CRWV Drops 10% After Hours as Q2 Guidance Misses and Capex Rises, $99B Backlog Tells a Different Story
CoreWeave doubled Q1 revenue and holds a $99B backlog, but a Q2 guidance miss and rising capex sent CRWV shares down 10% after hours.
Quick overview
- CoreWeave reported Q1 revenue of $2.08 billion, exceeding expectations and showing 105% year-over-year growth.
- Despite strong revenue, the company's Q2 sales guidance fell short of market expectations, leading to a significant selloff.
- Operating expenses surged to $2.22 billion, resulting in a net loss of $740 million, as the company prioritizes growth over profitability.
- CoreWeave's high capital expenditure guidance and rising debt levels raise concerns, but a strong backlog and partnerships with Nvidia provide some reassurance.
One of the larger sales beats on an absolute basis of the earnings season came from CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV), $2.08 billion compared to the $1.97 billion expectation, or 105% year-over-year growth. The $99.4 billion backlog, up from $66.8 billion just one quarter earlier, suggests demand for AI infrastructure capacity is not diminishing. “We’re now at hyperscale,” said CEO Mike Intrator on the results call.
CoreWeave’s Q1 Revenue Doubles, But What’s Next?
But the market didn’t care about the rearview mirror. But it did focus on the Q2 sales guide of $2.45–$2.60 billion — a midpoint of $2.53 billion that missed the $2.69 billion expectation by about $160 million. For a corporation trading on the expectation of unrelenting forward acceleration, any slowing indication, however temporary, is enough to cause a strong selloff.
But the real story is in operating expenses. Technology and infrastructure costs rose 127% to $1.27 billion. Sales and marketing expenses shot up more than sixfold to $69 million. Operating expenses of $2.22 billion were higher than sales, leading to a net loss of $740 million, compared with a loss of $315 million a year ago. CoreWeave is focused on growth over profitability, a conscious strategy, and the comparison to Amazon in its early days from Zacks analyst Andrew Rocco is fitting, but it needs investors to ride out quarters like this one.
Does CoreWeave Have a Capex Problem?
The other driver of the selloff was the rise in 2026 capital expenditure guidance. CoreWeave boosted the lower end of its annual capex forecast to $31 billion from $30 billion, saying a “acute shortage of certain components” has led to higher prices over the past six to nine months. Capex alone was $7.70 billion in Q1, up 90% sequentially.
“It’s a problem, but we have an incredible ability to navigate the supply chain,” Intrator conceded, but in a context of being manageable. The company’s contract structures offer some protection against spot price volatility, and its partnerships with Nvidia – which bought another $2 billion of CoreWeave shares in Q1 – give it access to a supply chain that smaller competitors cannot match.
Leverage is high with approximately $25 billion of total debt on the balance sheet and $8.5 billion of new debt issued in Q1 alone. S&P did change the outlook on CoreWeave’s credit rating to positive from stable—a indication the rating agency sees the backlog and revenue path as enough to cover the debt load. But any downturn in utilization or pricing would rapidly test that view.
CRWV Stock Technical Picture: Support Levels Under Immediate Threat
CRWV is down to 116.90 in after hours trading, the lowest levels since mid-April and testing important support levels. The next immediate line in the sand is the $115-$118 zone which had previously acted as a consolidation foundation post-IPO. If they fail to hold here it opens the road to $105-$108, the next meaningful technical floor.
The regular session close at $128.84 has flipped from support to opposition. Any rally attempt in the $125-$128 areas will face selling resistance before a cleaner path opens towards $135. The sale of shares for $39.3 million by the CEO on May 5, under a pre-planned 10b5-1 plan enacted in November 2025, adds a cautious note, albeit pre-planned sales are typical practice and not necessarily gloomy indications.
What’s Next for CoreWeave (CRWV) Stock?
CoreWeave’s Q1 statistics are quite solid at the core – quadrupled revenue, a near-$100 billion backlog, and 10 customers with a $1 billion+ expenditure commitment. The selloff is a capex and forward guidance story, not a demand narrative Intrator said, “Everyone is looking at the stock and looking at the trees and missing the forest.”
Traders should watch the $115-$118 after-hours support as the key mark. A hold there with stable volume might set up a comeback toward $125. If it breaks $115 it would certainly speed down to $105. But for long-term investors, the $99.4 billion backlog and Nvidia’s sustained equity investment are the anchors — but patience through more capex and wider losses are the price of entrance.
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