BigBear.ai reports tonight as TipRanks sees revenue down 9.5% and Zacks sees it up 17.5%
TipRanks' consensus sees BigBear.ai revenue falling 9.5%; Zacks sees it up 17.5%. Tonight's Q3 print decides whether $225 million of announced federal awards is turning into revenue or staying backlog.
Richard Tang · 2 min read
BigBear.ai+10.61% — BigBear.ai, up 10.61 percent today reports third-quarter results tonight after the close, and the interesting number is not the earnings estimate: it is the fact that the two major estimate providers disagree about the direction of revenue. TipRanks' Wall Street consensus models revenue falling to about $29.9 million, down 9.5% from a year ago; Zacks models $38.9 million, up 17.5% 12. Both cannot be right, and on a company with roughly a billion-dollar market cap, a 27-point spread on the headline line means nobody has a model for how the contract story converts into money 12.
TipRanks and Zacks disagree by $9 million on tonight's Q3 revenue
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q2 '26 reported | 36.75 |
| TipRanks Q3 estimate | 29.9 |
| Zacks Q3 estimate | 38.9 |
That is the question the whole quarter turns on. Since July, the company has announced more than $225 million in federal awards across homeland security, defense and intelligence customers, including recompetes with Customs and Border Protection and new work cited with the FBI and the Coast Guard 3. We argued two weeks ago that those headlines are a ceiling, not a check: most of the announced value sits in unfunded options and backlog, and awards are bookings, not revenue. Tonight is the first hard test of that thesis.
The guidance math forces Q3 to accelerate
Full-year revenue guidance stands at $135 million to $165 million, and second-quarter revenue was only $36.75 million with an adjusted EBITDA loss that widened to $11.5 million from $8.5 million a year earlier 1. A Cantor Fitzgerald analyst has already said the first half "just clears the low end" of that range 1. So the second half has to accelerate, and Q3 is where that acceleration has to start showing up 1.
Revenue peaked at $43.8 million two years ago and has not been back since
Data
| Revenue | |
|---|---|
| Q3 '24 | 41.51 |
| Q4 '24 | 43.83 |
| Q1 '25 | 34.76 |
| Q2 '25 | 32.47 |
| Q3 '25 | 33.14 |
| Q4 '25 | 27.3 |
| Q1 '26 | 34.44 |
| Q2 '26 | 36.75 |
The market is paying up for tonight's answer
Options imply a post-earnings move of about 14.5%, nearly triple the average move of the last four quarters 1. The stock, near $2.14 and down roughly 60% this year, is priced for the bear case: awards that stay backlog, a widening cash burn, and a 100-million-share sales agreement funding the gap with equity 1. If Zacks is right and the awards are becoming revenue, that pricing breaks.
Watch reported revenue tonight, not the loss per share, and watch what management says about funded versus unfunded backlog. The direction of revenue tells you whether $225 million of announcements is a business or a press release.
Get Robotics & Defense by email, free
Robots, self-driving vehicles, drones and AI in defense. In our daily email, every weekday.
