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CFO Brian Carolan explained that some of the margin outperformance was due to the timing of investments. He noted they are in a 'good spot' with sales capacity and are investing in areas like customer success to drive retention, aiming for a balanced strategy of growth investment and margin expansion.

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CPO Lee Klarich reiterated the company's conviction that all elements of cloud security—application security, posture, and runtime—are interconnected. He stated that as enterprises move critical applications to the cloud, runtime protection becomes paramount. Klarich highlighted the "shift left" (ASPM) and "shield right" (runtime) strategy enabled by Cortex Cloud, noting that customer response aligns with this integrated vision.

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CEO Nikesh Arora acknowledged that April was an 'anomalous month' with a brief customer pause due to tariff and supply chain concerns. However, he stated the team successfully executed through the uncertainty, and the business climate has since stabilized. He confirmed that customer transformation plans remain intact and the company is back to a normal cadence for Q4.

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CFO Dipak Golechha attributed the strong guidance to three key factors: a robust and differentiated product portfolio, a significant pipeline contribution from the recent IBM QRadar acquisition, and continued confidence in their internal forecasting process. He suggested this outperformance is proof that their unique platformization strategy is working effectively.

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CFO Jim Caci explained that the company had already factored federal spending uncertainty into its guidance at the beginning of the year and has not seen conditions worsen. He noted strong commercial demand across all regions and customer segments. Regarding sales capacity, Caci highlighted significant improvements in sales team efficiency, which is driving leverage in sales and marketing spend, and confirmed they are planning capacity one to two years ahead to support growth targets.

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CFO Roei Golan explained that internal data shows the annual recurring revenue (ARR) from customers who refresh their appliances increases over time. CEO Nadav Zafrir added that growth is also driven by new product lines like email and SASE, which are growing over 40% year-over-year, and by the unified Infinity platform.

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CFO Roei Golan clarified that the maximum exposure from potential tariffs would be less than one percentage point on total margin, and the company is working to mitigate this. He also projected that the current hardware refresh cycle is expected to continue through the end of 2026, presenting opportunities with both the existing install base and competitors' customers.

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CEO Nadav Zafrir stated the go-to-market changes are designed to flatten the organization and bring leadership closer to customers, with a focus on the Americas. CFO Roei Golan confirmed that the potential impacts of these changes were already incorporated into the company's full-year guidance.

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Founder and CEO Gil Shwed reported positive traction and that the integration of Perimeter 81 is on track. He noted a 'nice jump' in sequential quarterly sales for the SASE platform in Q3, with several seven-figure deals in the pipeline for Q4, indicating growing optimism for the solution's adoption.

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Roy Zisapel, Co-Founder, CEO, President & Director, responded that after surpassing the 20% short-term Cloud ARR growth target, the next goal is 25%, with a focus on accelerating growth. He differentiated Radware's API security by highlighting its Epic AI framework, which automates protection and business logic mapping, unlike competitors' manual processes. He also emphasized the SOCKS AI agent, which drastically reduces attack mitigation times from days to minutes, providing a significant business advantage.

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Roy Zisapel, President and Chief Executive Officer, responded that the business environment has been relatively stable without noticeable acceleration or deceleration in recent months or at the start of Q2. He noted that while there were initial customer questions about tariffs, the situation has since calmed down. Regarding the U.S. leadership changes, Zisapel clarified that the new team members have been in place for several months and are already ramping up productivity. He stated that the company is past any potential disruption phase and is now focused on future growth driven by this new team.

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CFO & COO Guy Melamed highlighted that SaaS Net Retention Rate (NRR) is trending higher than the previously reported company-wide NRR and that new customer momentum is strong. He suggested the gap between the current 19% ARR growth and the 20%+ target is small and can be closed by focusing on upsells post-transition. CEO Yaki Faitelson added that R&D investments provide strong visibility.

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CFO and COO Guy Melamed confirmed that lessons learned from last year have been implemented, resulting in strong Q1 conversions. He noted that renewal and gross retention rates remain very strong. He also emphasized that momentum was balanced, with strong new customer adoption contributing significantly alongside the efficient conversions, both driven by the superior SaaS offering.

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CEO Yaki Faitelson explained that while it's still early for some of the newly released coverages, demand is strong across all repositories because breaches are happening everywhere. He emphasized that the market now understands the need for automated remediation, not just discovery, and that Varonis sees interest across all data stores where it can apply its full feature set. He also highlighted the traction of their identity-related threat detection, which often catches bad actors before they reach the data.

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CFO & COO Guy Melamed stated that the company's guidance philosophy has not changed and they do not bake in potential positives, like Gen AI contributions, until they materialize in the data. Regarding seasonality, he noted that while Q4 is historically the largest quarter of the year, Varonis has not typically seen a 'budget flush' phenomenon and does not expect that to change with the move to SaaS.

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CFO Burt Podbere reiterated the expectation of a 27% free cash flow margin exit rate in Q4 of the current year. He stated that confidence in reaching over 30% next year is driven by the Falcon Flex model, which results in larger, longer-term deals and faster cash conversion as customers consume credits and repurchase.

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CEO George Kurtz agreed that workload protection is paramount for stopping breaches, unlike CSPM which is more for reporting. He affirmed that this is CrowdStrike's core strength and that the company is seeing consolidation in the market. He mentioned CrowdStrike has expanded its CNAPP capabilities (including CSPM, ASPM, DSPM) to be the single platform for customers, leading to the $600 million cloud ARR milestone.

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CEO George Kurtz stated that CrowdStrike has good momentum in the federal space, which takes time but continues to yield wins. He also noted strength in state and local government business and expressed confidence in the long-term opportunity in the public sector.

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CEO Tomer Weingarten attributed the results to a Q1 macro dynamic causing slipped deals, not elevated churn, and noted that trends improved in May. CFO Barbara Larson confirmed that churn from the Deception business was in line with their expectations.

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CFO Barbara Larson stated her guidance philosophy is to set clear, reasonable expectations based on factors within their control, such as pipeline and win rates. CEO Tomer Weingarten added that customers' 2025 budgets remain focused on cost savings and modernizing infrastructure to defend against new AI-based threats, which aligns well with SentinelOne's value proposition.

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CFO Erica Smith confirmed that CyberArk has not seen any macro headwinds and that the guidance reflects prudence given broader market volatility, with potential for upside if current trends hold. CEO Matt Cohen added that the sales team is seeing a strong uptick in Venafi pipeline globally and is effectively running cross-sell campaigns, indicating high comfort with the broader portfolio.

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CEO Corey Thomas stated that the company invests behind clear, profitable growth opportunities like Detection and Response (D&R). CFO Tim Adams added that a key point of leverage is selling into the existing installed base of nearly 12,000 customers, which comes at a lower cost of sale. The go-to-market motion is focused on integrated security operations, upgrading the VM base, and driving D&R adoption.

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CEO Corey Thomas stated that while the traditional VM business did face competitive pressure, the new Exposure Command platform is seeing strong momentum. He cited evidence of both strong pipeline generation and conversion rates that were ahead of internal expectations. Thomas emphasized that while the market remains competitive, Rapid7 has a significant upsell opportunity within its installed base of resource-constrained customers.

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CEO Corey Thomas clarified that deal cycle elongation is primarily based on deal size, not product, affecting larger deals across the board. Regarding retention, he stated that gross retention pressures mentioned earlier in the year appear to be bottoming out, with positive early indicators, partly due to existing VM customers responding well to the new Exposure Command strategy.

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Co-CEO Mark Thurmond stated that the channel performed extremely well in Q1, with great momentum from partners. He confirmed that Tenable added sales capacity in Q1 and will continue to evaluate adding more in specific geographies that show significant growth patterns throughout the year.

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CFO Remo Canessa confirmed that scheduled billings are expected to increase in Q4 but declined to provide any commentary or guidance for fiscal year 2026.

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CEO Jagtar Chaudhry clarified that customers want to consolidate to a few best-of-breed platforms (e.g., EDR, identity, zero trust access), not a single vendor for everything, which supports Zscaler's platform expansion. CFO Remo Canessa addressed NRR, stating that the 115% rate is outstanding and the company does not guide the metric, focusing instead on overall top-line growth.

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CEO Todd McKinnon stated that Okta is "really just scratching the surface" even with its largest customers, citing an anecdote of a major Q3 customer doing an even larger upsell in Q4 and still not having purchased Customer Identity. He emphasized that while the large enterprise opportunity is massive, Okta also sees robust, broad-based strength across the mid-market and low-end self-service segments, driven by partner ecosystem investments and specialized sales motions.

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CEO Todd McKinnon reported a solid quarter for the Customer Identity business, which is now over $1 billion in revenue. He noted its growth is often driven by customer experience needs rather than security, citing a European retailer consolidating logins. He sees an opportunity to accelerate growth by increasing focus on the developer persona, as many large deals originate from self-service, developer-led adoption.

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CFO Keith Jensen noted that larger enterprises are moving first on refreshes, often swapping out equipment over several quarters as part of their deployment schedules. CAO Christiane Ohlgart added that for large customers with Enterprise Agreements (EAs), purchasing is ongoing, so one might not see a single large deal but rather a continuous replacement habit built into the EA, making a direct deal-size comparison less straightforward.

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CEO Ken Xie expressed a very bullish view on the OT market, stating Fortinet is a leader and has invested for a long time. He believes most future connections will be OT devices, representing a huge, long-term growth opportunity. Regarding verticals, Xie noted manufacturing was strong in Q3 and expects it to accelerate post-election. He also mentioned the service provider vertical is finally seeing growth after six quarters and that retail, which grew strongly in 2021-2022, is likely approaching a refresh cycle.

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