Cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD 0.13%) made its stock market debut just over three years ago in June 2019, and it is safe to say that the company has been a big money spinner for investors since.
After all, shares of CrowdStrike are up 170% since its initial public offering (IPO), easily outpacing the S&P 500's returns of 25% over the same period. So, the company has turned a $1,000 investment into $2,700 in a space of just over three years.
While the tech-laden Nasdaq-100 Technology Sector index has slipped 41% so far this year, CrowdStrike is down just 25%. That's not surprising as the company has been growing at a tremendous pace and it is unlikely to lose momentum. Let's see why that may be the case.
CrowdStrike Holdings is showing no signs of slowing down
CrowdStrike released its fiscal 2023 second-quarter results (for the three months ended July 31, 2022) on Aug. 30. The company's revenue shot up 58% year over year to $535 million, driven by solid growth in subscriptions. CrowdStrike's subscription revenue was up 60% over the prior year to $506 million, accounting for nearly 95% of its top line.
The company added 1,741 new subscription customers last quarter, a jump of 51% over the prior-year period. Its total count of subscription customers stood at nearly 20,000 at the end of the previous quarter. The good part is that CrowdStrike is building a loyal customer base that's adopting more of its cybersecurity offerings and helping the company create a sustainable revenue pipeline.
This is evident from the fact that 59% of CrowdStrike's subscription customers were using five or more of its cybersecurity modules at the end of the previous quarter. The number of subscription customers using six or more modules stood at 36%, while those on seven or more CrowdStrike modules totaled 20%.
The company's ability to sell multiple products to its customers has led to solid growth in a key metric that points toward better times ahead -- annual recurring revenue (ARR). This metric represents the annualized value of all customer contracts that are in force at the end of a particular period.
CrowdStrike's ARR stood at $2.14 billion at the end of the previous quarter, a jump of 59% over the prior year. This figure is higher than the revenue of $1.83 billion CrowdStrike has generated in the past four quarters, suggesting that the company's top line is headed higher.
Not surprisingly, CrowdStrike's guidance suggests that it is set to finish fiscal 2023 on a solid note. The company anticipates revenue of $2.23 billion in the current fiscal year, which would be a nice jump of 53% over the previous one. CrowdStrike's earnings forecast of $1.32 per share at the midpoint of its guidance range indicates that its bottom line could nearly double over last year's adjusted earnings of $0.67 per share.
More importantly, CrowdStrike is expected to sustain its impressive growth in the future.
CRWD Revenue Estimates for Current Fiscal Year data by YCharts
What's more, analysts are anticipating 74% annual earnings growth from the company for the next five years. CrowdStrike looks capable of clocking such outstanding growth over the next five years thanks to the massive revenue opportunity it is sitting on.
Why the stock could multiply investors' money once again
CrowdStrike estimates that its total addressable market (TAM) could grow from $58 billion in 2022 to $71 billion in 2024. In 2019, the company was sitting on a TAM worth $25 billion. Its total revenue at the end of fiscal 2020 (which ended on Jan. 31, 2020 -- just a month after 2019 ended) came in at $481 million.
So, CrowdStrike's revenue is on track to jump 360% over fiscal 2020 levels. At the same time, the company's TAM has increased by 132%, which means the company is growing at a faster pace than the market it is operating in. By 2025, CrowdStrike expects its TAM to more than double once again to $126 billion as compared to this year's estimate, driven by the launch of new products and the fast-growing nature of the cloud security market in which it operates.
So, the company's solid catalysts can help it deliver the eye-popping earnings growth that analysts are expecting. Of course, investors will have to pay a rich price to buy into the company's potential growth as it is trading at an expensive 20 times sales. But that's lower than last year's price-to-sales ratio of 36.
The gloom in the stock market, thanks to inflation and a hawkish Federal Reserve, may push CrowdStrike stock lower in the short term. But that could give investors a chance to buy this fast-growing cybersecurity stock at a cheaper valuation -- an opportunity they may not want to miss, since it can multiply their investments once again.
