Nebius falls 10% as company expects increased 2026 capex spend, issues weak outlook

• Nebius' earnings report comes after fellow neoclouds IREN and CoreWeave showed better-than-expected results in the past week.
• The companies' stocks have bounced back this week after a brutal past month that reflected concerns about a slowdown in the AI buildout.
• Nvidia, which invests across the neocloud space, is creating added volatility due to the crisis surrounding CEO Jensen Huang.

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Follow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTArkady Volozh, CEO of Nebius and then Yandex CEO, speaks at the Artificial Intelligence Journey event in Moscow on Nov. 9, 2019.Mikhail Svetlov | Getty Images

Nebius shares sank 10% on Thursday as one of the biggest publicly traded neoclouds reported third-quarter revenue that beat analysts' estimates, but issued disappointing guidance.

Here's how the company performed relative to LSEG consensus:

• Loss per share: Loss of 13 cents per share
• Revenue: $980.8 million vs. $907.5 million

It was not immediately clear if the loss per share was comparable to the 69 cents expected by analysts.

Revenue jumped 571% in the quarter, according to a statement. The company reported a net loss of $37.5 million, a loss of 13 cents per share, compared with $119.6 million, a loss of 50 cents per share, a year earlier.

In a letter to shareholders, CEO Arkady Volozh said the company expects fiscal year 2026 revenue at the low end of the company's $3 billion to 3.4 billion range. FactSet expected full-year revenue of $3.35 billion.

Nebius also shared an initial outlook for 2027, expecting revenue of $12 billion to $13 billion, "reflecting a conservative approach to the pace of our build-out." FactSet expected 2027 revenue of $12.09 billion.

The company expects FY2026 capital expenditures of $27 billion, higher than its previous capex guidance of $20 billion to $25 billion and the FactSet expectation of $23.85 billion.

Nebius' expected FY2027 capex of $40 billion to $45 billion came in much higher than the FactSet expectation of $28.77 billion.

Nebius stock chart.

Nebius' results come after fellow neoclouds CoreWeave and IREN reported better-than-expected financials in their earnings announcements over the past week. That's provided a boost to the companies' stocks, which had suffered steep selloffs in recent weeks on concern about the sustainability of the artificial intelligence buildout.

The neocloud companies posted a robust rally on Wednesday, with Coreweave booming nearly 25%, Nebius climbing 15%, Applied Digital rising more than 7% and IREN adding nearly 6%.

Each of the stocks fell Thursday premarket after the Nebius Q3 report.

Last week, CoreWeave's bond yields spiked past the 16% mark. In its earnings report on Tuesday, CoreWeave told analysts it expects to keep parent-level debt financing under $5 billion through 2027.

The political backdrop has created further volatility as Nebius races rivals to open up new data centers. Last week U.S. voters supported dozens of ballot initiatives to restrict the development of such facilities, while Democrats won sweeping victories in both houses of Congress.

Then there's the Nvidia problem. Following stinging revelations about CEO Jensen Huang's affairs, including one with an alleged Chinese spy, the Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday that Nvidia's board was planning to push out the company's co-founder.

Nvidia, which has developed the neocloud market by investing in the companies and backstopping some of their projects, held about $329 million in Nebius shares at the end of June, according to a filing.

During the quarter, Nebius said it raised $5.75 billion in debt financing.

Executives will discuss the results with analysts and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 8 a.m. ET.

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