Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NYSE: PANW) will report its fiscal third-quarter financial results after the markets close Wednesday. Thomson Reuters has consensus estimates of $0.20 in earnings per share (EPS) on $223.22 million in revenue. In the quarter of the previous year, the company posted EPS of $0.11 and $150.70 million in revenue.
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This company has been a momentum trader’s dream over the past year and continues to show up well with resellers. It was reported to have the highest percentage share in the highly competitive firewall bake-offs at 42%. The company also ranked highest with the Wildfire product, which was the favorite in the advanced persistent threat (APT) space among the value-added resellers with 43%.
The company is helping to lead a new era in cybersecurity by protecting thousands of enterprise, government and service provider networks from cyberthreats, 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.
According to a recent report from Oppenheimer, Palo Alto is benefiting from strong customer growth and adoption. The Oppenheimer analyst also called the company a disruptor within the network security space and expects that it to continue to gain market share. The report said:
Given its platform approach, Palo Alto can also combine multiple security functions (firewall, IPS, web filtering, etc.) into a unified solution that improves efficiency and total cost of ownership for customers. With cost pressures fueling demand for more integrated security platform, we continue to view Palo Alto as a key beneficiary of a broad shift toward more platform-based security operations.
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Oppenheimer has a $175 price target for Palo Alto, more than $10 higher than the current price and nearly $10 higher than the consensus analyst price target.
Shares of Palo Alto were down 0.9% at $162.38 on Wednesday midday. The stock has a consensus price target of $167.17 and a 52-week trading range of $68.03 to $165.09.
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