Pure Storage Significantly Ups Guidance On Its Flash Storage, Cloud Focus

‘While the global macro environment remains as variable and as uncertain as ever, our strong execution and thoughtful planning have kept us ahead of the curve, and we remain confident in our ability to extend our industry leadership, as indicated by our improved guidance,’ says Pure Storage CEO and Chairman Charles Giancarlo.

Pure Storage is ignoring any talk about macroeconomic issues as it continues to grow its business on the back of its successful cloud-focused flash storage strategy.

Charles Giancarlo, CEO and chairman of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based storage technology developer, Wednesday told an audience of financial analysts during his company’s second fiscal quarter 2026 quarterly financial conference call that the company expanded its double-digit revenue growth thanks to its strong enterprise performance and accelerating momentum of core software and service offerings including Evergreen//One, Cloud Block Store, and Portworx.

“Our growing success stems from the compelling value proposition of the Pure Storage platform,” Giancarlo said in his prepared remarks. “We deliver simplicity, reliability, and long-term value with our integrated Purity operating system. Purity is the infrastructure software that has enabled the only true non-disruptive evergreen service and an unrivaled storage-as-a-service model with Evergreen//One.”

Macroeconomic concerns, including concerns about tariffs, have not slowed Pure Storage down, Giancarlo said.

“While the global macro environment remains as variable and as uncertain as ever, our strong execution and thoughtful planning have kept us ahead of the curve, and we remain confident in our ability to extend our industry leadership, as indicated by our improved guidance,” he said.

Indeed, Pure Storage Wednesday raised its full fiscal year 2026 revenue guidance to be in the range of $3.6 billion to $3.63 billion, or 14 percent year-over-year growth at the midpoint over fiscal year 2025. That is up by 300 basis points from its previous revenue guidance of 11 percent year-over-year growth.

Operating profit for the year is expected to be in the range of $605 million to $625 million at the midpoint, or 10 percent higher than last year, and a 300-basis point increase from its previously provided guidance of $595 million.

Third fiscal quarter 2026 revenue is slated to rise 15 percent year-over-year to be in the range of $950 million to $960 million, while operating profit should rise by 14 percent over last year in the range of $185 million to $195 million.

Pure Storage’s headcount increased by 120 employees over its first fiscal quarter 2026 to about 6,100 employees.

That growth builds on Pure Storage’s focus on all-flash storage technology and infusing it with leading cloud capabilities, Giancarlo said.

For instance, he cited Pure Storage’s new Enterprise Data Cloud, based on the company’s Purity storage environment, which he said lets businesses automate their storage and provides software-defined data management.

“The Enterprise Data Cloud is an industry-changing architecture that transforms how organizations store and manage data,” he said. “It replaces traditional siloed, compute stack-dedicated storage with a software-defined and orchestrated, enterprise-wide data service. Customer demand for Fusion continues to grow, in both commercial and enterprise accounts.”

Purity, enhanced with the company’s Fusion SaaS management technology for pooling all Pure Storage arrays into a single pool with fleet re-balancing of capacity, lets businesses manage their global data as an integrated cloud, providing a policy engine, presets, and cataloging for how different classes of data are managed on a global basis, Giancarlo said.

The Enterprise Data Cloud also lets businesses reduce labor costs and risk while increasing operational agility through software-defined enterprise policies, he said.

“Data sets become centrally governed, with policies and automated workflows handling the heavy lifting, freeing IT teams from manual configurations for each and every data set,” he said. “The Enterprise Data Cloud, or EDC, architecture allows fast, seamless, and consistent policy changes as business needs evolve. The key takeaway is that by virtualizing enterprise storage, Pure enables organizations to stop managing infrastructure and start managing data as a strategic asset, maximizing its value, ensuring availability, and standardizing control.”

Pure Storage in the second fiscal quarter also continued strength and growth in its Evergreen//One and Evergreen//Forever subscription sales, Giancarlo said.

“Evergreen//One continues to deliver consistent customer value that protects customers from future uncertainties, including capacity and performance planning, pricing, and tariff unpredictability,” he said. “Evergreen//One promises customers service level agreements that ensure the performance, capacity, and security they need now and in the future with consistently the most modern technology, without disruption.”

Pure Storage is also making strong headway in deploying its flash storage with hyperscaler cloud providers, Giancarlo.

For instance, he said, the company’s strategic co-engineering effort with Meta continues on track.

“They have initiated their first volume deployment, and we have recognized our first revenue from this activity in Q2. … Overall, our early-stage engagements with other top hyperscalers continue to progress well, as hyperscalers in general are increasingly seeking to accelerate their transition to flash data storage, where we continue to lead the industry in all things flash,” he said.

Pure Storage is doing this by helping cloud hyperscalers to replace their raw storage with the company’s DirectFlash technology, which lets all-flash arrays communicate directly with raw flash storage, Giancarlo said. Pure develops high-performance storage for hyperscalers’ storage media layer to work with their own storage protocol and format layers, while Pure Storage also brings its Pure Cloud Block Store technology to provide advanced services on top of the hyperscalers’ own storage services, he said.

“Cloud Block Store, provided by Purity Software at Layer 3, is able to provide enterprise customers the advanced storage services that their traditional applications depend on in the cloud while saving them significant expense,” he said.

Pure Storage By The Numbers

For its second fiscal quarter 2026, which ended August 3, Pure Storage reported total revenue of $861.0 million, up 12.7 percent over the $763.8 million the company reported for its second fiscal quarter 2025.

This included product revenue of $446.3 million, up from last year’s $402.6 million, and subscription services revenue of $414.7 million, up from last year’s $361.2 million.

Total revenue beat analyst expectations by $14.6 million, according to Seeking Alpha.

For the quarter, Pure Storage also reported GAAP net income of $47.1 million or 14 cents per share, up from last year’s $35.7 million or 10 cents per share. That beat analyst expectations by 5 cents per share, according to Seeking Alpha.

On a non-GAAP basis, Pure Storage reported net income of $144.5 million or 43 cents per share, down slightly from last year’s $149.5 million or 44 cents per share.