Horizontal SaaS

Progress Software reported third-quarter results on September 30, 2026, showing revenue down 2% to $246 million while non-GAAP earnings per share rose 13% to $1.69, as expenses fell about 6% and operating margin expanded to 43% from 40% a year earlier. Adjusted free cash flow grew 17% to $87 million, with days sales outstanding dropping to 42 from 73 at the end of fiscal 2025, funding $170 million of debt paydown this year and $17 million of buybacks in the quarter. The company closed the largest acquisition in its history, paying $400 million for Domo, or 1.4 times revenue and 3.5 times pro forma EBITDA, and management expects Domo to add well over $100 million in annual EBITDA once integration finishes by the end of fiscal 2027. Progress drew $390 million on its revolver, leaving total debt near $1.24 billion and net leverage around 2.7 times, and management warned Domo will run slightly below a 30% operating margin while synergies ramp, pulling overall margin to 36% to 37% from its usual 38% to 39% with roughly $21 million of added interest expense. Annual recurring revenue rose only about 1% on a pro forma basis with net retention at 99%, hedge fund holders fell to 23 from 29 in the prior quarter, and short sellers hold 16.69% of the float against a forward P/E of 6.47 as of October 2.

S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Workiva will join the S&P SmallCap 600, replacing Formfactor Inc. in the index prior to the opening of trading on Tuesday, October 6, as part of a series of component shifts across multiple benchmarks. Shares of the cloud reporting platform jumped 3.3% in the morning session on the news, then cooled to $71.74, up 3% from the previous close. Index additions frequently generate positive market sentiment because investment funds that track the benchmark must adjust their portfolios to include the newly designated member. Workiva's shares are very volatile and have had 23 moves greater than 5% over the last year, and the stock is down 13.5% since the beginning of the year. At $71.74 per share, it trades 23.1% below its 52-week high of $93.31 from November 2025.

Workday announced on Thursday that it has launched in the United Arab Emirates. Angelique De Vries-Schipperijn, President, EMEA, Workday, said in a statement that the UAE is a key market in Workday's growth strategy, with organizations pursuing transformation against some of the world's most ambitious national agendas, and that they need technology that helps them move faster, adopt new ways of working, and show clear results while maintaining the trust and control large, regulated organizations require. Workday shares slipped more than 3% in midday trading, in-line with a broader market sell-off.

Progress Software reported quarterly earnings of $1.69 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.49 per share and marking a positive earnings surprise of 13.42%. The figure compares to earnings of $1.5 per share a year ago, adjusted for non-recurring items, and the company has now surpassed consensus EPS estimates in each of the last four quarters. Revenue for the quarter ended August 2026 came in at $246.01 million, missing the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 0.47% and down from year-ago revenues of $249.79 million, with the company having topped consensus revenue estimates two times over the last four quarters. Ahead of the release, the estimate revisions trend was mixed, translating into a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), and the current consensus stands at $1.41 per share on $251.36 million in revenues for the coming quarter and $6.16 per share on $994.66 million in revenues for the current fiscal year. Progress Software shares have lost about 8.2% since the beginning of the year versus the S&P 500's gain of 12.1%, while industry peer Pegasystems has yet to report results for the quarter ended September 2026, with expectations of $0.45 per share in earnings and $442.6 million in revenues.

Asset Management Software by Siemens, formerly Brightly Software, announced the appointments of Mark Horne as Chief Revenue Officer and Nicolas Huguet as Vice President, Head of EMEA, strengthening the company's global commercial leadership within Siemens' asset management portfolio. Horne, a technology and SaaS executive with more than two decades of experience, most recently served as Vertical President of Fullstream Marketing and previously was CRO of Incident IQ, with earlier leadership roles at Equifax, RedHat, Sage, and NCR; he will lead sales, customer success, and revenue operations. Huguet joins from BT International, where he led global business units serving digital industries including manufacturing, logistics, and transportation, and previously held leadership positions at Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Nokia, Yahoo, and Google; he will lead the EMEA business and advance an integrated go-to-market strategy across the region. CEO and Head of Asset Management Software Don Kurelich said the two appointments are an important step in strengthening alignment across global revenue and providing focused leadership as the company expands throughout EMEA.

Zendesk announced that Rachita Sundar has joined the company as Chief Financial Officer, effective September 28, 2026. Sundar succeeds Julie Swinney, who is transitioning to Chief Administrative Officer and will serve as executive sponsor of Zendesk's Employee Service business, a growing area of focus for the company. Sundar brings over 20 years of experience leading finance and business operations at technology companies including Microsoft Azure, HubSpot, and Qualtrics, where she helped finance and close the company's $6.75 billion acquisition of Press Ganey Forsta. In her new role, Swinney will oversee Zendesk's People & Places and IT organizations, building the talent, culture and experience Zendesk needs while delivering the secure, scalable technology required to operate as an AI business. CEO Tom Eggemeier said Sundar's combination of financial rigor and deep operating experience will help ensure every investment sharpens the company's focus on customers as Zendesk builds itself into an AI company.

Guidewire Software reported fiscal 2026 operating cash flow of $390 million, up 30% year over year, and ended the fiscal fourth quarter with $1.2 billion in cash, cash equivalents and investments. During the year the company repurchased $606 million worth of shares under its buyback program, covering 4.1 million shares at an average price of $148.41 per share, and management said on its last earnings call that the program was nearly complete. Profitability also improved, with non-GAAP operating income of $340 million, up 63% year over year, gross profit up 25% to $990 million, overall gross margin of 67%, and subscription and support gross margin up 4 percentage points to 74.5%. For fiscal 2027, Guidewire expects operating cash flow of $445 million to $465 million, non-GAAP operating income of $403 million to $423 million, total gross margin of 67% to 68%, and capital expenditures of $23 million to $28 million, including approximately $17 million of capitalized software development costs. Among peers, ServiceNow generated $2.26 billion in operating cash flow in the first half of 2026 and targets a 35% free cash flow margin for the year, while Salesforce generated $7.97 billion in operating cash flow and $7.65 billion in free cash flow in the first half of fiscal 2027 and returned $364 million through dividends in the second quarter under its $25 billion accelerated share repurchase program.

IBM announced on September 24 two new capabilities for its Digital Asset Haven platform, aimed at tier-one financial institutions, governments, and regulated entities. In a new beta rollout, clients can connect to SWIFT's blockchain-based shared ledger, linking into a cooperative network of over 12,500 financial institutions across 150+ countries, and can process 24/7 tokenized deposit transactions through the ISO 20022 Messaging Adapter using familiar messaging workflows. IBM also introduced an on-premises beta deployment option for Digital Asset Haven on IBM Z and LinuxONE servers, letting institutions orchestrate assets such as stablecoins and tokenized deposits entirely within their private data centers. The company's software base generated $7.8 billion in revenue in Q2 2026, up 5%, with Red Hat up 11% and Data up 19%, while its distributed infrastructure sub-segment grew 37% in Q2 and built a backlog near $500 million. IBM ended Q2 with $62.0 billion in total debt against $8.2 billion in cash, restricted cash, and marketable securities after spending $10.5 billion on acquisitions year-to-date, and total Infrastructure revenue fell 7% in Q2 to $3.8 billion as IBM Z mainframe revenue dropped 42% in a cyclical trough.

Teem Finance, Inc., an AI-native procurement intelligence company, announced a partnership with Workday to integrate its supplier insights into Workday Strategic Sourcing and Workday Contract Lifecycle Management. As a Workday Partner, Teem will bring AI-powered supplier research and discovery, cost deflection guardrails, category management intelligence, and faster data-backed evaluations to the Workday ecosystem. The integration lets supplier and contract context flow directly from Workday into Teem with no manual data loading, and the Workday Strategic Sourcing integration uses Teem data to power supplier discovery and cost deflection use cases. Customers have used Teem's capabilities to reduce redundant software spend by 20% to 35% and cut sourcing cycle times in half. Teem founder and CEO Ben Mappen said joint customers can see what they already own, discover the right suppliers in minutes instead of weeks, and stop redundant spend before a purchase order is created. Teem will host a session at Workday Rising, Oct. 12-15 in Las Vegas.

Darwinbox said it ranks among the top two HCM vendors globally for Applied AI in the 2026 Gartner Critical Capabilities for HCM Suites for 1,000+ Employee Enterprises, and was named a Challenger in the 2026 Gartner Magic Quadrant for HCM Suites for the third consecutive year. The company said it is one of only two vendors to score 3.4 or higher for Applied AI, a result it tied to the launch of Darwinbox Cortex, an AI-native HCM platform built on what it calls an HCM Context Graph. Cortex launched with global design partners including Visteon Corporation, a Fortune 1000 enterprise, and Transcarent, plus technology partners including Microsoft, Slack, and Glean. Gartner highlighted more than 60 pre-built agentic and generative AI use cases, Model Context Protocol and Agent2Agent interoperability, and a no-code Agent Builder. Darwinbox said that at a full-service bank serving more than 18 million customers, time to hire fell from 33 days to 17 days, a 48% reduction, while HR queries dropped 31% year over year, with more than 43,000 interactions through Darwinbox AI.

Microsoft Corporation announced on September 25 a comprehensive overhaul of its Copilot ecosystem, introducing a central workspace structure consisting of Home, Code, and Autopilot. Home unifies conversation and productivity tools by natively integrating Word, Excel, and PowerPoint into the Copilot interface, while Code lets non-technical employees build custom applications and automations using natural language powered by GitHub Copilot technology. Autopilot establishes persistent, proactive AI agents capable of carrying out continuous background workflows independently, and Microsoft simultaneously introduced FinOps for AI spend management controls to help enterprise IT leaders manage consumption. The company said the expansion into no-code app building and autonomous agents strengthens its enterprise moat and reinforces Azure and Microsoft Cloud usage, though it also flagged heavier AI capital expenditure, higher usage-related costs of goods sold, and potential gross margin compression in the Cloud division.

Palantir Technologies reported continued expansion of its AIP-based commercial AI business across healthcare, defense, and manufacturing, raised full-year revenue guidance on robust demand, and named Nebius its preferred sovereign AI infrastructure partner, integrating Nebius compute into AIP. The company's narrative projects $23.0 billion revenue and $10.2 billion earnings by 2029, requiring 55.1% yearly revenue growth and about a $7.2 billion earnings increase from $3.0 billion today. That forecast yields a $191.68 fair value, in line with its current price. Some of the lowest estimate analysts assumed revenue of about US$17.7 billion and earnings of roughly US$6.3 billion by 2029, yet still saw downside risk. Investors continue to weigh valuation risks, competitive intensity, and concentration of growth in AI-related contracts.

Stifel upgraded Microsoft to Buy from Hold and raised its price target to $575 from $530 in a September 23 research note, citing robust artificial intelligence growth and Azure's continued acceleration. The firm believes Microsoft can sustain revenue growth in the mid-to-upper teens while keeping operating margins relatively stable, and expects improving operational efficiencies to support strong cash flow and reduce the need for external financing. Azure's recent acceleration is expected to continue as additional data-center capacity comes online, with operational efficiencies and a growing revenue contribution from OpenAI also supporting growth, after CFO Amy Hood said efficiency gains are being monetized quickly and process improvements have shortened lead times for bringing CPU and GPU capacity online. Copilot seats reached roughly 30 million in the fiscal fourth quarter, while GitHub's shift toward consumption-based pricing offers another source of recurring growth. Microsoft still faces risks from high capital requirements for AI and data-center capacity, rapid advances in rival AI models that could pressure premium pricing for Azure AI and Copilot, and the challenge of converting Copilot's large user base into durable incremental revenue and profit. Hedge fund positioning weakened modestly between the first and second quarters, with the number of funds holding the stock falling from 282 to 273, though Arrowstreet Capital raised its stake by 14% to approximately $10.31 billion and Fisher Asset Management increased its position by 3% to roughly $9.92 billion; short interest declined to about 67.35 million shares as of September 15 from 68.54 million as of August 14, or about 0.91% of shares outstanding.

Microsoft on Friday unveiled a revamped version of its Copilot software, combining its chat, coding, and agentic capabilities into a single package it calls Autopilot. The platform is designed as a one-stop shop for work needs such as preparing a pitch document or building a spreadsheet and then having AI reason over the data to surface insights users might miss. CEO Satya Nadella told Deirdre Bosa that trust will be the biggest issue for the company, asking whether users can really trust AI with all of their credentials when it performs autonomous activity and how they can feel in control, adding that in the enterprise this is everything. The new Copilot offers two billing options: standard per-user plans for general AI work and a pay-as-you-go offering for long-tail, multi-step agentic work, a combination Nadella said will prove especially beneficial as model makers and providers slowly reduce customer subsidies. Microsoft says Copilot will automatically route user prompts to the best available model from OpenAI and Anthropic, with manual model selection also available and additional options from other model makers to come; the per-seat option will carry token limits that most people will never hit, while those needing more can opt for usage-based billing.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company's new cloud-based Autopilot feature represents the next generation of automation in the enterprise, with high ROI expected for businesses that adopt it. In an interview with Deirdre Bosa, Nadella described Autopilot as an agent with its own identity that completes jobs and hands off work, while the inner agent loop lives inside applications such as Excel. The new Copilot update has three modes: chat, code, and Autopilot, and Microsoft is positioning Copilot as the operating layer for enterprise AI, with adoption at about 30 million customers so far. Nadella said the bet is that companies should not have to track the fast-moving model race, and that Microsoft will serve the right model for each task, using more capable models for hard tasks and cheaper models for easier ones.

Panya Poonpermphonsiri, Chief Sales and Marketing Officer of Synnex (Thailand) Public Company Limited, or SYNEX, said at an online seminar for institutional investors titled "Expensive Chips, Tight Supply: How IT Operators Are Changing the Game," organized by Krungsri Securities Public Company Limited, that IT operators are facing simultaneous pressure from higher chip costs, supply volatility, and cautious consumer spending behavior, making inventory management, product mix allocation, and margin preservation more important than ever. The company believes the response requires adjusting business models to accommodate the changing structure of the IT market. SYNEX assesses that the IT market still has room to grow through higher-value technologies and services, especially artificial intelligence, data centers, cloud systems, cybersecurity, subscription software, and managed services. Under its plans, the company will extend from its distribution business into developing products and technologies into solutions and services that customers can put to practical use, while expanding partnerships to create new revenue streams and reduce dependence on growth from any single business. It will support partners from generating market demand, designing and delivering solutions, through to developing services that generate recurring revenue, particularly in cloud and artificial intelligence, and will set up teams of specialists to advise customers and connect after-sales services, product buyback, financial services, and product protection services to add value throughout the product lifecycle. Panya said the company will maintain the strength of its core business while expanding into solutions and services to accommodate long-term changes in the technology industry.

Amazon has blocked Meta Platforms' Muse AI shopping assistant from accessing its marketplace, escalating a clash over control of AI-driven commerce. Meta had positioned Muse as an AI agent that helps users compare products and pricing across multiple online retailers, including Amazon, and the block complicates that push alongside partnership efforts such as its tie-up with Shopify. The move cuts off one route by which Meta hopes to turn its heavy AI and data center spending into commerce and payments revenue, while also highlighting platform control risk from large partners. Whether Muse-driven shopping scales through alternative channels such as Shopify integrations and Meta's own AI glasses ecosystem, and whether management discloses concrete metrics on agent-handled commerce or checkout volume, remain the key questions for investors.

Amazon expanded its Seller Assistant on Sept. 23, 2026, adding agentic AI workflows that let third-party sellers create recurring automations running even when they are not logged into Seller Central, monitoring inventory thresholds, competitive pricing, account health and product ratings, with the option to generate recommendations or take approved actions. The assistant now retains memory of a seller's pricing patterns, inventory cycles and growth goals, and a plug-in connects it to tools sellers already use, starting with Amazon Quick and Anthropic's Claude, though the service is free and optional so any financial benefit will be indirect. Elsewhere in the business, Alexa for Shopping nearly doubled active users in the second quarter with interactions up more than 5x year over year, and U.S. customers using it spend over 40% more per order, while Ads Agent, expanded to 11 new countries this year, delivers 8% lower cost-per-impression and 6% lower cost-per-acquisition, supporting advertising growth of 26%. Second-quarter net sales rose 20% to $200.6 billion and operating income climbed 43% to $27.5 billion, with AWS sales up 37% to $42.2 billion and its AI business exceeding a $25 billion annual run rate; for the third quarter Amazon expects net sales of $197-$202 billion, up 9-12% year over year, and operating income of $22.5-$26.5 billion versus $17.4 billion a year ago. Trailing-12-month free cash flow swung to a $7.6 billion outflow as property and equipment purchases rose to $66.1 billion, mainly for AI, leaving the near-term stock impact dependent on monetization catching up with investment.

The global product lifecycle management market is projected to grow from USD 36.60 billion in 2026 to USD 58.52 billion by 2031, registering a compound annual growth rate of 9.8%, according to a new report added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering. Growth is being driven by rising adoption of cloud and software-as-a-service PLM platforms, the integration of generative AI, model-based engineering and digital twin technologies, and tightening regulatory and sustainability requirements. Within the software segment, product data management is expected to hold the largest share, while small and medium-sized enterprises are expected to record the fastest growth rate as subscription-based cloud platforms lower cost and implementation complexity. North America is estimated to lead the market through 2031, supported by aerospace, defense and automotive OEMs and reshoring of domestic manufacturing, while Asia Pacific advances rapidly on expanding capacity across China, India and Southeast Asia. The report profiles key vendors including PTC, Dassault Systemes, Siemens, SAP, Autodesk, Oracle, Aras, Infor and Propel, and cites PTC's September 2025 launch of the Arena AI Assistant and its December 2025 launch of the Arena AI Engine among recent developments.

Meta went live with an agent-commerce layer at Meta Connect 2026, expanding its Muse ecosystem so that the Muse Spark personal AI agent can shop and check out on behalf of users. Meta confirmed that PayPal global Muse payments will let customers shop and check out using their Muse personal AI agents across PayPal merchants worldwide, while Shopify and Stripe have integrated their Shop Pay and Link wallets to enable agent-native commerce infrastructure, with Muse able to search the Shopify catalog and execute checkout directly in-app. The connectors also include Expedia and Instacart, effectively turning the Muse agent into a digital wallet. The technical leap is the Muse computer-use capability, which runs in a Muse Secure VM, an isolated Linux virtual machine in the cloud, letting the agent interact with native macOS apps like Files, Mail and Calendar and drive a full browser. Meta also unveiled the Luna camera-free smart glasses with six microphones, open-ear speakers and a dedicated AI button, though Muse-on-glasses was only teased as coming soon and was not shipped at the keynote, with 2.5M US downloads as of September 20. Amazon has blocked Muse from its platform, a revealing exclusion that suggests the future of commerce may be a battle between open agent-accessible platforms and walled gardens, and the industry is building ahead of the GENIUS Act enforcement cliff looming on January 18, 2027.

Meta Platforms and Shopify are teaming up to bring AI-powered shopping and checkout to Meta's Muse personal AI agent. Under the partnership, Muse will integrate with Shopify's e-commerce infrastructure, letting the AI assistant help users shop across stores powered by Shopify and complete purchases through Shop Pay, Shopify's accelerated checkout service that saves customers' payment and shipping details. Shopify CEO Tobias Lütke announced the deal on X, calling it an effort to create an easy and delightful way to shop and check out with Muse, while Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said shoppers find more and shops sell more, adding that more partnerships like this are coming soon. Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang said the partnership will give Muse users access to a broader selection of stores and products. Deutsche Bank analysts said the deal offers further evidence that major AI platforms are adopting Shopify's commerce infrastructure, which could ease investor concerns that AI agents and virtual shopping assistants might disrupt its business, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Oracle Health announced new AI capabilities across its revenue cycle management portfolio, planned for release in the coming months, to help US healthcare organizations limit reimbursement problems early in the patient and payment journey. The embedded AI spans scheduling, financial clearance, clinical documentation, charge capture, billing, and payment, and includes prior authorization, clinical document quality integrity, charge capture and integrity, medical coding for professional fees, and appeal management. Seema Verma, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Health and Life Sciences, said the comprehensive solution brings AI across the front, middle, and back office to help organizations reduce administrative work and revenue leakage, get paid faster, and strengthen financial stability. Oracle Health also intends to further connect reimbursement workflows with enterprise financial operations, including financial reconciliation, revenue accounting, treasury management, and analytics, through solutions such as Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications. The new AI capabilities are planned for general availability in the coming months.

Obic's full-year results for the fiscal year ending March 2026 showed revenue of 135.2 billion yen, up 11.5% year on year, operating profit of 88.8 billion yen, up 13.3%, ordinary profit of 104.7 billion yen, up 16.7%, and net profit of 75.1 billion yen, up 16.4%, with the operating margin reaching 65.7%. Profit growth outpacing revenue growth drove the margin higher, with gross profit of 105.6 billion yen and a gross margin of 78.1%, while selling, general and administrative expenses came to 16.8 billion yen, a SG&A ratio of 12.5%. The gross margin rose 2.1 percentage points from 76.0% in the fiscal year ended March 2022, and the SG&A ratio fell 2.9 percentage points from 15.4%, as revenue grew 51% from 89.4 billion yen to 135.2 billion yen over that period while SG&A expenses rose only 22%, from 13.8 billion yen to 16.8 billion yen. Demand for its flagship integrated business software, the OBIC7 series, strengthened among large and mid-sized companies across a wide range of industries including manufacturing, distribution, services and finance, and the company is meeting cloud demand through its own cloud centers. For the fiscal year ending March 2027, the company forecasts revenue of 148.7 billion yen, up 10.0%, operating profit of 98 billion yen, up 10.3%, and net profit of 82 billion yen, up 9.1%. In the first quarter, revenue was 36.6 billion yen and operating profit was 24.8 billion yen, putting operating profit progress toward the full-year forecast at 25.4%, with an operating margin of 67.7%, above the full-year result of 65.7%.

Ascent Cloud announced the launch of Shepherd, a new AI SaaS solution for field sales teams that works with all major CRMs and is built for mobile and offline use. Shepherd includes all the features thousands of field teams love about Geopointe plus a dedicated mobile app, offline mode, real-time collaboration, live location updates, and more, and it works with CRMs and Data Lakes including Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, HubSpot, ServiceNow, Snowflake, Databricks, BigQuery, and SQL Server. CEO David Leinweber said Shepherd addresses field teams' most common pain points, including the need for a modern mobile experience, offline mode, real-time collaboration, automation based on live location, and real-time data from any system of record, and he noted significant cost savings for teams that consolidate their field solutions regardless of tech stack. Shepherd is available in Beta for approved customers today and will be generally available for all customers on Monday, November 2, 2026. Interested parties should consult the Ascent Cloud website or email sales@ascentcloud.io.