
NETCloudflare, Inc.
Industry Dev software Updated 28 Sep 2026 Price 23 Oct 2026
If management hits its targets, one share in 12 months
$326 → $394
Promises vs. what happened
14 claims · 8 decksEvery target management put in a slide deck, and whether they hit it, missed it, or quietly dropped it.
| Promise | Made in | What happened | |
|---|---|---|---|
| FY24 revenue and operating income | Q3 '24 | beat both | Held |
| Q4 '24 revenue $451-452M | Q3 '24 | $459.9M, and profit +16% | Held |
| FY25 revenue $2.09-2.09B | Q4 '24 | $2.17B, raised three times | Held |
| Q2 '26 revenue $664-665M | Q1 '26 | $696.1M, the biggest beat | Held |
| Large customers lift retention | Q3 '24 | 110% to 120% | Held |
| FY26 revenue $2.79-2.80B | Q4 '25 | raised twice, now $2.86-2.87B | Open |
| Q3 '26 revenue $736-737M | Q2 '26 | open; due late Oct | Open |
| FY26 network capex 12-15% | Q4 '25 | narrowed up to 14-15% | Open |
| 20% operating margin, 25% FCF | Q3 '24 | 14% and 12%, then replaced | Open |
| 30% operating, 30-35% FCF | Q2 '26 | no date set | Open |
| GAAP profit by 2028 | Q2 '26 | open; -$207M in FY25 | Open |
| Rule of 50 in '27, 50%+ in '28 | Q2 '26 | about 47% on FY26 guidance | Open |
| 2027 market $222B | Q3 '24 | restated to $282B on new sources | Open |
| Gross margin 75-77% long term | Q3 '24 | 73%, and the band widened to 70-77% | Missed |
What they’re pitching
the headline page, deck by deckThe headline from each quarterly results deck over two years, so you can see what they want you to focus on, and when it changes.
'24Q4
'24Q1
'25Q2
'25Q3
'25Q4
'25Q1
'26Q2
'26
Large customersOff page one Q2 '26
RetentionFirst seen Q3 '24
Gross marginFirst seen Q3 '24
Long-term modelFirst seen Q3 '24
Market sizeFirst seen Q3 '24
ImpactFirst seen Q3 '24
AI agentsFirst seen Q2 '26
DevelopersFirst seen Q2 '26
on the headline page further in the deck not in the deck▲ onto page one▼ off page one● first mentionTap a mark for the quote.
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“Of Revenue from”
Deck Q3 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 3 ·
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“Of Revenue from”
Deck Q4 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 3 ·
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“Of Revenue from”
Deck Q1 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 3 ·
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“Of Revenue from”
Deck Q2 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 3 ·
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“Of Revenue from”
Deck Q3 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 3 ·
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“Of Revenue from”
Deck Q4 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 3 ·
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“Large Customers 34% 29% CAGR”
Deck Q1 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 3 ·
Large customers (scorecard on the at-a-glance slide)
“27% year-over-year Large Customer growth in Q2'26”
Deck Q2 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 8 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q3 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 25 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q4 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 27 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q1 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 25 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q2 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 25 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q3 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 25 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q4 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 26 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q1 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 25 ·
Dollar-based net retention
“Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention”
Deck Q2 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 37 ·
Consistent gross margin
“Attractive & Consistent”
Deck Q3 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 26 ·
Consistent gross margin
“Attractive & Consistent”
Deck Q4 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 28 ·
Consistent gross margin
“Attractive & Consistent”
Deck Q1 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 26 ·
Consistent gross margin
“Attractive & Consistent”
Deck Q2 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 26 ·
Consistent gross margin
“Attractive & Consistent”
Deck Q3 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 26 ·
Consistent gross margin
“Attractive & Consistent”
Deck Q4 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 27 ·
Consistent gross margin
“Attractive & Consistent”
Deck Q1 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 26 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins”
Deck Q3 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 30 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins”
Deck Q4 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 32 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins”
Deck Q1 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 30 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins”
Deck Q2 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 30 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins”
Deck Q3 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 30 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins”
Deck Q4 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 31 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins”
Deck Q1 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 30 ·
Operating leverage and the long-term model
“Margin What is the economic margin created by $1 ARR? Unit Economic Margin =”
Deck Q2 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 38 ·
Expanding addressable market
“Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion 18”
Deck Q3 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 18 ·
Expanding addressable market
“Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion 19”
Deck Q4 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 19 ·
Expanding addressable market
“Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion”
Deck Q1 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 18 ·
Expanding addressable market
“Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion”
Deck Q2 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 18 ·
Expanding addressable market
“Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion”
Deck Q3 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 18 ·
Expanding addressable market
“Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion”
Deck Q4 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 18 ·
Expanding addressable market
“Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion”
Deck Q1 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 18 ·
Expanding addressable market
“A Consistently Expanding TAM”
Deck Q2 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 14 ·
Helping build a better Internet (impact slide)
“Helping Build a Better Internet”
Deck Q3 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 4 ·
Helping build a better Internet (impact slide)
“Helping Build a Better Internet”
Deck Q4 2024 Investor Presentation · p. 4 ·
Helping build a better Internet (impact slide)
“Helping Build a Better Internet”
Deck Q1 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 4 ·
Helping build a better Internet (impact slide)
“Helping Build a Better Internet”
Deck Q2 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 5 ·
Helping build a better Internet (impact slide)
“Helping Build a Better Internet https://www.cloudflare.com/impact/”
Deck Q3 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 5 ·
Helping build a better Internet (impact slide)
“Helping Build a Better Internet https://www.cloudflare.com/impact/”
Deck Q4 2025 Investor Presentation · p. 5 ·
Helping build a better Internet (impact slide)
“Helping Build a Better Internet https://www.cloudflare.com/impact/”
Deck Q1 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 5 ·
AI agents and the agentic Internet
“AI and agents change everything”
Deck Q2 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 15 ·
Developer platform adoption
“MILLION developers on the Cloudflare platform”
Deck Q2 2026 Investor Presentation · p. 22 ·
What they keep talking about · 10
The themes that show up deck after deck, and the ones that disappear.
- Large customers
- The at-a-glance slide opened seven of the eight decks; in Q1 '26 its large-customer tile replaced the paying-customer tile, and in Q2 '26 it moved back to page 8.
- Retention
- The same slide title in all eight, "Strong Dollar-Based Net Retention", including the quarters it read 110-111%. It is 120% now.
- Gross margin
- Titled "Attractive & Consistent" through a fall from 79% to 73%, in seven decks, and absent from the eighth.
- Long-term model
- "Unit economics support 20% long-term operating margins" in seven decks running. Q2 '26 replaced it with a 44% unit-economic-margin slide and a 30% model.
- Market size
- "Consistent & Deliberate TAM Expansion" in seven decks; renamed in Q2 '26, with AI and agent-builder markets added and the IDC sources dropped. 2027 went from $222B to $282B.
- Impact
- The "Helping Build a Better Internet" slide sat on page 4 or 5 of seven decks, and was dropped in Q2 '26.
- AI agents
- Absent from the slides through Q1 '26, where it appears only in the safe harbour. In Q2 '26 it fills pages 15-31 of 47.
- Developers
- First shown in Q2 '26: 7.4M+ active developers, against 3M+ in December 2024.
- New
- Q2 '26, rebuilt around the June investor day: a 30% operating model, GAAP profit by 2028 at the latest, a "Rule of" north star of 50% for 2027, the developer count and the unit-economics slide.
- Quiet
- The paying-customer count stopped in Q1 '26 after printing +40%, and the quarterly gross-margin slide in Q2 '26 after printing 73%.
Every quarterly report we’ve saved · 11
The press releases and shareholder letters behind this page.
- Q2 2026 release · 8-K 6 Aug 2026
- Q1 2026 release · 8-K 7 May 2026
- Q4 FY2025 release · 8-K 10 Feb 2026
- Q3 2025 release · 8-K 30 Oct 2025
- Q2 2025 release · 8-K 31 Jul 2025
- Q1 2025 release · 8-K 8 May 2025
- Q4 FY2024 release · 8-K 6 Feb 2025
- Q3 2024 release · 8-K 7 Nov 2024
- ? release · filed copy
- ? release · filed copy
- ? release · filed copy
Archived as text; the links open the copies filed on EDGAR or the investor-relations site.
What analysts asked them
8 calls · Q3 24 – Q2 26The last eight earnings calls: what analysts kept asking about, which questions got dodged, and how much the CEO did the talking.
Share of questions by topic, call by call. A topic that suddenly dominates is usually the problem. The last row is how much of the answering the CEO did, rather than the CFO or others.
| Share of questions about… | Q3 24 | Q4 24 | Q1 25 | Q2 25 | Q3 25 | Q4 25 | Q1 26 | Q2 26 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Demand & customers | 38% | 14% | 36% | 36% | 31% | 28% | 33% | 40% |
| Growth & sales | 24% | 21% | 23% | 21% | 38% | 22% | 50% | 33% |
| Pricing & margins | · | · | 5% | 7% | · | 6% | 50% | 13% |
| Guidance & outlook | 14% | · | 18% | 14% | 8% | 11% | 17% | 20% |
| Capacity & supply | 10% | 7% | 14% | 14% | 15% | · | 33% | · |
| Capital & financing | 10% | · | 5% | 7% | 8% | 11% | · | 13% |
| Competition | · | 14% | 5% | 21% | 15% | · | 33% | 13% |
| Products & technology | 48% | 36% | 23% | 50% | 46% | 28% | 50% | 40% |
| Macro & regulation | · | 7% | 14% | 7% | 8% | · | · | · |
| Other | 29% | 43% | 36% | 7% | 23% | 50% | · | 13% |
| Questions | 21 | 14 | 22 | 14 | 13 | 18 | 6 | 15 |
| How much the CEO talked | 69% | 69% | 89% | 73% | 90% | 96% | 0% | 86% |
Who’s in charge, who’s selling
read from the filings · 1 Oct 2026Shareholder votes against the board and pay, plus which executives have been selling their own shares.
Tier 1 · live
The votes are being detached from the shares, and eight holders are suing
Approved 2026-06-30: each co-founder Class B share becomes one share of non-economic Series FF preferred with nine votes plus one Class A share, every common share splits into one voting and one non-voting share, and the authorised Class A doubles to 4.5bn. The proxy's own words: the co-founders "will be able to achieve additional liquidity through sales of up to all of their shares of Class C common stock without any consequence to the Co-Founders' voting power". Eight complaints were on file by 5 Aug '26, seven consolidated, alleging the terms are not entirely fair. Nothing filed by today says it has been implemented.
Tier 2 · stable
52.4% of the votes on about a tenth of the shares
Class B carries ten votes. Prince holds 39.0% of the voting power, Zatlyn 13.4%, officers and directors 52.4%; the largest outside holder of Class A has 11.4%. At the 2026 meeting the Class B present carried 335.6M of the 615.0M votes cast, so no resolution needed an outside holder's consent. The board is classified into three, stockholders cannot act by written consent or call a special meeting, and a director can be removed only for cause.
Tier 2 · stable
762 insider sales, no purchases, and no buyback against the dilution
The SEC insider data sets record 762 sales by 10 insiders for $705.9M in the year to Q2 '26 and zero purchases, 99.9% under pre-set plans; the Form 4 parse puts Prince at about $374M and Zatlyn at about $229M. Share-based pay was $451M, 20.8% of revenue and 173% of free cash flow, with the share count up 2.5% a year and no buyback ever authorised.
Tier 3 · worsening
Two yardsticks dropped, and a long-term model replaced before it was reached
The paying-customer count went in Q1 '26, right after printing 332,466 and 40% growth; the quarterly gross-margin slide went in Q2 '26, after the margin fell to 73%. KPI persistence across the eight decks is 0.75. The 20% operating / 25% free-cash-flow model that stood since before the listing was replaced with 30% / 30-35% while the actual was 14% and 12%, and the gross-margin band was widened from 75-77% to 70-77% in the same deck.
Tier 3 · stable
No chief technology officer since March 2025, after two network-wide outages
Graham-Cumming left the technology seat for the board in March 2025 and no filing read names a successor; Zatlyn's chief operating officer role ended in February 2025 and was not filled; the chief legal officer resigned in February 2026 after nearly ten years and his deputy succeeded him. The FY2025 10-K added the November and December 2025 network-wide outages, caused by the company's own software deployments, as a risk factor.
Where shareholders voted no
At each annual meeting shareholders vote on who sits on the board, what the executives are paid and whether the company may create more shares. These are the votes that drew the most "no"s at the last two meetings: the shares voted against (or withheld) each year, then what share of all votes cast that was. Under each one, what the vote was about and what a no means.
| 2025 | 2026 | Share 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Say on payExecutive pay. Shareholders say whether they accept what the top executives were paid. The vote is advisory: the board can ignore it, but a large no is a public rebuke and boards usually change the pay plan after one. | 63.6M against | 139.6M against | 23.8% |
| Ratify KPMGThe auditor. Keeping the outside accounting firm that checks the company's books. This almost always passes; a sizeable no means shareholders doubt the audit or think the firm has been in place too long. | 3.6M against | 6.9M against | 1.1% |
| Lakhani (Class I)A board seat. Shareholders vote to keep this person on the board, the group that hires, pays and can fire the CEO. A no, or a withheld vote, says they want this director out, often because of the committee they sit on or a decision they signed off. | — | 119.1M withheld | 20.3% |
| Sandell (lead independent)A board seat. | — | 56.6M withheld | 9.7% |
| Non-voting Class C stock (4A)Permission to create more shares. The company may then sell new shares later, for deals or to raise cash. New shares dilute the existing ones, so each shareholder owns a smaller share of the company. A no says shareholders want that door kept narrower. | — | 200.6M against | 34.4% |
| Double the authorised Class A (4B)Permission to create more shares. | — | 194.1M against | 33.3% |
Insiders who sold the most stock
Reported sales by executives and directors, biggest first.
| SEC insider data sets, Jul '25-Jun '26 | Sold | Note |
|---|---|---|
| All insiders | $705.9M | 762 sales by 10 people, and not one purchase |
| Matthew Prince | about $374M | ~1.73M shares in the Form 4 parse to 22 Sep '26 |
| Michelle Zatlyn | about $229M | ~1.02M shares in the same window |
| Of all of it, pre-planned | 99.9% | 10b5-1 footnotes on 987 of the 1,020 Form 4 rows read |