How Big Could Cloudflare Stock's Next Fall Be? Trefis Team Wed, November 11, 2026 at 5:05 PM EST 3 min read NET +3.17% PANW +3.14% ^GSPC +1.31% AKAM +3.91% ZS -0.65% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
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Cloudflare (NET) stock lost 12.8% in the month to November 10, 2026, against 3.6% for the S&P 500, in a month when Akamai Technologies, Zscaler and Palo Alto Networks also fell. Buyers still pay 40 times the company's sales over the past year, betting that its growth keeps accelerating and its reported losses turn into profits. When markets sold off before, how much did Cloudflare stock give up, and for how long?
How Deep Did Cloudflare Stock Fall In Past Sell-Offs?
The 2022 inflation shock hit Cloudflare stock hardest: it fell 69%, while the S&P 500 fell 24%. Its largest fall at any time since its listing was deeper still: 82.6%, from its close on November 18, 2021, to its close on November 9, 2022. The market figures in this section are measured on the SPY fund, which tracks the index. Across the six market shocks the stock has traded through since its 2019 listing, it lost 30.7% on average, against 16.8% for the index. It fell further than the S&P 500 in all but one of them, the 2020 COVID-19 crash. The most recent, the 2025 tariff shock, took 40% off the stock against 19% off the index.
Cloudflare stock eventually returned to its pre-decline high every time. The median climb back from the low took 1.2 months, but recovering from the 2022 fall took 31.4 months, from its June 2022 low until January 2025. The stock closed lower still in November 2022 before that climb.
Cloudflare's Sales Are Growing Faster Than A Year Ago
Revenue rose 39.2% from a year earlier in fiscal Q3 2026, against 30.7% growth in the same quarter of 2025, so the faster growth buyers are counting on has held so far. Management said the quarter's growth came in particular from its Workers Developer Platform, from AI agent workloads across its network and from its largest customers. Customers that management counts as large brought in 75% of revenue, up from 73% a year earlier.
Cloudflare Still Reports Losses, And Gross Margin Is Slipping
Based on the figures in its filings, Cloudflare still lost money in fiscal Q3 2026. Its operating loss was 7.3% of revenue, slightly wider than the 6.7% of revenue reported a year earlier. On management's adjusted measure, the operating margin reached 17.5%, the highest in the company's history.
Management expects Cloudflare to turn a GAAP profit in fiscal Q4 2026, arriving earlier than the 2028 deadline it set at its 2026 Investor Day. That profit remains a forecast.
Gross margin is lower than a year ago. Management said the adjusted measure fell to 72.4% in fiscal Q3 2026, down 290 basis points from a year earlier. That level remains inside the company's long-term target range of 70% to 77%. Management also said its Workers product has slightly lower gross margins than products such as Zero Trust, though it costs much less to sell.
Free cash flow was a smaller share of sales too: 10% of revenue in the quarter, against 13% a year earlier, management said. Cloudflare's fiscal Q4 2026 report, expected in February 2027, will show whether it turns the GAAP profit management expects.
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