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Introduction & Market Context
NetApp Inc (NASDAQ:NTAP) reported its fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2025 results on May 29, 2025, highlighting a record-setting year despite ongoing market challenges. The data storage and cloud services provider saw its stock fall 4.84% in after-hours trading to $94.41, continuing a pattern of market skepticism that began after its Q3 results.
The company’s presentation emphasized its strategic transformation into "the intelligent data infrastructure company," focusing on high-growth segments like all-flash arrays, cloud storage, and AI-ready infrastructure. This pivot comes as enterprises increasingly prioritize data management solutions that can operate seamlessly across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Quarterly Performance Highlights
NetApp delivered Q4 FY25 revenue of $1.73 billion, representing 3.8% year-over-year growth and falling within the company’s guidance range of $1.65-$1.80 billion. Non-GAAP earnings per share reached $1.93, up 7.2% year-over-year and at the high end of guidance.
As shown in the following quarterly performance summary, the company met or exceeded guidance across all key metrics:
Particularly impressive was the company’s Q4 billings growth of 12% year-over-year to $2.03 billion, suggesting strong future revenue conversion. Free cash flow generation was robust at $640 million, representing 37% of revenue.
The company’s all-flash array business continued its strong momentum, with the annualized revenue run rate reaching $4.1 billion, up 14% year-over-year:
Full-Year Financial Analysis
Fiscal year 2025 marked a record year for NetApp, with total revenue reaching $6.57 billion, up 4.9% year-over-year. The company’s strategic segments showed particularly strong growth, with All Flash revenue up 14%, Keystone (as-a-service) revenue up 54%, and Cloud Storage revenue up 43%.
The following slide highlights the key financial achievements for the full fiscal year:
NetApp’s revenue transformation toward higher-growth segments is clearly visible in the multi-year trend, showing the increasing contribution from All Flash and Public Cloud segments:
Operating margin for the full year improved by 150 basis points to 28.3%, while earnings per share grew 12.4% to $7.25, demonstrating the company’s ability to drive both top-line growth and operational efficiency.
Strategic Positioning and Product Portfolio
NetApp’s presentation emphasized its evolution from a traditional storage provider to an intelligent data infrastructure company. This transformation has positioned the company to address emerging needs in AI workloads and multi-cloud environments.
The following slide illustrates NetApp’s strategic evolution across different technology eras:
A key competitive advantage highlighted in the presentation is NetApp’s ability to provide unified control across hybrid multi-cloud environments through its BlueXP platform:
The company also emphasized its flexible consumption models, catering to different customer preferences from traditional purchases to as-a-service offerings:
NetApp’s intelligent data infrastructure is designed to deliver benefits across six key areas, addressing different stakeholder needs within organizations:
Forward Guidance and Outlook
Looking ahead to fiscal year 2026, NetApp provided guidance suggesting continued growth. The company expects FY26 revenue between $6.625 billion and $6.875 billion, representing approximately 3% growth at the midpoint. Non-GAAP earnings per share is projected to be between $7.60 and $7.90, implying 7.6% growth at the midpoint.
For the first quarter of FY26, the company forecasts revenue between $1.455 billion and $1.605 billion, with non-GAAP EPS between $1.48 and $1.58.
Despite meeting its guidance targets for Q4 and the full fiscal year 2025, the after-hours stock decline suggests investors may have been looking for more aggressive growth projections or had concerns about the sequential revenue decline implied by the Q1 FY26 guidance.
NetApp’s strategy continues to focus on capitalizing on AI workloads and cloud adoption, with CEO George Kurian previously stating that the company is "very well positioned with customers as a supplier of choice for AI and other data-driven workloads." The company’s portfolio expansion and strategic positioning in high-growth segments provide a foundation for potential acceleration as enterprise AI adoption increases in late 2025 and 2026.
The company’s ability to execute on its strategic transformation while maintaining strong margins and cash flow generation will be critical factors to watch in the coming quarters, particularly as competition in the AI infrastructure and cloud storage markets intensifies.
Full presentation:
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