FiscalNote (NYSE:NOTE) executives used the company’s fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call to outline a cost-reduction plan, discuss the continued rollout of its PolicyNote platform, and frame two newer growth areas—API-driven distribution and political prediction markets—as long-term opportunities. Management also provided 2026 guidance and reiterated an expectation to reach trailing twelve-month positive free cash flow by the end of the first quarter of 2027, excluding one-time restructuring costs.
2026 guidance and profitability targets
CEO Josh Resnik said FiscalNote is guiding to approximately $1 million of adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter of 2026 and $14 million to $16 million for the full year. Resnik said that implies adjusted EBITDA of roughly $13 million to $15 million across the remaining three quarters, with margins expected to exceed 20% in that period.
Separately from adjusted EBITDA, Resnik said that after implementing the announced changes and excluding one-time restructuring costs, the company expects to generate positive free cash flow for the 12 months ending March 31, 2027. Slabaugh echoed that expectation, stating FiscalNote expects to achieve trailing twelve-month positive free cash flow by the end of the first quarter of 2027 and remain free cash flow positive thereafter.
Workforce reduction and expense actions tied to AI adoption
Resnik said the company announced a plan to reduce cash operating expenses by over 19%, driven by personnel changes and insourcing third-party spend. He said FiscalNote is implementing a workforce transformation plan expected to reduce headcount by approximately 25% year-over-year, with the bulk of reductions in commercial teams, content generation, and G&A.
Management framed the initiative as an acceleration of operational discipline enabled by generative and agentic AI. Resnik said FiscalNote has 100% adoption of AI tooling across its engineering organization, and that development cycles are now approximately three times faster than before. He added that in the fourth quarter R&D teams used AI in 88% of completed development work and “accomplish[ed] 70% more” than in the same period a year earlier.
Resnik provided additional detail on where the company expects savings:
- Commercial organization: reducing approximately 24% on an expense basis and approximately 18% on a headcount basis, including eliminating certain senior roles and increasing automation of outbound marketing activities. Resnik also said the company is deploying agentic AI workflows to increase the speed and scalability of client support.
- Content operations: improving efficiency by approximately 20% on an expense basis and approximately 33% on a headcount basis through generative AI and agentic workflows for routine editorial and publishing tasks. Resnik said the company aims to minimize changes in “highest value areas,” including bespoke monitoring and analytical services and the CQ Roll Call newsroom’s core reporting capabilities.
- G&A: reducing approximately 12% on an expense basis through vendor savings, alongside broader deployment of agentic AI tools and “human plus AI operating dyads” pairing managers and team members with AI platforms.
Q4 and full-year 2025 results
Slabaugh reported fourth-quarter 2025 revenue of $22.2 million, within the company’s guidance range. He said annual recurring revenue (ARR) ended the quarter at $84.1 million and was “relatively stable” compared to the third quarter on a pro forma basis, reflecting stabilization following product sunsetting and divestitures earlier in the year. Net revenue retention (NRR) was approximately 96% for the quarter.
FiscalNote’s GAAP net loss for the quarter was $22.9 million, which included a non-cash goodwill impairment charge of $12.4 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.5 million, exceeding prior guidance of approximately $2 million and marking what Slabaugh described as the 10th consecutive positive quarter for adjusted EBITDA.
For full-year 2025, Slabaugh reported total revenue of $95.4 million, compared with $120.3 million in 2024, and adjusted EBITDA of $10.3 million. He said the adjusted EBITDA margin was 10.8% in 2025, up from 8.1% in 2024. Gross margin was approximately 78%, consistent with the prior year, and adjusted gross margin was approximately 87%.
Slabaugh attributed the year-over-year decline in GAAP revenue and ARR primarily to divestitures of non-core businesses, listing Board.org, Aicel, Oxford Analytica and Dragonfly, and TimeBase. He said these divestitures generated $144.9 million of gross cash proceeds, representing about 4.8 times divested ARR, and were intended to simplify the business and de-lever the balance sheet. On a pro forma basis excluding divested businesses, Slabaugh said full-year GAAP revenue declined 7% and ARR declined 9%, citing impacts including DOGE, non-renewals from legacy products, and sales execution challenges earlier in 2025.
On the balance sheet, Slabaugh said cash and short-term investments totaled $26.9 million at year-end 2025. Total debt outstanding was approximately $136.2 million, including $74.1 million under the senior term loan facility.
PolicyNote migration progress and retention commentary
Resnik said FiscalNote executed the first phase of the PolicyNote migration in 2025, transitioning customers off the legacy FiscalNote platform. He said usage metrics on PolicyNote remained strong, with adoption and frequency of use higher than the legacy platform over comparable periods. As examples, he said the share of users viewing legislation rose 250% and the share viewing alerts increased 88%.
Resnik also said early signs point to improved retention compared with legacy platform cohorts, while noting that PolicyNote represents only a portion of the overall customer base and that broader factors—such as budget constraints, prior legacy experience, and continued platform refinement—still influence results. He added that a small number of large enterprise customers canceled without migrating to PolicyNote, meaning they did not evaluate the new platform.
During Q&A, Resnik clarified that the 2025 migration moved customers off the legacy FiscalNote platform focused on state and federal data, while additional migrations and dataset expansions—including global datasets—are still in progress. He said additional cost savings are expected through deprecation of the legacy platform backend in the first half of 2026 and that those savings are built into the operating plan.
API distribution and prediction markets positioned as growth vectors
Resnik described a push to make FiscalNote’s policy intelligence consumable outside a standalone platform through APIs. He said the company has modernized and enhanced its APIs and introduced native support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which he called an emergent standard within the agentic AI community. Resnik said this enables MCP-compatible AI agents and platforms—such as those built on Claude, OpenAI, Google Gemini, or Microsoft ecosystems—to integrate FiscalNote’s intelligence into workflows.
Resnik said enterprise customers are already using the company’s APIs, naming Lumen Technologies and ICE Data Services as examples, and said these deployments are generating revenue. He also said the company is exploring consumption-based pricing models and hybrid structures that allow customers to shift spend between seat-based licenses and API usage credits.
On prediction markets, Resnik said FiscalNote is not seeking to build or operate an exchange, but instead aims to provide an “intelligence layer” including political risk data, contract design insights, and analytical overlays. He cited U.S. prediction market volume expanding from approximately $9 billion in 2024 to roughly $44 billion in 2025 and said current trends suggest the market could approach a $150 billion annualized run rate in 2026. He also referenced Bloomberg integrating prediction market signals into its terminal and pointed to the CFTC’s Future-Proof initiative as signaling a shift in how political event contracts may be treated.
Resnik said the company is partnering with specialized infrastructure providers, including 365Prediction, and is developing and testing related products previewed at PoliticalPredictions.com. In Q&A, he said investors should expect to hear more in the “coming weeks” about earlier initiatives such as content and engagement products tied to prediction markets.
About FiscalNote (NYSE:NOTE)
FiscalNote is a technology and data services company specializing in government and regulatory intelligence. Founded in 2013 by Timothy Hwang, Gerald Yao and Jonathan Chen, the company is headquartered in Washington, DC, with additional offices in New York, Brussels, London, Singapore and Hong Kong. FiscalNote went public in March 2021 through a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) merger and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker NOTE.
The company’s flagship software-as-a-service platform aggregates legislative and regulatory data from jurisdictions around the world, combining that information with AI-driven analytics and expert commentary.
