Nebius Group N.V. will release third-quarter 2026 financial results before the U.S. market open on Thursday, November 12, 2026, and will host a conference call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time, according to the company’s official October 30 newsroom notice. The date is confirmed. The results are not. This preview therefore uses official second-quarter figures, the August 12 shareholder letter, and the current macro backdrop, and it does not treat Thursday’s numbers as if they had already been published. Nebius is not CoreWeave, and it is not Nvidia. It is a Nasdaq-listed AI cloud operator, headquartered in Amsterdam, whose last official quarter showed extremely fast revenue growth, heavy capital expenditure, and a financing mix that included customer prepayments, an at-the-market equity program, and the company’s first asset-backed loan. Those are the right objects to carry into the call.
Key Takeaways
- Official timing: results before the open on November 12, 2026; webcast at 8:00 a.m. ET / 2:00 p.m. Central European Time, via Nebius’s investor hub.
- In the second quarter, according to the official August 12 earnings release, group revenue was $582.3 million, up 454 percent year on year, and adjusted EBITDA was $236.2 million.
- The Q2 shareholder letter said Nebius AI cloud revenue was $574.9 million, up 514 percent, and that annualized run-rate revenue reached $3.0 billion. Capital expenditures were about $5.7 billion in the quarter.
- Management reiterated full-year 2026 guidance on that letter’s highlight page, raised contracted-power guidance for year-end 2026 to 5 gigawatts from the prior indication of more than 4 gigawatts, and said it expected more than $9 billion of customer prepayments in 2026.
- The call arrives two days after a hotter-than-expected U.S. CPI and in the same week as a more hawkish tone from a Federal Reserve governor, which is a less friendly backdrop for financing a large capex plan. That is context, not a preview of any line item.
What the official second quarter actually showed
Nebius’s Q2 release is unusually explicit, which is a gift to anyone writing a preview. Group revenue of $582.3 million compared with $105.1 million a year earlier. For the six months ended June 30, revenue was $981.3 million, up 529 percent. Adjusted EBITDA swung to a $236.2 million profit from a $21.0 million loss in the year-ago quarter. Net income from continuing operations, however, was a $190.4 million loss, against a $502.5 million profit a year earlier, a reminder that the GAAP line can move with items that the adjusted measures exclude. Adjusted net loss improved to $33.2 million from $91.5 million. The company flags adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net loss as non-GAAP measures and provides reconciliations in the release; a preview should not treat them as superior to GAAP, only as the measures management emphasizes when it talks about the core cloud business.
The cost base grew quickly in absolute dollars and shrank as a share of revenue. Cost of revenues was $133.6 million, 23 percent of revenue, down from 29 percent a year earlier. Product development was $191.0 million, 33 percent of revenue, down from 41 percent. Selling, general and administrative expense was $173.9 million, 30 percent of revenue, down from 65 percent. Depreciation and amortization was $259.7 million, 45 percent of revenue, down from 72 percent. Total operating costs and expenses were $758.2 million, or 130 percent of revenue, compared with 206 percent a year earlier. Share-based compensation was $102.5 million. These ratios can improve simply because revenue is ramping faster than committed costs; they can also reverse if utilization disappoints. Thursday’s question is whether the third quarter continued that operating leverage or paused it.
Cash flow and capex are the other official pillars. Net cash provided by operating activities from continuing operations was $2,246.1 million in the second quarter, versus a $167.7 million use of cash a year earlier. Purchases of property and equipment and intangible assets were $5,657.4 million, against $510.6 million. For the first six months, operating cash flow was $4,504.1 million and purchases of PPE and intangibles were $8,130.3 million. A business that is both cash-flow positive at the operating line and still spending several billion dollars a quarter on equipment is not a contradiction in a prepayment-heavy cloud model, but it is a financing problem if prepayments, debt or equity stall. The shareholder letter’s highlight page put the cash position at $8 billion at the end of the second quarter, including that $2.3 billion of operating cash flow.
| Official Q2 2026 item | Q2 2025 | Q2 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Group revenue | $105.1 million | $582.3 million |
| Nebius AI cloud revenue (shareholder letter) | — | $574.9 million, +514% YoY |
| ARR (AI cloud, last month × 12) | — | $3.0 billion |
| Adjusted EBITDA / (loss) | $(21.0) million | $236.2 million |
| AI cloud adjusted EBITDA margin (letter highlight) | — | 50% |
| Net income / (loss) from continuing operations | $502.5 million | $(190.4) million |
| Operating cash flow, continuing operations | $(167.7) million | $2,246.1 million |
| Purchases of PPE and intangibles | $510.6 million | $5,657.4 million |
| Shares issued and outstanding, June 30, 2026 | — | 271,855,218 (excl. 50,185,726 Class A treasury shares) |
Note: Sources: Nebius Group official Q2 2026 press release and August 12, 2026, shareholder letter. Adjusted measures are non-GAAP. ARR is defined in the letter as the last month of the quarter’s AI cloud revenue multiplied by 12, on a revenue-recognition basis, excluding prepayments. An em dash means the comparable was not used in this table from the cited extract.
Guidance, capacity and financing: what was official in August
The shareholder letter’s opening spread said full-year 2026 guidance was “reiterated” and that a detailed view of guidance would be shared on the August 12 earnings call. This preview therefore does not invent a revenue or capex range and present it as a current official target. What the letter did state, in official writing, is more than enough to build a watchlist. Contracted-power guidance for the end of 2026 was raised to 5 gigawatts, from more than 4 gigawatts indicated the prior quarter. Management said it planned to deploy more than 1 gigawatt per year starting in 2027. It expected to receive over $9 billion in customer prepayments in 2026. It said it had more than $40 billion of customer commitments. It described four large second-quarter deals, including names such as Reflection and Cohere, with an average deal size above $1 billion and annual contract value of $20 million to $25 million per megawatt, and it estimated a payback period of one year and 10 months for deals closed in the second quarter, based on forecast costs and contracted future capacity, including capacity not yet built. It also said 50 to 60 percent of capex for those deals was self-financed by prepayments.
Financing details were similarly concrete. In July, after the quarter closed, Nebius entered into its first secured debt financing, raising $775 million at SOFR plus 2.50 percent, backed by deployed GPU infrastructure and contracted cash flows from an agreement with an investment-grade customer. Through June 30, it sold 12.7 million Class A shares under an at-the-market program at a weighted-average price of $223.6, for gross proceeds of about $2.8 billion, with 12.3 million shares remaining available under the program at that date. The letter said the company may enter into further debt transactions, including asset-backed and corporate-level debt, and that it will ultimately pursue the vehicles that best serve long-term interests. Those sentences are not a forecast of Thursday’s financing update. They are the official starting point.
Capacity geography also belongs on the watchlist. The letter cited additional sites in the United Kingdom, Estonia and Finland, construction at some owned “AI factories” in the United States, and continued work on a second Meta agreement with capacity “on track to come online in early 2027.” An asset-light partnership model was introduced as a new path to capacity. If Thursday’s materials update any of those items — delayed sites, accelerated sites, a change in the 5 gigawatt contracted-power target, or a new financing — that will matter more than a single-penny GAAP beat or miss, especially in a week when AI-infrastructure credit has been under scrutiny.
The questions the November 12 call still has to answer
First, did third-quarter revenue and ARR keep the pace implied by a $3.0 billion run-rate at June 30, or did short-term capacity constraints cap recognized revenue? The letter noted a new, premium-priced short-term capacity effort in the third quarter for customers with acute, time-bound need, and said one such deal had already been signed in Q3. That is a tease, not a number. The official Q3 release will have to say how much revenue was recognized, how much was prepaid, and whether ARR rose, stalled or was defined on the same last-month-times-twelve basis.
Second, did capex remain in the several-billion-dollar quarterly zone, and was it funded as management hoped? A drop in operating cash flow or prepayments, or a larger draw on the ATM or on new debt, would tell a different story from a repeat of the second quarter’s $2.2 billion operating cash inflow. Higher U.S. yields after the October CPI, and Governor Waller’s more hawkish December reaction function, are not Nebius’s doing, but they are part of the market that will have to buy or lend if the company needs incremental capital. The KCEX Blog’s November 5 AI-stock selloff note already grouped Nebius with other high-growth infrastructure names that lost value when financing fears rose. Thursday is a chance for the company to answer those fears with contracted figures, or to leave them unanswered.
Third, what is the utilization and delivery record on capacity that was supposed to come online in the second half? Fast ARR growth can be booked against future megawatts. Investors will look for evidence that power is being connected and that GPUs are being utilized, not only that term sheets exist. SoftBank’s official second-quarter disclosure of a $3.7 billion loss on revised U.S. power-equipment procurement, covered in a companion article, is a reminder that project plans change and that advance payments can become charges. Nebius is a different company with a different set of contracts. The parallel is only this: power and equipment plans should be described with the same concreteness as revenue.
Fourth, how concentrated is the backlog, and what is the status of the Meta-related build? A second agreement with a large customer can be a strength and a concentration risk at the same time. The letter already said some higher-priced contracts will contribute primarily to 2027 revenue. If that mix shifted further out, 2026 recognized revenue could lag the marketing run-rate even if the long-term book is healthy. Management should be asked to separate 2026 recognized revenue, 2026 prepayments, and 2027-and-beyond contracted value, using the same definitions as in August.
What this preview is not
It is not a CoreWeave earnings analysis. CoreWeave’s third-quarter call was scheduled for 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on November 10, and its results are not used here. It is not an Nvidia preview; Nvidia remains scheduled for November 17, and a separate earlier KCEX Blog setup already covers that date. It is not a claim that Nebius stock will rise or fall on Thursday. Secondary news stories have cited Wall Street estimates for the quarter; those estimates are not Nebius’s official guidance, they change, and they are not reproduced here as if they were company targets. The company, like many foreign private issuers, also files on Form 6-K and 20-F; the last annual report on Form 20-F cited in the Q2 release was filed with the SEC on April 30, 2026, for the year ended December 31, 2025.
The group still includes Avride and TripleTen and holds equity stakes in ClickHouse and Toloka, with Toloka no longer consolidated after a 2025 transaction. Those businesses can move the group GAAP lines without telling investors much about AI-cloud utilization. A clean preview keeps them in a footnote and judges the print first on the cloud revenue, ARR, capex, cash and power metrics that management itself chose to highlight in August.
Macro context should stay in its lane. A 0.4 percent CPI and a 0.3 percent core reading, a 2-year Treasury yield near 4.76 percent in a November 10 CNBC snapshot, and a December FOMC that may deliver at least a 25 basis point hike are relevant to the discount rate and to financing conditions. They do not tell anyone what Nebius booked in the three months ended September 30. Mixing the two is how previews become newsy and unfalsifiable. The broader AI capital-expenditure debate is the right industry backdrop; Thursday’s tables are the right evidence.
How to listen to Thursday’s call without getting fooled by run-rate math
ARR as Nebius defines it is the last month of the quarter’s AI cloud revenue, multiplied by twelve, on a revenue-recognition basis and excluding prepayments. That definition is clear, and it is also easy to misuse. A strong September can make ARR look ahead of recognized quarterly revenue; a strong prepayment can make cash look ahead of ARR. Neither gap is automatically a red flag or a green flag. It becomes a flag only if management cannot reconcile the three series — recognized revenue, ARR, and prepayments — with the same calendar and the same perimeter, namely the AI cloud rather than the whole group. A questioner on the call who lets those series be blended has wasted the official definition the company already provided.
Payback-period language deserves the same skepticism. The August letter estimated one year and 10 months for second-quarter deals, based on forecast costs and contracted future capacity, including capacity not yet built. An estimate that includes unbuilt capacity can be honest and still be wrong if equipment, power or labor costs change, or if customers do not take the capacity on the assumed schedule. SoftBank’s official disclosure this week of a multi-billion-dollar charge after U.S. power-equipment plans were revised is not a statement about Nebius. It is a statement about the industry’s ability to get advance payments and plans wrong. The useful follow-up on Thursday is whether Nebius’s assumed cost per megawatt, or its assumed delivery dates, moved relative to August, not whether a slide still shows a short payback.
Currency and listing mechanics are minor for most line items, because the official figures are already in U.S. dollars, but they are not irrelevant for shareholders. Nebius is a Dutch-headquartered company listed on Nasdaq under the ticker NBIS, with Class A and Class B shares and a large treasury-share balance as of June 30. Further ATM issuance, if it occurred in the third quarter, would change the share count before it changes the business. The June 30 official count — 271,855,218 shares issued and outstanding, excluding 50,185,726 Class A shares in treasury — is the baseline against which any later figure should be compared. A preview that ignores dilution and talks only about revenue growth is incomplete in a company that has already used the at-the-market program for about $2.8 billion of gross proceeds.
Finally, keep the schedule straight. The official call is 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time on November 12. The results are due before the U.S. open, so a press release may hit the wire while European markets are already open and while U.S. futures are trading. If the first headline is only an adjusted margin or only a qualitative comment about demand, wait for the tables. The second quarter already showed that adjusted EBITDA and GAAP continuing-operations income can tell different stories in the same quarter. Thursday may do the same.
FAQ
Has Nebius already reported third-quarter 2026 results?
No. The company said it will release them before the market open on November 12, 2026, and hold a call at 8:00 a.m. Eastern Time that day. This article is a preview.
What official figures can be used as a baseline?
Second-quarter group revenue of $582.3 million, AI cloud revenue of $574.9 million, ARR of $3.0 billion, adjusted EBITDA of $236.2 million, about $5.7 billion of capex, and $2.25 billion of operating cash flow, all from the August 12 official materials.
Did Nebius raise its power target?
Yes, in the August shareholder letter it said it anticipated ending 2026 with 5 gigawatts of contracted power, up from a prior indication of more than 4 gigawatts. That target is contracted power, not necessarily connected and utilized capacity, and it may be updated on the November 12 call.
Is there an official earnings-per-share guide in this preview?
No. The August letter said full-year guidance was reiterated and that a detailed view would be discussed on the August call. This preview does not invent a current EPS or revenue target and present it as official.
Where will the webcast be available?
Nebius said the registration link for the webcast and replay will be on its investor-relations site at https://nebius.com/investor-hub. Investor contact: askIR@nebius.com.
Sources and Methodology
The earnings date and call time are from Nebius’s October 30, 2026, newsroom announcement. Financial figures and definitions are from the official Q2 2026 press release and the August 12, 2026, letter to shareholders, including the letter’s own caveats on forward-looking statements, estimated payback periods, and non-GAAP measures. Macro context is from official BLS and Federal Reserve sources discussed in companion articles and is not a forecast of Nebius’s results. This is an earnings preview, not investment advice and not a report of third-quarter actuals, and was prepared before the November 12 release.
