Bloom Energy Raised Its 2026 Forecast for the Third Time. Is the Stock a Buy More Than a Third Below Its Record?

Bloom Energy (NYSE:BE) had lots of good news on Oct. 22. The fuel cell maker's third-quarter revenue grew 138% year over year to a record $1.24 billion, and management raised its 2026 forecast for the third time this year.

The stock still fell. Shares finished Oct. 22 at $217.77, down about 9% on the day, ahead of results released after the market closed. Then they dropped to roughly $203 in after-hours trading.

Even that $217.77 close is about 37% under the stock's record close of $345.85 on June 22.

Before the report, I said I'd look again if the new forecast put second-half revenue clearly over the second quarter's $1.07 billion. It did. Does that make the stock a buy?

Image source: Getty Images.

A third raise

Management now sees 2026 revenue landing between $4.4 billion and $4.6 billion. That compares to a July range of $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion. The forecast's low end is over double the $2.02 billion Bloom took in during 2025.

Showing how fast the company has grown, Bloom's revenue was $751 million in the first three months of 2026. It then hit $1.07 billion in the second quarter and $1.24 billion in the third. With around $3.05 billion booked through September, the latest forecast implies fourth-quarter revenue between $1.35 billion and $1.55 billion. Profits, of course, are growing even faster. Bloom's non-GAAP (adjusted) operating margin rose to 23.1% of revenue, up from 8.9% a year ago, and adjusted earnings per share climbed more than sixfold to $0.94.

The full-year profit forecast went up, too. Management now sees $3.10 to $3.40 in adjusted earnings per share, up from $2.55 to $2.85 in July.

Growth, though, is set to slow. Fourth-quarter revenue in this range would be up around 73% to 99% from the $778 million Bloom posted a year earlier. Growth like that is still strong. But it's under the 130%, 166%, and 138% growth rates for 2026's first three quarters. Some of that's a harder comparison, because Bloom's revenue climbed around 50% from the third quarter of 2025 to the fourth.

Management said the timing of a few deliveries near year-end will decide where in the range Bloom lands. For the artificial intelligence data centers it supplies, CEO KR Sridhar added that customers bring capacity online block by block, so the pace is up to them. Management also said its backlog is still growing faster than revenue, but it didn't share a new number.

Cash didn't keep up

The weak point in the report was cash. Bloom's operations used $27 million in the third quarter, a sharp swing from the $226 million they generated in the second quarter.

And with capital expenditures up to $153 million, free cash flow (operating cash flow minus capital spending) was negative $181 million.

The largest drain was a balance sheet line called contract assets, which is revenue Bloom has booked but can't bill yet. Current contract assets were $179 million as 2025 ended. They hit $243 million by March and $365 million by June, then $793 million at the end of September. Put simply, they more than doubled in one quarter.

"Billing follows contract milestones and can occur in a different quarter," CFO Simon Edwards said during the third-quarter earnings call.

The explanation sounds reasonable to me. After all, Bloom's operations have still generated around $273 million in cash so far this year, and the business finished September with $2.5 billion in cash. But for now, Bloom is recording revenue a lot faster than it's collecting cash.

The price tag has dropped a lot

At the $217.77 close, Bloom trades at around 67 times earnings, using the midpoint of management's latest adjusted forecast for 2026.

At the Oct. 20 close of $222.65, before the results, the stock cost around 82 times earnings on the old forecast. And at the June record, against April's forecast, it was roughly 170 times earnings. Using next year's expected earnings, shares now sell for around 44 times earnings.

Sure, 67 times earnings is still pricey. It assumes Bloom keeps growing fast well past this year. But management's adjusted earnings forecast for 2026 has more than doubled since February, and the stock now costs far less relative to the forecast than it did in June.

Is Bloom stock a buy after its third raise of the year?

I think it's worth considering here, maybe buying bit by bit. A stock that can lose 7% after hours on a record quarter can swing hard both ways. And I'd like to see the contract assets turn into cash before buying more aggressively.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Bloom Energy. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.