NetApp (NTAP) Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026 summary

Financial performance and outlook

• Raised fiscal 2027 guidance to 17% revenue growth and 22% EPS growth at midpoint, citing strong momentum across all product lines and geographies.

• Achieved record revenue, EPS, and billings, with all-flash array revenue up 47% year-on-year and cloud business growing in the high teens.

• Product gross margins improved due to disciplined pricing actions and cost recovery, with expectations for incremental margin growth throughout the year.

• Inventory levels increased to ensure supply availability amid strong demand and supplier agreements.

• Public cloud segment posted 28% growth (19% excluding extra week), driven by secular hyperscaler growth, expanded offerings, and strong customer retention.

AI adoption and enterprise storage trends

• AI-specific configurations and deals have grown materially, with over 1,100 AI deals in fiscal 2026 and increasing deal sizes as projects move from pilot to production.

• Unified data platforms like ONTAP address data readiness challenges by integrating diverse data types and environments, supporting hybrid multi-cloud strategies.

• AI infrastructure spend is broad-based, driving upgrades across databases, lakehouses, and streaming engines, not just AI-specific systems.

• Margin profile for AI-specific environments is similar to the broader enterprise business.

• Inference, rather than training, is seen as the key long-term driver for storage demand as more projects move into production.

Product innovation and market positioning

• AFX platform targets large enterprises and neoclouds needing flexible compute-storage configurations, with further advancements for high-end AI training to be announced.

• Competitive advantage stems from proven hyperscale deployments, cloud-native operations, and strong go-to-market partnerships, especially as neoclouds shift to enduring workloads.

• Expanded presence in sovereign and highly secure environments, leveraging partnerships like Google Distributed Cloud to offer private data management with advanced AI platforms.

• ONTAP's unified software layer across on-prem, cloud, and AI environments simplifies operations and provides strategic flexibility, creating a competitive moat.

• Continues to gain or hold market share against full-stack vendors by offering innovation and integrated hybrid cloud solutions.