Open Text's New CEO Bets on Sales Capacity and Data-Foundation AI to Rebuild Growth

FY2027 'foundation year' trades EBITDA margin for go-to-market and ecosystem expansion.

OTEX · Earnings Call · 2026-08-06

A new playbook from the new CEO

Ayman Antoun, who joined as CEO in April, used his second earnings call to lay out the broad strokes of a strategic pivot. Where his predecessor talked about sovereign data and the "content" moat, Antoun is focused on go-to-market execution: 300+ new quota-carrying reps, a reactivated partner ecosystem, and an "enterprise assessment" that will culminate in a multiyear plan early in calendar 2027. The tone is explicitly about fixing growth rather than defending the past: “we are not waiting to make changes that drive growth now.” — Ayman Antoun, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-08-06 The company is betting that its position as the secure data layer in the AI stack is the hook. As Antoun put it: “no large language model, no AI agent, no application functions without data.” — Ayman Antoun, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-08-06 That narrative shows up in the Aviator agents story – deals including Aviator close at 4x the size – and in the fact that 92% of cloud bookings are net-new customers rather than base migration.

The investment trade-off

The pivot is not free. CFO Steve Rai flagged $100M–$200M of incremental investment in FY2027, weighted toward go-to-market. That compresses adjusted EBITDA margin guidance to 32–33% from 36.3% achieved in FY26. Ayman is explicit about the sequencing:

Fiscal 2027 is a foundation year for us, centered on ruthless prioritization and focus, disciplined execution, core growth in constant currency and putting in place the foundation for enhanced performance for years to come.
Ayman Antoun, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-08-06

Investors are getting a second consecutive quarter of "food for thought" around AI monetization, but the market has started to reward the story: the stock is up ~18% over the past 90 days. Still, at a price-to-revenue of 1.0x, the market remains skeptical that the legacy core portfolio can recover its growth mojo.

Confluence with prior themes

The shift is a genuine departure. In May, Antoun was still talking about "client-focused culture" and "disciplined execution" – catchphrases rather than specifics: “the culture that is client-focused. You have everybody at OpenText that wakes up in the morning looking for ways to solve client problems” — Ayman Antoun, Chief Executive Officer · 2026-05-07. Now he's naming levers: sales capacity, enterprise assessment, and a revamped partner ecosystem. The prior CEO's emphasis on content as the atomic unit – “all the content that we've created and managed and curated over the years is the same thing” — Tom Jenkins, Executive Chair and Chief Strategy Officer · 2026-02-05 – has been reframed into "data foundation for AI." It's the same asset, repackaged for the AI era. The financials back up the narrative: quarterly total revenue has been essentially flat since 2023, but cloud revenue in the core portfolio grew ~9% in constant currency last quarter. The company is also paying down debt – net leverage down from 3.02x to 2.75x – and generating strong free cash flow. The question is whether the go-to-market investment can finally convert that cash flow into organic growth.