Shares in CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. declined slightly in after-hours trading today despite the cybersecurity company reporting beats in third-quarter earnings and forecasting a fourth-quarter outlook higher than expected.

For the quarter that ended Oct. 31, CrowdStrike reported adjusted net income of $199.2 million, or 82 cents per share, up from $96.1 million, or 40 cents per share, in the same quarter of last year. Revenue rose 35%, to $786 million. Analysts polled by FactSet had projected earnings of 74 cents a share on revenue of $777 million.

CrowdStrike’s headline figures were driven by an increasing customer base, with the company’s annual recurring revenue growing 35% year-over-year to $3.15 billion, including an additional $223.1 million in ARR in the quarter. Analysts had expected $3.14 billion.

Net cash generated from operations was $273.5 million, up from $242.2 million in the same quarter of last year, and cash, cash equivalents and short-term investments on hand sat at $3.17 billion as of the end of October.

Recent business highlights include CrowdStrike acquiring application security posture Bionic.ai in September. The company is using the acquisition to extend its Cloud Native Application Protection Platform with ASPM to deliver comprehensive risk visibility and protection across the entire cloud estate, from cloud infrastructure to the applications and services running inside it.

More recently, CrowdStrike announced that its artificial intelligence-powered cybersecurity offering Falcon Go is now officially available on Amazon Business. Falcon Go is designed to deliver the power of CrowdStrike’s protection in a simplified package for smaller information technology teams and non-technical users in small and medium-sized businesses.

“CrowdStrike’s record third quarter exceeded expectations, delivering new milestones across the business: net new ARR growth accelerated to a record $223 million and ending ARR surpassed $3 billion, making CrowdStrike the fastest and only pure play cybersecurity software vendor in history to achieve this milestone,” co-founder and Chief Executive George Kurtz said in the company’s earnings release. “Our single platform architecture and unique data advantage unites security and IT teams in solving cybersecurity’s mission-critical challenges, driving increased win rates and record pipeline.”

For its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter, CrowdStrike expects adjusted net income of 81 to 82 cents per share on revenue of $836.6 to $840 million. Both were beats, as analysts had expected 78 cents and $836.7 million. For its full fiscal year, CrowdStrike expects adjusted earnings per share of $2.95 to $2.96 on revenue of $3.0478 billion to $3.0502 billion.

Tom Etheridge, chief global professional services officer at CrowdStrike, spoke with theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s video studio, in September, where he discussed how the company is adopting frontline defense against escalating cyberattacks and extortion.

Image: CrowdStrike