Cloudflare stock popped Thursday after Goldman Sachs upgraded the cybersecurity firm to buy from sell. Cloudflare stock was among top performing cybersecurity stocks in 2024.
Meanwhile, shares in CyberArk also rose on Thursday amid an upbeat research note from Morgan Stanley.
Cloudflare Stock Upgrade
The Goldman Sachs report pointed to the recent "Salt Typhoon" Chinese hacking incident as likely driving higher cybersecurity spending. The Salt Typhoon attack targeted U.S. telecom companies.
Also, Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriela Borges upgraded Cloudflare stock on views its go-to-market strategy will be a bright spot.
"(We expect) an improving sales and marketing productivity cycle after two years of evolution to better address platform sales in the enterprise," Borges said.
In October, Cloudflare hired a former top ServiceNow executive, Chirantan "C.J." Desai, as president of product and engineering.
On the stock market today, Cloudflare stock rose 6.6% to 114.77. CyberArk stock rose 2.2% to 340.63.
Cybersecurity Stocks To Watch
Morgan Stanley analyst Hamza Fodderwala in a report said CyberArk could also gain from another Chinese hacking incident involving rival BeyondTrust.
"(On Dec. 30) it was announced hackers connected to the Chinese government breached several Treasury Department workstations and accessed unclassified documents, according to a letter sent to Congress," said Fodderwala in a report. "The hackers gained access by overriding security controls from a 3rd party provider, BeyondTrust, which is a major competitor to CyberArk in the Privileged Access Management space."
Meanwhile, Cloudflare stock gained about 36% in 2024 while CyberArk stock rose over 53%.
Other top performers included Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike Holdings.
Palo Alto stock climbed about 26%, Fortinet stock popped 63% and CrowdStrike stock advanced 38%. Cloudflare is among cybersecurity stocks to watch.
The S&P 500 rose about 24% last year.
Follow Reinhardt Krause on Twitter @reinhardtk_tech for updates on artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and cloud computing.
