SPS Commerce (SPSC) brought its AI-fuelled growth thesis to Citi's 2026 Global TMT Conference, with Chief Financial Officer Joe Del Preto presenting financial targets alongside an expanding suite of autonomous tools designed to accelerate onboarding and invoice processing across the company's supply-chain network.
The company, which carries a market capitalisation of $2.82 billion and trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 37.36, reported levered free cash flow of nearly $199 million over the trailing twelve months and a current ratio of 2.26. North America accounts for 91% of revenue. Del Preto set a target of high-single-digit revenue growth, a gross-margin band of 70% to 75%, and an EBITDA margin of 35%. Operating margin is projected to improve by 200 basis points year over year, with additional upside flagged from internally developed AI capabilities.
At the core of the growth narrative is the Max product line. Max Conversation, formerly called Max Chat, has reached general availability across all 40,000 customers on the network with what the company described as "really high" adoption. As an example of the tool's impact, one customer identified more than $300,000 in missing invoices after roughly 30 chat interactions, Del Preto said.
Max Agents, built to automatically execute tasks such as creating invoices, acknowledging purchase orders and matching orders to invoices, is scheduled to enter beta later in 2024, with broader commercialisation planned for 2027.
Perhaps the most dramatic efficiency gains are coming through agentic onboarding. For Web Fulfillment customers, fully agentic onboarding has cut processing time from one to two days down to approximately 15 minutes. The company scaled from its first agentic onboarding about a month prior to processing hundreds per month. For System Automation customers using ERP integrations such as NetSuite or SAP, onboarding time is expected to drop from six to nine months down to several weeks; agents for this segment are currently under development.
The push for automation comes against a backdrop of fragmented retail compliance data. Del Preto noted that only about half of buying organizations publish actual requirements, and merely one-third of requirement changes are formally published — inefficiencies that AI tools are designed to fill.
SPS Commerce, founded in the late 1990s, restructured its retail sales team in mid-2023, splitting roles into "hunter" positions focused on net-new retail relationships and "farmer" roles dedicated to expansion within existing accounts. A new European leader was hired in late 2023. In 2024 the company acquired SupplyPike and divested its 3P business, shifting customers from the legacy Carbon6 take-rate model to SupplyPike's subscription model. The network now serves approximately 3,500 buying organizations and just over 40,000 suppliers and customers.
Del Preto also referenced the lapping of "Liberation Day" in April, a reference point tied to tariff-related pressures and contract right-sizing that weighed on the second half of 2023.
