In short: Options flow bullish; Ethridge backs it despite the valuation (39:00–40:06). Renick: 100,000 contracts, $120M premium, 75%+ bought on the call side; top contract the 250-strike call expiring tomorrow ($2, needs 2%). Ethridge: "way too far over its skis" at ~180× forward, "but it is possible that as the category leader, it can grow into that valuation" — "focus on the annually recurring revenue growth." AI-safety fears (Karp clip) are "a big boost to the cyber trade."
CrowdStrike sells cybersecurity software. Worries about powerful AI being misused are pushing companies to spend more on protection, and options traders were betting heavily on further gains. The stock is expensive (around 180 times expected earnings), but Ethridge argues the market leader can grow into it, pointing to strong growth in recurring subscription revenue.
In short: Brown's answer to "is it harder to pick AI winners now?" — "I think it couldn't be easier." "The market has spoken. We have the verdict already… CrowdStrike. Stock's up 104% year to date. It is the 12th best stock in the NASDAQ 100, the 15th best stock in the S&P 500. I don't care what model you're rooting for… what I can promise you is there is no AI without the appropriate amount of cybersecurity. And what the appropriate amount of cybersecurity seems to be is only going in one direction. Tell me one government or one board of directors at a public company that's having a meeting, even considering lowering the amount that they're spending on cybersecurity in the age of AI… I think CrowdStrike is the winner here. This is a long term holding of mine. I'm in the stock for 600 plus percent."
CrowdStrike sells software that protects companies' computers and cloud systems from hackers. Brown's argument sidesteps the question everyone is fighting about — which AI lab or chipmaker wins — and asks what every winner has to buy regardless.
His answer is security: the more AI gets deployed, the more there is to attack, and no government or corporate board is going to vote to spend less on protection. The stock has roughly doubled this year, and he has held it for a 600%+ gain. It is a "toll road" argument: you don't need to predict the traffic, only that it keeps growing.
In short: Named by Terranova as part of the sector-wide sympathy move off Palo Alto's print: "every cybersecurity name today is down across the board. It's CrowdStrike, it's Okta, it's Fortinet, it's Datadog — and they all are down because positioning is full and the expectations could not be exceeded." The mechanism is crowding rather than company news, and his time horizon is explicit: it "will get worked off over the course of time," not in a day. Weiss's valuation-plus-competition case applies to the whole group.
CrowdStrike sells endpoint security — software that watches laptops and servers for attacks. It fell with the group on a day when it reported nothing at all, purely because a peer's results triggered a de-crowding of the whole sector.
That is worth internalising if you hold anything in a popular theme: the reason your stock moves on a given day is frequently not about your stock. The corollary is Terranova's: this kind of unwind "will get worked off over the course of time," so a one-day drop in a crowded group is rarely the end of the adjustment.
In short: The reference point for the whole software segment: it "knocked the cover off the ball" last week, the stocks took off, and Terranova uses it as the proof that the cybersecurity trend "is resilient" and that staying anchored in the group is being rewarded. No new position discussed.
In short: "I'd argue that the real AI winners are CrowdStrike and some like that rather than maybe some of the semis" — cyber numbers will be good because everyone is racing to defend against new AI threats. But the multiple is the problem: ~25–30× revenue for large companies, "the success rate on those is paying up there is low," and the labs themselves think cyber is something they will disrupt. "Lofty territory… more so than AI, frankly."
CrowdStrike sells cybersecurity software. Keller's fundamental view is genuinely bullish: "the real AI winners are CrowdStrike and some like that rather than maybe some of the semis," because AI creates new kinds of attacks and every organisation is now rushing to upgrade its defences. In a market where nobody can see three years out, a business whose next two quarters are almost knowable gets paid a huge premium — and that's what cyber has been.
The other half of his view is the price. Large cyber names trade around 25–30 times revenue — not profit — and "the success rate on those is paying up there is low." He also notes that people at the AI labs consider cybersecurity something they intend to disrupt too. So: right theme, very demanding entry price. He won't call himself bearish, but he thinks it's "lofty territory… more so than AI, frankly."
6:25I think it's a lot of momentum and they're going to beat for a little bit has driven them up. But I think that's a lofty territory that they're in more so than AI, frankly. I'd argue that the real AI winners are CrowdStrike and some like that rather than maybe some of the semis. — So within the infrastructure, what are you talking about? Can you give me some examples of infrastructure and why those names haven't been under the same pressure as application? — Yeah, you look at a company like
In short: "CrowdStrike was a cleaner beat" — and the cleanest single datapoint that security is not the software being disrupted. Net new ARR of $333 million, up 51% year over year and a company record, "with the Falcon Flex ARR more than doubling." Revenue $1.47B vs $1.44B, adjusted EPS $0.31 vs $0.29, free cash flow $377.4M (+33%), total ARR $5.84B (+25%), FY27 EPS guided to $9.21 versus $9.05, "those shares jumped in late trading after the company projected revenue that exceeded analysts' estimates" — up ~10% after hours and ~20% on the week. Management called it the best quarter in company history and cited a Mythos-driven tailwind as AI adoption increasingly needs security at scale. Named at the top of the call as evidence the sector already delivered: "CrowdStrike and other cybersecurity names, Okta, etcetera, did really well last week."
CrowdStrike sells cybersecurity software that runs on every computer an organisation owns and watches for attacks. It charges an annual subscription, so the number that matters is not quarterly revenue but how much new annual subscription revenue it signs — and this quarter that figure was a company record of $333 million, up 51% on a year ago.
That growth rate is the answer to the question hanging over all enterprise software: does AI make this product unnecessary? For security, the opposite is happening. Management pointed to a tailwind from AI adoption itself, because every AI agent an organisation deploys is another thing that can be attacked or misused, and it needs to be watched.
The rest of the print supported it — revenue slightly ahead, profits ahead, cash generation up a third, and full-year guidance raised. The shares rose about 20% on the week, and management called it the best quarter in the company's history.
Singh uses it as the anchor of a broader argument: the market spent this year assuming AI would eat software, and the companies that actually reported are showing the reverse. Security in particular is not a nice-to-have that AI replaces; it is the thing you have to buy more of when you deploy AI.
Full passage: premium transcript (PDF).
In short: "What doesn't kill it" — two years after the July 2024 update that caused "one of the largest IT outages in history," CEO George Kurtz called this the best quarter in company history. Revenue +26% Y/Y to $1.47B ($30M beat), "marking the fifth consecutive quarter of acceleration"; non-GAAP EPS $0.31 ($0.02 beat); non-GAAP operating income +46% to a record $372M (25% margin) and free cash flow a Q2 record $377M, +33%. The GAAP picture "remains less flattering" — still a 2% operating loss margin, mainly stock-based compensation at roughly 26% of revenue. The KPI that matters is the recurring engine: ending ARR +25% to $5.84B "continuing a remarkably predictable trajectory," and net new ARR at an all-time record $333M, +51% Y/Y, accelerating sharply from +32% last quarter, with record new-logo net new ARR and both gross and net retention improving — "showing that the acceleration extends beyond existing customers buying more modules." The Flex flywheel: ending ARR from Falcon Flex customers surged 101% to $2.29B, already approaching 40% of total ARR, with 935+ accounts adopting Flex in the quarter and movers increasing ending ARR by roughly 40% on average — "customers commit a security budget upfront and can deploy it across Falcon modules over time," which makes consolidation onto one platform easier. AI creates more to secure: "as enterprises deploy autonomous agents that can access files, call APIs, and interact with critical systems, every agent effectively becomes another identity and another attack surface" — AIDR (AI Detection and Response) ending ARR nearly tripled Q/Q with adoption "running well ahead of expectations" and management still believing the category "could eventually exceed EDR," while Next-Gen SIEM passed $695M of ending ARR displacing legacy analytics platforms. "CrowdStrike does not need AI to become a huge standalone revenue stream overnight. More AI workloads, agents, identities, and applications simply expand the surface area." Guidance raised again: FY27 revenue to $6.00B at the midpoint (~$65M raise) and — "more importantly" — net new ARR growth now expected at 34% this year, up from just 22.5% when FY27 began. Takeaway: "the debate shifts to how durable this new growth cycle can be and whether it can justify its current valuation above 100x forward EBITDA." A disclosed author holding.
CrowdStrike sells security software that runs on every laptop, server and cloud machine a company owns, watching for attacks. Customers pay annually, so the honest way to measure it is not revenue — which is last year's sales arriving on this year's income statement — but ARR, annual recurring revenue: the run-rate value of every contract currently in force. And the number that tells you what is happening right now is net new ARR — how much fresh recurring revenue was added in the quarter, after subtracting whatever customers cancelled.
That number hit an all-time record of $333 million, growing 51% year over year, up from 32% growth the prior quarter. For a company this size, new business accelerating rather than decaying is unusual. And it was the good kind: record sales to brand-new customers, with both retention measures improving, so it was not just existing customers being sold extra modules. Two years after a botched software update caused one of the largest IT outages in history, that is a striking recovery of trust.
Two things are driving it. The first is Falcon Flex, a pricing structure where a customer commits a security budget up front and then spends it across CrowdStrike's products over time. It sounds like a billing detail; it is actually a competitive weapon. Once the money is committed, every new CrowdStrike module the customer tries is free at the margin, while any rival's product requires finding new budget. Flex customers raise their spending about 40% on average, and Flex is already about 40% of the company's total ARR.
The second is a genuinely new source of demand. As companies deploy AI agents — software that acts on its own, opening files, calling other systems, making changes — each agent behaves like a new employee with credentials and permissions. That means each one is something to monitor, restrict and potentially defend. CrowdStrike's AI-detection product nearly tripled in one quarter, and management thinks the category could eventually be bigger than the laptop-protection business that built the company. The neat part of the thesis is that CrowdStrike doesn't have to sell AI to benefit; it just needs everyone else to keep deploying it, because more AI means more things to secure.
The honest counterweights. On official accounting rules the company still runs a small operating loss, because it pays roughly 26% of revenue to employees in stock — real value transferred away from shareholders that the "adjusted" 25% margin ignores. And the price is extreme: above 100 times forward EBITDA, meaning the market is already paying for many years of this. The author owns the stock and frames the remaining question precisely: not whether the quarter was good, but "how durable this new growth cycle can be and whether it can justify its current valuation." Analysis, not a recommendation.
In short: Its worst week since March 2025 (still +93% over six months) with price targets trimmed into Wednesday's print — Loop to 250, KeyBank to 240 — and Brown, a long-standing holder, isn't moved. His actual reason is a hire: "I just got finished reading the bio of the new guy they hired and he is an absolute beast — a guy coming out of NVIDIA. It's all about AI cybersecurity at this stage in the game, and as we get further into robotics, it'll be about cybersecurity as it pertains to automation. So it looks as though they have the right person in the seat." On the selloff: "I don't really understand what that was about yesterday. Probably algos trading with algos. I have full faith and confidence that we will ultimately see new highs in the stock again."
CrowdStrike sells cybersecurity software. It has just had its worst week since March 2025, and two brokers trimmed their price targets ahead of its earnings report next Wednesday — though the stock is still up 93% over six months.
Josh Brown, a long-standing holder, is unmoved, and his reason is unusually specific: the company has hired a senior executive out of Nvidia, and he read the biography. His logic is that security is increasingly an AI problem — machines defending against machines — and later a robotics problem, where the thing being protected is automated equipment rather than a laptop. Having someone who came from the centre of the AI hardware world is, in his view, the right hire for that.
On the recent drop he offers no thesis at all, which is honest: "probably algos trading with algos" — i.e. automated funds trading against each other, not a change in the business.
In short: A disclosed holding: bought at $24.53, $225 today (written "$CWRD" in the original — a typo for CRWD). Like Cloudflare, one of the three names accumulated more than fifty times through the fortnightly dollar-cost-averaging programme. No thesis is given in Part I.
CrowdStrike sells cybersecurity software that runs on every laptop and server a company owns and watches for attacks. Every customer's incidents improve the detection for all the others, which is the mechanism that makes the largest provider the best one.
Bought at $24.53 against roughly $225 today. As with Cloudflare, no thesis is offered in Part I; it appears as one of the three long-held positions accumulated in more than fifty separate purchases. (The post prints the ticker as "$CWRD", which is a typo.)
In short: Up ~6% last week and at a record high today. Terranova, who distrusts the broad software bounce, carves cyber out: "I trust the move in cyber." The exception that proves his rule — he won't own the software index but will own the security names inside it.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company, and it hit a record high. It matters because Joe Terranova refuses to buy the broad software rebound — he thinks a wave of AI companies going public (Anthropic, Databricks, OpenAI) will eat into traditional software vendors. Cybersecurity is the exception he carves out: "I trust the move in cyber." The logic is that security spending is defensive and grows with the amount of AI in a company, rather than being replaced by it.
In short: Deiya uses it twice as the incumbent benchmark: the reflex answer to identity-era threats ("let's hire Crowd Strike, let's get their Falcon agent"), and the valuation comparison — north of 20× EV/sales against Tenable's 4×, on a platform shift Tenable may be better positioned for. It does earn much more GAAP profit than Tenable today.
28:28And keep in mind that versus some of the larger competitors in space, Teneal trades at four times EV to sales and Crowd Strike and Palo Alto are both north of 20 times EV to sales. So you're getting a huge discount on a player that may be better positioned than some of these larger rivals to do very very well given this platform shift. — And it is just starting to make money on an operating profit gap basis.
In short: Ives' third winner is the sector, then the name: "cyber security budgets are going to double the next two or three years… every agent — if Steve Eisman has three agents… they have to protect three agents. It's just more surface area." Best-positioned on product and CEO: "CrowdStrike and Palo Alto were the ones… they're just able to see around corners" — "something I think investors are underappreciating."
CrowdStrike sells the software that protects a company's computers and cloud systems from attack. Ives' argument is a budget one: cybersecurity spending should "double the next two or three years."
The reason is agents. Each AI agent a company deploys is another thing that can be attacked or hijacked — "if Steve Eisman has three agents… they have to protect three agents. It's just more surface area." The earlier fear that Anthropic would launch a security product and wipe the sector out got the direction backwards: more AI means more to defend, not less. He rates CrowdStrike and Palo Alto the best-positioned on product and management.
38:38perspective and CEOs what they've done I think Crowd Strike and Pow were the ones where like they just if you look at Georgia Crowd Strike and the cash pow they're just able to see around corners and obviously have to continue to execute in terms like the companies where Gil would talk about like Salesforce.
In short: New record high today — the standout winner of the "redirection of corporate spending into other areas," which is "why you've seen the cybersecurity companies do so well" (Sechan). Even more in the spotlight after IBM's collapse; the desk's "haves and have-nots" software split.
CrowdStrike is a cybersecurity company. It hit a new record high the same day IBM collapsed — and that's not a coincidence. Rob Sechan's framing: companies have fixed technology budgets and are shifting money toward AI and cybersecurity and away from older software. CrowdStrike is a clear winner of that redirection, one of the "haves" in a market now separating software "haves and have-nots."
In short: Brown's long-term hold, "won't sell any": the cyber comeback poster child (+68% YTD; Needham PT to $235) after the "anthropic kills cyber" scare faded in ~10 minutes. The case borne out — more AI = more threats, contracts, pricing power, stickiness: ARR $5.51B (+24%), record FCF $468M (34% of revenue), rule-of-40 = 59; did a 4-for-1 split. "The market's getting smarter about disruption risk."
CrowdStrike sells cloud-based cybersecurity. Earlier this year investors feared AI (and companies like Anthropic) would make cybersecurity software obsolete — the "SAS apocalypse" — and dumped the whole software group. Brown says that fear "lasted about 10 minutes": the stock is up 68% this year. The company flipped the argument on its head — more AI means more cyber threats, which means more contracts, more pricing power, and stickier customers.
The numbers back it: annual recurring revenue reached $5.51 billion (up 24%), free cash flow hit a record $468 million (34% of revenue), and its "rule-of-40" score (growth plus profit margin) is 59 — elite. Brown is a long-term holder who won't sell a share, and points to CrowdStrike as proof the market is now "getting smarter," sorting the software winners from losers instead of hating them all.
In short: She owns it but it's the less-preferred of her two cyber names: at 35x price-to-sales versus Palo Alto's ~22x, she'd rather add Palo Alto. Held, not a fresh buy here.
CrowdStrike is the other cybersecurity name Link holds, but it's her second choice behind Palo Alto. The reason is purely price: CrowdStrike trades at 35 times sales versus Palo Alto's ~22, so for similar exposure she'd rather add the cheaper one. She's keeping CrowdStrike, but it's a hold here, not a name she's adding.
In short: Passing reference — named alongside Apple, Google and Microsoft as a Project Glasswing partner (the model that found flaws in every major OS/browser it was tested against is genuinely dual-use).
In short: The cleanest validation yet — Q1-record net-new ARR $256M (+32%), ending ARR $5.51B (+24%), record FCF $468M (Rule of 40 = 59); Falcon Flex flywheel (Flex ARR ~$1.9B, >1/3 of total), AIDR ending ARR +250% sequentially (Kurtz's fastest ramp ever), Next-Gen SIEM >$600M, FalconShield ~4x; poached NVIDIA's Bartley Richardson as Chief AI Officer; raised FY27 guide on every line. Yet the stock fell 10%+ after a +60% run — "expectations caught up." SBC 21% of revenue.
CrowdStrike protects companies' computers and cloud systems from attacks. The key number to watch is "net-new ARR" — the fresh annual recurring revenue added this quarter (ARR = the annualized value of subscriptions). It's a truer momentum read than total ("ending") ARR, because ending ARR is a big slow-moving base, while net-new ARR shows how fast new business is landing right now. This quarter set a Q1 record ($256M, +32%) — and Q1 is normally the weakest quarter, so that's a strong signal.
The growth machine is the "Falcon Flex" flywheel: a customer commits a pool of budget up front, then spends it across CrowdStrike's many modules; once they've used it up, they "re-commit" (ReFlex) a bigger pool — and each loop pulls them deeper into the platform (customers who reflexed more than once lifted spending +51% on average). The new fast-grower is AIDR ("AI Detection and Response") — security built specifically to watch what AI systems are doing — which Kurtz calls the fastest-ramping product of his career and potentially bigger than CrowdStrike's original endpoint business ("the next EDR").
So why "Neutral" on a clean beat-and-raise? The stock had already run up 60%+ going into the report, so investors had priced in a great quarter — and a merely-excellent one wasn't enough to push it higher, so it fell 10%+. This is the "expectations caught up" problem: when a stock rallies hard before earnings, even good news can disappoint. One real watch-item underneath the growth: stock-based compensation is 21% of revenue, a meaningful cost to shareholders that the headline cash-flow figures understate.
In short: Emerging ROS candidate: "200d still upward sloping, so it may need time to flatten out before getting put down for a long nap." Not there yet, on the watchlist.
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Verbatim excerpts from the public transcripts (auto-pulled at each mention's timestamp, lightly cleaned). Timestamps link into the video; "source page" opens that commentator's full analysis at this row. Click a mention's header line to expand it (one open at a time). For personal study — not investment advice.