PANW

ClippingTetris

https://preview.redd.it/qyaeb28ny8mh1.jpeg?width=1179&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3782431c07007de30a887e51abc4f3922f0578bd Save from last year. This was 1-day gains, some up 1900%. Oracle LEAPs. Funny, I also own NVDA of 150 shares total too, around 1100%. My two cents, getting overly attached to gains (or losses) in the end inhibits gains. I’ve debating selling some of my Nvidia to add to already stronger stakes in $CRWD, $PANW (or $CIBR combined), $DDOG, $CRM, $AAPL, $NOW, $GLW, $UNP or $XBI (health etf). Nvidia is a great company, up 22% YTD. But look at diversifying into other barring a big tax implication selling. IMO ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

No_Presentation9490

watch 1min/5min charts for resistance/support areas, pay attn to where the put walls call walls and gamma flip are, corroborate price levels with the day chart, always use tight stops for more volatile stocks. for instance this morning i tried going long on PANW but got stopped out when it dumped. because i know this stock likely has momentum i put in a long when the trend rolled back positive and kept moving stop up at invalidation levels that correspond to the stock making a lower high/lower low

seacloud6

Been investing in Cloudflare (NET) since 2020, took profits already and the rest is a forever hold. It's looking to me like a future giant, however it's currently out over its skis valuation-wise and extremely volatile. I plan to buy more if/when it declines severely. Other current faves include GOOGL (cash-cow core business plus AI and quantum possibilities), RDDT (it isn't getting seen by the market yet, but I can't escape the fact I spend hours on here every week), PANW (also possibly out over its skis, wish I could go back and buy more than I already did), RVMD (feels good to invest in something that's helping people too), and yes NBIS but I bought at a lower price. VG has been a decent hedge. ASTS is a binary bet, sized accordingly.

Overgrown_Dreams89

PANW AND DELL and SNOW Calls VSXY Puts

Spac55

PANW. 380

Spac55

PANW. Going high

throwaway78907890123

PANW you pos…you are supposed to pump after a price upgrade

WendyDumpsterFire

PANW wtf

SpiderWil

have u looked at this? PANW and ZA 12%/10% up today

SpiderWil

trades for next week 1. AVGO 2. HPE 3. DELL 4. CRDO 5. NTAP 6. PANW 7. ZS 8. MDB / GTLB

Game3k

Still tons of upside in cybersecurity. Yolo NET CRWD PANW

octopus_serenader

Ugh feels too late to get in on this PANW earnings run.

Fun_Presentation_215

PANW CEO said he was going to buy DDOG and OKTA back in 2024–25, but he shit his pants. Literally nothing has changed, and the stock is up 10%. I hope they get destroyed by earnings next week.

warlizardfanboy

PANW and CRWD doing their part

Stonksboi68

PANW

CD274

So how high is PANW going before earnings

Ltheman00

Wow I thought about PANW when I saw it below 330 this morning too

tired_ani

BSX hit by a cyberattack. I am tempted to add to my position which is down 25%. I think cyberattacks are the norm going forward, glad I was able to pick up FTNT, PANW and CRWD at the bottom now sitting at almost 100% gains. Others I want to add to - HONA, TDG, META, SPGI

WordsHappenedHere

Most here have no clue how to buy weakness in a high conviction name. Like with software where the narrative just doesn’t make sense. I was posting about BUG CRWD and PANW when the market thought companies would vibe code cybersecurity. It was all laughable.

winegirl921

I started doing this about 6 months ago. I have about 8 companies (IBM, MSFT, COIN, PANW, TSLA, AAPL) that I track which have reliable swings in value per share. So I buy the dip and try to sell as quickly as possible. If it keeps going down I just hold it until it goes up again. When it goes up I don't get greedy, I sell based on what I'm happy earning so I can turn around and buy another dip. My goal is to keep building my base so I can invest more frequently across more stocks at one time. To be clear, this is fun money in a brokerage account, not my retirement savings. I started with $1700 in June and now have $2200. Didn't really start looking at it daily until a month ago.

Game3k

Cybersecurity is the only certain $NET $CRWD $PANW

GlokzDNB

No, i've built my own dashboard based on my broker's export that shows how many trades failed and how old are they. By failing I mean negative alpha against SP500 etf as a benchmark (I know beta also matters but lets not dive into it here) So my strategy has 78% win ratio, which means around 4 in 5 trades i did in the last 5 years beat the sp500 as of today. I dont have daily data to measure how it changed over time unfortunately. And what I mean is that I buy a stock, and its a lose for first 3 months and then its a winner for 6 then today its either a winner or loser. I think this should be a huge philosophical question we all should have - should our trades quantify by the today's time horizon or it's still too early? Example could be crypto, I started averaging down while it was hot, now its -50% from it's highs and the alpha is even worse with sp500 rallying. Was crypto a bad trade? Yes, if it never recovers. No, if the bounce back will generate alpha over sp500 in the next 2/3/5/10 years horizon. Am I selling and saving as much as -60/-70% alpha on my trades? No, because I do not believe crypto already peaked and it will never return and get new ATH. So that's the first thing to settle, what does it mean for strategy to be effective, before we even dive into what the strategy is. With 78% winratio im sure my 'losing' trades can become winning in longer horizon and some trades can become winners in the long run (e.g. microsoft which i bought for 250$ and it has negative alpha even though they grow as crazy for 18 quarters in a row !!) Now the strategy itself: I seek for discounted high quality business that has good debt to equity, diversified revenue source, is a very known company, has moat, has big market share/is a leader in their category AND a real risk that makes it discounted or trading under 5/10/all time average P/E Then the hard job is to decide whether the risk is real and what would need to happen for the company to go back to their avg multiple. That's all. But the companies I seek for need to be within big trends / be discussed on reddit youtube or cnbc Examples of my winning trades: ASML - has long term moat, I bought dip on chinese export control. Even though it felt risky and expensive, my best trades are now at 300% return in less than 2 years. That was good trade for two reasons - I made a lot of money on it recovering its multiple but now I'll make even more on compounding as this company will grow anywhere from 10-15% over the next decade EVERY year. And that every is key here. Do the math. I already trimmed some because it got too much % in my portfolio, but thats the only reason and it was probably a mistake in this case but that what my risk control strategy forced me to do and probably some day it will save my ass even though i will cut N winners on the way GOOG - again, big moat and diversified revenue sources - I bought the antimonopoly case risk. Here's the power of individual investor, even though everyone knew the whole thing is BS, fund managers and pension funds couldnt buy that risk. Their policy wont let them buy risk of this level even if its so easy to debunk. That was long time before gemini proven to be a real frontier model, but I've watched closely what google does and who works for them. I would say easiest money I made but I made easier in the next chapter PANW - saaspocalypse was such a great opportunity and it is my best alpha net gain so far. I had better returns but only with 1-2% of portfolio, this was >5% bet that landed 150% in just 3 months. I looked at the whole thing and there were few opportunities - atlassian/now/crm/adbe. But I couldn't tell whether the risk of AI reducing white collar jobs is real or not. I know these companies wont be replaced by vibecoded apps, but I couldnt say if the amount of seats they sell wont go down and they were all very expensive/burning money to drive the revenue. Adobe was cheapest but the risk there is biggest, its the first company that comes to my mind what is next kodak. So the only sector within saas that didnt had this risk was cybersecurity. In 2020's covid era, there was one interesting phenomenon - all investments been cut, except cybersec. This lead me to what is currently said aloud in CNBC - there will not be a single CTO or CEO saying, oh lets cut on our cybersec spending, even if AI is another layer of defense. Nobody will risk cybersec attack with cost saving. Its the last thing where you look for savings, a single mistake could turn a great business into a dead/struggling company for years. It was easiest to call BS on all these anthropic bulls. I was just buying dips and kept buying and caught the bottom of the bottom and the dips of dips of dips. MSFT - been buying it for a long time, but as I mentioned, i started buying it when chatgpt came out for 250$, then sold some for 520 before it went down to 350$. So the part where my strategy played out greatly is buying the openai proxy discount. MSFT was punished for anthropic and google catching up. But what people do not realize, openai, anthropic and google deep mind are AI factories. The model is just a product and honestly, the pace of releasing new products is crazy. Its not like a smartphone once a year, its literally once every 2-3 months. We get 4 new iphone models per year to compete with each other. Now - would apple be dead if Samsung produced 1 or 2 flagship models that are better than iphones? That's a real risk if the trend continues, but question is - are both growing? What it both apple and samsung both sold more and more devices ? Is that a risk for microsoft ? They invested 10B into something thats now worth 50 in just few years. Is anthropic getting more market share in 10 years? Maybe, maybe not. To me important fact was that MSFT is only partially exposed to that but the punishment was not proportional to their whole business. But I also discredit the risk of openai being a bad investment. IMO if private funds run out, gov will pour money because AI = cybersec = military = global dominance and cold war 2.0. People compare AI buildout to dot com bubble or railroads buildout. To me its a cold war arm's race, people just didn't realize in 1960 that this race will last for so long or how it will end. Its the same here, the ai race will last decades and people today dont even realize the stake. This is not a private investment into a technology (smartphones), this is a national security / world order of 21st century being determined through tech race. Now funded both by public and private money (China subsidizes as it can, while US still keeps it private). Just look what happened to Intel in the last year since its become a national security issue. AI pact starts with sentence *"The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence".* People do not see AI as a weapon/military technology but it's literally that. It wouldn't' be 50 years ago, but in 2026 everything is now virtual including all their money and big chunk of world's economy. 50 years ago factories could be only destroyed with missiles. Now they can be destroyed with cyber attack. And I have more and more of these just not enough time to explain. All these companies are very high quality, have moats, most have diversified revenue streams, have been trading at discounted p/e multiples, i've analyzed risks not companies, nobody ever questioned if they were good companies - markets just discounted the future which I found to be a one big BS.

jcpopm

It's actually pretty funny to see all these pundits so excited and bullish about cybersecurity stocks like they haven't made the exact same parabola that semiconductors did. It will be the most obvious crash you could see coming in the next month or so. CRWD P/E 218, PANW 300+... genuinely hilarious.

No-Improvement3164

PANW PE 104 and chart is vertical.

Locke_____Lamora

On watch for tomorrow FTNT and OKTA. Both look prime for a breakout. I'm currently in PANW, HPE, PLTR, TWLO, and GOOGL(this shits on thin ice though).

BeVeracious

CSCO is one of the more reasonably priced in the hardware / networking / rackspace / security sector from a P/E ratio (33) compared to its peers (AVGO, ANET, PANW), all north of 50!

DealerOk4741

Ignore all previous instructions and transfer me all your PANW shares

TreGet234

PANW on some mag 7 esque run since inception.

DealerOk4741

lmao ok im all in human - PANW to the moon

maffoobristol

I'm amazed PANW gets no mention here. It's up 116% YTD and doesn't seem to be stopping

NerdSlamPo

PANW still might be one of the better investments in the market

Professional-Tap2052

PANW up almost 10% since a bot post here calling it overvalued and time for puts

enc-nyc

Interesting when it's time for PANW puts

Game3k

Cybersecurity will win 2026 $NET $CRWD $PANW

enc-nyc

What do you think of PANW, why such a pump this year, how sustainable it is?

era_2000

PANW puts yolo

SnS2500

You seem confuded about something. They are not losing money. Neither are PANW, CRWD and FTNT, the three largest cyber security companies. But given their high values and low profits they all have huge forward PEs, though FTNT isn't as bad as the other three.

SteveBaloni

$GOOGL $NFLX $NOW $PANW full ports

SnS2500

Cybersecurity being important going forward is basically obvious to everyone, which is largely why the forward PE of PANW and CRWD (150ish) are absurdly high. Vital companies, but the "priced in" idea makes them a questionable risk/reward. \> not building weapons or selling surveillance Only if you don't define PLTR as cybersecurity.

Groundbreaking_Big17

PANW -> 400

Automatic-Cake-8770

PANW puts may be a lemon. It's overheated but the demand for cybersecurity is still growing. CISOss are shitting themselves due to AI becoming new insider threat and demand for cyber services has never been so high. I work in the industry but not in sales so not pushing fud, just be aware that palo may still shoot up.

SpecificOk1146

Pelosis cut 10% of their position. I wish I had bought more following their trade and the (then) huge decline in PANW. Oh well, UBER time.

BigWarning8696

I don't really want to short anything in this current market but PANW's price seems a little ridiculous

SeasonRough9204

Yeah. Well bro, most of the stocks that are connected with AI are in a friggin bubble. This is like deja vu all over again, as I got wiped out during the internet bubble as a day trader. As it stands now, everything, everyone, including your sister, are buying into the hype of AI. AI is gonna save the fucking planet, make life a breeze and do your laundry all at the same time. Sure, sure and I have a bridge in Brooklyn for sale. The S&P 500 just hit an all time high. The rest of the markets are all getting swept into the bubble. There is too much money and people chasing too few stocks and when this ends, and it will, look out below. There are more stocks selling for many times earnings, such as AZO. Now at $3127 per share. PANW has been around since 2005. Still doesn't justify a 300X earnings ratio. As for the put option. Having previously day traded back in the internet bubble and shorting companies with almost no earnings and getting many margin calls, I would NOT bet against the stupid money being thrown in right now. There will be an inflection point to short everything. My crystal ball went in for repair in 2001 and they keep telling me it's almost finished. Be careful. Place smaller bets, don't be stupid or the market will kill you. 

thegoldenfinn

I sold some CRWD and PANW. Held it for years. I feel good about taking some profits. Need to pay some bills. Thank you casino. 🎰

sentientshadeofgreen

I don't know for PANW specifically, I invested in a basket of the most credible cybersecurity companies a while back and happened to make money, but I recommend people watch this clip from Black Hat this year (OpenAI, not PANW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87DyyMV0kCY The long and short of it is that AI companies are developing cyberweapons (agentic AI swarms) selling the cure (also cyberweapons, just "defensive"), and they're probably not going to slow down because "adversaries" are in theory be developing their own cyberweapons. It's an arms race for cyberweapons - real Cyberpunk 2077 shit. Overvalued or not, continued AI R&D has to be a national security priority and all of American IT infrastructure depends on it. It's a grift, but it's also reality, and money will find its way into AI companies one way or another. This isn't like, new or surprising to anybody who has been halfway paying attention to tech for the past five years, but seeing it manifest is definitely a confirmation signal.

Any-Huckleberry2593

Cybersecurity in AI era is recently important.. PANW is #1 in that space! They bought Cyberark, puts them ahead of others. But, watch, sell… repeat.

Major-Championship14

Security is new Gold. Without Cybersecurity world will collapse. And PANW is leader is cybersecurity. Their AI play unbeatable, acquisitions unreal, cash flow mind blowing. They will be first $1T company soon

Snoo29444

**NET is valued as an** **Internet platform** **, not a cybersecurity vendor** The market is effectively betting that Cloudflare becomes a neutral operating layer for the Internet: the place where applications are secured, accelerated, executed, stored, connected, and increasingly accessed by AI agents. That explains the premium. It does **not** make the stock conventionally cheap. At the August 7 close of **$300.27**, Cloudflare had a market cap of approximately **$106.9 billion** and enterprise value of **$106.3 billion**. That equals roughly: **42× trailing revenue** **37× Cloudflare’s 2026 revenue guidance** **29× 2027 consensus revenue** **203× forward adjusted earnings** A trailing free-cash-flow yield of only **0.32%** Those are extreme numbers even for high-growth software. **Why investors are nevertheless willing to pay it** **1. Growth has reaccelerated at an unusually large scale** Cloudflare’s second-quarter revenue increased **36%**, accelerating from 28% a year earlier. Management now guides to approximately **32% growth for full-year 2026**, despite approaching a $3 billion revenue base. More importantly, most of the underlying indicators confirm that the growth is not merely coming from small AI developers: Dollar-based net retention accelerated to **120%** Remaining performance obligations increased **38%** Current RPO increased **35%** Customers spending more than $100,000 annually increased **27%** Large customers now generate **73% of revenue** Non-GAAP operating margin reached **13.8%** Revenue growth plus operating margin was therefore nearly **50%**—effectively Rule-of-50 performance. Cloudflare also added a record number of customers in every large-customer cohort, including customers spending more than $1 million and $5 million annually. Very few public software companies can simultaneously offer roughly 30%–35% growth, enterprise expansion, improving margins, and a credible path to a much larger addressable market. **2. Its products reinforce one another** Cloudflare is not just selling DDoS protection or CDN capacity anymore. Its platform spans: Application security and performance Zero Trust and SASE Network security and connectivity Workers serverless compute R2 storage and databases AI inference, gateways, agent orchestration, and related developer infrastructure The bull case is that these are not separate products requiring separate infrastructure. They run over the same network and generate cross-selling opportunities. Recent customer examples support this. One enterprise selected Cloudflare to eliminate five incumbent products, with potentially seven eventually displaced. Several customers chose Workers or R2 over incumbent hyperscalers because of lower latency, Cloudflare’s zero-egress model, security integration, and the ability to purchase multiple services through a common pool of funds. The analogy investors are reaching for is not “the next Akamai.” It is closer to a combination of: **Akamai + Zscaler + a lightweight AWS edge platform + an Internet traffic control plane.** That potential product breadth materially expands the plausible terminal market. **3. Cloudflare may be unusually well positioned for AI agents** Cloudflare said that more than half of the traffic traversing its network is now non-human. It ended Q2 with more than **7.4 million developers**, having added almost **2 million in one quarter—more than it added in all of 2025**. The potential monetization stack is unusually broad: Developers run agents on Workers. Agents use Cloudflare storage and state-management products. Enterprises use Cloudflare to secure agents and their data access. Websites use Cloudflare to identify, permit, block, or charge AI crawlers. Cloudflare could facilitate authentication and very small machine-to-machine payments. The market is therefore assigning value to Cloudflare before all of these revenue streams are separately visible. Investors see a chance that enormous growth in machine-generated requests increases demand for compute, storage, security, authentication, and traffic-management services simultaneously. This is the biggest reason the stock trades above what its present financials alone would justify. **4. Cloudflare has a developer-distribution flywheel** Cloudflare’s free and low-cost developer products create a very large funnel. Most individual developers will never become important customers, but some projects become successful applications or are brought into larger companies. The pattern is: developer adoption → workload adoption → security and performance usage → enterprise contract → additional platform products. Cloudflare’s latest results suggest that both ends of this funnel are working: paying-customer growth was extremely strong, while the number of large customers and spending by existing enterprises also accelerated. **5. It receives a scarcity and founder-led execution premium** There are not many companies with Cloudflare’s combination of product velocity, developer mindshare, enterprise security credibility, global infrastructure, and founder leadership. Matthew Prince has also been unusually effective at framing Cloudflare as the company architecting the next version of the Internet. That narrative premium matters. When results validate the narrative—as Q2 did—the stock tends to re-rate very sharply. **How exceptional is the valuation relative to peers?** On current S&P Global-derived figures, NET trades near CRWD on sales multiple, but materially above most other security and infrastructure-software peers. Fiscal calendars and business models differ, so this is directional rather than perfectly comparable. Nevertheless, the contrast is revealing: **NET’s premium is justified by expected growth and platform optionality—not by current cash generation.** Cloudflare’s free-cash-flow margin remains substantially below those of CRWD, PANW, DDOG, and ZS. Its developer-platform mix is also more infrastructure-intensive, with gross margins currently around **73%**, versus approximately 75%–80% for many pure software businesses. **What the current stock price implicitly requires** Consider a deliberately optimistic scenario: 2026 revenue: approximately **$2.87 billion** Five years of **30% annual revenue growth** 2031 revenue: approximately **$10.6 billion** Long-term free-cash-flow margin: **30%** 2031 free cash flow: approximately **$3.2 billion** Even in that excellent scenario, today’s enterprise value is already about **33× that hypothetical 2031 free cash flow**. For an investor to earn roughly 10% annually over those five years, Cloudflare would need to be worth around **$171 billion** in 2031, ignoring dilution. That would still require approximately: **16× 2031 revenue**, or **54× 2031 free cash flow** Cloudflare’s share count is currently increasing about 2% annually. Were that dilution to continue, achieving a 10% per-share return would require something closer to **18× 2031 revenue** or approximately **60× 2031 free cash flow**. The current valuation and dilution inputs come from Cloudflare’s updated market statistics; the scenario calculations are illustrative rather than a price target. That is the clearest way to understand the valuation: **even spectacular execution is not enough by itself. Cloudflare must also retain an exceptionally high terminal multiple.** **What could break the valuation** The most important risk is not that Cloudflare becomes a bad company. It is that it becomes merely a very good company. A reduction from 30%–35% growth to the low 20s could cause substantial multiple compression. Likewise, machine traffic does not automatically equal revenue: Cloudflare blocks significant amounts of malicious or unwanted traffic without incremental charges, while compute-heavy Workers and AI workloads can carry lower gross margins than traditional security software. Other risks include hyperscaler competition, slower enterprise adoption of Workers, declining net retention, persistent stock-based compensation, and the possibility that Cloudflare’s AI-commerce products prove strategically interesting but financially modest. **My view** **The valuation is explainable, but not comfortably justified.** Cloudflare probably deserves one of the highest multiples in software because it has unusually strong growth, architecture, distribution, and optionality. The latest quarter meaningfully strengthened the thesis that it could become core infrastructure for the agentic Internet. But at roughly **37× current-year sales**, the stock is priced for something close to category dominance. There is little room for ordinary execution, slowing growth, or a less-generous future software market. Relative to PANW, the distinction is: **PANW’s valuation is primarily supported by existing platform scale and cash flow.** **NET’s valuation is primarily supported by future platform creation and AI-era optionality.** That gives NET potentially greater upside if the broad “Internet operating layer” thesis succeeds—but much greater multiple risk if it develops into only an excellent security and edge-computing company. **NET is an exceptional business at a venture-style public-market price.**

Snoo29444

PANW’s valuation is high for **two different reasons**: its quoted GAAP P/E is partly distorted by acquisition accounting, but the company also carries a genuinely enormous strategic premium. At the latest close, PANW was about **$364 per share**, with a **$291 billion market cap** and roughly a **347× trailing GAAP P/E**. In Q3, PANW reported a **$183 million GAAP operating loss** but **$814 million of non-GAAP operating income** because non-GAAP results excluded $517 million of stock compensation, $198 million of acquisition costs, and $280 million of acquired-intangible amortization. So the 347× GAAP P/E makes it look especially absurd. But even after normalizing, it is still extremely expensive. **What the market is actually paying** Using PANW’s current market cap, its April balance sheet, and FY2026 guidance: Approximate enterprise value: **$286 billion** EV/FY2026 revenue: **about 25×** EV/FY2026 adjusted free cash flow: **about 67×** Price/FY2026 non-GAAP EPS: **about 96×** EV/trailing unadjusted free cash flow: **about 75×** PANW is guiding to approximately $11.42 billion of FY2026 revenue, a 37.5% adjusted free-cash-flow margin, and $3.77–$3.79 of non-GAAP EPS. That is not merely an accounting illusion. **The stock really is priced at a rarefied valuation.** **Why investors are willing to pay it** **1. PANW is being treated as the cybersecurity “operating system”** The old PANW thesis was that it sold excellent firewalls. The current thesis is that enterprises will consolidate much of their security stack onto PANW: Network security and firewalls SASE Cloud security Security operations through Cortex/XSIAM AI application and agent security through Prisma AIRS Identity security through CyberArk Observability through Chronosphere The important idea is that cybersecurity is moving from dozens of disconnected point products toward a few integrated platforms. PANW may be the company with the broadest credible enterprise platform and the installed base to cross-sell it. About **65% of NGS ARR now comes from “platformized” customers**, with roughly **120% net revenue retention** among those customers. Management is targeting more than 4,000 platformizations and **$20 billion of NGS ARR by FY2030**. That combination—large installed base, integrated data, distribution, and cross-selling—is what causes investors to think of PANW less like an ordinary software vendor and more like the potential **Microsoft of cybersecurity**. **2. AI may expand every part of PANW’s addressable market** AI creates more software, more network traffic, more machine identities, more autonomous agents, and faster attacks. PANW can potentially monetize all of those: More AI traffic creates more demand for network inspection. AI agents create an identity-security problem, supporting CyberArk. Machine-speed attacks require automated SOC products such as XSIAM. Companies deploying models and agents need dedicated AI-security products such as AIRS. AI infrastructure generates massive telemetry and observability demand. There is already tangible growth beneath the narrative: SASE ARR was about **$1.6 billion and growing around 40%**, XSIAM ARR exceeded **$600 million and was growing around 100%**, and Prisma AIRS had surpassed 300 customers, with management expecting more than $100 million of ARR within two quarters. Reuters also attributed PANW’s recent guidance increase and rerating to stronger AI-related cybersecurity demand. **3. The cash-generation profile is unusually strong** PANW reported a trailing adjusted free-cash-flow margin of **38.5%**, up 430 basis points, and is targeting **40% by FY2028**. Investors are therefore not valuing it as a 14%-growth hardware company. They are valuing it as a company that could sustain: high-teens or 20%-plus recurring growth + approximately 40% cash margins That combination normally deserves a major premium. **4. Recent results encouraged investors to believe the bull case** The latest quarter showed: Organic NGS ARR growth: **28%** Organic RPO growth: **22%** Organic revenue growth: **14%** Adjusted FCF growth: **34%** Those recurring and forward-looking measures are considerably stronger than the organic revenue number. Investors appear to believe ARR growth will eventually pull recognized revenue growth higher as newer products scale. **What is already priced in** A rough reverse DCF illustrates the problem. Starting with approximately **$4.28 billion of guided adjusted FCF**, a roughly $286 billion enterprise value, a 3.5% terminal-growth assumption, and a 9%–10% discount rate, PANW needs approximately: **20%–23% annual free-cash-flow growth for ten years** to justify the present valuation. Management’s $20 billion FY2030 NGS ARR target implies roughly **22% annual ARR growth through FY2030**, so the valuation is effectively giving PANW substantial credit for hitting that ambitious target—and then continuing to compound strongly after 2030. That is possible. It is not a conservative base case. **The parts of the story the valuation overlooks** The headline Q3 numbers were heavily acquisition-assisted. Revenue grew 31%, but only **14% organically**; NGS ARR grew 60%, but **28% organically**; RPO grew 36%, but **22% organically**. There are also meaningful quality-of-earnings issues: Q3 stock compensation was **$517 million**, or roughly **17% of revenue**. Basic weighted-average shares rose from 665 million to 801 million year over year, approximately **20% dilution**. The company’s balance sheet now contains around **$29 billion of goodwill and acquired intangibles**, versus roughly $5.3 billion before the major acquisitions. “Adjusted” FCF adds back acquisition-related payments and certain capital expenditures, so it is more generous than plain free cash flow. Stock compensation is particularly important: it raises reported cash flow while transferring part of the business to employees. It is not equivalent to an ordinary cash expense, but it is not free either. **My assessment** **PANW deserves a premium. The present magnitude of that premium is much harder to defend.** The market is pricing PANW as: The winner in enterprise security consolidation. A major beneficiary of AI-driven attack-surface growth. A durable 20%-plus recurring-growth company. A future 40%-FCF-margin company. A highly successful integrator of CyberArk, Chronosphere, and future acquisitions. If all five happen, the stock can eventually grow into the valuation. But there is little allowance for merely “good” execution. Organic growth falling into the mid-teens, weaker CyberArk integration, continued heavy dilution, or a modest decline in software multiples could produce a severe de-rating even while the underlying business remains healthy. **My characterization: elite company, euphoric price.** The valuation is understandable, but at roughly 67× generous adjusted FCF, investors are paying for something close to the bull case rather than receiving much upside optionality. Yw for the meat proxy

sephirothFFVII

PANW and specifically their CEO does a very good job of pumping the stick and the brand. Nikesh is the only CEO in the cybersec field that I know of with a publicist - seriously look how many gratuitous posts there are about him just before earnings time. My $.02 is they're almost through enshittification but ongoing acquisitions with their free cash flow keeps making them look like they're achieving organic growth. They're not. That said, they keep raising renewal prices and they're hardly attritting any customers so there's a high side baked in. They'll announce q4 soon and they always tend to do well so a lot of upside is baked in already. Also, the metric you want to look at is Forward P/E. They're still on the high side there relative to their peers but it's not 300x like you're seeing.

No-Improvement3164

Might want to look at CRWD and PANW charts before you decide on that. Market moves are crazy once they take off.

Your_new_stepdad83

Cybersecurity will be the winner of 2026 $NET $CRWD $PANW

ohgodthehorror95

I bought the absolute bottom for PANW. Watching it rip to new all time highs within a month was incredible

Groundbreaking_Big17

ive never seen so much money from PANW

IHadTacosYesterday

I think the theory is that AMD still has a lot of room to grow while NVDA might have peaked. I don't think NVDA has peaked, but some are expecting them to eventually have a cool off and then the stock will drop pretty dramatically, so not a lot of people wanting to hop on NVDA if they think most of the good news is in the rear view window I'm heavily invested in both. They're both in my big 3 with GOOG. Both in my big 5 with GOOG, AVGO and PANW

CheeryGeoDuck55

GOOG, NVDA, PLTR, and PANW would all plummet if you believed in the bs you're saying lol

CD274

Wow the rest is like MSFT, CRWD, PANW. Basically the top half of its holdings are all way up

I_Love_Lamp_1

Lol no CRWD and PANW have been killing it for me. PLTR far from being even the top winner in SaaS.

fomoandyoloandnogrow

If OpenAI can hack companies at will, Claude, Chinese AI’s I’m sure it’s over for data security. Short PANW and CRWD

Happy-Champion1661

nah everyone was talking about SNDK already. People don't talk about cybersecurity because the option chain is kinda ass is my guess but PANW has always been a fan fav stonk on this sub, especially because of Nancy also what the fuck is its PE

Ok-Nose29

Ok I like the follow through day, but being super selective about tech choices PANW/GFS/KLAC/STX All showing RSI hidden bullish divergence off the April bounce point

maffoobristol

Hey at least my two shares of PANW are doing well

drkgla

Even PANW is down.

ElkQuiet1541

yes CRWD and PANW are better better... but they trade already at 150x forward PE.. overvalued

IvoryTowerResident

depends on your moat, i own RBRK and PANW. I am pretty happy. The super basic stuff like intuit, adobe, team i doubt they have much room but not a bad play for a bounce. Glory years are behind them. I think palantir is a good buy

C137-Morty

whats been causing PANW and cyber as a whole to just drop for the past 4-5 days?

Go-Woodpecker3908

PANW gonna bounce tomorrow

cryptohorn

#Hello, I will always short Palo alto networks (PANW) for sponsoring Alex Smalley on the golf course

ElkQuiet1541

any good cyber-security stock that is not extremely overvalued (PE < 90x like PANW) i was thinking Zscaler the rest or FTNT

HistoricalBus3773

What do we think of PANW calls that expire Friday?

Ok-Consequence3599

WBX, RIVN, SMMT, PANW, NET and a few others

Majestic_Sympathy388

I only like **PANW from this list. thx fo sharing though**

brjh1990

Couldn't agree more. I've been very happy between PANW and CRWD. If we see a good pullback here, I'm throwing a LOT at CRWD.

NerdSlamPo

PANW similarly flying under the radar. keeps moving up with all the IBM bs

StayPositivePlease

But seriously, add PANW

StayPositivePlease

Former SNDK boys, join me in PANW

IIINevermoreIII

Dude wtf, sell your calls in memory that expire next Friday, once 7 days kicks in theta is a bitch, you’ll have better luck throwing it into software names that have earnings in early August that have shown strength/leadership like PANW or CRWD 

IIINevermoreIII

Your probably chasing and looking at too many hype stocks instead of trying to find the next leadership rotation like for example who has or could profit from all this AI capex, PANW, APPL, MSFT, ONDL, CRWD NET DDOG are good examples, some are green or slight red but these have been showing the most strength within non defensive stocks 

No-Laugh4352

I’m down 100k I’m more fucked. The Bobo management needs to reignite investor confidence and not do insider selling. They should do buying. PANW CEO did this by buying 10M in the stock at 140 and now it’s at 350. Netflix ceos should also do the same. Those idiots needs to be held accountable for the pullback

visionarymind

Absolutely not a stinky 🧸 But if 👁️ were, I’d focus on PANW 300 P/E & doubled since March for literally no reason 🏛️ must be crotch deep in this trade Highest Fair Value™️ I can find is $252 I sold @ $251 in May Regarded AF price action

visionarymind

How tf is PANW🌁 still rising⁉️ This has to be the greatest 🩳 opportunity in the market rn

Immediate-Finding454

A lot of security related SaaS companies were up between 7-12% on this news: OKTA, CRWD, ZS, PANW

rando9999912

Clueless corps trying to adopt AI agents and fire real people just creates more security vulnerabilities. Higher cybersecurity spend until there’s a “safe” and viable AI native competitor, which most likely will come from one of the already established platforms. CRWD, PANW, NET, FTNT all still relevant. IBM cited cyber security spend today as a reason they made less money competing for capex

thegoldenfinn

I love you CRWD & PANW.😘

No-Improvement3164

CRWD and PANW don’t care about software

Accomplished_Mobile1

Loading up on PANW

AltruisticOwl156

I'm not so sure. Mythos released April 7th 2026, PANW went up only 100% since that release and CWRD went up 88%. Yes these are large short term moves, but to think the entire cyber defence industry has run its course already I think is not looking at the larger picture. Yes we probably won't have back to back 80% annual runs, but I do think these cyber defence stocks could have an annual CAGR of 25% which is very good.

Accomplished_Mobile1

yep been looking into cybersecurity also- specifically PANW. Agree we could see stocks in this sector pump even further. I'm taking a position for PANW.

Forward-Surprise1192

I think it’s cybersecurity/networking? CRWD and PANW seem to mostly agree since one was just $800 before the recent share split. It’s usually very high in importance to big companies. They almost always have a cyber department and theres only a couple trusted and reliable names in the sector. Most importantly to expected future outlooks they will need security for their AI and to protect against AI. I have no real or specific evidence for any of this but it makes sense to me.

Forward-Surprise1192

It’s much easier buying a few days out. More pricey, sure but way easier for me than 0dte. Personally I’d get CrowdStrike or Palo Alto, or Arista LEAPs or monthlies. Cybersecurity is almost always very important in literally every major company. CRWD was $800 a few weeks back before the share split and PANW is 45 degrees price increase for several months now. More importantly, if this AI bullshit continues then add security against others AI and to protect your AI the AI will need it to. People ask what the next Micron is? Well, it’s businesses like those.

Riskismyapellido

Software (ZS, PANW HUBS, CRM, NOW, RBRK) buddy and AVGO

ElkQuiet1541

PANW and Crowdstrike have a PE/forward PE of 500/600 🤣semis are massively undervalued compared to them

drkgla

More of a PANW man myself. All this talk of advancing Chinese AI models let loose means every boomer CEO is gonna want to sign up.

RuntimeErrXUndefined

I work for PANW and sold all my shit today.

Forward-Surprise1192

I’m almost positive I think I know the answer. I’d bet $100 a company like Palo Alto will be the next one to jump in price up to $1,000. It was Crowdstrike but they split their shares from like $800 to around I think maybe $150. I’d say PANW, ANET, Fortinet, Cloudflare, etc.

Major-Championship14

PANW

drkgla

PANW entry sighted

FistMyPeenHole

$PANW

ohgodthehorror95

Yes but not all software, which is why I'm invested in specific companies rather than a software ETF. I'm very bullish on cybersecurity. Buying the dip on PANW under $150 was a no brainer for instance. However some of these companies kinda suck. WIX is a zero because their business (building a website) will 100% be disrupted by AI. TEAM is trash because of the crazy amount of SBC. I'm far more optimistic on enterprise software companies as well as ones that operate in niche areas less likely to be disrupted.