BigBear.ai grew revenue 13% last quarter and its shareholders got poorer. That is not a contradiction, and it is the single most important thing to understand before putting a price target on BBAI. The stock closed at $3.26 on 12 August 2026, down 2.1% on the day and near the bottom of a one-year range that runs from $2.59 to $8.91, per stockanalysis.com. Our scenarios put a bull case at $5.60 (+72%), a base case at $3.60 (+10%) and a bear case at $2.25 (−31%). The spread is unusually wide because the company’s own full-year guidance is unusually wide — and because the share count is moving faster than the revenue line.
Here is the number nobody put in a headline. In Q2 2026 BigBear.ai reported revenue of $36.7 million on 479,119,921 weighted-average shares. A year earlier it reported $32.5 million on 320,591,204 shares. Revenue rose 13.2%; the share count rose 49.4%. Run the division and revenue per share fell from $0.1013 to $0.0767 — a 24.3% decline. Every figure there comes straight from the company’s own Q2 2026 8-K filing. A shareholder who held through the year owns a claim on materially less revenue than they did twelve months ago, despite the business growing. That is the axis the bull and bear cases actually turn on.
Key facts
- $3.26 — BBAI close, 12 August 2026, −2.1%; 1-year range $2.59–$8.91 — stockanalysis.com
- $36.7m — Q2 2026 revenue, up 13.2% year on year from $32.5m — BigBear.ai Q2 8-K
- +5.9% — H1 2026 revenue growth ($71.2m vs $67.2m); Q1 alone was down 0.9% year on year — FinanceFeeds calculation from the 8-K
- 32.8% — Q2 gross margin, expanded 781 basis points from 25.0% — BigBear.ai Q2 8-K
- $269.6m — backlog at 30 June, up 9% from 31 December but down from $281.9m at the end of Q1 — company disclosure
- $409.8m — total available cash and investments at 30 June, roughly 26% of market capitalisation — BigBear.ai Q2 8-K
- −$11.6m — Q2 adjusted EBITDA, wider than the prior-year quarter despite the margin gain — BigBear.ai Q2 8-K
- +49.4% — year-on-year growth in weighted-average shares outstanding — BigBear.ai Q2 8-K
What Q2 actually said
The reported quarter was genuinely better than the one before it. Revenue of $36.7 million beat the roughly $36.4 million consensus. Gross margin expanded 781 basis points to 32.8%, which for a services-heavy government contractor is a real structural improvement rather than a mix fluke. The company signed more than 20 new contracts and finished the period with $409.8 million of cash and investments — an unusually strong balance sheet for a company of this size.
“It has been another strong quarter. Double-digit growth, significant margin expansion and more than 20 new contracts show that the BigBear.ai leadership team is following through on our commitments,” said Kevin McAleenan, CEO of BigBear.ai, in the results release. He added that the company is “on track for our target of 17% revenue growth” and that “the second half of 2026 is all about execution discipline.”
That last phrase is doing a great deal of work, and the arithmetic explains why. H1 revenue was $71.2 million. Full-year guidance was affirmed at $135–165 million. Subtract, and the implied second half ranges from $63.8 million — a 10.4% decline against H1 — to $93.8 million, a 31.8% acceleration. With one quarter of visibility left, the company is still carrying a guidance range wide enough to accommodate both contraction and a step-change. Investors are not being asked to forecast a business; they are being asked to pick a point in a distribution management has not narrowed.
Two other items deserve more attention than they received. Backlog fell sequentially, from $281.9 million at the end of Q1 to $269.6 million at 30 June. The company framed it as up 9% from 31 December, which is true and also the more flattering of the two available comparisons. And adjusted EBITDA came in at −$11.6 million, wider than the prior-year quarter — margin expansion at the gross line has not yet reached the operating line.
The bull case: $5.60
The bull case does not require BigBear.ai to become Palantir. It requires three things that are each individually plausible.
First, the balance sheet is the real asset. $409.8 million against a $1.56 billion market capitalisation means roughly 26% of the equity value is cash, or about $0.86 a share. That removes financing risk from the story entirely for several years and — more importantly — it is acquisition currency. CFO Sean Ricker and the leadership team have been explicit that they are hunting deals. “We have steadily been maturing the underlying financial discipline of the company and have significant cash in reserve so that when the right opportunity presents itself, we can move fast,” McAleenan said. A cash-funded acquisition that adds $40–60 million of revenue would reframe the growth profile without further equity issuance.
Second, margin expansion is real and it compounds. Moving gross margin from 25.0% to 32.8% in a year on a services base is difficult and durable. If revenue reaches $190 million in 2027 and gross margin holds in the low thirties, the operating loss narrows sharply on fixed-cost absorption alone.
Third, the sector tailwind is not speculative. Defence AI budgets are expanding, and BigBear.ai’s positioning in mission-ready AI for defence and security sits directly in that flow. Our bull case applies a 12× EV/sales multiple to $190 million of 2027 revenue, adds back the $409.8 million cash position, and divides by the current share count. That produces $5.60, or 72% above spot — a level the stock traded at as recently as February 2026, so it requires no heroic re-rating, just a return to a multiple the market has already paid.
The bear case: $2.25
The bear case is simply the dilution math continuing.
If the share count keeps growing at anything close to 49% a year, revenue growth of 13% is not merely insufficient — it is value-destructive on a per-share basis, which is exactly what the last twelve months demonstrated. The bear case does not need a demand collapse. It needs only the status quo.
Layer on the second-half problem. If the company lands at the low end of its own affirmed range, $135 million, H2 revenue declines 10.4% against H1. A company printing sequential revenue declines while still generating negative adjusted EBITDA does not hold a double-digit sales multiple. The backlog trend is the leading indicator worth watching here: it fell sequentially this quarter, and backlog is the closest thing a government contractor has to forward revenue visibility.
Translate the guidance range into quarterly run-rates and the stakes get concrete. The low end implies roughly $31.9 million per quarter across Q3 and Q4 — below the $34.4 million BigBear.ai did in Q1 and well under Q2’s $36.7 million. The high end implies about $46.9 million a quarter, a 28% step up from Q2. Nothing in the reported trajectory or the backlog trend points to the latter, and a company that has produced one quarter above $36 million does not usually print $47 million twice consecutively without an acquisition closing first.
Our bear case applies 5× EV/sales to $135 million, adds the cash, and arrives at $2.25, roughly 31% below spot. Note what that implies: even in the bear case, the cash pile puts a meaningful floor under the equity. $2.25 is not a distress price — it is what the operating business is worth at a modest multiple once you strip the cash out. The floor is the balance sheet, which is precisely why this is a $2.25 bear case and not a $1.00 one.
The base case: $3.60, and what the multiple already assumes
At $3.26, BigBear.ai carries a market capitalisation of about $1.56 billion and an enterprise value near $1.15 billion. Against the guidance midpoint of $150 million, that is 10.4× sales, or 7.7× on an enterprise basis. For context, that is a premium multiple for a company growing high single digits in the first half with negative adjusted EBITDA — the market is already paying for the defence-AI narrative and the acquisition optionality, not for the reported numbers.
Our base case of $3.60 applies 8× EV/sales to $165 million of 2027 revenue plus cash: roughly 10% above spot. The honest reading of that is that the stock is close to fairly valued on the base case, and the asymmetry comes from the tails. This is not a mispricing story; it is a distribution story, which is a different thing and should be sized differently.
Investors who want the comparison should look at how a profitable defence-AI peer is priced. We laid out that framework in our Palantir PLTR bull and bear analysis, where the multiple is far higher but supported by actual free cash flow. The gap between those two situations is the gap between a narrative multiple and an earned one. For the shorter-horizon view around the print itself, see our BBAI earnings scenarios.
The dilution question, in context
It is worth being precise about why the share count grew 49%. This is not a company issuing stock into a falling price out of desperation — it holds $409.8 million and has no financing pressure. Much of the increase reflects earlier capital-structure decisions, including conversions and equity raises struck when the stock was materially higher.
That matters for the forward view. Dilution that has already happened is in the current share count and therefore in the current price; dilution that is still to come is the risk. The single most useful disclosure in the Q3 report will be the share count, not the revenue line. If weighted-average shares are roughly flat sequentially, the bear case weakens considerably regardless of what revenue does. If they keep climbing, the revenue-per-share erosion continues and no amount of headline growth fixes it.
This is a pattern visible across the small-cap AI complex — capital raised at high valuations, spent on growth that arrives more slowly than the share count. We examined a much larger version of the same dynamic in Intel’s bull and bear cases after its $20 billion equity sale, and a cleaner counterexample in Arm’s, where growth has outpaced issuance.
What moves the number next
The Q3 print, and specifically the share count. Revenue will get the headline; the weighted-average share line determines whether growth is reaching shareholders. Watch it first.
Backlog direction. One sequential decline is noise. Two is a trend, and it would make the low end of guidance the base case rather than the bear case.
M&A. Management has signalled it repeatedly and holds the cash to act. A cash-funded, revenue-accretive acquisition is the most plausible single catalyst for a re-rate toward the bull case — and equally, an expensive stock-funded deal would confirm the bear thesis.
Our base expectation is that BigBear.ai lands near the middle of its guidance range, that H2 revenue grows modestly against H1, and that the stock spends the next two quarters between $3.00 and $4.00 while the market waits for the share count to stabilise. The bull case needs a deal or a decisive Q3; the bear case needs only more of the same. Given that asymmetry, the burden of proof sits with management, and the Q3 report is where they either discharge it or do not.
This analysis is for information only and is not investment advice. Scenario prices are FinanceFeeds estimates derived from enterprise-value-to-sales multiples on 2027 revenue assumptions and are not price predictions or recommendations. Do your own research.
Frequently asked questions
What is the BBAI stock forecast for 2026?
Our scenarios put BigBear.ai’s bull case at $5.60, base case at $3.60 and bear case at $2.25 against a spot price of $3.26 on 12 August 2026. The range is wide because the company’s own affirmed full-year revenue guidance of $135–165 million implies a second half that could either decline 10% or accelerate 32% against the first half.
Why did BBAI stock fall despite 13% revenue growth?
Because the share count grew faster. Weighted-average shares rose 49.4% year on year in Q2 2026, to 479.1 million from 320.6 million, while revenue rose 13.2%. Revenue per share therefore fell 24.3%, from $0.1013 to $0.0767. Headline growth did not translate into per-share value.
Is BigBear.ai profitable?
No. BigBear.ai reported a Q2 2026 net loss of $25.7 million and a first-half net loss of $82.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA was −$11.6 million in Q2, wider than the prior-year quarter, even though gross margin expanded 781 basis points to 32.8%.
How much cash does BigBear.ai have?
Total available cash and investments stood at $409.8 million as of 30 June 2026 — roughly 26% of the company’s market capitalisation, or about $0.86 per share. This removes near-term financing risk and gives management acquisition capacity, and it is the main reason the bear case has a floor around $2.25 rather than lower.
What is BigBear.ai’s backlog?
Backlog was $269.6 million at 30 June 2026, up 9% from 31 December 2025 but down from $281.9 million at the end of Q1 2026. The sequential decline is the more relevant signal for forward revenue visibility, and a second consecutive quarterly fall would materially strengthen the bear case.
Is BBAI stock expensive at $3.26?
On the guidance midpoint of $150 million, BBAI trades at roughly 10.4× sales and 7.7× enterprise value to sales. That is a premium multiple for a business growing 5.9% in the first half with negative adjusted EBITDA, which means the market is pricing the defence-AI narrative and acquisition optionality rather than reported results.