- Stock surges 6% after-hours to hit 2023 high
- Pioneer in cloud-delivered endpoint protection
- Full year 2024 guidance blasts past Wall Street consensus
Cyber security firm Crowdstrike (CRWD:NASDAQ) saw its share price surge 6% in after-hours trading following fourth-quarter results that topped Wall Street estimates and the company issued better-than-expected full-year guidance as ongoing cybersecurity demand spurred new business wins.
Shares in Crowdstrike are seen opening around $7 higher at $132.50 when trading restarts later today, a 2023 high.
WHY CROWDSTRIKE MATTERS
$31 billion Crowdstrike, based in Austin, Texas ranks as the world’s third largest cyber security pure play behind Palo Alto (PANW:NASDAQ) and Fortinet (FTNT:NASDAQ). It is seen as the pioneer of cloud-delivered endpoint protection and advanced threat intelligence, unifying next-generation antivirus, endpoint detection and response and a 24/7 threat hunting service, all delivered via a single platform.
The stock more than halved their value through 2022 as stock market investors shunned growth companies, but that has changed dramatically this year, rallying 32% to date.
Crowdstrike reported earnings of $0.47 a share on $637.4 million for Q4 of fiscal 2023 (to 31 Jan), beating Wall Street’s consensus of $0.43 and $624.7 million respectively. The earnings beat was driven by a surge in new customer subscriptions that pushed average recurring revenue, or ARR, to record levels in the quarter.
STICKY SUBSCRIPTION GROWTH
‘Highlights of the quarter included record net new ARR of $222 million, record net new subscription customers of 1,873, and record operating and free cash flow,’ the company said.
Annual recurring revenue - a gauge of the performance of its subscription businesses - rose 48% year-on-year, while net new subscription wins pushed overall subscriber numbers to 23,019, representing 41% growth year-on-year.
That would have impressed most investors but Crowdstrike’s positive news didn’t stop there - it also raised Q! and full year 2024 guidance. In Q1, the company expects EPS of $0.50 to $0.51 on revenue in a range of $674.9 million to $678.2 million.
Consensus had been set at $0.42 on about $663 million.
For the 12 months, CrowdStrike forecast EPS of $2.21 to $2.39 and revenue of $2.95 billion to $3.01 billion, above Wall Street forecasts pitched at $2.02 and $2.97 billion respectively.
