Welp, Crowdstrike just posted a massive earnings beat, and somehow still managed to disappoint pretty much everyone. The infamous cybersecurity giant reported adjusted EPS of $1.03 per share, easily surpassing the consensus estimate of $0.86, while revenues clocked in at $1.06 billion against expectations of $1.03 billion. Solid numbers? Yes… however, that’s about where the good news ends.

(Source: Giphy) 

As it turns out, investors these days are harder to impress than my dad watching my middle-school talent show. Shares fell 8% after-hours (down -9.09% today), mostly thanks to CrowdStrikes uglier than a mud fence guidance for Q1 and fiscal 2026. Naturally, CEO George Kurtz leaned heavily into AI, stating "As businesses of all sizes rapidly adopt AI, stopping the breach necessitates cybersecurity’s AI-native platform." But unfortunately, the playbook that involves throwing AI around like it's an STD at Woodstock became a major miss—and a slight inconvenience for those who can read between the lines of it (a.k.a. me). 

(Source: CNBC) 

Now with that said, a -9% plunge is still pretty brutal, especially after the first part of the report had CrowdStrike body bagging expectations. So why the exaggerated panic over an outlook? Well, if you recall last summer’s global apocalypse teaser—when CrowdStrike’s own software update rug pulled the grid. It appears, that particular “Look what you did, you little jerk” moment isn’t quite behind them yet. The firm expects an additional $73 million in outage-related costs this upcoming quarter, plus another $43 million to serenade customers and convince them not to jump ship. Oof. 

On the other hand, CrowdStrike's key metric, Annual Recurring Revenue, rose 23% to $4.24 billion—just barely beating estimates of $4.21 billion. But the critical "net new" ARR plunged 20% to $224.3 million, indicating customers might be angling for discounts when renewing contracts. Refer back to the above paragraph for reasons why. 

(Source: Yahoo Finance) 

Going back to the outlook for a second, CrowdStrike’s revenue forecast came in somewhere between "$4.744 billion to $4.805 billion," against analysts' expectations of $4.768 billion. Even worse, adjusted EPS guidance landed at just $3.39 (midpoint), significantly below Wall Street’s rosy-eyed expectation of $4.40. Meaning, analysts speculate—probably correctly—that legal reparations from the outage might be taking a bigger bite than the $73 million anticipated. Lawyers win again. Shocking.

(Source: Giphy) 

However, despite the immediate yeeting into the abyss, the majority of retail sentiment is weirdly bullish, with investors eyeing the drop as a chance to “BTFD”. Because obviously, 2025 optimism is keen on ignoring past red flags—just ask anyone still holding crypto (this rally won’t last, fight me.) After all, CrowdStrike did proudly announce recently that sales via Amazon Web Services topped $1 billion in 2024, proving once again that hitching your wagon to Bezos is usually a safe bet… just don’t bring your wife to his yacht party. 

Bottom line to all this? CrowdStrike’s earnings was basically a stick the landing win only to trip on the podium steps. Great earnings, questionable guidance, and a stock price going wildly in the wrong direction. So with that, do what you will with this information and place your bets accordingly.

In the meantime, buy the dip or not, stay safe and stay frosty, friends! Until next time…

P.S. $1.4 million, $1.02 million, and $6.715 million—these aren’t lottery winnings or Miami real estate prices… they’re all insider transactions that have gone down in the last 72 hours while retail investors were busy panic-selling everything. Want to track these corporate fat cats in real-time so you can pretend you're also an executive with material nonpublic information? (Legally, of course.) Click here to join Stocks.News premium while you still can…

Stocks.News does not hold positions in companies mentioned in the article.