Cybersecurity provider Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ:PANW) will be reporting earnings tomorrow after market close. Here’s what to expect.
Palo Alto Networks beat analysts’ revenue expectations by 1.2% last quarter, reporting revenues of $2.19 billion, up 12.1% year on year. It was a strong quarter for the company, with EPS guidance for next quarter exceeding analysts’ expectations and a solid beat of analysts’ EBITDA estimates.
Is Palo Alto Networks a buy or sell going into earnings? Read our full analysis here, it’s free.
This quarter, analysts are expecting Palo Alto Networks’s revenue to grow 12.9% year on year to $2.12 billion, slowing from the 20.1% increase it recorded in the same quarter last year. Adjusted earnings are expected to come in at $1.47 per share.
The majority of analysts covering the company have reconfirmed their estimates over the last 30 days, suggesting they anticipate the business to stay the course heading into earnings. Palo Alto Networks has only missed Wall Street’s revenue estimates once over the last two years, exceeding top-line expectations by 0.7% on average.
Looking at Palo Alto Networks’s peers in the cybersecurity segment, some have already reported their Q3 results, giving us a hint as to what we can expect. Varonis delivered year-on-year revenue growth of 21.1%, beating analysts’ expectations by 4.7%, and Qualys reported revenues up 8.4%, topping estimates by 2.1%. Varonis traded down 10.7% following the results while Qualys was up 23.9%.
Read our full analysis of Varonis’s results here and Qualys’s results here.
There has been positive sentiment among investors in the cybersecurity segment, with share prices up 8.6% on average over the last month. Palo Alto Networks is up 2% during the same time and is heading into earnings with an average analyst price target of $392.76 (compared to the current share price of $386.04).
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