Cybersecurity firm has ‘clear green light’ for third-quarter earnings

Palo Alto Networks (Nasdaq: PANW), Fortinet (Nasdaq: FTNT) and several other cybersecurity firms appear to have a “clear green light” for third-quarter earnings, investment firm Wedbush Securities said this week.

Analyst Dan Ives said in September The quarter was “strong” as deal flow continued to hold despite macroeconomic uncertainty.

“We believe that federal trade flows [the third-quarter] More government agencies need data, endpoints, [and] In a memo to clients, Ives writes about infrastructure in a dangerous cyber environment where threats are increasing day by day. 1 for 3 stock split.

Ives added that the focus appears to be on moving to zero trust architectures that are likely to “disproportionately” benefit companies like Zscaler.Nasdaq: ZS) and Crowd Strike (NASDAQ: CRWD) amid rising federal spending and a continued push to the cloud.

Ives said that federal cybersecurity tracking in 2022 looks set to increase by 20% to 25% from 2021, and that 2023 will be almost I added that it is expected to be the same.

“Overall, trading activity appears to be tracked for each vendor, including Tenable (TENB), Fortinet (FTNT), CyberArk (CYBR), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), and Zscaler (ZS). Our end-of-quarter check was particularly solid, exceeding our expectations in this space despite the negative market noise baked into these names,” Ives explained. .

In addition, Ives said Checkpoint Software (CHKP) posted a “relatively strong” third quarter, despite a softening spending environment in Europe, as the deal pipeline was “strong” heading into the fourth quarter. I pointed out that it’s likely we’ve had a quarter.

Cybersecurity spending continues as Russia continues to battle Ukraine on all fronts, including cyberattacks, an increasing number of employees working from home, and the recent propaganda network linked to Russia and China shut down by the Meta Platform (META). outlook is as follows: It’s higher than it’s ever been, Ives said.

Specifically, we may see more momentum in areas such as identity threat detection, privileged access management, endpoint and vulnerability security, and the continued shift to Zero Trust software.

Despite the optimism surrounding the quarter, not all looks positive, Ives admitted. Apart from the aforementioned problems in Europe, there are all indications that SMEs are delaying cybersecurity deals as the ongoing economic weakness affects companies in varying ways.

Nonetheless, Ives said US strengths are “more than offsetting weaknesses in other areas,” especially since most security companies outperformed their targets by 3% to 5% as of the third quarter. More than enough,” he said. Ongoing global uncertainty.

Last month, it was reported that Palo Alto Networks (PANW) was nearing a deal to acquire Israeli cybersecurity startup Apiiro for around $600 million.