CoreWeave beats on earnings, but a data-center delay is dragging on the stock

By Christine Ji

While CoreWeave locked down several large cloud deals in the third quarter, an unexpected delay in delivering capacity has some investors concerned

CoreWeave reported over $55 billion in revenue backlog on Monday.

CoreWeave's third-quarter earnings report on Monday showed that demand for artificial-intelligence computing is alive and well as the company posted $1.36 billion in revenue for the quarter, soaring past Wall Street's consensus expectations of $1.29 billion.

However, shares of CoreWeave (CRWV) were off about 10% in premarket action Tuesday after the company said that it was experiencing delays delivering capacity to one customer, resulting in a financial impact to the fourth quarter.

Despite the roadblock, CoreWeave recorded steady momentum in its backlog, or contracted revenue, which swelled to $55.6 billion from $30.1 billion last quarter thanks to several multimillion-dollar contracts with high-profile customers such as OpenAI, Meta Platforms (META) and Nvidia (NVDA).

CoreWeave's third-quarter results also showed that the company has made progress on the path to profitability, thanks to higher revenues and increased efficiencies, CFO Nitin Agrawal said on the earnings call. The company reported a net loss of $110 million, far below consensus estimates of a $245 million net loss. Its adjusted net loss came out to $41 million, also much below consensus expectations for $199 million.

CoreWeave reported adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization for the quarter of $838 million, exceeding analyst expectations for $812 million.

On the earnings call, CoreWeave management said that the delays in delivering capacity were due to a third-party data-center developer running behind schedule. The development led CoreWeave to lower its 2025 full-year revenue guidance to between $5.05 billion and $5.15 billion, down from the $5.15 billion to $5.25 billion projected in August. Agrawal noted that there have been no changes to the contract with the impacted customer.

"This is a systemic problem that the industry will have to deal with for the foreseeable future," CEO Michael Intrator said of the delay on the earnings call. He reassured investors that the "vast majority" of the delay will be resolved by the first quarter of 2026.

As a result of the delay, CoreWeave management lowered the company's full-year capital expenditure outlook to between $12 billion and $14 billion, down from the $20 billion to $23 billion estimate from August. The capex originally anticipated for the fourth quarter is now anticipated to be recognized in the first quarter of 2026.

Read: Will CoreWeave bears get burned? New Nvidia deals spark fresh optimism for the stock.

Beyond the data-center delay, investors had other questions going into the call. Shares of the company have fallen nearly 30% since CoreWeave last reported earnings on Aug. 12, when it recorded a larger-than-expected loss in the second quarter due to big upfront costs for building AI infrastructure.

Prior to the earnings report, D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria wrote in a Monday note that "we fully expect the company to report better-than-expected revenue and profit, but question how much that matters" relative to concerns around the company's customer concentration and reliance on debt financing.

Management addressed those concerns on the earnings call. "The number of customers that exceeded $100 million of revenue over the last 12 months tripled year over year," Intrator said. He also emphasized CoreWeave's expansion among enterprise customers and increased focus on software and service offerings, including the recent launch of CoreWeave AI Object Storage. CoreWeave also recently announced its entrance into the U.S. federal market to provide its AI cloud services to government agencies.

According to Agrawal, no customer comprised of more than 35% of the company's revenue backlog, down from 50% last quarter. He also emphasized that CoreWeave is taking steps to lower its interest expenses on its debt. In the third quarter, the company raised new debt and created new tranches of existing debt with better terms.

"Going forward, we expect to continue to be able to finance at lower spreads as our capital providers increasingly appreciate our best in class execution as well as the durable cash flow and visibility that underpin our take or pay customer contracts," Agrawal said.

Read more: CoreWeave's stock has slumped. Here's how the company can prove the bears wrong.

-Christine Ji

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11-11-25 0812ET