Couchbase shares rise despite mixed quarterly results and lower outlook

Shares in Couchbase Inc. rose in late trading today despite the database company reporting mixed results in its fiscal 2025 fourth quarter and falling short on revenue outlook for the year ahead.

For the quarter that ended on Jan. 31, Couchbase reported an adjusted net loss per share of 30 cents, down from a loss of 44 cents in the same quarter of the previous year, on revenue of $54.9 million, up 10% year-over-year. The earnings per share loss was significantly larger than the loss of eight cents per share expected by analysts, but Couchbase’s revenue was ahead of an expected $53.2 million.

For the full year, Couchbase reported an adjusted earnings per share loss of $1.45, down from a loss of $1.75 per share a year earlier, on revenue of $209.5 million, up 16% year-over-year.

As of the end of the quarter, Couchbase had total annual recurring revenue of $237.9 million, up 17% year-over-year and free cash flow of $4 million, up from negative $7.7 million in the fourth quarter of the previous fiscal year. Both figures were record highs for the company.

Business highlights in the quarter included the December launch of Capella AI Services to help customers build and deploy secure agentic applications while reducing development complexity and operational costs.

The service includes model hosting, automated vectorization, unstructured data preprocessing and artificial intelligence agent catalog capabilities. The offering bundles various things developers require to prototype, build, test and then deploy their AI agents while ensuring both the underlying data and the models are stored close together.

Just yesterday, Couchbase announced that it was enhancing the capabilities of its artificial intelligence agent-building tools, Capella AI Model Services, by integrating them with Nvidia Corp.’s NIM microservices. The update is designed to make it easier for Couchbase Capella database users to create agentic AI applications that go beyond the capabilities of traditional chatbots by performing tasks on behalf of their users, with minimal supervision required.

“We finished fiscal 2025 on a strong note, including the highest quarterly free cash flow and net new ARR results in company history,” Chief Executive Matt Cain said in the company’s earnings release. “We delivered top- and bottom-line outcomes that exceeded the high end of our outlook, saw robust expansions and migrations, and made further progress with Capella uptake.” He expressed confidence “in our ability to continue our momentum in fiscal 2026.”

For its fiscal 2026 first quarter, Couchbase expects revenue of $55.1 million to $55.9 million. For the full fiscal year, the company expects revenue of $228 million to $232 million. The full year outlook was short of the $236.7 million expected by analysts.

Image: Couchbase