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CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. shares surged in the extended session Tuesday after the cybersecurity company’s quarterly results and outlook topped Wall Street expectations.
CrowdStrike CRWD, -2.73% reported a fiscal first-quarter loss of $19.2 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with a loss of $26 million, or 55 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings were 2 cents a share, compared with an adjusted loss of 47 cents a share in the year-ago period. Revenue rose to $178.1 million from $96.1 million in the year-ago quarter.
Analysts surveyed by FactSet had forecast an adjusted loss of 6 cents a share on revenue of $165.4 million. CrowdStrike had forecast an adjusted loss of 7 cents to 6 cents a share on revenue of $164.3 million to $167.6 million for the first quarter.
“CrowdStrike finished the quarter with strong momentum and delivered results that exceeded our expectations across the board,” said George Kurtz, CrowdStrike’s co-founder and chief executive, in a statement. “An increasing number of organizations recognize the power of CrowdStrike’s cloud-native Falcon platform to effectively stop breaches as well as simplify their security and I.T. operations stack with a single, lightweight agent.”
CrowdStrike was an early beneficiary of the work-from-home rush after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic as evidenced in the company’s previous earnings report in late March. CrowdStrike provides cybersecurity for clients that is “cloud first,” meaning it is provided independent of a client’s on-premise corporate servers and is better suited for remote access and updates.
Shares rallied as much as 8% after hours, following a 2.7% decline in the regular session to close at $92.25.
Annual recurring revenue, a Software-as-a-Service metric that shows how much revenue the company can expect based on subscriptions, surged 88% to $686.1 million for the quarter, while the Street expected $643.1 million. CrowdStrike report ARR of $364.6 million in the a year-ago period.
CrowdStrike expects an adjusted loss of 2 cents a share to break-even on revenue of $185.8 million to $190.3 million for the fiscal second quarter, while analysts forecast a loss of 6 cents a share on revenue of $173.1 million.
Of the 21 analysts who cover CrowdStrike, 15 have overweight or buy ratings, four have hold ratings, and two have a sell rating, with an average price target of $82.90, according to FactSet data.
The ETFMG Prime Cyber Security ETF HACK, -0.59% closed down 0.6% Tuesday, the S&P 500 SPX, +0.82% rose 0.8%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +0.59% advanced 0.6% for the session.
For the year, CrowdStrike shares are up 85%, compared with a 9.6% gain in the HACK index, a 4.6% decline in the S&P 500, and a 7.1% gain in the Nasdaq.
