CrowdStrike Stock Rises As Longer-Term Opportunity ‘Remains Intact’

Despite the massively disruptive outage caused by a faulty CrowdStrike update in July, the cybersecurity vendor should continue to capture major growth opportunities over the longer term, an equity analyst tells investors.

CrowdStrike’s stock price climbed Thursday following the release of quarterly results that beat expectations even in the wake of the massive IT outage in July, which was caused by the cybersecurity vendor’s defective update.

One Wall Street analyst pointed to the fact that CrowdStrike executives remain confident in a prior plan to reach $10 billion in annual recurring revenue by early 2031.

“We remain committed to reaching $10 billion in ARR by the end of [fiscal] 2031,” CrowdStrike CFO Burt Podbere said during the vendor’s quarterly call with analysts Wednesday, referring to the company’s fiscal year that ends Jan. 31, 2031.

CrowdStrike’s ARR as of the end of the quarter reached $3.44 billion, up 34 percent from a year ago, the company said.

In spite of the outage, the target for achieving $10 billion in ARR is “consistent” with CrowdStrike’s long-term plan that was shared a year ago, wrote Shaul Eyal, a managing director and senior analyst at TD Cowen, in a note to investors Thursday.

Ultimately, CrowdStrike’s “longer-term story remains intact,” Eyal wrote. “Market demand remains healthy, new product ramps remain strong, and we believe CRWD will [continue to] maintain its strong competitive position.”

CrowdStrike’s stock was up 5 percent to $277.62 a share Thursday as of early afternoon EDT.

During the quarterly call Wednesday, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said the cybersecurity vendor has found “enduring trust” expressed by many customers in recent weeks, following the Microsoft Windows outage that resulted from the faulty update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform.

Multiple deals did not close as expected during CrowdStrike’s second fiscal quarter, which ended July 31, but CrowdStrike is confident that those deals will ultimately still be completed in the coming quarters, executives said.

On the whole, CrowdStrike believes that most of its customers will continue to see the benefits of working with the vendor and its highly regarded security technologies, Kurtz said.

CrowdStrike’s quarterly revenue rose 32 percent from the same period a year earlier, reaching $963.9 million and coming in about $5 million above the analyst consensus estimate.

Kurtz noted that the July 19 outage occurred “in the final two weeks of the quarter, when a meaningful portion of our sales typically close.” As a result, “it delayed deals into subsequent quarters.”

However, “the vast majority of these deals remain in our pipeline,” the CrowdStrike CEO said. “Despite this impact, I'm encouraged by the results we delivered. The enduring trust that prospects, customers and the market have in CrowdStrike is demonstrated by our Q2 performance.”

Kurtz also echoed his prior statements apologizing for the outage and thanking partners and customers for their efforts in recovering from the incident, while also outlining the steps that CrowdStrike has taken to prevent a recurrence of this type of issue.

The company has pledged to do additional testing and deploy staged rollouts of updates in the future, among other changes.

The July 19 outage, which had lingering impacts for much of the following week, saw 8.5 million Windows devices suffer the “blue screen of death” and become inoperable until they were fixed manually by an IT professional.

The societal impacts were wide-ranging—with major disruptions to air travel, health care and many other sectors—and estimates have suggested the costs to major corporations will reach into the billions of dollars.

For CrowdStrike, meanwhile, the value of the delayed deals is in the vicinity of $60 million, Podbere said.

But as of earlier this week, those deals “remain open,” Podbere said. “We expect these deals to close in future quarters.”

On Wednesday, CrowdStrike executives did not directly discuss specific litigation over the outage, such as the probable lawsuit from hard-hit Delta Airlines and several proposed class-action suits, though Podbere did generally address the legal ramifications of the incident.

“The outcome of litigation is inherently difficult to predict, particularly in the early stages, and it is still too early for us to estimate any potential legal exposure we may have at this time,” he said.

However, CrowdStrike’s customer agreements, Podbere noted, “contain provisions limiting our liability, and we maintain insurance policies intended to mitigate the potential impact of certain claims and have a strong cash position.”

While Delta CEO Ed Bastian has said the airline lost $500 million over five days following the outage, both CrowdStrike and Microsoft have accused Delta of ignoring multiple offers to help with recovery from the outage.