CrowdStrike Faces Short-Term Challenges Like Pipeline Delays, Deal Scrutiny, and Discounting Pressure, Analyst Says

BofA Securities analyst Tal Liani maintained a Buy rating on CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc CRWD with a price target of $365.

The price target reflects 17x Liani’s fiscal 2026 EV/Sales, which is a premium to high-growth Software as a Service (SaaS) peers, supported by CrowdStrike’s competitive solid positioning in endpoint security and long-term growth opportunities across Cloud security, log management, and identity protection.

In addition, the analyst flagged CrowdStrike’s higher growth profile and potential to take a meaningful share in new markets.

Liani recently hosted an investor meeting with Burt Podbere, CrowdStrike’s CFO, where management outlined customer retention plans, technology programs, and financial implications following the global outage.

The discussion focused on CrowdStrike incentives for the outage victims, including managing the recovery through discounting, bundling, free product offerings, flexible payment options, and extended contract terms.

Liani noted that delays in pipeline generation activities post-outage and heightened deal scrutiny across new and existing customers are extending sales cycles and impacting near-term growth trajectory.

The company is no longer guiding to free cash flow or net new annual recurring revenue (nnARR). Yet, the analyst noted the potential for near-term pressure related to muted upsell value, longer deal cycles, and recovery of outbound prospecting.

Management is still measuring the magnitude of the impact, and Liani expects further information related to the impact towards the end of the quarter.

While CrowdStrike’s discounting is temporary and aims to address customer retention risk, Liani noted that the general pricing environment is deteriorating. The two largest cybersecurity companies, Palo Alto Networks Inc PANW and CrowdStrike, both now offer variable payment plans, which could drive long-term pricing headwinds should customers continue to push on discounting.

Price Action: CRWD stock is trading lower by 1.51% to $262.58 at the last check on Wednesday.

Photo via shutterstock