Kinaxis’s stock price rose more than 10 per cent Thursday after the manufacturer of supply-chain management software reported a record first-quarter profit. Kinaxis, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, turned a net profit of $29.4 million in the three-month period ending March 31, a result that helped push the company’s stock up more than […]
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Kinaxis’s stock price rose more than 10 per cent Thursday after the manufacturer of supply-chain management software reported a record first-quarter profit.
Kinaxis, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, turned a net profit of $29.4 million in the three-month period ending March 31, a result that helped push the company’s stock up more than $14 to nearly $154 in late-afternoon trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Kinaxis CEO Razat Gaurav told analysts on a call Thursday morning that “heightened levels of volatility in supply and demand” due to events such as the conflict in Iran mean the company’s supply-chain planning tools are more sought-after than ever.
“The opportunity ahead is significant and the latest innovations in data architectures in AI are providing us (with) a tremendous tailwind,” Gaurav said.
Kinaxis signed a record number of new customers in the first quarter, including its biggest contract ever in terms of total value and annual value.
Kinaxis said its average deal size in the first three months of 2026 was double the average value of the contracts it signed in the same period a year earlier. Among the firm’s high-profile customer wins was French distillery Pernod Ricard, the company behind spirits such as Absolut vodka and Jameson Irish whiskey.
Those deals pushed Kinaxis’s revenues to $165.6 million, up from $132.8 million a year earlier. Revenues from its subscription-based software rose 21 per cent to $102.9 million, while subscription term licences revenue more than doubled to $19 million and professional services revenue increased 16 per cent to $38.7 million.
Kinaxis posted a net profit of $29.4 million, up from $15.9 million in the first quarter of 2025. The company earned $1.04 per diluted share in its latest quarter, compared with 55 cents per diluted share in the same quarter last year.
Chief financial officer Blaine Fitzgerald, who is leaving Kinaxis Friday after six years with the firm, reiterated the company’s revenue forecast of between $620 million and $635 million for 2026, a year-over-year growth rate of 13-16 per cent.
“As a CFO, it’s pretty exhilarating where you get to go out and have these amazing numbers that you get to brag about,” Fitzgerald told analysts.
“I’d say we’re more confident probably than we ever were before that we’re going to at least hit those (guidance) numbers. I hope my successor is going to be very happy with me giving him a reward to be in a position to potentially give some increases in that guidance in the future.”
Kinaxis’s latest results come as a series of events, including U.S. tariffs and global conflicts, have ratcheted up demand for its software.
After the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas typically passes. The resulting surge in energy prices caused usage of Kinaxis’s software to spike as manufacturers tried to figure out how rising costs and shipping delays would affect their businesses.
Kinaxis senior vice-president of market strategy Fabrizio Brasca told OBJ last week the number of scenarios being run by Kinaxis’s customers jumped 121 per cent in the nine weeks after the start of the Iran war compared with the previous nine-week period.
While the deals signed last quarter were already in the works long before the latest conflict in the Middle East began, Gaurav said such events underscore the need for Kinaxis’s software as companies seek the “next big wave” of efficiencies in their supply chains.
“With the increase in fuel prices, there’s a lot of pressure for reducing costs,” he said.
In addition, companies are becoming more comfortable using artificial intelligence to help navigate supply-chain challenges, Gaurav said.
As a result, Kinaxis’s new suite of AI agents were its fastest-growing product segment in the first quarter.
The number of customers paying to use the tools – which incorporate large-language models such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude to respond to customer queries in real time – more than doubled in the first three months of the year, Gaurav said.
“I’m certainly biased, but it’s difficult to imagine any customer not using our AI agents in the coming years,” he added.
The CEO said Kinaxis has ramped up its spending on research and development in recent quarters in an effort to expand its AI capabilities and make them more compatible with other AI-driven software applications its customers use in their supply chains.
“The innovation that we’re doing is what’s getting us the wins against all of our competitors,” Fitzgerald added. “We’re in a great position.”
Gaurav said Kinaxis is also leaning heavily into AI to boost its own workers’ productivity. R&D workers are doing projects 25 per cent faster than before they began using artificial intelligence, he said, and the company’s sales team is using AI to conduct “deep research” on potential customers that could benefit most from its Maestro supply-chain orchestration platform.
“AI identifies the use cases, finds the right contacts, writes emails and follows up, all referencing the specific prospect context,” Gaurav explained. “We will continue to emphasize the use of AI for innovative ways to improve operations company-wide and transform our internal ways of working.”
Meanwhile, the CEO said the search for Fitzgerald’s replacement is “going well.” The company is working with an executive search firm and has been in contact with more than 200 potential candidates, Gaurav said.
“At this time, we are in our final stretch of decision-making with a very short list of candidates,” he added.
