PANW Earnings Preview

Bigger picture/sentiment:

Sentiment heading into the q is a lot better than last quarter, when most folks were freaking out over the late Friday ER. The sw specific investors I talked to are either long or want to get long the name, despite the weakness in other cyber results so far.  Along with CRWD and ZS, PANW remains a favorite in software security. Investors are looking for more color on a pair of recent acquisitions and how that will impact top line and ARR.

Bears into the q say that q1 tends to be the seasonally most challenging quarter, product headwinds remain meaningful, and contract duration remains elevated against a tough sw spending backdrop, while bulls will point to PANW being the best pure play sw security co with excellent mgmt., numbers looking achievable with less than seasonal expectations and a pair of acquisitions aiding top line, cloud growth that should help re-rate the multiple, and it trades at somewhat reasonable 20x FCF for a 20% FCF grower.

Read-throughs/C…