GoDaddy (GDDY) Stock Drops 16% After Weak Bookings and Soft 2026 Guidance

TLDR

• GoDaddy (GDDY) stock fell 16% on Wednesday to $77.34, making it the S&P 500’s worst performer.
• Q4 EPS of $1.80 beat estimates of $1.58, but bookings of $1.28B missed the $1.31B forecast.
• Full-year 2026 revenue guidance of $5.195B–$5.275B came in below Wall Street expectations.
• Applications & Commerce bookings decelerated from 14% to 11% growth after a new promotional pricing strategy.
• Multiple analysts slashed price targets, with RBC cutting from $200 to $100 and JPMorgan from $200 to $167.

GoDaddy $GDDY had a rough Wednesday. The stock dropped 16% to $77.34 after the company posted its fourth-quarter earnings report — making it the worst performer in the S&P 500 on the day.

GoDaddy Inc., GDDY

The drop would be the largest single-day percentage decline for the stock since March 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It also puts GDDY at its lowest close since November 2023.

This year alone, GoDaddy has fallen roughly 26%, while the broader market has gained about 0.6%.

The earnings themselves weren’t all bad. GoDaddy posted Q4 EPS of $1.80, beating analyst expectations of $1.58. Revenue came in at $1.27 billion, in line with Wall Street forecasts.

So what went wrong? Two things: bookings and guidance.

Q4 bookings came in at $1.28 billion, missing analyst estimates of $1.31 billion. Within the Applications and Commerce division, bookings growth slowed from 14% in Q3 to 11% in Q4.

GoDaddy had launched a new go-to-market strategy that offered promotional pricing on one-year contracts to attract new customers. The trade-off was lower upfront bookings.

The company did add 9,000 new customers in the quarter, up from 4,000 in Q3. But analysts questioned whether that growth is sustainable, with RBC noting that new cohort attachment rates appeared in line with or worse than average.

Guidance Disappoints

For full-year 2026, GoDaddy guided for revenue of $5.195 billion to $5.275 billion, representing around 6% growth at the midpoint. Analysts had been expecting $5.246 billion — above the midpoint of the company’s own range.

Free cash flow guidance came in 3% ahead of Street estimates, and GoDaddy generated $1.54 billion in levered free cash flow over the last twelve months.

Benchmark analyst Mark Zgutowicz noted that management did not quantify the impact of the new go-to-market strategy on the A&C segment. He expects bookings to stay under pressure in the near term due to the shift toward shorter contracts and smaller initial order sizes from discount pricing.

He also said the gap between bookings and revenue should narrow through 2026, approaching parity by year-end as volume improves.

Analysts Cut Price Targets

The reaction from Wall Street was swift. RBC Capital slashed its price target from $200 to $100, citing weak bookings and what it called a “more realistic AI-discounted multiple.” The firm kept its existing rating.

JPMorgan cut its target from $200 to $167 but maintained an Overweight rating. Analyst Alexei Gogolev said the company is accelerating its AI transformation while managing near-term go-to-market headwinds.

UBS cut to $105, Cantor Fitzgerald to $90, and Barclays to $118 — all while maintaining Neutral or Overweight ratings.

The AI concern is real. Analysts have flagged that GoDaddy may be falling behind competitors like Wix.com and Squarespace in integrating AI features. RBC said the results would reinforce bearish views on AI’s impact on traditional web design platforms.

Cantor Fitzgerald had earlier floated the idea of GoDaddy going private as a way to escape public market pressure.

GDDY stock currently trades near its 52-week low of $86.78, down around 47% over the past year.

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