AI's Double-Edged Sword for Cybersecurity: Outlook for CRWD, PANW, OKTA

price. And now Jefferies has that 230 target. So let's look ahead to the cybersecurity story. The names Ahmed Khan Equity analyst technology at Morningstar. I'm so glad you are with us. I was covering CrowdStrike earlier today, and there was a moment where they thought that AI would make cyber security obsolete, but in fact, the exact opposite has happened. The more AI, the more adoption, the more cyber security. Is that right? And could you explain for sure? First of all, thank you so much for having me, Nicole. So if we if we rewind back to what happened at the start of the year, obviously, you know, cloud and cloud security code security, a lot of these sort of different products were launched and investors had a freak out moment where, you know, there was a SaaS apocalypse or SaaS occur, and CrowdStrike or CrowdStrike or other cybersecurity names were basically bunched or grouped as AI losers ourselves and other sort of analysts on the street continue to reiterate this position that cybersecurity is different. Cybersecurity is, is, you know, by its nature, there's a, there's a dual use for these models. So if models get really good at capturing cyber threats, they also really get really good at exploiting new, new sort of like attack vectors when it comes to cybersecurity. And we reiterated our points, you know, with the, with the launch of mythos and, and glasswing sort of the collaboration. And we've seen the market come around to that view. So cybersecurity stocks like Palo, Fortinet, CrowdStrike, Okta, they've done really well over the last over the last few months. And we think there's, there's, there's plenty of sort of like growth ahead as, as, as enterprises try to figure out like, okay, we're using so much more AI, how do we actually secure the use of this AI and then actually use AI to protect from, from new threats that are emerging? So let's break it down because you did mention Anthropic's Glasswing, we had hugging Face, we've had, you know, agents against agents where you know what the hugging face story where one, you know, goes rogue and is searching the internet and such. So it's a big story and this is why we need more cybersecurity. In the meantime, we have a name like CrowdStrike, which has been moving higher. And yet you have a price target that's $460. So you certainly see more upside potential. What specifically about CrowdStrike do you like? I just I just want to clarify that that 460 price target or the fair value estimate is pre split. So actually we're below the street. The consensus when it comes to when it comes to the current. Yes, yes, yes. I looked at the analyst notes today and yes, it did have it did have a four for one stock split folks on July 2nd. And so I understand what you're saying, because I was going to say that is significantly higher than where we are today. That makes a lot of sense. So you actually have a price target that's lower than where we are. But you still like the company. Okay. Yes. So from, so from like from, from just a structural perspective, from a fundamental perspective, we think CrowdStrike, Palo, and a lot of these higher quality white moat cybersecurity names are going to perform really, really well. At the same time, we think the market is sort of like bringing all that growth. Too much into the near term. We think that this is this, the cyber story is going to play out over many quarters over many years, and it's not going to be like, okay, this quarter. Suddenly the numbers are that much massively, massively better is our view. And now obviously, if, if, if, if these companies, including Palo and CrowdStrike that are reporting in the next in the next week or so, if they come out and they have much better numbers than, than sort of we're modeling, we would revise our fair value estimate upward. And for both companies, we actually have both cases that do imply higher, sort of like, you know, further, further, further upside to where both names are trading your target now for CrowdStrike. So our base case, our base case is, is around 130. But again, as I mentioned, if this, if this cybersecurity bull case that the market is currently pricing in or parts of it that is currently pricing in if, if that, if that, if that comes to the comes to fruition with AI detection and response meaningfully contributing to the company's IRR and seeing like material acceleration in what the mythos moment is bringing for cybersecurity. Our bull case for for CrowdStrike is slightly north of 200, so there's still a little bit of upside based on where the stock is trading right now. And then for Okta, you talk about strong earnings there or for that company, right. So Okta Okta is a very interesting name because like we all understand that, you know, as agents proliferate, we need to have some identity and security for those agents. There's a lot of like real clear sort of like spending signals that that, that companies are, they're looking to secure the agent agentic identity. Okta is clearly making making a play in that in that space. We think it's roughly fairly valued. But again, for Okta as well, much like most of our cybersecurity coverage, we have our base case. But then we also have a bull case that kind of looks at, okay, how much better could it be if some of these AI drivers actually are much more near term? And I think if we if we look at the bull case for Okta, there is there is more upside to where the stock is trading right now. And so something like project Glasswing from anthropic was very beneficial to those two names in particular. Are there others that because it sounds like, you know, you have fair value targets, but you do have bull case scenarios for these companies because you like them? Are there others that you really like? I think when when we're thinking about cybersecurity, the three names that I would focus on as, as, as, as sort of like the main beneficiaries of this AI, AI driven spending would be CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, and then, and then Fortinet. If we, if we think about, if we take a step back and sort of look at, oh, which company has is most attractive from a price to fair value perspective from our side is Zscaler is another name that that that I would that I would put in front of you as the name that is that is that is trading well below our fair value estimate and is clearly poised to benefit from increased AI spending, provided that the company can actually execute. And some of the, some of the some of the some of the execution recently by the company has been, has been, has been not up to scratch, which is the reason why the stock has not performed as well as their cyber peers. And what was the last one? Because I heard you say Palo Alto and Fortinet. And what was that last one that you were referring to? It may be I just didn't hear it. What was that one? It's it's it's Palo Fortinet, CrowdStrike and Zscaler. CrowdStrike and Zscaler. Okay. What about what? Palo Alto? What is so special about Palo Alto? That was the one you said first. It's a leader. It's most it's heavily weighted in the hack ETF for folks who like to have the hockey. TF what is it about Palo Alto that really stands out? So Palo Alto is essentially, you know, it's it's it's the they have the widest platform when it comes to when it comes to cyber security. So the company does endpoint, they do network, they do cloud, they do sassy. And they're really embedded into enterprises. And then when enterprises are sort of looking at their cybersecurity spending and they're trying to spend more, it's much easier for them to go to existing incumbents. And also, Palo Alto's execution has been phenomenal under, under, under Nikesh, who's the CEO. And we think that that sort of they're meeting the moment. Right. So Palo Alto was talking about platform ization or vendor consolidation way before other companies were. And they've really sort of like, you know, doubled down on that. They recently made a big acquisition with Cyberark, which gave them access to identity, which was which is a market that they did not have prior access to. And especially now, as I mentioned before, with identity becoming that much more important in the world of Agentic AI, we think that could also sort of drive a robust growth for Palo Alto. Ahmed Khan, great to