ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (GTM): what the price assumes
The priced-in model claim for ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. (GTM) is temporarily suppressed because its solve record is unavailable. The separately dated narrative remains a snapshot, not a current quote.
Generated: 2026-07-25 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/GTM
Headline
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Ticker | GTM |
| Company | ZoomInfo Technologies Inc. |
| Current price | $2.92/sh |
| Composition | Subscription 98% / Usage-based 1% / Other 0% |
What The Price Assumes (Inversion)
The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Inversion basis | whole-company |
| Operating margin (value-band context) | 4.9% |
| Operating margin today | 18.5% |
| Margin compression (value-band) | -13.6pp |
| Multiple paid | 10x operating income |
The operating-margin figure is value-band context at year 9: derived from the framework's value band, a separate calculation — not part of the priced-in solve.
The price sits below what even a 5%/yr operating-profit decline would warrant; the inversion reports a bound, not a solved growth path.
Solve inputs: computed at a 7% cost of capital with 4% terminal growth over a 5-year stage (computed at the 7% minimum rate; the CAPM rate 6.1% sits below it).
How unusual the bet is: within-range (limited comparison data)
| Reference | Value |
|---|---|
| vs own history | -1.04σ |
| implied end-window share | 0% |
Valuation X-Ray
The price is supported by asset-based and earnings-power and relative-multiple and growth-DCF value. A value/asset-supported name, not a pure growth bet.
How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.
| Family | Median price/FV | Models | Reads |
|---|---|---|---|
| Asset | 0.67x | 5 | justifies |
| Earnings | 0.39x | 5 | justifies |
| Relative | 0.19x | 5 | justifies |
| Growth | 0.85x | 2 | justifies |
Families that justify the price: Asset, Earnings, Relative, Growth
The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 3.7%); the inversion above states its own rate.
Per-Model Detail (n=17)
| Model | Family | FV | Price/FV | Applicable | Methodology |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DCF Perpetual Growth | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| DCF Exit Multiple | Growth | $8.62 | 0.34x | yes | Exit EV/EBITDA: 6.6x / 8.6x / 10.6x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull), 5yr |
| Relative Valuation | Relative | $10.88 | 0.27x | yes | P/E 23.79x (blended: static sector reference 35x + trailing (TTM) 7x), scenarios: 20.1x / 23.8x / 27.5x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA 18.45x |
| Simple DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Two-Stage DDM | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Simple Excess Return | Asset | $4.53 | 0.64x | yes | BV/sh $4.87, ROE (TTM) 8.6%, ke 9.3% |
| Two-Stage Excess Return | Asset | $4.37 | 0.67x | yes | 5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3% |
| Discounted Future Market Cap | Growth | $2.13 | 1.37x | yes | Rev $1.3B, growth 4% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 0.6x / 0.7x / 0.8x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 8x) |
| Peter Lynch Fair Value | Relative | $4.80 | 0.61x | yes | EPS $0.40, growth 1% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=5.91 (Overvalued) |
| Margin Trajectory | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Earnings Power Value | Earnings | $7.58 | 0.39x | yes | Normalized EBIT (5y avg op income, one-time charges added back) $0.21B × (1−34%) / WACC 3.7% → EPV (no growth) |
| Residual Income | Asset | $4.34 | 0.67x | yes | BV $4.87 + 5yr PV of (ROE (TTM) 8.6% − Kₑ 9.3%) × BV; BV grows 5.6%/yr |
| Graham Number | Asset | $6.62 | 0.44x | yes | √(22.5 × EPS $0.40 × BVPS $4.87) — Graham's conservative floor |
| EV/EBITDA Relative | Relative | $17.26 | 0.17x | yes | EBITDA $0.27B × sector EV/EBITDA 25.0x |
| FCF Yield | Earnings | $8.78 | 0.33x | yes | FCF $375.5M / Kₑ 9.3% — zero-growth perpetuity |
| SBC-Adj FCF Yield | Earnings | $4.77 | 0.61x | yes | SBC-adj FCF $0.26B (FCF $0.38B − SBC $0.11B) capitalized at Kₑ |
| Ben Graham Formula | Earnings | $12.91 | 0.23x | yes | EPS $0.40 × (8.5 + 2×15.0%) × (4.4 / 5.3%) |
| ROIC-Justified P/B | Asset | $1.76 | 1.66x | yes | BV $4.87 × (ROIC 1.3% / WACC 3.7%) |
| P/Sales Sector | Relative | $33.17 | 0.09x | yes | Revenue $1.25B × sector P/S 8.0x |
| PEG Fair Value | Relative | $15.00 | 0.19x | yes | EPS $0.40 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 25.0% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 37.5x |
| Earnings Yield | Earnings | $4.32 | 0.68x | yes | EPS $0.40 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%) |
| Funds From Operations Multiple | Relative | — | — | no | — |
| Clinical Phase NPV | Growth | — | — | no | — |
| Merton | Asset | — | — | no | — |
| V5 Mechanical | — | — | — | no | — |
Solvency
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Net debt | $1.1b |
| Net debt / NOPAT (after-tax) | 7.57x |
| Net debt / operating income (pre-tax) | 5.00x |
| Interest coverage | 5.0x |
| Burning cash | no |
Bullet Takeaways
- ZoomInfo sells access to a proprietary database of business contacts and intelligence to sales, marketing, and recruiting teams, and unlike most software at this price it is solidly profitable, earning an operating margin near 19%.
- The price tells the whole story: at roughly 10 times operating income the stock sits below what even a steady decline in profits would justify, so the market is pricing the business to shrink.
- The near-term swing factor is the revenue trajectory and the restructuring around it, with full-year 2026 guidance cut to about $1.19 to $1.21 billion, a low-single-digit decline, alongside a plan to cut roughly 20% of headcount.
Bull Case
The cleanest support for the bull case is the balance sheet against the price, because the market is treating a cash-generative business as if it were a melting asset. ZoomInfo is GAAP-profitable, running an operating margin near 19%, and it converts a high share of that to cash because a data subscription business needs little physical reinvestment. The company carries debt, about $1.15 billion net, but interest is covered roughly five times over by operating income, so this is not a balance sheet in distress. A profitable, cash-generating company at 10 times operating income has the option to do the thing that creates the most value when a stock is this cheap, which is to buy back its own shares at a discount to what the business is worth, and management has the cash flow to do it.
The asset underneath is genuinely hard to replicate. ZoomInfo's edge is the database itself, and the 10-K frames the competitive battleground around exactly that, naming "comprehensive platform offering" and "quality and accuracy" of data as the principal factors that drive competition between vendors. A buyer is paying a depressed price for a data asset that took years and continuous investment to assemble and that competitors cannot copy overnight. The recurring, consumption-recognized revenue model means revenue is satisfied "at the point in time the services are consumed by the customer," which ties the company's income to actual usage rather than shelfware.
The strategic pivot is the optionality the price is not paying for. Management is decoupling the proprietary data asset from the legacy SaaS application so the intelligence can be sold into large language models, AI agents, and customers' internally built applications, and it is restructuring the cost base to fund the shift. If business data becomes the fuel that AI sales and marketing tools run on, ZoomInfo owns one of the larger curated supplies of it, and a 20% headcount reduction sized to the new model lifts margins on whatever revenue remains. The bull case does not require a return to fast growth; it requires the data asset to stay valuable while the company is priced as if it will not.
Bear Case
The variable with the most leverage on ZoomInfo is regulatory and structural risk to the data itself, and it is the kind of exposure a low multiple is right to demand a discount for. The company's entire product is built on collecting and selling business-contact information, and the 10-K is explicit about the legal surface that creates, listing exposure to claims around "data breaches, privacy compliance, or copyright or trademark infringement" and warning that new or changing privacy laws "may also require us to make additional changes to our services" and "increase our potential liability." A tightening of data-privacy rules in any major market does not just add cost; it can shrink the very database that is the asset. That is a risk the cash-flow methods cannot price, and it is part of why the stock trades where it does.
The second pressure is that the decline is already here, not hypothetical. Management cut full-year 2026 revenue guidance to roughly $1.19 to $1.21 billion, a low-single-digit decline at the midpoint, and approved a restructuring targeting about 20% of headcount. Cutting a fifth of the workforce is a response to a business that is contracting, and while it protects margins, it also signals that management does not expect demand to rebound on its own. For a stock priced below even a 5%-a-year decline scenario, the bear case does not need a collapse; it needs the contraction to persist, and the guidance says it is persisting.
Competition compounds the squeeze. The 10-K describes a market that "requires continuous innovation" and is "highly competitive, rapidly" changing, and flags the danger of a larger entrant with "access to greater resources" and "greater brand recognition." The same AI shift the bull case treats as opportunity is the bear case's threat: if large platforms and AI tools can assemble or generate comparable business intelligence, the moat around ZoomInfo's data thins, and the consumption model that ties revenue to usage cuts both ways when usage falls. The debt then matters more, because a contracting, levered business has less room to absorb a bad year. The price is cheap because the market is not sure the data asset holds its value, and the bear case is that the doubt is warranted.
Valuation
ZoomInfo is priced for decline, and the methods agree it is cheap if the decline is modest. At the current price the market is paying about 10 times company-wide operating income, a multiple so low that the price sits below what even a steady 5%-a-year drop in operating profit would warrant. The implied bet is not about growth at all; it is about how fast the business shrinks, and the price has already assumed a worse path than the company has so far delivered.
Every family of valuation method reads the stock as inexpensive, which is unusual and worth stating plainly. Asset value, earnings power, peer multiples, and the forward-growth method all land at or above today's price, and the peer-multiple lens is the most striking: against comparable software companies, ZoomInfo trades at a small fraction of where the cohort sits. None of the methods says the price is rich. The honest interpretation is that this is a value situation, not a growth bet, and the entire question is whether the profitable, cash-generating data business is durable or genuinely impaired. The methods cannot answer that; they can only show that if the cash flows hold even roughly steady, the price is well below what they support.
Solvency is the constraint that keeps this from being a simple value layup. Net debt of about $1.15 billion runs at roughly five times operating income, with interest covered around five times, so the leverage is real but serviceable while the business stays profitable. The risk is the interaction: a levered company whose revenue is declining has less cushion, and the restructuring charges from cutting 20% of headcount hit near-term cash even as they lower the future cost base. A buyer at this price is underwriting the survival and durability of the data asset more than any growth story, paying a deep discount on the bet that the decline is shallow and the AI-distribution pivot keeps the database relevant. The methods say cheap; the leverage and the privacy risk say why the market is not yet convinced.
Catalysts
ZoomInfo's first quarter of 2026 was a beat on the numbers and a disappointment on the outlook. Revenue of $310.2 million came in slightly ahead of expectations and GAAP earnings per share of $0.28 beat estimates, but the stock fell sharply because management cut full-year 2026 guidance to roughly $1.185 to $1.205 billion, a low-single-digit decline at the midpoint, with second-quarter revenue guided to $300 to $303 million. The market read the guidance cut, not the earnings beat.
The restructuring is the catalyst that defines the year. The board approved a 2026 program targeting about 20% of headcount, expected to generate $45 to $60 million of pre-tax charges by year-end, sized to a smaller, more profitable revenue base. Alongside it, the company is decoupling its proprietary data asset from the legacy SaaS application so the intelligence can be distributed across large language models, AI agents, and customers' own applications, a strategic shift that is the bull case's main hope and the bear case's main test. The pace of that decoupling and any early data-licensing traction are the developments to watch.
The variables that move the fundamental story next are the revenue trajectory against the cut guidance, the margin lift from the headcount reduction, and the evolving data-privacy regulatory environment that governs the underlying database. The next quarterly report is where the depth of the revenue decline and the early returns on the AI-distribution pivot will first be visible.
Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)
ZoomInfo (consolidated) (reported)
- SPSC (SPS COMMERCE, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- MANH (MANHATTAN ASSOCIATES, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- VERX (Vertex, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- PCTY (PAYLOCITY HOLDING CORPORATION)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- PAYC (Paycom Software, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- BLKB (Blackbaud, Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- EVCM (EverCommerce Inc.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
- SSNC (SS&C TECHNOLOGIES HOLDINGS, INC.)
- (no filing in the citation store)
Methodology Note
- Priced-in inversion: the valuation is inverted on the current price to recover the operating-income growth, duration, and steady-state margin the price embeds (ROE for financials, FFO growth for REITs).
- Valuation x-ray: the valuation models, grouped into four families (asset, earnings, relative, growth). Each model is expressed as a price/FV ratio (distance from price), not a point fair-value estimate. The spread across families is the disagreement.
- Solvency: net cash/debt, net-debt-to-NOPAT, interest coverage, and share-count CAGR from EDGAR financials (net debt / FFO and fixed-charge coverage for REITs; regulatory-capital framing for financials).
- Peer cohorts: per-segment comparables with deep-linkable SEC filing citations.
Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.
Sources
ZoomInfo Q1 2026 earnings