Summary
C3.ai closed fiscal 2021 with fourth-quarter total revenue of $52.3 million, up 25.6% from the prior-year quarter. Full-year revenue reached $183.2 million, up 16.9%. Gross profit was $40.6 million for the quarter, up 26.4%, and $138.7 million for the year, up 17.7%. Gross margin was 77.6% in the quarter, up 0.4 percentage points, and 75.7% for the full year, up 0.5 percentage points. The company still lost money. Operating loss improved to $23.9 million in the quarter, up 20.9% from the prior-year quarter, and net loss improved to $24.1 million, up 21.0%. Full-year operating loss improved to $60.3 million, up 15.7%, while full-year net loss improved to $55.7 million, up 19.7%. Operating margin improved to negative 45.7% in the quarter, up 26.9 percentage points, and to negative 32.9% for the full year, up 12.7 percentage points. The losses remain large, and the company is still investing heavily.
Operating cash flow was negative $31.7 million in the quarter, up 7.2% from the prior-year quarter. For the full year, operating cash flow was negative $37.6 million, up 38.7%. Capital expenditures were $0.46 million in the quarter, down 30.9%, and $1.63 million for the full year, down 29.2%. Deferred revenue was $75.2 million at April 30, 2021, up 24.8% from a year earlier. RPO was $293.8 million at April 30, 2021. Non-GAAP RPO was $345.1 million, up 40% from $246.9 million a year earlier. The company said existing cash and short-term investments should support working capital and capital expenditure requirements for at least the next 12 months.
Operational momentum was strong. Customer count reached 89 at the end of Q4 FY2021, up 82% from 49 a year earlier. C3.ai had 91 discrete applications in production and said it operated across 11 industries, up from 5. Application end users exceeded 7,400 worldwide. The C3 AI Suite and applications were integrated with more than 800 unique enterprise and extraprise data sources, managed more than 4.8 million concurrent production AI models, processed more than 1.5 billion predictions per day, and evaluated over 30.5 billion machine learning features daily. New production deployments included the United States Air Force, Bank of America, Standard Chartered Bank, Koch Industries, MEG Energy, Duke Energy, and ENGIE. Shell signed an expanded 5+ year enterprise agreement. The company also expanded alliances with FIS, Baker Hughes, Infor, and NCS. It added 56 net new employees in the quarter to end with 574 full-time employees.
Guidance points to higher revenue but continued losses. For the first quarter of fiscal 2022, C3.ai guided a non-GAAP loss from operations of $28.0 million to $35.0 million. For full fiscal 2022, the company guided a non-GAAP loss from operations of $107.0 million to $119.0 million. C3.ai said the guidance includes GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures and that a reconciliation of non-GAAP guidance measures to corresponding GAAP measures is not available on a forward-looking basis without unreasonable effort. Management said it is planning for accelerating growth.
Risks remain significant. The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant adverse impact on the conclusion of new and additional business agreements in 2021 and 2020, and the company said the pandemic may continue to pose challenges. C3.ai expects to keep incurring operating losses and negative cash flows from operations, and it may require additional capital. Revenue growth can vary based on the timing of customer acquisition, product mix, contract durations, renewals, or terminations. The company has historically had a relatively small number of customers with large total subscription contract values, although it expects the customer count to increase. Its Baker Hughes arrangement includes minimum revenue commitments, with any shortfalls assessed at the end of the fourth quarter of each fiscal year. International expansion, brand investment, and research and development spending also carry execution risk.
Forecast
Reported figures
GAAP, from SEC filings| Metric | Q4 FY2021 | Q3 FY2021 | QoQ | Q4 FY2020 | YoY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $52.3M | $49.1M | +6.5% | — | — |
| Gross profit | $40.6M | $36.9M | +10.0% | — | — |
| Gross margin | 77.6% | 75.1% | +2.5 pp | — | — |
| Research & development | $20.7M | $18.7M | +10.5% | — | — |
| Sales & marketing | $32.1M | $28.4M | +12.8% | — | — |
| General & administrative | $11.7M | $8.2M | +42.7% | — | — |
| Total operating expenses | $64.5M | $55.4M | +16.4% | — | — |
| Operating income (loss) | -$23.9M | -$18.5M | -29.2% | — | — |
| Operating margin | -45.7% | -37.7% | -8.1 pp | — | — |
| Net income (loss) | -$24.1M | -$16.9M | -42.7% | — | — |
| Net margin | -46.0% | -34.3% | -11.7 pp | — | — |
| Customers | 2,000 | — | — | — | — |
Risks
Top two market partners together accounted for 31% of revenue for the fiscal year ended April 30, 2021, and Baker Hughes and Engie each exceeded 10% of revenue. Loss or impairment of these relationships could cause revenue to decline.
Baker Hughes operates as exclusive channel partner and reseller in oil and gas under a co-branded arrangement revised in June 2020. Termination, expiration, or renegotiation could cause loss of co-brand rights and make it difficult to replace the channel partner in oil and gas.
The sales cycle is generally six to nine months but can extend over years for large organizations. Large individual sales are a large proportion of overall sales, making it difficult to plan and manage cash flows and margins.
The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant adverse impact on the conclusion of new and additional business agreements in fiscal 2021 and 2020, and may continue to pose challenges until the effects of the pandemic abate.
The market is intensely competitive, and many competitors are more established with greater resources and may sell at zero or negative margins or bundle offerings. This could result in fewer customer orders, price reductions, reduced operating margins, and loss of market share.
Success depends on continued service of founder and CEO Thomas M. Siebel, who is critical to overall management, sales strategy, culture, strategic direction, engineering, and operations. The company does not maintain key person life insurance.
Customers generally have no obligation to renew subscriptions after three-year terms, and average total subscription contract value is decreasing and expected to continue decreasing as the customer base broadens to include smaller customers through offerings like C3 AI Ex Machina.
RPO and similar metrics may not be accurate indicators of future revenue given large average subscription contract value and dependence on a small number of high-value contracts. The gain or loss of even one high-value contract could cause significant volatility in these metrics.
The dual class structure concentrates voting control with Mr. Siebel, who controlled approximately 65.8% of voting power as of April 30, 2021, limiting stockholders' ability to influence corporate matters.
The company expects revenue growth to slow in future periods due to factors including reduced demand, increased competition, contraction of the overall market, or failure to capitalize on growth opportunities.
The company expects to cease qualifying as an emerging growth company effective April 30, 2022 and has commenced planning for related additional reporting and financial requirements, which may increase compliance costs.
SaaS KPIs
All quarters →RPO
Non-GAAP RPO
Summary, forecast, risks and KPIs are extracted from C3.ai, Inc.'s SEC filings for Q4 FY2021 (10-Q / 10-K and the 8-K earnings release); GAAP figures in the summary are checked against the reported XBRL data. They can contain errors; the filings are authoritative. Processed Oct 2, 2026.