UPDATED 21:26 EDT / JULY 18 2019

SECURITY

CrowdStrike shares jump 16% as it beats revenue forecast in first earnings report

Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. saw its stock jump by double digits in after-hours trading today after its first earnings report since going public last month.

The company, which sells cloud-based security tools and consulting and investigation services, reported a fiscal first-quarter loss before certain costs such as stock compensation of 55 cents per share. Revenue came to $96.1 million, well over double $47.3 million reported a year ago. Wall Street had forecast a loss of 47 cents per share on revenue of $95.6 million.

The numbers might have been mixed, but investors were clearly pleased with CrowdStrike’s success on the customer acquisition front. CrowdStrike’s stock rose more than 16% in after-hours trading after the company said it added 543 new subscriptions in the quarter, bringing its total customer count to 3,059 at the end of April.

George Kurtz (pictured), CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief executive officer, told MarketWatch the company was able to grow its customer base as enterprises are becoming more frustrated with legacy security platforms that just don’t cut it.

“The legacy technologies are just failing, continuing to fail, and as they talk about new releases coming out, they’re just really not giving anything that even remotely resembles a cloud-native architecture,” Kurtz said.

The CEO added that many of CrowdStrike’s customers are buying multiple products from the company. On average they buy four modules each, which helped drive the higher-than-expected revenue.

“We are focused on expanding our relationships with existing subscription customers by deploying additional cloud modules and protecting more of their endpoints,” Kurtz said in a conference call.

For the second quarter, CrowdStrike said, it’s expecting a loss of between 23 and 24 cents per share on revenue of $103 million to $104 million. That’s well ahead of Wall Street’s estimates, which had pegged the company’s second quarter earnings at a 31-cent loss on revenue of $96.7 million.

Crowdstrike’s stock has more than doubled from its IPO offering price of $34.

Photo: CrowdStrike

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