Here’s why Palo Alto stock is about 10% up in extended trading

Palo Alto Networks Inc (NYSE: PANW) reported its financial results for the fourth quarter on Monday that beat Wall Street estimates. Shares of the company climbed by 10% in extended trading as the cybersecurity firm gave better-than-expected guidance for the future.

Financial performance

Palo Alto remained in $119.3 million of net loss in the fourth quarter that translates to $1.23 per share. In the comparable quarter of last year, its loss was capped at a lower $58.9 million or 61 cents per share.

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On an adjusted basis, the American multinational earned $1.60 versus the year-ago figure of $1.48. It generated $1.22 billion of revenue in the recent quarter – an increase from $950.4 million. Palo Alto valued billings at $1.87 billion compared to $1.39 billion last year.

According to FactSet, experts had forecast $1.17 billion in revenue, $1.43 of EPS, and $1.71 billion in billings.

Future guidance

For Q1, Palo Alto now expects up to $1.58 of EPS, $1.19 billion to $1.21 billion in revenue, and up to $1.31 billion of billings. For the full year, it forecasts up to $7.25 of EPS on $5.28 billion to $5.33 billion in revenue. The Santa Clara-based firm predicts up to $6.65 billion in billings this year.

Also on Monday, Palo Alto extended its Cortex XDR (extended detection and response) platform and added new identity analytics capabilities.

CEO Nikesh Arora’s remarks

Commenting on the financial update, CEO Nikesh Arora said in a statement.

“Our strong Q4 performance was the culmination of executing on our strategy throughout the year, including product innovation, platform integration, business model transformation and investments in our go-to-market organization. In particular, we saw notable strength in large customer transactions with strategic commitments across our Strata, Prisma and Cortex platforms.” 

At the time of writing, the $36 billion company has a price to earnings ratio of about 61.