Snowflake — FQ1 FY2027 Earnings Preview

FQ1 FY2027 = Calendar Feb–Apr 2026 (quarter ended April 30, 2026)  ·  Reports Wednesday, May 27, 2026 AMC  ·  Conference call 2:00pm PT  ·  Prepared May 21, 2026

Snowflake reports FQ1 FY2027 (Feb–Apr 2026) results on Wednesday, May 27, 2026 after the close. Management pre-guided Q1 product revenue to $1.262–1.267B (+27% YoY) and FY27 full-year product revenue to $5.66B (+27%) — ~$160M ahead of Street consensus (~$5.50B). The fundamental setup is a sentiment-inversion thesis: Street estimates have compressed while the underlying business is re-accelerating — product revenue YoY moved from 27.5% in FQ4'25 to 26.2% (FQ1'26) then back up to 30.4% (FQ4'26), a +280 bps re-acceleration in H2 FY26. RPO YoY accelerated from +33% to +42% over the same window (+900 bps), and NRR stabilized at 125% for three consecutive prints.

Management contrarianism flag: FY27 product rev guide of $5.66B sits +$160M / +290 bps above the Street consensus of ~$5.50B. CFO Brian Robins reiterated unchanged guidance philosophy on the FY26 Q4 call. Management is more bullish than the Street — historically a positive asymmetric setup in SNOW's 11-of-11 quarterly beat track.

Bull case: RPO accelerated to +42% YoY for the 2nd consecutive quarter at $9.77B — the cleanest leading indicator of forward consumption. NRR stabilized at 125% (three consecutive prints, prior bear case was further decay). AI hit a $100M run-rate one quarter ahead of plan. Cortex now in 9,100+ accounts; Snowflake Intelligence in 2,500+ (nearly doubling QoQ). KeyBanc flags ~$10M Observe contribution as a swing factor for a Q1 beat. BofA model calls for at least +30% YoY product revenue. OpenAI/Anthropic $200M-each partnerships (Feb 2026) reframe SNOW as the enterprise-data substrate for agentic AI.

Bear case: FY27 op margin guide of 12.5% is only +200 bps of expansion despite +27% growth — margin leverage is being reinvested into AI GTM. SBC remains ~34% of revenue. Databricks growing 55–65% (nearly 2x SNOW) on a similar ARR base is the existential competitive threat. Iceberg interoperability could cannibalize storage TAM. Consumption-model volatility makes any single quarter noisy. AI revenue is only ~2.3% of total — narrative > numbers so far.

What's at stake: Summit 26 in San Francisco runs June 1–4 (five business days after the print). Management has every incentive to enter Summit with a clean beat-and-raise on product revenue and constructive AI/Cortex traction commentary. Key fundamental tests: Q1 product rev print ≥ $1.30B (+3% beat consistent with 11-Q pattern), FY27 raise of $40–60M, RPO YoY holds ≥ +40%, NRR holds at 125%.

Key concern: The expectations bar has quietly shifted from "too low" to "potentially too high" over the last three months. SNOW traded down 35% YTD to ~$136 by late April — sentiment was deeply negative — but a 28% rally to ~$175 in the final four weeks before the print has re-priced much of that pessimism. The Street consensus of $1.32B now embeds a ~4.4% beat over the $1.265B guide midpoint, above SNOW's recent-quarter beat cadence of +2.7–2.9%. The risk is that positioning has rotated from bearish to cautiously bullish without the fundamental bar moving — a normal-cadence beat could disappoint a market that has already priced recovery.

Three-Month Sentiment Arc

Analyst Price Target Reset

The sell side broadly cut targets post-Q4 while keeping Buy ratings — a "lower the bar, keep the thesis" reset:

Mean consensus PT ~$224 (28 Buy / 2 Hold / 0 Sell). Every major bank cut targets but maintained Buy — the tell is that the fundamental thesis is intact while the multiple has de-rated. Benchmark is the only near-print raise, and the most bullish pre-earnings signal.

The Expectations Gap: Where Risk Sits

Three data points frame why the bar may be higher than the consensus number suggests:

1. The stock has re-priced a beat. The 28% rally from $136→$175 has already embedded recovery expectations into the share price. Options market prices a ±13.5% move post-print — the upper bound ($199) is close to where SNOW traded in early March. A normal cadence beat would confirm what's already in the stock, not add to it.

2. Consensus has drifted above the historical beat cadence. Street consensus of $1.32B implies a 4.4% beat over the $1.265B guide midpoint. SNOW's last two prints landed at +2.7% and +2.9% — well below what consensus is now baking in. Ramaswamy explicitly calibrated "3% is a very good beat" on the Q4 call. The buy side is positioned for a blowout, not a standard print.

3. The narrative tailwinds may be fully discounted. Hyperscaler beats (MSFT/AMZN/GOOGL), consumption-peer beats (DDOG, NET), and SNOW's own Cortex AI product drumbeat (SnowWork, multimodal, guardrails GA, GSA federal deal) are all known information. The stock rally is the market pricing these in. The question is whether Q1 actuals can exceed what the rally has already discounted.

Residual Negatives Not Yet Priced Out

Despite the rally, several headwinds persist and could resurface on the call:

Verdict: Expectations Are Closer to Priced-In Than the Street Admits

The setup has flipped from a clear asymmetric long three months ago (deeply oversold, expectations troughed) to a more balanced risk/reward today. The fundamental thesis hasn't changed — the price has. A standard beat-and-raise (~$1.30B rev, FY27 raise to $5.72B) is now the consensus expectation, not an upside surprise. For the stock to work post-print, SNOW likely needs at least one of: (a) a revenue print >$1.32B (beating the buy side, not just the guide), (b) an FY27 raise >$5.78B (materially above Street), (c) an AI revenue disclosure that shows >$150M run-rate and a path to 5%+ of total. Absent one of those, the risk is a "sell the news" reaction on a good-but-expected quarter.

Source: StocksToTrade, 24/7 Wall St., Blockonomi, TipRanks, Benzinga, TIKR, Yahoo Finance, FX Leaders, ECIKS. Stock prices as of May 26, 2026. Section added May 27, 2026.

Headline read: Carbon Arc behavioral panel data (27M opt-in users; total worldwide weekly traffic to snowflake.com) shows SNOW website traffic flipped from +27% YoY in January 2026 to negative YoY every month of FY27 Q1 — the first sustained YoY contraction in the dataset. Q1 FY27 (Feb–Apr 2026, full quarter through April 24) total traffic is -5.8% YoY vs Q1 FY26. At the same time, Datadog Q1 cal 2026 web traffic was +62% YoY (and DDOG just beat) and MongoDB was +1.7% YoY (essentially flat). SNOW's web-traffic differential vs peers is the most negative datapoint in this preview. It does not signal an imminent Q1 revenue miss — consumption-SaaS revenue lags inbound demand by 2–4 quarters — but it does signal that FY27 H2 / FY28 new-logo formation is softening, and a modest FY27 guide raise (rather than a step-up) is the more likely outcome.

SNOW Weekly Website Traffic — Monthly YoY (Worldwide, All Pages)

Source: Carbon Arc Website Traffic (behavioral panel, 27M opt-in users; URL/domain-level browsing). Weekly visits aggregated to calendar month, worldwide. Full clean coverage through May 24, 2026.

Note: Earlier draft of this section reported a "Sign-Ups" subscription-page metric showing a Feb-only data point. That metric appears to have broken in March 2026 (a likely URL-routing change at Snowflake). The total-traffic series above uses Carbon Arc's broader Website Traffic insight (#379), which has clean weekly coverage through May 24, 2026, providing full Q1 FY27 visibility.

Peer Cross-Check: Monthly YoY Web Traffic — SNOW vs DDOG vs MDB

Side-by-side monthly YoY traffic for SNOW vs the two cleanest data-infra peers — Datadog (reported a Q1 beat on 5/7 at $0.60 vs $0.51 cons) and MongoDB (reports 5/28, the day after SNOW). All three series sourced from Carbon Arc Website Traffic (insight 379), aggregated to calendar month from weekly data, worldwide.

What the monthly comparison shows: The peer divergence is structural, not a one-month anomaly. SNOW exits Q4 FY26 with a +27% Jan print — directionally consistent with the +30.4% reported Q4 product revenue — then flips negative in every month of Q1 FY27 and stays negative into May. DDOG and MDB both inflect positive in the same window. The cohort-relative story: SNOW underperformed peer traffic by 90+ ppts in Feb, 53 ppts in Mar, 55 ppts in Apr, and 112 ppts in May against DDOG; and by 8 ppts in Feb, 7 ppts in Mar, 8 ppts in Apr, and 4 ppts in May against MDB. The DDOG comparison especially matters because DDOG's traffic surge tracked a real Q1 beat — so the SNOW underperformance is informative, not noise.

New-Logo Detection (Carbon Arc Tech-Stack Crawl)

Carbon Arc also tracks new-customer technology adoption (8k+ technologies detected across 28M+ company websites and job boards) — a leading-but-lagged indicator of net-new logo formation. This metric clearly lags reported results (DDOG TTM is -37% despite their reported beat), so read relative ranking only:

On new-logo detection, SNOW ranks best in the data-infra cohort — pushing back on the "Databricks is eating Snowflake" bear narrative. This is the one alt-data signal pointing the other way.

Alt Data Verdict — What It Implies for Q1 Print and FY27 Guide

Q1 print likely OK despite the traffic miss: Consumption-SaaS revenue lags inbound demand by 2–4 quarters. Q1 FY27 product revenue will reflect Q4 FY26 + early-Q1 FY27 pipeline conversion, not current web traffic. Q4 FY26 ended with +27% YoY traffic (Jan 2026), so the Q1 revenue print should land near the $1.30B / +2.7% beat zone. What this rules out: a +4.4% beat (the $1.32B Street number) is not supported by alt data.

FY27 raise will be modest, not a step-up: The decisive datapoint — Q1 FY27 total traffic -5.8% YoY with three of three months negative — argues against a +$80M+ FY27 raise. Management's existing $5.66B guide already prices in much of the H2 FY26 conversion; alt data does not provide upside to it. The base case is a +$40–60M raise that gets framed as "prudent" — and that won't be enough to satisfy a stock that has already rallied 28% into the print.

SNOW is the worst in its peer cohort on this metric: Datadog +62%, MongoDB +1.7%, Snowflake -5.8%. DDOG's traffic move tracked their real Q1 beat — so the SNOW -5.8% is an informative signal, not panel noise. The relative ranking will be uncomfortable on the call and is likely to draw a sell-side question on top-of-funnel softness.

One counter-signal: On new-logo technology detection, SNOW is flat while Databricks is -11%. The "Databricks is eating Snowflake" thesis is not visible in the new-customer formation data. Combined with the traffic deceleration, the most consistent interpretation is: top-of-funnel demand is cooling for the data-infra category broadly, not just SNOW — but SNOW's funnel has compressed faster than its base would suggest.

Source: Carbon Arc — Website Traffic (insight 379, behavioral panel of 27M+ opt-in users, weekly URL/domain-level browsing, worldwide; data through May 24, 2026) and Customer Count by Company (insight 17610, technology-detection across 28M+ company sites and job boards; data through April 30, 2026). Reported product revenue YoY from Snowflake 10-Q/10-K filings and Daloopa. Section added May 27, 2026; refreshed with full Q1 FY27 dataset same day.

Hyperscaler + consumption-infra peers (MSFT/AMZN/GOOGL/DDOG/NET) all beat heading into SNOW — sets a constructive macro tape. CRM same-day AMC is the key cross-current. MDB +1 day is the closest comp. Source: FMP earnings calendar.

Note: SNOW guides product revenue, not total revenue or EPS. Q1 product revenue guide of $1.262–1.267B implies +27% YoY at midpoint. FY27 product revenue guide of $5.66B vs. Street ~$5.50B is the key positive going into the print.

FCF margin is seasonally lumpy — Q4 collections drive the spike (61% in FQ4'26 per Daloopa); Q2/Q3 trough due to payment timing — compare same-quarter YoY only (FQ4'26 61% vs FQ4'25 43% = +1,800 bps YoY). RPO acceleration from +33% (FY26 Q1) to +42% (FY26 Q4) is +900 bps in 4 quarters — strongest forward signal. Op margin trajectory: FY26 Q1 9% → FY26 Q4 11% = +200 bps; vs prior-year FY25 Q4 9% = flat YoY (Q4-over-Q4). Each cell links to its Daloopa source.

5-year trajectory: product revenue growth has stabilized in the high-20s (38% → 29.5% → 29.2% → 26.6% guide), a "high growth plateau" rather than continuing decel. Op margin expanded +750 bps over 4 years (5% → 12.5%); FY27 guides +200 bps additional. Adj FCF margin steps DOWN -300 bps in FY27 — driven by the ~150 bps Observe acquisition drag plus AI infrastructure capex. Customer count >$1M TTM compounding +26% annually for 3 consecutive years. Source: Daloopa series 220609, 220632, FY27 guide from Q4 transcript.

Watch for: (1) updated Cortex account count vs. 9,100; (2) Snowflake Intelligence GA timing and per-user cap pricing (Ramaswamy flagged "sticker shock" concern on Q4 call); (3) any quantified $ figure for AI revenue beyond the $100M run-rate.

8/8 total revenue beats with average +2.4% surprise. EPS: 7/8 beats, avg +27.9%. Pattern is consistent low-single-digit revenue beat + larger EPS upside on operating leverage. Magnitude trend: FY25 avg rev beat +1.5%; FY26 avg rev beat +3.3% — beat magnitude expanded +180 bps YoY despite higher base. EPS beat magnitude expanded from +23.7% (FY25 avg) to +27.2% (FY26 avg) on operating leverage.

11-of-11 beats above the high end of the guide range. Average beat: +3.8% all-time, +3.7% in FY26. The two most recent prints (FY26 Q3/Q4) printed at the low end of the historical band (+2.9%, +2.7%) — consistent with Ramaswamy's explicit "3% is a very good beat" calibration. The print bar to beat: a normal-cadence print sits at ~$1,302M (+3% on the $1,264.5M mid). Consensus total revenue of $1,323.7M implies the buyside is positioned for a +5% blowout. Source: Daloopa series 486317/486318 (guide low/high) and 220609 (actual), shifted forward one calendar quarter to pair guide-with-actual.

Net read: positive on product/strategy, neutral-to-mixed on stock and sales execution. Project SnowWork (3/18) anchors the agentic-AI narrative. CRO transition (3/31) is the swing variable. GSA federal deal (today) is a tangible new revenue avenue — expect prominent mention on the call.

Bull Catalysts

Bear Risks

1. Q1 product revenue magnitude: Beat to $1.28–1.30B (vs. $1.265B midpoint) is the cadence-consistent print (+3% beat per Ramaswamy's calibration). Anything below $1.28B breaks pattern.

2. FY27 product revenue raise: The single most important number. Raise to $5.72–5.78B (+$60–120M) extends the 11-of-11 consensus raise streak. No raise breaks it.

3. RPO YoY growth: Holds at +40%+ = forward consumption strength confirmed (FY26 trajectory +33% → +42%, +900 bps re-accel). Decel to mid-30s reverses that trend.

4. NRR: Stable at 125% or up-tick = floor in (3 consecutive prints at 125%). Drift to 123–124% = expansion stalling, prior bear case re-emerges.

5. AI revenue dollars disclosed: Watch for $150M+ run-rate figure (vs. $100M in Q4 = +50% QoQ). Snowflake Intelligence customer count vs 2,500, Cortex account count vs 9,100.

6. Snowflake Intelligence GA + pricing: Pricing structure detail (per-user cap) and GA timing — sets up Summit 26 narrative for June 1–4.

7. Op margin trajectory: Q1 actual vs. ~9% guide; FY27 commentary on whether 12.5% is conservative or a true ceiling. Q1'26 op margin was 9% — flat YoY in Q1'27 would imply +150 bps full-year leverage path.

8. Net new $1M+ customers: FQ4'26 added 45 sequentially to 733; YoY adds = +153 (+26% YoY count growth). Watch for 45-55 sequential adds to maintain trajectory.

9. Databricks / competitive language: Any explicit mention of competitive wins/losses, especially around Iceberg-based workloads. Databricks growth ~55-65% (vs SNOW 27%) is the share-of-spend question.

10. Summit 26 preview: Any leading commentary on AI product launches at Summit (June 1–4) — management has incentive to tease.