Tempus posts record revenue and a first adjusted profit, with a $1.5 billion stock deal still on the table

Tempus AI▲+12.36% — Tempus AI, up 12.36 percent today walked into Monday's earnings with its stock screened 7.22% lower and the market asking the question Investing.com had framed in advance↗: when does the growth pay? ⁴ The quarter itself answered with the best numbers the two-year-old public company has produced. Revenue hit a record $411.5 million, up 23% year over year, and the company posted its first adjusted profit, earnings per share of $0.07 against expectations of a loss. ¹⁶ In premarket trading the stock gave back its pre-print slide and traded more than 4% higher. ⁷

The bill for the data moat arrives in stock

The complication sits outside the income statement. Tempus, the precision-medicine data platform founded by Eric Lefkofsky, is mid-way through buying Personalis, a cancer-sequencing company, for $16.25 per share in Tempus stock, an implied enterprise value of about $1.5 billion↗. ³ The terms are all-stock, with a floating exchange ratio capped at 0.3356 Tempus shares per Personalis share, a 6% premium to the prior close and 28% to the 30-day volume-weighted average price. ³

Both stocks fell when the deal was announced on July 20, and analysts questioned the price and the dilution. ³ The shareholder vote is set for November 30, with regulatory review now cleared and closing expected late 2026 or early 2027. ⁷³

The receipts, and the line they stop at

The growth engine is real. Data and Applications revenue rose 33% to $108.1 million, diagnostics revenue grew 20% to $303.5 million on 32% oncology volume growth, and minimal residual disease testing volumes, the cancer-recurrence market the Personalis deal targets, surged roughly 300% to about 12,000 tests. ⁷ Adjusted EBITDA reached $25.6 million, up from $1.5 million a year earlier, and data licensing bookings crossed $550 million year to date, anchored by the Bristol Myers Squibb▲+0.21% — Bristol Myers Squibb, up 0.21 percent today collaboration The Inference reported on October 23. ⁶⁷

Adjusted profit, GAAP red

Here is what the bulls' headline number does not carry: on a GAAP basis Tempus still lost $14.9 million in the quarter, narrowed from $80 million a year earlier but still red. ⁶⁷ Every quarter since its 2024 listing shows a GAAP net loss except one, and the filing series itself flags that one quarter as a break↗, not a trend. ⁵ Full-year guidance raises the lower revenue bound to $1.60 billion while holding adjusted EBITDA at roughly $65 million, a forecast that remains a non-GAAP figure. ⁷⁶

The bull case, stated fairly

The strongest opposing view: the first adjusted profit, a sixth straight earnings beat, and a raised outlook are exactly the inflection short sellers were betting against. Cathie Wood's ARK bought 154,521 shares the Friday before the print↗. ⁶⁷

That case does not fully resolve the dilution math. Personalis holders receive Tempus paper for a business still unprofitable on a GAAP basis, while Roche's agreement to buy PathAI for up to $1.05 billion shows rivals are also paying up for the same data assets. ³

The trade into the November 30 vote is therefore a priced question: does record revenue plus a $1.5 billion stock-funded data moat deserve a premium, or does the second bill, the one paid in diluted shares, argue for the short? The market has until the votes are counted to answer.