Nebius Earnings: Revenue Up 571%, Stock Sinks on $45B Capex Plan

Nebius earnings for the third quarter beat Wall Street's revenue estimate by a wide margin, and the stock still fell about 17% on Thursday, November 12, according to Reuters. Revenue rose 571% from a year earlier to $980.8 million, the company said. What sank the shares was the outlook: 2026 revenue at the low end of the company's range, and a 2027 spending plan of $40 billion to $45 billion.

Analysts had expected revenue of about $907 million, according to the Investing.com report on the results. Nebius also reported adjusted EBITDA of $465.8 million, against a loss of $5.2 million a year earlier, and a net loss from continuing operations of $37.5 million, down from $119.6 million.

$980.8M

Third-quarter revenue, up 571% from a year earlier

$7.3B

Capital spending in the quarter, up from $956 million

$40B to $45B

Capex planned for 2027

-17%

Nebius shares on Thursday, per Reuters

Why Nebius stock fell after a revenue beat

Two numbers moved against the company. First, Nebius said its 2026 revenue would come in at the low end of its earlier forecast of $3 billion to $3.4 billion, Reuters reported. Management put that down to timing: capacity in third-party data centers is arriving later than planned, and it said demand has not weakened, according to the Investing.com account of the earnings call. The company pointed to power problems behind a delay at a New Jersey site.

Second, the spending plan grew. Nebius raised its 2026 capital spending forecast to about $27 billion, from a range of $20 billion to $25 billion, and guided to $40 billion to $45 billion for 2027. Wall Street had expected about $28.8 billion for 2027, according to Blockonomi.

The gap between the two columns is the story. For every dollar of revenue Nebius expects in 2027, it plans to spend more than three dollars on data centers and chips. The company expects to reach pre-tax break-even by the end of 2027.

How Nebius plans to pay for $45 billion of capex

Nebius spent $7.3 billion on property and equipment in the quarter and $15.4 billion in the first nine months of the year, its results show. Operating activities brought in $4.2 billion over the same nine months, helped by customers paying in advance. The company ended September with about $7.4 billion in cash.

Management's answer is that customers and lenders will carry most of the load. Prepayments on new contracts now cover more than 100% of the related capital spending, up from 50% to 60% a quarter earlier, executives said on the call. For 2027, Nebius expects customer prepayments and asset-backed financing to fund 75% to 85% of capex. It closed a $5.75 billion convertible note sale in August and secured a $3.5 billion financing facility with Citi in October, according to its newsroom.

Customers have committed more than $12 billion of contract value since the start of the third quarter, the company said. That is the same model we examined in Neocloud Stocks and Debt: long contracts with large buyers, financed up front, with the build paid for before most of the revenue arrives.

A hard day for neocloud stocks

Nebius did not fall alone. The report landed on the morning Nvidia announced that Jensen Huang had resigned as chief executive, which we cover in our Nvidia report. CoreWeave fell about 7%, and data center operators IREN, Applied Digital and Core Scientific lost 3% to 5%, Reuters reported.

The reversal was quick. A day earlier, CoreWeave's results had lifted the whole group, and Nebius rose 15% on Wednesday, according to Blockonomi. Before the open on Thursday the stock traded at $120.48, down 22% from Wednesday's close of $154.69, Investing.com reported, before recovering part of the loss. Its 52-week high is $299.86.

What the AI Bubble Index says

The AI Bubble Index read 61.5 after Wednesday's close, in its Normal band, down from 62.2 a week earlier. That reading predates Thursday's session. Fragility, at 69, sits above Euphoria at 61.3, and the systemic risk family stands at 69.3. The demand family is the coolest of the five at 40.6. Each one is charted on the dashboard.

Nebius is a small company next to the largest AI spenders, but its report shows the pattern the index's fragility axis is built to track: spending commitments that grow faster than revenue and depend on outside financing staying available. Our guide to AI investment risks explains why that matters when credit gets tighter, a theme we followed this week in AI Debt Bubble: Lenders Pull Back.