CrowdStrike Stock Soars on DoD Authorization, Raised Mid-term Guidance Seen as Impressive
2022.04.08 13:42
CrowdStrike (CRWD) Stock Soars on DoD Authorization, Raised Mid-term Guidance Seen as ‘Impressive’
Cybersecurity technology company CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD) announced on Thursday it has obtained a provisional authorization to operate at impact level 4.
The permit will allow the U.S. company to deploy its CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity platform to a large base of Department of Defense (DoD) and Defense Industrial Base (DIB) clients, marking a significant milestone in the company’s plan to launch its sophisticated cybertechnology in the public sector.
Adoption of superior cloud-native technologies is mission-critical for the DoD and the DIB, as all federal agencies must remain vigilant in today’s heightened threat environment. It’s crucial the government takes steps to adequately prepare for disruptive activity from our nation’s adversaries, said Shawn Henry, CSO of CrowdStrike and president of CrowdStrike Services.
CrowdStrike provides its cloud workload and endpoint security, threat intelligence, identity and data, as well as cybersecurity response services to 65 of the Fortune 100 companies and 15 of the top 20 banks in the world.
The company has recently teamed up with other companies to improve the cyber defense system of the U.S. through the joint Critical Infrastructure Defense Project.
Furthermore, CrowdStrike also held an Investor Briefing event where it presented new financial targets. Most importantly, CRWD said it is looking to achieve over $billion in ARR by FY26, which is much higher than the prior outlook of $3 billion and more by FY25.
Mizuho analyst Gregg Moskowitz called the new guidance impressive.
We view the revised outlook as highly encouraging, although we believe it will still ultimately prove too low. More broadly, we believe CRWD’s cloud platform remains highly differentiated, and we continue to believe strong ongoing execution can propel the shares much higher over time, Moskowitz said in a client note.
Similarly, Stifel analyst Brad Reback sees the new target as very achievable as he believes the company’s growth opportunity remains in the early days as the company should continue to gain unit share from its market-leading endpoint platform, drive ARPU gains given continuous product innovation as well as benefit from a very robust cybersecurity spending environment.
Moreover, given CrowdStrike’s operational efficiency (~30% FCF margin in FY22), we believe it will be extremely difficult for smaller, less advanced, competitors to sustain the pace of investment in both R&D and S&M that would be needed to close the technical/sales gap needed to catch CrowdStrike, Reback added.
By Senad Karaahmetovic
