Tempus AI stock hits $80.62 as data growth sets 2027 forecast

Tempus AI shares touched $80.62 during Monday’s U.S. session, 11.6% above Friday’s $72.22 close, after the company reported $411.5 million of third-quarter revenue, up 23% from a year earlier. In its November 2 earnings release, the precision-medicine company raised the lower end of its 2026 sales outlook to $1.60 billion while holding the upper end at $1.605 billion. The intraday high is a dated observation, not a closing price or proof that any one line in the release caused the move.

The more useful stock question is whether the pieces that could lift 2027 sales are becoming large enough to justify the reaction. Tempus’s faster-growing Data & Applications unit supplied only about 26% of third-quarter sales, but about 35% of the year’s $77.3 million increase in quarterly revenue. Management also projects an approximately $80 million reimbursement benefit in 2027 from its xT CDx assay. Those are different growth engines, and the guidance revision itself was much smaller than the headline might suggest.

Article Brief

Key takeaways

3 Points18s Read

• 01The move–TEM reached $80.62 intraday on Nov. 2, 11.6% above its previous close; that is not a closing price.
• 02Guidance–The new 2026 revenue range raised the midpoint by only $2.5 million.
• 032027 test–Data & Applications supplied about 35% of Q3’s annual revenue increase; Tempus expects an approximately $80 million annual reimbursement benefit next year.

The $2.5 million guidance lift versus the 2027 question

Tempus’s new 2026 revenue range of $1.600 billion to $1.605 billion compares with the $1.595 billion to $1.605 billion range in its second-quarter outlook. The high end did not move. The midpoint increased from $1.600 billion to $1.6025 billion, a $2.5 million change, or roughly 0.16% of the old midpoint. Tempus left its full-year adjusted EBITDA expectation at approximately $65 million. Calling this a substantial guidance reset would overstate what changed.

The company nevertheless beat the revenue level it had set for the September quarter. Its Q2 presentation guided to $405 million to $410 million for Q3; the reported $411.537 million exceeded the top end by $1.537 million. Adjusted EBITDA of $25.572 million also came in above its $15 million to $20 million quarterly target. These are concrete execution positives. They say little by themselves about whether the share price at its intraday high is reasonable, because a stock reflects many future years of expectations, not one beat.

There is an immediate fourth-quarter hurdle inside the full-year range. Tempus reported about $1.142 billion of revenue for the first nine months in its quarterly filing. Subtracting that from the new full-year guide implies roughly $458 million to $463 million of Q4 revenue. That is about 11% to 12% above Q3’s $411.5 million, before rounding. This is TECHi’s arithmetic from company figures, not a separate management forecast. The next report needs to show that sequential step, not merely another good year-on-year percentage.

The data business is small enough to grow fast and large enough to matter

The CEO and CFO letter gives the cleanest segment comparison. Data & Applications revenue rose from $81.3 million in Q3 2025 to $108.1 million in Q3 2026, a $26.8 million increase. Total company revenue rose from $334.206 million to $411.537 million, or $77.331 million. Dividing $26.8 million by $77.331 million shows the data unit supplied about 34.7% of the total revenue increase, despite representing only 26.3% of current quarterly sales.

That does not mean every Data & Applications dollar is an AI software subscription. The segment includes data licensing and modeling, applications and a service-oriented Trials business. The letter says Insights, its licensing and modeling activity, grew 29% year over year, while Applications contributed $9.7 million versus $3.2 million a year earlier. A faster segment mix is favorable, but treating the entire $108.1 million as recurring AI-platform revenue would make the stock story less accurate.

The mix also matters for profitability. Tempus reported a 72% GAAP gross margin for Data & Applications and 62% for Diagnostics in Q3. At the reported segment sales, a dollar shifting toward the higher-margin data unit can raise consolidated gross profit, all else equal. The company-wide GAAP gross profit of $266.7 million was 64.8% of revenue, up from $209.9 million a year ago. Tempus attributed the improvement to Data & Applications growth, reimbursement and lab efficiencies; no single factor can be isolated from the public figures with precision.

Bookings are an additional signal, not earned sales. Tempus said its data-licensing bookings exceeded $550 million year to date after its Bristol Myers Squibb collaboration. The letter describes two BMS-related agreements totaling up to $192.5 million over roughly five years and says their revenue should be recognized largely over that period, about $36 million annually on a go-forward basis, excluding any extra cloud or compute purchases. An investor who drops the whole booking amount into a 2027 revenue model would overstate the near-term contribution. The test is how these commitments convert into recognized revenue and gross profit quarter by quarter.

A 2027 sensitivity with two separate levers

Here is a bounded way to test the 2027 story without inventing a share-price target. If Data & Applications repeated its 33% year-on-year Q3 growth rate in the corresponding quarter of 2027, $108.1 million would become about $143.8 million, an increase of $35.7 million. Management separately expects its xT CDx pricing change to add approximately $80 million of average-selling-price benefit in 2027 after revised reimbursement takes effect on January 1. Spread evenly for illustration, that is $20 million per quarter, equal to about 6.6% of Q3 2026 Diagnostics revenue.

Together, those two isolated levers would be about $55.7 million of additional quarterly revenue on a Q3-sized base, or roughly 13.5% of Q3 2026 consolidated revenue. This is not a 2027 company forecast. The data growth rate may change; the pricing benefit is management’s expectation, not cash already received; a calendar-year amount need not arrive evenly; and other Diagnostics changes, acquisitions and contract schedules also affect reported revenue. The point is to show how much of the possible next leg can be described with disclosed inputs, and which assumptions must be checked later.

A conservative countercase matters as much as the upside. Data & Applications grew 33% in Q3, but the company says its Trials component had softer growth. If licensing implementations slip, the same bookings could support revenue much later than stockholders expect. Likewise, the xT pricing benefit assumes successful conversion of tests to the higher-reimbursed assay on the timetable management described. A planned acquisition of Personalis could change both segment mix and cost structure; it is not included in this simple bridge. A one-quarter acceleration cannot establish a durable 2027 growth rate.

The stronger case is visible too. Oncology testing volumes grew 32% year over year, even as Diagnostics revenue grew 20%. Tempus says expanded reimbursement should help its realized price in 2027, and management reported roughly 12,000 minimal-residual-disease tests in Q3, up about 300%. Those volumes may create more clinical data that can support licensing and models over time. But the feedback loop is a business thesis, not a measured dollar of future revenue. Investors need subsequent test volumes, reimbursement receipts and segment sales to see whether it is actually compounding.

Adjusted profit is progress; GAAP still has distance to travel

Tempus’s $25.572 million of adjusted EBITDA was its strongest disclosed quarterly figure, up from $1.476 million a year earlier. The company also reported $9.2 million of cash provided by operations in Q3 versus $7.5 million used in Q2. Those improvements are material and give the bull case something more solid than a contract announcement. The Q3 cash number, however, is one quarter, not a guarantee that full-year or post-acquisition cash generation is positive.

GAAP tells a more demanding story. The same earnings statement showed a $56.864 million operating loss and a $14.851 million net loss. The net loss narrowed from $79.982 million a year earlier, but included $42.8 million of unrealized gains on marketable securities. It also included $50.8 million of stock-based compensation and related payroll taxes. Neither item can simply be ignored: the unrealized gain can reverse, and stock compensation is an economic cost to shareholders even when adjusted metrics exclude it.

The arithmetic gap between the $266.701 million gross profit and $323.565 million GAAP operating expenses was $56.864 million. A hypothetical extra $87.8 million of quarterly sales at the quarter’s 64.8% blended gross margin could close that operating gap if all other costs and margins stayed fixed. That assumption is unlikely to hold perfectly as Tempus expands testing, invests in models or integrates Personalis. It is a sensitivity, not a claim that the company needs exactly $87.8 million next quarter or that Q4 guidance produces GAAP profit. It makes the remaining scale issue visible beside the adjusted EBITDA headline.

Cash and marketable securities ended September at $854.4 million, according to the release. That is a useful financing buffer but not a substitute for comparing operating cash flow and acquisition spending over multiple quarters. The stock’s reaction can reasonably reflect improving margins and cash conversion. It can also reverse if the 2027 reimbursement benefit arrives slowly or the data unit’s higher growth fails to translate into earnings after operating expense.

What the share move can and cannot say

The market quote showed TEM at $78.82 at 10:46 a.m. Eastern, up 9.1% from the prior close, after it had touched $80.62 during the session. The high occurred in the preceding hour, around 10:46 a.m. on an intraday price feed. That confirms a meaningful same-day reaction; it does not reveal whether traders were responding mainly to revenue, adjusted EBITDA, the 2027 reimbursement expectation, broader health-technology buying or some mixture of them. The high also should not be read as a price target.

For a 2027 stock forecast, the key distinction is between a limited near-term guidance lift and a potentially larger but unproven next-year revenue bridge. Q4 must deliver the roughly $458 million to $463 million implied by current guidance. Data & Applications must keep contributing a disproportionate share of growth without weakening its margin. Reimbursement gains must appear in realized Diagnostics revenue. If those three checks hold while GAAP operating losses continue to narrow, the case for a higher valuation becomes stronger. If any one stalls, Monday’s intraday enthusiasm could prove premature.

What to watch

The next dated checkpoint is Personalis’ November 30 shareholder meeting on the proposed transaction; Tempus says regulatory review has cleared, but shareholder approval and other closing conditions remain. Then watch the fourth-quarter results for the $458 million to $463 million revenue implication of the current full-year guide, the first reported effect of January 1 reimbursement pricing, and whether Data & Applications growth remains ahead of the company as a whole. These are the numbers that can test the 2027 case more reliably than a single day’s high.