Price = 23 Oct 2026 close ($257.57, Alpha Vantage). TTM = four quarters to 31 Jul 2026 (Q3 FY26 to Q2 FY27): revenue $5,396M; GAAP operating loss $133M; non-GAAP operating income $1,288M; GAAP net income to CrowdStrike $38M; non-GAAP net income $1,141M; operating cash flow $2,017M; free cash flow (company-defined) $1,518M; non-cash stock compensation $1,231M (cash-flow statement; $1,305M including employer payroll taxes). Fiscal year ends 31 January (FY27 = year to Jan 2027). Share basis: basic market cap uses ~1,024M Class A shares (1,023,934,842 outstanding at 20 August 2026, latest 10-Q cover; no Class B shares outstanding); diluted uses the 1,044M weighted average in Q2. EV adds $746M of notes and $74M of lease liabilities and deducts $5,014M of cash. EBITDA: GAAP operating income plus $333M of depreciation and amortization; adjusted = non-GAAP operating income plus depreciation. "After stock comp" deducts non-cash stock compensation from free cash flow. Beta from 60 monthly returns to Sep 2026 (correlation 0.34); the 3-year figure reflects the 2024 outage and 2026 rally. WACC ~10.5–11.5% is an assumption (assumed 10-yr Treasury 5.15% (valuation sensitivity, not the Oct. 23 closing yield) plus beta 1.19 × a 4.5–5.5 point equity premium). Consensus EPS: Alpha Vantage (51 analysts FY27, 53 FY28), amber = estimates. Rating and targets: S&P Global via StockAnalysis, 22 Oct 2026. Institutions: 13F filings for the June 2026 quarter (Equibles). Short interest: Nasdaq data via StockAnalysis, MarketBeat and Fintel, Sep–Oct 2026; sources differ. Insider totals: Alpha Vantage Form 4 aggregation, 23 Oct 2025 to 23 Oct 2026. Volume: Alpha Vantage monthly volume ÷ trading days.

Further caveats. 4. ARR is a company-defined measure. It is a recurring-revenue run-rate, not recognized revenue, and its methodology assumes contracts expiring within twelve months are renewed on existing terms and keeps customers in renewal negotiation in the total until they decline. Gross retention of 97% in every quarter of FY26 supports the figure; annualized revenue has run at 99% to 101% of ending ARR for six quarters (appendix panel on stock compensation and ARR conversion). 5. The "Q2 miss" on some screens is not a miss. Some financial data sites show Q2 FY27 as an 80% EPS miss ($0.01 vs $0.05) because they set GAAP EPS against a non-GAAP estimate. On a like-for-like basis, non-GAAP EPS of $0.31 beat the $0.29 consensus.

All valuations on one basis: enterprise value ÷ trailing revenue at the 23 Oct 2026 close (CrowdStrike: report calculation; peers: StockAnalysis). Operating figures from each company's own release: CrowdStrike Q2 FY27 (26 Aug 2026); Palo Alto Networks fiscal Q4 FY26 (Form 8-K exhibit 99.1; margins derived from reported operating income and revenue; CyberArk contribution not quantified); Zscaler fiscal Q4 FY26 (Form 8-K exhibit 99.1); SentinelOne Q2 FY27 earnings release. Stock compensation: cash-flow statements, four quarters to July 2026 (Palo Alto: fiscal year to July 2026). FCF margins: company-reported where stated; Palo Alto and SentinelOne trailing FCF from StockAnalysis. "FCF less stock comp" is a non-standard report measure. Periods differ by company and are shown in each cell.

On one EV/revenue basis, Zscaler, growing ARR at a similar rate, trades at about a quarter of CrowdStrike's multiple and Palo Alto Networks at a little over half. The stock-compensation rows qualify the comparison: after stock pay, CrowdStrike's cash economics are better than Zscaler's and SentinelOne's and weaker than Palo Alto's. CrowdStrike's premium rests on what the table cannot show: the durability of 97% gross retention, platform breadth and the market's view that AI-agent security will be won at the endpoint.

Source: Q2 FY27 earnings release (GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation). Memo rows are report calculations (interest income × 0.79). Columns may not sum exactly due to rounding.

The reconciliation shows that, apart from stock compensation, CrowdStrike's adjustments are now small and shrinking: outage costs have turned into insurance recoveries, and the 2025 restructuring is finished. Two items flatter the adjusted line modestly: interest income on $5B of cash supplies about 11% of non-GAAP net income, and it depends on short-term rates staying high; and the 21% non-GAAP tax rate is higher than GAAP tax actually paid, which is conservative. The decisive line is the first adjustment. Excluding stock pay is industry practice, but the shares issued are a real cost to holders, which is why this section reports free cash flow both before and after it.

Exhibit A1 · Margin trend

Non-GAAP margin up 7 points in six quarters; GAAP margin stuck near zero

Non-GAAP and GAAP operating margin, FCF margin and stock compensation as % of revenue · quarterly

Non-GAAP op. margin FCF margin GAAP op. margin Stock comp % revenue

Source: company earnings releases; report calculations · stock compensation includes employer payroll taxes

Margin bridge (Q2 FY27 vs. Q2 FY26). Non-GAAP operating margin rose 3.5 points, from 21.8% to 25.3%. Gross margin added about 1 point (78% to 79%) and sales and marketing efficiency added about 3 points (31% to 28% of revenue); R&D (19%) and G&A (6%) were flat as a share of revenue. That is genuine operating leverage on the go-to-market side. Exhibit A1 also shows why GAAP margin did not follow: stock compensation with related payroll taxes jumped from 23.7% to 27.1% of revenue in the same period, absorbing all of the improvement. The company's Fal.Con targets call for a non-GAAP operating margin of 28% to 32% and an FCF margin of 34% to 38% by fiscal 2029; it gave no target for stock compensation.

Working capital and capitalized costs. Days-based measures are not very meaningful for a prepaid subscription business; the items to watch are capitalized sales commissions (deferred contract acquisition costs of $1.19B, up from $1.10B in January, amortized over customer life) and capital spending, which roughly doubled to $222M in H1 FY27 (8% of revenue in Q2) as CrowdStrike builds data-center and AI capacity. Capitalized internal software was $49M in H1. Deferred revenue of $4.84B represents customer billings for revenue not yet recognized; it differs from ARR, a recurring-revenue run-rate. The balance was broadly flat from January, in line with the seasonal billing pattern.

Owner FCF is a non-standard analytical measure used here to show the economic cost of equity compensation; it is not a GAAP or company-defined measure. The two stock-compensation lines come from different statements and do not reconcile exactly by quarter. Percentages are of revenue.

Exhibit A4 · Stock compensation and growth

Growth slowed by two-thirds; stock compensation as a share of revenue did not fall

Stock compensation, % of revenue (bars) · revenue growth, % YoY (line) · fiscal year

Stock compensation % revenue Revenue growth

Source: company 10-K and 10-Q filings (revenue; stock-based compensation from the cash-flow statement) · TTM = four quarters to Jul 2026, growth vs. the prior four quarters

Exhibit A4 tests whether scale is reaching per-share economics. Revenue growth fell from 66% in FY22 to 22% in FY26, yet stock compensation stayed between 21% and 24% of revenue throughout, and Q2 FY27 was higher at 25.6%. The diluted share count rose 1.9% in the year to Q2 FY27 (company-reported weighted average). Until the ratio falls, the operating leverage visible in non-GAAP margins does not fully reach shareholders.

Dilution sensitivity

Report estimates under the model's assumptions. This variant uses reported free cash flow (margin rising from 28.1% to the 36% midpoint of the FY29 target) and charges stock pay through dilution instead of as a cost; dilution is assumed to stop after year ten. It should not be combined with the owner-FCF grids, which already treat stock compensation as a cost (that would count it twice). At 9.5% and 11.5% discount rates, 2% dilution gives $78 and $56 a share. At about 2% a year, close to the current rate, this method gives nearly the same answer as the owner-FCF method (22.3% vs. 22.6% over twenty years at 10.5%).

ARR to revenue

Source: company releases. Revenue includes professional services (about 5%), so subscription revenue alone runs slightly below ARR (Q2 FY27: 96%). Acquired revenue and ARR are inside both columns and are not separately disclosed.

Annualized revenue has stayed within about 1% of ending ARR for six quarters, so on this evidence Flex has not opened a gap between the ARR the company reports and the revenue it recognizes, and management's ARR targets translate roughly one for one into the revenue base the valuation uses. A widening gap would be an early sign that Flex commitments are running ahead of consumption.

Exhibit A2 · Balance sheet & leverage

A $4.3B net cash cushion, with acquisitions now a larger use of it

Cash and total debt at quarter-end ($B, bars) · goodwill plus acquired intangibles ($B, line)

Cash Total debt Goodwill + intangibles

Source: company releases; Alpha Vantage balance sheet · total debt = 3.000% senior notes due 2029 (excludes lease liabilities of ~$74M)

Balance sheet stress points. Few. Exhibit A2 shows $5.01B of cash against $746M of fixed-rate notes due 2029, so net debt to EBITDA is not meaningful and interest coverage is not a constraint. What changed is the asset mix: goodwill and intangibles rose from about $1.0B to $2.5B in fifteen months as CrowdStrike spent about $1.7B on four acquisitions, and now equal roughly half of shareholders' equity. That is an impairment risk only if the acquired products fail to sell. Sensitivities. CrowdStrike does not publish a rate or FX sensitivity in the sources reviewed. A simplified rule of thumb: each 1-point change in the yield on its cash moves pre-tax interest income by about $50M (about $0.04 a share after tax), which ignores changes in the cash balance and investment mix. Contingencies. Litigation from the July 2024 outage remains a disclosed risk factor; a Georgia court allowed core parts of Delta's suit to proceed in 2025, and no resolution was found in the sources reviewed. The company booked $14.5M of net recoveries (mainly insurance) in Q2 FY27.

Sources: company releases and 10-Qs (Q1 and Q2 FY27); deal values as reported by RCP Magazine, SecurityWeek and Yahoo Finance (Jan 2026). Buyback price = $175.6M ÷ 1.92M split-adjusted shares.

Buybacks. The board authorized $1.0B in June 2025 and added $0.5B on 6 April 2026, citing a "disconnect" between momentum and valuation; $1.3B remained at 31 July. All $176M so far was spent in February to April 2026 at about $91.50 a share (split-adjusted), well below today's price, and none in Q2. The program has no expiry date, so there is no required pace. At $257.57 the remaining $1.3B would retire about 5.0M shares, roughly 0.5% of the count, against annual dilution of about 2%: buybacks are opportunistic and too small to offset stock compensation. Sustainability under stress (illustrative): net cash of $4.27B and trailing free cash flow of $1.52B would fund the remaining authorization even if free cash flow fell by a third for a year, a stress harsher than the July 2024 outage year (when quarterly net new ARR fell about 31% year on year but annual free cash flow still grew). The binding constraints are the board's preference for acquisitions and the share price, not capacity.

M&A record. CrowdStrike's tuck-ins have tended to become products quickly: Preempt (2020) became identity protection, Humio (2021) the SIEM, and Pangea (2025) the AIDR product now sold as Falcon Guardian. The 2026 deals are larger and priced at venture valuations, and their revenue contribution is not disclosed, so delivered returns cannot yet be measured. The item to track: for each deal, purchase price against any disclosed acquired ARR, the product it became and that product's module adoption. Reinvestment runway. Incremental capital goes to R&D (19% of revenue non-GAAP, 30% GAAP), data-center capacity and acquisitions in identity, data and AI security. The return on it will show up, or not, in whether owner FCF margin rises from about 5%.

EPS split-adjusted (pre-split guidance ÷ 4). Consensus for Q3 FY27: Alpha Vantage (43 analysts for revenue, 45 for EPS). The acquisition effect in Q1 FY27 cannot be separated because the deals closed during the quarter after guidance was set; from Q2 the acquired businesses were inside guidance.

Decomposing the beats. The pattern looks like operations rather than below-the-line items. In Q2 FY27, revenue beat the guided midpoint by $32M and non-GAAP operating income beat its midpoint ($347M) by $24M, consistent with roughly 75% incremental margin on the extra revenue; interest income actually fell year on year. In Q1, revenue beat by $24M and operating income by $16M. What cannot be separated is how much of Q1's beat came from acquisitions that closed after guidance was set. Annual guidance has risen at every report: the FY27 revenue midpoint from $5.90B (March) to $5.94B (June) to $6.00B (August); ending ARR from $6.49B to $6.54B to $6.61B; non-GAAP EPS from $1.21 to $1.23 to $1.255.

Sources: Q3 FY26 to Q2 FY27 releases; Fal.Con investor briefing (company webcast, 2 Sep 2026: $10B ARR target moved from FY31 to FY30 and $20B from FY36 to FY35; transcript via Investing.com); Q2 FY27 earnings presentation (FY29 target operating model); April 2026 buyback release.

Sources: Form 4 filings (Kurtz, filed 8 and 21 Oct 2026); Alpha Vantage insider-transaction aggregation for totals (sale values computed from reported prices; totals approximate and include pre- and post-split trades). 10b5-1 status is shown only where stated in the filings named.

Institutions & positioning. 13F filers held about 76% of shares at June 2026, led by BlackRock (8.5%), Vanguard (6.3%) and State Street (4.5%); like-for-like institutional holdings rose about 6% in that quarter, with large additions by Invesco and JPMorgan. Short interest is low at about 2.5% to 2.9% of float and two to three days to cover. Sell-side targets moved up sharply in October (Citi $295, BTIG $312, Wells Fargo $300, Needham $310, Freedom $320, KeyBanc $265, Mizuho $275), but the consensus mean of $246 still sits below the share price.

Compensation. In April 2026 the board granted President Michael Sentonas 100,000 performance units (0% to 200% payout) based on CrowdStrike's total shareholder return ranked against S&P 500 companies from December 2025 to December 2028, with target payout at the 55th percentile (8-K, 16 April 2026). Relative TSR ties pay to per-share outcomes rather than to adjusted metrics, though a strong starting point (the company cited a 95th-percentile three-year return) makes the hurdle a function of the market as much as of the business. The broader stock-compensation pool, at a quarter of revenue, is the larger alignment question: it is the main channel through which value created so far has reached employees rather than outside holders.

Three bases, kept consistent

The non-GAAP and reported-FCF bases ignore dilution from stock pay; the owner-FCF basis treats it as a cash-equivalent cost. In the valuation work below, the discounted cash flow uses owner FCF, so cash flow and share count are on the same basis (current shares, no future dilution).

What the price implies

A reverse discounted cash flow asks what revenue growth today's ~$260B enterprise value implies under a stated set of assumptions; the outputs are only as precise as those assumptions. Inputs: trailing revenue of $5.40B; owner FCF margin rising in a straight line from 5.3% today to a long-run level by year ten; a discount rate of 9.5% to 11.5% (CAPM with the measured 1.19 beta and an assumed 5.15% 10-year yield gives about 10.5% to 11.7%; 9.5% is a low-rate sensitivity); and terminal growth of 3% to 5%. Terminal cash flow is the final explicit-year owner FCF grown by the terminal rate, divided by discount rate less terminal growth. No separate reinvestment haircut is applied; the assumed owner FCF margin is after reinvestment.

Report estimates. 16% a year roughly matches management's path from $5.84B ARR (Jul 2026) to $10B by FY30 and $20B by FY35. Value = (PV of owner FCF + terminal value at 4% growth + $4.2B net cash) ÷ ~1,024M shares. Simplified: ignores future dilution (which would lower values) and option value from new markets (which could raise them).

The grids say three things, under the model's assumptions (linear margin ramp, 9.5% to 11.5% discount rate, 3% to 5% terminal growth, stock pay treated as a cost and no additional terminal reinvestment haircut). First, on a ten-year model with a 25% long-run margin after stock pay, the price implies growth of roughly 36% to 42% a year, well above the current 25%. Second, stretching the high-growth period to twenty years brings the implied rate to about 21% to 24% a year, close to today's growth rate held for two decades. Third, if revenue simply follows management's own long-range ARR targets (about 16% a year), the same model produces values of roughly $35 to $72 a share. Buyers at $258 are therefore underwriting something beyond the published targets: a much longer runway, a far larger market in AI-agent security, materially lower stock pay, or a lower discount rate. None of these is impossible; each is an assumption the current numbers do not yet show.

Scenario earnings: three cases for fiscal 2029

Report estimates. These are operating scenarios, not probability-weighted forecasts. FY27 revenue = $6.00B guidance midpoint. Base margin sits at the middle of the 28%–32% FY29 target; FCF margins bracket the 34%–38% FY29 target. Amortization assumed at ~1% of revenue. Cross-checks: FY28 consensus non-GAAP EPS $1.61 (53 analysts, range $1.50–$2.04) and revenue $7.38B (+23%).

Exhibit A3 · Scenario earnings range

Even the bull case leaves a three-digit multiple two years out

FY29 EPS by scenario, non-GAAP and after stock comp (report estimates, amber) vs. FY28 consensus and TTM non-GAAP EPS · $

Non-GAAP EPS (est.) EPS after stock comp (est.) FY28 consensus $1.61 TTM non-GAAP $1.11

Source: report estimates (assumptions in table above); Alpha Vantage (consensus); company releases (TTM)

Exhibit A3 puts the earnings power in perspective. The base case, close to management's own margin targets, gives about $2.05 of non-GAAP EPS in fiscal 2029, 126x today's price; counting stock pay as a cost, about $0.71, or roughly 360x. Consensus for FY28 ($1.61) sits on the path to the base case. The bear case (growth slowing to the low teens, margins stalling) is not a collapse in the business; it is a return to the growth rates of FY26 with today's cost structure, and it still leaves a 161x non-GAAP multiple.

Key-driver sensitivity

Report estimates, simplified: uniform growth in FY28 and FY29 from the $6.00B FY27 guidance midpoint; $0.18B interest income, 21% tax and 1,085M diluted shares held constant across cells. The 30%/20% cell ($2.02) sits close to the base case ($2.05, which uses 22% then 20%). Each 4 points of margin is worth about $0.24 to $0.27; each 5 points of annual growth about $0.14 to $0.18.

Other measures

Dividend plus buyback yield: about 0.07% trailing ($176M of buybacks, no dividend), negative net of dilution. Peer multiples: 48.1x EV/S against 27.1x for Palo Alto Networks, about 12x for Zscaler and about 7x for SentinelOne (peer panel above). Sell-side: consensus "Buy" from 53 analysts, mean target $246, median $250, range $132 to $325; the mean is about 4% below today's price.

Thresholds are report judgment, set against recent run-rates and company targets; they are monitoring markers, not a rating.

Definitions. Fiscal year ends 31 January; Q2 FY27 = quarter ended 31 July 2026. TTM = Q3 FY26 to Q2 FY27. All share and per-share figures are adjusted for the four-for-one split distributed 1 July 2026, with split-adjusted trading effective 2 July 2026 (pre-split guidance and EPS divided by four). "Non-GAAP" figures are company-defined (excluding stock compensation and related payroll taxes, intangibles amortization, acquisition costs, July 19 incident costs and recoveries, strategic-plan charges, strategic-investment gains and losses, deferred-compensation marks, debt cost amortization, at a 21% tax rate). Free cash flow is company-defined. "Owner FCF" (FCF less stock compensation) deducts non-cash stock compensation from the cash-flow statement; it is a non-standard report measure, not GAAP or company-defined, and employer payroll taxes on equity awards are already inside free cash flow. ARR, net new ARR and retention are company operating measures. Guide-implied net new ARR = midpoint ARR guidance less prior quarter-end ARR. Year-end EV/Sales uses January month-end closes, Alpha Vantage share counts and balance-sheet cash and debt. Reverse DCF: ten-year (or 15/20-year) explicit period from TTM revenue, owner FCF margin ramping linearly from 5.3% to the long-run level over ten years, Gordon terminal value, solved for constant revenue growth. Scenario EPS: revenue path from the FY27 guidance midpoint, non-GAAP operating margin, interest income, 21% tax and diluted shares as stated. Operating invested capital = net PP&E, goodwill, intangibles, capitalized commissions, receivables, prepaid and other assets, less payables, accrued liabilities, deferred revenue and other operating liabilities (31 Jul 2026). Beta from 60 monthly adjusted returns vs SPY. Rate and interest sensitivities are simplified.

Company sources. Q2 FY27 earnings release and financial tables (26 Aug 2026); Q1 FY27 release (3 Jun 2026, including four-for-one split announcement); Q4 and FY26 release (3 Mar 2026); Q3 FY26 release (2 Dec 2025); Q2 FY26 investor materials; 10-Qs for the quarters ended 30 Apr and 31 Jul 2026 (share repurchases); FY26 Form 10-K (retention); share repurchase increase release (6 Apr 2026); 8-K on President's performance award (16 Apr 2026); Form 4 filings (Kurtz, filed 8 and 21 Oct 2026); Q2 FY27 earnings presentation (26 Aug 2026, FY29 target operating model); Fal.Con investor briefing (company webcast, 2 Sep 2026; ARR targets of $10B by FY30 and $20B by FY35, each one year earlier than the FY31 and FY36 set at the September 2025 investor day; transcript via Investing.com, corroborated by TIKR and Akrostec summaries); press releases on NVIDIA (21 Oct 2026), mini-tender (9 Oct), Fal.Con Europe (6 Oct), OpenAI marketplace (29 Sep), Optiv and Falcon Guardian (1 Sep).
Source hierarchy. Company facts come from CrowdStrike's filings, releases and investor presentations, and peers' own releases; macro facts from the Federal Reserve and BLS. Market data (prices, consensus, short interest, institutional holdings, peer valuations) come from data providers. Media reports are used only for events, attributed as such.
Market, peer & macro sources. Federal Reserve FOMC statement and Summary of Economic Projections (16 Sep 2026; median end-2026 funds rate 4.1%, central tendency 4.1%–4.4%); BLS CPI release for September 2026 (14 Oct 2026); Alpha Vantage (statements, monthly adjusted prices for CRWD and SPY, latest quote, weekly 10-yr Treasury yield, insider transactions, consensus estimates and peer cash-flow statements; retrieved 23–24 Oct 2026); Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler and SentinelOne earnings releases (Aug–Sep 2026); S&P Global consensus via StockAnalysis (22 Oct 2026); StockAnalysis (peer valuations, 23 Oct 2026); Equibles (13F holdings); StockAnalysis, MarketBeat and Fintel (short interest); CNBC on Project Glasswing (Apr–Jun 2026) and media reports on October price moves and analyst targets (Yahoo Finance, TIKR, Schaeffer's); RCP Magazine, SecurityWeek and Yahoo Finance (2026 acquisition values); ch-aviation and Law360 (Delta litigation).