CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Hamza Fodderwala with Morgan Stanley.

Hamza Fodderwala: Hi. Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. George, a question for you. I think it’s pretty clear that, the macro is going to impact pretty much every company, security not excluded from that. I’m curious how you’re thinking about balancing sort of growth and profitability from here because on the one hand, clearly, growth has been slow for CrowdStrike and for everybody else. But on the other hand you’ve got this big market opportunity in front of you as an emerging consolidator in cybersecurity. Do you feel like this is a time to maybe continue to invest as maybe others are going to struggle more, they don’t have that free cash flow generation that you do, or do you feel like this is a time to maybe show a little bit more leverage? Just curious, how you’re thinking about that?

George Kurtz: Well, great question, Hamza. And it’s always been a balanced growth approach, and it’s never been a growth at all costs. And I think we’ve shown that with our performance and track record. And we continue to play the long game. But if you put things into perspective, we’re a Rule of 83 last quarter. I mean, you think about the growth and the cash flow generation at scale at $2 billion plus ARR is pretty remarkable. We actually see this as a great opportunity for CrowdStrike as we go forward as smaller competitors fall by the wayside, as private companies look for exits we think it’s a very attractive opportunity for us with our balance sheet, almost $2.5 billion in cash. And at the end of the day, as these macro trends evolve, we see a great opportunity for us now into the future to continue to consolidate customers as well as other technologies that might fit within our platform.

So that’s the way we look at it, balanced investment and, again, a focus on making sure that we’re delivering cash flow for our shareholders.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Andrew Nowinski with Wells Fargo.

Andrew Nowinski: Great. Thank you for taking the question this afternoon. So total ARR of $2.3 billion, growing 54% is still absolutely amazing, I was €“ and it’s at scale. But I was wondering, were you surprised that the net new logos that you added were down 9% this quarter?

Burt Podbere: Thanks, Andy. So when we think of the net new logos, it really corresponds to what we talked about in terms of what we saw in that SMB space. The SMB space is the one that drives the velocity of our net new logos. And as we talked about, we saw an 11% increase in our sales cycle in the SMB space. And that actually equated into $15 million in terms of deals in that space that could push out. And so when you think about 15 million in that space and what it means in terms of logos, where you can do the math, it’s a pretty big number. So that’s how we think about net new logos corresponding to what we saw in net new ARR from the SMB space. So from that perspective, we weren’t surprised at the end of the day when we saw that what happened with respect to the increased sales cycles and the amount of money that got pushed out in the SMB space.

Operator: Thank you. And our next question comes from the line of Jonathan Ho with William Blair.