Technology
Cyber diamond in the rough - unloved and out-of-favour, VRNS has underperformed its peers by a wide margin over the last 12 months. However, Felix Wang thinks its fortunes may start to change this year. His bullish thesis revolves around overplayed concerns re. the company’s ongoing SaaS transition and with continued product leadership, alongside a better sales team, VRNS's 2025 ARR and earnings guidance are beatable. Investors are highly sceptical of the company’s ability to reach $1bn ARR by 2027. This is why it is trading at only 6.6x 2026 EV/ARR. With a multiple re-rating and M&A optionality (Google's historic acquisition of Wiz for $32bn could open the floodgates to more M&A in cybersecurity), Felix sees 30%+ upside.
Edition: 208
- 04 April, 2025
Technology Spending Intentions Survey
ETR’s July 24 TSIS saw participation from 1768 IT Decision-Makers, including 293 Fortune 500 and 419 Global 2000 organisations. Highlighted vendors include:
Equinix (EQIX) - rising sector and vendor-level spending intent places EQIX in a dominant position among peers, as the vendor seems well-aligned with broader IT spending and ML/AI trends, warranting ETR’s first-ever positive outlook on the data set.
Salesforce (CRM) - souring spend intent for its core Enterprise Apps business, in tandem with overall Net Score in Cloud Computing registering sharp declines, warrants a negative outlook.
Varonis (VRNS) - Negative outlook. ETR has observed a clear declining trend in spending intentions for two years, with an even lower Net Score among the Global 2000 and a sharp rise in Replacement intentions among existing customers.
Edition: 191
- 26 July, 2024
Technology
Survey data suggests more friction converting customers to SaaS - ETR’s Technology Spending Intention Survey (TSIS) results have shown a 28-point Net Score decline over the past two years and preliminary July Net Score data puts VRNS as the second lowest among publicly traded security vendors. The company has executed its first SaaS transition phase well, but ETR’s data reflects declining spending intentions among existing customers it aims to convert. AI adoption is expected to grow the volume and complexity of enterprise data use, but ETR sees increasing competition from Microsoft, large security platform companies and AI-focused security start-ups.
Edition: 189
- 28 June, 2024
Cybersecurity: Potential SEC investigations
Technology
Last October the SEC charged SolarWinds and its chief information security officer with fraud. This report looks at other companies in the cybersecurity industry that may have similar risks to an SEC investigation. Based on Veritas' Freedom of Information Act work, they received confirmations from the SEC pertaining to 15 publicly-listed cybersecurity stocks. Out of the 15 issuers confirmed, 2 attracted SEC scrutiny. Stocks mentioned: Palo Alto, CrowdStrike, Fortinet, Zscaler, Cloudflare, Check Point, Okta, Gen Digital, CyberArk, SentinelOne, Qualys, Tenable, Varonis, Rapid7 and SecureWorks.
Edition: 186
- 17 May, 2024
Cybersecurity: Beat-and-raise being replaced by marginal-beat-and-cautious-outlook
Technology
Inflection Point Research, LLC
Economic woes impacting cybersecurity vendors - security projects are being delayed / cancelled at a rate not seen for several years. Following recent earnings, IPR questions whether Tenable will be able to sustain its surprisingly impressive momentum over the next couple quarters. Varonis’ lowered guidance is consistent with IPR’s belief that their offering has shifted to being a like-to-have technology. Qualys and Rapid7’s reliance on vulnerability management must be considered a negative. Meanwhile, Check Point's results underscore IRP's hypothesis that vendor consolidation trends are strong and becoming stronger.
Edition: 148
- 11 November, 2022
Varonis (VRNS)
Technology
VRNS is a must have platform to protect data - companies will soon realise it since there is no way to stop hackers once they are inside the perimeter from stealing data. Summit Insights see no credible competition for the firm on the horizon. Despite having 99% of license revenue from subscriptions VRNS is yet to get a SaaS multiple. The stock will be driven higher as the group consistently beats and raises guidance over the coming quarters. TP $75 (70% upside).
Edition: 110
- 14 May, 2021