Watch CoreWeave (CRWV) Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) / Backlog

$CoreWeave, Inc.(CRWV)$ is scheduled to release its fiscal Q3 2025 financial results on Monday, November 10, 2025, after the market closes.

CoreWeave, a specialized cloud provider focused on high-performance computing for AI, operates in a high-growth but capital-intensive market. Its performance is heavily tied to the continuing boom in Generative AI.

Consensus Estimates

Based on analyst forecasts, the Q3 2025 consensus estimates are generally around the guidance the company provided after its Q2 2025 results:

Revenue: Approximately $1.28 Billion (The company's Q3 guidance was $1.26 Billion to $1.30 Billion).

Earnings Per Share (EPS): A net loss is expected, with a consensus forecast around -$0.51 to -$0.54 per share.

A significant deviation from these targets—particularly a beat on revenue or a narrower-than-expected loss—could fuel short-term trading interest.

CoreWeave (CRWV) Fiscal Q2 2025 Earnings Summary and Lesson Learned

CoreWeave's fiscal Q2 2025 results, reported in August 2025, confirmed the company's status as a top beneficiary of the AI infrastructure boom but highlighted the significant financial costs of rapid scaling.

The market's reaction was mixed to negative, with the stock declining in after-hours trading despite a revenue beat.

Q2 2025 Financial Summary

Key Operational Highlights

Massive Demand and Backlog: The company secured a $4 billion expansion deal with OpenAI, adding to its existing commitments. The total Revenue Backlog (RPO) surged to $30.1 billion, providing substantial revenue visibility for years to come.

Capacity Expansion: CoreWeave rapidly scaled its data center footprint, with Capital Expenditures reaching a record $2.9 billion as they deployed new NVIDIA GPU inventory (including being one of the first to bring the Blackwell GB200 systems online).

Strategic Moves: Completed the acquisition of Weights & Biases, a leading AI developer platform, enhancing its software and developer tools offering.

The Lesson Learned from Q3 Guidance

The most critical takeaway for investors and the primary reason for the stock's post-earnings weakness (despite the strong revenue and backlog) centered on the company's profitability guidance relative to its growth.

The "Costs First, Revenue Later" Dilemma

Management's guidance for Q3 2025 Adjusted Operating Income (Adj. OI) showed an unexpected sequential decline compared to Q2, even though the Q3 Revenue guidance ($1.26B - $1.30B) pointed to continued sequential growth.

The Lesson:

For an AI Hyperscaler like CoreWeave, the priority is capacity deployment, which causes profitability to be highly volatile due to a significant timing lag between CapEx spend and Revenue recognition.

This lag is driven by several factors that temporarily depress near-term operating margins:

Front-Loaded Costs: CoreWeave incurs massive Capital Expenditures (buying GPUs, building data centers) and related operational expenses (power contracts, bandwidth) before the new capacity is fully installed, commissioned, and generating revenue.

Depreciation Hit: Once the equipment goes into service, Depreciation & Amortization (D&A) charges immediately hit the income statement. D&A is the largest cost of goods sold component and must be absorbed long before the contracted revenue from the new capacity is fully recognized.

Interest Expense: The record-high CapEx is funded largely by debt (e.g., the $2 billion in Senior Unsecured Notes). The significant Interest Expense is a substantial drag on the GAAP and Adjusted Net Loss.

The Q2 results taught the market that CoreWeave's explosive growth comes with a trade-off: The pursuit of market share and capacity leadership will cause short-term profitability metrics (like Operating Income) to be volatile and compressed until the massive CapEx investments are fully ramped up, commissioned, and generating stabilized revenue. Investors must therefore prioritize Revenue Backlog (RPO) and Adjusted EBITDA (a measure of core unit profitability) over short-term Net Income/EPS.

Key Metrics Investors Should Watch

Given CoreWeave's position as a high-growth, infrastructure-heavy AI company, key metrics extend beyond the standard EPS and Revenue.

Revenue and Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO)

Q3 Revenue: How the actual revenue compares to the consensus $1.28 Billion and company guidance. Continued triple-digit year-over-year growth is expected, but the rate of acceleration or deceleration is key.

Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) / Backlog: This represents contracted, committed revenue for future periods, a crucial indicator for a company with long-term "take-or-pay" contracts. In Q1 2025, this backlog was already around $25.9 billion. Any update on securing new, major contracts (like the previous OpenAI or Microsoft deals) will be a significant market driver. A strong RPO signals high revenue visibility.

Profitability and Margins

Gross Margin: As a provider of bare-metal GPU capacity, the cost of goods sold (primarily hardware acquisition, power, and cooling) is high. Maintaining or expanding the Gross Margin (which was notably high in the past) shows pricing power and efficient capacity utilization.

Adjusted EBITDA / Adjusted Operating Income: Since the company is in a heavy investment phase, this non-GAAP metric can better reflect the core operational efficiency before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. The Q3 Adjusted Operating Income guidance was $160 Million to $190 Million.

Capital Expenditures (CapEx) and Liquidity

Capital Expenditures: CoreWeave must continually invest billions in new GPU inventory (primarily NVIDIA) and data center capacity to keep up with customer demand. The Q3 CapEx guidance was $2.9 Billion to $3.4 Billion. Investors need to see CapEx spending is being deployed effectively and in line with contracted demand (RPO).

Financing and Debt: Given the heavy CapEx, the company relies on debt and financing. Updates on their cost of capital and ability to secure new financing (which they have been very successful at in the past) are essential to sustain growth.

Guidance for Q4 2025 and Full Year 2026

The forward-looking guidance will likely be the most important factor, as it indicates the management's confidence in translating their large backlog (RPO) into realized revenue and deployment of new capacity. Any changes to the full-year 2025 revenue target (which was previously around $5.0 Billion) will move the stock.

CoreWeave (CRWV) Price Target

Based on 25 Wall Street analysts offering 12 month price targets for CoreWeave in the last 3 months. The average price target is $156.87 with a high forecast of $430.00 and a low forecast of $36.00. The average price target represents a 46.70% change from the last price of $106.93.

Short-Term Trading Opportunity Post-Earnings

Trading around earnings is inherently high-risk, especially for a high-growth, highly-valued stock like CoreWeave. Its primary drivers are growth momentum and AI sector sentiment.

Opportunity for a "Beat and Raise" Rally: If the company beats consensus revenue and EPS estimates AND raises its full-year 2025 or initial 2026 guidance (a "beat and raise"), this could lead to a significant short-term rally. This is the most common bullish catalyst in the AI/cloud space. Key positive surprise could be a new, massive contract win that significantly boosts the RPO.

Risk of a "Growth Scare" Drop: The most significant downside risk comes from any hint that the phenomenal growth rate is slowing down, or that CapEx is rising faster than RPO (suggesting over-investment). Any indication of delays in capacity deployment, trouble securing GPUs (NVIDIA's supply chain), or a decline in RPO could trigger a sharp sell-off. The stock is highly-valued, so a miss or disappointing guidance could be harshly penalized.

Technical Analysis - Exponential Moving Average (EMA)

We have seen CRWV experiencing a sharp decline in its share price despite positive RSI momentum, and we could see that it is currently trading below the 50-day period, so we can see that investors might be focusing on its remaining RPO and also backlog.

So if CRWV could address the RPO and backlog in upcoming earnings release we might potentially see a small rally of its share price as CRWV present an earnings beat with positive guidance for the next quarter.

Summary

CoreWeave is scheduled to report its Q3 2025 earnings after the market closes on Monday, November 10, 2025.

Consensus Expectations:

  • Revenue: Analysts project approximately $1.28 Billion, indicating continued triple-digit year-over-year growth fueled by AI demand.

  • EPS: A wider net loss is expected, around -$0.37 to -$0.51 per share, due to heavy investment.

Key Metrics to Watch:

  • Revenue Backlog (RPO): The most critical metric. Investors look for significant additions to the $30.1 Billion backlog from new, long-term AI compute contracts, signaling future revenue visibility.

  • Capital Expenditures (CapEx): Updates on the pace and magnitude of CapEx are crucial, as massive spending on NVIDIA GPUs and data centers precedes revenue recognition.

  • Profitability Guidance: The forward guidance for Adjusted Operating Income will be scrutinized. Given the CapEx-to-Revenue lag, any sequential stability or improvement in operating margins will be viewed positively, mitigating the "growth scare" risk.

A "beat and raise" driven by new, large contracts offers the best short-term trading opportunity, while any major delay in capacity deployment or unexpected dip in RPO could trigger a sell-off.

Appreciate if you could share your thoughts in the comment section whether you think CRWV could provide a significant updates on its RPO and backlog with a potential improved earnings and possible profitability.

@TigerStars @Daily_Discussion @Tiger_Earnings @TigerWire @MillionaireTiger appreciate if you could feature this article so that fellow tiger would benefit from my investing and trading thoughts.

Disclaimer: The analysis and result presented does not recommend or suggest any investing in the said stock. This is purely for Analysis.

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  • Venus Reade
    ·2025-11-07
    I think 104 was bottom for sure, it will consolidate in 107-109 range for the day and move up higher again tomorrow and all next week going into earnings

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  • Enid Bertha
    ·2025-11-07
    This sell off is a bit over done, this will go higher on Monday for sure, if not tomorrow going into the weekend

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  • BelindaHaywood
    ·2025-11-07
    Looks like an interesting play! Definitely worth monitoring how their RPO shapes up post-earnings.
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