Check Point Software Technologies Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

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Provided by Quartr
July 30, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Neutral Sentiment: Q2 revenue rose 1% to $674 million, in line with expectations, while non-GAAP EPS increased 8% year over year to $2.55. Deferred revenue and remaining performance obligations each grew 7%, indicating continued strength in contracted business.
  • Negative Sentiment: Product revenue declined 14% amid lower firewall-appliance demand and disruption from the go-to-market reorganization. Management expects a similar trend in Q3, making the second half significantly back-end loaded.
  • Positive Sentiment: Subscription revenue grew 12%, with email security, CTEM, and AI security collectively generating more than 40% year-over-year ARR growth. Management expects firewall product revenue to return to growth in Q4 and maintained its full-year 2026 guidance.
  • Positive Sentiment: Check Point launched an AI Network Firewall as part of its AI Defense Plane, aimed at securing prompts, agent actions, and model interactions across networks, cloud, and SASE. Executives view accelerating AI adoption and increasingly sophisticated attacks as a long-term demand opportunity.
  • Neutral Sentiment: The company plans to hire approximately 300 additional go-to-market employees globally, but said the investment is not expected to materially benefit results until Q1–Q2 2027. Check Point ended the quarter with $4.2 billion in cash and marketable securities and expanded its share-repurchase authorization by $2 billion.
AI Generated. May Contain Errors.
Earnings Conference Call
Check Point Software Technologies Q2 2026
00:00 / 00:00

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Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

During the formal presentation, all participants are in a listen-only mode that will be followed by a Q&A session. During the presentation, Check Point's representatives may make forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements can relate to future events or future financial and/or operating performance. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statement. Any forward-looking statements made only as of the date hereof, Check Point Software undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements except where required by law. In our press release, which has been posted on our website, we present GAAP and non-GAAP results, along with the reconciliation of such results, as well as the reasons for our presentation of non-GAAP information. If you have any questions after the call, please feel free to contact investor relations by email at kip@checkpoint.com.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Nadav Zafrir.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Okay. Thank you all for joining us today. Our Q2 results were in line with our expectations, we continued to make tangible progress strengthening our go-to-market organization. We're actually encouraged by improving execution and a growing sales pipeline. We expect Q3 to mark the trough, followed by a stronger Q4 that supports second half performance, we are maintaining our 2026 guidance. As a next step, we are significantly expanding our sales capacity by hiring hundreds of additional salespeople. We've launched a focused hiring campaign reflecting our confidence in the long-term growth opportunity. Over the past few weeks, I met with more than 1,000 security leaders at Check Point Engage events in Chicago, Paris, and Singapore. Their message is consistent and unmistakable. Our industry is at an inflection point. AI, and particularly the latest frontier model, is driving a collapse in scarcity of adversarial capabilities.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

This is democratizing and industrializing sophisticated cyberattacks and challenging many of the assumptions that have guided cybersecurity for decades. We cannot stop AI adoption, we must prepare to defend against sophisticated attacks at unprecedented scale. This is a time for decisive action. At Check Point, securing our customers' AI transformation means executing the fundamentals better than ever while building the next generation of cybersecurity, we must do it in parallel. The fundamentals start with prevention, powered by our ThreatCloud AI intelligence, more than 100 AI agents, and telemetry from millions of enforcement points. Prevention-first security is in our DNA. Fundamentals alone are no longer enough. We must build security that operates at machine speed, learns continuously, and evolves as AI evolves. Today, I'm excited to introduce the industry's first AI Network Firewall.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

We believe AI has created a new class of network traffic. It deserves a new class of firewall. The AI Network Firewall gives customers visibility, control, and security for prompts, agent actions, and model interactions. The AI Network Firewall is a part of our AI Defense Plane. It's a full stack AI security platform continuously trained on our threat research and intelligence and built to protect applications, users, and agents from AI-based attacks. With the release of the AI Network Firewall, we're embedding the AI Defense Planes across networks, private and public cloud, and SASE, giving network security teams control they can put in place today. Beyond AI demand, across our emerging technologies portfolio remains healthy.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Subscription revenue grew 12% year-over-year in Q2. We continue to integrate the capabilities from our recent acquisitions across the platform, strengthening our competitive position and expanding the value we deliver to customers. We're building momentum by expanding our go-to-market capacity and strengthening our product portfolio. The launch of our AI Network Firewall, combined with our AI Defense Plane, reinforce Check Point's mission of securing our customers' AI transformation. We remain focused on disciplined execution, accelerating growth, and delivering long-term value for our customers, our partners, employees, and shareholders. With that, I'll turn over the call to Roei to review the financials.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Thank you, Nadav. One moment. Great. Thank you, Nadav, and thank you everyone for joining the call. As Nadav mentioned, the second quarter was as planned with 1% growth in revenues, driven by 12% growth in subscription revenues. Our total revenues reached $674 million, and we're $1 million below the midpoint of our projection as a result of lower product revenues, a lower demand for firewall appliances. When we're looking at our subscription revenues, it reached $333 million, and we're at the midpoint of our projections. Our adjusted free cash flow reached $161 million, $1 million above the midpoint of our projection, and represent 24% of our revenues. Our non-GAAP EPS was $2.55 per diluted shares and exceeded our guidance and grew by 8% year-over-year. As mentioned, we had 1% growth in revenues, while our deferred revenues grew by 7% to $2.025 billion.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Our calculated billing totaled to $639 million and was similar to last year. While our current calculated billing grew by 2% to $641 million. Our Remaining Performance Obligation grew by 7% and reached $2.55 billion. Our current RPO reached $1.6 billion and representing 4% increase compared to last year. As we indicated in the call back in May, we expected lower product revenues, mainly as a result of our disruption affected by the changes were made in the go-to-market organization. Our product revenues declined by 14% in the second quarter. As we are looking on the second half of the year, we do expect to see similar trend in the third quarter with our firewall appliances, while we do see significant improvement in our pipeline, in the opportunities, in the qualified opportunities in Q4.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

We do expect to see a back to growth in product revenues in the fourth quarter. We are looking on the subscription revenues, it continued to accelerate to 12% growth this quarter, driven by the strong demand for our emerging technologies, as email security and CTEM continue to have strong demand. We are looking on the third quarter, we do expect slight deacceleration in our subscription revenues as a result of large appliances deals that were pushed from Q3 to Q4 and have also an impact on our subscription line item. As indicated, our total subscription business continued to be strong as we continue to experience strong demand for our emerging product portfolio, which remains the primary driver for our revenues growth.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

In the second quarter, if we're looking on the email security, CTEM, and AI security, accumulated they exceeded 40% growth in ARR year-over-year, while the calculated billing from these products grew by 35% year-over-year. Looking on our revenues by geographies. Our revenues from EMEA and America were 44% each, for the second quarter, while the remaining 12% came from Asia Pacific, similar to what we had last year. We are reviewing, we are looking on our P&L for this quarter. Our gross profit increased from $585 million to $588 million, representing a gross margin of 87%. The slight decrease in the gross margin was explained due to higher memory costs. Our operating expenses, excluding R&D grants, increased by 13%, while on constant currency basis, our operating expenses increased by 11%.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Our Q2 results include approximately $28 million of benefit from R&D grants to be received from the Israeli government. We are looking on our operating expenses, net of R&D grants, the expenses were $328 million and increased by 5% year-over-year. The net increase is primarily as a result of increase in our workforce and as a result in continuing investment in AI security and investment in our sales and marketing programs. Looking on the operating income, it continues to be strong at $260 million or 39% operating margin. Our non-GAAP net income increased by 1% and reached $264 million, while our GAAP net income reached $194 million and decreased by 4% year-over-year. Our non-GAAP EPS grew by 8% and reached $2.55. 8%, as I said, growth year-over-year, while our GAAP EPS was $1.87, a 2% increase year-over-year.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Our number of fully diluted outstanding shares for Q2 was 103.5 million shares. While we continue to do our buyback, we expect the number of shares for the next quarter to decrease by approximately 1.5 million shares. Moving into our cash flow and cash positions. Our cash balances as of the end of the quarter was $4.2 billion of cash and marketable securities and deposits. Our adjusted free cash flow reached $161 million, as planned and in line with our projections. We also continue to do our buyback program and purchased approximately 2.5 million shares for $325 million this quarter at an average price of $131 per share. During the quarter, the company announced also a $2 billion expansion of the company share repurchase program. We're going to continue to do this buyback. Next.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

To summarize, from one end, definitely strong demand, continued strong demand for emerging technology led by email security and CTEM, that's becoming more and more significant to our total business. On the other end, we did see, as expected, lower demand for firewall appliances this quarter. As I mentioned, we do expect similar trend to continue also in Q3, but definitely we do see significant improvement on the appliances business in Q4, and we do expect to be back to growth in Q4 in the product revenues. We're going to move to the guidance, to the business outlook. First, regarding the full year, we are not touching the full year guidance. We are maintaining the same guidance as we gave you back in May, in the last call. Looking on the Q3 outlook, the total revenue range is between $655-$685.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Subscription revenue between $332-$343. Non-GAAP EPS between $2.43-$2.53. The GAAP EPS is $0.70 less. Our adjusted free cash flow expected to be between $235 million-$265 million.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

It is important to note, as I mentioned earlier, that we do see significant DAF opportunities and deals that are expecting to be pushed from Q3 to Q4, and therefore that have a negative impact mainly on the appliances revenues. As I said, if I'm comparing to what we've seen in the pipeline for Q4 in May and now, definitely we do see even stronger pipeline for Q4. Definitely, it's a more back-ended loaded deal. It's also is a reflection of the go-to-market disrupting that we've done. Definitely we do see a positive sign, first, of course, with the emerging product that continue to have a strong demand. Also with the appliances and the firewall, we see positive signs that we are seeing the end in Q3 in terms of the decline and going back to growth in Q4. Thank you, and we are moving to Q&A.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Kip, floor is yours. We can't hear you, Kip.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

That'd be good. Probably most people appreciate that. As with always, please keep your question to one question for each time around. Today, to begin, we're going to have Joseph Gallo from Jefferies, followed by Patrick Colville from Scotiabank.

Joseph Gallo
Joseph Gallo
Analyst at Jefferies

Hey, guys. Thanks for the question. It was great to hear about the investment in sales capacity. Can you just remind us what the normal cadence of sales ramp to productivity is? I'm just trying to understand better, the confidence in a 4Q rebound when hiring today would be more indicative of 2027's benefit.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yeah. Thanks, Joe. The latter. The impact to sales is expected in Q1 and Q2 of 2027. The guidance and what we're expecting for Q3 and Q4 does not take into consideration the ramp-up. The ramp-up obviously has its momentum, but it's going to take some time. However, it is very significant. For us, hiring hundreds of new frontline sellers is a major move. I don't know if you've seen it. I hope you have. We've started an aggressive campaign, so it's not just the number, it's also the people that we're hiring, and the invigorating of our sales force across the globe. It's really meaningful and it's a company-wide effort. The guidance that we gave today does not take that into consideration. That is sort of preparing for a stronger 2027.

Joseph Gallo
Joseph Gallo
Analyst at Jefferies

Thank you.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Next up's Patrick Colville, followed by John DiFucci.

Patrick Colville
Patrick Colville
Analyst at Scotiabank

Thank you, Kip. I guess I wanted to ask about kind of Mythos preparedness and advanced AI preparedness. There's a lot of excitement in the market around what advanced AI means for cybersecurity. You kind of touched on this in your prepared remarks a little bit, but just vis-a-vis Check Point specifically, are you seeing changes in buying patterns as a result of enterprises kind of concerned about the risks brought on by advanced AI models? Then, I guess, specifically, where is that hitting the financial model? Is it at the firewall layer for Check Point? Is it the non-attach subs and any changes to sales cycles?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yeah. Great question. If you zoom out, really, the phenomena that we're seeing is very interesting. When you think about it from the attacker's perspective, you want to think about it from an ROI perspective. The way we see it is the attackers now have access to resources that they didn't have before. That's what we call the collapse of scarcity. They literally have access to what used to be very scarce resources, and that's sort of what leads into the democratization and industrialization. We're going to see more sophisticated attacks at a much higher cadence. That is happening already, but we think it's going to accelerate within the next couple of years.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

When you think about the security paradigm or the assumptions that we have around security, we're seeing signs that some of these assumptions and the current paradigm does not necessarily withstand the change that's coming from the attackers. That leads us to, like in a Kuhnian way, to really a world between true paradigms. That's what I mean when I say, number one, going back to fundamentals. This is the proactive prevention first. That's our DNA. That's where we shine. That's what our customers expect from us. We have to do everything that we have learned, just much better, much faster, much more diligently. At the same time, in parallel, we have to look into the future. We have to imagine different possible futures, give them different probabilities, and start simulating how the attackers are going to change.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

For example, we believe that detection and response are going to be much less relevant because we're going to have to go to automatic remediation at machine speed. We're making massive investments. Last year, we spoke about hiring hundreds of new individuals to build the next generation. Today, we announced the launch of the first AI Network Firewall integrated into our AI Defense Plane, and there's a whole strategy around that. To your question about the buyer's perspective, I think that they realize that on the one hand, back to basics, and at the same time, they're looking to what's next. I'll give you a couple of examples. I think the continuous threat exposure management, based on three acquisitions that we made, that is growing. Last quarter, we spoke about that growing at almost 100%, is a part of that. Why?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Because it gives you the ability to understand what's coming at you, but also creating a real pathway to understand what the real threats mean, and automatically remediating that in an open platform approach. That's why CTEM, for example, is having such success. At the same time, the reason I'm so excited about the AI Network Firewall is that it's also happening at the network level. Customers that already have our firewall can now also take advantage of the network to understand what their employees are doing, what agents are running, and control that. I really think to summarize, it's sort of a tale of two cities. On the one hand, everything that we've learned, we must do better than we've ever done before. At the same time, we're creating the new technology, the new products.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

I think within the next couple of years, you'll see a new paradigm emerging. That's sort of the story of where we are right now. I think that in some way, some of the frontier models may be hyped, but the phenomena as a phenomena cannot be overhyped. We're seeing it in a very tactical level in the amount of vulnerabilities that are out there, and how fast we need to patch them. That's what we're doing today. As we move forward, we need to change that paradigm, and we're working on this in different buckets. The last one is actually running these models on our own software, to make sure that we can simulate, imagine, and get ahead of the curve before attackers do it.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Next up is John DiFucci, followed by Brian Essex.

Analyst

Thanks, Kip. Nadav, I sort of have a high-level question, I think. Check Point's always been a respected technology company and a thought leader in its field. Long before the term platformization came out, I remember your predecessor talking about the Infinity platform, and I know it became products too, but it was a platform. It was the first time we had heard about one company working to secure an enterprise from top to bottom.

Analyst

Even today, partners in the field acknowledge the strength of the technology at Check Point, but there seems to be a customer perception of the sort of dreaded word, legacy, even though your install base is really loyal and pretty much Check Point diehards. I guess, what is it, other than hiring a lot of new go-to-market people, that you think has to be done to change that perception? Because that's really important. That's hard. Is the issue really just not enough feet on the street?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

I think it goes beyond that. Not enough feet on the street is one thing, That's why we started this campaign. This is a second phase of the go-to-market changes that we announced last time. Now that we've stabilized, we're ready to add hundreds of new people based on the new model in the organization or the reorg that we announced. I think second, it's marketing, right? We need to be louder. I really believe that when it comes to this world that we're walking into, this world where on the one hand, security, real security, proactive prevention, has never been more important. I think that's our DNA, and I think we can provide real security based on the current paradigm. At the same time, the announcement of the first AI Network Firewall, it's a big announcement.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

It's taking the firewall and preparing it for the AI era. Not as a standalone, to your point, but as a platform play, and this is where integrating the AI Network Firewall into the AI Defense Plane and having the ability to look at different choke points within the network, not just for observability, but also for enforcement, is a huge advancement. We are seeing the demand for our AI capabilities grow very, very fast. In fact, some of the hiring that we're doing across the globe is because we just can't get to enough customers fast enough with the high demand that we have, because this is a specialized field where you need people, the specialists, that can come in and do all the more technical stuff for our customers. When you bring all these things together, it makes us very optimistic about the future.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

One thing that I'll say about the platform, yes, consolidation is important, but I think it needs to be an open platform, right? An open platform means that we acknowledge the fact that, number one, from the approach should not be a monolithic approach, especially at the enterprise level. That's not going to lead to resilience. Number two, whether we like it or not, a lot of our customers are going to be multi-vendor, and we need to appreciate that and have their security front and center in our policy. With our unified management, which I think is one of the strongest features that Check Point has, within the next few months, we're going to offer our customers the ability to manage different products and different firewalls, even if they're our fiercest competitors.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

At the end of the day, especially in the Mythos era, we just don't have the time to take care of things one by one with an SLA of days and weeks. We need to be able to see what's coming. We need to be able to understand what the real impact may be. We're using AI to do that, to actually simulate the paths to the vulnerabilities that we're seeing. Then we're moving into an automatic remediation capability, whether it's patching or virtual patching or segmenting or segregation within the network, so that at the end of the day, we can have this real proactive prevention first mentality, and at the same time, starts with the new paradigm of autonomous remediation.

Analyst

By the way, that makes a ton of sense, and it's truly unique, that open platform to work with others, and it's in the customer's best interest. I think you got to have Roei loosen up that marketing budget a little more and go out there really loud. Have Kip run the marketing because he's pretty loud.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yeah. No, I totally agree. Some of it is already happening. Some of it is work in progress. I think we're starting to see the impact. We're starting to see that turn into the funnel. As Roei said, we're already seeing a very strong Q4 ahead of us.

Analyst

Thank you.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Thank you, John. Next up is Brian Essex with JPMorgan.

Brian Essex
Brian Essex
Analyst at JPMorgan

Great. Thanks, Kip, and thanks for taking the question. Nadav, I wanted to follow up on some of that commentary, particularly with regard to platform in your AI firewall. I think it's great to see the innovation of the platform. I think that's another thing that we've heard customers are really focused on is the rate of innovation to build that platform. Would love to know, what is your vision in terms of how you see the AI firewall technology stacking up against what seems to be an emerging AI gateway market?

Brian Essex
Brian Essex
Analyst at JPMorgan

Are you targeting platforms that span-- I guess, are you thinking about expanding the platform to span across broader observability, tracing, performance optimization, cost control features, which is one thing that I think sales are very focused on, or do you intend to stick towards more security and governance? It seems like maybe some of your peers are looking at things more of in a consolidated, broader observability and security platform, would love to know what your focus is going forward.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yeah. I want to start by saying that we need some, I would say, humility as we try to understand where this is going. There are different possible futures in where this is going. I think we must look at it from different perspectives. One perspective, which I spoke about at length, is the attacker's perspective. The second perspective is different industries and how they are adopting AI. Again, a lot of hype, but it's a process.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

There's a lot of trial and error within this process of adoption of AI, whether it's the bread and butter that all of us have already. It's the employee usage of AI, moving into independent agents that in the beginning take over some of the human, more redundant, mundane, day-to-day tasks, but over time, becoming more and more independent and autonomous. That's where the game changes, not only from the attacker's perspective, but also from the attack surface. Having said all that, our mission remains securing the AI adoption journey.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

The way we approach this is with our customers. We have a design partner program, with different industries, with different verticals, because health is different than finance, and finance is different than energy, and energy is different than production and logistics. For each one of them, we have to sit down with our customers, understand where they're going in the next couple of years, simulate what kind of the new threats emerge from that, and coming up with the right mechanisms to govern, to control, and to secure these new capabilities so that on the one hand, they can deploy it, but from a different perspective, they can do it with security in mind. Now, being very direct to your question, Brian, we are focusing on the security part, but security is becoming much broader than just observability.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Observability in many ways, when you think about the next paradigm or the emerging paradigm, doesn't really matter, because going to the SOC or to the CISO or to the VP of Engineering and giving them a list of things that may go wrong is not going to help them. We need to be able to autonomously remediate. We're building those capabilities, but at the end of the day, we're not looking to go beyond the security level. We think security is very broad, very deep. We're building very deep capabilities. When you think about controlling this from a cost perspective-

Brian Essex
Brian Essex
Analyst at JPMorgan

Right

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

That's not necessarily where we're going. Of course, when you have the observability, you can add that to it.

Brian Essex
Brian Essex
Analyst at JPMorgan

Super helpful. Thank you.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

Thanks, Brian. Next up is Todd Weller, followed by Adam Tindle.

Analyst

Thanks. Nadav, I'd love to get your perspectives on potential AI tailwinds for the network security business. There's different kind of angles to this. There's AI application and infrastructure deployments related to that, AI data centers, and then there's an angle around potentially increasing traffic volumes and spectrum requirements. How do you think about framing those dimensions? How do you think about magnitude and timing of those opportunities? Then within your core large enterprise base today, are you seeing any of that, and where do you think we are?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

I think that to your point about the tailwinds for security, I would look at it from, I think there are two different aspects that are relevant to look at. The first one is how the network is a part of the overall AI Defense Plane. The overall AI Defense Plane is on the device, it's in the cloud, it's in workloads, it's in the DevOps. The network is at the heart of that and needs to play within that. That's why the introduction of the AI Network Firewall as a part of the overall AI Defense Plane is so important, and I think that's going to have a meaningful tailwind for the industry and for Check Point specifically. With thinking about that, it's not just about securing, it's also about managing.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Our AI-driven unified management, which is becoming an open platform and allows us to manage different components and different vendors, different firewalls, connected as a platform to the Continuous Threat Exposure Management, which gives us the ability to understand the intelligence from the outside in, the attacker's path and combining that is one aspect. The second aspect is emerging new capabilities that enterprises are building. For example, some enterprises have already invested and some are thinking about investing in AI factories, right? Localized capabilities, sort of going back on-prem, whether it's because of privacy issues or cost issues. We're also seeing a plethora of rising investments in different parts of the world regarding data sovereignty, which is another issue. Finally, very specific data centers that are going to be either for inference or for training, which require different capabilities.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

If you remember a few months ago, we announced that we're working with NVIDIA to embed our firewall capability within the GPU level, because in those data centers, latency is so important, and east-west traffic is so much more imminent, that we literally need to do it at the hardware level in order to remain very efficient. That's the second tailwind that we're seeing. However, to be transparent about that.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

When you're ready to go, Kathleen.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

That is something that we're seeing in a little bit of a further future. 2027, we need to start seeing that.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Thanks, Todd. Next up is Adam Tindle, followed by Shaul Eyal.

Analyst

Okay, thanks, Kip. Nadav, I wanted to ask on the business outlook, you are reiterating the fiscal year guidance this year. If I backed into the implied Q4, you are going to need to do about an $800 million revenue quarter at the midpoint of guidance. I was going back through the model. I have never seen that. That would be a record quarter. You also mentioned earlier that guidance does not take the ramp into consideration. I know it is more of a Roei question on guidance, but I wanted to hear from you the debate over setting that expectation today and what markers you are looking at for Q4. Roei, any comments that you could give us on billings? I know we kind of lost track. We were thinking 6%-7% for the year entering the year.

Analyst

We have got this very difficult comp in Q3 that I think some are struggling to model. Just correct us a little bit on the billings trajectory as well. Thanks, guys.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Roei, you want to start and then I will-

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Yeah, I will start. Definitely you are right in terms of your calculation for Q4. It is around 6.5% growth for Q4 in order to be in the midpoint. I mentioned, during my script that we do expect to be back to positive growth in product revenues. I remind you, the main headwind that we see today on our revenues, the decline in revenues is coming from the product revenues, which declined this quarter for 14%, expecting to be similar levels in Q3. In Q4, we are expecting to be back to green, to be positive in product. That is one aspect that definitely. I remind you also that Q4 is a more product-driven quarter. The portion of product out of the total revenues is bigger than any other quarter in the year. That is one aspect.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

I think that when we are looking on the funnel for Q4, I know that it's much higher than what we guided for Q3, I mean this growth. When we are looking on the funnel, on the qualified deals, I'm talking about qualified deal, I'm not talking about now potential stuff. We do see much better funnel, much better pipeline, for Q4. Again, we went through with our sales leader on all the large deals, everything. Again, some of them are deals that have been pushed from Q3 to Q4.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

That again, is expected to be pushed because there might be some that will be placed in Q3. Q3 is more tricky because of the summer. We took a more conservative view approach that some of this significant deal will be pushed to Q4. Definitely it's a high bar in terms of Q4. When I'm looking on the internal metrics, there is the support for that. You ask about the billing. You're right, when we started, I'm not giving any guidance for billing. When I was asked about billing for the year, when we started the year, it was mid-single digit, and we talked about 5%, 6%. When we came back on May, we talked, again, because of the higher disruption that we did see, it's resulted more back in load the deal. We do see it in the numbers for Q2.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

When I'm looking on H2, I don't want to give any specific guidance. Definitely I do see much better billings in Q4 in terms of growth. Q3, you are right that the comparable are tougher. Q3 might be more challenging with billing. Q4, definitely we are expecting, again, if we are looking on the front end on large deals, definitely we expect to be a strong billing quarter.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yeah, just to add to that, Adam. Remember that when we spoke in our last earnings, we were very transparent about the reorg that we did in our go-to-market org. That's going according to plan. That's why we think Q3 is the trough. When we look at what's happening in the future, in Q4, like Roei said, we're seeing a much better outcome, that's why we are maintaining the guidance. With regards to the hiring, the reason we're not taking that into consideration is the natural ramp-up. Right? It's the second phase. In fact, when you think about it now, because this is a company-wide effort and many of our folks, beyond selling, need to recruit and onboard. Actually, we're not going to see the impact of the hiring in 2026.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

We're only going to see the impact of the hiring in 2027. Right? Some of it in Q1, and hopefully more of it in Q2. It's the prudent thing to do, and it's a part of the plan and a part of the strategy that we spoke about last time. For us, hiring hundreds of new sellers is obviously a great investment. We're investing in our future. Last year we spoke about hiring about 500 new R&D folks to start doubling down on the future products for the AI era. Now we feel we're ready with some of the products. We've done the reorg, and we're ready to ramp up. As you said, that's only going to have an impact in 2027.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Just one more comment about billing, Adam. I think it's important to say, too. I understand that you're following billing, it's important for cash flow and stuff, it's not the only metric that we care. We are looking on new business. We are looking on RPO, which is, I mentioned it today, with bookings. I can give you an example. This quarter, the billing was affected. I didn't mention discrete, because again, I thought that it's not, probably I would be asking about it. Again, the billing this quarter affected, for example, from large deal that was renewed. It's not only renewal, it's renewal and new business, that last year we billed annually, and this year we billed quarterly. This alone have an effect of two points on our billing this quarter, just the moving from annually to quarterly. We are flexible with that.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

It's a large deal, very large deal with new business. You don't see it in the billing because we are billing it quarterly. I approved the quarterly billing on that aspect. Again, if we would bill it annually, probably our billing will look much better for this year, but it wouldn't change the fact that our RPO grew by 7%. I totally understand the importance of billing and it give you some kind of prediction on what's going on in the business. Definitely it's not the only metric that we are following.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right, guys. Thank you, Adam. Next up is Shaul Eyal, and that'll be followed by Shrenik Kothari from Baird.

Analyst

Thank you. Hi, good afternoon, guys. Maybe Roei or Nadav still double-clicking on this head count. When we're saying hundreds of new people, what is it, 200, 300? How do you think about it geographically from that perspective?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

I'll start, Roei, you can chime in. When we say hundreds, yes, we're talking about by the end of the year, we need to hire approximately for our go-to-market, a head count of about 300 more individuals. When you look at it from a percentage perspective, it's a meaningful percentage at our size. When you think about it geographically, honestly, it's pretty globally spread. I wouldn't say that it's just one area. America, Western Europe a little bit more, but it's across the globe, APAC, et cetera. Some of it is at the frontline sellers, what we call the generalists, but also specialists. For example, we spoke about AI. We're seeing the funnel growing very substantially. In some cases, we just don't have the people out there that can actually go out to customers and do the POCs.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

We have to ramp up that very fast. Obviously, just getting the heads is not enough. We need to get the right people on board that are also ready for this future generation of buyers, and the new paradigm that's emerging. It's an opportunity not just to get more headcount, but also to revitalize and get new blood into the system. That's exactly what we're doing. It's a company-wide effort. Again, we launched a campaign, and we hope to be able to get to the right people that want to join us for this ride.

Analyst

Thank you.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Next up is Shrenik, followed by Joshua Tilton.

Shrenik Kothari
Shrenik Kothari
Analyst at Baird

Great. Thanks for taking my question. Totally understand the internal execution disruption around go-to-market. Just on your specific comments on firewall appliance demand softer than you expected, right? Some of the peers are seeing stronger firewall demand, AI infrastructure-driven product growth. Just, Nadav and Roei, can you help unpack that a bit? What are your customers actually doing? Are they extending the useful life without refreshing right now? Are they shifting focus towards more AI-centric enforcements, which is sort of elongating cycles? Just, are these pushes primarily rep transition driven, or are customers fundamentally reevaluating the scopes and the architecture in the AI era as well?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Roe, you want to start or you want me to take it?

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

I'll start. I think it's a combination, Shrenik. I think it's a combination of, first, I think internal disruption that affecting our execution, that, again, our execution in Q2, we've seen the numbers, was not what we wanted when we started the year. I would say it's a combination of internal disruption and definitely also behavior of customers that I think, again, some of them, we are looking on the memory cost. It's something that I'm spending significant part of my time for to find a way to make sure that we have the enough inventory to give to our. By the way, it's not only for appliances, it's also for internal users. Again, probably it's a combination. I don't know. I don't think it's clear. There is no clear answer for that.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Definitely when I'm looking, and I think it's mainly when I'm looking on our business, I think it's mainly internally. Mainly internally because I'm looking on the funnel, I'm looking on deals, I'm looking that our go to market being stabilized, and I'm looking that we have very interesting opportunities, qualified opportunities that located in second half of the year, mainly in Q4, that makes us feel more positive that it's more internal and less external.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yeah. I would say that the demand is there, right? We're seeing it. You're seeing it with our competition as well. That's why we're so excited about the announcement of the AI Network Firewall today. The unified management that we're coming out with, and hopefully the fruits of a lot of investment that we put into this in the last couple of years will start to show. Then the optimism comes from what we see already in Q4, and that's why we're doubling down also to get ready for a higher growth in 2027. Having said all that from the customer's perspective, look, I think that top of mind for them right now is, like I said, first of all, go back to basics and fundamentals. This era calls for patching at an unprecedented pace. That's just one example.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

We're also building the capabilities to do that with them and for them, not just for our own products, but again, we have to have the total security in mind. They're also getting a lot of pressure from the executives and the board to adopt AI, whether it's to allow employees to use it or new applications and agents that are now running within the. It is a transition time. What I believe is that it calls for us to continue doing what we've always done, which is prevention first, at the same time, really changing the industry.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

That's both on the network level with AI Network Firewall and the new unified management, but at the same time, combining that with our workspace, our CTEM, our AI Defense Plane, and going forward, probably more capabilities that we will need to add to this in order to build this open platform that our customers can rely on for their secure AI transformation.

Shrenik Kothari
Shrenik Kothari
Analyst at Baird

Thanks. Appreciate it.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Next up is Joshua Tilton, followed by Junaid Siddiqui.

Analyst

Hey, guys. Can you hear me?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yep.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Yeah.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

You got a shirt on.

Analyst

Just for you, Kip.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

Appreciate that.

Analyst

Maybe a quick clarification and then my actual question. On the clarification side, maybe this is for Roei, I understand you're reiterating the full year outlook, and you guys are confident in what it implies for Q4. I guess what I'm trying to understand is when you think about what is implied on a quarterly basis, is this how you expected it to play out when you first took guidance down 90 days ago, or did something change between now and then that we're pointing to a much stronger Q4? Then maybe just a follow-up, and my actual question for Nadav is, what happens when we get past the disruption from this year? You ramp hundreds of salespeople. All these products are on fire. Everybody needs to replace their current firewall with an AI firewall.

Analyst

What is the durable growth profile that we should be expecting when we move past the disruption, sales ramps, and all the sexiness around some of these newer products starts to really come through the model?

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

I'll start, and then Nadav can take it. Regarding the guidance, when we gave the guidance in May, actually we did expect slight improvement in the third quarter in terms of appliances. I mentioned in my presentation that we do expect more deals that will be pushed from Q3 to Q4, mainly on appliances that affecting not just appliances revenues, but also support and subscription revenues because they have an attached, it's bundling, and they have an attached revenues of subscription and support to every appliance deal. I would say that the expectation back in May, that Q3 will be slightly better. Slightly better, not significantly better, slightly better in Q4. Because of the deal being that we are expecting now to be pushed from Q3 to Q4, that's how we are well projecting now. Nadav?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Going forward, looking at 2027 and beyond, from a general industry perspective, I think the security demand will continue to grow. We're between two paradigms, I think that we will see meaningful changes over the next couple of years, and we need to get ready for that. Our vision of securing the AI transformation through an open platform means that we have a lot of integration to do, for example, between the network and the continuous threat exposure management. There's a lot of integration that we need to do between workspace and AI. There's a long road map ahead of us, and at the same time, we also have to keep our eyes wide open to what's out there from the emerging startup community, that is doing some very exciting things, and we're looking at that.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

The combination of that vision and strategy that we're starting to see the fruits of, with the stabilization of the go to market and the hiring of new people, obviously makes us optimistic. I think that the hit that we took will position us for a better outlook going forward. Obviously, we're not giving guidance now for beyond that. It's not a short journey. This is a company that has been around from the beginning of cybersecurity history. We need to build it for the next decades. It's a process, it's a journey. I think that we're seeing it going according to plan right now. Hopefully, more good things to come.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Next up is Junaid, followed by Saket Kalia.

Analyst

Great. Thanks, Kip. Nadav, you've previously indicated SASE still around 12-18 months away from supporting your largest enterprise customers at the scale that you envision. What milestones should we be watching over the next year, and how close are you to being able to compete for the same global deployments targeted by the market leaders?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

Yeah, thanks for that, Junaid. Yeah, SASE is an integral part of our hybrid mesh proposition and part of the platform. We are now at a point where in terms of capacity, we're already ready for the enterprise level, and integrating SASE into our unified management as we speak. I think we already have a proposition that in some aspects is best in class. For example, we have the best latency with our hybrid device architecture. It's fast and easy to deploy and manage. I think we're ready to go bigger with our SASE and this is the time to do it. We're focused on it. We have a very strong and capable R&D team. As a part of the hiring that we're doing is focused specifically on specialists that will go out and do this.

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

More important than anything is to put that as part of the platform. Connect it to the firewall through our hybrid mesh management so that our customers can push their policy, both to the SASE remote access, internet access within the firewall, integrate that into our AI Defense Plane. There is a lot of work to do there, we've made a lot of progress, we're ready to go bigger, as I indicated before.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Thanks, Junaid. Next up is Saket Kalia, followed by Eric Heath, who will most likely be our last caller today.

Analyst

Okay, great. Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question here. Roe, maybe for you. I'd love to dig into the sales investment just from a financial perspective, right? I'm sure that we can all take a shot at the financial impact of hiring 300 additional resources. Just to be clear, that sounds like it's the right thing to do to invest for growth. Not necessarily looking here for guide for next year, but I want to make sure it's asked. Is there any way that you want us to think about the margin impact of that investment, understanding that it's short-term pain for long-term gain?

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

I would say that regarding, first of all, the hiring impact will be less for this year, because it's going to be mainly for next year, the hiring. I would say for next year margin, I would wait with that for the next calls because next week, we are kick off our planning for next year for 2027. I don't want now to give you anything because it's still very in early stages. I would say, let's wait with that for the next call regarding margin for next year.

Analyst

Totally get it. Thank you.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right. Next up is Eric Heath.

Analyst

Thanks, Kip. Roei, Nadav, maybe just to come back one more time to the 3Q, 4Q seasonality. Can you just put a finer point of what changed since last quarter in terms of why you're expecting deals to push? Is this internal execution just giving you a little bit more prudence, or is there something changing on the customer behavior side that maybe changed in the last 90 days? Thanks.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

I think it's less customer behavior. I think it's more, again, we've done a very thorough analysis or going through our pipeline for Q3 and Q4. I think we have, I would say, a bit more prudent approach about the Q3. We are taking a more prudent approach in terms of deals that are going to be pushed from Q3 to Q4. I'm taking it because Q3 is usually a tricky quarter because of the summer. People are on vacations, holidays, and are back to work only in September. We are taking a more prudent approach. Definitely, I think we do see improvement and more stabilization in our go-to-market. Therefore, I think we are going to this hiring campaign that we feel confident with expanding our go-to-market now after it being stabilized after the disruption that we had in the first half of the year.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Nadav, you want to add something around it, or?

Nadav Zafrir
Nadav Zafrir
CEO at Check Point Software

No. Again, H2 back-end loaded, a lot riding on Q4. It's about having a better execution and making sure that we have the right headcount and the right people as we go into 2027. As Roei said, that's what we're starting to plan for now.

Kip Meintzer
Kip Meintzer
Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software

All right, everybody. That's going to conclude today. We thank you all for showing up and participating, and we'll be seeing you shortly hereafter in the analyst calls. The rest of you that are following us today, we'll see you throughout the quarter. Thank you, and have a great day, guys. Bye-bye.

Roei Golan
Roei Golan
CFO at Check Point Software

Bye-bye. Thank you

Analysts
    • Kip Meintzer
      Head of Global Investor Relations at Check Point Software
    • Nadav Zafrir
      CEO at Check Point Software
    • Roei Golan
      CFO at Check Point Software
    • Joseph Gallo
      Analyst at Jefferies
    • Patrick Colville
      Analyst at Scotiabank
    • Analyst
    • Brian Essex
      Analyst at JPMorgan
    • Analyst
    • Analyst
    • Analyst
    • Shrenik Kothari
      Analyst at Baird
    • Analyst
    • Analyst
    • Analyst
    • Analyst
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