Cloudflare's stock drops after earnings as forecast comes up a bit shy

By Emily Bary

Cybersecurity stocks under pressure in Thursday's late trading

Cloudflare Inc. shares declined 6% in Thursday's extended session after the cybersecurity company beat revenue expectations for its latest quarter but came up a bit shy with its top-line view of the ongoing quarter.

The company posted a third-quarter net loss of $23.5 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with a loss of $42.5 million, or 13 cents a share, in the year-prior quarter. On an adjusted basis, Cloudflare (NET) earned 16 cents a share, up from 6 cents a share a year before, while analysts were modeling 10 cents a share.

Revenue increased to $335.6 million from $253.9 million, whereas analysts were calling for $330.5 million.

For the fourth quarter, Cloudflare executives model $352 million to $353 million in revenue, along with 12 cents in adjusted earnings per share. The FactSet consensus was for $356 million in revenue and 10 cents in adjusted EPS.

See also: CrowdStrike's and Zscaler's stocks are top plays in rocky cybersecurity market, analyst says

"We believe inference is the biggest opportunity in [artificial intelligence], and inference tasks will largely be run on end devices and on connectivity clouds like Cloudflare," Chief Executive Matthew Prince said in a release. "By the end of 2024, we expect to have inference-optimized [graphics processing units] running in nearly every location where Cloudflare operates worldwide -- within milliseconds of every internet user."

Cloudflare's results come as fellow cybersecurity company Fortinet Inc. (FTNT) also posted earnings Thursday afternoon, bringing a significant miss on its outlook. That guidance seemed to be weighing on the sector in the extended session, with shares of Palo Alto Networks Inc. (PANW) and Zscaler Inc. (ZS) both down.

-Emily Bary

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11-02-23 2003ET

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