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

Gil Shwed: So first, both your questions are right on spot. There is a possibility that we will increase it if we need to. So far, again, as we’ve been doing that policy for buyback for over 10 years, and it works well. But again, there’s no — I don’t have any objection to see that if there’s an opportunity in the marketplace, we will increase the buyback. I hope, by the way, it will go the other way around but — in the buyback. In terms of opportunities to acquire companies, you’re absolutely right. There will be more opportunities. But still, I mean, when I look at the market and we analyze it all the time, it’s not that — we don’t do it on a public market, the valuation starts to change a little bit, even though still you can find a lot of cyber companies that are losing tons of money.

And I’m not sure that what you want us to do is to buy a company that will cause us to start to growing from very nice earnings to fund their business model, which may or may not be justified over the long run. I mean, that’s one challenge. On the private market, I think we will see some opportunities in the future. I’m not sure that the valuation reached the level that we need to reach yet. Some — we do get once in a while a call from a company that we think is interesting and reached this point of time that it may be interesting. So far, we haven’t made — I mean again, we made many acquisitions. If you look, we’ve made I think like 18 acquisitions over the history of Check Point. Over the last three, four years, I think made like six or seven.

So, it’s not that we are not active on the M&A frame. But I think in the future, there’s definitely an opportunity that we will do more. And by the way, that is a good reason to keep some cash, especially if we will find something more transformative, and then not that I’m underestimating spending a few hundred million dollars on a company is also a big bet and a big investment. But maybe we’ll find something even bigger, and then it’s good to have some cash to fund that.

Brad Zelnick: Thank you.

Kip Meintzer: All right. Next up is Fatima Boolani followed by our last caller, Sami Badri from Credit Suisse.

Fatima Boolani : Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. Either for Roei, but I would love to get a more financial and quantitative perspective on this. Going back to your margin guidance for calendar ’23. So, we are seeing a compression in spite of the fact that you will benefit from the stronger dollar more visibly in 2023. So, what I wanted to understand is as you think about the go-to-market organization, the sales capacity, the productivity trends that you’ve been seeing and maybe attrition trends you’re seeing, how is that changing, if at all, in 2023? And where can we see potential uplift? Or if you’re changing any incentives to drive some of this new product adoption? I’d love to get a little bit more granular on why we’d still underneath the hood, if you will, from the FX impact, still see margin compression? Thank you.