CrowdStrike shares fall as billings miss overshadows earnings and revenue beat

Shares in CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. fell more than 9% in late trading today after the cybersecurity company beat earnings and revenue estimates in its fiscal 2027 first quarter but disappointed investors with softer-than-expected billings.

For the quarter that ended on April 30, CrowdStrike reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.10, up from 73 cents in the same quarter a year earlier, on revenue of $1.39 billion, up 26% year-over-year. Analysts had been expecting $1.07 per share on revenue of $1.36 billion.

The miss that mattered was billings, which came in at $1.35 billion, up 17.7% year-over-year but short of what analysts had penciled in. CrowdStrike shares had climbed nearly 60% this year before the report, so a beat on the headline numbers was not enough to satisfy investors who had already priced in a strong quarter.

Annual recurring revenue grew 24% year-over-year to $5.51 billion as of April 30, of which a record $255.8 million was net new annual recurring revenue added in the quarter, up 32% from a year earlier. Net cash generated from operations was a record $590.9 million, up from $384.1 million in the same quarter last year and free cash flow hit a record $468.5 million. CrowdStrike ended the quarter with $4.55 billion in cash and cash equivalents.

The company also saw a profit on an unadjusted basis, reporting net income of $27.8 million, or 11 cents per share, compared with a loss of $104.3 million, or 42 cents per share, in the first quarter of fiscal 2026. The year-earlier period was weighed down by costs tied to the July 2024 update that crashed Windows systems worldwide.

Alongside the results, CrowdStrike said its board approved a four-for-one stock split to be paid as a stock dividend. Shareholders of record on June 25 will receive three additional shares for each share held, with split-adjusted trading expected to begin July 2.

Business highlights in the quarter included the launch and expansion of Project QuiltWorks, a cybersecurity coalition that counts OpenAI Group PBC and Anthropic PBC among its members and aims to remediate frontier artificial intelligence risk through the Falcon platform.

CrowdStrike was also the only security vendor selected as a launch partner for both Anthropic’s Project Glasswing and OpenAI’s Trusted Access for Cyber program. The company introduced Agentic MDR, a managed detection and response service that pairs human analysts with AI agents and rolled out Falcon Data Security to discover and protect sensitive data across endpoints, cloud and AI workflows.

“In Q1, the worlds of cybersecurity and frontier AI collided: this was the Mythos moment. CrowdStrike is AI security infrastructure, critical to successful AI adoption,” founder and Chief Executive George Kurtz said in the company’s earnings release.

CrowdStrike raised its full-year outlook, lifting net new annual recurring revenue growth guidance to 27.7% at the midpoint. For its fiscal year 2027, the company now expects adjusted earnings per share of $4.88 to $4.96 on revenue of $5.915 billion to $5.959 billion. Analysts had been expecting $4.90 per share on revenue of $5.91 billion.

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