Boosted by the financial industry’s interest in artificial intelligence, Wilmington-based nCino on Wednesday reported upswings in growth and profitability during an earnings call on the third quarter of fiscal year 2026.
Sean Desmond, president and CEO of the cloud-based banking software firm, touted wins, including a 10% year-over-year increase in revenue to $152.2 million. Subscription revenues totaled $133.4 million, up from nearly $120 million a year ago.
“During my first earnings call as nCino’s CEO in early April, I spoke about the tremendous confidence I had in our team, our technology and our market position,” Desmond said. “I noted that the foundation was in place and that it was all about execution, that we needed to execute at a level that reflects the strength of our market position and the ambitions we have for this business. As you can see from our financial results, that is exactly what the company did in the third quarter.”
The good news included a $11.7 million increase in operating income from core business operations – a turnaround from the $0.8 million loss a year prior. The company’s non-GAAP analysis presented an even sunnier operating margin of 26%.
The publicly traded company buoyed its footing with a $100 million stock buyback during the reporting period.
A significant component of the Q3 growth was the 11% uptick in subscription revenues. During the quarter, the company added a regional bank in Japan with $80 billion in assets and expanded its relationship with two top-50 U.S. banks, among other major deals.
The company appears to be taking advantage of a fear-of-missing-out moment, with the executive noting that customers no longer ask what AI is, but how quickly they can adopt it.
nCino is a software-as-a-service provider that builds on the Salesforce platform to provide financial institutions with a cloud-based operating interface to manage, analyze and build on their accounts. With the incorporation of AI, the company enables banks to leverage their own internal intelligence – the ability to run analyses on thousands of accounts overnight, for example—as well as benefit from the market insights of more than 1,800 institutional clients, according to nCino officials.
CFO Greg Orenstein compared the moment to when banks first realized the competitive advantages of cloud services.
“It feels like the early days of nCino,” Orenstein said.
The call included forward-looking statements about the company’s strategic momentum. Guidance for the fourth quarter, ending Jan. 31, 2026, was for total revenues between $146.75 million and $148.25 million.
“We are going to continue to hold back savings from the May restructuring to preserve operating flexibility as we finish out the year and continue to position the company for growth in fiscal ’27 and beyond,” Orenstein said.
The executives ended their call by repeating their stay-the-course positioning.
“We have to continue to execute,” Desmond said. “That’s the drum we continue to beat here. We saw the team respond incredibly well in the third quarter, and we expect that to continue to be the focus, which is just execution. The business is out there.”
nCino shares rose about 7% in early trading Thursday, according to SeekingAlpha. On Thursday, the company's stock price had fallen from $27 around 9:30 a.m. to about $25 at 1:45 p.m.
