This Company Is Building a Software Fleet One Truck at a Time

Author

Noah Zelvis
December 14, 2025

You do not need to memorize every buzzword in connected operations to follow Samsara.

Think about how fast recurring revenue and big-ticket customers are growing, whether all the AI-and-telematics chatter shows up in real-world outcomes like fewer accidents and fatter margins, and why the stock is flat while the earnings line is bending up.

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What Just Happened

Samsara (NYSE: IOT) has quietly crossed an important milestone: its first quarter of GAAP profitability. That is the moment a lot of institutional investors stop treating you as an interesting SaaS story and start putting you on the serious watchlist.

Annualized recurring revenue is up around 29 percent year over year to roughly 1.75 billion dollars, which is a big number for a company still talking about early innings. The large-customer engine is working as well: they just added a record 219 customers with more than 100 thousand dollars of ARR in a single quarter.

On the stock side, you would never guess it. The share price is basically flat for the year and down mid-single digits over twelve months, drifting in the mid-40s while smaller headlines go to flashier AI names. That disconnect is exactly why the estimate revisions matter.

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The Strategy In Plain English

Samsara sells a software platform to companies that run physical operations: fleets of trucks, construction equipment, factories, field teams. Their pitch is simple. Stick our sensors, cameras, and boxes on the stuff you already own, pour all that data into one cloud platform, and we will give you fewer accidents, lower fuel spend, less downtime, and cleaner audits.

The model is classic SaaS with a twist. Hardware and installation get you in the door, subscriptions keep you paid. Once the data is flowing, Samsara can layer on AI and automation: video-based safety coaching, predictive maintenance, route optimization, and compliance workflows.

If it works, customers steadily expand from one use case to many. That is why the company keeps talking about a platform rather than a point solution. A point solution can be swapped out. A platform that touches safety, insurance, compliance, and operations is much harder to rip.

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Why The Stock Looks Stuck

So why is the chart yawning while the fundamentals look better?

  • The valuation already grew up. Even after the recent lull, Samsara trades like a growth name, not a bargain bin special, and that makes new buyers more picky about timing.

  • Big deals bring lumpy quarters. Management has been clear that large enterprise contracts can take longer and land unevenly, which means ARR can wiggle from quarter to quarter even if the long-term direction stays up.

  • It is still early internationally. Europe is finally contributing its highest-ever slice of new business, but the overseas opportunity is less penetrated and slower to digitize, so investors know there will be investment and patience involved.

  • The market is tired of generic AI stories. You need to prove AI is doing something tangible, not just powering a slide.

  • In short, nothing is wrong, but the market is waiting to see a few more quarters of clean execution before paying up again.

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The Good Stuff You Can Actually Point To

  • First GAAP profit
    This is not just adjusted magic. Samsara just printed a quarter in the black under regular accounting rules, which makes the path to sustainable profitability much more believable.

  • Recurring revenue with real momentum
    ARR growing 29 percent from an already large base is exactly what you want in a subscription name. Add in that 219 big customers joined the 100k-plus club this quarter, and you have proof that larger organizations are not just piloting, they are committing.

  • AI that saves money, not just keystrokes
    Customers using Samsara’s AI dash cameras are seeing accident reductions on the order of one-third. That is the kind of outcome safety teams, insurers, and CFOs all understand, and it gives the sales pitch teeth.

  • Estimate revisions moving the right way
    Analysts now expect about 13 cents of EPS this quarter and around 50 cents for the full year, with estimates up sharply over the last month. When earnings forecasts rise across the board and nobody is cutting, that is usually not random.

  • International runway
    Europe just posted its strongest mix of new business, and the rest of the world is still in early-digitization mode. That is scary for timing, but attractive for the total addressable market.

The Rub You Should Respect

  • Lumpy enterprise deals
    Bigger customers mean bigger contracts, longer approvals, and more lawyers. That combination makes quarterly ARR less smooth, which can spook short-term traders even when the multi-year story is intact.

  • Early-stage global expansion
    Overseas markets bring different regulations, sales cycles, and competitive landscapes. Building out go-to-market and support outside North America will eat resources and may not be perfectly linear.

  • Competition from “good enough” incumbents
    Older telematics and fleet vendors are not just going to roll over. Some customers will decide that their aging system is fine for now, and Samsara still has to win the budget fight.

  • High expectations baked in
    A platform with 25-billion-plus market cap, strong growth, and a fancy ticker (IOT) is not exactly hiding. That means a modest stumble on growth or margins can sting more than it would for an unknown small cap.

What This Means For The Next 3–4 Quarters

From here, the setup is about turning the first GAAP profit into a habit while keeping growth respectable. A constructive path looks like this.

  • ARR growth stays somewhere in the high-20s range, maybe cooling as the base grows but not falling off a cliff.

  • Big customer counts keep climbing, especially those spending 100 thousand or one million dollars a year on the platform.

  • Operating leverage shows up, with expenses growing slower than gross profit now that a lot of the core platform build is done.

  • International mix creeps higher without blowing up sales efficiency.

Deliver that for a few quarters and the current “meh” share-price action starts to look more like a reset than a verdict.

What I’m Watching

  • Growth in 100k-plus and million-plus customers versus total logo count.

  • Net new ARR each quarter, not just the headline growth rate, to see whether large deals are filling in or stuttering.

  • Signs that new products keep contributing a larger slice of new business, not just one launch spike and then silence.

  • International commentary, especially in Europe, where early momentum could turn into a meaningful second engine.

  • Cash flow and stock-based compensation as profitability improves, to make sure the earnings quality is moving in the right direction.

How I’d Frame A Position

Samsara is no longer the tiny story stock it was at IPO, but it also is not priced like a megacap with every good year already in the rearview mirror. That creates room for patient, size-aware positioning.

  • Starter exposure for investors who want a software name tied to the physical economy rather than yet another pure cloud play.

  • Add only if the company strings together several quarters of solid ARR growth, healthy large-deal adds, and cleaner margins.

  • Be ready to lean against volatility when a slow enterprise deal quarter spooks the tape but the underlying churn and win rates still look fine.

The Bottom Line

Samsara is trying to do something straightforward and valuable: make fleets, factories, and field teams safer and more efficient by wiring them into one platform. The latest numbers say that pitch is resonating, with ARR up strongly, big customers signing on, and the company finally over the profitability line.

The stock, for now, is acting like it missed the memo. If you believe earnings estimates are moving up for good reasons and that AI-powered safety and telematics are more than a passing fad, that gap between business performance and share price may be the opportunity. Just remember this is still a growth name with lumpy quarters, not a sleepy utility – position size accordingly and let the earnings do the talking.

Action Recap

✅ Starter – Consider a modest position if you want SaaS exposure tied to real-world operations and safety.
✅ Add On Proof – Only after a few quarters of consistent ARR growth, large-customer expansion, and cleaner profitability.
⚠️ Trim On Trouble – If net new ARR stalls, big-deal timing turns from “lumpy” to “missing,” or international build-out starts dragging margins without clear payoff.

That's our coverage for today; thanks for reading! Reply to this email with feedback or any tech stocks you want me to check out.

Best Regards,
—Noah Zelvis
Tech Stock Insider