Bloom Energy has spent years burning cash and posting negative margins, but the story in 2025 and into 2026 looks meaningfully different. Revenue crossed $2 billion in fiscal 2025, gross margins climbed to nearly 29%, and the company finally turned EBITDA-positive on an annual basis. The most recent quarterly data — through September 2026 — shows the acceleration continuing, with an 18% operating margin and gross margins above 33%. The balance sheet has also improved: the current ratio sits comfortably above 3.7x and leverage, while still present, has declined. Capital expenditures are falling as a share of revenue, suggesting the business is becoming more efficient rather than requiring ever-larger reinvestment to grow. Put simply, Bloom Energy is transitioning from a high-promise, high-burn clean energy startup into something that looks increasingly like a real, scaling business — though net income remains negative and meaningful profitability risks remain.
Snapshot & Big Picture
Bloom Energy makes solid oxide fuel cell power systems — essentially on-site electricity generators that run on natural gas or hydrogen and are far cleaner than diesel alternatives. The company has been public since 2018 and spent most of its early years as a public company dealing with the classic clean-tech growth problem: revenues rising but costs rising faster, leaving investors to bet on a future that kept getting pushed out. That inflection point now appears to have arrived. Fiscal 2025 revenue of just over $2 billion represents roughly 37% year-over-year growth, and EBITDA turned positive for the first time in the annual data series. The 10-year CAGR window is not available in the provided data (see Growth section), but the 3- and 5-year trajectories confirm a company that has been compounding revenue at roughly 19–21% annually — a strong growth rate for an industrial energy company.
| Fiscal Year | Revenue | Gross Margin | Operating Margin | EBITDA |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | $208.5M | -49.6% | -115.6% | -$197.9M |
| 2017 | $365.6M | -4.5% | -42.4% | -$100.7M |
| 2018 | $632.6M | 16.7% | -26.1% | -$111.1M |
| 2019 | $785.2M | 12.4% | -29.6% | -$154.2M |
| 2020 | $794.2M | 20.9% | -10.2% | -$28.5M |
| 2021 | $972.2M | 20.3% | -11.8% | -$61.0M |
| 2022 | $1,199.1M | 12.4% | -21.8% | -$199.4M |
| 2023 | $1,333.5M | 14.8% | -15.7% | -$146.3M |
| 2024 | $1,473.9M | 27.5% | 1.6% | $76.0M |
| 2025 | $2,024.0M | 29.0% | 3.6% | $123.4M |
Latest Quarter Snapshot
The most current data available comes from the 10-Q for the quarter ending September 30, 2026 — more recent than the annual figures and worth treating as the leading edge of the story. Revenue for the nine-month period through September 2026 came in at approximately $1.24 billion, already well ahead of the pace needed to surpass 2025's full-year total. Gross margin has expanded further to 33.8%, and the operating margin reached 18.2% — a dramatic improvement even versus the already-improved 2025 annual figure of 3.6%. EBITDA for the period was $238.7 million. Net margin was -4.6%, meaning the company is still recording a net loss, likely reflecting interest expense on its debt load. The current ratio stands at 3.74x, indicating strong short-term liquidity, and the debt-to-equity ratio has fallen to 1.28x — well below the 3.4x recorded at fiscal year-end 2025, suggesting active deleveraging or equity growth. Capital expenditures for the period were $26.2 million, or about 2.1% of revenue.
Profitability
The profitability trajectory at Bloom Energy is one of the most important things to understand about the investment case. For the better part of a decade, the company had negative gross margins (as late as 2017) and consistently deep operating losses. 2022 was particularly rough — a dip back to 12.4% gross margins and -21.8% operating margin — likely reflecting supply chain pressures and input cost inflation that hit many manufacturers in that period.
The turn began in earnest in 2024, when gross margin jumped from 14.8% to 27.5% in a single year, and EBITDA flipped positive for the first time. By fiscal 2025, gross margin reached 29.0% and operating margin was 3.6%. Through the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, gross margin has expanded further to 33.8% and operating margin is 18.2%. Net margin remains negative across all annual periods where data is available, and is reported as not available for fiscal 2025 in the filing data. As of the latest quarter, net margin is -4.6%. The trend is clearly and strongly improving, but the company has not yet achieved bottom-line profitability on a sustained basis.
Financial Health
Bloom Energy's balance sheet has strengthened considerably. The current ratio — a measure of whether short-term assets can cover short-term liabilities — was a worrying 0.82x in 2019 (below 1.0x, meaning liabilities exceeded liquid assets). It has since risen steadily to 5.98x at fiscal year-end 2025, and sits at 3.74x in the most recent quarter. This is a healthy liquidity position by any standard.
Debt-to-equity has been volatile — partly because stockholders' equity itself swung negative in some years (producing the extreme negative and high positive readings in 2019–2021). By fiscal year-end 2025 it was 3.41x, elevated but not unusual for a capital-intensive industrial company that has been funding growth through debt. The latest quarterly reading of 1.28x suggests meaningful improvement in the capital structure.
Capital Expenditures: Capex intensity has been declining, which is a positive signal. At the peak in 2022, Bloom spent $116.8 million on capital expenditures — 9.7% of revenue. By fiscal 2025, that fell to $56.8 million and 2.8% of revenue. In the most recent quarter (through September 2026), capex was $26.2 million, or 2.1% of revenue. This declining capex-to-revenue ratio suggests the company is achieving better utilization of its existing infrastructure and does not need to reinvest at the same rate to sustain its growth. For investors, this is a meaningful positive: it implies future free cash flow conversion should improve even as revenue continues to grow.
| Fiscal Year | Capital Expenditures | CapEx / Revenue | Current Ratio | Debt / Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $37.9M | 4.8% | 1.42x | 4.96x |
| 2021 | $49.8M | 5.1% | 2.35x | -11.88x* |
| 2022 | $116.8M | 9.7% | 1.95x | 1.21x |
| 2023 | $83.7M | 6.3% | 3.60x | 1.69x |
| 2024 | $58.9M | 4.0% | 3.21x | 2.01x |
| 2025 | $56.8M | 2.8% | 5.98x | 3.41x |
| Q3 2026 (TTM proxy) | $26.2M | 2.1% | 3.74x | 1.28x |
*2021 debt-to-equity ratio is negative because stockholders' equity was negative that year, making the ratio not directly comparable.
Growth
Bloom Energy's revenue growth has been consistent and meaningful across the periods where data is available.
| Window | Start Year | End Year | Start Revenue | End Revenue | CAGR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3-Year | FY 2022 | FY 2025 | $1,199.1M | $2,024.0M | 19.1% |
| 5-Year | FY 2020 | FY 2025 | $794.2M | $2,024.0M | 20.6% |
| 10-Year | N/A | N/A | — | — | Not available |
The 10-year CAGR window is not available because the company's SEC filing history in the provided data does not extend back a full 10 years from fiscal 2025 with sufficient comparable revenue data to compute a reliable figure. The 3- and 5-year CAGRs of 19.1% and 20.6% respectively tell a consistent story: Bloom has compounded revenue at roughly 20% annually for half a decade, a pace that, if sustained alongside the margin improvements now visible in the data, would meaningfully change the company's earnings profile within the next few years.
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