What happened
Shares of Zscaler (ZS 1.40%) climbed 17.1% in March, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The cloud-security company's stock climbed as more businesses took their work digital and dramatically outperformed the broader market last month.
Zscaler Private Access (ZPA) and Zscaler Internet Access (ZIA) are seeing increased use as customers aim to keep workflows steady and secure amid coronavirus-related challenges. The heightened demand for cybersecurity and private-network services helped the company's stock bounce back from a roughly 7% sell-off that occurred in February after second-quarter results arrived with third-quarter guidance that fell short of the market's expectations.
Image source: Getty Images.
So what
Zscaler's third-quarter guidance underwhelmed the marked in February, but CEO Jay Chaudhry published a letter on Microsoft's LinkedIn platform on March 15 detailing some positive business developments amid the novel coronavirus crisis.
Chaudhry's LinkedIn post stated that Zscaler's overall traffic had more than tripled since January -- with the company's recently opened Milan data center seeing huge usage and traffic being more than 12 times higher in China, six times higher in Seoul, and two times higher in Tokyo.
Now what
Zscaler stock has continued to gain ground in early in April's trading. The company's share price is up roughly 2.5% in the month so far.
Per the guidance the company issued in February, Zscaler expects to post non-GAAP (adjusted) third-quarter earnings per share between $0.01 and $0.03 on sales between $105 million and $107 million. For the full-year period, the company is guiding for adjusted earnings between $0.14 and $0.16 per share and total revenue to be between $414 million and $417 million.
Zscaler is valued at roughly 19.5 times this year's expected sales.
