Wall Street should put CrowdStrike Holdings' July 2024 global IT outage in the rearview mirror, said an analyst who upgraded the cybersecurity stock to buy. CrowdStrike stock climbed amid the news on Tuesday.
BTIG analyst Gray Powell in a report said he expects CrowdStrike stock to rebound in a key financial metric — annual recurring revenue, or ARR. It's tied to subscription services growth.
Analysts have lowered estimates for Crowdstrike's "net new" ARR amid expectations that many customers will seek price discounts when renewing contracts to help cover the cost of business disruptions. A software upgrade caused the global IT outage.
"With the July 19 2024 IT outage now eight months in the rearview mirror, we think CrowdStrike has much better visibility on forecasts," said Powell in a report.
"As we run through ARR recapture scenarios, we see potential for growth to reaccelerate in second half (fiscal) 2026 and upside to street forecasts in fiscal 2027." Fiscal 2026 starts with the current quarter ending in April.
He added: "More importantly, we see CrowdStrike emerging as the cleanest platform play across the security software space."
Further, Powell raised his rating on CrowdStrike stock to buy from neutral, with a price target of 431.
CrowdStrike Stock Technical Rating
On the stock market today, CrowdStrike stock gained more than 3% to 384.81 in afternoon trades. Shares in the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based cybersecurity firm have advanced 12% in 2025.
CrowdStrike competes with Palo Alto Networks, SentinelOne, Microsoft and others in the "endpoint" market. Endpoint security tools detect malware on laptops, mobile phones and other devices that access corporate networks.
Also, CrowdStrike is building a threat-detection cybersecurity platform called XDR, which stands for extended detection and response. It monitors endpoints as well as web/email gateways, web application firewalls and cloud business workloads.
CrowdStrike stock holds a strong IBD Composite Rating of 95, according to IBD Stock Checkup.
IBD's Composite Rating combines five separate proprietary ratings into one easy-to-use gauge. The best growth stocks have a Composite Rating of 90 or better.
Follow Reinhardt Krause on X, formerly Twitter, @reinhardtk_tech for updates on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.
