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While cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike is seeing its shares plunge amid a global tech outage caused by a regular software update, its rivals are seeing their shares rise.
The Austin, Texas-based firm’s stock was down around 9.1% during mid-day trading on Friday after being down 9% at the market open and down over 12% in pre-market trading. Microsoft, which reported issues with its Azure cloud service and its Windows operating systems due to the outage, also saw its shares fall around 0.4% during mid-day trading.
Meanwhile, here’s how CrowdStrike’s competitors are doing:
SentinelOne
California-based cybersecurity company SentinelOne saw its shares rise almost 6% during mid-day trading Friday to $21.34 per share. The firm’s shares had popped 7% in pre-market trading.
Palo Alto Networks
Santa Clara, California-based Palo Alto Networks saw its shares rise around 2.3% during mid-day trading Friday to $331.16 per share.
CrowdStrike chief executive George Kurtz wrote in a post on X that the outage was not due to “a security incident or cyberattack,” and that the firm “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.” He added that a “fix has been deployed.”
The timing of the IT outage in the last two weeks of CrowdStrike’s second quarter is “not ideal” and “will likely significantly constrain potential upside in F2Q as new customers await assurances that the situation has been handled,” Jeffries analysts wrote in a note on Friday. Analysts said it is still “too early to tell financial implications” for the company.
“This could be an expense burden for CRWD given it has to invest to clean up the issue and potentially dispense credits which could impact margin,” Jeffries analysts wrote in the note. “While we don’t know how CRWD will appease its customers who dealt with outages and potential lost revenue...we assume it will require credits, discounting or additional free products.”
The analysts noted that CrowdStrike “was the standout performer” this quarter, and that it doesn’t expect the outage to lead to a miss in its second quarter. Meanwhile, the analysts said the outage will have “minimal impact, if any” on Microsoft since it hasn’t been attributed to a security weakness on behalf of the company.