CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) stock rose in Thursday’s premarket trading after the cybersecurity company delivered what it called the best quarter in its history.
Revenue rose to $1.47 billion, beating the $1.44 billion analyst estimate. Adjusted earnings of 31 cents per share topped the 29-cent consensus estimate.
CrowdStrike also issued third-quarter revenue guidance above Wall Street expectations and raised its fiscal 2027 outlook.
CrowdStrike Raises Full-Year Outlook
CrowdStrike raised its fiscal 2027 revenue forecast to between $5.99 billion and $6.01 billion, up from its previous range of $5.92 billion to $5.96 billion. Analysts expected $5.93 billion.
The company lifted its adjusted earnings forecast to between $1.25 and $1.26 per share from $1.22 to $1.24. Wall Street expected $1.23 per share.
CrowdStrike also increased its net new annual recurring revenue guidance by about $116 million to between $1.35 billion and $1.36 billion. The forecast implies growth of about 34%, compared with its initial projection of 22.5%.
For the third quarter, CrowdStrike expects revenue of $1.52 billion to $1.53 billion, above the $1.52 billion estimate. It projected adjusted earnings of 31 cents per share, in line with expectations.
The company expects third-quarter annual recurring revenue, or ARR, of $6.18 billion to $6.19 billion, representing 26% growth. Net new ARR is expected to range from $343 million to $347 million.
CrowdStrike maintained its forecast for a full-year free cash flow margin of at least 30%.
The company expects its acquisition of XM Cyber’s technology assets to close in the second half of fiscal 2027. Its outlook does not include any fiscal 2027 revenue or ARR contribution from the deal.
During the earnings call, CEO George Kurtz described cybersecurity as an “arms race,” saying, “AI is driving more cyber attacks. AI is driving more cyber spending.”
He said the rapid adoption of AI models and agents is expanding the attack surface, prompting businesses to accelerate security upgrades and increase spending on CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform.
Profitability And Cash Flow Improve
Adjusted gross margin reached 79%, while subscription gross margin rose to 81%, supported by cloud optimization efforts.
Adjusted operating income jumped 46% to $372 million. The adjusted operating margin expanded 350 basis points to 25%.
Net new ARR climbed 51% to $333 million, while ending ARR increased more than 25% to $5.84 billion.
Free cash flow rose 33% to a record $377 million, while operating cash flow reached $530 million.
Subscription revenue increased 27% to $1.40 billion. Professional services revenue reached a record $71 million.
Revenue from global systems integrators grew nearly 50%, led by demand for Next-Gen SIEM and vulnerability management products.
CrowdStrike ended the quarter with $5.01 billion in cash and cash equivalents.
Falcon Flex Growth Accelerates
CrowdStrike said 51% of its subscription customers use at least six modules. About 35% use seven or more modules, while 26% use at least eight.
Falcon Flex ARR surpassed $2.29 billion, up 101% year over year. CrowdStrike added more than 935 Falcon Flex accounts during the quarter.
Customers that switched to Flex recorded average ARR growth of more than 40%. More than 630 existing customers renewed or expanded through Flex, six times the year-earlier level.
Customers that renewed through Flex at least twice had 53% higher average ARR than their initial Flex level. New-customer Flex ARR accounted for a record 34% of second-quarter net new ARR.
Identity ARR rose 34% to more than $585 million. Falcon Shield ARR climbed more than 185%, while privileged account security ARR increased more than 35-fold.
Falcon Cloud Security ARR exceeded $905 million, up more than 29%.
Project QuiltWorks now includes more than 25 partners and has generated a combined contract-value pipeline of nearly $400 million.
Kroll migrated most of its customers to Falcon across 450,000 endpoints and more than tripled its spending through a multiyear Falcon Flex subscription.
Deal value through the cloud marketplaces of Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT) exceeded $600 million, up more than 30%.
CRWD Price Action: CrowdStrike Holdings shares were up 8.77% at $205.78 during premarket trading on Thursday, according to Benzinga Pro data.
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