Good morning, and welcome to NIQ's third quarter 2026 earnings conference call. This call is scheduled to last approximately one hour. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Will Lyons, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hello, everyone, and welcome to NIQ's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me today are CEO Jim Peck and CFO Mike Burwell. Following Jim's and Mike's prepared remarks, we'll open the line for Q&A with Jim, Mike, and our Chief AI and Product Officer, Troy Treangen. As a reminder, today's remarks will include forward-looking statements regarding our expectations and outlook. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. For information about factors that could cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to today's earnings press release and our SEC filings. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on this call, except as required by law. During this call, we will also discuss both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures.
Reconciliations of non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in our investor relations website. A replay of this call will also be available there. Finally, unless otherwise noted, revenue growth rates mentioned on this call are in organic constant currency and are compared with the prior year period. With that, I'll turn the call over to Jim.
Thank you, Will. Good morning, everyone. Q3 was a milestone quarter for NIQ. There were several key takeaways: ongoing demand for our solutions, our resilient business and relentless execution in a dynamic operating environment, and our strengthening financial profile. We also announced a new agentic commerce partnership with Google, which I'll cover in detail shortly. Some financial highlights. It was our sixth consecutive quarter exceeding the top end of our guidance across all key metrics. We grew organic constant currency revenue growth by 5.8%, our 11th straight quarter of mid-single-digit growth. Adjusted EBITDA grew 17.8%, and we expanded an Adjusted EBITDA margin by 230 basis points year over year to 23.6%. We delivered positive GAAP earnings per share for the first time since our IPO. We generated levered free cash flow of $181 million and adjusted earnings per share of $0.30, both considerably above expectations.
We achieved 2.9 x leverage, reaching our sub-three times milestone a quarter ahead of schedule. Our recently announced $150 million share repurchase authorization adds return of capital to a disciplined capital allocation framework. We continue to deliver from the top line to the bottom line and strengthen our balance sheet. We are raising full-year 2026 guidance to reflect year-to-date outperformance, and with a strong core, real AI momentum, and our new partnership with Google, putting NIQ data at the center of agentic commerce, we believe 2027 begins a new phase of durable, profitable growth. Looking at the quarter from a segment perspective. Americas grew 11.5% with broad strength across intelligence and activation. In North America, we had several key wins with key retailers. We won our first-ever convenience retail collaboration with Maverik, displacing the incumbent across more than 830 stores in 20 states.
We established a full-store data partnership with a leading department store and off-price retailer, representing roughly $15 billion in retail sales. We also expanded our BevAlc retail collaboration with a global mass merchandise retailer. In Latin America, we won competitive business from a global CPG leader across five markets, renewed and expanded a global spirits maker in Mexico, and we scaled a clothing partnership nearly eightfold from a single-brand pilot into a multi-brand program. EMEA grew 2.9%, and we continue to work closely with clients impacted by the ongoing conflict in that region. Despite the challenge, EMEA delivered some of our strongest wins of the quarter. In Western Europe, a global home furnishings retailer signed a landmark eight-figure, three-year activation renewal of its global program, expanding across more than 60 markets, our largest deal of the quarter. This relationship spans nearly 25 years and has always run on annual renewals.
This was the first-ever multi-year commitment made even as they were under real budget pressure and reviewing their all-around spend. We also won a European frozen food maker from the incumbent in a high seven-figure multi-year deal. In the Middle East, despite the volatile landscape, we renewed a global telecom operator's customer experience program, extending a 15-year partnership. APAC grew 0.2%, as a tough year-over-year growth comparison masked the progress we continue to make in that region. A global social commerce platform went live with us across six markets after a year-long build. We also opened up a new vertical, adding our first agricultural sector client in Vietnam. Our go-forward APAC strategy remains intact: develop retailer relationships and win collaborations, improve coverage, and improve data quality. We made progress this year and believe we are on the right path to make APAC a more consistent growth contributor.
Zooming out, while our segment growth rates differ today, we believe growth rates can converge over time. Americas growth reflects strong upsell of Full View and cross-sell traction for our activation offerings, as well as initial demand for our AI-native solutions. As the EMEA conflict abates and our APAC strategy takes hold, we believe growth can broaden over time. Turning to growth by product, we saw strength across intelligence and activation. Intelligence grew 5.5% on new wins and strong upsell motion. Client demand for NIQ's Full View drove 20%+ growth in e-commerce and consumer panel. Measurement wins stood out. We anchored the largest retail census undertaken in South Africa and Nigeria, each covering roughly 180,000 outlets, and displaced the incumbent at a global sparkling wine leader, expanding it from 12 to 23 markets in a high seven-figure deal. Activation growth accelerated for a third straight quarter, up 7%.
Analytics is a prime space for agentic tools when coupled with NIQ's decision-grade data. Marquee wins in the quarter included a competitive takeaway in Japan and a region-wide creator effectiveness study for a major technology platform. Growth remains resilient thanks to our global reach and diverse offerings. Clients need NIQ in every environment, and that need increases in an AI world.
Clients are accessing AI-powered NIQ intelligence several new ways: through NIQ applications, through our new solutions that embed NIQ intelligence directly into their AI platforms and the LLM tools they already use, and with ConnectAI, some of our largest and most sophisticated AI Builder customers are embedding NIQ intelligence deep inside their own AI applications and workflows. Over the past year, we have shown how NIQ's AI value builds for clients in stages, from usage to adoption to deep integration, and now to incremental revenue. Here is where each stands.
Data usage comes first. It is the leading indicator we began sharing late last year. Client use of NIQ data is growing roughly 20% a year, and clients are engaging with our new AI features. Some recent proof points include: more than half of our Discover users engaged with AI features in Q3, double what we saw in Q2. Since August, we added global measurement and U.S. panel datasets to U.S. retail measurement, increasing the number of datasets available to Optiq users by 13-fold. We also beta launched MCP connections across four major LLMs: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and Copilot. Users can now access automated insights and AI-powered reports, and we have more enhancements planned over the coming quarters. Next, the data usage is turning into AI product adoption. Nearly 60% of our top 100 clients now buy at least one of our AI-powered applications.
BASES AI and Retailer Analytics are first wave of AI-native innovation over the past year plus. Revenue from these products is up 28% year to date, and roughly 74% of AI-native revenue comes from clients who bought our solutions in 2025. AI-native solutions are driving cross-sell. And we are gaining traction with our new AI-native solutions launched this year. In less than six months, we have reached 10 charter commitments with AI Builder, including Mars Snacking and Purina. We are earning revenue from these initial projects, and as we progress and deliver value, stand to turn these into even bigger commitments over time. And we have a global pipeline of 79 qualified proof of concepts behind them, spanning categories like food, beverage, personal care, pet care, and beauty across every region in which we operate. Now, let me describe how we are going about deep integration.
Clients choose NIQ because, while AI models are abundant, AI that drives value cannot be bought as software. It has to be built from the inside and with granular trusted data, and lots of it. With Optiq Bridge and ConnectAI now launched, our forward-deployed engineers are working side by side with our clients, and in some cases, their integration partners, to build and enable AI products that plug directly into their enterprise workflows.
In one charter program engagement, we mapped a client's product records to NIQ data covering 96% of their category's retail sales, the foundation that lets their systems and the market speak one language. We are now embedding NIQ's harmonization and innovation frameworks directly into the client's own agents and workflows, powering their AI-driven innovation decisions. With a global beverage leader, we are building an innovative system that matches their product data to NIQ's measurement to guide post-launch decisions.
In partnership with The OpenAI Deployment Company, we're building an AI agent to automate commerce intelligence workflows for manufacturers, starting with U.S. Beauty and planning to expand into additional categories in 2027. Every deployment creates a path to additional data consumption and product subscriptions after it's go-live. As NIQ intelligence flows into clients' AI tools, Copilots, and LLMs, NIQ moves from mission-critical input to critical business infrastructure, and that value is already starting to show up in our results. Just months after launch, we're beginning to monetize. We expect about a tenth of a point of growth from these AI solutions in 2026, which remains a foundation-building year. We're gaining adoption, building pipeline, expanding partnerships, and validating our monetization models. That momentum builds into 2027.
We're not setting formal 2027 guidance today, but we believe our new AI-native product suite can contribute about a quarter to a half point of growth. Our new AI products are putting us at the table with client CIOs and CTOs as they build their own AI tools, as a trusted partner and thought leader on how to maximize AI value. Because Optiq, Bridge, and ConnectAI connect NIQ's data directly into their AI environments, we're opening technology budget pools we haven't historically accessed. A leading global consulting firm sized the prize. It estimates technology budgets at the top 100 global manufacturers will grow from roughly $60 billion in 2024 to approximately $90 billion in 2030.
Capturing even a small share of the incremental spend positions us for $500 million-$1 billion of potential growth as we unlock new revenue streams, from consumption-based revenue to data licensing, to implementation fees, to agentic service fees. That's before widening the aperture to our 23,000+ clients. We think our progress is showing that AI tools are only as good as the data that powers them, and we believe no one has granular consumer intelligence like NIQ. Our proprietary permissioned harmonized data is the critical ground truth, and we think our advantage compounds as client adoption grows. We're pleased with our early progress this year, and we look forward to scaling with clients in 2027. Nothing illustrates that better than our new partnership with Google, and one of the most important developments of the quarter.
It extends everything I just described, taking NIQ intelligence beyond our clients' own AI tools and into the consumer-facing AI experiences where shopping decisions are increasingly made. This partnership will integrate NIQ's granular proprietary semantic data spanning more than 265 million products in 90 countries into their Shopping Graph. The first order objective is to strengthen product discovery and local availability. When a consumer asks an LLM for something like, "The best fragrance-free sunscreen for sensitive skin nearby," our shared goal is to drive more sales for retailers and brands at a stronger ROI than other channels. Stepping back a bit, AI is changing how consumers shop and what it takes for our brand and retailer clients to compete and win. AI assistants increasingly help consumers discover, compare, and decide what to buy. Agentic commerce goes further, acting on the shopper's behalf, and the channel is growing fast.
NIQ and World Data Lab report that nearly three-quarters of shoppers use AI for product discovery. McKinsey estimates that AI agents could mediate $3 trillion-$5 trillion in global consumer goods commerce by 2030, including up to $1 trillion in the U.S. An opportunity in agentic is the same as it has been in other new channels. Lead the change, help brands and retailers understand the shift, act on it, and measure the results. We are advancing that work in three areas. First is measurement, helping manufacturer and retailer clients see where AI is in changing demand and choice. We are building products to help clients understand their presence in AI shopping journeys, competitive performance, and the connection to purchase behavior. We entered a data partnership in the U.S. in Q3, and we plan to expand in other markets in 2027.
Next is agentic commerce readiness, helping products get discovered and accurately recommended. We are building capabilities to assess how brands appear in AI shopping experiences, identify gaps in product content and distribution, and prioritize fixes. Our product intelligence suite helps connect verified product facts to the needs shoppers express in natural language. Measuring the outcomes will help establish whether those improvements translate into stronger visibility and incremental sales. Third is store intelligence, where we connect shopper intent on agentic channels to where products can be bought. By connecting to AI platform commerce feeds, such as Google Merchant Center, our store intelligence links agent recommendations to retail locations and local offers. It helps AI shopping experience answer a practical question: Where can I buy this sunscreen nearby? We are already working with clients.
We are designing an initial pilot with a global consumer health leader to benchmark its brand's agentic commerce readiness, identify what influences AI recommendations, prioritize improvements, and test their sales impact. There are more than a couple dozen brand and retailer customers in the pipeline. With Google as a marquee validation of our data, we are building great momentum in our three-pillar AI growth strategy and positioning the business ahead of significant potential growth. Lastly, AI is working on the cost side too. This quarter, we substantially completed the actions under our 2026 restructuring program. Heading into 2027, we are actively identifying additional AI-driven operational efficiencies across our data operations, engineering, commercial, and support functions. Our approach remains disciplined. Identify and harvest efficiency, reinvest a portion in long-term growth initiatives, such as building our AI capabilities, and expand profitability.
Any measures we choose to take will come with compelling payback of less than one year. In closing, we are aiming to finish strong in 2026 and are entering 2027 with exciting opportunities ahead, including our new partnership with Google, which positions NIQ data at the heart of how consumers will discover and buy products in an AI world. With that, I will hand it to Mike.
Thanks, Jim, and good morning, everyone. I will take you behind the numbers Jim covered, growth and margin drivers, our ongoing free cash flow inflection, and our balance sheet now strong enough to support capital returns. Starting with revenue, Q3 reported revenue grew 6.3% or 5.8% in organic constant currency. This quarter's growth is again powered by our revenue algorithm, retention, pricing, and cross-sell and upsell, contributing across both intelligence and activation. In a more volatile macro environment, the recurring subscription-weighted nature of our revenue base continues to provide stability and visibility. On the bottom line, positive GAAP net income of $36 million, or $0.12 per share, was the result of higher operating income, lower interest expense, and lower stock compensation versus an IPO charge-heavy Q3 2025, and net gains from M&A and deconsolidation activities.
Adjusted earnings per share of $0.30 was again above the top end of our guidance range. Even without these one-time items, GAAP earnings would have been positive for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA of $264 million was driven by our increased operating leverage, AI-enabled automation benefits, and execution of our 2026 productivity program, which continues to improve the efficiency of our largely fixed cost base. That profitability is now converting to cash. Levered free cash flow was $181 million in Q3. This brings our year-to-date levered free cash flow to $132 million, $187 million improvement over the same period last year. As expected, Q3 itself was modestly below the prior year quarter, which had benefited from the timing of vendor payments. I will come back to that.
The year-to-date improvement is the clear inflection driven by higher EBITDA flow-through, improved working capital from client prepayments, and stronger collections and lower interest expense as we deleverage. Digging deeper into Q3 results from a segment perspective, Americas grew 13.8% on a reported basis, or 11.5% organic constant currency, to $463 million. Our growth algorithm is working. Client retention, pricing, upselling motion with consumer panel and e-commerce, and higher activation cross-sell. In North America, we believe we are gaining share on two fronts: a larger share of our clients' wallets and competitive share through takeaways like Maverik. Americas' adjusted EBITDA grew 16.3% to $145.4 million, with margin expanding 70 basis points to 31.4%. EMEA revenue increased 1.4% reported, or 2.9% organic constant currency, to $491.2 million. This reflects the combination of pricing and upselling our Full View offerings more than offsetting softer ad hoc project demand amidst the ongoing Middle East conflict.
EMEA adjusted EBITDA increased 5.5% to $165.3 million, with margin expanding 140 basis points to 33.7%. APAC revenue grew 2.4% to $164.9 million reported, while growth was basically flat in organic constant currency against a difficult year-over-year comparison. We saw ongoing demand for Full View, as well as our analytics and innovation solutions. New economy wins stood out, a social commerce platform scaling across six markets and an inventory optimization upsell with a leading Indonesian convenience retailer. APAC adjusted EBITDA rose 13.7% to $34 million, with margin up 200 basis points to 20.6%, the largest margin expansion of our three regions this quarter. Looking at growth by product, intelligence grew 5.5%, delivering 5%+ growth for the 11th quarter in a row. Annualized intelligence subscription revenue growth also grew 5.5% to $3.1 billion, with solid revenue retention at 105% NDR and a 99% GDR.
These results signal durable, sticky demand for our measurement-based solutions, and we keep layering new subscription growth onto that base. For example, this quarter, a leading European frozen food maker consolidated all of its retail measurement data onto NIQ, winning back three markets from the incumbent. Within activation, Jim mentioned continued demand for our analytics and innovation offerings across all regions. Q3 growth was led by Americas. Our year-to-date performance and pipeline reflects overall industry trends. Specifically, increased demand for AI-led analytics more than offsetting soft demand for legacy survey-based consumer insight projects. Also, our new retailer collaborations, such as Maverik in the U.S. this quarter and Unlimitail Global Media last quarter, add a layer of growth that we expect to build through 2027 as we lap our big retailer collaboration win from Q4 last year.
Moving down the P&L, Q3 operating expenses declined 6.9%, driven by lower SG&A expenses as we continue to realize benefits from our legacy transformation programs, along with lower stock-based compensation expense versus the prior year period, which included IPO-related charges. We continue to find additional savings opportunities across SG&A. AI-led productivity gains now span data operations, engineering, commercial, and G&A support functions. We are doing more with less. For example, corporate costs not allocated to our segments declined 7.7% this quarter to $81.1 million, reflecting this continued cost discipline. One-time and restructuring costs totaled approximately $9 million in the quarter, including $6 million from the 2026 program. This program, as well as our legacy NIQ and GfK transformation programs, are now complete. We have accrued approximately $77 million in cost to achieve.
From a cash standpoint, we incurred $35 million cash outlay for this program year to date and expect the balance to be paid out in the fourth quarter of 2026 and the first half of 2027. These programs delivered roughly half of year-over-year margin expansion in Q3. As we move into 2027, we are likely to pursue additional investments that carry a less than one-year payback, supporting increased structural efficiency moving forward. Across other line items, depreciation and amortization was $141.5 million for the quarter, or 13% of revenue, in line with prior quarters. GAAP interest expense was $54 million, $24 million lower than the prior year, reflecting lower debt balances and our transformed post-IPO capital structure. Changes in foreign currency resulted in a loss of approximately $7 million, compared to a $19 million loss in Q3 2025.
The lower loss reflects favorable foreign currency movements, particularly between the U.S. dollar and the euro, which resulted in lower remeasurement losses in the current period. Income tax expense was approximately $30 million, modestly below prior quarters, reflecting a more favorable jurisdictional earnings mix. Turning to liquidity and free cash flow. As of September 30, 2026, we had total available liquidity of approximately $1.3 billion, including $573 million in cash and cash equivalents and $748 million on our undrawn revolver. Cash flow from operating activity was $254 million. CapEx was $73 million, or 6.5% of revenue, reflecting continued investment in our growth priorities, AI capabilities, our technology platform, and proprietary data assets like our omnichannel consumer panels. Levered free cash flow was $181 million in Q3 and $132 million year to date.
The modest year-over-year decline in Q3 reflects the timing of vendor payments benefiting Q3 2025 and higher cash paid for CapEx to support growth investments. I will note that while we raised our full-year cash flow guidance implies Q4 will step down versus Q3 due to the timing of tax obligations, CapEx, and certain vendor payments, the midpoint implies roughly $303 million of levered free cash flow in the second half, up $3 million versus our prior guidance. This is the cash flow inflection we have been building toward. After years of transformation investment, this business is now meaningfully more cash generative. The cash brought net debt to $3 billion and net leverage to 2.9x a quarter ahead of plan. It also now enables us to fund a measured return of capital through our new $150 million repurchase authorization.
To be clear, reaching 2.9x is a positive milestone, but is not an end goal. We do not have a specific new net leverage target to share with you today. I will tell you that deleveraging remains a top priority. We will continue to balance that along with disciplined organic growth investments, strategic M&A, and opportunistic share repurchases. Now turning to guidance. Our raised outlook is rooted in our year-to-date over-performance, supported by core strength and disciplined execution. As a reminder, our guidance philosophy is to endeavor to provide ranges that we believe we can achieve. For Q4, we expect reported revenue growth of 5.2%-5.5%. OCC revenue growth of 5.4%-5.7%, consistent with our full-year range. Two things to keep in mind.
In Q4, we lap a big retailer collaboration win from last year, and Q4 typically carries a higher mix of ad hoc activation work, which is harder to forecast than our majority recurring subscription base. Adjusted EBITDA margin of 26.3%-26.7%, reflecting our typical Q4 revenue and cost seasonality, as well as continued operating leverage. Adjusted earnings per basic and diluted share of $0.43-$0.47. For the full year 2026, we now expect reported revenue growth of 7.5%-7.7%. OCC revenue growth of 5.5%-5.7%. Adjusted EBITDA growth of 16%-17%, driving margins of 23.6%-23.8%. Adjusted earnings per basic and diluted share of $1.16-$1.20, a roughly 8% increase at the midpoint. Levered free cash flow of $249 million-$257 million, up roughly $3 million at the midpoint.
To update some of the full-year 2026 modeling assumptions, we expect D&A of $600 million-$605 million, GAAP interest expense of approximately $210 million-$215 million, income tax expense of $155 million-$160 million, or roughly 15% of EBITDA, share count of approximately 300 million, and CapEx at 6.5%-7% of revenue. Although we are not providing a full-year 2027 outlook today, I will provide some early views to help you think about your models. Overall, we expect our financial profile to strengthen further in 2027. This includes durable mid-single-digit growth with potential AI upside, steady margin expansion driven by operating leverage post-major transformation over the past few years, increased free cash flow and better conversion, and a balanced approach to deleveraging and capital allocation. We foresee OCC growth building through the year due to several potential factors.
These include new wins scaling, APAC improvements taking hold, and increasing contribution from our AI-native offerings. As Jim mentioned, we believe these offerings can contribute a quarter to a half point of growth next year. Of course, the mix by region and product may shift quarter to quarter, since about a third of our business is ad hoc and the global backdrop remains dynamic. We expect typical quarterly seasonality on cash flow, including a seasonal cash low point in Q1 as a result of our typical front-half weighted tech and IT expenses and back-half weighted revenue contribution. Further to cash flow, while we expect to be a user of cash in Q1, we expect a significant year-over-year improvement in that period as part of our overall growth for the year.
This view is inclusive of any incremental AI-led productivity measures we may take, and we continue to prioritize one-time investments that carry one-year payback. In closing, Q3 showed our business resilience and increasing AI progress. We delivered durable growth, margin expansion, cash flow, and a balance sheet now strong enough to support broader capital allocation. We're focused on closing out a strong 2026 and believe we are well-positioned for 2027. With that, operator, let's open the call to Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. Please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Your first question comes from the line of Manav Patnaik with Barclays. Manav, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you. Jim, I just wanted to zoom into the quarter to half a point of growth that you said comes from the, I guess, your AI solutions. Just to clarify, these are brand new AI-native solutions, or are these AI enhancements to your existing solutions? And is it cannibalizing some of your other smaller solutions as well, I.E., is this a net incremental growth rate you're giving us?
Yeah. I think you're referring to when we said we're not guiding, but I said what it could be next year. No. It is a combination of all those things. We're, I think, just to step back, Manav, to our strategy. The Full View remains, right? Our need and our clients' need for us to still capture all the consumer spending that is happening, that is relevant in the world, because that is what really is fueling AI. I know that's a cliché, but it is, in fact, the truth of what's really happening. We're staying very focused on that. Then what's happening with our clients now, yes, we're using and integrating AI into our products, like Discover through Optiq.
We're creating ways for them to tap in a very efficient way into our information, into their worlds, through things like AI Builder. What's probably most exciting for me anyway is we're also beginning to become their forward-deployed engineering group, let's call it, that's helping them understand how they can organize their own information in concert with ours. The vignettes I'll give you there are, I was at C360 earlier this year. That's our big user conference. We had been preparing up to that point by hiring the right people, by putting the right infrastructure in place to help our clients in the implementation of their AI. So hiring someone who understands how to manage and lead forward-deployed engineers in the way that we need them, putting infrastructure in place.
While I was there in the hallways, in the main speaker auditoriums, I was stopped so many times by clients who say, "We need your help, because we really can't do this on our own, and we realize that you guys know how we think about our data." Since then, we've announced and talked about these 10 proof of concepts. Those are real dollars. Those are real, let's call them, forward-deployed engineering engagements where our data is being used in new ways. There are new budget pools. Those are not cannibalizing other sales that we do. Since we've spoken, or since we talked about the script of this call, we said we had 79 new opportunities. That number's up to 100. These are very real. They're very practical, and they're right in our wheelhouse.
I'm really excited about the fact that we're tapping into these new budgets, and this is not cannibalizing the other things that we do. I know that was a little bit of a long-winded answer, Manav, but it's really important. I'd like to bring Troy Treangen , our Chief Product Officer, who also leads all our AI efforts, kind of the architect behind it, to give his view in an answer to your question. He may take us down a little different road, and then we'll let you follow up.
All right. Hello, everybody. Two things to piggyback on what Jim said is the capabilities that we are building are across the three segments that we talked about in the last couple calls. We have our beginners, we have our buyers, and we have our builders, and we are building capability across all three of them. When Mike and Jim were talking about that number for next year, it includes those features and functions and applications in those three respective areas. Just another anecdote, since we have launched the broader program for forward-deployed engineers and going into this new space over the last couple quarters, we are talking to new folks at clients. I happen to be sitting here in New Jersey today, and we are meeting with a Chief AI Officer and some of those teams, which historically has not been where we have had conversations.
I was an account lead many, many years ago for some of our larger accounts, and we did not have those conversations. They are unlocking new budgets. We are building new capabilities within our world, but also helping our clients within their worlds. I think the pipeline is building extremely well, and I am excited about what is going to happen here in 2027.
Got it. Super helpful. Thanks for that. Maybe just to close the loop, Mike, from your perspective, I think you tried to quantify it, but maybe I missed it, but just the AI benefit on the margin front, how should we think of that in terms of what is in the margin performance today and the kind of that guidance you have given for the longer term?
Manav, so when we have given guidance that in the midterm we would get to the mid-20s in terms of margins, and then we see a path to moving ourselves to 30% margins, although we have not defined a timeframe to it, we will endeavor to do that as we ultimately provide future guidance. This is going to be a key ingredient to it. What we are seeing is continue to see that revenue happen, and then AI is, from a cost standpoint, is continuing to drive almost half of our benefits overall. So we are continuing to drive it on the top line, as Jim and Troy talked about, but we are also delivering it on the bottom line in terms of what we are doing internally.
Whether it be coding or looking at our back office activities, we're continuing to drive cost improvements, as I said in the opening, that have definitely paybacks less than one year.
Your next question comes from the line of Kevin McVeigh with UBS. Kevin, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks so much, and congratulations on the results and really great execution. I want to follow up on that, just because I think it's really, really important. Jim, I think if I heard you right, you talked about an incremental $500 million-$1 billion of revenue from an AI perspective, and any sense of how that starts to scale? Obviously, some starting to come in 2027, but is that all North American? Appreciating the fact that geographically, clients are different, pace and evolution of consumption, but just any sense of how that comes in geographically, and is there incremental upside to that as you start to see just more innovative consumption patterns and maybe some of the more emerging market areas? If we could start there.
Yeah. As a foundation to answer that question, Kevin, our customers really are local and country-specific, and each country operates a little bit differently. It's not even by region. We're very much organized to face off with them locally, by country, and then also where they're global or where they have global needs globally. We just recently did a, let's call it an AI bootcamp, where we're teaching our sellers how to approach customers in each of the dimensions we talked about with AI. So AI that's built into our Discover product, AI capabilities, or let's say integration capabilities that allow them to use these tools on our data in a controlled way, and then the actual POCs that we're doing. This wasn't just done in the U.S., it was done around the world.
While the demand comes largely from the U.S. and Western Europe, where these are the headquarters of the biggest and most well-funded manufacturers and retailers in the world, that is the early demand, it is also showing up across all the regions and all the countries. If anything, we are having to prioritize which ones we want to make sure we do first, because as we do each of these POCs, we are learning ourselves, and we are able to reuse both the learning and the actual, let us call it code, or the actual capabilities to repeat each of those POCs. I will make another point.
The POC is a one-time engagement that as we have success, in which we are, those turn into long-term new revenue subscription-based products, or let us say capabilities that our clients are taking in that are in addition to our, let us call it our traditional capabilities.
It is super helpful. Then just one quick follow-up. Mike, great to see the buyback. Any sense of, is that opportunistic or just any thoughts as to deployment around that?
Kevin, so when we looked at it and said, now that we have reached the target that we had put in place a quarter early, in terms of our leverage below 3.0x at 2.9x, we viewed that as another tool in our toolkit. So, look, as I said, our main focus is continuing to delever and continue to pay down debt, but it just gives us another, as I say, tool in the toolkit. So nothing that is going to happen here immediately, but nonetheless, we are going to continue to be opportunistic in terms of thinking about it, and we think it was the right point in terms of looking at our financials and the strength of our financials to put that tool in the toolkit. So, that was the thinking behind it, Kevin.
Your next question comes from the line of Curtis Nagle with Bank of America. Curtis, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Great. I will start with a model question and then move to one on AI. I guess just for the Q4 org guide growth, I think you noted there is some sensitivity on just, I suppose, the unpredictability of activation. Could you just maybe, I guess, give some of the puts and takes there, and then just, I guess, the degree of sensitivity embedded within the guidance, and then I will have a follow-up?
Yeah, I think Mike will take this, but I will just start like I always do when we talk about guidance. As you know, I am probably a relatively conservative guider. We always want to make sure that we guide something we have very, very clear line of sight to achieving, always knowing there is probably a little upside there. With that as context, Mike, do you want to go ahead and jump in?
Sure, Jim. Curt, as you rightly pointed out, when you look at our activation growth, we see a large portion of that happens in the fourth quarter. That is due to seasonality. We have many of our clients, that is what their buying patterns are, and that is what happens in the fourth quarter. We also had a large activation project that we are lapsing in the fourth quarter overall. Look, we raised slightly for the full year versus where our previous guidance was, as Jim said. When you bring that all together, you come away and say, "Look, we set guidance up that we are going to, we know we have line of sight to deliver." We knew we do have more activation in Q4.
There is a seasonally stronger in terms of what happens in the fourth quarter, and we are lapsing an activation project that was there, that we had in the fourth quarter of last year. That is how we think about it.
Okay. Fair enough. Yeah, agentic obviously a huge topic. As agents like Muse become more prevalent, I guess at this point, are you beginning to see any changes in terms of how consumers discover products? How are NIQ clients thinking differently about engaging them? I guess just for you, in terms of sort of the biggest monetization opportunities on top of that.
Yeah. Hey, Troy, do you want to jump in and take this one?
Yes. Agentic commerce, as you know, is a growing channel. I think we've had studies that have came out recently, I think it was even mentioned in the prepared or the comments before, that majority of people in the U.S. and many markets around the world are already using agents or LLMs to actually discover products. The opportunity for us in this space is all around content management, that's where these partnerships come in place and are important. For example, if you go out and go search for a high-protein snack that's got a clean label, that needs a definition, and understanding which products actually meet that expectation is where we come into play. Agentic will continue to adjust, right? Right now, it's primarily on discovery, then people are actually buying the products themselves.
Over time, likely the things that Muse that you referenced, the more agents actually doing that. Regardless of those two scenarios, you got to understand which products actually meet the criteria of the question, which is not always on a package, that's where we come into play for the first part. The second part is, in the agentic space, it is another channel that we need to measure. Our core part of our business and our Full View is all in trying to figure out where does volume go. If it's coming from a brick-and-mortar store and now switching to online, now switching to agents within an online space, that's our job to measure, that's the other part of monetization that we're going after.
Jim mentioned that earlier with our partnerships in the U.S., but then also we'll have more on the outside the U.S., and then we're also building capabilities ourselves to go after that part of it as well.
Your next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with RBC Capital Markets. Ashish, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to drill down further on the EMEA geography. You mentioned some of the challenges there. I was just wondering how are the conversations with client progressing now in the fourth quarter, and how do you think about the visibility for growth in EMEA, particularly as we get into 2027? Thanks.
Yeah, I want to make sure I The first part of that question broke up just a little bit. Are you asking how we're thinking about—
Like EMEA.
—Growth in EMEA? Okay. We, if you take out kind of the ad hoc world there, which was fairly significantly impacted by the war, because it's creating kind of uncertainty with the consumer and uncertainty in what they're doing. Our clients are saying, "I'd rather not spend my money right now trying to understand things when I believe they're going to change." That hasn't caused them to stop using information, of course, and our intelligence business continues, and subscription business continues to operate really well there or to perform really well there. They are saying, "Let's wait a little bit for us to get in the market doing some of our analytics and doing some of our surveys." I think over time that, as things normalize, that will come back and will normalize our growth in EMEA.
By the way, EMEA includes Western Europe as well, and we're seeing really good growth in our, let's say, our Full View with our panels and e-comm, and also equally good demand, let's call it, for our AI-native solutions.
That's very helpful color. I wanted to focus on the ConnectAI. Really good traction there with 10 new clients and 79 in the pipeline. As you mentioned, there is some initial project revenue, but can you help us understand the incremental opportunity there as the clients adopt the GenAI solutions? Thanks.
Sure. Troy, you want to jump in?
Yeah. So, yeah, like we mentioned, there are the 10 charters that are kicking off now. They are set up in a couple different ways. One, there is initial setup and development revenue and expense, I guess, to the client. That is what Jim was referring to earlier. What happens post that is there is ongoing one of three things, if not all of them. One is about data expansion. Many of these charters are uncovering that more data is needed to solve that internal workflow that the client is working to implement. So there is incremental data licensing that comes along with them. The second is ongoing token or transaction fees to keep that capability up and running, because some of that development is calling our backend services to actually make a call. That is the second.
Then the third, which is actually probably the one I am most excited about right now, which is as we are getting in and actually uncovering some of these use cases, more and more use cases within that initial engagement are popping up. Then it is about broader expansion. That is where we continue to grow to the client. We said over 80, which Jim said is also going to 100 in the last couple days. We do not expect that to slow down. We are seeing that all around the world as well. It is in the U.S., it is in Western Europe, of course, but we are seeing it in all markets, some level of engagement to actually integrate and do these types of services within our ConnectAI portfolio, but then also our forward-deployed engineer engagements. So that is kind of how that is playing out.
I think Mike referenced the numbers a little bit in 2027 and that what we are shooting for and expecting, but the momentum has been fantastic, and I couldn't be more excited about it.
Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Nicholas with William Blair. Andrew, your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning. Appreciate you taking my questions. I wanted to ask on annualized subscription growth. It moderated a bit this quarter, despite what's been really stable retention and strong panel and e-commerce growth. Just curious what else kind of underlying that moderation is going on and what would drive subscription growth higher in 2027 specifically?
Yeah, so Andrew, when I-
Go ahead, Jim. Sorry. Go ahead, Jim.
Go ahead. No, no, go ahead, Mike. You got it. Go ahead.
Yeah. When I look at that, it is over $3 billion in terms of subscription revenue growth. It is at that 5.5% when you look at it on an annualized basis. As you rightly pointed out, 105% NDR and 99% GDR. I mean, you feel it very, very sticky. I would go back to what Jim and Troy have said. As we continue to move in the AI space, and our forward-deployed engineers are working in those different buying groups, we are working with them. Part of that then becomes more subscription, more revenue, more data, and our Full View data is being provided or signed up for, that is going to continue to drive that subscription revenue going forward. So I feel good about where we are and that growth rate, at that 5.5, it is going to that 5.5%-6% range.
The opportunity going forward is just going to continue to see that overall. So that is what I think will continue to drive that as we look in 2027 and beyond.
Appreciate that. Then, maybe just a question to help me better understand for my follow-up. On the Google partnership, how does that get monetized? Is that a route to getting more data to inform your products, or is there actual consumption-based dynamics tied to that relationship. Obviously, something sounds like you are pretty excited about coming out of the quarter. Thank you.
Yeah. There are a lot of, let's say, multiple dimensions of how we would monetize that. One is Google simply has recognized the value of our information in the way they're operating their business, so they're taking in our information. In addition to that, they're realizing that our information will help them in their agentic commerce journey, using it to kind of inform consumers what, let's say, what is in the product or what's hot, and also where they can actually buy it. Then we should just be measuring that channel, right? Which is not just Google, but the whole agentic channel. It really covers a very broad dimension. The relationship is big for us, and I think meaningful for them as well, even as big as they are.
That's why we're really excited about it. Troy, again, has been very engaged in this, along with many of us. What is your view?
Yeah. There's three ways that that partnership is important and monetizes with us. Number one, like Jim said, they do license more data assets from us that is part of their Google Shopping and their agentic broader frameworks. That's one, which goes to the points Jim just said. The second is, we're working on many additional product opportunities, which together, which will unlock some things that we'll announce in 2027. Then third, what it does is it is an input, right? As Jim was talking about, like we need to measure the channels. Like we need to measure how many sales are done through Gemini versus ChatGPT versus whatever else source, on the major LLMs, but also within the LLMs or the chat environments of retailers specifically.
That's part of data in that will then use those assets to create products and sell to manufacturers and other retailers, et cetera. All three of them are engagements. I think over time, the individual products and things will tweak because it's early on. Agentic commerce is still relatively new, but progress is there. Again, you'll see more announcements from us in the coming months, I'm sure, within this framework.
We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to CEO Jim Peck for closing remarks.
Yeah. Just to reiterate that we are feeling really good about our business. I think I have used the word execution machine before, and that continues to be part of who we are and who I am. I really feel good about the position we have put ourselves in to continue with our Full View strategy, which will always be fundamental to what we are providing to our clients and to the world in conjunction with how we are leveraging AI, both externally, which we have talked a lot about, but also internally to drive good top-line growth and continue top-line growth, and also to continue to expand margins. So I feel like we are in a really good spot, and you will hear more from us going forward. Thank you all for the great questions, and we will see you next time.