$0.31
$7.96
bear $0.31
base $5.78
bull $7.96
margin of safety $3.00
market price* $3.80
ZoomInfo sells subscriptions to a business-to-business data platform: continuously updated company and contact records, buyer-intent signals and related tools that sales, marketing and recruiting teams use directly or pipe into their CRM systems. Revenue was $1,239.5 million in 2023, $1,214.3 million in 2024 and $1,249.5 million in 2025, and $620.6 million in the first half of 2026 (up 1.3% on the prior year). Most sales are to customers in the United States. The business has stopped growing. Net revenue retention, the share of last year's revenue kept from existing customers, was 87% at the end of 2024 and 90% at the end of 2025, so the existing base shrinks every year and new customers only just replace it. The company's own filing warns that AI tools let customers get the same results with fewer paid seats, which could cut seat counts at renewal. On the positive side, customers paying $100,000 or more a year rose from 1,820 (2023) to 1,867 (2024) and 1,921 (2025) and now provide over half of contract value. How we measure the cash. We start from operating cash flow, strip out working-capital timing swings, subtract stock-based pay and the capital spending needed to keep the business running. Two corrections lower our figures versus our previous analysis. First, sales commissions: ZoomInfo pays commissions in cash up front and expenses them over time. Our earlier figures removed the up-front payments as if they were a timing swing while still adding back the expense, which left commissions (about $86.5 million paid in 2025) out of the cost base entirely. Second, bad debts (about $23 million in 2025, $42.8 million in 2024) were likewise left out. Both are real costs and are now charged. On this basis owner earnings were about $0.73 a share in 2023, $0.48 in 2024 and $0.69 in 2025. 2024 was depressed by about $67 million of cash spent exiting the old Waltham headquarters lease and roughly $30 million of class-action settlement payments, so we do not lean on it. Capital spending stepped up to $76.1 million in 2025 and about $42 million in the first half of 2026; with revenue flat we treat all of it as the cost of staying in business. Adding back the roughly $46 million of interest paid in 2025, the business produced about $268 million of cash before paying its lenders. Our starting level is $270 million a year, about $0.92 per current share; the 2023 figure restated to today's level of capital spending is similar, and the first half of 2026 ran close to the first half of 2025. Owner earnings rose about 29% in 2025, but only because 2024 was depressed by one-off payments, so year one assumes no growth. The tax-sharing agreement. When ZoomInfo went public it agreed to pay its pre-IPO owners 85% of the income-tax savings it realizes from tax deductions created at the IPO and later unit exchanges. Those deductions are why ZoomInfo pays very little cash tax ($8.2 million in 2025), which flatters operating cash flow. But the payments to the former owners run through financing cash flow instead: $94.0 million in 2024 and $23.6 million in 2025. The recorded obligation was $2,731.9 million at the end of 2025, enough to last for decades at current income. We deduct about $40 million a year, scaled up or down with earnings in each case. Without this deduction the values below would be roughly $0.80 (bear) to $2.05 (bull) a share higher. Debt. ZoomInfo owes about $1.27 billion: $650 million of 3.875% notes due February 2029, a term loan of about $580 million at a floating rate (about 5.7% at year-end 2025) due February 2030, and a revolving credit line due February 2028. The notes are cheaper than our 6% benchmark until 2029, worth a credit of about $32 million. After counting about $100 million of cash beyond operating needs, net debt is about $1.14 billion, or $3.87 a share on 294.5 million shares. In 2024 and 2025 the company spent $977 million buying back stock, partly with borrowed money, which is why debt rose while the share count fell. Base case: business cash flow holds at about $270 million ($230 million after tax-sharing payments) for ten years. This is the 2023 to 2026 pattern of new customers offsetting attrition, with no growth credited, because no contracted or proven source of growth is visible. After year ten the cash flow declines 3% a year through year 30. Retention below 100% means the business depends on constantly winning new customers, and we have no evidence that this keeps working for decades against AI-native rivals. The business is worth about $2.84 billion ($9.65 a share). Less $1.14 billion of net debt, that leaves about $5.78 a share. Bear case: retention stays near the 2024 level of 87% and new business no longer covers it, so revenue falls a few percent a year. With mostly fixed costs, business cash flow falls from $270 million to about $145 million over five years, holds there to year ten, then fades to nothing by year twenty. The company still repays its debt from cash flow, but refinancing the 2029 notes and 2030 term loan costs about two points more than today, adding about $119 million to what it effectively owes. The business is worth about $1.35 billion ($4.59 a share) against about $1.26 billion owed ($4.28 a share), leaving roughly $0.31 a share. In this case almost all the value belongs to lenders. Bull case: the gains already showing continue: retention up from 87% to 90%, the large-customer count rising, stock-based pay down 14% in the first half of 2026. Cash flow holds at about $290 million, the 2023 level at today's capital spending, for fifteen years, then declines 2% a year through year 40. No new products or market growth are credited. The business is worth about $3.48 billion ($11.83 a share), less $1.14 billion of net debt, or about $7.96 a share. Other judgements. Amortization of acquired intangibles (about $58 million a year) and asset write-downs, including the $650.5 million goodwill write-down in the second quarter of 2026, are non-cash and do not reduce the cash figures. Repeated write-downs ($57.4 million in 2024, $23.7 million in 2025) show that the 2019 to 2022 acquisitions are worth far less than ZoomInfo paid, and the platform's decay is reflected in the fading years of each case. The tax-sharing payments are lumpy and depend on taxable income, so the true yearly amount could differ from our $40 million estimate. What would make this wrong: retention climbing back above 100% (higher values), or AI-driven seat cuts pushing revenue into steady decline (values move toward the bear case, where the debt absorbs almost everything). Margin-of-safety price. The bear case leaves almost nothing for shareholders because of the debt, and the gap from bear to bull is wide. Fair value grows about 6% a year, so a 20% annual return over an assumed three-year holding period needs a price near 70% of value. Applied to a range centred around $5 that leans toward the bear case, that gives a margin-of-safety price of about $3.00 a share.