It has been a Friday (19 July) to forget for those working at CrowdStrike (NASDAQ:CRWD). The US cybersecurity tech firm’s being blamed for the global outages around the world for airlines, news channels and more. This threatens to have large implications for the CrowdStrike share price. Here’s what I think could happen.
The immediate response
CrowdStrike’s a US company listed on the Nasdaq. Therefore, the market hasn’t opened yet. However, in pre-market trading, the stock’s down 20%. If this is indeed where it stands when the market opens, it would wipe out $16.7bn of value from the stock.
This is a whopping figure, but some would argue that it’s justified given the scale of the problem the firm’s potentially responsible for.
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From what we know so far, Microsoft users experienced problems that have been linked to a security update processed overnight by CrowdStrike. The firm confirmed it’s aware of reports of crashes related to their Falcon Sensor system and that its engineering teams are actively working to resolve this issue.
The longer this issue takes to resolve, the heavier I expect the fall in the share price to be today. If there are signs this could take several days to fix, I think investors will react even more negatively.
Taking a step back
The concern here is that something of this magnitude shouldn’t be allowed to happen. CrowdStrike teams should have thoroughly tested any update or changed to the software before roll-out on such a large scale to users. This isn’t a good look for the company.
However, let’s take a step back. The stock (excluding any potential fall today), is up 117% over the past year. It’s a hot growth stock, with the latest quarterly results from June showing strong momentum.
Revenue was up 33% versus the same quarter last year. Net income hit $42.8m (compared to $0.5m from last year). What I really like about the business is that most customers are on contracts or subscriptions. This means it can generate sustainable annual recurring revenue (ARR). It doesn’t have to rely on one-off large sales. As a result, it can scale in a much more efficient manner.
Further, let’s not forget that it operates in a key sector. Cybersecurity is only going to become more and more in demand. This is especially true with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and the dark side it can bring to the internet.
My Foolish approach
Even though some might be shocked, I’m actually closely watching the stock to look to buy over the next couple of weeks. Of course, this depends on when the issues get resolved. But once they do, I think this could be a great opportunity for me to buy.
This could be a chance for me to buy a growing cybersecurity stock at a discount for the long term.
