Nebius Q3 Preview: A Raise to Full‑Year ARR Guidance Would Be a Pleasant Surprise

Nebius will report Q3 earnings on Tuesday, November 11, before the U.S. market opens. The stock jumped nearly 50% on September 9 after the company announced a $17.4–19.4 billion GPU infrastructure services agreement with Microsoft, which materially improved growth visibility for 2026 and beyond.

For Q3, investors will focus on three things: Whether management raises or at least firmly reiterates the 2025 ARR run-rate target, whether revenue is tracking ahead of the post-Microsoft expectations, and whether margins are showing the operating leverage the market is hoping for.

Nebius options show implied volatility around 112%, which is elevated. The options market is pricing roughly a ±15% move around earnings; given the typical post-earnings IV crush, premium-selling strategies look more attractive right now.

Street consensus is currently calling for about $156 million in Q3 revenue and EPS of roughly –$0.40.

In Q2, Nebius revenue was about 9% of CoreWeave’s. Based on both companies’ Q3 forecasts, that ratio could rise to roughly 12% in Q3. Compared with CoreWeave, Nebius runs a cleaner balance sheet with lower leverage, so debt and interest expense are not the pressure points here.

Nebius reported adjusted EBITDA of –$21 million in Q2 at the consolidated level, but management said the core AI infrastructure services business was already EBITDA positive. If the company can turn total EBITDA positive in Q3, that would be an upside surprise.

The headline item is whether Nebius reaffirms the FY25 ARR guidance and whether management sounds comfortable toward the upper half of the $900 million–$1.1 billion range. Any signal of stronger bookings conversion or faster workload onboarding will be read positively.

Management will likely point out that the U.K. and Israel data centers are now live, although the revenue contribution this quarter should still be small. The Token Factory offering will probably be framed as a strategic differentiation layer at this stage, not as a material revenue driver.

Do not expect to see revenue from the Microsoft deal yet. Workload migration is scheduled to start in Q4 and should accelerate through 2026.

Investors will also want more color on how the $17.4–19.4 billion, five-year Microsoft GPU services contract signed in September will be recognized in revenue between 2025 and 2031, and what cadence to expect after 2026.

Nebius is targeting about 220MW of “connected” power by the end of 2025, up sharply from roughly 100MW in midyear. This effectively sets the upper bound for how much AI compute Nebius can monetize before 2026. Investors will be looking for more quantified updates on MW energization, GPU deliveries, interconnect build-out, and data-hall commissioning.

Q2 showed that the core business is already adjusted-EBITDA positive. Group-level numbers were still weighed down by R&D, expansion spend, and non-cash fair-value items. If Nebius can keep that trajectory or push it lower, EBITDA and operating cash flow should show incremental improvement.

Q3 should be viewed as a transition quarter that is more about setting up 2026 capacity, confirming the ARR bridge, and showing discipline on costs than about a sudden growth spike. The Nebius equity story still hinges on timeline credibility, confidence in the 2025 ARR range, and visibility into Q4 and 2026 scale-out. If those stay intact, the setup remains favorable relative to higher-levered peers like CoreWeave.