Boost Run's Q1 2026

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Boost Run (BRUN) just reported its first quarterly earnings as a public company, filing its Q1 2026 10-Q after close on June 1, 2026. They also released an updated investor presentation on June 2, 2026.

When I covered it in my deep dive, Boost Run traded around $10.70 as Willow Lane (WLAC), with warrants under $3.00.

Since then it has nearly quadrupled to ~$40. The trust floor that defined the original setup is gone, and this is now a pure execution story.

The last ~7 weeks since the DEFM14A did almost everything the bull case needed:

That run is a ~270% move on the common, all before the company filed its first 10-Q.

The $11.50 strike warrants went from under $3.00 to deep in the money, worth about $28 of intrinsic value at $40 (+850%)!

But the risk/reward today looks nothing like it did back in April.

The Q1 2026 put up 165% revenue growth, but came in a third short of the proxy's Q1 plan and posted a net loss:

Boost Run started the year behind its own plan. The DEFM14A modeled $16.5M of revenue for Q1 2026, and actual came in at $10.96M, $5.5M short (34% below plan).

The why, as far as the filing says, is mostly timing. The 10-Q cites longer sales cycles and delayed purchases, and the revenue is deployment-paced.

Management says the majority of the $940M contracted base is already in production, with the rest scheduled to come online through FY2026 as capacity is built.

The full-year target was $170-$180M, and the proxy ramped the quarterly build from $16.5M to $35.8M to $54.7M to $73.0M.

With Q1 a third below plan, even more of that build now rides on the back half, a steeper climb than the proxy already drew.

The cash story is better than the income statement. Operating cash flow of $13.24M outpaced revenue, driven by customer prepayments.

Customer deposits on the balance sheet grew to $41.1M ($21.5M current + $19.6M non-current) from $15.4M at year-end, which is the prepay model showing up in the numbers.

One caveat on the FCF claim. That $4.3M is operating cash flow ($13.24M) less equipment capex ($8.93M), and management's own FCF definition excludes growth capex financed under leases.

Subtract the $7.0M of operating and finance lease prepayments too, and the quarter burned about $2.7M before financing, covered by the $9.95M February bridge draw.

Boost Run is now an NVIDIA Preferred Cloud Partner with NVIDIA Exemplar Cloud status on Blackwell. For a sub-$2.5B name competing with CoreWeave (CRWV) and Nebius (NBIS), that's a credibility marker on the deployment stack.

On capacity, the June 2 update put hard numbers on the footprint: eight data centers (six online today, with Rock Island, IL and Marietta, GA live by Q3 2026), 33MW of locked capacity, plus 125MW under LOI, for 158MW total in-control.

That locked 33MW is what's deployable now, and it's still ramping, which is why Q1 ran at just $10.96M, ~$44M annualized. The 125MW under LOI is the expansion runway, though letters of intent aren't binding.

The demand behind it has moved fast. Contracted backlog went from $120M (Dec 2025) to $360M (April 2026) to ~$1.45B as of June 1, and management says it's on track to triple again by year-end.

ARR has tracked it: $30M (Dec 2025) to $96M (April 2026), with the FY2026E target now raised to $400M (1233% y/y).

The biggest piece is the Thinking Machines Lab deal, 5,000 Nvidia B300 GPUs (roughly 10MW) worth about $157M/year on take-or-pay terms. Most of the rest of the backlog runs the same ~3-year, take-or-pay structure.

The customer list is widening, too. The deck names Fluidstack, Fireworks AI, and even Nebius, a competitor renting from Boost Run, which is its own validation.

On distribution, CDW announced a strategic relationship on May 11, giving Boost Run access to CDW's enterprise, public-sector, healthcare, and education customers.

The takeaway is that the gap between today's run-rate and the target is a deployment-and-funding question against contracted demand, not a question of whether the demand exists.

Boost Run colocates rather than building its own data centers, so the model looks asset-light. But the capital intensity is still there, it just shows up in leases and purchase commitments.

Total assets jumped to $264.1M from $77.4M at year-end, almost entirely from leases.

Operating lease right-of-use assets went to $107.4M and finance lease right-of-use assets to $94.1M, as the company signed a seven-year, $113.8M colocation lease and 12 new GPU-server finance leases.

As of March 31, future lease obligations were $102.1M of operating leases and $86.8M of finance leases, or $189M combined. The funded debt is gone, but the lease load is now sizable.

Two post-quarter commitments raise the bar further:

Those commitments signal confidence in demand and scale. They also lock in spending.

The merger solved the near-term funding gap, but the June 2 update reframed the scale. Management guided to $1.1-$1.2B of capex in 2026 to build into the backlog, against $108M of cash.

Most of that is lease- and vendor-financed (the Dell agreement) and offset by take-or-pay prepayments, so management frames it as self-funding (TCV/capex 1.2-1.4x, FCF positive).

But $108M is thin at that scale, and between upfront lease deposits and the lag from capex to revenue, a sizable raise in 2026 seems likely.

A large chunk of the April risk list (from my deep dive) resolved at close:

However, the risks that remain are the ones that now set the price. Execution is the main one: the $400M ARR exit is ~4x April's $96M ARR, and Q1 recognized revenue is running lower still at ~$44M annualized.

The buildout also leans on heavy external funding, customer concentration is still high (Thinking Machines is about a third of the backlog), and with the trust floor gone there's nothing under the stock if the cadence slips.

How cheap/expensive the stock looks depends on which number you reference.

In April it traded at 3.0x forward EV/Sales on the $180M plan, the cheapest name in a group where CRWV, NBIS, and IREN sat at 4-7x. That discount is gone.

At $40 with about 62M shares, the market cap is $2.4B. Net of $108M of cash and $87M of finance leases, enterprise value is also ~$2.4B.

On 2026 GAAP revenue, that looks rich: 13x the old $180M plan ($2.4B / $180M), and Q1 already ran behind it.

But GAAP timing isn't the right perspective for take-or-pay capacity. On the raised $400M ARR exit target, EV sits at 6.0x ($2.4B / $400M); on the ~$1.45B backlog (~$480M of annual revenue once deployed), closer to 5x.

As discussed, that ARR is largely contracted, not hoped for, and the 125MW under LOI is the runway to grow into.

So against a cohort where CRWV re-rated to 7.5x forward ($95B EV / $12.7B 2026E) and NBIS trades richer, 6.0x on a contracted base is reasonable, maybe even cheap.

One catch: at $40 the 11M earnout shares (triggers at $12.50, $15.00, and $17.50 VWAP) effectively vest, pushing the diluted count toward 73M.

That lifts the stock to 7.3x the ARR target ($2.9B EV on 73M shares, over $400M), a cohort multiple rather than a discount. Fair, still leaning cheap if the backlog deploys on schedule.

So the base case is constructive, not stretched. A 7-8x cohort multiple on a delivered $400M ARR puts the stock around $40-44 on diluted shares. Push to 9-11x, or beat the target as the LOIs convert, and you get $50-61 (9x → $50, 11x → $61, over 73M shares).

For reference, DA Davidson's $45.00 Buy sits right around the base case.

The downside is what changed most. With the trust floor gone, a deployment stall re-rates the stock with nothing underneath. If ARR lands closer to $250M, or the cohort compresses to 5-6x, the stock heads back toward the mid-$20s.

Boost Run did exactly what the asymmetric setup needed. The deal closed, nobody redeemed, the going concern and bridge debt are gone, and the backlog scaled to ~$1.45B with an Nvidia stamp of approval.

From here it's a different story.

Deliver the $400M ARR exit as the backlog deploys, and $40 holds up with room toward DA Davidson's $45 and higher if ARR beats.

Let the deployment cadence slip again and the stock re-rates toward the mid-$20s.

For warrant holders specifically, the math also changed. With the stock at $40, BRUNW is deep in the money, but the $18.00 redemption trigger is now in play.

If you want to learn about Boost Run's share structure and warrant conversion decisions, you can read this post.

If you want a similar setup to Boost Run pre-merger check out my write-up on Exascale Labs (BCAR).