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AppFolio delivered strong Q1 2026 results, with revenue growing 20% year-over-year to $262 million. The company reached 9.5 million units on its platform, driven by the best first quarter for residential new business in its history. A primary catalyst for growth is the rapid adoption of its Realm-X AI suite; over 99% of its 22,520 customers now use AI features, and adoption of its autonomous AI 'performers' surged 500% sequentially. These AI agents manage workflows like leasing and maintenance, increasing operational efficiency for property managers and improving resident satisfaction. Financially, AppFolio showed significant margin expansion, with non-GAAP operating income reaching 27.3% of revenue. The company is leveraging AI internally to reduce R&D costs as a percentage of revenue while accelerating product deployment. Management raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance to a midpoint of $1.118 billion and increased its non-GAAP operating margin outlook to 26%-28%. AppFolio also continued its share repurchase program, buying back $125 million in stock during the quarter. With the promotion of Kyle Triplett to Chief Product Officer, the company remains focused on its 'Real Estate Performance Management' strategy, positioning itself as the central operating system for the real estate industry.

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AppFolio, Inc.: Aggressive Financial Engineering and Insurance Risk Management Masks GAAP Volatility

Full Earnings Call Transcript — Q1 • 2026-04-23

Operator: Good afternoon, thank you for standing by, and welcome to AppFolio, Inc.'s First Quarter 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. Please be advised today's conference is being recorded, and a replay will be available on AppFolio's Investor Relations website. I would now like to hand the conference over to Lori Barker, Investor Relations.
Lori Barker: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Lori Barker, Investor Relations for AppFolio, and I'd like to thank you for joining us today as we report AppFolio's First Quarter 2026 financial results. With me on the call today are Shane Trigg, AppFolio's President and CEO; and Tim Eaton, AppFolio's CFO. This call is simultaneously being webcast on the Investor Relations section of our website at appfolioinc.com. Additionally, an audio replay of the call and a transcript of the prepared comments will be posted to the website. Before we get started, I would like to remind everyone of AppFolio's safe harbor policy. Comments made during this conference call and webcast contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties. Any statement that refers to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events, including financial projections, future market conditions business performance or future product enhancements or development is a forward-looking statement. AppFolio's actual future results could differ materially from those expressed in such forward-looking statements for any reason, including those listed on our SEC filings. AppFolio assumes no obligation to update any such forward-looking statements, except as required by law. For greater detail about risks and uncertainties, please see our SEC filings, including our Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025, which was filed with the SEC on February 5, 2026. In addition, this call includes non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures and the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our first quarter earnings release posted on the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Shane Trigg. Shane, please go ahead.
Shane Trigg: Thanks, Lori, and welcome to everyone joining us today. AppFolio is off to a strong start in 2026. First quarter revenue reached $262 million, a 20% year-over-year increase and up from the 16% year-over-year increase we delivered in Q1 2025. Non-GAAP operating income grew 36% and was 27.3% of revenue and GAAP operating income increased 50% and was 19.4% of revenue. We had the best first quarter in company history for residential new business unit acquisition and units on platform grew to $9.5 million, in line with our expectations and typical seasonality. This is an exciting time for our business and our industry. AI is powerful, and we're putting it to work across every dimension of our business, accelerating performance for our customers while driving greater efficiency across our own operations. At our annual future conference last year, we introduced real estate performance management, what we call RPM, a new way of thinking about value creation in real estate. RPM represents a fundamental shift from reactive task-oriented property management to a holistic practice of delivering value across the entire real estate ecosystem. Residents that love where they live, investors that see consistent strong returns, property management businesses that grow, serving communities that thrive. Achieving that requires a performance platform that provides the harness for intelligent AI orchestration and real estate with an AI native architecture of 3 interconnected systems, a system of record, a system of action and a system of growth, all accessible through one unified experience. There's a unique advantage in operating a mission-critical platform in a vertical market sitting at the center of how our customers operate their business. Compliance is embedded in how our platform works, not layered on after the fact in the domain knowledge we've encoded across residential real estate is sharpened by tens of thousands of customers. Our Realm-X performers are fully operational AI agents built directly into the platform, taking ownership of entire workflows and doing the work with and for our customers. And by reimagining the resident experience with the services renters demand, we turn AppFolio from a cost center into a growth driver, one whose value deepens with every customer we serve. The RPM discipline we've introduced and the performance platform we've built are redefining what it means to win in real estate. It's gratifying to see the market embracing RPM and our customers turning it into daily practice. Dan Rubenstein puts it well. He's the CEO of Hampton Management Associates, a 3,000-unit Bay Area property management company that this quarter signed a 3-year renewal on our [ MAX ] plan. I quote, "AppFolio is attacking the friction in our business by consolidating our tech stack into a single platform. By integrating Realm-X performers to automate core workflows, we've transitioned our team for manual administrative tasks to high-value resident engagement. Partnering with AppFolio allows us to spend less time on system maintenance and compliance and reallocate resources towards scaling. It provides one source of truth where everything is simplified so we can stop reinventing the wheel and get back to the business of bettering our properties." Dan's experience reflects the type of customer outcomes we pursue through the pillars of our company strategy. Our first strategic pillar is differentiate to win. Starting with our system of action. Our AI strategy is producing measurable commercial outcomes at scale. More than 99% of our nearly 23,000 customers are now using some form of our AI-powered Realm suite. AI actions are up 7x year-over-year and [ performer ] adoption has grown almost 500% quarter-over-quarter. The Business Intelligence Group has recognized this momentum, naming AppFolio a 2026 Artificial Intelligence Excellence Award winner in the Agentic AI category. Maintenance performer is a good example since it tackles a workflow that's universal and property management. Resident issues don't stop at 05:00 p.m. and neither does AppFolio. Over half of all work orders are submitted after hours and Realm-X maintenance Performer is there to respond to residents in an average of 6 seconds, triaging and troubleshooting the issue in automatically creating a work order when needed. This quarter, we enhanced the maintenance performer with new vendor follow-up capabilities. It now proactively contact vendors, monitors open work orders, confirms completions and logs every interaction automatically. Turning to our system of record. AppFolio stack is deepening what customers can do directly within AppFolio while continuously expanding the categories it covers, most recently adding cloud communications through Simple VoIP. We've surpassed 5 million units connected on stack, creating a powerful network whose value grows with every connection. The depth of these integrations is what sets them apart through our partnership with Avid Exchange, Plus and Max customers can now manage their entire accounts payable life cycle, bill payment, real-time status tracking, reconciliation and fraud protection directly within AppFolio. This isn't just a data handoff between systems. It's the full workflow inside our platform. In our system of growth, we start with one conviction. The resident is at the center of the real estate ecosystem. When they thrive so did everyone in the industry and the data is clear on what that means for business performance. Our national study of more than 3,000 renters confirms that a modern resident experience is a strong driver of satisfaction. The research showed satisfied residents are 72% more likely to renew and 34% less likely to plan a move directly impacting NOI and property performance. But we're measuring something deeper than satisfaction, the impact on the daily lives of renters, residents on our platform with access to resident services score 14% higher on the [indiscernible] ladder for like satisfaction, the highest leverage moment to deliver that value and that move in. It sets the tone for the entire resident journey and as we're offering easy access to the right services becomes a differentiator for property managers. Resident on-boarding lift transformed that moment. Rather than a checklist of manual tasks, Move-in becomes a streamlined, transparent digital experience, covering renters insurance, utility setup and other essential services. The result is a 95% attach rate at Move-in compared to 64% without it and more renters with insurance coverage that protects their personal property. Our recent addition of group rate Internet to resident on-boarding lift gives residents convenient affordable connectivity from the moment they move in. In the same rental research I mentioned a moment ago, 97% of group ran Internet users says save them money and improve their financial well-being. Brad Randall, the President of Welsh Randall, a nearly 6,000 units AppFolio customer headquartered in Ogden, Utah explains it this way, and I quote, "Residents complete the entire movement on their phone. It walks them through each step clearly, so they understand exactly what they're signing up for and why. The result is faster lease execution, fewer questions and residents who feel confident and set up for success from day 1." Our second strategic pillar is deliver performance efficiently. Let's start with how we're delivering for our customers. As the industry shifts towards RPM, ambitious operators are choosing AppFolio to drive increased performance. Mandy Management, a New Haven, Connecticut-based operator managing more than 3,000 units is one of our newest customers. They selected AppFolio to consolidate their disparate systems into 1 unified platform. By replacing clunky interfaces and manual accounting with integrated AI workflows and real-time reporting, they're streamlining everything from maintenance coordination to resident communications to accelerate performance. New customer momentum is one measure of our success. Equally important is the retention and growth we're driving within our own customer base. Since 2017, West Des Moines, Iowa-based Newberry Living has grown its portfolio to 2,300 units on AppFolio. They continue to consolidate new acquisitions under our platform, driven by our high-performance AI tools. Rich overhaul technology implementation coordinator at Newberry Living explains and I quote, "We evaluated a specialized AI leasing solution alongside Realm-X leasing performer and chose AppFolio. What won us over was how much AppFolio already understood about how we operate. Other solutions required us to bring all that context to them. With AppFolio, it was already there. Since deploying Leasing Performer, our inquiry to completed showing conversion rate has increased 20%, and Leasing Performer is now driving 57% of all completed showings, freeing our on-site team to stay focused on closing high-intent tours." We're successfully attaching AI products when customers sign, expand or renew with us, reflecting the growing value they see in our platform and continue to drive growth for AppFolio. That value is rooted in how AppFolio is built, a unified platform that tightly connects the system of record and the system of action provides the harness for intelligent AI orchestration. Our AI agents operate directly on governed real-time data and transactional workflows, reducing latency, avoiding connector fragility and improving accuracy and security. AppFolio's AI data architecture gives agentic capabilities native access to the underlying data model and execution layer, enabling more reliable automation, better orchestration and faster results. The same discipline we bring to our customers' performance we apply to our own. AI native engineering is changing how we build. We're compressing the time from concept to deployment, enabling our teams to design, code, test and refine products with greater speed and precision. That means more value in the hands of our customers faster. This shift is freeing our engineers to pursue the work that compounds long-term platform value, including market and customer opportunities that otherwise may have taken us longer to address. Our growing efficiency is reflected in our financial performance as we reduced R&D as a percentage of revenue year-over-year, which Tim will speak to shortly. Our third strategic pillar is great people and culture. I'm consistently inspired by our team's ability to innovate at an exceptional pace and make a real difference for our customers. It's their dedication that makes our vision to power the future of real estate a reality. I'm pleased to share that AppFolio has been recertified as a Great Place to Work for 2026. That recognition is a reflection of the people at the heart of this company. AppFolio aims to exemplify our values, live the AppFolian way and deeply care about our customers. On that note, I'm delighted to announce that Kyle Triplett has been promoted to Chief Product Officer. Many of you know Kyle from his leadership across our product organization, where he's been instrumental in delivering the AppFolio performance platform and our Realm-X AI capabilities. In this expanded role, Kyle will continue to lead our product strategy and design, advancing AppFolio's innovation leadership and ensuring our platform continues to set the standard for our industry. The RPM discipline we've introduced and their performance platform we have built are turning property managers into performance managers. And when they win, everyone in the real estate ecosystem does as well. With that, I will hand it over to Tim to share more about AppFolio's Q1 financial results.
Timothy Eaton: Thank you, Shane. I am pleased with our first quarter results and strong start to 2026, which demonstrate how our performance platform continues to deliver outcomes for our customers, and that customer value is increasingly visible in our financial results. In the first quarter, we delivered revenue of $262 million, growing 20% year-over-year compared to $218 million in Q1 2025. Subscription services revenue previously called core revenue grew 18% year-over-year to $58 million compared to $49.5 million in Q1 2025. This growth was driven by winning new customers, growth in total units under management and an increasing number of customers upgrading to our Plus and MAX premium tiers. This tier upgrade trend reflects the growing value customers are finding in Realm-X flows, our AI-powered workflow automation engine currently available in premium tiers, our expanding stack partner ecosystem and mixed product, mixed portfolio capabilities, such as student and affordable housing. First quarter revenue from value-added services grew 22% year-over-year to $201 million, driven by increased adoption of our Folio Guard risk mitigation services, Folio screen offerings and online payments as well as growth in units under management. Resident onboarding lift and Realm-X performers, comprising our leasing, maintenance and resident messenger AI agents are also increasing their contribution to value-added services revenue. We continue to be pleased with our acquisition and retention of customers and units. At the end of the quarter, we managed approximately 9.5 million units compared to 8.8 million units a year ago, representing an 8% increase. Customers grew to 22,520 from 21,105, a growth rate of 7%. Customer and unit retention continues to be strong and in line with historical averages. In summary, first quarter revenue of $262 million, growing 20% year-over-year reflects our continued strength in winning new business and driving adoption of our products and services. Turning to margin. In the first quarter, GAAP operating income, which includes stock-based compensation expense, grew 50% year-over-year to $51 million and 19.4% of revenue compared to $34 million or 15.5% of revenue last year. Non-GAAP operating income grew 35% to $72 million or 27.3% of revenue compared to $53 million or 24.3% of revenue in 2025. Continuing with non-GAAP measures, cost of revenue exclusive of depreciation and amortization was flat year-over-year at 36% of revenue. Efficiencies in our operations were offset by our payments product mix and additional data center spend to support our customers' growing usage of our AI product capabilities. As a percent of revenue, in the first quarter, sales and marketing was consistent with the first quarter of 2025 at 13% as we continue to invest in additional sales capacity and go-to-market initiatives to drive new unit acquisition, premium care upgrades and value-added services adoption. R&D spending declined as a percentage of revenue to 16% from 17% in the prior year. The use of AI tools and systems is increasing the velocity of our innovation and the productivity of our engineering teams, particularly in areas such as the resident experience and AI product capabilities. G&A expense declined to 7% from 8% as a percentage of revenue, reflecting the benefits of scale and continued operational efficiencies. We entered the quarter with 1,721 employees, an increase of 4% from the first quarter of 2025, primarily reflecting growth in sales capacity as we continue to invest to win new business, drive premium tier upgrades and increased adoption of value-added services such as resident on-boarding lift and performers. In the first quarter, we deployed $125 million to repurchase 702,500 shares. Our opportunistic share repurchase strategy is one component of how we are driving long-term shareholder value. In 2025 and 2026 to date, we have repurchased nearly 1.4 million shares and have another $125 million remaining of our existing share repurchase program. Our balance sheet remains healthy, providing financial flexibility as we continue on our mission to build the platform where real estate comes to do business. Now turning to our 2026 financial outlook. We are raising our guidance for annual revenue to a range of $1.110 billion to $1.125 billion, for a full year midpoint growth rate of 17.5%, fueled by adoption of our premium care offerings, growth in new business units and increasing adoption of our products and services including agentic AI performers and new resident services. We continue to anticipate 2026 revenue seasonality to be mostly consistent with 2025. We are also raising our guidance for non-GAAP operating margin and expect to deliver between 26% and 28% compared to 2025 of 24.7%. Cost of revenue exclusive of depreciation and amortization is expected to be relatively flat as a percentage of revenue compared to 2025. While we expect to continue hiring in areas, including sales, operating expenses as a percent of revenue are projected to decline modestly as we scale and leverage AI to drive efficiency across our internal operations. Diluted weighted average shares outstanding is now anticipated to be approximately $36 million for the full year. To close, Q1 reflects continued long-term shareholder value creation through revenue growth, margin expansion and disciplined capital allocation. Together, these priorities are designed to grow operating cash flow over time, manage solution and drive durable customer performance. We are pleased with our results and remain focused on executing on our vision to power the future of real estate. Thanks to all of you for your support and interest in AppFolio. Operator, this concludes today's call.
Operator: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.