DevSecOps platform provider GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB) reported Q1 CY2026 results exceeding the market’s revenue expectations, with sales up 23.1% year on year to $264.2 million. The company expects next quarter’s revenue to be around $273 million, close to analysts’ estimates. Its non-GAAP profit of $0.23 per share was 12.3% above analysts’ consensus estimates.
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GitLab (GTLB) Q1 CY2026 Highlights:
- Revenue: $264.2 million vs analyst estimates of $254.2 million (23.1% year-on-year growth, 3.9% beat)
- Adjusted EPS: $0.23 vs analyst estimates of $0.20 (12.3% beat)
- Adjusted Operating Income: $37.53 million vs analyst estimates of $33.13 million (14.2% margin, 13.3% beat)
- The company slightly lifted its revenue guidance for the full year to $1.12 billion at the midpoint from $1.11 billion
- Management raised its full-year Adjusted EPS guidance to $0.80 at the midpoint, a 3.2% increase
- Operating Margin: -6%, up from -16.1% in the same quarter last year
- Free Cash Flow Margin: 55.6%, up from 16% in the previous quarter
- Net Revenue Retention Rate: 117%, down from 118% in the previous quarter
- Billings: $249.9 million at quarter end, up 12.5% year on year
- Market Capitalization: $5.71 billion
“The agentic era is creating structural tailwinds for GitLab, and Q1 showed it clearly with accelerating platform activity and promising traction from GitLab Duo Agent Platform,” said Bill Staples, GitLab chief executive officer.
Company Overview
With its all-remote workforce pioneering a new approach to software development, GitLab (NASDAQ: GTLB) provides a single-application DevSecOps platform that helps development, operations, and security teams collaborate to build, secure, and deploy software faster.
Revenue Growth
Examining a company’s long-term performance can provide clues about its quality. Any business can put up a good quarter or two, but many enduring ones grow for years. Thankfully, GitLab’s 42.2% annualized revenue growth over the last five years was incredible. Its growth surpassed the average software company and shows its offerings resonate with customers, a great starting point for our analysis.
Long-term growth is the most important, but within software, a half-decade historical view may miss new innovations or demand cycles. GitLab’s annualized revenue growth of 27.1% over the last two years is below its five-year trend, but we still think the results suggest healthy demand. 
This quarter, GitLab reported robust year-on-year revenue growth of 23.1%, and its $264.2 million of revenue topped Wall Street estimates by 3.9%. Company management is currently guiding for a 15.7% year-on-year increase in sales next quarter.
Looking further ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 14.6% over the next 12 months, a deceleration versus the last two years. This projection is underwhelming and indicates its products and services will face some demand challenges. At least the company is tracking well in other measures of financial health.
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Billings
Billings is a non-GAAP metric that is often called “cash revenue” because it shows how much money the company has collected from customers in a certain period. This is different from revenue, which must be recognized in pieces over the length of a contract.
GitLab’s billings punched in at $249.9 million in Q1, and over the last four quarters, its growth was solid as it averaged 17.4% year-on-year increases. This alternate topline metric grew slower than total sales, meaning the company recognizes revenue faster than it collects cash - a headwind for its liquidity that could also signal a slowdown in future revenue growth. 
Customer Retention
One of the best parts about the software-as-a-service business model (and a reason why they trade at high valuation multiples) is that customers typically spend more on a company’s products and services over time.
GitLab’s net revenue retention rate, a key performance metric measuring how much money existing customers from a year ago are spending today, was 117% in Q1. This means GitLab would’ve grown its revenue by 17% even if it didn’t win any new customers over the last 12 months.
Despite falling over the last year, GitLab still has a good net retention rate, proving that customers are satisfied with its software and getting more value from it over time, which is always great to see.
Key Takeaways from GitLab’s Q1 Results
It was great to see GitLab’s full-year EPS guidance top analysts’ expectations. We were also happy its revenue outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. On the other hand, its EPS guidance for next quarter missed and its billings fell short of Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this was a softer quarter. The stock traded up 7.2% to $34.77 immediately after reporting.
Is GitLab an attractive investment opportunity right now? We think that the latest quarter is only one piece of the longer-term business quality puzzle. Quality, when combined with valuation, can help determine if the stock is a buy. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).
