tiprankstipranks
Trending News
More News >
DigitalOcean Holdings (DOCN)
NYSE:DOCN

DigitalOcean Holdings (DOCN) AI Stock Analysis

Compare
1,794 Followers

Top Page

DOCN

DigitalOcean Holdings

(NYSE:DOCN)

Select Model
Select Model
Select Model
Neutral 68 (OpenAI - 5.2)
Rating:68Neutral
Price Target:
$65.00
▲(3.60% Upside)
Action:ReiteratedDate:02/24/26
DOCN scores highest on forward outlook from the latest earnings call (raised growth and profitability/FCF guidance, strong ARR momentum), but the overall score is held back by weaker financial resilience (negative equity and sharply lower free cash flow) and only moderately supportive technical/valuation signals.
Positive Factors
High margins & profitability
Sustained gross margins near 60% and a TTM net margin around 29% indicate durable unit economics and pricing power in core cloud services. High margins support internal funding for capacity, R&D, and margin-accretive scaling, improving resilience against cyclical demand shifts.
Record ARR momentum and customer expansion
Record organic ARR additions and strong trailing ARR growth boost revenue visibility and recurring cash flows. Higher ARR supports predictable revenue expansion, aids cross-sell/up-sell, and signals durable enterprise adoption that underpins long-term retention and lifetime value improvement.
Committed capacity to enable growth
A secured 31 MW capacity commitment aligns supply with management's growth targets and enables hosting larger AI and enterprise workloads. Pre-committed capacity reduces go-to-market friction, supports scaling of higher-value customers, and can drive better long-run utilization and unit economics as demand ramps.
Negative Factors
Negative stockholders' equity
A negative equity position materially weakens the balance sheet cushion and amplifies leverage ratios, constraining capital flexibility. This raises refinancing and covenant risks in downturns, limits capacity for opportunistic investments, and makes the company more sensitive to cash-flow volatility.
Near-term margin pressure from capacity ramp
Front-loaded data center and GPU costs will depress margins and free cash flow before utilization catches up. That timing mismatch elevates short-term leverage and execution risk, requiring precise capacity fill and supply-chain delivery to avoid prolonged margin dilution.
Revenue growth deceleration
A marked slowdown to low-single-digit revenue growth erodes operating leverage and makes sustaining improved margins harder without renewed top-line momentum. Re-acceleration depends on execution of capacity ramps and AI/customer expansion, leaving structural growth risk if adoption lags expectations.

DigitalOcean Holdings (DOCN) vs. SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY)

DigitalOcean Holdings Business Overview & Revenue Model

Company DescriptionDigitalOcean Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiaries, operates a cloud computing platform in North America, Europe, Asia, and internationally. Its platform provides on-demand infrastructure and platform tools for developers, start-ups, and small and medium size businesses. The company offers infrastructure solutions across compute, storage, and networking, as well as enables developers to extend the native capabilities of its cloud with fully managed application, container, and database offerings. Its users include software engineers, researchers, data scientists, system administrators, students, and hobbyists. The company's customers use its platform in various industry verticals and for a range of use cases, such as web and mobile applications, website hosting, e-commerce, media and gaming, personal web projects, managed services, and others. DigitalOcean Holdings, Inc. was incorporated in 2012 and is headquartered in New York, New York.
How the Company Makes MoneyDigitalOcean generates revenue primarily through a subscription-based model, where customers pay for cloud services on a usage basis. Key revenue streams include payments for Droplets, Kubernetes services, managed databases, and object storage. The company also offers additional services such as monitoring and networking solutions, which further contribute to its earnings. DigitalOcean's pricing is designed to be transparent and predictable, appealing to developers and businesses looking for cost-effective solutions. Significant partnerships with educational platforms and developer communities enhance its outreach and customer acquisition, driving recurring revenue and customer loyalty.

DigitalOcean Holdings Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Any
Any
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate
Dollar-Based Net Retention Rate
Indicates how much revenue is retained from existing customers, reflecting customer satisfaction and the potential for upselling.
Chart InsightsDollar-based NDR moved from strong expansion (>110%) in 2021–22 to a material deterioration below 100% in 2023, then stabilized around 97–100% into 2025. Management’s Q3 remark of 99% NDR and outsized growth in >$1M customers suggests current revenue momentum is driven more by new large accounts and AI workloads than broad-based upsells across the base. That stabilizes top-line growth but leaves DigitalOcean vulnerable unless NDR sustainably reverts above 100% to restore organic expansion dynamics.
Data provided by:The Fly

DigitalOcean Holdings Earnings Call Summary

Earnings Call Date:Feb 24, 2026
(Q4-2025)
|
% Change Since: |
Next Earnings Date:May 12, 2026
Earnings Call Sentiment Positive
The call presents a strongly positive outlook driven by accelerating revenue growth, record organic ARR additions, strong customer expansion (notably AI-native and large accounts), robust profitability (42% adjusted EBITDA margin) and healthy cash generation. Management provided upgraded guidance (21% growth target for 2026 midpoint, exit 25%+, and a path to 30% in 2027) and committed incremental capacity (31 MW) to support that growth. Key near-term risks include margin compression and higher reported leverage as new data center and GPU capacity is brought online (timing and supply-chain risks), a $13M ARR legacy product wind-down, and remaining 2026 convertible note actions. On balance, the highlights materially outweigh the lowlights given growth acceleration, strong margins, product traction, and a plan to finance capacity responsibly.
Q4-2025 Updates
Positive Updates
Revenue Growth and Run Rate Milestone
Full-year 2025 revenue reached $901,000,000 with Q4 revenue of $242,000,000, up 18% year-over-year. Company crossed a $1 billion revenue run rate in December 2025.
Record Organic ARR Addition and Trailing ARR Momentum
Delivered a record $51,000,000 incremental organic ARR in Q4 and $150,000,000 on a trailing twelve-month basis, the highest in company history.
Top Customer Acceleration (DNE Cohort)
DNE (digital-native enterprise) ARR reached $640,000,000 (62% of total ARR), growing 30% YoY. Million-dollar customers reached $133,000,000 in ARR, growing 123% YoY. NDR for large cohorts: $100k customers 102% NDR (58% growth), $500k customers 106% NDR (97% growth), $1M customers 115% NDR with churn averaging 0% over the last 12 months.
AI Customer Traction
AI customer ARR was $120,000,000 in Q4, growing 150% YoY and representing 12% of total ARR. 70% of AI customer ARR came from inference services or general-purpose cloud (non-bare metal) rather than bare metal GPU rentals.
Strong Profitability and Cash Generation
Full-year adjusted EBITDA of $375,000,000 with a 42% adjusted EBITDA margin; Q4 adjusted EBITDA margin was 41%. Trailing twelve-month adjusted free cash flow was $168,000,000 (19% of revenue). Gross margin: 59% in Q4 and 60% for full year.
Raised Near-Term and Long-Term Guidance
2026 revenue growth guidance raised to 19%–23% (21% midpoint) with an exit growth target of 25%+ in Q4 2026 and a path to 30% growth in 2027 using existing committed capacity. 2026 guidance projects 36%–38% adjusted EBITDA margins and 18%–20% unlevered adjusted free cash flow margins ($207,000,000 at midpoint).
Committed Capacity to Enable Growth
Committed incremental 31 megawatts of data center capacity coming online in 2026 (smallest 6 MW ramping in Q2, remaining ~25 MW ramping in H2 2026); company guides that existing committed capacity supports the 30% 2027 growth target.
Product and Customer Technical Wins
Notable production wins and performance: Character AI saw 100% throughput increase and ~50% lower cost per token on DigitalOcean's inference cloud (AMD Instinct GPUs) on live traffic; Hippocratic AI selected platform for HIPAA-compliant clinical AI workloads (NVIDIA optimization). OpenClaw adoption: ~30,000 one‑click OpenClaw GPU droplets launched soon after release.
Operational & Talent Investments
Expanded product and engineering capabilities (agent development kit, agent evaluation tools, GPU observability, managed NFS, multi-node GPU support, remote MCP support) and hired Vinay Kumar as Chief Product & Technology Officer (founding OCI member) to accelerate platform buildout.
Balance Sheet Actions and Capital Allocation
Strengthened liquidity with an $800,000,000 bank facility, issued $625,000,000 of 2030 convertible notes, repurchased most 2026 convertibles; repurchased 2.4M shares for $82,000,000 in 2025 (SBC down to 9% of revenue from 12% prior year). Entered 2025 with ~3.2x net leverage.
Negative Updates
Near-Term Margin Pressure from Capacity Ramp
Bringing 31 MW online in 2026 will front-load data center lease expense and GPU depreciation months before associated revenue ramps, causing near-term gross margin and adjusted EBITDA compression; company explicitly forecasts some margin pressure during the ramp.
Short-Term Increase in Net Leverage and Financing Timing
Net leverage expected to rise above 4x in the short term as finance leases for GPU/CPU investments increase net debt; company expects to return below 4x over the medium-to-long term as utilization ramps.
Remaining Convertible Note Maturity
Approximately $312,000,000 of 2026 convertible notes remain outstanding and are expected to be repurchased or redeemed for cash by or before December 2026 (management drawing down remaining $120,000,000 on term loan A to address this).
Product/ARR Headwind from Sunsetting Legacy Offering
Sunsetting a legacy dedicated bare metal CPU offering will result in approximately $13,000,000 of ARR rolling off by end of 2026 (excluded from customer-specific YoY growth metrics).
Execution & Supply Risks
Capacity ramp has supply chain and implementation timing risks that could impact the planned revenue ramp timing; management notes increased data center and equipment costs are present but within expected economics.
Mix Impact from AI Revenue
Growing AI revenue (inferencing-heavy customers) is higher-growth but has lower margins than core cloud, which will modestly reduce ARR-per-megawatt and margin as AI mix increases (management estimates ARR-per-MW could decline from ~$22M today to around ~$20M by end of 2027 as AI mix grows).
Competitive and Fast-Moving Market
Inference market is crowded (Neo clouds, inference APIs/wrappers, hyperscalers); while company cites differentiation, rapid evolution of open-source and closed-source models and varied customer routing needs create ongoing operational complexity and a moving target for product requirements.
Company Guidance
DigitalOcean guided Q1 2026 revenue of $249–250M (~18–19% YoY), Q1 adjusted EBITDA margin of 36–37% and non‑GAAP diluted EPS of $0.22–0.27 on ~111–112M diluted shares; for full‑year 2026 it expects revenue growth of 19–23% (21% midpoint; 21–24% excluding a ~$13M ARR legacy bare‑metal CPU roll‑off), adjusted EBITDA margin of 36–38%, unlevered adjusted free cash flow margin of 18–20% (≈$207M at midpoint), non‑GAAP diluted EPS of $0.75–1.00 (111–112M shares), and to exit Q4 2026 at 25%+ growth. Management is bringing 31 MW of incremental capacity online (6 MW beginning to ramp in Q2, the remainder ramping in H2), noted Q4 RPO of $134M (up 121% sequentially, ~500% YoY), warned of near‑term gross‑margin and EBITDA pressure and short‑term net leverage above 4× from lease/depreciation timing, and reiterated a path to 30% revenue growth in 2027 with 20%+ unlevered adjusted free cash flow margins (a “rule of 50+” outcome).

DigitalOcean Holdings Financial Statement Overview

Summary
Profitability has improved sharply (TTM net margin ~29% with ~60% gross margin), and operating cash flow is solid, but the balance sheet is a material weakness with negative stockholders’ equity and sharply lower free cash flow (down ~78% YoY), reducing financial flexibility.
Income Statement
78
Positive
DOCN shows a strong profitability inflection. Revenue in TTM (Trailing-Twelve-Months) is up modestly (+4.3%), but margins are notably higher versus prior years: net margin is ~29% in TTM (Trailing-Twelve-Months) versus ~11% in 2024 and ~3% in 2023, with healthy gross margin near ~60% and improved operating profitability. The key weakness is the clear deceleration in revenue growth (from ~20–35% historically to low-single-digits in TTM), which raises execution and demand-risk if margin gains prove non-recurring.
Balance Sheet
32
Negative
The balance sheet remains the primary concern. Stockholders’ equity is negative in TTM (Trailing-Twelve-Months) (and also negative in 2023–2024), which makes leverage metrics unstable and indicates limited balance-sheet cushion. While total debt declines meaningfully from 2024 to TTM (Trailing-Twelve-Months), leverage is still a risk given the negative equity position and reduces financial flexibility in a downturn.
Cash Flow
56
Neutral
Cash generation is mixed. Operating cash flow is solid and improving (TTM (Trailing-Twelve-Months) operating cash flow is higher than 2024), and operating cash flow roughly covers reported earnings in TTM (Trailing-Twelve-Months). However, free cash flow has fallen sharply in TTM (Trailing-Twelve-Months) (down ~78% year over year), indicating weaker cash conversion after investment and working-capital effects, which tempers overall cash-flow quality despite positive free cash flow.
BreakdownDec 2025Dec 2024Dec 2023Dec 2022Dec 2021
Income Statement
Total Revenue901.43M780.62M692.88M576.32M428.56M
Gross Profit539.59M465.94M408.92M364.39M257.97M
EBITDA362.05M236.86M153.59M86.74M73.92M
Net Income259.26M84.49M19.41M-27.80M-19.50M
Balance Sheet
Total Assets1.84B1.64B1.46B1.82B2.10B
Cash, Cash Equivalents and Short-Term Investments254.47M428.45M411.77M864.23M1.71B
Total Debt730.55M1.70B1.66B1.64B1.46B
Total Liabilities1.87B1.84B1.77B1.77B1.52B
Stockholders Equity-28.69M-202.96M-313.70M47.57M578.20M
Cash Flow
Free Cash Flow309.60M96.20M110.13M74.94M24.02M
Operating Cash Flow309.60M282.73M234.94M195.15M133.11M
Investing Cash Flow-268.29M-94.81M401.15M-1.15B-113.61M
Financing Cash Flow-216.91M-76.45M-468.90M-610.36M1.59B

DigitalOcean Holdings Technical Analysis

Technical Analysis Sentiment
Positive
Last Price62.74
Price Trends
50DMA
55.15
Positive
100DMA
49.08
Positive
200DMA
39.89
Positive
Market Momentum
MACD
2.74
Positive
RSI
54.10
Neutral
STOCH
30.05
Neutral
Evaluating momentum and price trends is crucial in stock analysis to make informed investment decisions. For DOCN, the sentiment is Positive. The current price of 62.74 is above the 20-day moving average (MA) of 62.07, above the 50-day MA of 55.15, and above the 200-day MA of 39.89, indicating a bullish trend. The MACD of 2.74 indicates Positive momentum. The RSI at 54.10 is Neutral, neither overbought nor oversold. The STOCH value of 30.05 is Neutral, not indicating any strong overbought or oversold conditions. Overall, these indicators collectively point to a Positive sentiment for DOCN.

DigitalOcean Holdings Risk Analysis

DigitalOcean Holdings disclosed 58 risk factors in its most recent earnings report. DigitalOcean Holdings reported the most risks in the "Finance & Corporate" category.
Finance & Corporate - Financial and accounting risks. Risks related to the execution of corporate activity and strategy
Latest Risks Added 0 New Risks

DigitalOcean Holdings Peers Comparison

Overall Rating
UnderperformOutperform
Sector (61)
Financial Indicators
Name
Overall Rating
Market Cap
P/E Ratio
ROE
Dividend Yield
Revenue Growth
EPS Growth
73
Outperform
$3.65B20.7635.56%22.02%12.42%
70
Outperform
$1.36B33.2319.01%1.33%10.27%3.52%
68
Neutral
$5.74B24.9914.20%204.86%
65
Neutral
$2.19B-1,113.190.58%24.71%99.52%
61
Neutral
$37.18B12.37-10.20%1.83%8.50%-7.62%
60
Neutral
$2.18B-60.93-9.95%11.05%45.23%
* Technology Sector Average
Performance Comparison
Ticker
Company Name
Price
Change
% Change
DOCN
DigitalOcean Holdings
62.74
18.80
42.79%
ATEN
A10 Networks
18.99
-0.93
-4.69%
TENB
Tenable Holdings
18.29
-19.77
-51.94%
AVPT
AvePoint
10.13
-7.31
-41.92%
DLO
DLocal
12.40
-0.95
-7.12%

DigitalOcean Holdings Corporate Events

Executive/Board ChangesFinancial Disclosures
DigitalOcean’s CTO Bratin Saha Resigns Amid Stability
Neutral
Nov 26, 2025

On November 20, 2025, Bratin Saha announced his resignation as Chief Product and Technology Officer of DigitalOcean Holdings, effective November 26, 2025, to pursue other opportunities. His departure is amicable and not due to any disagreements with the company. DigitalOcean reaffirmed its financial guidance for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2025, indicating stability in its financial outlook despite the leadership change.

The most recent analyst rating on (DOCN) stock is a Buy with a $49.00 price target. To see the full list of analyst forecasts on DigitalOcean Holdings stock, see the DOCN Stock Forecast page.

Glossary
BuyA stock rated as a "Buy" is expected to perform better than the overall market or a specific benchmark over the near-to-medium term. This rating suggests the stock is likely to deliver higher returns compared to other stocks in the same sector or market index. Note: This is not investment advice; please consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions.
HoldA stock rated as a "Hold" is expected to perform in line with the overall market or a specific benchmark. This rating indicates that the stock is neither particularly compelling nor unfavorable for investment. Note: This is not investment advice; please consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions.
SellA stock rated as a "Sell" is expected to perform worse than the overall market or a specific benchmark over the near-to-medium term. This rating suggests the stock may deliver lower returns compared to other stocks in the same sector or market index. Note: This is not investment advice; please consult a financial advisor before making investment decisions.

Disclaimer

This AI Analyst Stock Report is automatically generated by our AI systems using advanced algorithms and publicly available financial, technical, and market data. While the information provided aims to be accurate and insightful, it is intended for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Any content created by an AI (Artificial Intelligence) system may contain inaccuracies and/or contain errors. Investing in stocks carries inherent risks, and past performance is not indicative of future results. This report does not account for your personal financial circumstances, objectives, or risk tolerance. Always conduct your own research or consult with a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. The analysis and recommendations provided are based on historical and current data and may not fully reflect future market conditions or unexpected developments. Neither the creators of this report nor its affiliated entities guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of the information presented. Use this report at your own discretion and risk.Date of analysis: Feb 24, 2026