Morgan Stanley analyst Melissa Franchi noted that the average security stock has significantly underperformed the broader software space over the past 3 years, which she attributes to bearishness on security vendors' ability to navigate the increased competitive threat from public cloud vendors and disruption as enterprises turn to decentralized and cloud-heavy architectures. However, her CIO survey work and industry conversations lead her to estimate third-party security vendors will realize 9% topline growth through 2020, while the consensus is only pricing in 5%. Franchi said she favors security vendors who are exposed to markets where the cloud drives higher security spending and have optimal business models for the cloud and identified Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Cisco (CSCO), Proofpoint (PFPT) and Sophos (SPHHF) as well-positioned vendors poised for outperformance. As previously reported, she also downgraded Fortinet (FTNT) to Equal Weight this morning.

KeyBanc lowered the firm's price target on Palo Alto Networks to $355 from $380 on lower peer multiples, while keeping an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm says that at some point, the case for optimism needs to be backed up by some optimistic data, and its 1Q24 VAR Survey did not deliver it. IT budgets are still in hiding at this point, with just 50% of KeyBanc's respondents meeting or exceeding their goal in the Q1, the lowest quarterly reading since the heart of the pandemic, and sentiment from the follow-up calls with some individuals also has down ticked. The firm's Q4 2023 VAR survey was iffy, the outlook in 2024 from its CIO survey in January was also not great, its SMB survey was worse than expected, and now 2024 is off to a difficult start - "let's just call a trend a trend," KeyBanc adds.