ServiceNow Stock Is Down 36% in 2026: Is the Market Making a Category Error on AI?

David Beren6 minute read
Reviewed by: David Hanson
Last updated Jun 25, 2026

Key Stats for ServiceNow:

  • 52-Week Range: $81.24 to $211.48
  • Current Price: $90.16 (as of June 25, 2026)
  • Market Cap: ~$97 billion
  • Street Mean Target: ~$141
  • NTM P/E: ~22x
  • NTM EV/EBITDA: ~14x
  • LTM Gross Margin: 76.6%
  • Q1 2026 Subscription Revenue: $3.67 billion (up 22% year over year)
  • Q1 2026 Free Cash Flow: $1.67 billion (44% margin)

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ServiceNow Has Grown Revenue From $6 Billion to $13 Billion in 4 Years. The Estimates Show No Sign of Slowing

ServiceNow, Inc. (NOW) built one of the most consistent growth records in enterprise software over the last decade.

Revenue grew from $5.9 billion in 2021 to $13.3 billion in 2025, roughly doubling in four years, as the company expanded from IT workflow automation to a platform that runs HR, legal, procurement, and customer operations for some of the world’s largest organizations.

Consensus estimates project that the trajectory will continue: around $16.2 billion in 2026, $19.2 billion in 2027, and approaching $31 billion by 2030.

Q1 2026 confirmed that the growth is intact. Subscription revenues grew 22% year over year to $3.67 billion. Current remaining performance obligations grew 22.5% to $12.64 billion. Total remaining performance obligations grew 25% to $27.7 billion. ServiceNow beat the high end of guidance across every metric and raised its full-year subscription revenue outlook.

CEO Bill McDermott said on the call that Now Assist customers’ spending over $1 million in annual contract value grew over 130% year over year, then went further: “We might have understated that a little bit. We’re already talking about $1.5 billion now.” That is not a business losing ground to AI disruption.

The reason the stock is down 36% anyway comes down to one question the market has been asking all year: if AI agents can automate workflows and handle service requests autonomously, does an enterprise still need ServiceNow?

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ServiceNow’s Multiple Has Never Been This Low. Here Is What That Actually Means

The NTM EV/EBITDA chart is the clearest way to see what has happened to ServiceNow’s valuation in 2026. The multiple peaked above 220x in early 2014 when the company was a small, fast-growing startup.

It compressed steadily through 2016 and 2018 as the business scaled, stabilized in the 30-40x range through the pandemic era, briefly re-rated to around 60x in 2021 and 2022, then compressed again. Today it sits at roughly 14x, the lowest point in the company’s entire public market history.

That compression happened for a specific reason. In late January 2026, concerns about agentic AI tools triggered a broad selloff in enterprise software. The logic was that AI agents replacing human workflows would mean fewer software seats and lower revenue for companies like ServiceNow.

The market applied that fear broadly and immediately. What it may have misjudged is what ServiceNow actually sells. The platform processes over 95 billion workflows annually and has accumulated two decades of enterprise context.

Every AI agent a company deploys needs to be governed, audited, and tracked across systems. That is the infrastructure ServiceNow provides, and it is not obvious that the rise of AI agents makes that less necessary.

There are real near-term headwinds: subscription gross margins compressed about 400 basis points year over year as Armis integration costs flowed through, and several large deals in the Middle East were delayed due to regional conflict. Those are legitimate pressures. They are not structural obsolescence.

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What the TIKR Model Says About Where ServiceNow Goes From Here

At roughly $90, ServiceNow trades at around 22x NTM earnings and 14x NTM EV/EBITDA. The Street mean target sits around $141, implying around 57% upside from current levels even after a series of post-earnings downward revisions.

The TIKR mid-case model targets around $239 per share, implying roughly 155% total return at about 23% annualized over 4.5 years. The model assumes around 17% annual revenue growth and net income margins approaching 32%.

The high case reaches around $648. The low case lands near $337, still well above where the stock trades today. That spread reflects genuine uncertainty about how fast the AI governance opportunity materializes and whether margin pressure from recent acquisitions proves temporary.

What is clear is that the current price embeds a deeply pessimistic view of a business still compounding revenue above 20% and generating free cash flow at a 44% margin. Whether that pessimism is warranted will be determined by the next two quarters of results.

Should You Invest in ServiceNow, Inc.?

The case for ServiceNow today rests on a straightforward disagreement with the market. If AI agents need governance infrastructure to function inside large enterprises, ServiceNow’s platform becomes more valuable as adoption accelerates, not less.

The numbers so far support that view: growth is holding above 20%, AI-specific contract values are expanding rapidly, and the multiple has compressed to levels that price in an outcome far worse than what the business is actually delivering.

The risk is that the AI disruption narrative proves more accurate than the current results suggest, or that three simultaneous integrations in Moveworks, Armis, and Veza consume more management attention than the growth trajectory can absorb.

Investors comfortable holding through that uncertainty are looking at a business trading at its cheapest historical valuation while still posting some of the strongest growth numbers in enterprise software.

See the full TIKR model for NOW, including scenario assumptions and historical valuation multiples. Build your own valuation for ServiceNow stock on TIKR for free →

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Disclaimer:

Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!

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