Cloudflare's AI Innovations And Sales Strategy Drive Goldman Sachs Upgrade

Cloudflare Inc NET stock is trading upwards Thursday after Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriela Borges upgraded the stock from Sell to Buy and raised its price target from $77 to $140.

Security stock performance in 2024 can almost entirely be explained by the extent to which the market believed each company was a platform rather than a point product, as per the analyst.

Borges flagged two catalysts for Cloudflare stock in 2025, including an improving sales and marketing productivity cycle after two years of evolution to better address platform sales in the enterprise and traction with Act III products for developer services as Cloudflare applies its core edge network architecture advantages to new AI inferencing use cases.

The price target boost reflects a jump in the multiple from 11x to 20x (Q5-Q8 revenue), raising the analyst’s 2026 revenue estimates by 2%, given his views on sales productivity and Act III.

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Borges changed his 2024, 2025, and 2026 EPS estimates to $0.75, $0.90, and $1.32 from $0.75, $0.86, and $1.12, driven by slightly more margin expansion, marking the highest target multiple in his coverage.

Borges downgraded Check Point Software Technologies CHKP from Buy to Neutral and raised the price target from $204 to $207.

The analyst highlighted 2025 as a year of incremental investment for Check Point as its new CEO evaluates growth priorities and the company ramps up its new SASE products. Taken together, the analyst noted that EPS growth will be under pressure in 2025, and the stock typically tracks EPS growth. He noted an opportunity to become more positive into 2026, as the path to 10%+ revenue growth and 20%+ EPS growth comes back into focus if Check Point successfully converts incremental investments into incremental revenue growth.

Borges compared Check Point to Software companies with less than 10% revenue growth and enough EPS to be valued using a P/E methodology. Relative to this peer group (median 2025 P/E of 17x), Check Point offers similar revenue growth (6% on Street estimates versus 6% for peers in 2025) but better Rule of 40 (~47 versus 35).

The analyst also used the S&P 500 as a point of comparison: The S&P 500 is trading at 22x 2025 EPS while offering ~10% EPS growth; relative to the S&P 500, Check Point provides similar cross-cycle earnings growth.

Borges revised 2024, 2025, and 2026 EPS from $9.10, $9.75, and $10.95 to $9.10, $9.45, and $10.65 to reflect an operating expenditure trend consistent with recent history and introduced 2027 EPS of $12.25.

Price Actions: NET stock is up 4.59% at $112.62 at last check Thursday. CHKP is down 0.80%.

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