ZETA Stock Q4 2025: Clean Beat, Raised Guidance, Still Down 26% YTD
- Q4 EPS $0.28 vs. $0.24 est.; revenue $394.6M vs. $378.1M est., +25% YoY.
- FY2026 guidance set at $1.75B–$1.76B, clearing $1.73B consensus.
- William Blair reiterates Buy; stock still down 26.4% YTD despite 13% post-earnings pop.
Zeta Global hit every headline number in Q4 2025. Revenue of $394.6M beat the $378.1M estimate by 3.7% and grew 25% from $314.7M in Q4 2024. Adjusted EPS of $0.28 cleared the $0.24 consensus by $0.04 — a 23.5% surprise. EBITDA and free cash flow also beat. The company has now outrun revenue estimates in four straight quarters.
Forward numbers held up. Q1 2026 guidance of $369M–$371M tops the $362.2M estimate at the midpoint. Full-year 2026 guidance of $1.75B–$1.76B clears $1.73B consensus. Management also delivered GAAP profitability in the quarter — a company first. That removes one standing bear argument entirely.
William Blair’s Arjun Bhatia kept his Buy rating after the print. His thesis rests on valuation dislocation: ZETA’s integrated data-and-activation stack, multi-use-case customer expansion, and early traction from the Athena AI agent are not reflected in current price. That’s a defensible position after a quarter where the company beat on revenue, EBITDA, and free cash flow simultaneously — then raised multiyear guidance on top of it.
The setup is messier than the beat suggests. Over the last 90 days, ZETA absorbed 7 negative EPS revisions against only 4 positive ones. Zacks holds a #3 (Hold) rating. The Technology Services industry sits in the bottom 38% of Zacks-ranked sectors. Those signals explain why the 13.35% post-earnings pop faded fast, and why the stock remains down 26.4% YTD while the S&P 500 is near flat over the same stretch. Institutional conviction is split. The fundamentals are not.
ZETA’s Q4 report neutralized the execution risk bears had priced in. The company beat, raised, and turned GAAP profitable in a single quarter. The stock bounced hard, then kept fading — that’s a sentiment problem, not a fundamental one. The negative revision skew and weak industry ranking are real headwinds, but they reflect backward-looking analyst inertia more than forward earnings risk. The gap between what the numbers say and what the price says is where the trade lives.
Disclaimer: This post is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. All investment decisions and their outcomes are solely the responsibility of the reader.