Atlassian soars after strong beat and a hike to its 2026 guidance, blowing a hole in the software AI bear thesis
Atlassian shares skyrocketed 23% in premarket trading on Friday after the embattled workflow software firm hiked its FY2026 guidance and reported better-than-expected revenue and profit results for its fiscal third quarter.
For the quarter ended March 31, 2026, the company reported:
Revenue of $1.79 billion, up 32% year-over-year and topping Wall Street expectations of $1.695 billion (compiled by Bloomberg).
Adjusted EPS of $1.75 per share, more than 30% ahead of analyst estimates for $1.34 of adjusted earnings.
CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes noted that “Our strong Q3 results show the power of our strategy in action, with total revenue growing 32% year-over-year to $1.8 billion, as customers sign bigger, longer-term commitments, and connect their teams and workflows on our AI-powered platform,” the company also hiked its fiscal year 2026 outlook, ending June 30. Atlassian now expects:
Total revenue year-over-year growth to be approximately 24%, up from 22% expected in the previous quarter.
Higher revenue growth for its key businesses, with Cloud now expected to grow 26.5%, Data Center 21.5%, and Marketplace and other 6.5%, compared to the year before.
The latest jump is a sigh of relief not only for Atlassian — which has seen its shares fall more than 50% in 2026 — but also the wider software complex at large, which has been under relentless pressure from an AI-spooked selloff in recent months. While this certainly won't kill the "SAASpocalypse" thesis altogether — the idea that the moat of software businesses will disappear in an age of vibe-coding — it may blunt some of the concerns, or at the very least push the timeline of any anticipated disruption back a few quarters.
Strong earnings from Five9, and even Reddit, are also helping the software landscape this morning, with a number of high profile SAAS stocks in the green, includingHubspot, GitLab, Workday, ServiceNow, Salesforce, and Figma.
Earlier in March, Atlassian announced it was laying off about one-tenth of its staff “to self-fund further investment in AI and enterprise sales, while strengthening our financial profile.”