Asana Holds the Team Work Plan but Its Stock Pay Still Outruns the Cash Shareholders Keep

Cash left for shareholders after capex, capitalized software and all stock pay

-$85.2M

Twelve months to Jul 31, 2026, our calculation

Stock pay as a share of revenue

27.2%

Fiscal 2026 (year ended Jan 31, 2026), our calculation

Stock bought back

$185.3M

Twelve months to Jul 31, 2026, our calculation

1. Our call: Avoid, because Asana holds the team plan but still pays its staff more in stock than it collects in cash

Our call: Avoid. Asana sells work management software in which teams lay out projects, owners, deadlines and goals, and it had over 180,000 paying customers at Jan 31, 2026, of which 25,928 spent at least $5,000 a year and 817 spent at least $100,000 ^[1].

Its data model, which the company calls the Work Graph, links each task to the project, person and goal it serves ^[1].

Fiscal 2026 revenue rose 9.2% to $790.8M, our calculation, and second quarter fiscal 2027 revenue rose 10% to $216.4M ^[3][11]. The company guides fiscal 2027 revenue to $858.5M to $863.5M, growth of about 9% ^[3].

Dollar-based net retention was 97%, which means existing customers as a group spent slightly less than a year earlier ^[3].

We measure owner cash, the cash left for shareholders: operating cash flow, less capital spending including capitalized software, less all stock pay. On that measure the figure was negative $137.8M in fiscal 2026 and negative $85.2M over the twelve months to Jul 31, 2026, our calculation from the filings and SEC XBRL ^[1][2]

2. Research spending is close to two fifths of revenue

2b. Asana holds the plan but is paid per seat

A team that runs on Asana keeps its project plans, task owners, due dates and goal links there, so the product records who is supposed to do what by when ^[1]. That is useful context for an agent, but the same work often also lives in email, chat, documents and the productivity suites the 10-K names as competitors ^[1].

No passes, three partials and one fail. The gate exists: a company that has mapped its goals and projects in Asana would lose that structure by leaving ^[1].

But Asana charges for people using the plan, not for the work agents complete on it, and the fail on pricing is the reason we do not rate the gate higher ^[1][3].

3. Growth has slowed from 67% to about 9%

Growth has held near 9% to 10% for two years, and net retention below 100% shows the slowdown comes from existing accounts spending less ^[3][11]. The second quarter of fiscal 2027 beat the top of guidance, and the company raised its full-year range ^[3].

Third quarter guidance of $217M to $219M implies growth of 8% to 9% ^[3].

Remaining performance obligations, contracted revenue not yet recognized, were $522.0M at Jul 31, 2026, with about 81% due within twelve months ^[2]. That figure was $507.3M a year earlier, up only 2.9%, our calculation ^[11].

Current deferred revenue rose to $350.3M from $312.5M a year earlier, up 12.1%, our calculation ^[11].

4. Larger customers are growing faster than the base

Customers spending $100,000 or more a year rose 16% to 890 at Jul 31, 2026, and revenue from Core customers rose 11% ^[3]. Net retention for both the Core and the $100,000 groups was 98%, slightly above the 97% overall rate, which means smaller accounts are shrinking fastest ^[3].

Asana is pushing upmarket and into government. It achieved FedRAMP Moderate authorization for its government product in the second quarter, which opens U.S. federal agencies as buyers ^[3].

The 10-K does not name any customer above 10% of revenue ^[1].

The risk is that the companies most able to pay are also the ones most likely to standardize on a suite they already own. The 10-K names companies offering productivity suites as one of three competitor groups ^[1].

5. Margins are improving, but stock pay is still a quarter of revenue

GAAP operating loss was $41.2M in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, 19% of revenue, against 25% a year earlier ^[3]. For the first half the loss narrowed to $56.5M from $93.4M, as R&D fell 4% and sales and marketing fell 5% ^[2].

Stock pay was $214.8M in fiscal 2026, 27.2% of revenue, our calculation ^[11]. In the first half of fiscal 2027 it fell to $92.6M from $110.3M, or 22.0% of revenue, our calculation ^[2].

The company's non-GAAP operating margin of 10% in the second quarter excludes that cost ^[3].

Gross margin slipped to 86.0% in the second quarter from 89.7%, our calculation, as cost of revenue rose 41% in the first half on third-party hosting, staff, monitoring and software amortization costs ^[2]. Our reading is that agent features cost more to serve than seats, which the 10-Q does not quantify ^[2].

6. Cash left for shareholders is still negative, but the gap is closing

Operating cash flow has risen every year since fiscal 2024, and the first half of fiscal 2027 came within $18.3M of breaking even on our measure ^[2][11]. A year earlier the same six months showed negative $70.9M, so the gap closed by $52.6M in one half, our calculation ^[11].

In fiscal 2026 the second half produced $43.8M of operating cash flow against $46.6M in the first half, our calculation, so a positive full year needs stock pay to keep falling rather than a seasonal lift ^[11].

The company's own adjusted free cash flow was $42.3M in the second quarter, because it does not subtract stock pay ^[3]. We do subtract it, since stock grants dilute holders unless the company spends cash to buy the shares back ^[11].

7. Buybacks ran well ahead of the cash shareholders kept

Asana repurchased $132.2M of stock in fiscal 2026 and $96.5M in the first half of fiscal 2027 ^[11]. The board added $160.0M to the program on Feb 27, 2026, bringing total authorizations to $410.0M since June 2024 ^[2].

Those purchases did cut the count, even as Class B holders converted 6.4M shares into Class A, our calculation ^[2]. Class A and Class B shares outstanding fell to 229.0M on Aug 28, 2026 from 237.9M on Jan 31, 2026, a 3.8% drop, our calculation ^[2].

But with cash left for shareholders negative, the buybacks were funded from the balance sheet: cash and marketable securities fell to $339.9M at Jul 31, 2026 from $434.0M at Jan 31, 2026, our calculation, partly because of the $74.6M StackAI purchase ^[2].

Debt is small. The term loan with SVB, now part of First Citizens, had $36.9M outstanding, and the $78.3M revolving facility was undrawn ^[2].

8. The main risks are control, retention and suite rivals

Control: Dustin Moskovitz held 74.2% of the voting power as of the 2026 proxy, through Class B shares that carry ten votes each ^[1][4]. Holders of Class A stock cannot outvote him on directors, mergers or charter changes ^[1].

Retention: net retention of 97% means growth depends on new customers. If larger accounts do not offset shrinkage in small ones, growth could fall below the current 9% range ^[3].

Rivals: productivity suites bundle work management and agents into tools customers already pay for ^[1]. Asana's answer is its new agent and service management products, which it launched across all paid tiers in the third quarter ^[3].

Turnover: in the twelve months to August 2026 the operating chief, general counsel, chief financial officer and chief accounting officer all left, and the founder stepped down as Chair ^{[5][7][8][10]}.

9. A founder-controlled company in transition

Asana is no longer early stage: it has positive operating cash flow, near-zero debt and a guided 10% non-GAAP operating margin for fiscal 2027 ^[2][3]. It is also not yet mature, since stock pay still exceeds its operating cash flow ^[11].

The September 2026 board changes moved control of the agenda from the founder to the hired chief executive, Dan Rogers, who became Chair while Moskovitz stayed on as a director ^[5]. Moskovitz's voting control did not change ^[4][5].

10. Agents need a plan, but someone has to pay for it

The bull case is that agents need the project context Asana already holds, so every agent deployed inside a customer runs through Asana's record ^[1][3]. The company says customers that use its agent tools engage more, retain better and expand faster ^[3].

The bear case is that Asana charges per human seat, and agents that do work for fewer people could shrink seat counts. Until outcome-based pricing shows up as a separate revenue line, investors cannot test which effect wins ^[3].

11. A hired chief executive, a controlling founder and directors with ties to Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic

Dan Rogers became chief executive in July 2025 and Chair on Sep 25, 2026 ^[5][9]. He previously ran LaunchDarkly as chief executive, was president of Rubrik and was chief marketing officer of ServiceNow, and earlier worked at Symantec, Salesforce, Amazon and Microsoft ^[9].

Aziz Megji became chief financial officer in March 2026 after running financial planning at Asana; he previously worked at RingCentral and in corporate development at Nvidia ^[4][7]. Katie Colendich, formerly of HP, became general counsel in January 2026 ^[4].

Dustin Moskovitz, a Meta co-founder, remains a director and controlling holder; he and his spouse sit on the board of Good Ventures Foundation, which holds Asana shares ^[4]. The proxy discloses that he has a minority stake in Anthropic, from which Asana bought $1.1M of services and earned $0.6M of revenue in fiscal 2026 ^[4].

Co-founder Justin Rosenstein holds 10.0% of the vote ^[4].

12. The questions we would ask management, and the calls we are tracking

Question one: when will cash left for shareholders turn positive for a full fiscal year, and what stock pay level does the plan assume? ^[11]

Question two: how much revenue do the agent products and StackAI bring today, and how will they be priced beyond seats? ^[2][3]

Question three: why did remaining performance obligations grow only 2.9% while current deferred revenue grew 12.1%? ^[11]

Question four: will buybacks continue at about $50M a quarter while cash left for shareholders is negative? ^[2]

Question five: does Moskovitz plan further Class B conversions or sales, given Class B shares fell to 69.5M from 75.9M in six months? That answer sets our conviction.

^[2]

Prediction one: fiscal 2027 revenue exceeds $863.5M, the top of guidance (60%). ^[3]

Prediction two: fiscal 2027 cash left for shareholders, as we define it, is above zero (35%). ^[11]

Bottom line: Asana holds the team plan, but stock pay still outruns its cash

Asana holds the project plans of over 180,000 paying customers and is building agents on top of them, but it is paid per seat, net retention is 97% and growth is near 9% ^[1][3]. Over the twelve months to Jul 31, 2026 cash left for shareholders was negative $85.2M while buybacks took $185.3M ^[2][11].

We would move to Hold off if fiscal 2027 cash left for shareholders turns positive and net retention climbs back to 100%, or if agent pricing appears as its own revenue line. A drop in growth below 7% or a further fall in net retention would keep us out.

Our call: Avoid, conviction 3 of 5.