NEW YORK, March 10, 2026, 3:43 PM EDT.
CrowdStrike Holdings was little changed in afternoon trading on Tuesday after Morgan Stanley upgraded the cybersecurity company to overweight and raised its price target. The shares were at $434.25, up 12 cents from a previous close of $434.13, after a six-session winning streak through Monday.
The call matters because CrowdStrike has become a test of whether new AI tools will eat into parts of the cybersecurity market or push customers toward bigger software platforms. CrowdStrike, Zscaler and other cyber names sold off in late February after Anthropic launched Claude Code Security, though JPMorgan strategists later said investors had been pricing in a worst-case disruption scenario.
Barron’s, citing Morgan Stanley’s note, said the bank lifted its price target to $510 from $487. Excerpts published Tuesday said analysts Meta A. Marshall and Keith Weiss saw CrowdStrike as staying “in rarified air” among software companies still growing more than 20% at scale. Barron’s
CrowdStrike gave bulls fresh numbers on March 3. It forecast fiscal 2027 revenue of $5.87 billion to $5.93 billion, above analysts’ estimates, as fourth-quarter revenue rose 23% to $1.31 billion. “I think people are still digesting numbers. But in this environment, having a software stock trade close to flat post print seems like a good outcome,” Truist Securities analyst Junaid Siddiqui told Reuters. The company also said costs tied to the July 2024 Windows outage and related matters rose to $117.7 million in fiscal 2026, though they narrowed in the latest quarter. Reuters
In its earnings release, Chief Executive George Kurtz said fiscal 2026 would “go down in our history books as CrowdStrike’s best year yet” after the company reached $5.25 billion in annual recurring revenue, or subscription revenue normalized over a year. He also said AI adoption was making CrowdStrike “mission-critical infrastructure.” Securities and Exchange Commission
CrowdStrike is still fighting for security budgets against larger platform vendors such as Palo Alto Networks and cloud-security rival Zscaler. Palo Alto last month cut its annual adjusted profit forecast as deal costs rose, while Zscaler reported a wider quarterly loss in what Reuters described as a competitive market.
But the trade still has an obvious weak spot. Excerpts published by Investing.com said Morgan Stanley argued CrowdStrike’s premium valuation versus peers had to be backed by reaccelerating growth and free-cash-flow margins above 30%. That leaves little room for a stumble if customer spending softens or AI tools start to pressure pricing.
CrowdStrike has also been widening its reach beyond endpoint protection, software that secures laptops and servers. Reuters reported in January that it agreed to buy identity-security startup SGNL for $740 million and browser security firm Seraphic Security for about $420 million, and a separate Reuters report on Monday said it had sued rival AiStrike in California federal court over alleged trademark infringement.
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