Many CEOs have used their quarterly earnings calls to warn that the Trump administration’s tariff coverage, and the following financial uncertainty, goes to be dangerous for enterprise. However not ServiceNow CEO Invoice McDermott.
McDermott says the present macroeconomic upheaval attributable to Trump’s insurance policies might truly present a further enhance to ServiceNow’s enterprise.
The rationale? To higher management prices, firms wish to consolidate their know-how stack, turning to only a handful of platforms that can be utilized throughout a company, fairly than buying a number of area of interest software program options, McDermott informed Fortune Wednesday in an interview simply forward of the corporate’s quarterly earnings announcement.
“Firms have uncertainty within the international economic system, which is why they’re their OPEX, they’re their margin profile, and so they’re very targeted on effectivity and effectiveness,” he mentioned. “They’ll consolidate a lot price and take a lot price out with ServiceNow and implement so shortly and get a [return on investment] so shortly, they love that.”
Nonetheless, McDermott mentioned the steering ServiceNow gave the market yesterday about its future earnings displays uncertainty about precisely what affect Trump’s insurance policies might have. “Whereas our enterprise stays sturdy, we’re solely flowing although a part of these advantages into our full yr outlook. This enables us to think about potential dangers as they pertain to the present geopolitical setting,” the corporate mentioned in its earnings launch.
The corporate has informed the market to anticipate revenues to develop 18.5% to 19% for the total yr to $12.6 billion, that means the corporate would basically preserve the identical 18.5% yr over yr gross sales development it noticed within the first quarter. ServiceNow buyers have had a tricky 2025 to this point, with issues in regards to the impact of Trump’s insurance policies, together with cuts to authorities spending on software program, serving to to push the corporate’s shares down greater than 20% from an all-time excessive of $1,170.39 reached on January 28.
McDermott informed Fortune he expects ServiceNow’s prospects will proceed to implement digital transformation tasks, and particularly will proceed investing in synthetic intelligence going ahead. “We’ve a $4 trillion [forecast total market size in terms of business spend] market with AI between now and 2030 and ServiceNow has confirmed, primarily based on this quarter alone, the place we actually quadrupled AI revenues yr over yr, that we’re changing into the usual for enterprise grade AI and enterprise software program.”
The CEO mentioned that ServiceNow, which was initially recognized for automating the dealing with and determination of firms’ IT assist requests, has more and more been profitable marketshare in buyer relationship administration (CRM) options from rival Salesforce. He mentioned 16 of ServiceNow’s 20 largest offers for the quarter have been for CRM options.
Each ServiceNow and Salesforce have been making an enormous push into promoting AI “brokers” that automate workflows for patrons. ServiceNow introduced plans to purchase Moveworks an organization that has developed AI brokers to assist resolve IT and human useful resource duties and questions, for $2.85 billion to assist bolster its agentic AI choices. It additionally acquired Logik.ai, an organization that makes use of AI to assist salespeople quote for advanced product choices, so as to add to its CRM capabilities.
McDermott says that ServiceNow’s potential to supply a single platform throughout all of a buyer’s purposeful areas, fairly than providing siloed merchandise for gross sales, human sources, IT, and operations, meant firms might extra simply implement AI brokers with ServiceNow than with its rival. “Discuss to an enormous firm, choose anybody, they will inform you they’ve 50 to 100 situations of Salesforce. How are you going to use brokers to 50 situations that are not built-in? Good luck. So they need a clear platform with a pure play AI functionality to order fulfill and repair on one widespread structure, and we give them that, and we do it at a a lot decrease price.”
In a separate interview with Enterprise Insider, McDermott mentioned that the corporate has to this point not been impacted by cuts to authorities contracts mandated by the Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE), which has been concentrating on software program licenses as an space for slicing federal spending.
For now, ServiceNow’s enterprise momentum seems sturdy. For the primary quarter, the corporate introduced earnings per share that topped analysts’ consensus forecasts by 5% and topped market expectations for each gross sales and earnings. For the three months ended March thirty first, the corporate made $460 million in internet earnings on whole revenues of $3.09 billion, utilizing customary GAAP accounting. The corporate additionally reported that it has greater than $22 billion in gross sales already booked in its pipeline and 508 prospects with greater than $5 million in annual contract worth, a rise of greater than 20% yr over yr. ServiceNow’s shares rose 11% in after hours buying and selling on Wednesday night time following the announcement.
This story was initially featured on Fortune.com
