Throughout 2025, a number of data center stocks have emerged beyond the incumbent players such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices. One company that's witnessed a significant rise in popularity is neocloud provider Nebius Group (NBIS -2.79%).
Nebius is scheduled to report earnings for the second calendar quarter of 2025 on Aug. 7. Let's detail what investors should be on the lookout for as earnings season comes into full bloom. Is Nebius stock a buy before Aug. 7?
What is Nebius guiding for Q2?
Nebius primarily serves as a neocloud. At its core, the company helps outfit data centers with various Nvidia GPU architectures and provides access to this infrastructure via the cloud.
At the end of the first quarter, Nebius reported an annualized run rate revenue (ARR) of $249 million for the core infrastructure services segment. According to the company's management, momentum from Q1 carried over into the second quarter -- as April ARR landed around $310 million.
The big-picture update that investors should be on the lookout for is whether or not Nebius remains on pace to hit its full-year 2025 ARR guidance in the range of $750 million and $1 billion while achieving positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) in the second half of the year.
Image source: Getty Images.
Why is this an important earnings call for investors?
One of the major pillars supporting the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution this year is ongoing investment in capital expenditures (capex) from tech's biggest developers.
During the first quarter, cloud hyperscalers Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet guided toward a collective capex spend of $260 billion in 2025 alone. Just recently, however, Alphabet notified investors that it is raising its infrastructure spend by $10 billion this year. Of note, Meta Platforms increased its 2025 capex forecast during its own first-quarter call a few months ago.
These secular trends should bode well for Nebius. The company is an integral partner to Nvidia's ecosystem, and is helping the chip king roll out its newest Blackwell GPUs all over the world.
If Nebius reports further robust growth from its infrastructure business, I think investors will see this as a positive sign that the company is benefiting handsomely from these rising capex trends.
However, if Nebius' full-year guidance comes in at a more tempered level compared to prior estimates, it could suggest that the company is losing ground to larger competitors such as CoreWeave or Oracle -- the latter of which just inked a $30 billion cloud infrastructure services deal.
Is Nebius stock a buy before Aug. 7?
Since Nebius reported first-quarter earnings on May 1, shares have risen by 36%.
Although the stock has been trading sideways as of late, I don't necessarily see this price action as a buying opportunity. All things considered, there is still a fair amount of momentum fueling Nebius' price action at the moment.
Investors with a long-run time horizon should not worry about the specific timing of their purchases. Rather, a more prudent approach is to invest in your high-conviction positions over the course of several years and at different price points. This is a strategy known as dollar-cost averaging.
With that said, having more information at your disposal can help you make better-informed, more confident decisions when it comes to investing in an emerging growth stock such as Nebius. For this reason, it might be more optimal to assess the company's second-quarter earnings report before initiating or adding to your existing position in Nebius stock.
The main priority for investors here should be to see if Nebius remains positioned for robust growth relative to its peers in the AI infrastructure landscape over the next several years.
