CoreWeave reports better sales and operating income than any analyst anticipated; revenue backlog swells above $55 billion
CoreWeave reported a strong sales beat in Q3, with bottom-line results to match.
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Revenue: $1.36 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $1.23 billion and guidance for $1.26 billion to $1.30 billion)
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Adjusted operating income: $217.15 million (estimate: $177.2 million, guidance: $160 million to $190 million)
Those figures exceeded every estimate among analysts polled by Bloomberg. And more strong sales seem to be in the pipeline: CoreWeave’s revenue backlog swelled to $55.6 billion at the end of the quarter, nearly double the $30.1 billion at the end of Q2.
If there’s a fly in the ointment, it’s that CoreWeave seems to be having a little trouble getting as much compute up and running as Wall Street had hoped for, with active power of 590 megawatts at the end of the quarter, while analysts were anticipating nearly 625 megawatts.
When I look at this chart of CoreWeave’s revenue backlog, and in particular how much is slated to be realized within the next 24 months, all I can think is, “That’s got to mean a lot of capex. And power.”
Source: CoreWeave Q3 earnings presentation
The neocloud had a busy quarter, reaching a $14 billion pact with Meta for AI compute, expanding its agreement with OpenAI, and signing a $6.3 billion deal with Nvidia for any unused cloud computing capacity, among others. CoreWeave’s recent attempt at vertical integration failed, as Core Scientific shareholders voted overwhelmingly against its proposed acquisition on October 30.
However, there’s much less drama around this quarter’s results than the last one. That’s because its lock-up period expired shortly after CoreWeave’s impressive Q2 results, catalyzing a wave of profit taking in the AI darling.
