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Cloudflare’s stock drops after earnings as forecast comes up a bit shy

Cloudflare Inc. shares declined 6% in Thursday’s extended session after the cybersecurity company beat revenue expectations for its latest quarter but came up a bit shy with its top-line view of the ongoing quarter.

The company posted a third-quarter net loss of $23.5 million, or 7 cents a share, compared with a loss of $42.5 million, or 13 cents a share, in the year-prior quarter. On an adjusted basis, Cloudflare
NET,
+13.11%
earned 16 cents a share, up from 6 cents a share a year before, while analysts were modeling 10 cents a share.

Revenue increased to $335.6 million from $253.9 million, whereas analysts were calling for $330.5 million.

For the fourth quarter, Cloudflare executives model $352 million to $353 million in revenue, along with 12 cents in adjusted earnings per share. The FactSet consensus was for $356 million in revenue and 10 cents in adjusted EPS.

See also: CrowdStrike’s and Zscaler’s stocks are top plays in rocky cybersecurity market, analyst says

“We believe inference is the biggest opportunity in [artificial intelligence], and inference tasks will largely be run on end devices and on connectivity clouds like Cloudflare,” Chief Executive Matthew Prince said in a release. “By the end of 2024, we expect to have inference-optimized [graphics processing units] running in nearly every location where Cloudflare operates worldwide — within milliseconds of every internet user.”

Cloudflare’s results come as fellow cybersecurity company Fortinet Inc.
FTNT,
-13.88%
also posted earnings Thursday afternoon, bringing a significant miss on its outlook. That guidance seemed to be weighing on the sector in the extended session, with shares of Palo Alto Networks Inc.
PANW,
-2.23%
and Zscaler Inc.
ZS,
+3.81%
both down.

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