Ben’s Portfolio update end of January 2026

Investment Analysis Clubs Saul’s Investing Discussions
1

Ben’s Portfolio update end of January 2026

Returns and portfolio holdings:










Portfolio
Notes






2022
-15.6%*
*Jul-Dec, since I started posting my portfolio on Saul’s and fully adopting my version of Saul’s investing approach.




2023
77.8%





2024
31.7%





2025
24.9%












2026
YTD
Month




Jan
-8.2%
-8.2%

These are my current positions:










Jan 2026
Dec 2025
First buy*






Nvidia
22.7%
21.5%
5/13/2020




Cloudflare
20.8%
21.6%
11/2/2020












Datadog
13.6%
13.1%
5/13/2020




Snowflake
12.1%
12.6%
2/8/2021




Crowdstrike
10.9%
10.4%
5/13/2020












Axon
6.7%
7.0%
4/2/2024




Samsara
3.2%
3.9%
1/8/2024




AppLovin
3.2%
2.1%
11/18/2025




Zscaler
3.0%
3.3%
3/4/2021




Monday
2.0%
2.5%
9/13/2021




Astera Labs
1.9%
2.0%
11/18/2025

*held through today

Expectations for upcoming earnings

In the following I summarize my expectations for the companies reporting this earnings season. The goal of this exercise is to come up with reasonable earnings expectations. The goal here is not to be absolutely accurate, but to be able to identify when a company surprises in either a good or a bad way. That way it will be easier for me to identify if a change in conviction level is warranted. Also, just because a company exceeds or performs below my expectation with a single metric, that doesn’t necessarily mean my conviction has to change. Really, what this exercise does is it helps me to think about my companies holistically. Therefore, I think it is valuable to come up with these expectations before they report as it will help me to keep the companies (and myself) accountable and minimize any cognitive bias once the results are out.

A practical way for me to come up with those numbers is by asking a couple questions. For example “what revenue growth rate would continue the trends the company is currently following?” (Looking at revenue growth trends AND other metrics.) And then when I have a number in mind, I ask myself “If the company reaches less than this number, would I be negatively surprised?“; “If the company reaches more than this number, would I be positively surprised?” If the answer is yes to both questions I write it down below. Same goes for all other quantitative metrics below.

Cloudflare:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2025 on 02/10/26.
  • Revenue expectation: $604M (7.4% QoQ, 31.3% YoY), implying a 2.5% beat.
  • Q1 new revenue guide: $619M (2.5% QoQ, 29% YoY) which I would interpret as $631M (4.5% QoQ, 31.7% YoY) expecting YoY growth rate to slightly accelerate.
  • I would like to see NRR at 119%.
  • I would like to see total customer growth around 7% QoQ (~20700 net adds, I know, kind of insane).
  • I would like to see large customer growth around 7% QoQ (~281 net adds).
  • I would like to see RPO grow around 12.5% QoQ to $2.41b (43% YoY).
  • I would like to see cRPO grow around 12.5% QoQ to $1.54b (30.7% YoY).
  • I would like to see Gross Margin greater or equal to 75%.
  • I would like to see operating income around $95M (15.7% margin).
  • I would like to see a FCF margin around 13%.
  • Detailed thoughts: Cloudflare’s 3Q25 earnings recap.

Nvidia:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2026 on 02/25/25.
  • Revenue expectation: $67600M (18.6% QoQ, 71.9% YoY), implying a 4% beat; they beat a year ago’s Q1 guide by 8.5%, Q2 guide by 7.3%, Q3 guide by 7.9%, Q4 guide by 4.9%. Then last Q1 guide by only 2.5%, their Q2 guide by 3.9% and their Q3 guide by 5.6%.
  • Q1 new revenue guide: $71666M (6% QoQ, 63% YoY) which I would interpret as $74370M (10% QoQ, 69% YoY), expecting slight YoY deceleration.
  • I would like to see GAAP gross margin around 74.8%.
  • I would like to see non-GAAP gross margin above 75.0%.
  • Detailed thoughts: Nvidia’s 3Q26 earnings recap.

Snowflake:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2026 around 02/25/25.
  • Product revenue expectation: $1239M (7% QoQ, 31.3% YoY), implying a 3.5% beat; $68M net new product revenue.
  • Q1 new product revenue guide: $1276M (3% QoQ, 28% YoY) which I would interpret as $1313M (6% QoQ, 32% YoY), implying a 3% beat and that revenue growth will be roughly stable YoY.
  • NRR around 125%.
  • I would like to see RPO around $9.85b, corresponding to 43.5% YoY growth and cRPO around $4.5b, corresponding to 37.5% YoY growth; note: RPO/cRPO is THE metric to watch in Q4: If RPO grows 25% QoQ and 43.5% YoY, then I expect cRPO to jump to 37.5%, which is my new expectation, but RPO might grow closer to 4Q25’s sequential growth of 20% (implying cRPO YoY growth staying at 32%) or 4Q24’s sequential growth of 40% (implying an insane 54% cRPO YoY growth), which is a wide range of potential outcomes that will be very telling for FY27’s revenue growth.
  • I would like to see total customer growth around 4.5% QoQ (~568 adds) and $1M+ customer growth around 6% QoQ (~41 adds).
  • I would like to see stable edge customer growth very roughly around 6% QoQ (~310 adds) and market place listings growth very roughly around 3% (~106 adds) and AI adoption to reach about 63% of customers.
  • I would like to see continued strength in profitability margins, with OM ~12%, NM ~14%, FCFM ~60%. Note: They’ll have to earn about $777M in FCF (60% margin for Q4) in order to fulfill their guided, adjusted, 25% FCF margin for FY26.
  • Detailed thoughts: Snowflake’s 3Q26 earnings recap.

Datadog:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2025 on 02/12/26 before the market opens.
  • Revenue expectation: $949M (7.1% QoQ, 28.6% YoY), implying a 3.7% beat.
  • Q1 new revenue guide: $954M (0.5% QoQ, 25% YoY) which I would interpret as $987M (4% QoQ, 29.6% YoY) expecting YoY growth will accelerate above 29%.
  • My Q4 revenue expectation implies about $63M raw sequential revenue increase (up from $48M last Q4).
  • I would like to see RPO at around $3.49b (25% QoQ, 53.6% YoY growth).
  • I would like to see Billings at around $1.16b (30% QoQ, 27.9% YoY growth).
  • I would like to see QoQ customer growth around 2.2% (~700 new),for the $100k+ cohort, around 3% QoQ (~120 new) and for the $1M+ cohort, around 10% YoY (~508 total).
  • I would like to see continued multi-product adoption progress with 2+, 4+, 6+ and 8+ products cohort percentages to stay stable at 84%, 54%, 31% and 16%.
  • I would like to see NRR around 120%.
  • I would like to see OM ~24%, NM ~29%, FCFM ~26%.
  • Detailed thoughts: Datadog’s 3Q25 earnings recap.

Zscaler:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q2 2026 around 03/05/26.
  • Revenue expectation: $813M (3.2% QoQ, 25.5% YoY), implying a 2% beat.
  • Q3 new revenue guide: $829M (2% QoQ, 22% YoY) which I would interpret as $846M (4% QoQ, 25% YoY) expecting slight YoY deceleration.
  • I would like to see ARR of around $3.36b (5% QoQ, 25.4% YoY).
  • I would like to see RPO growth of around 5% QoQ (to $6.23b) and cRPO of about $2.9b (29.5% YoY).
  • I would like to see NRR at 115%.
  • I would like to see >100k ARR customer growth around 4% QoQ (~150 net adds).
  • I would like to see >1M ARR customer growth around 6% QoQ (~42 net adds).
  • I would like to see an operating income around $179M (22.0% margin).
  • I would like to see an FCF around $186M (22.9% margin).
  • Detailed thoughts: Zscaler’s 1Q26 earnings recap.

Crowdstrike:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2026 around 03/04/26.
  • Revenue expectation: $1239M (6% QoQ, 22.6% YoY), implying a 2.2% beat this Q.
  • Q4 new revenue guide: $1289M (4% QoQ, 22% YoY) which I would interpret as $1313M (6% QoQ, 24% YoY), assuming roughly stable QoQ growth.
  • Net new ARR of around $237M (7.4% QoQ and ARR +5.1% QoQ).
  • I would like to see around $7.92b RPO (10% QoQ, 47% YoY); cRPO around $4.0b (51% of RPO, 31% YoY).
  • I would like to see NRR greater or equal to 115%.
  • I would like to see about $286M operating income.
  • I would like to see about $267M net income.
  • I would like to see no multi-product customer decline.
  • I would like to see gross retention close to 97%.
  • Detailed thoughts: Crowdstrike’s 3Q26 earnings recap.

Monday:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2025 on 02/09/26 before the market open.
  • Revenue expectation: $337.5M (6.5% QoQ, 26% YoY), implying a 2.6% beat.
  • Q1 new revenue guide: $347M (2.7% QoQ, 23% YoY) which I would interpret as $356M (5.2% QoQ, 25.8% YoY).
  • I would like to see raw sequential revenue increase around $20.7M.
  • I would like to see around 264600 total customers (19600 net adds, similar to last year), around 63951 customers with 10+ users (~876 net adds), around 4352 customers in the $50k+ cohort (395 net adds), around 1763 customers in the $100k+ cohort (160 net adds) and around 88 customers in the $500k+ cohort (10 net adds).
  • I would like to get an update on CRM, Dev, Service and Campaigns products with new products ARR greater or equal to 11%.
  • I would like to see that NRR greater or equal to 112%, NRR10+ >=115%, NRR50k >=117% and NRR100k >=117%.
  • I would like to see RPO around $836M (36.3% YoY, 12% QoQ).
  • I would like to see operating margin around 14.6% (~$49.4M operating income), net margin around 20% and FCF margin around 24.6% with FCF of around $83M.
  • Detailed thoughts: Monday’s 3Q25 earnings recap.

Samsara:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2026 around 03/6/26.
  • Revenue expectation: $442M (6.3% QoQ, 27.6% YoY), implying a 4.8% beat.
  • Q1 new revenue guide: $445M (0.7% QoQ, 21% YoY) which I would interpret as $466M (5.5% QoQ, 27.2% YoY).
  • I would like to see net new ARR around $135M (total ARR around $1.88b).
  • I would like to see RPO around $3.68b (9% QoQ) and cRPO around $1.75b (29.2% YoY).
  • I would like to see core customer NRR around 115%.
  • I would like to see large customer NRR around 120%.
  • I would like to see around 239 new $100k+ ARR customers (3229 total, 30% YoY) and more than 150 total $1m+ ARR customers (wasn’t reported the last couple quarters).
  • I would like to see around $59M operating income, corresponding to a 13.4% operating margin.
  • Detailed thoughts: Samsara’s 3Q26 earnings recap.

Axon:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2025 around 02/25/26.
  • Revenue expectation: $767M (8% QoQ, 33.5% YoY), implying a 0.4% beat of their FY guide given in Q3 (compared to past Q3 FY guide beats: FY21: 1.6%, FY22: 2.6%, FY23: 0.7%, FY24: 0.6%).
  • Q1 revenue expectation: $805M (5% QoQ, 33.5% YoY), assuming similar YoY growth as in Q4.
  • I would like to see around $125M net new ARR (total ARR to ~$1.38b).
  • I would like to see RPO around $13.7b.
  • I would like to see NRR around 124%.
  • I would like to see gross margin greater than 62.7%.
  • I would like to see adjusted EBITDA around $173M.
  • Detailed thoughts: Axon’s 3Q25 earnings recap.

AppLovin:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2025 on 02/11/26.
  • Revenue expectation: $1656M (17.9% QoQ, 65.7% YoY), implying a 4.5% beat.
  • Q1 new revenue guide: $1846M (11.5% QoQ, 59% YoY) which I would interpret as $1921M (16% QoQ, 66% YoY).
  • I would like to see a GAAP Gross Margin of 87-88%.
  • I would like to see a FCF margin of 70-75%.
  • I would like to see an Operating margin greater or equal to 75%.
  • I would like to see a Net margin greater or equal to 55%.
  • I would like to see an adjusted EBITDA margin greater or equal to 80%.

Astera Labs:

  • Reporting Fiscal Q4 2025 on 02/10/26.
  • Revenue expectation: $276M (19.9% QoQ, 95.6% YoY), implying a 7.6% beat.
  • Q1 new revenue guide: $282M (2% QoQ, 77% YoY) which I would interpret as $302M (9.6% QoQ, 89% YoY).
  • I would like to see a Gross Margin of 76-77%.
  • I would like to see an Operating margin around 40%.
  • I would like to see a Net margin around 38%.

Wrap up

Some OT encouragement about the recent stock price action (and as always, no investment advice): Yes, this was the third red month in a row for our portfolio. And that, despite great earnings reports from most of our companies. I think a lot of the current price action is sentiment driven and unless we start seeing the Fed suddenly raise interest rates and/or our companies suddenly dropping off a cliff in revenue growth rates, I really don’t think this is the beginning of another 2022. If I am right, this time will have been a great buying opportunity for our companies in hindsight. Regarding the upcoming earnings season, I found my last January wrap up quite fitting:

Another round of earnings reports is incoming shortly and I expect significant volatility if just because almost all of our companies will give their dreaded initial new FY guides. I think it is important to keep in mind how un-certain those initial guides will be. Many companies have historically guided very conservatively in their first new FY guides and the market has often punished them for that. And while that could be a buying opportunity for long-term minded investors, I think it is more important to look beyond those uncertain initial guides and focus on what really matters: The company’s execution from top to bottom line. Are revenue growth and related forward looking metrics falling off a cliff or trending nicely? Are profitability margins expanding or do they see pressures? Does the narrative connecting top and bottom-line make sense or are there issues? Those are the questions we want to be answering in the coming months when our companies report new numbers. Remember, it’s not just about the initial guidance but the overall health and strategic direction of the companies we invest in. Here’s to a season of insightful analysis and prudent investing.

I am wishing you all a great February!
Ben

Past recaps

2022: Jul 2022 | Aug 2022 | Sep 2022 | Oct 2022 | Nov 2022 | Dec 2022

2023: Jan 2023 | Feb 2023 | Mar 2023 | Apr 2023 | May 2023 | Jun 2023 | Jul 2023 | Aug 2023 | Sep 2023 | Oct 2023 | Nov 2023 | Dec 2023

2024: Jan 2024 | Feb 2024 | Mar 2024 | Apr 2024 | May 2024 | Jun 2024 | Jul 2024 | Aug 2024 | Sep 2024 | Oct 2024 | Nov 2024 | Dec 2024

2025: Jan 2025 | Feb 2025 | Mar 2025 | Apr 2025 | May 2025 | Jun 2025 | Jul 2025 | Aug 2025 | Sep 2025 | Oct 2025 | Nov 2025 | Dec 2025

46 Likes