Cerebras Q1 2026 earnings: stock falls on margin warning
Key takeaways
- Net loss for the quarter came to $14 million, or 22 cents per share, compared with $23.9 million, or 46 cents per share, in the year-ago period.
- "The additional cost of renting third-party capacity will depress core cloud and other services margin temporarily from current levels," Komin said, according to Reuters.
- Second-quarter core revenue guidance came in at roughly $194 million, an 88% year-over-year increase.
Cerebras Q1 2026 earnings: stock falls on margin warning Quartz · Nur Photo / Getty Images Cris Tolomia Wed, June 24, 2026 at 6:16 PM GMT+7 2 min read CBRS Cerebras Systems reported first-quarter revenue of $193.4 million on Tuesday, up 94% from a year earlier, but Cerebras stock fell about 11% in after-hours trading as the company warned that profit margins would decline through the rest of the year.
Net loss for the quarter came to $14 million, or 22 cents per share, compared with $23.9 million, or 46 cents per share, in the year-ago period. First-quarter core gross margin, the company's preferred non-GAAP profitability measure, reached 46.5%, though Cerebras projected that figure would erode to 36%-38% in the current quarter and settle in a range of 38%-41% over the full year.
On a post-earnings call with analysts, CFO Bob Komin explained that a key driver of the compressed margins was an arrangement under which Cerebras is temporarily leasing back data center capacity it had previously deployed with an existing client in order to satisfy near-term demand. Komin said the leaseback would weigh on core cloud and services gross margins by 10 to 15 percentage points for the remainder of 2026, with the company aiming to eventually reach a long-term gross margin target of at least 60%.