Cloudflare (NET) Q3'26: Line of sight to 40%+ growth

Cloudflare's Q3'26 earnings were one of the first bright spots of the earning season. With so many other companies coming out with modest beats and guidance often implying deceleration into the end of year, Cloudflare bucked the trend and posted its largest $ beat ever at +$46MM, following up an also impressive Q4'25 and Q2'26 (their prior records) and even on a % basis it was the best since COVID exuberance in H2'20 (when the company was doing just $125MM/quarter). They then passed the beat through at nearly 2x, implying with even a more normal beat of ~3% that growth could exceed 40% — we continue to think our earlier work published into the quarter that anticipates the acceleration is sound and supported by the management commentary and our callback. The company emphasized they are seeing several inflections: first in Oct '25 demand from traditional content owners needing bot management and adopting Cloudflare for the first time; second in early/mid '26 as developer-centric Workers