Will Datadog raise FY2026 full-year revenue guidance to imply growth of 22% or above at the Q1 2026 earnings call?

The FY2025 precedent is the strongest prior: management raised FY2025 guidance from initial ~20% to ~22% at exactly the Q1 2025 earnings call — an exact structural analogue to this market. The required raise of ~$106M (2.6% from $4.08B midpoint to $4.186B threshold) is achievable if Q1 actuals beat guidance by 3-5% ($30-50M incremental) and the largest customer Q1 trajectory allows updating the 'very conservative assumption.' The non-AI floor at 20%+ growth provides management a concrete basis to close at least part of the gap. Confidence constrained to MEDIUM because the 22% threshold requires not just any raise but a specific magnitude: a raise to $4.15B midpoint (21% growth) resolves NO despite an absolute guidance increase.

The fundamental tension in this market: the guide-and-raise precedent argues strongly for YES, but the initial FY2026 guide was set at 18.7% — a 10pp discount from the Q1 rate and well below FY2025's initial guide. This suggests management encoded an unusually large conservative buffer specifically because the largest customer trajectory is genuinely uncertain. If Q1 data confirms the largest customer is stabilizing or declining, management may raise the FY guide but to a midpoint of $4.1-4.15B (20-21%), resolving NO even with a raise occurring. The mathematical gap from 18.7% to 22% is larger than FY2025's Q1 raise required (from ~20% to ~22%), adding risk of an insufficient raise. Slightly below run 1 to reflect this magnitude gap risk.

Weighting the bookings and RPO data more heavily in this run: $1.63B in bookings (+37% YoY) and $3.46B RPO (+52% YoY) are contracted indicators that management can use to support a confident FY guidance raise. In prior years, record bookings have been the concrete basis management cited when raising guidance — the certainty of contracted revenue conversion reduces the ambiguity in H2 projections. Additionally, the new 8-figure AI financial model company land (largest new logo deal in DDOG history) represents incremental H2 revenue not in the original FY guide, providing a concrete basis for upward revision. Against this, the largest customer remains the swing variable and the 22% threshold requires a specific magnitude of raise.

This market requires two sequential things to both be true: (1) Q1 actuals beat guidance, AND (2) the beat plus largest-customer trajectory update is sufficient to justify raising FY guidance to 22%+ specifically. The predecessor resolved NO with the initial guide at 18.7% despite Q4 delivering 29%. Management demonstrated willingness to maintain a large gap between observed quarterly growth and FY guidance when concentration uncertainty is high. At Q1 earnings, management will have Q1 actuals but only partial H2 visibility on the largest customer — they may prefer to raise to a midpoint of $4.1-4.15B (20-21% growth) as an intermediate step rather than committing to 22%+ before H2 concentration trends are clearer.

Applying the predecessor calibration lesson: the initial FY guide market resolved NO (18.7% vs 22% threshold) with ensemble prediction at 42% YES. That market showed management's conservatism persists even when Q4 delivered 29% growth. The question is whether the Q1 raise is structurally different — and it is, because Q1 adds actual delivery data that wasn't available for the initial guide. But the lesson about management's conservatism ceiling is relevant: if management raised to only 22% in FY2025 from an initial 20% guide, repeating that exact move from an 18.7% initial guide would produce only ~20.6% raised guidance — below the 22% threshold. The calibration points toward a partial raise rather than a threshold-clearing raise, especially given the larger initial gap.

The mathematical analysis of this market is more complex than a simple guide-and-raise call. The non-AI floor at 'at least 20% growth' provides a concrete lower bound for the non-concentrated business. FY2025 actual was $3.431B. If ex-largest-customer grows 20% and represents ~70% of FY revenue, that segment contributes ~$2.87B * 1.20 = $3.44B. The remaining 30% (largest customer) at flat contribution ($1.03B) gives $4.47B total — well above 22%. So even flat largest-customer performance implies FY above 22%. The risk is the largest customer is actively declining, not flat. If the largest customer declines 20% from its FY2025 level, the math gets tight. This mechanical floor analysis suggests YES probability is moderately above 50% but uncertainty about decline magnitude is real.

Calibration discipline is paramount here given the predecessor haiku run was catastrophically wrong (72% YES, Brier 0.52) on the initial guide market. The correction: do not mechanically apply the guide-and-raise pattern without accounting for concentration uncertainty. However, the critical distinction noted in the context — this is a Q1 raise, not an initial guide — is real and should not be entirely discounted. Setting probability at near-50% reflects maximum honest uncertainty: the guide-and-raise precedent argues for YES, the threshold specificity and concentration uncertainty argue for near-NO. The balance lands at modest YES lean given FY2025 exact precedent, but without high conviction.

This run applies maximum conservatism on the calibration lesson without over-correcting. The predecessor market for the initial FY guide resolved NO despite strong Q4 delivery — management demonstrated that concentration uncertainty can override the mechanical guide-and-raise impulse. At Q1 earnings, the same largest-customer uncertainty will still be present (only one quarter of Q1 data vs a full fiscal year of unknown trajectory). Management may prefer to raise the FY guide but to a threshold below 22% (e.g., $4.12-4.15B midpoint, implying 20-21%) as an incremental step, holding full raise until Q2 when more data is available. A 50% probability reflects genuine analytical symmetry on this specific question.

A slight tilt back toward YES from the near-50% baseline in run 2 to reflect one analytically important factor: the Q1 2026 guidance of 25-26% was set at the same call where FY was guided at 18-20%. Management already revealed in that single call that they view Q1 as executing at 25-26% while maintaining H2 conservatism. When Q1 actuals confirm ~25-28% delivery, management has a public record of their own Q1-specific optimism to build on when raising FY. The mathematical tension between Q1's 25-26% run rate and an 18-20% FY guide is so visible that maintaining a sub-22% FY guide after Q1 confirmation would be analytically difficult to justify publicly — creating pressure to raise past 22%.