Data Breach Drives Cloud Security Stocks to Record Highs

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Cyber security players have been in the news recently following the SolarWinds security breach at several federal agencies. Analysts believe that the hack “will see a seismic increase in spending” in the coming year and could lead to a $200 billion growth opportunity in cloud security over the next five years. Endpoint security providers and vulnerability management companies like Rapid7 (NASDAQ:RPD) and Tenable (Nasdaq: TENB) are bound to benefit from this growth.

Rapid7’s Financials

Rapid7’s revenues for the third quarter grew 26% to $105.1 million, ahead of the market’s expectations by 3.41%. Non GAAP net income was $25 million or $0.00 per share compared with the Street’s forecast of a loss of $0.04 per share.

By segment, revenue from products grew 29% to $98.6 million and maintenance, support, and professional services grew 29% to $98.6 million.

By region, revenues from North America grew 25% to $87.6 million and Rest of world grew 32% to $17.5 million.

Total ARR grew 29% to $398.7 million, primarily driven by strong customer growth. Its customer count increased by 17% to over 8,600 customers globally. Its customer economics remain strong with average ARR per customer increasing 19% to $42,700.

For the fourth quarter, Rapid7 forecast revenues of $107.9-$109.5 million with a loss of $0.09-$00.7 per share. The Street was looking for revenues of $107.18 million and a loss of $0.04 per share. Rapid7 expects to end the current year with revenues of $406.2-$407.8 million and earnings of $0.12 to $0.10 per share. The market had forecast revenues of $402.18 million with a loss of $0.11 per share.

Rapid7’s New Products and Partnerships

During the quarter, Rapid7 announced the availability of several new products. It released Enhanced Endpoint Telemetry (EET) within InsightIDR. The solution allows customers to bring endpoint activity into InsightIDR, unifying it within network, user, and cloud data, providing holistic visibility of the environment. The solution will enable security teams to better monitor the attack surface and drive accelerated investigations and response from one interface. EET extends core threat hunting capabilities of InsightIDR.

It also announced the extension of its partnership with Synk. Prior to the announcement, the partnership enabled an integration that allowed Rapid7’s tCell, a Cloud WAF and RASP solution, to leverage Synk Intel, thus embedding continuous security into the application development process. The expanded partnership will now enable developers with the ability to secure the critical components of the cloud native application development.

It recently also announced a partnership with SCADAfence, a market leader in industrial cyber security. As part of the partnership, the two companies will work together to provide security and OT teams deeper visibility into traditional IT and IoT/OT devices that are co-located in manufacturing and critical infrastructure environments. It will also allow customers the ability to assess their infrastructure, including OT assets, as well as receiving advanced prioritization of risks based on end point and network-based exposures. Together, the two players will be able to assist organizations with the challenges by providing ways to visualize risks for IT and OT devices connected to the network.

Its stock is trading at $91.36 with a market capitalization of $4.74 billion. It peaked to a record high of $94.6 this week. It hit a 52-week low of $31.34 in March.

Tenable’s Financials

Tenable recently announced its fiscal second quarter results. Revenues for the quarter grew 22% over the year to $112.2 million, ahead of the market’s estimates by 2.56%. It reported an EPS of $0.09, which was better than the market’s estimated EPS of $0.03 per share.

Among key metrics, calculated current billings grew 21% to $133.7 million for the quarter. It added 335 new enterprise platform customers and 56 net new six-figure customers.

For the current quarter, Tenable expects revenues of $113-$115 million with an EPS of $0.05-$0.06. It expects to end the year with revenues of $435.1-$437.1 million with an EPS of $0.11-$0.12. The market was looking for revenues of $112.20 million for the quarter with an EPS of $0.03 per share and revenues of $431.72 million for the year with an EPS of $0.02 per share.

Tenable’s Product Upgrades

During the quarter, Tenable unveiled its new cloud security capability, Frictionless Assessment, to evaluate cloud assets without interruption. With the capability, customers will be able to have complete visibility of their assets in the cloud, and will be able to quickly detect new vulnerabilities of environment changes without having to schedule a scan or deploy an agent. Frictionless Assessment is a cloud-centric and cloud native way of operating and will be available in the current quarter.

It also announced enhancements to Tenable Lumin, including new capabilities to asses and benchmark organization remediation, maturity, and inventory of endpoint security controls, as well as predictive scoring, allowing for a more comprehensive insight into an organization’s cyber exposure.

Like Rapid7, Tenable is also expanding its partnerships. It recently announced a new partnership with the Center for Internet Security to bolster cyber hygiene for public and private sector organizations. It will help make foundational cyber security more attainable for organizations of all sizes.

Tenable’s stock is trading at $56.02 with a market capitalization of $5.78 billion. It hit a 52-week high this week. The recent global turmoil had sent the stock falling to a 52-week low of $16.28 in March. It was privately funded till 2018. It had raised $309.8 million in four rounds of funding from investors including Accel, Insight Partners, and In Q-Tel. In its last private round, Tenable was valued at $1 billion. In 2018, it went public and raised $250 million at a valuation of $2.1 billion.

Other stocks to watch in this context are Proofpoint, Crowdstrike, Palo Alto Networks, and Zscaler.

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