Mindset for Money
CPA, Financial Analyst, Former Big Four Auditor
CrowdStrike's $242B valuation is far too expensive for a business that generated about $770M of cash flow over the last 12 months once stock-based compensation is stripped out. The business is impressive, but the setup recalls SaaS a few years ago, when investors assumed nothing could go wrong. x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks need 50%-plus growth to deliver even a 10% IRR over a realistic horizon, but almost no conceivable case gets them there. They feel as dumb as Zoom and Peloton in 2021. Even if revenue doubles over four to five years, Palo Alto would still trade at 10x revenue and CrowdStrike at 20x, leaving little prospect of a real IRR; Palo Alto is growing in the teens today. x.com x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike is extremely expensive on real owner earnings once stock-based compensation is counted. Of $3.9B reported free cash flow over four years, $3.1B was matched by SBC, yet the share count still rose 7.5%. FY26 owner free cash flow was $138M on $4.81B revenue, a 2.9% cash margin, so at a $219B market cap investors pay about 1,590x owner earnings. x.comÂ
CrowdStrike may distinguish itself from an expensive cybersecurity group by showing more breakneck growth at earnings next month. Fortinet's slowing product revenue exposed how much relentless execution investors had priced into the group's extreme multiples, pulling CrowdStrike down in sympathy. CrowdStrike remains in a higher tier than Fortinet, which itself ranks above SentinelOne. x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike's 45x sales multiple on mid-20% revenue growth only works if multiple expansion continues in perpetuity, which no long holder can count on. x.comÂ
SentinelOne appears undervalued relative to its expected revenue growth. Analysts forecast 19.2% NTM revenue growth, versus 23.2% for CrowdStrike, which trades at a premium on forward EV/sales. x.comÂ
CrowdStrike's re-rating reflects a massively expanded market in which security seats are defined by AI agents rather than employees. The Mythos model announcement and a frontier model going rogue with cyber attacks changed the fundamentals since the stock was at $100. It is very expensive versus its history and peers, and @InvestingVisual notes it trades at 109x forward free cash flow, but that does not mean nothing has changed. x.comÂ
CrowdStrike at 40x forward sales is hard to take seriously as a best idea into 2027. x.comÂ
CrowdStrike is a hard pass at its current valuation, priced for perfection and then some for just 26% growth on an already large revenue base. It trades at 35x forward revenue, 102x forward free cash flow, 113x forward EV/EBITDA and 166x forward earnings. x.comÂ
CrowdStrike is where the AI buildout ends, because rising AI demand expands the addressable market for security. Management said that since Anthropic's Mythos, growth has shown up in ARR, not just meetings or interest, and the threat landscape is not subsiding. The stock's move higher is a rerating: CrowdStrike can grow faster as it gets bigger, with no end in sight in an AI world, though the share price could wobble. x.com x.comÂ
CrowdStrike at 45x revenue is even sillier than its valuation back in 2020, when its fundamentals were far stronger: customer count grew 116%, revenue guidance beat the Street and sales and acquisition costs fell. There was a time to own it; that time is not now. x.comÂ