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SNOW · Forward model · Control plane case

The Control plane case, 20 quarters out

Each segment is projected from its own operating driver, rolled up into consolidated cash flow, and discounted back to a fair value per share. The assumptions below are editable — change them and every number on this page moves with them.

Snowflake reports a single operating segment, so this model uses the only revenue disaggregation it publishes every quarter: product revenue and professional services and other revenue. The two lines foot to reported total revenue to the dollar in all nine quarters shown, including the basis quarter, where $1,334,329 thousand plus $56,622 thousand is the reported $1,390,951 thousand. Nothing is split by product - there is no Cortex, Snowflake Intelligence or Cortex Code revenue line anywhere in the filings - and nothing is split by compute, storage or data transfer, because none of those is disclosed. Quarter labels are Snowflake fiscal quarters: 2027 Q1 is the three months ended 30 April 2026. Two boundaries matter. First, the margin ladder is non-GAAP and therefore excludes stock-based compensation, which ran at $433.7 million, or 31.2% of revenue, in the basis quarter; on GAAP the company's operating margin was -23.4% and it lost $0.86 a share. To carry some of that cost, the fair value is struck on the 375.0 million non-GAAP diluted share count rather than the 346.6 million shares outstanding. Second, corporate operating expense is allocated to the two verticals pro rata to their revenue rather than held as overhead, because Snowflake allocates no operating expense by line: at the basis quarter that puts the platform line at a 15.26% fully-loaded margin (75.1% non-GAAP product gross margin less the 59.84% non-GAAP operating expense ratio) and the services line at -68.04%, which recombine to the disclosed 11.9% consolidated non-GAAP operating margin. That allocation is an accounting convenience of this model, not a Snowflake disclosure. Free cash flow here is EBITDA less capital expenditure less tax at 25%, so it is not Snowflake's adjusted free cash flow: the guided 23.0% adjusted margin adds back stock-based compensation and the working-capital inflow from growing deferred revenue, and this model's projected margin runs about nine points below it, which is why the rule-of-forty score shown here is near 38 where the company's own guided score is 54. Both verticals were tested for seasonality against a centred four-quarter moving average and both came back inside the noise, so neither carries a seasonal factor.

The CEO's stated destination, priced. Snowflake stops being the warehouse that AI products attach to and becomes what Sridhar Ramaswamy calls the control plane for the Agentic Enterprise, so first-party AI pulls core platform consumption behind it: the CFO's version is that Cortex Code 'had the largest driver to the increase in our forecast' and 'encourages faster, more consumption of the data platform'. Net revenue retention holds above 126% for longer than the base allows and the operating margin ladder runs past the guided 13.5% as the AI gross-margin drag is offset by lower bandwidth cost under the new AWS contract. What this case does not reach is any disclosed long-term target, because Snowflake has none in force: no revenue, margin or customer goal beyond fiscal 2027 appears in the FY2026 10-K, the Q1 FY2027 release or the Q1 FY2027 call. It is a thesis, not guidance.

SNOW REVENUE MODEL

Latest: $4.03B (2032Q1E)

Period Value
2025Q1 $829M
2025Q2 $869M
2025Q3 $942M
2025Q4 $987M
2026Q1 $1.04B
2026Q2 $1.14B
2026Q3 $1.21B
2026Q4 $1.28B
2027Q1 $1.39B
2027Q2E $1.49B
2027Q3E $1.60B
2027Q4E $1.71B
2028Q1E $1.82B
2028Q2E $1.93B
2028Q3E $2.05B
2028Q4E $2.17B
2029Q1E $2.29B
2029Q2E $2.42B
2029Q3E $2.55B
2029Q4E $2.68B
2030Q1E $2.81B
2030Q2E $2.95B
2030Q3E $3.09B
2030Q4E $3.24B
2031Q1E $3.39B
2031Q2E $3.54B
2031Q3E $3.70B
2031Q4E $3.87B
2032Q1E $4.03B

What drives each segment

Platform consumption (product revenue)

Subscribers × ARPU
Basis quarter$1.33B
Final quarter$3.91B
Implied CAGR+24%
Share of revenue, final quarter97%
PV of segment cash flow$10.14B

Snowflake bills consumption of compute, storage and data transfer, not seats, so product revenue is the disclosed customer count multiplied by a derived product revenue per customer. Expansion inside the installed base is the dominant half: net revenue retention was 126% in the basis quarter and 779 customers now spend more than $1 million on a trailing twelve-month basis, up 29% year over year, so the spend is concentrated in a widening large-account tier rather than spread thinly. Product revenue is 96% of total revenue.

Last four quarters
2026 Q2 $1.09B Reported
2026 Q3 $1.16B Reported
2026 Q4 $1.23B Reported
2027 Q1 $1.33B Reported
Compute consumptionStorageData transferFirst-party AI products (Cortex, Snowflake Intelligence, Cortex Code) - bundled inside product revenue, not separately disclosed
Subscribers 14K 46.4% of a 30K addressable base 13,912 total customers at 30 April 2026, disclosed in the 10-Q. Not a seat count: each is an account that consumes.
Addressable subscribers 30K the S-curve ceiling Assumed. Snowflake discloses no addressable market; 30,000 is about 2.2x the base, set off the eight-quarter add rate.
Net adds 1K/qtr ramping toward 1K/qtr, throttled as the base approaches the TAM The disclosed 616 net adds grossed up by the 53.6% headroom left to the ceiling, so the printed adds start at 616.
Net-add ceiling 1K/qtr what supply can deliver at full rate Add capacity thins toward 1,000 as the large-enterprise pool empties; 813 of the Forbes Global 2000 are already on.
ARPU $31,970.67/mo drifting +1.8% per quarter, floor $0.00 $31,970.67 a month is the derived $95,912 of quarterly product revenue per customer, billed monthly by the engine.
Non-subscriber revenue $0/qtr growing +0.0% per quarter Zero. Everything outside product revenue sits in the professional services vertical, which is the only other line reported.
Platform consumption (product revenue)

Latest: $3.91B (2032Q1E)

Period Value
2025Q1 $790M
2025Q2 $829M
2025Q3 $900M
2025Q4 $943M
2026Q1 $997M
2026Q2 $1.09B
2026Q3 $1.16B
2026Q4 $1.23B
2027Q1 $1.33B
2027Q2E $1.44B
2027Q3E $1.54B
2027Q4E $1.65B
2028Q1E $1.75B
2028Q2E $1.87B
2028Q3E $1.98B
2028Q4E $2.10B
2029Q1E $2.21B
2029Q2E $2.34B
2029Q3E $2.46B
2029Q4E $2.59B
2030Q1E $2.72B
2030Q2E $2.86B
2030Q3E $3.00B
2030Q4E $3.14B
2031Q1E $3.28B
2031Q2E $3.44B
2031Q3E $3.59B
2031Q4E $3.75B
2032Q1E $3.91B

Assumptions & reasoning

  • Product revenue per customer is derived, not disclosed. Snowflake publishes the total customer count and the product revenue every quarter; the ratio is arithmetic. It was $95,912 per customer per quarter in the basis quarter, up 11.4% year over year, and the driver carries it as $31,970.67 a month because the engine bills ARPU monthly.
  • The engine damps net adds by the headroom left against the ceiling, so the 1,157 net-add capacity in the slider is the disclosed 616 net adds grossed up by the 53.6% of the 30,000-customer pool still unfilled. The published net-adds trace prints 616 in the first projected quarter, which is what Snowflake reported.
  • Total customer counts are restated for acquisitions, consolidations and spin-offs. The FY2026 10-K states 13,328 total customers at 31 January 2026; the FY2027 Q1 10-Q restates that same date to 13,296, and the 616 net adds disclosed in the release are computed against the restated figure. The history above uses each count as first reported.
  • The AI products - Cortex, Snowflake Intelligence and Cortex Code - sit inside product revenue with no separate disclosure. The CFO said Cortex Code 'had the largest driver to the increase in our forecast' but gave no dollar figure, so this model creates no AI revenue line.
  • Tested for seasonality by ratio to a centred four-quarter moving average: the fiscal-quarter factors come out 0.982, 1.007, 1.004 and 0.993, a 2.5-point signal, while the same method on the longer thirteen-quarter total-revenue series gives a 1.5-point signal against a 1.1 to 2.3 point window-to-window spread within each quarter. The spread swamps the signal, so this line is modelled as aseasonal.
  • Observe closed on 2 February 2026 for $595.8 million, inside the basis quarter, and Snowflake discloses no revenue contribution from it. Part of the customer and revenue step-up is therefore inorganic and cannot be sized from disclosure.

Professional services and other

Growth path
Basis quarter$57M
Final quarter$121M
Implied CAGR+16%
Share of revenue, final quarter3%
PV of segment cash flow-$768M

Implementation, training and education attached to platform deployments. It is sold to seed consumption rather than for profit: it carried a 37.1% GAAP gross loss and an 8.2% non-GAAP gross loss in the basis quarter and has never been gross-profitable in the nine disclosed quarters. At 4% of revenue it is immaterial to value but it is the second half of the only revenue split Snowflake publishes, so it is carried explicitly rather than folded into the platform line.

Last four quarters
2026 Q2 $54M Reported
2026 Q3 $55M Reported
2026 Q4 $57M Reported
2027 Q1 $57M Reported
Professional servicesTraining and educationOther
Sequential growth +3.0%/qtr decaying toward +2.4% 3.0% a quarter, 12.5% a year: the four-quarter trend after the FY2026 Q2 level shift, well below the 25.1% year-over-year print.
Professional services and other

Latest: $121M (2032Q1E)

Period Value
2025Q1 $39M
2025Q2 $40M
2025Q3 $42M
2025Q4 $43M
2026Q1 $45M
2026Q2 $54M
2026Q3 $55M
2026Q4 $57M
2027Q1 $57M
2027Q2E $59M
2027Q3E $62M
2027Q4E $64M
2028Q1E $67M
2028Q2E $69M
2028Q3E $72M
2028Q4E $75M
2029Q1E $78M
2029Q2E $81M
2029Q3E $84M
2029Q4E $87M
2030Q1E $90M
2030Q2E $94M
2030Q3E $97M
2030Q4E $101M
2031Q1E $105M
2031Q2E $109M
2031Q3E $113M
2031Q4E $117M
2032Q1E $121M

Assumptions & reasoning

  • Snowflake discloses no headcount, utilisation, billable-hours, day-rate or backlog measure for this line, so a base growth rate is the only honest driver. Any unit or capacity build would be invented.
  • The FY2026 Q2 step from $45.3 million to $54.5 million is a level shift that has held for four quarters, not a season; the base is roughly $55 to $57 million a quarter growing with deployments.
  • Ratio to a centred four-quarter moving average puts the apparent fiscal-quarter factors at 0.946, 1.065, 1.003 and 0.979, an 11.9-point spread - but every quarter index has a single usable window, and the whole shape is that one level shift sitting in the FY2026 Q1 and Q2 slots. A level change cannot be separated from a season on one observation, so this line is modelled as aseasonal.
Scenarios

Where each case comes from

Bear case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bear column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

Bull case — primary sources

The primary sources this case is built from — filings, calls and posts. Where they are claims by an interested party rather than disclosures, every number in the Bull column is what happens if they are taken at face value.

Valuation

From cash flow to fair value

Present value of free cash flow, 20 quarters$7.03B
Terminal-year revenue$15.14B
Terminal-year EBITDA$4.20B
Exit multiple, on revenue12.0x
Terminal value$181.74B
Discounted at 10.0% a year, terminal value becomes$112.84B
Enterprise value$119.87B
Net cash$2.09B
Equity value$121.96B
Shares0.38B
Fair value per share$325.19
Against the current price of $329.11-1%

10.5% on a business that is loss-making at GAAP, carries $2.09 billion of net cash and $2.3 billion of zero-coupon converts, and whose revenue is consumption-billed and therefore discretionary - a premium over a large-cap SaaS cost of equity. 9.0x terminal revenue is roughly half the 17.6x forward EV/sales the shares carry at the 26 August 2026 close of $315.37, and it is the compression a line fading from 31% growth toward the terminal rate has to take; on the assumed 28% terminal margin it is the same as 28x EBITDA. No peer multiple was independently verified beyond Datadog at 19.67x trailing EV/sales, so the exit multiple is anchored on Snowflake's own fade rather than on an asserted comp set. It is by a wide margin the most sensitive input in this model.

Read the other way round: at $329.11 the market is paying 12.2x terminal-year revenue, holding every other assumption on this page fixed. That is the number to argue about.

Quarter by quarter

The projected path

Quarter Platform consumption (product revenue)Professional services and other Revenue YoY EBITDA Capex FCF R40 PV of FCF
2027 Q2E $1.44B$59M $1.49B +31% $267M $12M $191M +43 $187M
2027 Q3E $1.54B$62M $1.60B +32% $300M $14M $215M +45 $205M
2027 Q4E $1.65B$64M $1.71B +33% $335M $16M $240M +47 $223M
2028 Q1E $1.75B$67M $1.82B +31% $372M $18M $266M +45 $241M
2028 Q2E $1.87B$69M $1.93B +29% $409M $20M $292M +45 $259M
2028 Q3E $1.98B$72M $2.05B +28% $448M $22M $320M +44 $277M
2028 Q4E $2.10B$75M $2.17B +27% $489M $24M $349M +43 $295M
2029 Q1E $2.21B$78M $2.29B +26% $530M $26M $378M +42 $313M
2029 Q2E $2.34B$81M $2.42B +25% $573M $28M $409M +42 $330M
2029 Q3E $2.46B$84M $2.55B +24% $618M $30M $440M +41 $347M
2029 Q4E $2.59B$87M $2.68B +23% $663M $33M $473M +41 $364M
2030 Q1E $2.72B$90M $2.81B +23% $710M $35M $506M +41 $380M
2030 Q2E $2.86B$94M $2.95B +22% $758M $37M $541M +40 $397M
2030 Q3E $3.00B$97M $3.09B +22% $808M $40M $576M +40 $413M
2030 Q4E $3.14B$101M $3.24B +21% $859M $42M $613M +40 $429M
2031 Q1E $3.28B$105M $3.39B +21% $911M $45M $650M +40 $444M
2031 Q2E $3.44B$109M $3.54B +20% $965M $47M $689M +40 $459M
2031 Q3E $3.59B$113M $3.70B +20% $1.02B $50M $728M +39 $474M
2031 Q4E $3.75B$117M $3.87B +19% $1.08B $52M $769M +39 $489M
2032 Q1E $3.91B$121M $4.03B +19% $1.14B $55M $810M +39 $503M

Every row is projected. A year-over-year change is shown only where the quarter it compares against exists — an em dash means there is no comparable quarter, not a flat year.

Track record

Model revisions

Assumptions are marked to reality as each quarter prints. Every change is appended here, with the fair value the model produced at the time, so the model's own history stays visible.

DateChangedFair value thenNote
2026-08-27 all $193.27 First publication, built on the fiscal 2027 first-quarter print of 27 May 2026. Two verticals - product revenue and professional services, the only revenue split Snowflake discloses - with the platform line driven by the disclosed customer count and a derived product revenue per customer, tuned so the three projected quarters of fiscal 2027 reproduce the $5,840 million full-year product revenue guide.