, were all posted to our Investor Relations website. This morning's call will allow participants to ask questions about our results and the written commentary that management provided this morning. Before we begin this morning's Q&A, Docebo would like to remind listeners that certain information discussed may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking information reflects the company's current views with respect to future events. Any such information is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. For more information on the risks, uncertainties and assumptions relating to forward-looking statements, please refer to Docebo's public filings, which are available on SEDAR and EDGAR. During the call, we will reference certain non-IFRS financial measures. Although we believe these measures provide useful supplemental information about our financial performance, they are not recognized measures and do not have standardized meanings under IFRS. Please see our MD&A for additional information regarding our non-IFRS financial measures, including reconciliations to the nearest IFRS measures. Please note that unless otherwise stated, all references to any financial figures are in U.S. dollars. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Docebo's CEO, Alessio Artuffo; and our CFO, Brandon Farber. Sarah, you can open the queue.
Questions and answers
The operator opened the line for questions. Your first question comes from Ryan MacDonald with Needham.
Congrats on a great quarter. Alessio, we're obviously about a week or so post Inspire now. There were a lot of great product updates and even a lot of enthusiasm from customers around many features and functionality. But I'd love to get a sense of the conversations you're having with your prospective enterprise customers. Is the focus right now really on updating and modernizing the LMS and focusing on some of those core external use cases? Or are you starting to see some of those conversations evolve to really lead with some of the new AI features as they're thinking about the modernization cycle?
Ryan, thank you for the question. First of all, let me touch base very quickly on Docebo Inspire. Thank you to those of you that made the trip to come see what I hope you agree was an incredible experience. Inspire is always a place where the energy thrives. This year we experienced growth across all factors. We had 20% growth in attendance with over 1,000 people attending; a significant portion of our key customers were there. We had more than 20% of our ARR in the room on a financial basis. We were very pleased with the event itself. When it comes to key customers and enterprise prospects, the conversations we're having are along the lines of what you are hinting at. Let me walk you through a couple of the themes that I believe are prevalent. First, I think what I'm hearing from prospects and customers both is that we are going through the most significant transformation of the past few decades, and I'm referring to the transformation into this new agentic AI world. Our buyers are not developers; they are talent, HR, and learning leaders. Now more than ever, what they want is to partner with companies that truly operate as a partner and support the customer throughout this transformation and do not operate as technology vendors alone. That was the shared sentiment across the board. The second part of this equation is in the enterprise sector: the large majority of the market is a substitution market. Everybody has an LMS or a comparable platform. These enterprises now are facing a generational moment that is very transitional, and they are evaluating stepping out of the legacy world, often from vendors that have been preoccupied with technical debt and integrating multiple roll-ups that, as a result, have given up innovation. They don't just want a partner. They want a partner that is mature and an innovator. When you look at the landscape of our competition, I was sitting in a room with one of the largest financial services firms in North America. I flat out asked them the question: what are your alternatives to your current and soon-to-be legacy provider? The answer was Docebo. So that's it.
That's great to hear. I really appreciate all the color on that in the context. Brandon, maybe for you. I'm curious, as you think about the enterprise customer base and the opportunity and pipeline coming out of Inspire, how are you feeling about the state of the pipeline early in the year within that enterprise cohort of customers? I was also really impressed by the level of demand you're seeing for 365Talents. Curious if what you saw at Inspire is changing your view or outlook for that acquired asset in particular for 2026.
Ryan, thanks for the question. On the enterprise piece, we certainly had a great quarter from an enterprise perspective. Q1 was the first quarter where we saw real strength in the market after 2025, where there's ebbs and flows within that segment. From a Q1 perspective, it wasn't just sales execution; it was also strong demand. When I think about our guide, we're still being conservative from an enterprise perspective because one quarter is not a trend. If you look at our guidance philosophy from last year, it really took us three quarters of mid-market strength before we started embedding that assumption into our model. We're going to wait two to three quarters for enterprise strength in order for us to flow that forward. But we're seeing really strong signs in the enterprise segment that will allow us to continue to beat and raise throughout the year. From a 365 perspective, we're holding our revenue assumption at $9 million for the year. We saw really strong demand from our Docebo customers at Inspire; I believe there was a stat about 50% of our customers going through the booth and viewing the demo. So we're seeing strong demand signals. It is still early — with any acquisition, it takes time for your Docebo staff to learn the product, be knowledgeable on how to implement it and demo it. So we're seeing really strong signs that H2 will go in accordance with our acquisition business model.
I appreciate the color. Congrats again.
Your next question comes from Richard Tse with National Bank Capital Markets.
With Agent Hub really getting a tremendous amount of traction, particularly at Inspire, are there any sort of leading indicators that we should be tracking ahead of that big rollout just to assess how demand is building for it?
Richard, Agent Hub, as you mentioned, is our own agentic infrastructure product that we are soon to be releasing in general availability. At Inspire, for context, we demonstrated real agents at work and demoed them live, not in a constructed video, for the 1,000-plus people in the audience. Agent Hub aims at executing moderate to complex LMS and beyond capabilities at scale in automated ways. We're super excited about it. We lead in that sense because in our market this is a very innovative product. Having said that, a couple of things we believe are good leading indicators. At Inspire alone, Richard, we asked our customers through a dedicated channel to provide their input in the form of agent requests. We asked customers: if you could create an agent for your own organization, how would that look, and what business problem would it solve? We were pleased to see that we've received over 500 applications digitally for agent creation. That signaled a level of engagement that frankly surpassed our expectations because our audience is not primarily sales and marketing or IT developers, where the concept of agentic is a bit more mature. It is not yet deployed at scale by anybody. So having this as a leading indicator was encouraging. Then we listen to our customer calls and understand there is tremendous opportunity to solve complex, costly problems with an agentic-first mindset. We are operating effectively as an AI company. Learning is a data moat within our strategy, and agentic is going to be the future for us.
Okay. Great. With respect to the enterprise RFPs today, I'm curious whether there's a shift in the market away from large HCM suites toward best-of-breed platform players like yourself? I'm trying to understand the dynamics — who you're displacing today and where you're seeing the most momentum in terms of segments.
Sure. Let me try to characterize this simply and effectively. When we approach an organization, the ideal customer for Docebo is slightly irrespective of the organization size. Organization size is an important leading indicator for what matters most, which is the complexity of their learning infrastructure and operation. We have organizations with 500 employees that serve millions of users and have three, four, five hyper-complex use cases ranging from compliance to external customer use cases, partners, and so on. So while there is a correlation between being a multi-national bank and having complexity, the opposite can also be true. Regarding migration from one type of vendor to another, platforms — legacy platforms and point solutions in the talent world — we are winning a significant portion of business away from these vendors. Why? Because we are focused. We are not an HCM provider that does payroll, workforce time and attendance, and all HR core use cases; instead we combine two things that L&D and HR care about in a unified way: learning at scale and upskilling people. We are the only enterprise provider that has core enterprise-level technology with those two things combined. Now we've added the power of agents and knowledge management on top. That combination is unique in the market and will allow us to accelerate taking market share away from legacy vendors in the learning space.
Your next question comes from Josh Baer with Morgan Stanley.
I was hoping we could focus on go-to-market and sales teams. Looking to double-click on pipeline, how that's trending, sales efficiency, sales rep productivity, how reps are doing versus quotas — any context around that would be helpful.
A few quarters ago, we had a shift in management. You may recall that the management team at Docebo went through a significant change. We brought in a new CMO and a new CRO. These people are now short of a year in, some a year in. As a result of those changes, the company has matured and grown up its entire go-to-market execution and approach. What we are seeing are the following things: Mid-market is now, as Brandon mentioned earlier, consistently delivering for the past three to four quarters at or above their internal targets. Very pleased with their execution; it continues to grow. That is our steady beat — our bread and butter — and performance has become even better thanks to strong leadership. Second, the enterprise side has matured. Why? Because we are executing in a much more enterprise way holistically across the company. It's not just GTM; it's combining product, services, and customer success. The entire engine is aligned. When you align an engine, good things happen. But enterprise cycles are 12 months, so when you start fixing things three to four quarters ago, that's when you start reaping the benefits — you don't get the benefit right away. Finally, on pipeline: demand has been the strongest we've seen in years. In a time when some talk about a SaaS apocalypse, what we're seeing in LMS and skills is the opposite — strong demand centered around the type of customers we want to acquire. Our focus has shifted away from volume to quality, and that choice of quality pipeline is paying off in win rates and efficiency on the CAC side.
Really helpful. Maybe one for Brandon on free cash flow. It was particularly strong. Anything to call out in the quarter?
Josh, from a free cash flow perspective, I like to look at the long-run relationship: our trailing 12-month free cash flow will be plus or minus 2% of EBITDA margins. This quarter was particularly strong; obviously we can't keep up that pace quarter-over-quarter of having roughly a 42% free cash flow margin. We saw some one-time benefits in working capital that will normalize in Q2, so I'd expect Q2 to be possibly below prior year. So there is a bit of push forward into Q1. Regardless, it is a testament to the type of customers we're acquiring that are high quality and sometimes pay years in advance. We have very minimal bad debt expense. In the enterprise motion, you're seeing strong cash flow as well. So very pleased with Q1 free cash flow, but I would not expect that pace to continue quarter to quarter.
Your next question comes from Robert Young with Canaccord.
Maybe a slight variation on Ryan's earlier question. Regarding sales cycles, are customers delaying decisions for AI? Or are prospects picking vendors that they feel can guide them through AI — i.e., they're not waiting, they're picking vendors best positioned? Is there pressure to update legacy platforms to position for this? How has the sales cycle reacted to AI?
For sure. In terms of AI readiness in procurement cycles, it's not a level playing field — different organizations view AI differently. Certain sectors, particularly highly regulated ones, remain conservative and skeptical about AI. Others, typically more tech-forward, are AI-hungry and innovative. How do we deal with this dichotomy? We embed the office of the CIO and the office of the compliance or risk officer into every enterprise conversation. We have people on our solutions team who are educated in working with customers at different stages of AI adoption, from the most skeptical to the most innovative, and we adjust the conversation accordingly. Is AI a show-stopper delaying purchases? I wouldn't say so; we have no evidence of that. Some organizations take baby steps with AI when they go live, and others go all in. The good thing is we've built our AI to be very approachable with a control panel and full governance and controls for customers to use. That's part of being enterprise-ready: approaching customers at different stages of maturity.
Okay. In the prepared comments you highlighted proprietary data as an advantage, particularly in external business. What is it about external learning that's particularly sheltered or advantageous from AI? Is that due to the network element or something else?
Yes. If you think about it, nearly 50% of our customers use Docebo for a hybrid use case, and we call it hybrid because there's an external component in that revenue. Those audiences are customers, partners, or distributors. When you think about years of performance data for customers or partners operating on your product and ecosystem, imagine how important and non-replicable that data is by a nondeterministic LLM. If you're running a GTM with 60,000 partners globally and your P&L depends on their performance, wouldn't you want to know how certain partners have performed over the past three years relative to their certification or qualification? That information is vital for any manufacturer or technology company with those constituents at the base of the P&L. You can't get that from a general LLM.
Your next question comes from George Sutton with Craig-Hallum. Logan W Lillehaug is on for George.
This is Logan hopping on for George. It was encouraging in the prepared remarks to see you called out $2 million-plus deals having an average contract length of five years, longer than the average enterprise contract. Could you speak a little to what you're seeing in discussions around willingness to make longer-term commitments during this era of transformation? More generally, have you seen any change in contract lengths being discussed recently?
Logan, from an enterprise perspective, we actually saw enterprise customers signing on Docebo at an average length exceeding three years overall, and our two largest deals of the quarter were five years plus. What we're seeing is that as we move upmarket, enterprise customers do not want to go through an RFP process every three years. An RFP takes about 12 months plus implementation time, and then you'd have to run another RFP on a three-year cycle. Large enterprises want to lock in for five years. They do deep due diligence to ensure they're going into business with the right partner. As we move more upmarket, we're seeing more five-year deals, and I expect that to continue.
Great. Second question: you mentioned companies are paying a lot for the value you're providing with Enterprise Knowledge and Agent Hub. As you build out AI functionality, at what point are you earning the right to get paid for that value? How should we think about monetization following the value you're providing with these AI products?
The objective number one is increasing moat and making Docebo unique and highly differentiated. Historically, our market was the LMS market — a commoditized market with many comparable players. Our strategy has been to add value on top of that core to differentiate for complex use cases and enterprise usage. That's been central to our strategy. Regarding monetization, our objective is to continue increasing our right to win. As we add these capabilities, the premium we can command is the natural consequence of our positioning. The premium for Docebo workforce readiness — meaning the combination of the learning platform, the skills platform, the knowledge management platform, and products we will announce at the proper time in 2026 and 2027 — will be reflected in our ability to command higher value. Our right to win and the right to increase dollar value per new customer will continue to increase. In Q1 2026 we recorded a record dollar value in that regard. That trend has already started.
Your next question comes from Matt VanVliet with Cantor.
As you look at the first step on achieving FedRAMP and what that unlocks with the product roadmap, curious what the pipeline looks like over the next few months as we head into the September fiscal year-end for the U.S. federal market. You also called out a state deal; how is that playing out in the broader public sector go-to-market?
We started our federal and SLED journey before now. I'm pleased to say we've recently renewed our FedRAMP certification, which is subject to yearly review; that was an important accomplishment. Our pipeline in the government space — federal, state, and local (SLED) — continues to grow very significantly and above our expectations. Sales cycles for federal skew toward Q3, so the timeline is not immediate. We look at deal material in that cohort and are working closely with our partners; partners play a huge role in federal GTM, and partners like Deloitte are critical for execution. I can say we like the deals we're in. Federal deals tend to be lumpy — fewer in number but larger in dollar value. That is hedged by the SLED side, which has more volume but smaller tickets. On both ends, our pipeline is healthy and improving. We're growing our team, ramping sellers, ramping partners and business development efforts. We're not at the beginning but not yet at full maturity of GTM in government. H2 2026 and 2027 will be meaningful for us.
Very helpful. You completed the previous share repurchase and it looks like there's a new authorization. How does that play into overall capital allocation strategy and where does M&A fit? Any thoughts on what might still be left to acquire to build out the platform while balancing other capital needs?
We have a three-pronged capital allocation approach: one, investing back in the business; two, share repurchases; and three, M&A. On share repurchases, we repurchased a significant amount of shares through the SIB and the NCIB. As we look at valuation, we will continue to buy back shares when we see attractive valuations, which we believe exist today. Regarding M&A, we've done two acquisitions over the past four months. M&A is inherently risky, and we want to focus on execution. There are two types of M&A: opportunistic — a compelling asset appears — and strategic where you have a gap you want to fill. Opportunistic M&A is always an option, but if you ask whether we'll acquire another asset in the next three quarters, the likelihood is low. We think we have the right assets and the right platform and want to focus on execution.
Your next question comes from Suthan Sukumar with Stifel.
First, I wanted to touch on the current upsell motion and priorities. Given the expected fall GA date for Agent Hub and Enterprise Knowledge, what are some of the key upsell levers in the sales motion in the meantime? More broadly, do you still expect a typical back-ended strength for enterprise procurement this year, or given the strength you're seeing in Q1, do you expect it to be more even paced?
Yes, Suthan. On expansion, Q1 was a very strong expansion quarter — one of the strongest ever. The levers of expansion we have now are: number one, 365Talents, a completely new product; and number two, use case expansion. For example, one of our largest deals this quarter with a regulated broker: we won the logo in Q4 on an internal use case, and because we executed well in presales and implementation, in Q1 we landed the external use case. That's always a big expansion driver. Looking to H2, there will be additional expansion levers, including Agent Hub and Enterprise Knowledge. From an enterprise perspective, there will always be lumpiness and I would expect Q4 to be our strongest ARR quarter in 2026 as well. At the same time, we're seeing strong demand and Q1 was a strong enterprise performance.
Got you. Second question: on the five-year terms you saw with some large deals, do you still have the same or greater opportunity to upsell and expand over the duration of those terms?
Yes. With any term, customers are locked in, but as we add new modules and products, those are expansion opportunities. Also, as companies grow through headcount or customer growth, that leads to more registered users, MAUs, or whatever their pricing model is. As Docebo adds more modules and becomes a larger multiproduct company, that will continue to increase our expansion levers.
Your next question comes from Ken Wong with Oppenheimer.
Alessio, I wanted to circle back to the federal and SLED pipeline. As you look at your pipeline, do you have interwoven deals where one piggybacks on another, where you might have to wait for one to close before you can close others? What's the conversion funnel look like in that context?
I'm sorry, I didn't fully catch that. Would you mind repeating?
Yes. I'm asking if there are deals that are connected where, for example, a federal deal could help bring in state deals — are there dependencies where you have to wait for a sequence of deals to close?
Ken, I don't know if it depends on one closing first, but it's an expansion lever. For example, if you think about State of New Jersey, we have a contract with the transit department, and once you get in with the state and have champions within that department, it becomes easier to expand within that state. In one example, we have a correctional facility as a customer, and they're introducing us to a correctional facility in a different state. So it's a matter of having more customers in SLED to use that cross-sell motion, but I wouldn't say there are strict interdependencies where we must close one before another.
Understood. Appreciate the clarity. Brandon, on the guidance, Q2 looks perhaps a bit subseasonal. Any comment on whether there's incremental conservatism or context on the pipeline conversion baked into the Q2 and full year guide?
Yes. Take a step back: we raised our guidance by about $3.5 million in revenue; $2.2 million of that came from the Q1 beat. So we're not only raising annual guidance by the Q1 beat but flowing strength throughout the rest of the year. As mentioned, Enterprise had an exciting Q1 but we're still being conservative in Q2 and Q3 based on prior experience; we want to see a couple of quarters of strength before calling it a trend. We're definitely seeing strength across segments, including EMEA mid-market and healthy traction in SLED for Q2. We're keeping core assumptions from last quarter while increasing confidence from the pipeline.
Your next question comes from John Shao with TD Cowen.
I want to ask about Databricks because they seem like the kind of customer that could build their own platform given their talent and resources, but they chose to do more with you. Curious what happened behind the scenes and any color on that customer's decision-making.
Thank you, John. We're proud and grateful to Databricks — a great partner and customer that has been with us for a significant time and grown in adoption of different Docebo products and modules. It's a great story of execution and establishing a partnership rather than simple vendorship. It takes a customer determined to accomplish what they want and looking for the right partner; Databricks was that customer. We've responded to their needs and shown partnership. Regarding build versus buy, Databricks has some of the smartest people in tech and they opted for Docebo as their learning technology partner and recently upgraded to use 365 as their skills platform. That speaks to our strategy of equipping enterprises not just with learning but with talent capabilities, and it was proof of our thesis around 365 expansion strategy for the quarters to come.
Great color. I also want to ask about the mix between external training versus internal. I know it's roughly 50/50 now. As you continue to go after large enterprise with more complex use cases, where do you think this number will eventually land?
Let me be clear: more than half of our customers use Docebo for multiple use cases across both internal and external audiences, not just external. I wouldn't expect a dramatic short-term change in this mix; our fundamental strategy for product mix and target audiences is not changing — it's strengthening because we're adding products to address these audiences. Over time, we expect the hybrid portion to increase as we convert customers that are currently internal-only or external-only to adopt more Docebo products across multiple audiences. That's the upsell motion Brandon referred to earlier. We like the current mix and will continue executing accordingly.
Your next question comes from Gavin Fairweather with ATB Cormark.
When you announced 365Talents, initial cross-sell conversations were largely around internal use, but it's clear from Connect there's an external play as well. Curious if there's product work needed to open that up and if you're getting early feedback from clients informing your view on that opportunity?
Smart question, Gavin. I've had a passion since 2014 for transforming Docebo from an internal-only business to the hybrid business we are today, so I know that story well. When I first evaluated 365 as an asset, it had majority success on the internal side. When I met the founders, I believed there was a strong external play — they had some proof but not a majority. We developed the roadmap and listened to customers and leading indicators. At Docebo Inspire, with over 1,000 attendees, half the audience visited the 365 booth and more than half of that group said they'd like to know how to use skills in an external use case. So we've advanced our roadmap, and you're right to infer that some light product adjustments are needed to support skills in external use cases versus internal. We're on that journey and believe it will strengthen our hybrid play.
This concludes the question-and-answer session. I will turn the call to Alessio for closing remarks.
As we continue to build Docebo as an AI company with learning, knowledge, and skills at the center of it, we remain not just excited but thrilled about the opportunity ahead. We thank you for your time today and look forward to the next call. Thank you.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.