Technology

What to Expect From Palo Alto Networks Earnings

Chris Lange

Published: February 25, 2016 12:35 pm

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 12:42 pm

Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NYSE: PANW) is scheduled to report its fiscal second-quarter financial results after the markets close on Thursday. The consensus estimates are calling for $0.39 in earnings per share (EPS) on revenue of $318.32 million. The same period from the previous year had $0.19 in EPS on $217.66 million in revenue.

This stock has been a momentum trader’s dream over the past two years. Palo Alto Networks is helping to lead a new era in cybersecurity by protecting thousands of enterprise, government and service provider networks from cyber threats, and it boasted a staggering year-over-year billing growth. Unlike fragmented legacy products, its security platform safely enables business operations and delivers protection based on what matters most in today’s dynamic computing environments: applications, users and content.

This company’s security platform has new features that help security professionals overcome the distractions and time spent on problems caused by the overwhelming volume of alerts and manual processes associated with operating many discrete security products, and instead expand breach prevention capabilities and boost operational efficiency.

A few analysts weighed in ahead of the earnings report:

• Cowen has an Outperform rating with a $190 price target.
• Baird reiterated an Outperform rating with a $180 price target.
• Pacific Crest has an Overweight rating with a $190 price target.
• Oppenheimer has an Outperform rating with a $177 price target.
• Piper Jaffray reiterated an Overweight rating with a $208 price target.
• Barclays has an Overweight rating with a $170 price target.

So far in 2016, Palo Alto Networks has underperformed the broad markets, with the stock down 27% year to date. Over the past 52 weeks, the stock is only down about 8%.

Shares of Palo Alto Networks were trading up fractionally at $128.61 on Thursday, with a consensus analyst price target of $194.49 and a 52-week trading range of $111.09 to $200.55.