BlackLine (NASDAQ:BL) executives said the company is leaning on platform pricing, artificial intelligence and deeper enterprise adoption as it works to reaccelerate revenue growth, according to remarks at a William Blair conference session.
Chair and CEO Owen Ryan described BlackLine as a “mission-critical system for the office of the CFO,” saying the company supports financial close, reconciliation, intercompany, invoice-to-cash and reporting workflows. Ryan said BlackLine recently marked its 25th anniversary and serves about 4,400 customers across major global markets.
Studio 360 Positioned as Growth Driver
Chief Financial Officer Patrick Villanova said BlackLine’s Studio 360 platform has changed the company’s go-to-market and product strategy by connecting what had historically been four separate solutions: Financial Close, Intercompany, Invoice-to-Cash and Financial Reporting & Analytics.
Villanova said Studio 360 provides a single data layer across those offerings, creating what he called a “single source of truth” for finance organizations. He said that structure is important both for customers seeking fewer systems to manage and for BlackLine’s AI strategy.
“For an agent to work in our world, it has to work off one data source,” Villanova said. He contrasted that with companies operating across dozens of ERP and finance systems, where AI tools could return different answers depending on the data source.
Villanova said the platform is opening cross-sell opportunities within the existing customer base. He said customers using three or more BlackLine solutions are “almost guaranteed” to be seven-figure annual recurring revenue customers, while customers using only one solution are less likely to reach that level.
Platform Pricing Brings Subscription Uplift
Villanova outlined three monetization levers tied to BlackLine’s platform pricing model. First, he said customers moving to Studio 360 are seeing a 10% to 40% uplift in baseline subscription revenue. He said 13% of eligible annual recurring revenue is already on platform pricing, providing evidence that customers are willing to pay more for access to the technology.
Second, Villanova said the platform model reduces a historical source of attrition: user reductions. Under the platform model, he said customers receive unlimited users and a fixed fee, rather than paying based on seats.
Third, Villanova said BlackLine expects consumption-based pricing tied to AI agents to become the largest opportunity. The agents are designed to perform accounting and finance functions on a transaction basis. As more transactions are performed by agents, he said, BlackLine revenue can rise while customers see efficiency gains.
Villanova said BlackLine offers customers a sample of agent transactions for free as part of the uplift, allowing companies to validate that the agents perform work in line with internal policies, procedures and audit requirements. In public company settings, he said that validation typically takes a couple of quarters.
SAP Partnership Remains Central
Ryan said BlackLine continues to have a longstanding relationship with SAP through SAP’s Solution Extension, or SolEx, partnership. He said about 26% of BlackLine’s revenue comes through working with SAP in the market through that relationship, though BlackLine also has SAP customers outside SolEx.
Ryan said the companies collaborate on product roadmaps, joint go-to-market efforts and customer success. He said SAP’s cloud transition has helped BlackLine, particularly when customers approach ERP migrations with finance transformation as an early priority.
Ryan cited ExxonMobil and Delta as examples of companies where BlackLine was part of broader SAP-related finance transformation efforts. He said the timing of large ERP migrations can be slow, but SAP’s eventual end of support for on-premises systems could become a catalyst.
Enterprise Focus Affects Customer Mix
Ryan said BlackLine has become more selective about customers after previously selling software to companies that were not a strong fit. He said the company made a strategic decision in 2023 to wind down parts of the lower middle-market portfolio, and many of those customers had three-year contracts.
Ryan said BlackLine expects lower middle-market attrition to be “substantially done” by the end of the year. He said the shift has weighed on customer count, but new customers are substantially larger than those leaving.
He added that more than 90% of new customers in the first quarter went live with the platform “right out of the box,” reflecting the company’s focus on organizations committed to finance transformation.
Executives Point to Pipeline, RPO and AI Adoption
Ryan said he is encouraged by seven or eight consecutive quarters of pipeline growth and by increased customer engagement in enterprise sales discussions. He also pointed to remaining performance obligations, or RPO, as evidence that customers are committing to longer-term transformation projects.
Villanova said pipeline generation increased in the second half of 2024, leading to bookings growth of more than 20% in 2025. He said continued pipeline growth supports confidence in more than 20% bookings growth in 2026, which he said would translate into low-teens revenue growth in 2027.
Villanova also said BlackLine’s RPO grew 23% in the fourth quarter and 18% in the first quarter, surpassing $1 billion for the first time. He described that as guaranteed current and future revenue, and said those financial data points underpin management’s confidence in the growth model.
On AI risks, Ryan said customers sometimes ask why they cannot build their own agents using large language models. He said BlackLine emphasizes the difference between producing a reconciliation once and performing it repeatedly at scale with the controls needed for auditors and regulators.
Ryan said BlackLine is also exploring ways for system integrators and business process outsourcing partners to build on its platform, subject to standards similar to an app store review process.
About BlackLine (NASDAQ:BL)
BlackLine, Inc is a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions designed to automate and modernize the finance and accounting function. The company’s flagship offering, the BlackLine Finance Controls and Automation Platform, enables organizations to streamline critical processes such as account reconciliations, journal entry management, intercompany accounting, and transaction matching. By delivering a centralized, real-time view of financial data, BlackLine helps companies improve operational efficiency, enhance compliance and strengthen internal controls.
Key products and services within the BlackLine platform include Account Reconciliation, Task Management, Transaction Matching, Journal Entry, and Intercompany Hub.
