BuccoCapital Bloke
Technology & Markets Writer for Educated Guess
HubSpot is mathematically on track to accelerate, not die, because it has grown net new ARR faster than total revenue for about six straight quarters. Its failure to capture agent spending is a real and existential threat, but that is priced in and the game is not over. Exposure to SaaS remains small, so this is reasoning rather than table-pounding. x.com x.comÂ
HubSpot is a bullish pick. x.comÂ
HubSpot could have bottomed because its business held up through the stock's collapse while buybacks cut its share count. Q2 revenue grew 19.8% and free cash flow 44% year over year; net shares fell 4.4% last quarter. Shares trade at 17.5x free cash flow versus a two-year mean of 45x. All four models now agree. The 12-month bear, base and bull paths are $274, $317 and $360, respectively; November 4 Q3 results are the next test. x.comÂ
HubSpot shows that disruptors get disrupted, as AI forces CRM vendors toward outcome-based pricing that bills for results rather than users. KCR made that call in December 2025, and it materialized on May 7, 2026, when HubSpot moved its AI agents to outcome-based pricing and cut prices; the stock fell about 19% the next day. x.comÂ
HubSpot is at its most attractive entry point since 2022, about 8.4x implied forward earnings, if agentic AI eventually shows up in revenue, which it likely will. Adjusted operating margin expanded to 18%, deals above $120k ARR surged 64% as it wins upmarket against Salesforce, and it gets 6% more per customer each year while adding 16% more customers. Revenue growth has slowed to 18%, and not significantly raising the 2026 guide suggests management itself doesn't know if AI will lift revenue. … Show more
HubSpot is a massive AI beneficiary because it lets customers spin up ad campaigns without a full-time employee or even an outside marketer. Yet its shares trade exactly opposite AI. x.comÂ
HubSpot barely needs to grow to justify today's valuation, given its current cash inflows, terminal value aside. That shows once the customer acquisition costs and growth spending in the P&L are accounted for. Reading through from IBM is silly, since IBM serves a totally different market. x.comÂ
HubSpot is a long with much better management than peers, while monday.com is AI roadkill; the two are the only real comparables. Its valuation case needs realism, though: @CeleritasRe sees 2x forward sales as absurdly cheap if it reaches 30% terminal margins on 20% growth, but those margins are unlikely at that growth, and HubSpot is growing 17%. x.com x.comÂ
HubSpot's free cash flow understates its earnings power, because its sales and marketing spend works like capital investment with a roughly 42-month payback. If it stopped spending on growth, a massive gusher of earnings and FCF would appear. Per @SouthernValue95, projects with 3-4 year paybacks are good returns on capital that depress FCF while a company grows fast, as at Microsoft, Google and Amazon now. x.comÂ
ServiceNow's seat business is being cannibalized faster than AI deals can replace it. Next-quarter cRPO growth is guided to 18.5%, down from 20.5%, while subscription growth was 24.5% two quarters ago; agentic usage on its platform is up 13x. Management points to AI deal value heading to $1.7bn, against a roughly $16bn subscription business. The slowdown leaves more pain ahead. Underweight, $90 target. x.com x.comÂ
HubSpot is the only apps company ripping the bandaid off by moving away from seat-based pricing, even if that means lower growth in the near term. Enterprise SaaS only starts to work after a total reset of pricing toward consumption-based models, which also resets near-term revenue growth and margins. x.comÂ
