Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ:CHKP) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Gil Shwed: I think that from everything I know, we actually have a pretty healthy pipeline for SD-WAN. We have customers waiting for it. We actually have many customers already using it in early access program. Usually to have some real contribution, it takes between three to six months. This one, I think, has some pent-up demand ready, but still, it’s a product that because it’s rollout, SD-WAN is usually to roll out too many branch offices, it takes a little bit more time because it’s not just installing it in one major location. It’s actually a longer rollout.

Keith Bachman: Okay, great. Thank you.

Kip Meintzer: All right. Next up is Andrew Nowinski from Wells Fargo followed by Brian Essex of JPMorgan.

Andrew Nowinski: Good morning, and thank you very much for the question. So, I know your billings can be unpredictable due to large deal activity. So I was wondering if you could discuss both linearity in the quarter and any large deals you may have had in Q4 or lack thereof that might have impacted your billings growth in Q4, notwithstanding that tough comp you had from last year?

Roei Golan: Yes. So I think this quarter, I think Gil also mentioned it, we’ve seen less budget flush. I think we didn’t see any budget flush this quarter. I mean, last quarter, we saw — we had some mega deals that came through this due to budget — some of them due to budget flush in Q4 2021. And this quarter because of also the macro environments and also deals that the longer sales cycle, so we’ve seen some of these deals are deferred, the projects were deferred or slipped to Q1. So I think that’s, in general, that’s affected — is what you see in the billing. Also, need to mention, as Gil also mentioned, when we are signing Infinity contract, you won’t see it in the billing mostly because the Infinity contract is billed based on specific payment terms, and most of them are not being billed upfront. So it can be billed in the next — in the future periods. So I mean, that’s in terms of the billings.

Kip Meintzer: Next up is Brian Essex with JPMorgan followed by Patrick Colville of Scotia Bank.

Brian Essex: Great. Thank you, good morning. And thank you for taking the call. Gil, I was wondering if you could maybe kind of circle back on SD-WAN. Maybe one, hit the decision to build versus buy. And then two, are you seeing the pull-forward or the pull-in for demand on a point solution SD-WAN basis? Or this full end-to-end SaaS that you’re seeing, is that kind of the larger driver here? Thank you.

Gil Shwed: I think there’s multiple factors driving it. On one end, customers are looking for SaaS solutions that they can consume the security from the cloud. Some of it makes sense. Some of it may not. Still many, many customers are deploying customers on site, which gives them a better performance, better latency, in some cases, better economics and the SD-WAN element that talks about the network optimization. Now the reason to build versus buy, first, we are looking for vendors to buy. We’ve looked in the past. I think the real answer is that the SD-WAN is very well tightly integrated into the gateway itself, and we build the gateways. And it’s integrated in a networking code. So buying an SD-WAN vendor and integrating it might take longer and might not necessarily generate better results after all.