Snowflake Reports Tonight With No GAAP Counterpart to Its Margin Guide: Last Quarter's Two EPS Lines Were $1.25 Apart

by Leah Avraham · September 2, 2026

Previews Correspondent, Earnings Dispatch

Snowflake is scheduled to release results for the second quarter of its fiscal 2027, the three months ended July 31, 2026, after the close of US markets on Wednesday, September 2. The company said in an August 3 announcement that management would hold a conference call at 2 p.m. Pacific time the same day, which is 5 p.m. Eastern. As of late Wednesday morning the report had not been published, and nothing in this article describes results that exist.

The bar Snowflake set for itself is narrow and specific. In its first-quarter release on May 27, the company guided second-quarter product revenue to a range of $1,415m to $1,420m, which it characterised as 30% year-over-year growth, and guided the non-GAAP operating margin for the quarter to 12.5%. Both figures come from the company's own release. The two are not the same kind of number. Product revenue is a GAAP line, so that half of the guide will have a direct counterpart in the accounts on Wednesday night. The margin guide will not: every profitability measure in Snowflake's outlook, for the quarter and for the full year, is labelled non-GAAP, and the company publishes no GAAP margin range beside them.

That asymmetry is the thing to hold in mind when the numbers land. In the same release Snowflake stated that a reconciliation of GAAP guidance measures to the corresponding non-GAAP guidance measures is not available on a forward-looking basis without unreasonable effort, citing uncertainty about, and the potential variability of, expenses that may be incurred in the future. The practical effect is that the 12.5% margin figure the company will be measured against on Wednesday night cannot be checked against any GAAP margin the company has published in advance.

What the two EPS lines did last quarter

In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, the quarter ended April 30, 2026, Snowflake reported a GAAP diluted net loss of $0.86 per share and a non-GAAP diluted profit of $0.39 per share, according to the company's May 27 release and the reconciliation carried in the accompanying 8-K exhibit as summarised by StockTitan. The distance between those two figures is $1.25 a share, and they sit on opposite sides of zero. The GAAP net loss for the quarter was $295.6m.

The operating lines diverged by a similar order of magnitude. Snowflake reported a GAAP operating loss of $326.2m, a negative 23.4% margin on total revenue, alongside non-GAAP operating income of $165.8m, a positive 11.9% margin. That is a spread of 35.3 percentage points between the two margin measures on the same quarter's revenue, and a $492.0m difference in the dollar figure.

The bridge between them is dominated by one item. Stock-based compensation-related charges came to $433.7m in the quarter, equal to 31.2% of the $1,391m of total revenue Snowflake booked. The remaining adjustments were far smaller: $40.6m of amortisation of acquired intangibles, $17.7m of asset impairment tied to office facility exits, $2.1m of debt issuance cost amortisation, a negligible acquisition expense, and a $50.4m offset for income tax effects. Anyone reading Wednesday's headline non-GAAP margin as a measure of accounting profit is reading a number from which roughly a third of revenue in employee equity cost has been removed.

The consensus figure, and what it is not

MarketBeat's compilation of analyst estimates for the quarter, accessed September 2, 2026, carries an EPS estimate of $0.45 and a revenue estimate of $1.48bn. That page does not state whether the $0.45 is a GAAP or a non-GAAP figure, does not name the compiler behind it, and does not give an analyst count. Given that Snowflake's GAAP result was a loss of $0.86 a share in the immediately preceding quarter, a $0.45 GAAP profit would represent a swing the company has given no guidance to support, which is a reason to treat the estimate as an adjusted one rather than to assume it.

There is a second gap on the same page. Snowflake's $1,415m to $1,420m guide is for product revenue, a narrower line than total revenue, and MarketBeat does not state which of the two its $1.48bn estimate refers to. In the April quarter product revenue of $1,334m accounted for 95.9% of the $1,391m total, so the choice of line materially changes what a comparison means. Without that label on the estimate, it cannot be set against the company's guide cleanly.

The metrics that carry the growth case

Beyond the two revenue lines, the disclosures that moved most in April were the forward-looking ones. Remaining performance obligations stood at $9.21bn at the end of the first quarter, up 38% year over year, running ahead of the 34% product revenue growth rate in the same period. The net revenue retention rate was 126%, and the count of customers generating more than $1m of trailing twelve-month product revenue reached 779, up 29%.

Cash generation is the one place where Snowflake's own numbers and its adjusted numbers stay close together. First-quarter free cash flow was $232.8m, a 16.7% margin, against an adjusted free cash flow margin of 19.1%, a gap of 2.4 percentage points rather than the 35.3 points separating the operating margins. For the full fiscal year the company guided to a 23.0% adjusted free cash flow margin.

The full-year frame Snowflake set in May was product revenue of $5,840m, described as 31% growth, raised from a prior $5,660m, an increase of $180m or 3.2%. It also lifted its full-year non-GAAP operating margin guide to 13.5% from 12.5% and set a non-GAAP product gross margin of 75.0%. Whether those full-year figures move again on Wednesday night is the question the quarter actually turns on, and every part of that answer except the revenue line will be given in non-GAAP terms only.

For context on the tape going in, the Nasdaq Composite closed Tuesday, September 1 at 26,099.77, down 1.03% on the session, with the S&P 500 at 7,631.47, down 0.71%. US markets are open as this is published and no closing level for Wednesday exists yet. Nothing here is a recommendation to buy or sell any security.