New CrowdStrike Price Target as AI Update Drive $10 Billion Projection
The cybersecurity firm has turned some heads on Wall Street.
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Ever hear of Deutsche Bank’s Brad Zelnick? If not, he’s one of Wall Street’s top sell-side analysts. Rated at five stars and ranked in the top 4% of all such analysts by TipRanks, Zelnick changed his opinion on top-five Sarge-folio name CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD) on Monday morning.
Early on Monday morning, Zelnick upgraded CRWD from a “hold” rating to a “buy.” He also took his target price up to $300 from $240. CRWD closed at $250.43 on Friday afternoon. According to TipRanks, Zelnick has compiled a 66% success rate over the past two years while compiling an average return of 10.2%.
Within the accompanying note, for Deutsche Bank, Zelnick cited the growth in demand for cybersecurity as AI adoption expands. He sees this growth as industry-wide but also sees opportunity for CrowdStrike to grow market share. According to the note, AI adoption is expected to accelerate consolidation in the cybersecurity industry, benefiting established platforms such as CrowdStrike’s Falcon. Currently, CrowdStrike’s AI-related products include Guardian and SafeMind. The firm has existing partnerships with Nvidia (NVDA) and CoreWeave (CRWV).
Zelnick sees the possibility for CrowdStrike to reach its $10 billion annual recurring revenue target for fiscal 2030 ahead of schedule and be able to sustain annual sales growth of more than 20% per year for several years. From the note:
“We increasingly believe the company’s $565B TAM (CY34) provided at FalCon will prove conservative given a tsunami of cyber demand materializing as the AI frontier advances.”
Today’s News
Yes, this all happened on Monday morning.
CrowdStrike and Dynatrace (DT) announced a strategic partnership to disrupt legacy SIEM and observability. Three new integrations connect the CrowdStrike Falcon platform with Dynatrace’s AI Observability platform and log management capabilities.
CrowdStrike and CoreWeave (CRWV) announced an expanded strategic partnership to secure production AI at scale. CoreWeave is bringing CrowdStrike Falcon platform protection and 24/7 managed security expertise to customers running AI workloads on its cloud.
CrowdStrike and Deloitte announced an expanded collaboration to transform enterprise cybersecurity from boardroom strategy to the Security Operations Center. CrowdStrike and Deloitte Spain are extending their collaboration into AI-powered risk advisory with Falcon IQ.
CrowdStrike announced the expansion of Project QuiltWorks across Europe, adding leading partners to scale the expertise and remediation capacity organizations need as frontier AI transforms vulnerability discovery and exploitation. Almaviva Group, Atos (AEXAY), BT (BTGOF), Computacenter, Deutsche Telekom Security (DTEGY), Grant Thornton UK, iiTD, Intrinsec, Kudelski Security, Orange Cyberdefense, Serviceware, Stoik, Strong-IT, Telefonica (TEF) and TIM AG are joining Project QuiltWorks, extending its reach and depth of expertise across Europe.
CrowdStrike announced that Ignition Technology has made a multi-million-dollar Falcon Flex commitment in Q1 FY27 to expand access to AI-native cybersecurity for SMB and mid-market customers across Europe. Working with more than 1,000 partners across Europe, Ignition Technology is expanding access to the Falcon platform through its managed service provider and managed security service provider (MSSP) ecosystem.
Earnings
CrowdStrike is set to report in early December, still about a month away. Wall Street is looking for an adjusted EPS of $0.31 on revenue of $1.53 billion. That would compare well to the $0.24 reported for the year-ago period while reflecting year-over-year sales growth of 23.8%.
Of the 45 sell-side analysts who cover this name, direction has been pretty split. I don’t know if Monday morning’s news dump does anything to change that, but I am mildly surprised at how “less than” optimistic the community of analysts is this quarter. Sixteen of the 45 have increased their earnings estimates since the start of the period, while 12 have revised those estimates lower.
The stock has done well, far better than most tech stocks. CRWD is up 185% from its February low for the year, but it’s still up 10% from October’s low. Do the analysts have this stock right? Or do the traders? I’m with the traders. The stock has opened lower. Opportunity?
Opinion
Readers can see that in August, CRWD broke out from a rising wedge of bearish reversal to the upside. Breaking out a bearish setup in a bullish direction can often be a very positive sign for equities. Readers will then see that enthusiasm cooled in September and the stock moved sideways into October.
No, that is not a classic double top (the peaks are $16 apart), but it very well might be a closing pennant pattern, which signals increased volatility going forward without foretelling direction. Neither the RSI nor the daily MACD is especially telling at the moment. A couple of positive or negative sessions will shift both of those indicators, and both are very close to neutral right now. I am willing to add right here at the 50-day SMA, which stands at $241. That’s my upside pivot and has held as support since April.
Target Price: $302
Pivot: 50-day SMA
Add: Now
Panic: Loss of 200-day SMA
At the time of publication, Guilfoyle was long CRWD equity.
