PANW valuation is high (nearly 70x FCF/share) and profitability is pressured by dilution/acquisitions; patience recommended.

We're going to talk about Palo Alto Networks in particular. They are the biggest of the three, ticker symbol PANW. We're coming up actually on a decade of owning this stock. So, this is a bit of an earnings review after Q4 fiscal year 2026, but let's call it like a 10 years later review on this.

Especially now, shares are up well over 100% since March, early April, around the time of the cloud mythos moment and investors deciding actually cybersecurity is going to be a major beneficiary of AI, not a top disrupted software industry by AI.

Palo Alto in particular now has its hands in virtually every part of enterprise cybersecurity. Everything on the left, it got its start in network security when current CEO Nikesh Arora took over some years ago, they started making a spree of acquisitions to get into cloud security, which is now the largest sub-segment of the cybersecurity industry, which is expected to be about $250 billion this year when you exclude integrators, resellers, other consulting services, and whatnot.

They are in the midst of a new round of acquisitions for some of the sub-segments of cloud-based security, especially identity and access management. That was the big CyberArk acquisition that was made.

It was completed back in February. And within the greater cloud security market, AI-native security is also becoming a hot trend. Of course, it would be. Two more recent acquisitions were made.

One of them announced just yesterday during earnings, the acquisition of Console for AI agent security. As that digital cloud world expands, there are now lots of autonomous workers, AI agents running around getting work done for businesses and for their employees.

And earlier this summer, they also acquired Embrace. That is another observability product that will complement Chronosphere, yet another acquisition that they made around the same time as CyberArk to get into the observability market.

So, we'll get to the financial implications here in just a moment, but Palo Alto really has leaned heavily into this this AI trend and expects that the tailwinds driving cybersecurity demand will just continue to strengthen in fiscal year 2027.

So, as companies spend more, especially in this current cycle on capital expenditures to build AI data centers, that is ultimately the driving force right now for Palo Alto and its peers.

For fiscal year 2026, that's the 12 months that ended at the end of July of calendar year 2026, revenue was at just shy of 11.5 billion, up 24% for the full year. It was 9.2 billion for fiscal year 2025.

Fiscal year 2026 caps off a decade of nearly 24% CAGR revenue growth. 24% CAGR for revenue under CEO Nikesh Arora. A lot of acquisitions made starting this time about 10 years ago to help build them into the big cloud platform they are today.

And again, there is a new wave of that happening right now. So, the 24% full year growth number that was just reported, you can actually break it up into two halves. In Q1 and Q2 of fiscal year 2026, the end of 2025 and through the first quarter of the calendar year 2026, let's say through February, March, revenue was growing at 16% and 15% year-over-year.

After the acquisition of Cyberark in February, it was a big addition. Their ARR at their last report at the beginning of the year was at $1.4 billion and still growing at a high teens CAGR.

So, that pushed Palo Alto's overall revenue growth to 31% in the spring quarter back back 3 months ago, we got that in June, and then 34% year-over-year growth in this latest quarter.

assume that that big jump, 24% year-over-year growth in revenue is going to slow down as we progress through this current fiscal year and into calendar year 2027.

What we really want to look at though, more importantly, is GAAP profitability. That's a strange one. Over time, as Palo Alto matures, the GAAP net income there in purple fell off a cliff the last 2 years in part because of the new string of acquisitions.

Over the next 2 3 years, expect that line item to converge once again with the green bar, which is free cash flow. At 4.1 billion, just over 4.1 billion in fiscal year 2026. The reason why GAAP net income is so low, yes, there's employee stock-based compensation that's backed out that is not included in free cash flow.

Free cash flow is an adjusted metric, but in addition to that, there's also lots of amortization expense because Palo Alto isn't just a sales organization. That's where a lot of the SBC comes from.

It is also really deep into R&D, acquisitions of technology, of software technology to help protect infrastructure and protect enterprises. That also weighs on GAAP net income via amortization expense.

So, all on its own, GAAP net income tanking the last 2 years is not an automatic red flag if management executes properly on this and doesn't just continue fostering the revenue growth, but manages the bottom line.

Average share count increased 7.8% in fiscal year 2026 to 764 million shares. So, how do you account for the dilution from stock-based comp? You take the free cash flow of 4.11 billion and divide it by 764 million.

So, free cash flow per share was $5.38, up 10% year over year.

Okay, another yellow flag because especially the Cyberark acquisition, about $25 billion, large dilution event, and at least as of yet, that is not translating into a really big more pronounced increase in free cash flow per share for shareholders.

Will that change in the new fiscal year, fiscal year 2027?

Remember I said expect total revenue to start to decelerate. We still have 5 months, 6 months before we begin lapping the acquisition of CyberArk as well as the observability platform Chronosphere.

Currently, the guidance is for 23% to 24% full-year revenue growth. That's good. Driving that, the very top line here is their next-gen security ARR. That's all the next-gen cloud security that they acquired starting 10 years ago and some of the new AI and observability and identity management that they've been acquiring more recently.

That is also starting to slow down. So, as we get to the end of 2027, expect Palo Alto Networks revenue to begin to go back down towards the total industry average, which earlier in that slide we showed you was probably going to be a CAGR in the low teens over the next few years.

Barring other large acquisitions that the company makes, I expect this by the end of the fiscal year, next July, August, early September when we get those reports, revenue growth on a quarterly year-over-year basis will decelerate back down to mid to low teens like it was pre-CyberArk.

But again, more importantly, we can get the implied free cash flow on a per share basis using their guidance. Adjusted free cash flow margin of 38%. They exclude a couple other items to get at this adjusted free cash flow, an adjustment to the adjusted metric.

Just normal free cash flow probably going to be more like 36%, 37%, but but okay, let's just use the adjusted free cash flow metric. With their adjusted free cash flow margin expected to be flat from fiscal year 2026 to 2027, but share count increasing by approximately 11%.

That was their guidance that they provided on share count. Free cash flow on a per share basis should be roughly around the same place as adjusted earnings per share, which is implied at 9% year-over-year.

It's very clear this is going to be a multi-year investment cycle for Palo Alto Networks. They're going to need to digest these acquisitions that they're making. Profitability is going to be under pressure.

Revenue growth can still be a proxy for what's possible when the profit margins snap back, snap back higher on a per share basis once they're done with this current round of investment.

But nevertheless, this is something that we think could pressure the stock.

And the reason for that, as of right now, even after a little bit of a sell-off, Palo Alto Networks stock trades for nearly 70 times both last year's free cash flow per share, again on a per share basis, not just straight free cash flow, but on a per share basis to account for the dilution, and actually slightly higher, even closer to 70x on the fiscal year 2027 expectation.

We think this is a pretty high valuation for a company that, excluding further acquisitions that the company makes, investors decide they like, this seems like a pretty high valuation now at this point for Palo Alto Networks.

Yes, cybersecurity in the AI era is most definitely going to benefit. There are more attack surfaces to be exploited that need to be protected, but new acquisitions to continue plugging those holes, the company's own R&D efforts to bring new products, new features, new protection to enterprises to market are not yet adding shareholder value.

The rising share count has drastically lowered the per share profit growth for Palo Alto.

So, long story short here, I think patience will go a long way for investors after a pretty incredible run-up, especially for Palo Alto and CrowdStrike.