Symbotic is no longer a pre-profit warehouse robotics story. The third fiscal quarter ended late June showed operating leverage on a platform that still lives almost entirely inside one retailer's distribution network. Revenue reached $721 million, a gain of 22% from the year-ago quarter. GAAP results flipped from a prior-year loss into a profit. The debate is no longer whether the systems work at scale. The debate is whether a Walmart-dominated project book can convert booked work into cash as fast as the income statement now implies.
The income statement improved for operating reasons, then the cash statement walked the other way. Systems work still supplies nearly all of the top line, while software maintenance and operation services grew faster from a small base as more sites went live. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization more than doubled, to $95 million. Cash still fell by roughly $300 million in the quarter as receivables rose and deferred revenue came down. A profitable automation vendor that burns cash when deployments accelerate is not broken, but it is not a software compounder either.
Management started 11 new system deployments and finished the period with 77 systems in the field. Four more sites went live, lifting operational systems to 56. Remaining performance obligations, the contracted work not yet delivered, sat near $22 billion and stayed essentially flat. That book still excludes a contingent Walmart back-of-store program that management now describes as an early twenty twenty-eight event. The next few quarters resolve a narrower question than growth: does free cash flow, cash from operations after capital spending, turn positive as billed work collects, or does the working-capital drain persist as the installed base scales?