Check Point Software Technologies Eyes Firewall Rebound After Sales Overhaul

Key Points

• Check Point says it has largely moved past the most disruptive phase of its go-to-market overhaul and expects its firewall business to return to growth in the fourth quarter. Executives said the reorganization improved funnel generation after a weak start to the year.
• The sales overhaul was significant, affecting about one-third of employees and shifting the company toward a more focused model aimed at large enterprises, new customer wins and subscription/SaaS growth. The near-term disruption hit firewall appliance sales and pushed product revenue lower in Q2, with some spillover into Q3 expected.
• Management highlighted AI data centers and competitive displacement as key growth opportunities, citing NVIDIA-related capabilities, the Lakera acquisition and more than 80 integrations with other security vendors. Executives also said the guidance change was not driven by macro weakness, and they are not seeing broad budget cuts or delayed refreshes.

Check Point Software Technologies NASDAQ: CHKP executives said the company has moved past the most disruptive phase of a broad go-to-market reorganization and expects its firewall product business to return to growth later this year, according to remarks at a JPMorgan software event.

The discussion featured Sherif Seddik, Check Point’s newly appointed chief revenue officer; Roei Golan, chief financial officer; and Kip Meintzer, head of investor relations. Seddik, who was named to the CRO role two weeks before the event, said his background includes senior roles at Microsoft, Citrix and Check Point, with experience spanning sales leadership, product management, consulting and go-to-market strategy.

Seddik said Check Point’s strategy is built around four pillars and a shift toward “multi-pillar selling,” which required a significant review of the company’s go-to-market model. He said the effort began in the middle of last year and was designed to support sustainable double-digit growth by focusing resources on large enterprise customers, new logo acquisition and subscription and SaaS businesses.

Go-to-Market Changes Affected About One-Third of Staff

Seddik said the changes were “pretty deep,” with roughly one-third of employees moving into new roles. Even employees who remained in existing positions often received new account or partner assignments as the company narrowed its focus to fewer, larger customers and partners.

“We are absolutely convinced that it is the right model to take us forward,” Seddik said. He added that Check Point believes it has exited the disruption phase and moved into execution, with improving funnel generation across the company’s product portfolio, including firewall.

The reorganization included increased investment in customer success, renewal teams, specialist sales and partner programs. Seddik said the company also shifted toward a hunter-farmer model for its largest strategic customers and prospects, hiring more “hunter” profiles focused on new customer acquisition.

Firewall Business Saw Near-Term Disruption

Golan said the disruption most affected the company’s firewall appliance business, particularly new business handled by generalist account teams. Renewals were less affected, he said, because they were managed separately and involve a different selling motion.

Golan said the company saw delays in pipeline generation early in the year, especially in January and February, which affected the second-quarter outlook and may also affect third-quarter results. He said net new firewall business typically has a sales cycle of five to nine months, and sometimes longer.

“The main impact is Q2,” Golan said, adding that Check Point updated its guidance because of the pipeline disruption. He said the issue was not limited to new logos, but also included expansion projects with existing customers, such as data center expansions.

Seddik said the reorganization was launched to the field on Jan. 6. He said funnel generation improved in February, was strong in March and was even stronger in April on a year-over-year basis. He also said new-logo pipeline is growing faster than the overall pipeline, which was one of the company’s strategic objectives.

Golan said Check Point expects product revenue to decline in the second quarter and probably also in the third quarter due to the disruption, but said the company expects the firewall product business to return to growth from the fourth quarter onward.

Competitive Displacement and AI Data Centers Identified as Growth Areas

Seddik said Check Point is launching a competitive displacement program that includes three main elements: focusing on use cases where the company believes it has differentiation, offering partner incentives and pre-approved pricing levels, and providing customer transition support.

He said the company has built tooling to automate the movement of policies and rules from other vendors’ platforms to Check Point’s platform. It is also offering both CapEx and OpEx models, depending on customer preference.

Seddik said Check Point has “ring-fenced” aggressive displacement pricing with policies requiring proof of displacement, in order to prevent that pricing from affecting normal deals.

AI data centers were another major focus of the discussion. Seddik said data centers represent the majority of Check Point’s firewall business, though not the majority of the company’s total business. He said the company is starting from a position of strength in data center security and expects AI data centers to provide additional opportunities.

Seddik cited Check Point’s partnership with NVIDIA, saying the company can run its firewall on NVIDIA’s data processing unit, or DPU. He said that approach can help address latency concerns while leaving the GPU available for AI workloads. He also pointed to Check Point’s Lakera acquisition for AI guardrails, its Maestro architecture for scalability and its web application firewall capabilities as part of a broader AI data center security offering.

According to Seddik, Check Point has already won AI data center deals in Asia and the Middle East and is discussing large opportunities in the Americas and Western Europe. He said some deals can lead to follow-on opportunities when customers include Check Point’s security capabilities in services they offer to their own customers.

Executives Say Macro Was Not the Cause of Guidance Change

Golan said the company does not view the recent guidance update as a result of macroeconomic conditions. He acknowledged that rising memory costs could potentially influence customer behavior, but said Check Point is not currently seeing broad evidence that customers are delaying refreshes because of those costs.

Seddik said customers are placing increased emphasis on cybersecurity and reprioritizing within security budgets, although he said he has not seen customers broadly increasing cybersecurity budgets by large amounts. He said there are no signs that budgets are being reduced.

Seddik also said exposure management is becoming a more important topic in customer discussions. He highlighted Check Point’s acquisitions of Cyberint and Veriti, saying Cyberint added external visibility while Veriti provides capabilities to implement changes across multiple vendors. He said the company is developing capabilities that, with customer permission, could allow automated patching based on defined rules.

On platform strategy, Seddik said Check Point is building platforms within each of its pillars while maintaining an “open garden” approach. He said the company recognizes that customers use multiple vendors and has built native integrations with other security products, including partnerships or integrations involving Wiz, Illumio, CrowdStrike and Microsoft Defender. He said Check Point has more than 80 native integrations with competing and other products.

About Check Point Software Technologies NASDAQ: CHKP

Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. is an Israeli-founded cybersecurity company that develops, markets and supports a broad portfolio of network, cloud and endpoint security products. Founded in 1993, the company was an early pioneer of stateful inspection firewall technology and later developed a modular “software blade” approach that allowed customers to combine protection capabilities. Check Point's product set spans physical and virtual security appliances, software and cloud-native services designed to prevent cyberattacks, protect data and simplify security management for enterprises and service providers.

Key product families include Quantum Security Gateways (on-premises and hybrid appliances), CloudGuard (cloud security posture and workload protection), Harmony (endpoint, remote access and unified endpoint security), and SandBlast (advanced threat prevention and sandboxing).

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