Why Analysts Keep Chasing Palo Alto Higher After Earnings

By Chris Lange Updated Nov 25, 4:42PM EST · Published Nov 25, 10:01AM EST

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Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NYSE: PANW) reported its first-quarter earnings Monday after the market close as $0.15 in earnings per share and $192.3 million in revenue. The Thomson Reuters consensus estimates were $0.12 in earnings per share and $181 million in revenue. The first quarter from the previous year had $0.08 in earnings per share and $128.2 million in revenue.

This article has been updated to reflect the closing strength on Tuesday.

There is one key issue that we have seen before, which we are seeing again — Wall Street analysts just keep loving Palo Alto, and they seem to just never be able to get enough of the data security leader.

With Palo Alto Networks being one of the leaders in Next generation Firewall technologies, it is one of the top direct and indirect winners from all of the major corporate security and data breaches we have heard about over the last year. As we have shown below, analysts keep lifting their price targets —

The company gave guidance for the second quarter as $0.16 to $0.17 in earnings per share and $200 to $204 million. There are consensus estimates of $0.16 in earnings per share and $197.9 million in revenue.

Net income for the first quarter was $12.8 million, more than doubling from $6.2 million in the same period of the previous year. In this time product revenues grew 34% to 101.5 million and recurring subscription revenues grew 76% to $43.7 million. Deferred revenues grew 69% to $470.7 million year over year.

Also, here is why Oppenheimer came out ahead of earnings and named Palo Alto as one of five game-changing data security stocks. Shares of Palo Alto closed Monday up almost 4% at $113.26. Following the release of the earnings report, the initial response in Tuesday’s trading was positive and shares were up about 3% at $116.51. UPDATE FOR CLOSE: Tuesday’s closing price was up 6.1% at $128.19, and volume of 6.88 million shares was effectively a three-times normal volume spike.

The company’s stock has a consensus analyst price target of $115.64 and a 52-week trading range of $48.04 to $113.38. It has a market cap of $9 billion. With all the analyst price hikes, that consensus price target should be considerably higher in a few days.

Mark McLaughlin, President and CEO of Palo Alto, said:

We had a strong start to fiscal year 2015, outperforming expectations across all of our reported metrics. As the leading provider of the next-generation enterprise security platform, we delivered 52 percent billings growth and 50 percent revenue growth on a year-over-year basis. In today’s increasingly complex threat environment, enterprise customers recognize that a true, integrated and automated platform delivering prevention capabilities offers superior security with a superior total cost of ownership advantage. Our results demonstrate the differentiation and sustainability of that unique platform, the scalability of our go-to-market model and our ongoing growth potential.

Analysts took the opportunity to issue calls for Palo Alto immediately following this earnings beat, and across the board they all moved up price targets:

Stifel maintained a Buy rating and moved up its price target to $120 from $110
Deutsche reiterated a Buy rating and moved up its price target to $125 from $100
Credit Suisse maintained an Outperform rating and moved up its price target to $135 from $110
Needham maintained a Buy rating and moved up its price target to $123 from $110
FBR Capital Markets maintained an Outperform rating and moved up its price target to $121 from $105

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About the Author Chris Lange →

Chris Lange is a writer for 24/7 Wall St., based in Houston. He has covered financial markets over the past decade with an emphasis on healthcare, tech, and IPOs. During this time, he has published thousands of articles with insightful analysis across these complex fields. Currently, Lange's focus is on military and geopolitical topics.

Lange's work has been quoted or mentioned in Forbes, The New York Times, Business Insider, USA Today, MSN, Yahoo, The Verge, Vice, The Intelligencer, Quartz, Nasdaq, The Motley Fool, Fox Business, International Business Times, The Street, Seeking Alpha, Barron’s, Benzinga, and many other major publications.

A graduate of Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, Lange majored in business with a particular focus on investments. He has previous experience in the banking industry and startups.