You may have heard us speak about cybersecurity lately. We feel it is a good investment theme going forward. One of the leaders in the field is called CrowdStrike and they reported numbers last night which were very good.
Revenues grew 70% to $302 million compared to $178 million in the first quarter of last year. Of that $302 million in sales, $281 million was subscription revenue. This is important to note because the business has two types of clients. Annual subscribers and once off clients who need help with a security breach.
Often what happens is that a business gets breached and they call in CrowdStrike to fix the problem. After that experience, they become clients for life. Of course CrowdStrike prefer subscription clients.
The company has many high-profile clients, including Goldman Sachs, Berkshire Hathaway, Sony, Hyatt, Mercedes Formula One, and various US government entities.
They use sophisticated AI technology which improves over time as it picks up unusual patterns in data analysis. As they say, data is the new gold and it needs protecting. There are certainly some quality competitors in the industry like Palo Alto Networks, Okta and Palantir. They will probably all do well. Based on our research CrowdStrike is one of the best.