Prepared Remarks
Equity Investor, Macro Commentary
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 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 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
HubSpot only looks cheap, because its CRM is terrible and will be used less and less as AI takes over software. x.comÂ
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 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 the same great company at a completely different valuation, about 2x EV/sales and 10x EV/free cash flow versus 25x EV/sales five years ago. It is much bigger, still grows at solid double digits, has much stronger cash flow and high gross margins. x.comÂ
Horizontal SaaS tools such as HubSpot, Atlassian and Intuit will be disrupted as companies build their own replacements with AI. Per @CJ0pp3l, quoting one of Constellation Software's AI leads, HubSpot, Jira, Mailchimp and Zendesk have been replaced with AI-built systems and agents, and only vertical software with strong systems of record and deep workflow integration will grow with AI. The market also sold vertical names like Constellation and Topicus, which hold deep platform data. x.comÂ
HubSpot is a bullish pick. x.comÂ
