Tenable (NASDAQ:TENB) reported fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 results that management said exceeded guidance across all metrics, driven by growing adoption of its Tenable One exposure management platform and what executives described as rising customer urgency around AI-related security risks.
Q4 results topped guidance as Tenable One mix hit a record
Co-CEO Steve Vintz said the company delivered 11% year-over-year revenue growth in the fourth quarter and a 24% operating margin, while CFO Matt Brown reported quarterly revenue of $260.5 million, up 10.5% year over year. For the full year, Brown said revenue growth was 11.0% year over year.
The company also emphasized customer additions and enterprise activity. Vintz said Tenable added over 500 new enterprise platform customers in the quarter, and Brown reported 502 new customers added in Q4, “many of which came directly into Tenable One.”
AI security became central in customer conversations
Executives repeatedly described AI as an increasingly common driver of demand. Vintz said AI is showing up in “nearly every customer conversation,” with organizations moving quickly but lacking visibility into where AI is running, what it touches, and who can access it—creating what he called an “invisible attack surface.” He argued that AI-specific point products often leave gaps across applications, identities, cloud workloads, and data, supporting Tenable’s view that a platform approach is required.
Vintz said Tenable One now continuously discovers AI across an organization—internal and external, on-premises and cloud—to provide “a complete risk-aware view” of AI usage and exposure. He added that customers are increasingly asking Tenable to go beyond identifying risk and help reduce it in an “automated, repeatable way,” and he characterized remediation as a major next chapter in exposure management.
On the Q&A, Vintz said AI security is coming up in every discussion with CISOs. He pointed to recurring themes such as discovering “shadow AI,” assessing AI attack surface, protecting AI workloads and agents from misconfigurations and non-human identities, and addressing governance concerns. He said the company is seeing pipeline build around these use cases.
Analyst recognition and customer wins highlighted exposure management positioning
Co-CEO Mark Thurmond cited multiple industry recognitions during the quarter, including being named a leader in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Exposure Assessment Platforms and being characterized as the “current company to beat” in Gartner’s “AI Vendor Race” for AI-powered exposure assessment reporting. He also said Tenable was one of two vendors recognized as a Customers’ Choice (alongside Wiz) in the 2025 Gartner Peer Insights Voice of the Customer report for cloud native application protection platforms.
Thurmond described several Q4 customer wins, including:
- An expansion at a “large global enterprise” that consolidated multiple vulnerability management technologies and selected Tenable One for broader use cases, including third-party risk management after a competitive evaluation.
- The company’s “first seven-figure deal driven by AI exposure,” in which a major telecommunications provider adopted Tenable One to gain visibility into AI deployment and usage across the organization.
- A public-sector win in which a large higher education consortium selected Tenable for a multi-phase exposure management initiative spanning more than 20 campuses, with additional phases expected as the program expands.
Thurmond said these wins reflect customers standardizing on Tenable One as part of a broader shift toward consolidating fragmented point solutions into a platform.
Margins expanded, cash flow remained strong, and buybacks increased
Brown reported non-GAAP gross margin of 82.7% in Q4 (up from 81.7% a year ago) and full-year non-GAAP gross margin of 82.1%. Non-GAAP operating income was $63.7 million in the quarter, representing 24.4% of revenue, and $219.0 million for the year, representing 21.9% of revenue.
Non-GAAP EPS was $0.48 in Q4 (up from $0.41) and $1.59 for the year (up from $1.29). Brown attributed EPS growth to higher profitability and fewer diluted shares outstanding.
Cash and short-term investments totaled $402.2 million at quarter-end. The company generated $87.5 million in unlevered free cash flow in Q4 and $277.0 million for the full year, which Brown said represented 27.7% of revenue.
Tenable also expanded its capital return plans. Brown said the company repurchased 2.3 million shares for $62.5 million in Q4 and has repurchased 10.6 million shares for $362.4 million since November 2023. He added that the board approved a $150 million increase to the share repurchase authorization, bringing total authorization to $338 million as of year-end. Brown said management believes the share price trades at a discount to “true value.”
2026 outlook: revenue to surpass $1 billion; CCB guidance discontinued
For Q1 2026, Tenable guided revenue of $257 million to $260 million and non-GAAP operating income of $53 million to $56 million. For full-year 2026, the company guided revenue of $1.065 billion to $1.075 billion, which would exceed the $1 billion annual milestone for the first time, and non-GAAP operating income of $245 million to $255 million, implying 23.4% operating margin at the midpoint.
Brown also guided to full-year unlevered free cash flow of $285 million to $295 million, while noting the forecast is impacted by an estimated $24 million headwind due to reduced upfront multi-year billings and cash restructuring charges.
One of the call’s key disclosure changes involved billings metrics. Brown said changes in upfront billing patterns and increasing contract durations are causing calculated current billings (CCB) and short-term remaining performance obligations (CRPO) to diverge and that management is no longer using CCB internally to monitor the business. As a result, Tenable said it will no longer provide a specific guidance range for CCB in 2026 and beyond, though Brown said the company expects full-year 2026 CCB to be in line with current consensus expectations despite billings duration headwinds.
Brown also disclosed restructuring activity tied to investment priorities. He said the company began a departmental realignment effort at the end of Q4 to remove redundant roles and reinvest into innovation in Tenable One and AI security, resulting in $3.1 million of restructuring expenses in Q4 and an expected approximately $5 million more in the first half of 2026.
During Q&A, management also addressed customer expansion and pricing. Vintz said new business was strong and that larger customers adopting Tenable One expanded during the quarter. Thurmond said the company was not seeing pricing pressure, describing Tenable One as enabling a consolidation-driven pricing benefit. Brown added that moving a standalone vulnerability management customer to the platform can bring “as much as 80% uplift” when moving to Tenable One, and he said roughly two-thirds of the business is not yet on the platform.
On public sector expectations, Brown said federal performance assumptions embedded in guidance are “in line with” overall company growth and that a government shutdown is not embedded in the outlook. Management said it saw minimal shutdown impact in 2025 and does not expect significant impact in 2026.
About Tenable (NASDAQ:TENB)
Tenable Holdings, Inc is a global cybersecurity company specializing in vulnerability management and continuous threat exposure assessment. Headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, Tenable was founded in 2002 by Ron Gula and Jack Huffard to address the growing need for proactive network security solutions. Over the years, the company has evolved from a pioneer in open-source vulnerability scanning to a leading provider of comprehensive security platforms that help organizations identify, investigate and prioritize cyber risks across on-premises, cloud and operational technology environments.
At the core of Tenable’s product suite is Nessus, one of the industry’s most widely adopted vulnerability scanners.
