UPDATED 19:04 EDT / AUGUST 28 2024

SECURITY

Cybersecurity firms CrowdStrike and Okta beat earnings forecasts but face challenges

Shares in both CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and Okta Inc. fell in late trading today despite the cybersecurity companies reporting solid quarterly figures.

CrowdStrike revised its outlook downward following a quarter that saw the company shrouded in controversy following an update to its Falcon cybersecurity product that brought down systems across much of the world.

For its second quarter, CrowdStrike reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.04, up from 74 cents the year prior, on revenue of $963.9 million, up 32% year-over-year. Analysts had expected to see adjusted earnings per share of 97 cents on revenue of $958 million.

The company ended the quarter with annual recurring revenue of $3.86 billion, up 32% year-over. Cash flow from operations in the quarter came in at $326.6 million, up from $244.8 million in the second quarter of fiscal 2024. CrowdStrike ended the quarter with $4.04 billion billion in cash and cash equivalents on hand.

Though CrowdStrike did highlight some achievements through the quarter, including a new strategic partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., its quarter will forever be remembered for the dubious Falcon update pushed out by the company in July. The broken update disrupted the operations of hospitals, financial institutions, airports, banks, mobile operators and more across the globe, with the result described as one of the largest information technology outages of all time.

It was later disclosed by Microsoft Corp. that an estimated 8.5 million computers running Windows had been affected. Though the number was estimated to be fewer than 1% of Windows installs worldwide, the problem was far more serious than the number suggests, as CrowdStrike software is used by many critical services.

The results in CrowdStrike’s second quarter didn’t appear to be affected by the drama that surrounded the company, since the outage came toward the end of the quarter. Since that time, it has not issued any pre-announcements or revised earnings. But the company revised its full-year outlook downward.

“CrowdStrike’s earnings were pretty much in line with our expectations,” said Dave Vellante, chief analyst at theCUBE Research, SiliconANGLE’s sister market research firm. “The impact on the current quarter’s revenue was minimal as expected and the company reset earnings forecasts.”

For its fiscal 2025 third quarter, CrowdStrike expects adjusted earnings per share of 80 to 81 cents on revenue of $979.2 million to $984.7 million. The revenue outlook was below an expected $1.01 billion.

For its full fiscal year, the company expects earnings per share of $3.61 to $3.65 on revenue of $3.89 billion to $3.902 billion. Analysts were looking for $3.90 and $3.955 billion and CrowdStrike had previously forecast revenue of $3.993 billion at the midpoint for the full fiscal year.

“There are still some unknown potential costs related to the incident, so I would expect investors will continue to be cautious for the next few quarters,” Vellante said. “As difficult as this crisis has been, CrowdStrike has handled it as well as could be expected. They’re not out of the woods yet, so we’ll have to stay tuned. The upcoming Fal.con conference next month will provide a good opportunity for us to gauge customer sentiment in real time.”

As for Okta, it reported adjusted earnings per share of 73 cents, up from 31 cents in the same quarter of the previous year, on revenue of $646 million, up 16% year-over-year. Both were beats, as analysts had expected earnings per share of 61 cents on revenue of $632.6 million.

For its fiscal third quarter, Okta expects to see adjusted earnings of 57 to 58 cents on revenue of $648 million to $650 million. For the full year, the company expects earnings per share of $2.58 to $2.63 on revenue of $2.555 billion to $2.656 billion.

The CrowdStrike outage was discussed extensively by theCUBE Research industry analysts John Furrier and Dave Vellante on an episode of theCUBE post on July 22. In the podcast, both discuss how the outage was important given its scale and widespread impact:

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram

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