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MDB: AI Adoption And Expanding Platform Will Support Balanced Outlook Ahead

Published
19 Mar 25
Updated
17 Dec 25
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AnalystConsensusTarget's Fair Value
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Author's Valuation

US$440.10.09% undervalued intrinsic discount

AnalystConsensusTarget Fair Value

Last Update 17 Dec 25

Fair value Increased 2.84%

MDB: Leadership Transition And AI Demand Will Shape Durable Profitability Outlook

Analysts have raised their price target on MongoDB by $12, to $440 from $428, citing improving profitability, sustained Atlas driven and AI related demand, and confidence in the company’s leadership transition and long term growth profile.

Analyst Commentary

Recent research notes highlight a broadly constructive backdrop for MongoDB, with a series of price target increases reflecting improving execution, durable growth prospects, and rising conviction in the company’s AI and Atlas strategies. At the same time, some commentary underscores that expectations are high and that competitive and adoption risks remain in focus.

Bullish Takeaways

  • Bullish analysts emphasize that accelerating profitability and margin expansion, supported by better Atlas consumption trends, justify higher valuation multiples despite recent share appreciation.
  • Several notes point to strengthening AI related demand, including early traction with agentic coding and AI native workloads, as a key incremental growth driver that could sustain above market revenue growth over the medium term.
  • The leadership transition to CJ Desai is framed as a positive inflection, with his large scale operating background seen as enhancing execution, enterprise focus, and MongoDB’s ability to reach multibillion dollar revenue targets.
  • Updates following recent investor and analyst events cite a more robust product roadmap, including vector search and broader platform capabilities, as reinforcing MongoDB’s competitive position and supporting long term multiple expansion.

Bearish Takeaways

  • Bearish analysts and more neutral voices caution that AI monetization remains early, with some generative AI use cases not yet ramping, which could create a disconnect between elevated expectations and near term revenue contribution.
  • Concerns around competitive pressure, particularly from Postgres and other established database options, are seen as a potential overhang on valuation if MongoDB fails to clearly differentiate in AI centric workloads.
  • Some research flags that management’s medium term financial framework is relatively broad and conservative, which may limit near term upside to consensus estimates and temper multiple expansion in the absence of clear outperformance.
  • A subset of cautious commentary suggests a wait and see approach, arguing that while MongoDB is a high quality infrastructure asset, current pricing already discounts a long runway of growth and successful execution on its AI and Atlas ambitions.

What's in the News

  • Board appoints Chirantan "CJ" Desai as CEO effective November 10, 2025, succeeding longtime leader Dev Ittycheria. He will remain on the Board and as advisor to support a smooth transition and long term strategy execution (Key Developments).
  • MongoDB raises preliminary third quarter fiscal 2026 revenue guidance, expecting to exceed the high end of prior targets on the back of continued strength in Atlas (Key Developments).
  • Company updates fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2026 outlook, now guiding to 21% to 22% year over year revenue growth and lifting the full year revenue range by $79 million at the high end versus prior guidance (Key Developments).
  • MongoDB completes a major tranche of its share repurchase program, buying back 1,443,294 shares, or 1.77% of shares outstanding, for $351.69 million under the buyback announced March 5, 2025 (Key Developments).

Valuation Changes

  • Fair Value Estimate has risen slightly to approximately $440, up from about $428, reflecting modestly higher long term expectations.
  • Discount Rate has edged down marginally to roughly 8.91 percent from 8.91 percent previously, implying a slightly lower required return.
  • Revenue Growth forecast has increased slightly to about 18.44 percent from 18.36 percent, indicating a small uplift in top line expectations.
  • Net Profit Margin assumption has risen meaningfully to roughly 5.11 percent from 3.67 percent, signaling improved profitability expectations.
  • Future P/E multiple has fallen significantly to about 286 times from 388 times, suggesting a lower valuation multiple despite higher earnings assumptions.

Key Takeaways

  • Rising enterprise adoption and AI-focused demand propel recurring revenue growth, while platform innovations drive deeper customer engagement and operating margin potential.
  • Upmarket expansion, international reach, and strong developer focus position MongoDB for enduring revenue streams and long-term earnings strength.
  • Rapid cloud growth faces margin and differentiation pressures from integrated competitors, open-source advances, and regulatory complexities, risking slower growth and long-term share dilution.

Catalysts

About MongoDB
    Provides general purpose database platform worldwide.
What are the underlying business or industry changes driving this perspective?
  • The exponential growth of data from digital transformation and AI initiatives is increasing demand for MongoDB's scalable, flexible platform, as evidenced by strong customer uptake among large enterprises and new AI-native companies, suggesting continued revenue growth opportunities.
  • MongoDB's Atlas platform is capturing a higher share of workloads as enterprises migrate to cloud-native architectures, with Atlas now 74% of revenue and delivering 29% YoY growth, improving recurring revenue scale and gross margins that support future earnings expansion.
  • Ongoing product innovation-including integrated capabilities like search, vector search, and embeddings-increases platform stickiness and wallet share, enabling deeper penetration of current accounts and higher net revenue retention, which can drive both top-line and operating margin improvement over time.
  • Accelerated movement upmarket is leading to acquisition of higher quality, larger enterprise workloads that grow faster and for longer, creating durable, long-term revenue streams and greater operating leverage as new use cases scale.
  • Continued international expansion and success onboarding AI-native startups, combined with strategic investment in developer awareness and R&D, positions MongoDB to benefit disproportionately as organizations standardize on modern, developer-centric data platforms, supporting sustained revenue growth and long-term earnings power.

MongoDB Earnings and Revenue Growth

MongoDB Future Earnings and Revenue Growth

Assumptions

How have these above catalysts been quantified?
  • Analysts are assuming MongoDB's revenue will grow by 16.8% annually over the next 3 years.
  • Analysts assume that profit margins will increase from -3.5% today to 0.1% in 3 years time.
  • Analysts expect earnings to reach $5.0 million (and earnings per share of $-0.02) by about September 2028, up from $-78.6 million today. However, there is a considerable amount of disagreement amongst the analysts with the most bullish expecting $114.2 million in earnings, and the most bearish expecting $-196.4 million.
  • In order for the above numbers to justify the analysts price target, the company would need to trade at a PE ratio of 8069.9x on those 2028 earnings, up from -323.8x today. This future PE is greater than the current PE for the US IT industry at 32.4x.
  • Analysts expect the number of shares outstanding to grow by 7.0% per year for the next 3 years.
  • To value all of this in today's terms, we will use a discount rate of 8.71%, as per the Simply Wall St company report.

MongoDB Future Earnings Per Share Growth

MongoDB Future Earnings Per Share Growth

Risks

What could happen that would invalidate this narrative?
  • The rapid expansion in Atlas (cloud) business is driving solid revenue growth, but margin pressure may persist as cloud provider-native NoSQL competitors (e.g., AWS DocumentDB, Azure Cosmos DB) offer tightly integrated, lower-cost alternatives, which could force MongoDB into more aggressive pricing and R&D spending, negatively impacting net margins and future profitability.
  • The company's current growth is heavily supported by existing and upmarket enterprise workloads rather than new AI-driven use cases or net new customers, raising the risk that as these large enterprise customer additions and workload expansions mature or saturate, future revenue growth rates could decelerate.
  • Open-source document databases and community-driven solutions (such as DocumentDB via the Linux Foundation) continue to develop, and increased reliance by hyperscalers on open source ecosystems may threaten MongoDB's proprietary differentiation, risking both market share erosion and downward revenue pressure.
  • While management touts strong self-serve and developer-driven adoption, ongoing migration from on-premise (EA) to cloud (Atlas) could be hampered by tighter global data regulations and data sovereignty laws-especially as enterprises increasingly require hybrid or multi-cloud deployments-potentially increasing compliance costs and limiting international revenue growth.
  • The company's share count is rising as non-GAAP net income per share guidance is based on a growing number of diluted shares outstanding (reflecting significant stock-based compensation and share issuance), which increases the risk of long-term earnings per share dilution and may suppress share price appreciation despite profitability gains.

Valuation

How have all the factors above been brought together to estimate a fair value?
  • The analysts have a consensus price target of $317.1 for MongoDB based on their expectations of its future earnings growth, profit margins and other risk factors. However, there is a degree of disagreement amongst analysts, with the most bullish reporting a price target of $425.0, and the most bearish reporting a price target of just $222.0.
  • In order for you to agree with the analyst's consensus, you'd need to believe that by 2028, revenues will be $3.5 billion, earnings will come to $5.0 million, and it would be trading on a PE ratio of 8069.9x, assuming you use a discount rate of 8.7%.
  • Given the current share price of $312.88, the analyst price target of $317.1 is 1.3% higher. The relatively low difference between the current share price and the analyst consensus price target indicates that they believe on average, the company is fairly priced.
  • We always encourage you to reach your own conclusions though. So sense check these analyst numbers against your own assumptions and expectations based on your understanding of the business and what you believe is probable.

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Disclaimer

AnalystConsensusTarget is a tool utilizing a Large Language Model (LLM) that ingests data on consensus price targets, forecasted revenue and earnings figures, as well as the transcripts of earnings calls to produce qualitative analysis. The narratives produced by AnalystConsensusTarget are general in nature and are based solely on analyst data and publicly-available material published by the respective companies. These scenarios are not indicative of the company's future performance and are exploratory in nature. Simply Wall St has no position in the company(s) mentioned. Simply Wall St may provide the securities issuer or related entities with website advertising services for a fee, on an arm's length basis. These relationships have no impact on the way we conduct our business, the content we host, or how our content is served to users. The price targets and estimates used are consensus data, and do not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and they do not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Note that AnalystConsensusTarget's analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.

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