Cantor Fitzgerald Initiates Coverage of Cyber Stocks - Starts CrowdStrike at Overweight

© Reuters. Cantor Fitzgerald Initiates Coverage of Cyber Stocks - Starts CrowdStrike at Overweight

By Sam Boughedda

A Cantor Fitzgerald analyst initiated coverage on cyber stocks CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD), CyberArk Software (NASDAQ:CYBR), Cloudflare (NYSE:NET), and Fortinet (NASDAQ:FTNT) on Thursday.

Starting with Crowdstrike, the analyst initiated the firm with an Overweight rating and a $240 per share price target. He said they see "more than a niche tool, in that we also see an evolving cloud-native platform that enables rapid innovation and the ability to quickly expand into new security adjacencies."

"We believe evidence of this is in CrowdStrike's ability to consistently post net retention above 120%, combined with an impressive gross retention rate that has been running at 98% since the company's F2Q20 IPO. The platform story only becomes stickier over time as customers continue to adopt additional modules, which in our view is a clear positive for long-term success," the analyst said in a note.

On CyberArk Software, the analyst initiated the stock with an Overweight rating and a $180 price target.

"CyberArk has established itself as a perennial leader in the PAM market and in recent years has successfully broadened its portfolio to include single-sign-on, adaptive multifactor authentication (MFA), endpoint identity security, customer identity and access management, credentials and secrets management and cloud entitlements management, creating a compelling platform opportunity in the broader Identity and Access Management market (IAM)," he wrote.

Cloudflare was initiated with a Neutral rating and a $65 price target. "We see Cloudflare's current security product offerings as compelling and expect the company to continue to enhance its security capabilities," said the analyst. "Cloudflare has several try-before-you-buy offerings that should build momentum to potentially disrupt the traditional means of securing networks."

Finally, Fortinet was started at Coverage at Overweight with a $70 price target. The analyst said they believe Fortinet's strategic position in building its platform to target two lucrative markets in enterprise networking and cybersecurity should serve its investors well.

"We believe Fortinet's CSMA offers customers superior threat intelligence and platform performance," stated the analyst.