NIQ Global Intelligence Q3 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

NIQ Global Intelligence (NYSE:NIQ) reported third-quarter financial results on Thursday. The transcript from the company’s third-quarter earnings call has been provided below.

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Summary

NIQ Global Intelligence achieved its sixth consecutive quarter exceeding top-end guidance, with a 5.8% growth in organic constant-currency revenue and a 17.8% increase in adjusted EBITDA.

The company announced a strategic partnership with Google to integrate its data into Google’s Shopping Graph, aiming to enhance product discovery and local availability.

NIQ Global Intelligence raised its full-year 2026 guidance, expecting durable, profitable growth into 2027, driven by AI-native solutions and strategic initiatives.

Key regional performances included 11.5% growth in the Americas, 2.9% in EMEA despite regional challenges, and 2% in APAC with strategic expansions.

The company highlighted significant AI-driven initiatives, including AI Builder projects and Connect AI, with an increasing pipeline and early monetization success.

A $150 million share repurchase authorization was announced, reflecting a strong balance sheet and disciplined capital allocation.

NIQ Global Intelligence expects continued margin expansion and cash flow improvement, with a focus on AI-driven operational efficiencies and strategic growth investments.

Full Transcript

OPERATOR

Last approximately one hour. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker’s remarks, there will be a question and answer session. With that, I’d like to turn the call over to Will Lyons, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Will Lyons (Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Hello everyone and welcome to NIQ Global Intelligence’s third quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me today are CEO Jim Peck and CFO Mike Burwell. Following Jim’s and Mike’s prepared remarks, we’ll open the line for Q&A with Jim, Mike and our Chief AI and Product Officer Troy Triangin. As a reminder, today’s remarks will include forward-looking statements regarding our expectations and outlook. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. For information about factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to today’s earnings press release and our SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on this call except as required by law.

During this call we will also discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our earnings press release, which is available on our Investor Relations website. A replay of this call will also be available there. And finally, unless otherwise noted, revenue growth rates mentioned on this call are in organic constant currency and are compared with the prior year period.

And with that I’ll turn the call over to Jim.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Thank you, Will. Good morning, everyone. Q3 was a milestone quarter for NIQ Global Intelligence. There were several key takeaways: ongoing demand for our solutions, our resilient business and relentless execution in a dynamic operating environment, and our strengthening financial profile. We also announced a new agentic commerce partnership with Google, which I’ll cover in detail shortly. Some financial highlights: it was our sixth consecutive quarter exceeding the top end of our guidance across all key metrics. We grew organic constant-currency revenue by 5.8%, our 11th straight quarter of mid-single-digit growth. Adjusted EBITDA grew 17.8%, and we expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 230 basis points year over year to 23.6%. We delivered positive GAAP earnings per share for the first time since our IPO. We generated levered free cash flow of $181 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.30, both considerably above expectations.

We achieved 2.9 times leverage, reaching our sub-3 times milestone a quarter ahead of schedule, and our recently announced $150 million share repurchase authorization is a return of capital to a disciplined capital allocation framework. So we continue to deliver from the top line to the bottom line and strengthen our balance sheet. We’re raising full-year 2026 guidance to reflect year-to-date outperformance, and with a strong core, real AI momentum, and our new partnership with Google putting NIQ Global Intelligence data at the center of agentic commerce, we believe 2027 begins a new phase of durable, profitable growth.

Looking at the quarter from a segment perspective, Americas grew 11.5% with broad strength across Intelligence and Activation. In North America, we had several key wins with key retailers. We won our first-ever convenience retail collaboration with Maverik, displacing the incumbent across more than 830 stores in 20 states. We established a full-store data partnership with a leading department store and off-price retailer representing roughly $15 billion in retail sales.

We also expanded our beverage alcohol retail collaboration with a global mass merchandise retailer. In Latin America, we won competitive business from a global CPG leader across five markets, renewed and expanded a global spirits maker in Mexico, and we scaled a clothing partnership nearly eightfold from a single-brand pilot into a multi-brand program. EMEA grew 2.9%, and we continue to work closely with clients impacted by the ongoing conflict in that region. Despite the challenge, EMEA delivered some of our strongest wins of the quarter. In Western Europe, a global home furnishings retailer signed a landmark eight-figure, three-year Activation renewal of its global program, expanding across more than 60 markets—our largest deal of the quarter. This relationship spans nearly 25 years and has always run on annual renewals.

This was the first-ever multi-year commitment, made even as they were under real budget pressure and reviewing their all-around spend. We also won a European frozen food maker from the incumbent in a high seven-figure multi-year deal. And in the Middle East, despite the volatile landscape, we renewed a global telecom operator’s customer experience program, extending a 15-year partnership. APAC grew 2%, as a tough year-over-year growth comparison masked the progress we continue to make in that region. A global social commerce platform went live with us across six markets after a year-long build. We also opened up a new vertical, adding our first agricultural sector client in Vietnam. Our go-forward APAC strategy remains intact: develop retailer relationships and win collaborations, improve coverage, and improve data quality. We’ve made progress this year and believe we’re on the right path to make APAC a more consistent growth contributor.

Zooming out, while our segment growth rates differ today, we believe growth rates can converge over time. Americas’ growth reflects strong upsell of Full View and cross-sell traction for our Activation offerings, as well as initial demand for our AI-native solutions. As the EMEA conflict abates and our APAC strategy takes hold, we believe growth can broaden over time. Turning to growth by product, we saw strength across Intelligence and Activation. Intelligence grew 5.5% on new wins and strong upsell motion. Client demand for NIQ Global Intelligence’s Full View drove 20%+ growth in e-commerce and consumer panels. Measurement wins stood out. We anchored the largest retail census undertaken in South Africa and Nigeria, each covering roughly 180,000 outlets, and displaced the incumbent at a global sparkling wine leader, expanding from 12 to 23 markets in a high seven-figure deal.

Activation growth accelerated for a third straight quarter, up 7%. Analytics is a prime space for agentic tools when coupled with NIQ Global Intelligence’s decision-grade data. Marquee wins in the quarter included a competitive takeaway in Japan and a region-wide creator effectiveness study for a major technology platform. Growth remains resilient thanks to our global reach and diverse offerings. Clients need NIQ Global Intelligence in every environment, and that need increases in an AI world.

Clients are accessing AI-powered NIQ Global Intelligence several new ways: through NIQ Global Intelligence applications; through our new solutions that embed NIQ Global Intelligence directly into their AI platforms and the LLM tools they already use; and with Connect AI, some of our largest and most sophisticated AI builder customers are embedding NIQ Global Intelligence data deep inside their own AI applications and workflows. Over the past year, we’ve shown how NIQ Global Intelligence’s AI value builds for clients in stages—from usage to adoption to deep integration and now to incremental revenue.

Here’s where each stands. Data usage comes first. It’s the leading indicator we began sharing late last year. Client use of NIQ Global Intelligence data is growing roughly 20% a year, and clients are engaging with our new AI features. Some recent proof points include: more than half of our Discover users engaged with AI features in Q3, double what we saw in Q2. Since August, we added global Measurement and U.S. Panel data sets to U.S. Retail Measurement, increasing the number of data sets available to Optic users by 13-fold.

We also beta launched MCP connections across four major LLMs—Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. Users can now access automated insights and AI-powered reports, and we have more enhancements planned over the coming quarters. Next, the data usage is turning into AI product adoption. Nearly 60% of our top 100 clients now buy at least one of our AI-powered applications—BASES AI and Retail Analytics—our first wave of AI-native innovation over the past year-plus. Revenue from these products is up 28% year to date, and roughly 74% of AI-native revenue comes from clients who bought our solutions in 2025, a sign these solutions are driving cross-sell and we’re gaining traction with our new AI-native solutions launched this year.

In less than six months, we have reached 10 charter commitments with AI Builder, including Mars Snacking and Purina. We’re earning revenue from these initial projects and, as we progress and deliver value, stand to turn these into even bigger commitments over time. And we have a global pipeline of 79 qualified proof of concepts behind them, spanning categories like food, beverage, personal care, pet care, and beauty across every region in which we operate.

Now let me describe how we’re going about deep integration. Clients choose NIQ Global Intelligence because while AI models are abundant, AI that drives value can’t be bought as software—it has to be built from the inside and with granular, trusted data, and lots of it. With Optic Bridge and Connect AI now launched, our forward-deployed engineers are working side by side with our clients—and in some cases their integration partners—to build and enable AI products that plug directly into their enterprise workflows.

In one charter program engagement, we match a client’s product records to NIQ Global Intelligence data covering 96% of their categories’ retail sales—the foundation that lets their systems and the market speak one language. We’re now embedding NIQ Global Intelligence’s harmonization and innovation frameworks directly into the client’s own agents and workflows, powering their AI-driven innovation decisions. With a global beverage leader, we’re building an innovative system that matches their product data to NIQ Global Intelligence’s Measurement to guide post-launch decisions.

In partnership with OpenAI Deploy Company, we’re building an AI agent to automate commerce intelligence workflows for manufacturers, starting with U.S. beauty and planning to expand into additional categories in 2027. Every deployment creates a path to additional data consumption and product subscriptions after go-live. As NIQ Global Intelligence flows into clients’ AI tools, copilots, and LLMs, NIQ Global Intelligence moves from mission-critical input to critical business infrastructure, and that value is already starting to show up in our results. Just months after launch, we’re beginning to monetize. We expect about a tenth of a point of growth from these AI solutions in 2026, which remains a foundation-building year. We’re gaining adoption, building pipeline, expanding partnerships, and validating our monetization models.

That momentum builds into 2027. We’re not setting formal 2027 guidance today, but we believe our new AI-native product suite can contribute about a quarter to a half point of growth. Our new AI products are putting us at the table with clients’ CIOs and CTOs as they build their own AI tools, as a trusted partner and thought leader on how to maximize AI value. Because Optic Bridge and Connect AI connect NIQ Global Intelligence’s data directly into their AI environments, we’re opening technology budget pools we haven’t historically accessed. A leading global consulting firm sized the prize; it estimates technology budgets at the top 100 global manufacturers will grow from roughly $60 billion in 2024 to approximately $90 billion in 2030.

Capturing even a small share of the incremental spend positions us for $500 million to $1 billion of potential growth as we unlock new revenue streams—from consumption-based revenue to data licensing to implementation fees to agentic service fees. And that’s before widening the aperture to our 23,000-plus clients. So we think our progress is showing that AI tools are only as good as the data that powers them. And we believe no one has granular consumer intelligence like NIQ Global Intelligence.

Our proprietary, permissioned, harmonized data is the critical ground truth, and we think our advantage compounds as client adoption grows. We’re pleased with our early progress this year, and we look forward to scaling with clients in 2027. And nothing illustrates that better than our new partnership with Google. One of the most important developments of the quarter extends everything I just described—taking NIQ Global Intelligence beyond our clients’ own AI tools and into the consumer-facing AI experiences where shopping decisions are increasingly made. This partnership will integrate NIQ Global Intelligence’s granular, proprietary semantic data spanning more than 265 million products in 90 countries into their Shopping Graph.

The first-order objective is to strengthen product discovery and local availability. When a consumer asks an LLM for something like, “the best fragrance-free sunscreen for sensitive skin nearby,” our shared goal is to drive more sales for retailers and brands at a stronger ROI than other channels. Stepping back a bit, AI is changing how consumers shop and what it takes for our brand and retailer clients to compete and win. AI assistants increasingly help consumers discover, compare, and decide what to buy. Agentic commerce goes further—acting on the shopper’s behalf—and the channel is growing fast. NIQ Global Intelligence and World Data Lab report that nearly three-quarters of shoppers use AI for product discovery. McKinsey estimates that AI agents could mediate $3 to $5 trillion in global consumer goods commerce by 2030, including up to $1 trillion in the U.S. Our opportunity in agentic commerce is the same as it has been in other new channels: lead the change, help brands and retailers understand the shift, act on it, and measure the results. We’re advancing that work in three areas.

First is Measurement—helping manufacturer and retailer clients see where AI is changing demand and choice. We’re building products to help clients understand their presence in AI shopping journeys, competitive performance, and the connection to purchase behavior. We entered a data partnership in the U.S. in Q3, and we plan to expand in other markets in 2027. Next is Agentic Commerce Readiness—helping products get discovered and accurately recommended. We’re building capabilities to assess how brands appear in AI shopping experiences, identify gaps in product content and distribution, and prioritize fixes. A Product Intelligence suite helps connect verified product facts to the needs shoppers express in natural language. Measuring the outcomes will help establish whether those improvements translate into stronger visibility and incremental sales.

Third is Store Intelligence—where we connect shopper intent on agentic channels to where products can be bought. By connecting to AI platform commerce feeds such as Google Merchant Center, our Store Intelligence links agent recommendations to retail locations and local offers. It helps AI shopping experiences answer a practical question: “Where can I buy this sunscreen nearby?” We’re already working with clients. We’re designing an initial pilot with a global consumer health leader to benchmark its brand’s agentic commerce readiness, identify what influences AI recommendations, prioritize improvements, and test their sales impact.

There are more than a couple dozen brand and retailer customers in the pipeline. So with Google as a marquee validation of our data, we’re building great momentum in our three-pillar AI growth strategy and positioning the business ahead of significant potential growth. Lastly, AI is working on the cost side too. This quarter we substantially completed the actions under our 2026 restructuring program. Heading into 2027, we’re actively identifying additional AI-driven operational efficiencies across our data operations, engineering, commercial, and support functions. Our approach remains disciplined: identify and harvest efficiency, reinvest a portion in long-term growth initiatives such as building our AI capabilities, and expand profitability.

Any measures we choose to take will come with compelling payback of less than one year. In closing, we’re aiming to finish strong in 2026 and are entering 2027 with exciting opportunities ahead—including our new partnership with Google, which positions NIQ Global Intelligence data at the heart of how consumers will discover and buy products in an AI world. With that, I’ll hand it to Mike.

OPERATOR

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Manav, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Manav Patnaik (Analyst)

Good morning. Thank you, Jim. I just wanted to zoom into the quarter to half a point of growth that you said comes from, I guess, your AI solutions. Just to clarify, are these brand new AI-native solutions, or are these AI enhancements to your existing solutions? And is it cannibalizing some of your other smaller solutions as well, i.e., is this a net incremental growth rate you’re giving us?

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, so I think you’re referring to when we said we’re not guiding, but I said what it could be, you know, next year. No, so it is a combination of all those things. I think just to step back to our strategy: the full view remains, right? Our need and our clients’ need for us to still capture all the consumer spending that is happening that is relevant in the world, because that is what really is fueling AI. And I know that’s a cliché, but it is in fact the truth of what’s really happening. So we’re staying very focused on that.

And then what’s happening with our clients now: yes, we’re using and integrating AI into our products like Discover through Optic. We’re creating ways for them to happen in a very efficient way, into our information, into their worlds through things like AI Builder. And then what’s probably most exciting for me anyway is we’re also beginning to become their forward deployed engineering group, let’s call it, that’s helping them understand how they can organize their own information in concert with ours.

And the vignettes I’ll give you there are: I was at C360 earlier this year — that’s our big user conference — and we had been preparing up to that point by hiring the right people, by putting the right infrastructure in place to help our clients in the implementation of their AI. So hiring someone who understands how to manage and lead forward deployed engineers in the way that we need them, putting infrastructure in place. While I was there in the hallways, in the main speaker auditoriums, I was stopped so many times by clients who said, we need your help because we really can’t do this on our own, and we realize that you guys know how we think about our data.

And so since then, we’ve announced and talked about these 10 proof of concepts. Those are real dollars. Those are real, let’s call them forward deployed engineering engagements where our data is being used in new ways. There are new budget pools. Those are not cannibalizing other sales that we do. And since we’ve spoken — or since we talked about the script of this call — we said we had 79 new opportunities. That number’s up to 100. So these are very real, they’re very practical, and they’re right in our wheelhouse.

So I’m really excited about the fact that we’re tapping into these new budgets and this is not cannibalizing the other things that we do. I know that was a little bit of a long-winded answer, but it’s really important. I’d like to bring Troy Triangin, our Chief Product Officer, who also leads all our AI efforts — kind of the architect behind it — to give his view in answer to your question. He may take us down a little different road. And then we’ll let you follow up.

Troy Triangin (Chief Product Officer)

Hello, everybody. So two things to piggyback on what Jim said. The capabilities that we’re building are across the three segments that we talked about in the last couple calls. We have our beginners, we have our buyers, and we have our builders, and we’re building capability across all three of them. When Mike and Jim were talking about that number for next year, it includes those features and functions and applications in those three respective areas.

Just another anecdote: since we’ve launched the broader program for forward deployed engineers and going into this new space over the last couple quarters, we are talking to new folks at clients. I happen to be sitting here in New Jersey today, and I’m meeting with the chief AI officer and some of those teams, which historically has not been where we’ve had conversations. I was an account lead many, many years ago for some of our larger accounts, and we didn’t have those conversations.

So they are unlocking new budgets. We are building new capabilities within our world, but also helping our clients within their worlds. And I think the pipeline is building extremely well, and I’m excited about what’s going to happen here in 2027.

Manav Patnaik (Analyst)

Got it. Super helpful. Thanks for that. Maybe just to close the loop, Mike, from your perspective — I think you tried to quantify, but maybe I missed it — just the AI benefit on the margin front, how should we think of that in terms of what’s in the margin performance today and the guidance you’ve given for the longer term?

Mike Burwell (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, Manav. So we have given guidance that in the midterm we would get to the mid-20s in terms of margins, and then we see a path to moving ourselves to 30% margins, although we haven’t defined a timeframe to it. We will endeavor to do that as we ultimately provide future guidance. But this is going to be a key ingredient to it. What we’re seeing is we continue to see that revenue happen, and AI, from a cost standpoint, is continuing to drive almost half of our benefits overall.

So we’re continuing to drive it on the top line, as Jim and Troy talked about, but we’re also delivering it on the bottom line in terms of what we’re doing internally — whether it be coding or looking at our back-office activities. We’re continuing to drive cost improvements, as I said in the opening, that have paybacks of less than one year.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Kevin, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Kevin McVeigh (Analyst)

Great. Thanks so much, and congratulations on the results and really great execution. I want to follow up on that just because I think it’s really, really important. Jim, I think if I heard you right, you talked about an incremental $500 million to $1 billion of revenue from an AI perspective. Any sense of how that starts to scale? I mean, obviously some starting to come in ’27, but is that all North American? And appreciating the fact that, geographically, clients are at a different pace in the evolution of consumption, just any sense of how that comes in geographically, and is there incremental upside to that as you start to see more innovative consumption patterns in maybe some of the more emerging market areas? If we could start there.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, so as a foundation to answer that question: our customers really are local and country-specific, and each country operates a little bit differently. It’s not even by region. And so we’re very much organized to face off with them locally by country, and then also, where they’re global or where they have global needs, globally. We just recently did an, let’s call it, AI boot camp where we’re teaching our sellers how to approach customers in each of the dimensions we talked about with AI — AI that’s built into our Discover product, AI capabilities or, let’s say, integration capabilities that allow them to use these tools on our data in a controlled way, and then the actual POCs that we’re doing. And this wasn’t just done in the U.S.; it was done around the world.

While the demand comes largely from the U.S. and Western Europe, where these are the headquarters of the biggest and most well-funded manufacturers and retailers in the world — that’s the early demand — it’s also showing up across all the regions and all the countries. And if anything, we’re having to prioritize which ones we want to make sure we do first. Because as we do each of these POCs, we are learning ourselves, and we’re able to reuse both the learning and the actual, let’s call it, code — the actual capabilities — to repeat each of those POCs.

And I’ll make another point: the POC is a one-time engagement that, as we have success — and we are — those turn into long-term new revenue subscription-based products, or let’s say capabilities, that our clients are taking that are in addition to our traditional capabilities.

Kevin McVeigh (Analyst)

That’s super helpful. And then just one quick follow-up. Mike, great to see the buyback. Any sense of if that is opportunistic, or just any thoughts as to deployment around that?

Mike Burwell (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, Kevin. So when we looked at it and said, now that we’ve reached the target that we had put in place a quarter early in terms of our leverage — below three times at 2.9 — we viewed that as another tool in our toolkit. Look, as I said, our main focus is continuing to delever and continue to pay down debt. But it just gives us another, as I say, tool in the toolkit. So nothing that’s going to happen here immediately, but nonetheless we’re going to continue to be opportunistic in terms of thinking about it.

And we think it is the right point, looking at our financials and the strength of our financials, to put that tool in the toolkit. So that was the thinking behind it, Kevin.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Curtis Nagle with Bank of America. Curtis, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Curtis Nagle (Analyst)

Great. I’ll start with a model question, then move to one on AI. For the fourth quarter guide growth, I think you noted there’s some sensitivity on the unpredictability of activation. Could you give some of the puts and takes there, and then the degree of sensitivity embedded within the guidance? And then I’ll have a follow-up.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I think Mike will take this, but I’ll just start like I always do when we talk about guidance. As you know, I am probably a relatively conservative guider, and so we always want to make sure that we guide to something we have very, very, very clear line of sight to achieving, always knowing there’s probably a little upside there. So with that as context, Mike, do you want to go ahead and jump in?

Mike Burwell (Chief Financial Officer)

Curt, so as you rightly pointed out, when you look at our activation growth, we see a large portion of that happens in the fourth quarter — that’s due to seasonality. We have many of our clients; that’s what their buying patterns are, and that’s what happens in the fourth quarter. We also will — we had a large activation project that we’re lapsing in the fourth quarter overall. So we raised slightly for the full year, as Jim said. When you bring that all together, you come away and say, look, we set guidance up that we know we have line of sight to deliver. We know we do have more activation in Q4 — it is seasonally stronger in terms of what happens in the fourth quarter — and we are lapsing an activation project that was there in the fourth quarter last year. So that’s how we think about it.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Hey Troy, do you want to jump in and take this one?

Troy Triangin (Chief Product Officer)

Yes. So agentic commerce, as you know, is a growing channel. I think we’ve had studies that have come out recently, and I think it was even mentioned in the prepared remarks or the comments before, that a majority of people in the U.S. and many markets around the world are already using, you know, agents or LLMs to actually discover products. The opportunity for us in this space is all around content management, and that’s where these partnerships come into play and are important.

So, for example, if you go out and search for a high-protein snack that’s got a clean label, that needs a definition and understanding which products actually meet that expectation is where we come into play. And so, you know, agentic will continue to adjust. Right now it’s primarily on discovery, and then people are actually buying. Over time, like with the things like Muse that you referenced, more agents will actually be doing that. But regardless of those two scenarios, you’ve got to understand which products actually meet the criteria of the question, which is not always on a package, and that’s where we come into play for the first part.

The second part is in the agentic space, it is another channel that we need to measure. And so our core heart of our business and our Full View is all in trying to figure out where does volume go. So if it’s coming from a brick-and-mortar store and now switching to online, now switching to agents within an online space, that’s our job to measure, and that’s the other part of monetization that we’re going after. And Jim mentioned that earlier with our partnerships in the U.S., but then also we’ll have more outside the U.S., and then we’re also building capabilities ourselves to go after that part of it as well.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Ashish, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Ashish Sabadra (Analyst)

Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to drill down further on the EMEA geography. You mentioned some of the challenges there. I was just wondering how are the conversations with clients progressing now in the fourth quarter, and how do you think about the visibility for growth in EMEA, particularly as we get into 2027? Thanks.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, I want to make sure I—the first part of that question broke up just a little bit. Are you asking how we’re thinking about growth in EMEA? Okay. Yeah. So, if you take out kind of the ad hoc world there, which was fairly significantly impacted by the war because it’s creating kind of uncertainty with the consumer and uncertainty in what they’re doing, our clients are saying, I’d rather not spend my money right now trying to understand things when I believe they’re going to change.

And so that hasn’t caused them to stop using information, of course, and our Intelligence business and subscription business continue to operate really well there, or to perform really well there. They are saying let’s wait a little bit for us to get in the market doing some of our analytics and doing some of our surveys. I think over time that, you know, as things normalize, that will come back and will normalize our growth in EMEA. And by the way, you know, EMEA includes Western Europe as well, and we’re seeing really good growth in our, let’s say, Full View with our panels and e-commerce, and also equally good demand, let’s call it, for our AI-based solutions.

Ashish Sabadra (Analyst)

That’s very helpful color. And then I wanted to focus on the Connect AI. Really good traction there with 10 new clients and 79 in the pipeline. As you mentioned, there is some initial project revenue. But can you help us understand the incremental opportunity there as the clients adopt the GenAI solutions? Thanks.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Sure. Troy, you want to jump in?

Troy Triangin (Chief Product Officer)

Yeah. So like we mentioned, there’s the 10 charters that are kicking off now. They’re set up in a couple different ways. One, there’s initial setup and development—revenue and expense, I guess, to the client. That is what Jim was referring to earlier. But what happens post that is there’s ongoing one of three things, if not all of them. One is about data expansion. So many of these charters are uncovering that more data is needed to solve that internal workflow that the client is working to implement. So there’s an incremental data licensing that comes along with them. The second is ongoing token or transaction fees to keep that capability up and running, because some of that development is calling our backend services to actually make a call. So that’s the second.

And then the third, which is actually probably the one I’m most excited about right now, is as we’re getting in and actually uncovering some of these use cases, more and more use cases within that initial engagement are popping up. So then it’s about broader expansion, and that’s where we continue to grow with the client. You know, we said over 80, which Jim said is also going to 100 in the last couple days. We don’t expect that to slow down. We’re seeing that all around the world as well.

It’s in the U.S., it’s in Western Europe of course, but we’re seeing it in all markets—some level of engagement to actually integrate and do these types of services within our Connect AI portfolio, but then also our forward-deployed engineer engagements. So that’s kind of how that’s playing out. I think Mike referenced the numbers a little bit in ’27 and what we’re shooting for and expecting. But the momentum has been fantastic, and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

OPERATOR

Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Andrew, your line is open. Please go ahead.

Andrew Nicholas (Analyst)

Hi, good morning. Appreciate you taking my questions. Wanted to ask on annualized subscription growth—it moderated a bit this quarter despite what’s been really stable retention and strong panel and e-commerce growth. So just curious what else, kind of underlying that moderation, is going on, and what would drive subscription growth higher in 2027 specifically.

Mike Burwell (Chief Financial Officer)

Yeah, so when I look at that, you know, it’s over $3 billion in terms of subscription revenue growth. It’s at that 5.5% when you look at it on an annualized basis, and as you rightly pointed out, you know, 105% NDR and 99% GDR. I mean, you feel it very, very sticky. But I’d go back to what Jim and Troy have said. As we continue to move in the AI space and our forward-deployed engineers are working in those different buying groups, we’re working with them, but also part of that then becomes more subscription, more revenue, more data, and our Full View data is being provided or signed up for.

That’s going to continue to drive that subscription revenue going forward. So I feel good about where we are and that growth rate at that five and a half to six percent range. But the opportunity going forward is just going to continue to see that overall. So that’s what I think will continue to drive that as we look in ’27 and beyond.

Andrew Nicholas (Analyst)

I appreciate that. And then maybe just a question to help me better understand for my follow-up on the Google partnership—how does that kind of get monetized? Is that a route to getting more data to inform your products, or is there actual kind of consumption-based dynamics tied to that relationship? Obviously something sounds like you’re pretty excited about coming in this quarter. Thank you.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, so there I’m going to let Troy jump in. But there are, let’s say, multiple dimensions of how we would monetize that. One is Google simply has recognized the value of our information in the way they’re operating their business, so they’re taking in our information. In addition to that, they’re realizing that our information will help them in their agentic commerce journey, using it to kind of inform consumers what’s in the product or what’s hot and also where they can actually buy it.

And then we should just be measuring that channel, which is not just Google but the whole agentic channel. And so it really covers a very broad dimension. The relationship is big for us and I think meaningful for them as well, even as big as they are. So that’s why we’re really excited about it. Troy again has been very engaged in this, along with many of us. What is your view?

Troy Triangin (Chief Product Officer)

So there’s three ways that that partnership is important and monetizes with us. Number one, like Jim said, they do license more data assets from us that are as part of their Google Shopping and their agentic, you know, broader frameworks. So that’s one which goes to the points Jim just said. The second is we’re working on many additional product opportunities together which will unlock some things that we’ll announce in 2027. And then third, what it does is it is an input.

Right? And so as Jim was talking about, we need to measure the channels—we need to measure how many sales are done through Gemini versus, you know, ChatGPT versus whatever else, you know, source on the major LLMs, but also within the LLMs or the chat environments of retailers specifically. So that’s part of data in that will then use those assets to create products and sell to manufacturers and other retailers, etc. So all three of them are engagements. I think over time, you know, the individual products and things will tweak because it’s early on. Agentic commerce is still relatively new, but progress is there. And again, you’ll see more announcements from us in the coming months, I’m sure, within this framework.

OPERATOR

We have reached the end of the Q and A session. I will now turn the call back to CEO Jim Peck for closing remarks.

Jim Peck (Chief Executive Officer)

Yeah, just to reiterate that we’re feeling really good about our business. I think I’ve used the word execution machine before, and that continues to be part of who we are and who I am. And I really feel good about the position we put ourselves in to continue with our Full View strategy, which will always be fundamental to what we’re providing to our clients and to the world, in conjunction with how we’re leveraging AI both externally, which we’ve talked a lot about, but also internally to drive good top-line growth and continue top-line growth and also to continue to expand margin.

So I feel like we’re in a really good spot, and you’ll hear more from us going forward. Thank you all for the great questions, and we’ll see you next time.

OPERATOR

This concludes today’s call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.

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