u/LegitimateShameHands

I collected the (in my view) most important metrics to keep an eye on for tomorrow‘s release, thought I‘d share it here.

1. The ARR Target ($7B - $9B):
For me the most critical metric. Management has set an ambitious goal to reach $7B–$9B ARR by year-end 2026. Progress from the current $1.25B base is the key benchmark for tomorrow.

2. Q1 Revenue Consensus ($317M - $389M):
Expectations: Consensus is around $316.9M, though some forecasts hit $389M. This is a very wide range and just shows how difficult it is to project quarterly revenue figures with the current growth rates. Most likely projections are split by such a wide range because it’s a guessing game of timing, where some model the revenue starting the moment a chip is delivered while others wait for the capacity to be actually powered up and connected.

I would say anything north of $350M suggests faster GPU deployment than modeled, but with these projections narratives can be shifted in either direction..

3. 2026 Full-Year Guidance ($3B - $3.4B):
Watch for any hike to the $3B–$3.4B range. With a $50B backlog (anchored by Meta and Microsoft), the market is looking for accelerated monetization signs.

4. EPS Estimates (-$0.81):
Analysts expect a loss of roughly $0.81/share due to the $16B–$20B capex. A miss on earnings might be overlooked if ARR and Revenue actually beat.

5. Deployment Timelines:
Updates on the $27B Meta and $19.4B Microsoft deals are important catalysts. Strategy and speed here are everything.

The research of Phillip Securities from Wednesday is probably the worst one I have ever seen and it is absolutely insane that this caused a shift in momentum.

Serena Lim at Phillip Securities downgraded Reddit to “accumulate”, because, get this, it’s growing too fast.
She called 74% ad growth normalizing.
Ad growth in Q1 2025 was 61%. To me an increase of 13 points is the definition of an acceleration, to call this normalization is linguistic gaslighting.

The best part however is that Serena claims Reddit missed her internal projections. I checked the previously published reports of Phillip Securities and guess what, they have never published any FY26 projections before Reddit delivered Q1 earnings. It’s like a teacher grading a test and then inventing a passing score that is 1 point higher than whatever you got.

And it gets even better than that! You would ask yourself, if 680% growth, accelerating ad revenue, and blowing past market consensus on every single metric isn‘t enough to maintain a Buy rating, what would be?
Well, according to Phillip Securities and Serena Lim, the answer is simple: To maintain a Buy rating, you actually need to shrink and miss your own internal projections. They kept a Buy rating on 17LIVE ($LVR), which has a revenue growth of -13,4% and missed their own, already low, estimations by a mile..

The report was so fundamentally broken that I wrote
a complete audit on substack to document every single error.