Shares of NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) closed at $174.29 on Friday, May 29, 2026, up 22.4% from the prior session’s $142.40. The move erased a year of underperformance in a single day after the Intelligent Data Infrastructure vendor reported a record fourth quarter and laid out fiscal-2027 guidance that finally lines the storage maker up with the AI-infrastructure trade.
The headline numbers were comfortably ahead of internal consensus: Q4 net revenue of $1.948 billion grew 12% year over year, all-flash array revenue hit a record $1.2 billion (up 18%), and non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.43 rose 26%. Management then guided full-year FY27 revenue to $7.325–$7.575 billion, a midpoint that implies roughly 7.6% growth and a re-acceleration from FY26’s 5% pace, with non-GAAP EPS of $8.70–$9.00. The full press release was filed with the SEC on Thursday, May 28.
The print: every line lit up
NetApp framed the year as a clean sweep — record revenue, gross profit, operating income, operating cash flow and free cash flow for both Q4 and the full fiscal year. The composition matters more than the size: the high-margin Hybrid Cloud segment (on-prem flash and software) was up 13% in the quarter, while Public Cloud services grew 11%. Public Cloud’s $688 million annual run rate is small relative to total revenue, but it now grows faster than the hardware base and carries far higher gross margins, which is the part of the model AI customers actually consume.
| Metric (non-GAAP unless noted) | Q4 FY26 | Q4 FY25 | Y/Y |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net revenue | $1,948M | $1,732M | +12% |
| Hybrid Cloud segment | $1,766M | $1,568M | +13% |
| Public Cloud segment | $182M | $164M | +11% |
| All-flash array revenue | $1,200M | ~$1,017M | +18% |
| Billings | $2,163M | $2,032M | +6% |
| Free cash flow | $900M | $640M | +41% |
| EPS (non-GAAP) | $2.43 | $1.93 | +26% |
| EPS (GAAP) | $2.03 | $1.65 | +23% |
The AI angle finally shows up in the numbers
Storage has been the awkward seat in the AI trade. GPUs get the headlines; the boxes that hold the training and inference data sit at the bottom of the stack and rarely move on AI excitement. NetApp’s Q4 commentary was structured to fix that. The company introduced the NetApp AI Data Engine, an end-to-end data platform co-engineered with NVIDIA that gives enterprises a single metadata catalog and pipeline for production AI workloads. New EF50 and EF80 high-performance arrays target the same AI/HPC/database workloads where competitors have been winning land-and-expand deals. NetApp also expanded its multi-year collaboration with Google Cloud for sovereign and regulated environments, and announced a strategic alliance with Nutanix to integrate ONTAP storage with the Nutanix Cloud Platform.
None of those by itself is a quarter-mover. Stacked against a guide that calls for FY27 revenue growth roughly 250 basis points faster than FY26, and with the all-flash mix already at a $4.8B annualized run rate, the read is that AI workloads are starting to pull-through hardware refresh cycles that storage vendors had been waiting for since 2023.
The stock — one print, a year of relief
NetApp entered 2026 near $106 and traded in a $96–$115 range for most of the first four months as investors questioned whether the company would ever participate in the AI compute build-out. Friday’s gap took the stock to $174.29 — still about 10% below the 52-week high of $192.83 hit last year, but up roughly 64% year-to-date.
Nutanix on the same wave
NetApp wasn’t the only data-infrastructure name reporting last week. Nutanix (NASDAQ: NTNX) printed Q3 FY26 results on May 27 that beat the top end of every guided metric: revenue of $703.1 million (+10% Y/Y), annual recurring revenue of $2.43 billion (+15%), and a $750 million share-repurchase authorization increase. Management also raised the FY26 revenue range to $2.82–$2.84 billion and free cash flow guidance to $760–$780 million. Nutanix shares closed at $52.07 on Friday — up roughly 12% in the two sessions following the print. The Nutanix earnings release highlighted the same AI infrastructure narrative — Agentic AI, neoclouds, NVIDIA integration — that NetApp leaned on a day later.
Two prints, same week, same theme: enterprise data-platform vendors are starting to register the spending that has so far accrued mostly to the hyperscalers and the GPU supply chain.
What to watch into FY27
Three things will decide whether NetApp’s re-rating sticks. First, billings growth: at +6% in Q4, billings still trail revenue growth, which on a multi-year view caps how fast the model can compound. Second, the operating-margin guide — FY27 non-GAAP operating margins of 29.1%–30.1% imply incremental leverage versus FY26, which the company will need to deliver even as it invests in the AI Data Engine roadmap. Third, the durability of all-flash share gains against pure-play competitors and hyperscaler-native object storage. The press release flagged macro and tariff risk explicitly, and management’s forward-looking-statements section calls out the same set of variables. None of those caveats are new; they are reasons the stock had been priced for a 5%-grower until last week.
Sources
- NetApp, Inc. — Q4 and FY26 results press release, filed as Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, May 28, 2026 (SEC EDGAR).
- Nutanix, Inc. — Q3 FY26 results press release, filed as Exhibit 99.1 to Form 8-K, May 27, 2026 (SEC EDGAR).
- NTAP and NTNX historical and intraday prices: Yahoo Finance historical chart data, retrieved May 31, 2026.
Disclosure: This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed before publication. It is for informational purposes only and is not investment advice.