Cybersecurity is a hot-button topic in the business world today. In 2015, Cybercrime cost businesses $3 trillion, but that's projected to rise to $10.5 trillion in 2025. There likely will be more attacks in the future that are more costly, dangerous, and frequent.
Businesses are incentivized to keep their names out of the headlines as a victim of an attack. A successful attack could mean lost business, ransom payments, and negative publicity. Many businesses are turning to CrowdStrike (CRWD +5.95%) to avoid these outcomes by protecting their network endpoints.
Not only is CrowdStrike a top-notch cybersecurity platform, I believe it's an excellent investment for growth-oriented portfolios. Here's why.
A smarter cybersecurity platform
One of the easiest ways to infiltrate a company's internal systems is to access it through a network endpoint. This endpoint could be an employee's cellphone, laptop, or any other equipment on the network. As a line of defense, many companies roll out antivirus or other types of software to protect these devices.
However, this is risky, as many programs are stagnant and require updates. If a hacker finds a way in, thousands of businesses could be at risk until the provider patches their software.
CrowdStrike isn't prone to this flaw. It's a cloud-based platform and harvests trillions of data points each week from attackers trying to access the devices it protects. Once one attack occurs, CrowdStrike automatically adds that data point to its machine learning (ML) model and utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) to instruct the program on how to protect against that form of attack on devices across its customer base.
NASDAQ: CRWD
Key Data Points
This solution is highly effective. Forrester Research found that CrowdStrike provides more than $1.5 million in equivalent IT support. It also has a three-month payback and a three-year 403% return on investment. That kind of value proposition makes it an easy selling point to businesses when determining what cybersecurity provider to go with.
Thousands of customers have already chosen CrowdStrike as their cybersecurity provider. In the second quarter (ended July 31), the customer count grew 51% year over year to 19,686. Among those are 69 of the Fortune 100 and 15 of the top 20 U.S. banks.
Customer growth is great, but it's not a good investment if CrowdStrike can't properly monetize them. Fortunately for investors, it is doing a great job of this.
Growing rapidly into a massive market opportunity
Because CrowdStrike is a subscription service, an important metric for investors to watch is its retention rate. This metric clocked in at 123.9% in Q2, which means existing customers spent $123.90 for every $100 they spent the previous year. Not only is CrowdStrike good at acquiring customers, but it's also fantastic at squeezing more money out of each one with every passing quarter.
Overall, CrowdStrike's annually recurring revenue (ARR) rose 59% in Q2 to $2.14 billion. This growth rate is impressive, especially considering the difficult Q2 environment in which many businesses weren't interested in purchasing expensive enterprise software.
Although CrowdStrike isn't profitable from a net income basis, it does produce positive free cash flow (FCF). In Q2, it generated $136 million in FCF -- a 25% margin. Still, the company isn't far away from being profitable. CrowdStrike lost $49.3 million in the quarter, and with its growing $2.3 billion cash hoard, the business is in no danger of running out of resources.
CrowdStrike's path to profitability is pretty straightforward; it needs to continue its rapid growth. It also has a considerable growth runway, as it believes its current total addressable market is currently $58.3 billion. Still, this number will expand to $126 billion by 2025 with its future planned offerings.
The one downfall with CrowdStrike's stock is its expensive stock price. I'm not talking about the actual price investors pay for stock; I'm talking about its valuation. From a price-to-sales standpoint, CrowdStrike trades at an expensive 24 times sales.
For comparison, a mature enterprise software company like Adobe trades at 11 times sales. That's quite a premium for CrowdStrike's stock, but remember, the company is far from done growing. The market is forward-looking, thus the premium valuation.
With the massive opportunity in cybersecurity, I think this is a fair price to pay for CrowdStrike's stock. This stock will likely look expensive for many years, and investors will miss out on owning it if they wait for the valuation to drop. However, this recommendation comes with a caveat: Don't buy the stock unless you're willing to hold it for at least three to five years.
CrowdStrike's business opportunity will last at least that long, so investors should be willing to hold for a similar period. CrowdStrike is one of the best cybersecurity stocks today; use the stock's short-term weakness as an opportunity to establish a long-term position.
