DDOG

Datadog, Inc.Nasdaq
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Valuation snapshot

Above bull case

Price is above even the bull case.

Price as of Aug 17, 2026 · Valuation Aug 17, 2026

$255.46
price
$18.13
base IV/share
Track record
$401.3M
Net cash

From reported financials.

What drives DDOG's base case?

base-case thesis

Datadog is compounding from a much larger base than a few years ago: revenue grew 28% in 2023, 26% in 2024, 28% in 2025, and has reaccelerated to 32% and 36% in the first two quarters of 2026. Management guides the full year to about $4.46 billion, roughly 30% growth, and its own third-quarter outlook implies a step down to around 28% because it removed the upside from its largest customer, whose usage fell. This case takes management at its word and then decelerates smoothly: existing customers still expand spending more than 20% a year, and high-value accounts paying over $100,000 grew about 23%, but adding more than a billion dollars of revenue annually inevitably slows the percentage. Profitability rises from today's near-zero all-in level because gross margin sits near 80% and the roughly $220 million quarterly stock-compensation bill should grow slower than revenue.

What shapes the assumptions

  • Management's own full-year revenue guidance of about $4.46B

    FY2026 guided growth of roughly 30% YoY

    Raises revenue growth

  • Existing customers keep expanding spend

    Trailing-12-month net revenue retention in the low-120s

    Raises revenue growth

  • Law of large numbers on a $4B revenue base

    Growth decelerating from 36% in Q2 to a guided 28-29% in Q3

    Lowers revenue growth

  • High gross margin plus slowing stock-compensation growth

    79.6% gross margin; $220.3M quarterly SBC vs $1.12B revenue

    Raises operating margin

  • Capital-light delivery funded by customer prepayments

    25% free cash flow margin exceeding 23% non-GAAP operating margin

    Lowers reinvestment

Each driver links a business metric to the forecast assumption it shapes — the basis for this case, not investment advice.

Why the gap?

No revenue growth rate in a sensible range reproduces today's price — the market appears to be valuing something this model does not capture.

What else could explain it?
How confident is this estimate?
Robustness 45.0/10 (Moderate) — some of any gap is our own uncertainty rather than disagreement.
What would change the answer?
Which assumption this valuation swings on, and by how much.
Share count is still growing
Diluted shares grew 3.4% year on year. This valuation uses today's share count, not tomorrow's — continued dilution would spread the same value across more shares.

Many combinations of assumptions reproduce the same price. These are ways to read what the market might be expecting, not the market's actual view. How this is worked out

Research & assumptions

Inspect the valuation thesis, cases, risks, evidence, and model inputs.

Three independently researched cases generated automatically from published financials. Every assumption is justified and cited; the discount rate is computed from researched market inputs.

Base inputs from financials

source period →

Base revenue (TTM)

$4B

Diluted shares

371,023,000

Net cash

$401.3M

Bear

low confidence

$7.01

IV / share

-97.3% vs $255.46

Enterprise

$2.2B

Equity

$2.6B

Discount rate

11.2%

Cost of equity

11.2%

Where the value comes from

Explicit cash flows
$1.93
Terminal value
$4.01
Net cash
$1.08
Intrinsic value / share
$7.01

57.1% of the value rests on the terminal value — elevated dependency.

Revenue growth20.0% → 14.0% → 10.0% → 7.5% → 5.5%medium

How derived: Starts from the company's own guided deceleration — Q3 2026 revenue of $1.135–1.145B implies 28–29% growth versus the 36% just reported, because management fully de-risked its largest customer's reduced usage — and extends that reversal by assuming the AI-native cohort that drove the acceleration keeps shrinking while total customer count, up only ~6% YoY to 33,400, shows the new-logo engine is already slow, leaving growth to fade toward mid-single digits as net retention in the low-120s drifts toward 100%.

Why this confidence: Company's own guided Q3 deceleration to 28-29% anchors year one , Disclosed customer concentration event is a documented, not hypothetical, risk , Five-year horizon for a usage-based model with volatile AI demand , Non-AI cohort is accelerating, contradicting the fade thesis

Evidence for

Evidence against

Operating margin10.0%medium

How derived: Begins from the fact that Q2 2026 GAAP operating income was only $5M (about 0.5% of revenue) versus $257M non-GAAP (23%), a gap created almost entirely by $220.3M of stock-based compensation (about 20% of revenue), and assumes that in a slower-growth world Datadog must keep issuing equity to retain engineers while price competition caps the non-GAAP margin near today's ~23%, so the true all-in margin only reaches about 10%.

Why this confidence: Reported GAAP-to-non-GAAP bridge and SBC dollar amount are disclosed exactly , Gross margin of ~79.6% is stable and well documented , Future SBC-to-revenue ratio depends on hiring and share price, both unpredictable

Evidence for

  • Q2 2026 GAAP operating income was $5 million while stock-based compensation was $220.3 million, so nearly all reported non-GAAP profit is offset by equity issuance.[Datadog Q2 2026 financial results detail]· primary
  • Quarterly GAAP operating margin has hovered between -4.3% and +1.3% across the last eight reported quarters, showing no durable GAAP profitability yet.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary

Evidence against

  • Full-year 2026 non-GAAP operating income guidance of $1.01–1.03B on $4.45–4.47B of revenue implies roughly a 23% margin, and Q2 non-GAAP margin already reached 23% with a 79.6% gross margin, leaving room for leverage.[Datadog Q2 2026 results press release]· primary
Tax rate25.0%medium

How derived: Starts from the 21% US federal statutory rate and adds roughly 4 points for state taxes and Datadog's substantial international footprint under global minimum-tax rules, assuming that in a low-growth scenario the company exhausts its accumulated loss carryforwards and loses the outsized stock-compensation windfall deductions that have suppressed its reported tax expense.

Why this confidence: Statutory rate is a hard, verifiable anchor , Timing of loss-carryforward exhaustion is uncertain , Company is not yet reliably GAAP-profitable, so no stable effective rate to observe

Evidence for

  • Datadog files as a US corporation subject to the 21% federal statutory rate with additional state and foreign jurisdiction taxes disclosed in its quarterly income-tax footnote.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary

Evidence against

  • Datadog's near-breakeven GAAP pre-tax income and accumulated loss carryforwards mean its reported cash tax expense has been far below statutory, and stock-compensation deductions can keep it there for years.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary
Reinvestment rate55.0%low

How derived: Anchors on the gap between Q2 2026 free cash flow of $279M and non-GAAP operating income of $257M — which shows today's cash cost of growth is low because deferred revenue funds it — but assumes that in the bear world Datadog must plough back a majority of after-tax profit into GPU-heavy observability infrastructure, sales capacity to replace lost usage, and defensive acquisitions just to hold share, so reinvestment stays elevated even as growth slows.

Why this confidence: Free-cash-flow and operating-income figures are disclosed , Capital intensity of future AI observability workloads is unproven , Reinvestment need is inferred, not guided by management

Evidence for

  • Datadog's AI-native cohort now includes hyperscalers running in-house AI labs, workloads that require the company to carry heavier infrastructure capacity to serve.[Datadog Q2 2026 earnings call transcript]· primary

Evidence against

  • Q2 2026 free cash flow of $279 million (25% of revenue) exceeded non-GAAP operating income of $257 million, evidence that the business currently consumes very little incremental capital to grow.[Datadog Q2 2026 results press release]· primary
Terminal growth2.0%medium

How derived: Takes long-run nominal economic growth as the ceiling for any mature company and sets Datadog below it, because this case assumes observability becomes a commoditized feature bundled by cloud providers and open-source standards, leaving a mature Datadog growing slower than the broad economy; it is held well under the 4.69% 10-year Treasury yield so the terminal value stays internally consistent.

Why this confidence: Bounded by an observable Treasury yield and long-run GDP logic , Terminal state is decades out and unobservable

Evidence for

Evidence against

  • Datadog's trailing-12-month net revenue retention in the low-120s means existing customers still expand spend more than 20% a year, suggesting durable pricing power beyond a sub-GDP terminal rate.[Datadog Q2 2026 earnings call transcript]· primary

Base

low confidence

$18.13

IV / share

-92.9% vs $255.46

Enterprise

$6.3B

Equity

$6.7B

Discount rate

11.2%

Cost of equity

11.2%

Where the value comes from

Explicit cash flows
$4.61
Terminal value
$12.44
Net cash
$1.08
Intrinsic value / share
$18.13

68.6% of the value rests on the terminal value — elevated dependency.

base operating margin (16%) sits well above the best recent margin (3%)

Revenue growth25.0% → 21.0% → 18.0% → 15.5% → 13.0%medium

How derived: Starts from management's own full-year 2026 guidance of $4.45–4.47B (about 30% growth) against a trailing-twelve-month base of $3.97B, then decelerates the path steadily because the guided Q4 exit rate implies roughly 25% growth after the largest-customer de-risk, and because a company adding over $1B of revenue a year mathematically slows even while net retention holds in the low-120s and $100k+ customers grow about 23%.

Why this confidence: Year-one path is anchored to explicit company revenue guidance , Net revenue retention and $100k+ customer counts are disclosed quarterly , Usage-based revenue model makes multi-year growth volatile , Years three to five are extrapolation, not guidance

Evidence for

Evidence against

Operating margin16.0%medium

How derived: Begins with the guided full-year 2026 non-GAAP operating margin of roughly 23% ($1.01–1.03B on $4.45–4.47B) and assumes a few points of further leverage on a stable ~79.6% gross margin, then subtracts a stock-compensation burden that falls from about 20% of revenue today toward the low teens as revenue roughly doubles while headcount grows more slowly, leaving an all-in economic margin near 16%.

Why this confidence: Management guides non-GAAP operating income explicitly for the full year , Gross margin has been stable near 80% , Requires assuming a large decline in stock compensation as a share of revenue

Evidence for

Evidence against

  • GAAP operating income was just $5 million in Q2 2026 because $220.3 million of stock compensation offsets nearly all non-GAAP profit, so the all-in margin today is close to zero.[Datadog Form 8-K Ex-99.1 (Q2 FY2026)]· primary
Tax rate23.0%medium

How derived: Starts from the 21% US federal statutory rate that governs Datadog as a US filer, adds roughly 4 points for state and international jurisdictions where it operates, and nets back about 2 points for research credits and the ongoing deduction from employee stock vesting, which its filings show materially reduce cash taxes relative to statutory.

Why this confidence: 21% federal statutory rate is a verifiable legal anchor , Company discloses its jurisdictional mix in filings , No stable observed effective rate because GAAP income is near breakeven

Evidence for

  • Datadog is a US-domiciled filer subject to the 21% federal statutory corporate rate with additional state and foreign taxes disclosed in its 10-Q.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary

Evidence against

  • Because GAAP pre-tax income remains near breakeven, Datadog's reported effective tax rate has been erratic and far from statutory, so a marginal-rate assumption is a modeling convention rather than an observed figure.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary
Reinvestment rate45.0%low

How derived: Grounded in the observation that Q2 2026 free cash flow of $279M (25% of revenue) slightly exceeded non-GAAP operating income of $257M (23%), which shows the software model is capital-light and partly self-funded by customer prepayments, so growing revenue at a high-teens pace requires ploughing back under half of after-tax profit into infrastructure, working capital, and tuck-in acquisitions.

Why this confidence: Free cash flow and operating income are both disclosed each quarter , Management does not guide to a reinvestment or capex ratio , Deferred-revenue funding of growth may not persist as growth slows

Evidence for

  • Q2 2026 free cash flow was $279 million, a 25% margin, versus $257 million of non-GAAP operating income, evidence of low incremental capital intensity.[Datadog Q2 2026 results press release]· primary

Evidence against

Terminal growth3.0%medium

How derived: Sets the perpetual rate at long-run nominal economic growth, reasoning that a mature Datadog with a low-120s net retention rate and an expanding platform should grow roughly in line with the digital economy rather than above it, and keeping it comfortably beneath the 4.69% 10-year Treasury yield so the perpetuity does not assume the company eventually outgrows the economy.

Why this confidence: Anchored to an observable Treasury yield and standard GDP logic , Terminal period is far beyond any company guidance

Evidence for

Evidence against

Bull

low confidence

$39.75

IV / share

-84.4% vs $255.46

Enterprise

$14.3B

Equity

$14.7B

Discount rate

11.2%

Cost of equity

11.2%

Where the value comes from

Explicit cash flows
$9.33
Terminal value
$29.34
Net cash
$1.08
Intrinsic value / share
$39.75

73.8% of the value rests on the terminal value — high dependency. A small change to terminal growth moves the valuation a lot — see terminal growth below.

bull revenue growth (avg 24%) runs well above the trailing 5% trend

bull operating margin (24%) sits well above the best recent margin (3%)

Revenue growth30.0% → 27.0% → 24.0% → 21.0% → 18.0%low

How derived: Starts from the actual Q2 2026 result of $1.12B revenue growing 36% — an acceleration from 25% in Q1 2025 through 29%, 32% and now 36% — and from management's disclosure that non-AI customer growth itself accelerated to the high-20s from 18% a year earlier, then assumes the broad-based re-acceleration outlasts the single-customer setback because AI-native accounts now number over 750 including eight spending more than $10 million a year, sustaining above-20% compounding through year five.

Why this confidence: Recent quarterly acceleration is a reported, verifiable fact , Assumes five years of above-20% growth, well beyond any guided period , Directly contradicted by the company's own Q3 deceleration guidance , Depends on a concentrated AI-native cohort whose usage has proven volatile

Evidence for

Evidence against

Operating margin24.0%low

How derived: Takes the guided ~23% non-GAAP operating margin for 2026 as a floor rather than a ceiling, and assumes that on a nearly 80% gross margin a business roughly tripling revenue over five years drives non-GAAP margin into the mid-30s while stock compensation, currently about 20% of revenue, falls toward high single digits as the share count stabilizes, leaving an all-in economic margin around 24%.

Why this confidence: Near-80% gross margin gives real structural room for leverage , Requires stock compensation to fall by more than half as a share of revenue , No management guidance exists for margins beyond fiscal 2026

Evidence for

Evidence against

  • GAAP operating margin has been roughly breakeven for eight straight quarters (-4.3% to +1.3%), so a 24% all-in margin requires an unprecedented structural shift in stock compensation.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary
Tax rate20.0%low

How derived: Starts from the 21% US federal statutory rate and holds the long-run effective rate just below it, reasoning that in a high-growth outcome Datadog's large research-credit base, favorable treatment of foreign-derived software income, and the deduction generated when its heavy employee stock grants vest at a rising share price keep the effective rate under statutory even after state and foreign taxes.

Why this confidence: Statutory rate provides a firm reference point , Assumes tax benefits persist for a decade, which depends on share price and tax law , No observable steady-state effective rate at near-breakeven GAAP income

Evidence for

  • Datadog's $220.3 million of quarterly stock-based compensation generates large tax deductions on vesting, historically holding its cash tax expense well below the statutory rate.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary

Evidence against

  • The US federal statutory rate alone is 21%, and Datadog's multinational operations add state and foreign taxes, so a sustained sub-statutory effective rate is not guaranteed.[Datadog Form 10-Q (Q1 FY2026)]· primary
Reinvestment rate38.0%low

How derived: Anchored on the fact that Q2 2026 free cash flow of $279M was larger than non-GAAP operating income of $257M, meaning growth is currently more than self-funded by deferred revenue, and assumes that at higher scale Datadog's software economics require only about a third of after-tax profit to be recycled into capacity and product, because each incremental dollar of revenue rides on an already-built platform serving 33,400 customers.

Why this confidence: Free-cash-flow conversion above operating income is directly observed , Assumes low capital intensity persists while serving AI workloads , No company guidance on capital expenditure or reinvestment

Evidence for

  • Q2 2026 free cash flow of $279 million (25% margin) exceeded non-GAAP operating income of $257 million, demonstrating negative working-capital intensity from customer prepayments.[Datadog Q2 2026 results press release]· primary
  • The same platform now serves ~33,400 customers including ~4,720 paying over $100,000 a year, so incremental accounts are served on existing infrastructure.[Datadog Q2 2026 financial results detail]· primary

Evidence against

Terminal growth3.5%low

How derived: Sets the perpetual rate modestly above long-run nominal economic growth on the reasoning that observability and security telemetry scale with total compute rather than GDP — evidenced by an AI-native cohort that already includes eight customers spending over $10 million a year — while still keeping it well below the 4.69% 10-year Treasury yield so the terminal value does not imply infinite outperformance of the economy.

Why this confidence: Bounded below the observable Treasury yield , Assumes permanent above-GDP growth, the most aggressive assumption in the model , Terminal state is unobservable and unguided

Evidence for

Evidence against

Valuation robustness

reliability of the estimate, not a stock rating

45 / 100 · Moderate

Scenario dispersion1
Terminal-value dependency3.1
Historical stability0
Margin predictability9
Forecast visibility5.4
Evidence quality10

Formula v1.0.0. Higher means a more reliable estimate — not a recommendation.

Quality checks

Automated model-risk flags — warnings, not recommendations.

  • The bear-to-bull range spans 181% of the base value — the outcome is highly uncertain.scenarios
  • The reinvestment assumption is low-confidence.reinvestment

Per-share economics

Business growth after changes in the diluted share count.

PeriodRevenue growthFCF/shareFCF/share growthSharesShare growth
Q3 202426.0%0.6247.5%357.64M1.8%
Q1 202524.6%0.7230.1%363.08M2.0%
Q2 202528.1%0.5214.9%358.73M0.6%
Q3 202528.4%0.655.2%362M1.2%
Q1 202632.2%0.8922.5%364.73M0.5%
Q2 202635.6%0.8260.0%371.02M3.4%

Valuation history every run

Aug 17, 2026Bear$7.01Bull$39.75Base$18.13Price$250.96
-$12.50$58.24$128.99$199.73$270.48Aug 17, 2026

History builds as the valuation is recalculated — this is the first recorded run.

Market inputs researched

Risk-free rate

Uses the 10-year US Treasury constant maturity yield of approximately 4.69% observed on August 17, 2026 as the default-free rate matched to a long-duration equity cash-flow stream, rounded to 4.7%.

4.7%
high
Beta

Takes the published five-year monthly regression beta of 1.54 for Datadog against the broad US market, which reflects the above-market volatility typical of a high-growth, consumption-priced enterprise software stock whose shares moved roughly 15% on a single earnings report.

1.54
medium
Equity risk premium

Uses Aswath Damodaran's forward-looking implied equity risk premium for the S&P 500 of 4.23% over the US Treasury bond rate at the start of 2026, a market-implied estimate derived from current index prices and expected cash flows rather than a backward-looking historical average.

4.2%
high
Share price

Uses Datadog's traded price of $250.96 on August 17, 2026, within that session's $244.48–$254.22 range, as the current market price against which the model's per-share value is compared.

250.96
high
Cost of debt

Datadog's only borrowing is $1.0B of 0.00% convertible notes due 2029, whose zero coupon reflects an embedded equity option rather than an economic borrowing cost, so the pre-tax cost of debt is built as the 4.69% 10-year Treasury plus roughly a 0.9-point spread appropriate for a debt-light issuer generating over $1B of annual free cash flow, landing below the ~5.8–6.1% Moody's Baa seasoned yield.

5.6%
medium
Researched byClaude Opus 5
Why the model matters →

Generated 8/17/2026, 10:56:07 PM · pipeline v1.1.0