Check Point Software Technologies - Q4 2025

Transcript

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Greetings, and welcome to Check Point Software's 2025 fourth quarter and full year financial results video conference. I'm Kip Meintzer, Global Head of Investor Relations, and joining me today, our Chief Executive Officer, Nadav Zafrir, and our Chief Financial Officer, Roei Golan. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the conference is being recorded and will be available for replay on our website at checkpoint.com. During the formal presentation, all participants are in a listen-only mode that will be followed by a Q&A session. During this presentation, Check Point's representatives may make forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial and/or operating performance, including statements related to the anticipated ratification of the Israeli Government Research and Development Incentive Program and potential impact of these grants on our financial results.

These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements made speak only as of the date hereof, and Check Point Software undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements. In our press release, which has been posted on our website, we present GAAP and non-GAAP results, along with a reconciliation of such results, as well as the reasons for our presentation of non-GAAP information. If you have any questions after the call, please, please feel free to contact Investor Relations by email at [email protected]. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Nadav for the-

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Thank you, Kip. It's great to be with everyone here today. I want to begin with a recap of 2025, followed by our plans for 2026 and beyond. We printed solid 2025, fourth quarter and full year results. During the year, we delivered consistent execution while building a stronger foundation for our long-term sustainable growth. We expanded our platform with two new pillars, security for AI and exposure management. We're building both organically and through targeted acquisitions. We also strengthened our go-to-market engine. We expanded and flattened our C-suite structure and aligned it to our operating model. We're laser-focused on strategic customers, new logo acquisition, and partner leverage, and our sales are focused and designed to develop deeper enterprise penetration, a broader portfolio adoption, and increased new logo wins.

We also enhanced our financial flexibility with a $2 billion zero coupon convertible notes offering, strengthening our balance sheet and creating the capacity to invest in our highest conviction priorities. Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, we are positioning the company to lead the AI era of cybersecurity. As you're keenly aware, AI is fundamentally changing the threat landscape, and this requires organizations to revisit their core security assumption and revalidate their security foundations. In fact, decades of corporate infrastructure is now vulnerable because the very nature of attacks is changing, and so security leaders must revalidate their existing security foundations, protect new attack surfaces that are driven by the adoption of new capabilities and tools, as well as embrace AI as a force multiplier just to remain competitive. And our mission at Check Point is very clear: We secure our customers' AI transformation.

That means we continuously update our existing security solutions to defend against evolving threats. We're securing the expanding AI-driven attack surface with purpose-built capabilities and leveraging AI to simplify and automate security management and operations. And we do this by applying a proactive prevention-first approach, which leverages our superior capabilities and continuously research, discover, and build solutions to anticipate the evolving threats. We secure our customers' AI transformation through four strategic solution pillars, each one of them a platform of its own. Hybrid mesh network security, securing the infrastructure, workspace security, securing the employees, exposure management that provides situational awareness, and then finally, AI security across all of these pillars. We secure the hybrid mesh infrastructure across data centers, hybrid cloud, branch, and SASE, and we have a very clear market differentiation for a hybrid mesh.

Our advantages are we have the superior proactive prevention, second to none, a hybrid architecture that optimizes user experience at the edge, an unparalleled ability to scale, and then finally, an AI-powered unified management. As you know, AI is embedded everywhere, and so the attacks can originate from everywhere, from anywhere. We're building an integrated and unified workspace platform that's spanning across devices, browser, email, SaaS applications, and remote access. We believe that our recognized leadership position in email security and superior phishing prevention capability is a springboard to lead the way in exposure management. Managed service providers, or MSPs, also represent an important opportunity in the workspace security pillar. We identified Rotate as a provider of a comprehensive platform, purpose-built for MSPs.

We acquired the team of Rotate to build momentum in the MSP market, leverage our position as a leading MSP email security provider. Next, we establish exposure management as a new strategic pillar, and we believe we're uniquely positioned to expand our market share in the coming few years. Security teams are challenged by the overwhelming volumes of vulnerability, disconnected intelligence, shrinking remediation windows, and in an AI-driven threat landscape, weeks-long resolution cycle for critical vulnerabilities are no longer viable. At Check Point, we deliver real-time situational awareness, unified across threat intelligence, attack surface visibility, providing context and automated remediation. Today, I'm also excited to announce the acquisition of Cyclops, a cyber asset attack surface management company that brings AI-driven asset discovery to enable accurate vulnerability, context, and risk prioritization.

Cyclops strengthens our exposure management platform and delivers robust CTEM offering that includes threat intelligence, vulnerability scanning and prioritization, and at the end of the day, also actionable and safe remediation. Finally, as organizations rush to adopt AI just to remain relevant, this breakneck pace of AI adoption presents many new risks to organizations. We get data leakage via prompts, the uploading of sensitive data, AI threats like jailbreaking or model inversion, and lastly, agents with uncontrolled autonomy, sometimes acting beyond their scope. AI security is a foundational pillar of our strategy. Our comprehensive AI security stack protects employee usage, enterprise application, agents, and models. Late last year, we made the acquisition of Lakera to deliver runtime protection across AI applications and agents based on an industry-leading foundational model.

You know that this is evolving faster than anything we've ever seen and requires design partnerships and open architecture, and the ability to track and acquire the innovators. So today, I'm happy to announce the acquisition of Cyada, specializing in discovering and understanding and ultimately governing autonomous AI agents. Cyada extends our platform by protecting the emerging AI workforce, enabling organizations to safely accelerate their AI transformation. In summary, 2025, as you know, my first year as CEO of Check Point. During the year, we strengthened our leadership team, we improved our go-to-market execution, and enhanced our financial flexibility, all while delivering solid results. I believe during my first year, we built a foundation that positions us to accelerate our growth over the next few years. Looking ahead, our strategy is focused and aligned.

Organizations around the world are adopting, and our mission is to secure their AI transformation. Through our four strategic pillars, we are addressing the expanding AI-driven attack surface and bringing critical innovation to customers. The recent acquisition of Cyclops, Lakera, and Rotate's talent further enhance our capabilities in exposure management, AI security, and workspace, and these acquisitions strengthen our competitive position and ultimately support our long-term growth ambitions. We're executing with discipline, investing behind our highest conviction opportunities, and driving greater value for customers, partners, and shareholders in 2026 and beyond. And with that, I'll turn to Roei Golan to address our financials.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Thank you, Nadav. One moment. Can you see my slides?

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yes.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Great. Okay, so thank you, Nadav, and thank you everyone for joining the call. As Nadav said, we had a solid fourth quarter. It was a solid quarter with 6% growth in revenues, driven by 11% growth in our subscription revenues. Our revenues reached $745 million, and we were $1 million above the midpoint of our projections. Our non-GAAP EPS was $3.40 per diluted share and exceeded our guidance. The figure includes a one-time tax benefit of approximately $0.52, related to a reduction in our corporate tax rate in Israel, that impacted prior years' income taxes and also updates to our tax reserves. Excluding the one-time benefit, EPS exceeded the top end of our projections by approximately $0.08.

As for the full year, our revenues reached $2.725 billion and were $15 million above the midpoint of our original projections. Our Non-GAAP EPS was $11.89 per diluted share and exceeded our guidance. This figure includes a tax benefit of approximately $1.90, related to a reduction in our corporate tax rate that impacted prior year income taxes and updates in our tax reserves, also due to the tax settlement that we announced last quarter. Excluding one-time benefit, EPS exceeded the midpoint of our projection by approximately $0.09. As mentioned, our revenues grew by 6% year-over-year, while deferred revenues grew by 9% to $2.18 billion.

It is important to note that our product revenues growth was moderated in the quarter, mainly as a result of our subscription price increase that we announced in July 2025, which shifted a larger portion, a portion of bundled annual deals towards subscription. This resulted in headwind of $6 million to our product revenues in this quarter, as we allocated relatively to a smaller product component without changing overall deal value.... We do expect to see this impact also in Q1 of approximately $4 million-$5 million on our product revenues. We expect the benefits of this strategy to increasingly materialize in subscription revenue during Q1 and throughout 2026, while also the product price increase that we have effectively from 1/1/2026 of 5%, expect to support our product growth primarily from the second quarter of 2026.

When we are looking on our calculated billings, they total to $1.039 billion, reflecting an 8% year-over-year growth, while our current calculated billing grew by 6%. Our remaining performance obligation, RPO, grew by 8% to $2.7 billion. On an annual perspective, our revenue grew by 6% year-over-year, while our calculated billing grew by 9% to $2.9 billion. Our current calculated billing totaled to $2.784 billion, reflecting a 6% growth year-over-year. When we're looking on our recurring calculated billing, which represent the calculated billing from subscription, maintenance and updates, this grew by 10% year-over-year. As we mentioned, our growth this quarter was driven by our subscription revenues.

We continue to experience strong demand for our emerging product portfolio, which remains the primary driver for our revenues growth. In this quarter, in Q4, we had a growth across all our pillars, CTEM, Workspace, and Hybrid Mesh, while our emerging product, Email Security, SASE and ERM, exceeded 40%—more than 40% growth in ARR. When I'm looking on the global revenue distribution, so we did see growth in all regions. 48% of our revenues came from EMEA, and that grew by 5% year-over-year. 40% of the revenues came from America, which had 6% growth year-over-year, while the remaining 12% came from Asia Pacific, that grew 9% year-over-year. When I'm looking on the full year, 2025, so actually, so 46% of our revenue came from EMEA, grew by 5%.

42% of the revenues came from America, and that grew 7%, while the remaining 12% came from Asia Pacific, and that grew double-digit 11% year-over-year. Looking into our P&L in this quarter, our gross profit increased from $623 million to $660 million dollars, representing a gross margin of 89%. Our operating expenses increased by 13% to $358 million dollar. On constant currencies basis, our OPEX increased by 11%. The increase is primarily as a result of increase in our workforce and investment in sales and marketing and channel programs. Our non-GAAP operating income continues to be strong, at $302 million dollar, or 41% operating margin.

Our non-GAAP net income increased by 21%, mainly as a result of a one-time tax benefit that I mentioned in the beginning of this quarter deck in connection with reduction in tax rate and updated tax reserves. The non-GAAP EPS grew by 26%, while the one-time benefit contributed approximately $0.52. Our GAAP net income reached $305 million, increase of 18% year-over-year, while our GAAP EPS was $2.81 and grew by 22% year-over-year. When I'm looking on the full year, so our gross profit increased to $2.4 billion, and that represent a gross margin of 88%.

When I'm looking ahead into 2026, we all know the memory price increase, the recent memory price increase that we have in the market over the past few months, and that it is expected to have an impact also on our gross margin in 2026. We estimated this impact to be approximately 1 point for the full year, 1 point on our gross margin for the full year, with most of the impact expected in the second half of 2026, as we have enough inventory, a sufficient inventory to support the needs for the first half of 2026. We'll continue to closely monitor supply and pricing dynamics into the second half of the year and adjust our procurement strategy as needed, including potential product price increase.

Our operating expenses increased by 10%, mainly as a result of our continued investment in our workforce organically, and also the impact related to Cyberint acquisition that we closed back in September 2024, and the acquisition that we've done during 2025 of Veriti and Lakera. Our non-GAAP operating income was $1.13 billion, or 41% operating margin. Looking ahead to 2026, we continue to actively hedge our foreign exchange exposure, however, not all currency are fully covered. As we disclosed in the previous earnings calls, if current exchange levels persist, we anticipate an additional headwind of approximately 1 to 1.5 points on our operating margin for next year. Our financial income increased to $114 million in 2025, as we kept reinvested our cash in higher rates compared to 2024.

In December 2025, as Nadav mentioned, we completed a $2 billion convertible notes offering. As a result, we expect higher financial income in 2026, that estimated to be between $40 million to $40 million. The financial income in 2026 is expected to be $40-$40 million per quarter. In 2025, we had income tax benefit of $79 million, which included a benefit of approximately $209 million or $1.90 non-GAAP EPS, in connection with updating our tax reserve due to the tax settlement and also the reduction of the tax rate, for prior years.

As for 2026 taxes, it is important to update that in December 2025, Israel enacted the OECD Pillar Two Framework, established a 15% global minimum effective tax rate for large multinational groups, effective for taxes beginning in 2026. As a result, we currently estimate that our tax rate for 2026 will be between 16%-17%. In parallel, a complimentary Israeli government R&D incentive program was initially approved in January 2026. The outcome from this program that expected to be effective from January 2026 can be approximately $50 million benefit into our operating income. This program is expected to be finally approved by the end of Q1 2026.

Our outlook reflects this development as part of our forward-looking statements, including the anticipated certification of the R&D program, incentive program, and the potential financial impact of related grants on our future financial results. One moment. Moving into our cash flow and our cash position. Our cash balances as of the end of the quarter was $4.3 billion. As a reminder, on December 2025, we also announced the $2 billion, and we received $1.8 billion net proceeds, net of issuance costs and third, the purchase of the capped call. Also, during October 2025, we acquired Lakera for approximately $190 million of net cash consideration.

Our operating cash flow was very strong this quarter, with $310 million, 24% growth year-over-year, and representing 42% of our revenues in Q4. We also continued our buyback program and purchased 2.2 million shares for $425 million, at an average price of $193 per share. On an annual perspective, our operating cash flow grew by 17% to $1,234 million, while important to note that this includes $66 million tax payment, one-time tax payment, that related to our tax settlement that we signed in Q3. While our balance sheet hedge transaction resulted from the other lender benefit of $51 million in 2025.

Also, as a reminder, during 2025, we completed the $160 million payment for the land purchase associated with the new Check Point campus that we are building here in Tel Aviv. We do not expect any significant additional payment in connection with this new campus in 2026. To summarize, our revenues were above the midpoint of our projection, and the ASP exceeded our projection. We do see continued strong demand for emerging technologies, if it's email, if it's CTEM, SASE, and we had another quarter and another strong operating cash flow and stock of stability. Now moving to the business outlook, to our projection for Q1 and for the full year. For Q1 and the full year, I'll start with the revenues.

So first, our revenues is expected to be between $655 million-$685 million in Q1 2026. I remind you that the short-term guidance that we have only specified in Q1 in terms of product revenues. For the full year, we expect, our revenues to be between $2.83 billion-$2.95 billion, between 4%-8%, while the midpoint is 6%. This time, we also gonna give you the subscription revenue guidance, which expected to continue to accelerate.

As for Q1, we do expect it to be between $318 million-$328 million, while as for the full year, we expect it to be between 10%-14%, which means that the midpoint expect to be 12% growth. Our non-GAAP EPS, including it takes into effect, the expected grants, the R&D incentive program that needs to be completed by the end of Q1. This take into account that the EPS is between $2.35-$2.45, while the full year, EPS, non-GAAP EPS, expect to be between $10.05 and $10.85. GAAP EPS for Q1 expect to be $0.64 less, while for the full year, it's expect to be $2.58 less.

Also, we're gonna share with you guidance, projections. So for adjusted free cash flow for Q1 and for the full year, this is the operating cash flow minus CapEx, minus any acquisition-related costs. In Q1, we expect to have a strong adjusted free cash flow between $420 million-$460 million, which represents 66% of our midpoint, the expected revenues in Q1. While for the full year, we expect it to be 42% of the revenues in the midpoint, which is $1.15 billion-$1.25 billion. That's it, and with that, Kip. The floor is yours.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right. So for Q&A, today, first up, we're gonna have Adam Tindle from Raymond James.

Adam Tindle (Analyst)

All right. Thanks. Can you hear me?

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Yes.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Yes.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

We'll be followed by Shaul Eyal from TD Cowen.

Shaul Eyal (Managing Director of Equity Research)

Thanks, Kip. Good morning. Nadav, I wanted to ask, AI security is obviously a clear focus in your script today, and it sounds like you're investing both organically and inorganically with some of the acquisitions here. I wonder, and this is sort of a high-level, strategic question for you. The heart of it is to kind of compare and contrast your view of AI security versus how cloud security played out, and with the context being that you made the very smart decision in cloud security to choose to partner with Wiz, essentially exiting Check Point's efforts in organically as the ROI wasn't there. Again, in hindsight, very smart, given the cloud security market has been problematic for your competitors, bad pricing, bad profitability there.

I see some similarities in cloud security and AI security, so I guess, what's different about AI security that got you more comfortable to invest here versus the decision to invest in cloud, and how big do you think this could be for Check Point over time? Thanks.

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

... Yeah, no, great question. And you know, the sort of the analogy is in place. However, in my opinion, the AI transformation is both more foundational. It's not shift and lift, your activities from on-prem to the cloud, but rather it's a real shift in the way you use technology, do business, employ people, et cetera. And the second change, in my humble opinion, is that it's, we're seeing it already, but I expect this to accelerate, so it's happening much faster. So in my opinion, you know, you can look at the cloud analogy, but you need to have it as a reference for difference. The second thing I'll say is that here are two fundamental issues. Number one, attackers are using AI much faster than defenders.

This is just the nature of this asymmetry between offense and defense, and in this learning competition, and how, unfortunately, for several reasons, you know, the, the attackers can adapt faster. So what we're seeing is larger scale, more precision, and a real change in the nature of attacks, right? So that's one angle that we need to look at. The other is... and that's sort of the nature of what we're seeing right now. Every organization on the planet is racing to adopt AI to stay relevant, and as they're doing that, they're sort of creating a new attack surface. When you look at these two things separately, in my humble opinion, this is time to revalidate security altogether.

We think we're really well positioned to lead the way to secure our customers' AI transformation based on the four pillars that we were talking about, based on the fact that we truly have the best prevention, proactive prevention security, which has always been important, but it's now becoming critical. And so building, we have decades of data, 100,000 customers, four pillars, a vision that I believe is very specific to secure AI transformation. This is a must for us. We're, we're making acquisitions, we're building organically, and we really believe this is our time and our space to challenge the status quo.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you. Next up is Shaul Eyal, followed by Joseph Gallo of Jefferies.

Joseph Gallo (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Apologies for some background noise. Question for Roei. How should we be thinking about ASP hikes, from a linearity perspective? Are we seeing them coming in the first half of the year? Are we seeing them coming in the second half of the year? Can you just help us out a little bit? Thank you.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Yeah. So we did several price increase. One of them was one of them was in July only for the subscription, the firewall subscription, and all in, all in, in general, we've done it for all the firewall, which including client, hardware, subscription, and support. In general, usually it takes to see the ASP going up, it takes usually it's a quarter. I mean, if I'm looking at about, for example, appliances, we talked about the appliances. So we, of course, it's effective on January 1, but from revenues perspective, that's something that usually we see the main impact coming from the quarter afterwards, because certain revenues that are recognizing in Q1 are coming from bookings that came from prior Q4 builds. And also we have we are expecting quotes that are being delivered to our customers before the effective price increase.

So most of the effects usually come in. We should expect to see from Q2 this year.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Next up is Brian Essex, followed by Rob Owens, followed by Brian Essex. Pardon me.

Joseph Gallo (Equity Research Analyst)

Am I on here first, Kip, or?

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

You are in first, Joseph. I'm sorry.

Joseph Gallo (Equity Research Analyst)

I appreciate that. So hey, guys, thanks for the question. It was great to see the strength in subscription, but I just wanted to ask on product in 4Q. I know there was some mix shift and reallocation in large deals, but is there anything else we should be aware of? And then, I believe your product guide for 2026 implies approximately flat. Just any comments on remaining refresh cycle available, or have you seen customers change their buying behaviors ahead of these, you know, incoming price increases? Thanks.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Yeah. So, I think Q4 were the good quarter for product again, was less good than what we've seen in the first three quarters, but still, we did see a good, good quarter for our client, for the demand for our product. If I'm looking ahead for 2026, 2026, I think we still have, we see good demand for hardware, specifically in the second half of the year. I do have to say that in the... You are right, that when you all take into consideration what I gave for subscriptions, so product is around flat to low single digits.

In our guidance, we took a more prudent approach, mainly because we are taking a more prudent approach to what's going on in the market with the memory shortages, that, you know, we see everywhere, price increases, not specifically only on memories, by the way, on all raw materials, and that might affect some customer behavior, that's postponing some CapEx projects. So we took it into account, but definitely again, we want to be more than that. We want to be higher than that. I think we continue to see refresh, and, but again, we cannot ignore what's going on in the market with the memory situation.

Joseph Gallo (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right, next up is Todd Weller or Brian Essex, followed by Todd Weller.... Sorry about that, Brian.

Brian Essex (Equity Research Analyst)

That's all right. And so I wasn't gonna let him pass you by. So, thanks, Kip. Appreciate you taking the question. Really, another question on guidance. Would love to understand maybe the puts and takes embedded in operating margins. What if we were to back into operating margins, what are the implicit margins in your guidance, and how do you think about spending? And then maybe one for Nadav, basically back on that, the dynamics around the hardware price increases, are you hearing any shift in spending intentions from your customers, anticipating maybe firewall and server prices accelerating on the back of the memory pricing? So, you know, one for each of you. Thank you.

Roei Golan (CFO)

So the margin that we took into account in our guide, it's between 39%-40%. So that's the operating margin. We're taking into account all the headwinds that we get from the memories, from the ASICs, on the other end, the expected grants from the government, so all of that was taken into account. That puts you in the 39%-40%.

Brian Essex (Equity Research Analyst)

Beautiful.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Nadav, go ahead.

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah, look, with regard to the hardware, as Huri said, we don't see any change as of now. As Huri said, we do need to be prudent looking into what's happening this year. I actually think for us, this could be a competitive advantage. You know, we have the supply for the first two quarters. We're gonna figure out how to take advantage of the situation. I don't see this as being a huge headwind, except for what Huri said about the one point in the margin that we just spoke about. Obviously, very encouraged by the high growth in the subscription rate that we're seeing and projecting.

Brian Essex (Equity Research Analyst)

You know, shift towards SASE or other types of architecture.

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Exactly. Exactly. Our SaaS products are becoming our, our SaaS products and subscription is becoming a much bigger part of our overall cake, and we intend to continue growing that, again, again, across the different pillars. So in hybrid measured, SASE, Workspace is completely SASE, so is exposure management. And this year, for the first time, a true, you know, a Northstar around security for AI, around the AI security pillar.

Brian Essex (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you very much.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right, next up is Todd Weller, followed by Junaid Siddiqui.

Todd Weller (Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks. Thanks for the question. Nadav, you outlined all the changes that were implemented in 2025. What would be the two or three specific ones you think will most positively impact the growth trajectory in 2026, and when do you expect to see those start kind of showing up in the numbers?

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah, look, I think that, we laid the foundations, right? The most importantly is the C-suite and the new leadership we had, and the way we are reorganizing or refocusing our go-to-market. That's number one. And the second thing that I'm very excited about is going to the market with these four pillars. Each one of them is a platform in itself. Some of our customers are going to choose to use one pillar as their platform, let's say, for Workspace, others are still using the hybrid mesh pillar, and some are using everything, and it's an open garden, so we can play with the others. So if you ask me, these are the two main things: Number one is the four pillar approach, number two is the leadership and the C-suite change and the refocusing of the go-to-market.

Above everything else, I am, I am a true believer that we need to revalidate security. Attackers are moving at an extreme speed. I think we have the foundations, but as you can see, we're also making the acquisitions. We have the right design partnerships. We want to do this as an ecosystem play. So the third thing, of course, is security for AI. The race is on, and we're in it.

Todd Weller (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Todd. Next up is Junaid, followed by Keith Bachman from BMO.

Junaid Siddiqui (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to talk about the progress on the SASE front. You know, you mentioned AR grew around 40%. In the past, you've talked about making it much more enterprise-ready, moving to a unified policy. How's that tracking? And is the focus right now mostly on upselling the existing customers?

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah, so great question. As you can see, the SASE now is a part of our hybrid mesh pillar. We're maturing the product. We made significant investments organically in 2025, and the product is maturing, and we're integrating it as a part of the hybrid mesh, the hybrid mesh pillar and platform, like you said, with our unified management. Now, in terms of our sales motion, we are integrating what used to be the, what we used to call the rocket, we're now integrating it this into the hybrid mesh pillar. We're also putting together the sales overlay of our CloudGuard of our CloudGuard network security with SASE to better integrate that into the overall motion.

You're right that, I would say that two-thirds is upsell to existing customers, but that's not the only one. We're also seeing new customers that are actually buying our SASE, and we hope to actually move them to our, to our firewall business to create the, the full capability of a hybrid mesh pillar.

Junaid Siddiqui (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right, next up is Keith Bachman, followed by Shrenik Kothari of Baird.

Keith Bachman (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you very much. Nadav, I want to put this to you, and it sort of reflects incoming comments already this morning. Investors are looking for an acceleration of growth. You're basically guiding to 6% ± total revenue growth, which is consistent-

... with what's happened the last two years. So while subscription is improving, which is nice to see it, it's nice to see, total growth isn't improving, right? So how do you sort of respond to 'cause you're asking investors to be patient about this notion of acceleration. So how do you respond to that comment? And then consistent with that, Roei, any comments you want us to think about for total billings growth in light of the midpoint of rev growth? Thank you.

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah, sure. Thanks. Look, we laid the foundations, now it's all about execution. I think we have the four pillar approach, we have the foundations, we have the right people in place, we have the financial flexibility to make acquisitions. Now it's all about execution. And you're right, that it's not an overnight acceleration, but I think we're on the right trajectory. I think also, what we have in terms of product solutions around our superior ability to proactively prevent the acquisitions that we're making and the what we're building in the AI security, is putting us in the right trajectory. And now it's all about execution.

Roei Golan (CFO)

As for the total billings, similar to the revenues growth, around high single digits, 6%-7%, that's the expectation in order to achieve the midpoint.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Next up is Shrenik ...

Shrenik Kothari (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks a lot for taking my question. So, then now, you, you just mentioned financial flexibility, ended Q4 with $4 billion in cash, and you have added $2 billion onward. Just in terms of, so far, mentioned about favoring, you know, smaller AI-native integrations and the announcements you made just on the large-scale M&A, right? Just— Can, can you just talk to, as some of the other peers are kind of going after platform convergence waves, aggressively chasing through things. So what kind of, sort of, scale IP or agency would, would actually justify more transformative, so AI-driven impact for you guys, if at all? Thanks.

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah. So yeah, we have the flexibility, and we have the vision, and now in each one of those pillars, we need to be very disciplined and identify the targets. They could be tuck-ins, they could be larger, but the ones that actually take us to be a podium player in each one of those pillars, specifically. So these targets need to have the right technology, the right people, the right culture, and so that we can see that we can integrate it and move fast to create a real platform. In my humble opinion, you know, just buying more and more products and putting sort of a supermarket approach is not what our customers are looking for when they look through consolidation.

They look for a real integrated, for us, pillar, and each one of those pillar, we're looking at it as its own, platform play. So if you take, exposure management, we are looking to create the number one exposure management system. Some of the acquisitions are smaller. We're also looking at, larger ones all the time, but we're gonna be disciplined about it. And again, through the looking at each pillar separately, we're not stopping. We're moving fast.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Shrenik, it looks like you just stopped playing a game when you came on. Good seeing you, Shrenik. Next up is Joshua Tilton, followed by Roger Boyd from UBS.

Joshua Tilton (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, guys. Maybe Roei, for you, any way to think about how much the acquisitions that you announced today are contributing to the guidance that you provided for 2026? Maybe outside of pricing, could you just talk to why or what gives you conviction in the belief that guiding to, I think what you said, flat to low single digit growth for product is prudent from your perspective?

Roei Golan (CFO)

Okay. So first, in terms of the acquisitions, well, so of course, it's part of the guidance, and that said, it should have an effect of approximately 0.5 point in gross margin, because it's mainly right now in 2026, we expect it to have many, many costs, many dilution to our margin, that's approximately 0.5 point to the operating margin. As for the pricing and the product, so I think again, I'm looking at when we are-- of course, we are working on the guidance and of course, working for our plan of 2026. We're looking on the funnel, we are looking on the potential.

We're looking, of course, on the pricing that we've done in January first, and I think that again, we can do, we should, I mean, we need to continue the stronger demand that we've seen in 2025. We see good funnel also for hardware, mainly in the second half of the year, also in the first half, but mainly in the second half of the year. And I think that definitely also the pricing, because in the effect that we've seen, that the discounts this year will actually even improve compared to last year, in 2025 compared to 2024. So if we manage to continue that and maintain the discounts, we'll also can benefit from this price increase.

I do have to say, and it's important to say, we didn't take into account in our guidance any additional price increase. Because of the memory shortages, there might, of course, we might consider additional pricing is during the year, but that was not a factor in the guidance right now.

Joshua Tilton (Equity Research Analyst)

Just to be clear, that 0.5 point is in the 39%-40% margin-

Roei Golan (CFO)

Yes.

Joshua Tilton (Equity Research Analyst)

already.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Part of the guidance I provided you. Yeah.

Joshua Tilton (Equity Research Analyst)

Any way to think about the top line contribution from the acquisitions?

Roei Golan (CFO)

Minimal. Minimal to zero, I would say, $a few million or even $a few million. Yeah.

Joshua Tilton (Equity Research Analyst)

... Super helpful. Thank you, guys.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Next up is Roger Boyd from UBS, followed by Peter Levine from Evercore.

Roger Boyd (Equity Research Analyst)

Awesome. Thanks, Kip. Nadav, I wanted to hit on Rotate. They have a lot on their platform, so I guess in addition to the MSP enablement tools that you talked about and some of the exposure management technology, how much interest is there in the rest of their portfolio, which I think includes some native technology for detection across endpoint and some other attack surfaces? And when you think about MSPs in general, can you just talk about what % of revenue they represent today, and how you see that evolving? How important is that in terms of your channel strategy this year? Thanks.

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah, thanks. So, today, I think it's not only, it's still relatively small, but I think it's a high potential growth for us in 2026 and beyond. The MSP, we're going to consolidate everything under a workspace, under Gil Friedrich, and the Rotate technology and the folks that are coming with it are going to enable us to actually streamline everything to the MSPs, and that's where the opportunity is. And you're right, it's email, it's endpoint, it's browser, it's SASE, all put together for the smaller customers working with our partners and the MSPs. And so this acquisition will allow us to accelerate, to move faster into a consolidated, unified ability to work with those MSPs.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Thanks, Roger. Next up is Peter Levine with Evercore, followed by Saket Kalia from Barclays.

Peter Levine (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks, guys. I, Nadav, I mean, what, what's changed in customer demand that makes, kind of, exposure management more of a priority today? You, you've touched upon it on the call and, you know, in your, in your prepared remarks, but, you know, are customers explicitly asking for, like, a united, you know, exposure, visibility across network, cloud, identity, whatever it is, and then maybe just Roei, help us understand, like, how meaningful could this category be over the next, call it two or three years, in terms of revenue contribution?

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah. So first, I can't resist to answer Roei's question. It's meaningful. It's not huge right now, but we see great potential in it. When I look at this ... You know, I come from the trenches, ultimately. When I look at this, as a practitioner, you've gotta have this situational awareness. And so, yes, we're seeing more and more demand, and we're seeing it going upstream as our capabilities become more and more mature. And what we're building is the full gamut. So on the one hand, based on an acquisition that we made, you know, year before last, around Cyberint, we have the intelligence. Now, with Cyclops, we can see the posture, and we can prioritize based on what we're seeing, CVEs, dark web stuff. We're seeing what's coming, and from the inside, we're seeing what's vulnerable.

With the Veriti acquisition, we can actually do the automatic remediation. What our customers find us, once they deploy that, is that a lot of the things that are coming at them are no longer in danger, and we 'cause we can block it automatically before it even happens. In my opinion, again, looking at this as a practitioner, one of the shifts is that attackers can actually weaponize vulnerabilities much, much faster, and they can also use autonomous agents that, once there's a breach, they operate much, much faster. Having that proactive prevention has become more important than ever, and building this triage around these three components, I think is unique in the industry, and I think will carry more and more traction.

For us at Check Point, it's also important 'cause it allows us to go outside of our install base right now to new customers, and hopefully upsell and cross-sell once we go beyond that. And so, yes, we see this as something which is becoming a core pillar and an important part of the four-pillar strategy that we're going with. The last thing I'll say about it is that when we do the remediation, the automatic remediation, we don't do it just for Check Point products, and that's the beauty of it. This is where an open platform, open garden, comes in. When we see a vulnerability, you know, some of our customers are not using Check Point products to secure their hybrid mesh, but we can go in and fix the other vendors' vulnerabilities when we can...

After we prioritize them, and at the end of the day, I think it gives our customers better security.

Peter Levine (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, guys.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thanks, Peter. Next up is Saket Kalia, followed by Brad Zelnick from Deutsche Bank.

Saket Kalia (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay, great. Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question here. And by the way, appreciate the additional detail on, on guidance. Thank you. Maybe a question for both Nadav and Roei. You know, the four pillars are a really helpful framework for, for thinking about the business. Roei, for you, are there any guardrails that you can give us just on the mixes across those, across those four, high level, of course? And Nadav, what are you changing from either a contracting or sales comp, perspective to drive higher growth across those smaller, maybe faster-growing pillars? Does that make sense?

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yep.

Roei Golan (CFO)

So I think if you're looking on the four pillars, so of course, the most significant one is the hybrid mesh, which includes also our firewall, which is still a significant part of our business. It's growing, of course, mainly driven by the SASE and our cloud network. That's mainly driving the growth, both of them, SASE and cloud network, sitting on the subscription line item. That's a part of the acceleration that we see in the subscription line item. And the others that I think have the highest growth that we see today are Workspace and CTEM. We talked a lot about it in this call. We do see very strong demand.

Of course, still small numbers from total Check Point, but very strong demand, which started when we acquired Cyberint, then we added the other acquisition that we've done and included in the offering. And again, when we are looking on the funnel for next year, definitely it will be—it's expected to be, even in 2026, a major driver for subscription line item. And also email. Email is going to continue to be very strong. We talked about the numbers, I think, talked about the numbers few quarters, for the few quarters. I mean, we already passed the $160 million ARR and continue to grow in very strong double digit. So definitely we're aiming to pass the $200 million this year.

I think that's the main driver that's why you see our subscription revenues continue to accelerate, and we expect it to accelerate every quarter. Of course, with the contribution also from firewall, again, contribution, that it's a mix of the price increase, but also gaining new logos and expanding our market share in the firewall. So that's in total picture in how it translate into our revenues. And Nadav, you want to?

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah, the four pillars is strategic, as you said, you know. In the first one, it's the infrastructure and the network. The second one is your employees. The third one is the situational awareness, and then finally, security for AI, which is as a standalone, but also embedded in the three others, and we have the services that engulf all that. To your question, to grow these pillars faster, we're doing a few things. Number one, in each pillar, we're trying to see what is a differentiated advantage, right? So like I said, for the hybrid mesh, it's the prevention first, it's the scalability, it's the unified management, and it's the hybrid architecture. But there are other things that we want to improve in. So some of them we're doing organically, some we're looking for acquisitions.

We're doing the same thing for each one of those pillars. The second thing is from our go-to-market focus, we are moving to a multi-pillar, multi-platform company so that our frontliner sellers can sell each one of those pillars. Of course, in each one of them, there's also different products, and we're better aligning our account managers with the specialists that can come in and support them. That's a major change in the way we're going to market, as of literally now. The one thing I want to add is that in each one of those pillars, we're also going to challenge. We're going to challenge some of the existing status quo in the market.

So you know, and we're going to, we're challenging status quo around, you know, supermarket approach consolidation to a real platform approach. We're challenging a closed garden to an open garden. We're challenging complexity. So in each one of these, we're not just building our own security, platform pillar, but also challenging the existing status quo. Again, some of it with existing, capabilities that, which I think are critical and becoming more important, and in others, by building new stuff and, making acquisitions. And at the end of the day, I think we need to realize that especially the world we're going into, every morning, there is a new reality and a new threat, so we need to constantly evolve. We need to constantly see the roadmap of our customers.

We need to constantly look around the corner, so we can truly be their companion for a secure AI transformation.

Saket Kalia (Equity Research Analyst)

Very helpful. Thank you.

Brad Zelnick (Equity Research Analyst)

All right, next up is Brad Zelnick, followed by Shyam Patel from Susquehanna.

Thanks, Kip. Nadav, I've heard you loud and clear. The foundation is in place; it now comes down to execution, and I take that to mean more go-to-market than product, because Check Point's always had great product, and you're acquiring high quality tuck-ins that only strengthen your offerings and the position that you're in. But where do we stand from a go-to-market perspective? How much more ramp distribution capacity do you have heading into 2026? And maybe for Roei to chime in, what needs to happen to exit 2026 growing double-digit and to get us to double-digit growth for the full year in 2027?

Nadav Zafrir (CEO)

Yeah, thank you for that. So you're right that it's about go-to-market execution. It starts with a louder voice around our marketing effort. It's about the focus, and as I described, we're gonna be focusing on large enterprise, we're gonna be focusing on new logos. We're gonna be focusing on the multi-pillar, multi-product company approach. We're gonna be focusing on hiring the best people in the industry. So it's a plethora of things that we're doing to create a better execution as we go to market. And lastly, it's also about challenging the status quo. I think this is a time where the nature of security is changing.

I think the criticality of the basis of what security means has become more critical than ever, and we're gonna take advantage of some of the assets that we already have. We're gonna take advantage of where we are situated. We're seeing all the innovators, and we're trying them out as design- with our design partners on the customer side. We've got new leaders in marketing, we've got new leaders in sales, and we're gonna continue bringing in the best of the best in the industry to join us to do exactly what you said by the end of the year.

Roei Golan (CFO)

As for the double digit question, so I think, again, I think we need to show, first, we need to continue the strong momentum, the strong demand that we've seen for the... We mentioned the CTEM, we mentioned the email security, the workspace, and SASE. So definitely, we want, we need to see here, we need to see specifically in email and CTEM, continuous strong demand there, as we see already. We see it in the final, we saw it last year, we saw it in the last few years, but email in the last few years, but CTEM specifically in 2025 and also in the final for next year, for 2026. But definitely, in order to be double digits, we need to grow even faster than in firewall.

I mean, we are positioned much better today on the firewall than what we've been two years ago or three years ago. I think we did a significant improvement, both on the product side, also on the go-to-market and after on the go-to-market, I think we brought, we had great, we have great leadership in the go-to-market, and, and I think we are positioned much better today to accelerate our growth on, on the firewall. Definitely, me, too, I think a digit in the firewall, together with the continuous strong momentum that we have in the other pillars, that should bring us to double digits.

Brad Zelnick (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you very much.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Next up is Shyam Patel, followed by Ben Bollin of Cleveland Research.

Speaker 17

This is Anil, on for Shyam. Thanks so much for taking the question. I guess with the price of memory increasing significantly of late, just, I know you talked about potentially increasing prices, but what levers do you have to maybe try to get better deals from suppliers? And how are you looking at that as we progress through the year and, and try to get through sort of these shortages?

Roei Golan (CFO)

So I think we are working 24/7 with suppliers around the world to get better pricing. I think we are doing. We have a great team here that are doing an amazing job in order to get the best pricing, I think. But still, we cannot avoid the situation that the price of the memory is increased significantly. So even if we're getting better pricing, it's still significantly higher than what we used to pay a few months ago before this trend starts. But definitely, we are investing a lot on that, on getting the best pricing. And again, we're doing it. We have teams around the world that's exploring the opportunities in order to get the best pricing in the market.

Of course, we can do, we always want to do even better, but I think definitely we are doing a great job there.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

All right. Our last caller is going to be Patrick Colville. Ben Bolan's not on the call today. Patrick, nice of you to show up!

Patrick Colville (Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you, and I'll make it a good one to close. It's actually a clarification question. Can you, Roei, please go over again what drove the product revenue to be a little bit softer than we might have hoped in 4Q?

Roei Golan (CFO)

Yeah.

Patrick Colville (Equity Research Analyst)

And then, can you just also just re-clarify why the pricing benefit doesn't really hit in one Q, and then why it builds throughout the year?

Roei Golan (CFO)

So for product, most of our hardware that we are selling today, that is a significant portion of our product revenues, is sold as a bundle, together, bundle together with the software subscriptions, actually with subscription. And when we announced the subscription pricing back in July, so we announced only pricing for subscription without increasing the appliances price list. From accounting perspective, the small accounting, we need to allocate, because the standalone subscription price was increased without the total price, so the allocation of the revenues are smaller to the product, to the bare hardware. It's smaller, and that impacts mainly Q4, because in Q3, we just announced it, some of the deals were not recognized as revenues, but in Q4, we already saw that, and that had. Again, it's mainly short-term headwind.

It's not gonna affect our total revenues. It's more kind of headwind on our short-term product revenues, and we're gonna see the benefit from the subscription over time. So again, that's in general. And your question on the price increase, so let's separate between billings and revenues. Billings, most of it, you're gonna see it in the same quarter that we did the price increase. From revenues perspective, sometimes, like in Infinity, some in some other ELAs that we have, we have deals that have been closed before we recognize. I mean, in prior quarters, and we are recognizing. It's part of our backlog, and we are recognizing the revenues in future periods. So in that factor, you don't see the price increase in the revenues. You're not gonna see that.

You might see billings for new deals, but not, you're not gonna see the main impact in the same quarter. So, as I said, the main impact we start to see from the quarter, from Q2, which is the quarter after the price increase on the revenues, not on the billings.

Patrick Colville (Equity Research Analyst)

All right. Thank you.

Kip Meintzer (Global Head of Investor Relations)

Thank you, everybody, for joining us. We appreciate it, and we'll see you throughout the quarter, and then obviously, next quarter. Have a great day. Bye-bye.

Roei Golan (CFO)

Bye. Thank you.