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FY2026 Q4
Improving
NetApp, Inc. earnings call
Buzzberg read
AI wins grew to 1,100 in FY26, up from 400 prior year
NetApp reported a record Q4 and FY26, with revenue exceeding guidance, driven by strength in all-flash, public cloud, AI, and Keystone. Management guided to FY27 revenue growth acceleration and provided Q1 guidance. The company is navigating memory cost inflation but sees robust demand driven by enterprise AI adoption, particularly through a major expanded partnership with Google Cloud. Record Q4 revenue of $1.95B (+12% YoY) and FY26 revenue of $6.93B (+5% YoY), with operating margin hitting a record 32%.
Buzzberg read AI wins grew to 1,100 in FY26, up from 400 prior year NetApp reported a record Q4 and FY26, with revenue exceeding guidance, driven by strength in all-flash, public cloud, AI, and Keystone. Management guided to FY27 revenue growth acceleration and provided Q1 guidance. The company is navigating memory cost inflation but sees robust demand driven by enterprise AI adoption, particularly through a major expanded partnership with Google Cloud. Record Q4 revenue of $1.95B (+12% YoY) and FY26 revenue of $6.93B (+5% YoY), with operating margin hitting a record 32%. Read full analysisCollapse analysis
NetApp reported a record Q4 and FY26, with revenue exceeding guidance, driven by strength in all-flash, public cloud, AI, and Keystone. Management guided to FY27 revenue growth acceleration and provided Q1 guidance. The company is navigating memory cost inflation but sees robust demand driven by enterprise AI adoption, particularly through a major expanded partnership with Google Cloud. Record Q4 revenue of $1.95B (+12% YoY) and FY26 revenue of $6.93B (+5% YoY), with operating margin hitting a record 32%.
- AI momentum is strong: ~500 AI wins in Q4, over 1,100 for FY26, with nearly half from customers where NetApp was not the incumbent data infrastructure provider.
- Cloud growth driven by first-party and marketplace services (+30% YoY), with public cloud gross margins expanding to 85.7%.
- Expanded multi-year agreement with Google Cloud for Google Distributed Cloud is a major growth driver, boosting product and support revenue.
PUBLIC_CLOUD Revenue$0.182B+5% QoQ
Revenue$1.948B+14% QoQ
EPS$2.43+15% QoQ
HYBRID_CLOUD Gross margin69%Reported
6 grounded callouts
What matters now
The highest-signal changes from the call.
AI
AIDE gaining traction with large installed base for data prep
Pricing
Expects to raise prices to offset memory cost inflation
Show 3 more callouts
Guidance
FY27 revenue growth to accelerate to ~8% from 5%
Partnerships
Google Cloud partnership expands into sovereign and regulated markets
Margins
Product gross margin to trough in Q1, then improve gradually
Reported period
Actuals
| Metric | Reported | Change |
|---|---|---|
| PUBLIC_CLOUD Revenue | $0.182B | +5% QoQ |
| Revenue | $1.948B | +14% QoQ |
| EPS | $2.43 | +15% QoQ |
| HYBRID_CLOUD Gross margin | 69% | Reported |
| Gross margin | 70.07% | Reported |
| Operating margin | 27.26% | Reported |
Forward-looking
Forward guidance
| Metric | Period | Range | Midpoint | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EPS | FY2027 | $8.70–$9.00 | $8.85 | Initiated |
| EPS | FY2027 Q1 | $2.05–$2.15 | $2.10 | Initiated |
| Gross margin | FY2027 | 68.5%–69.5% | 69% | Initiated |
| Operating margin | FY2027 | 29.1%–30.1% | 29.6% | Initiated |
| Revenue | FY2027 | $7.325B–$7.575B | $7.45B | Initiated |
| Revenue | FY2027 Q1 | $1.75B–$1.9B | $1.825B | Initiated |
AI, capex & demand read
Management read
Confident
Management expressed strong confidence in sustained demand and growth, highlighted record results and ambitious FY27 guidance, while acknowledging component cost headwinds but signaling proactive mitigation.
Management AI read
Management highlighted accelerating enterprise AI adoption, with 500 AI wins in Q4 and 1,100 for FY26. They see AI as a growth engine, with solutions like AFX and AIDE gaining traction, and emphasize their ability to activate unstructured data for AI as a key competitive advantage.
all 6 named companies below
Companiesreturns since call
Partners
Partners
George Kurian
The AFX solution powering NVIDIA SuperPOD environments indicates a close partnership and integration with NVIDIA's AI infrastructure, suggesting mutual dependency and demand for AI storage.
Evidence
“NetApp's disaggregated AFX solution for their NVIDIA SuperPOD environment enabled independent scaling of compute and storage, delivering flexible, future-proof infrastructure.”
Partners
George Kurian
This win demonstrates the value of NetApp's integration with Azure Databricks for AI, highlighting the synergies and the strength of the cloud partnership.
Evidence
“A leading insurance company accelerated financial risk modeling and data science by connecting Azure Databricks directly to their data in Azure NetApp files, ensuring security, governance, and performance.”
Partners
George Kurian
Wins on AWS for GenAI deployments demonstrate the viability of NetApp's cloud storage service with AWS, showing value in the partnership for AI workloads.
Evidence
“An Asian engineering company streamlined its GenAI chatbot deployment on AWS by leveraging FSx for NetApp on tap.”
Partners
George Kurian
The Google Cloud Distributed Cloud agreement has a significant support revenue component, as evidenced by a large increase in unbilled remaining performance obligations (RPO). — The deal frames NetApp as a core data layer for sovereign cloud infrastructure, providing a durable multi-year revenue stream.
Evidence
“Another significant achievement is our expanded partnership with Google Cloud for Google Distributed Cloud, which underscores both the growing opportunity in AI and sovereign cloud environments and the strength of our technology.”
Supply chain
Supply chain
George Kurian
NetApp's AI wins are increasingly from non-incumbent accounts with large data sets, indicating share gains against competitors like Dell and Pure Storage in AI-focused workloads. — This signals a potential shift in the competitive landscape for AI storage, with NetApp demonstrating success in displacing incumbents.
Evidence
“I was particularly pleased with the fact that a very large percentage of our AI wins were from customers who we are not the incumbent, you know, data infrastructure provider.”
External signals
Supply-chain alpha · 3returns since call
NetApp explicitly guided that the July quarter is the product gross margin trough, with gradual improvements expected through the fiscal year as price increases take effect.
Evidence
“For us, July quarter is more or less the trough, and from there on, we're anticipating gradual improvements... those price adjustments will start seeing more and more effect as the year progresses.”
NetApp's AI wins are increasingly from non-incumbent accounts with large data sets, indicating share gains against competitors like Dell and Pure Storage in AI-focused workloads.
The Google Cloud Distributed Cloud agreement has a significant support revenue component, as evidenced by a large increase in unbilled remaining performance obligations (RPO).
Evidence
“This outperformance was driven by an increase in support performance obligations associated with the Google agreement, as well as Keystone unbilled RPO”
Methodology & coverage
Management-only analysis. All 6 validated company mentions are shown. Reported actuals and forward guidance are kept separate. Public evidence is limited to eight short attributed quotes. AI-generated analysis can be incomplete or wrong; verify important claims against the original source.