monday.com (NASDAQ: MNDY) dropped Q1 2026 results before the bell this morning — and the print was a clean beat on both lines, paired with a chunky buyback and a strategy pivot that’s going to dominate the call at 8:30 AM ET.
The numbers
- Revenue: $351.3 million — up 24% year-over-year, beating the $339M consensus by roughly $12M.
- Net income: $28.0 million — a record GAAP operating income quarter.
- Adjusted free cash flow: $102.8 million, though margin compressed to 29% from 39% in Q1 2025.
- Share repurchases: $552.6 million executed during the quarter — that’s a massive print for a company this size.
- Cash and equivalents: $997.1 million, down from $1.50B at year-end, driven almost entirely by the buyback.
The pivot
monday.com also formally launched what it’s calling its “AI Work Platform” — native AI agents inside the existing work-OS product, paired with a planned shift to consumption-based pricing over the medium term. That’s a big deal for the SaaS category. It’s the same playbook Snowflake popularized and the same pivot Salesforce has been telegraphing on Agentforce. If MNDY can stick the landing, it could re-accelerate growth that had decelerated into the high teens.
Forward guidance
Management guided Q2 to $354–356M (18–19% YoY) and the full year to $1,466–1,474M (19–20%). That’s roughly in line with prior consensus — neither a raise nor a cut. Wall Street’s going to want to hear whether the AI platform launch shows up in the second-half guide or whether it’s a 2027 story.
Heading into the print, options were pricing a +/- 15.45% move. The stock had also fallen ~22% since the last earnings report, which compresses the “expectations” side of the equation — the beat plus the buyback should help, but the bigger question is whether net dollar retention reverses from its recent low of 110% (lowest since Q2 2024).
The Play
This is a “watch the call, then act” setup. The headline beat plus a half-billion-dollar buyback is the kind of cocktail that can squeeze shorts hard. But the entire reason MNDY has been down 22% since last print is that growth is decelerating and net dollar retention has slipped. The AI pivot has to do real work in the narrative for the multiple to expand.
If the 8:30 AM call delivers: (1) Q2 raised above the prior range, (2) NDR ticking back up, AND (3) any concrete AI consumption number — you can chase the gap. If two of three miss, the squeeze fades by midday.
Pairs trade worth watching: long MNDY / short broad-line SaaS (IGV) if you think this print marks the bottom of the work-OS multiple compression. The setup is symmetric — if MNDY can’t re-accelerate on AI, neither can the rest of the SaaS book. ☕