Palo Alto reports strong Q4 as it adds new customers

Palo Alto Networks reported strong fourth quarter earnings as the company saw strong demand and grew its customer base to more than 42,500.

The security company reported a net loss of $38.2 million, or 42 cents a share, on revenue of $509.1 million, up 27 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 92 cents a share for the fourth quarter.

Wall Street was expecting fourth quarter non-GAAP earnings of 79 cents a share on revenue of $487.3 million.

Palo Alto Networks aims to thwart credential theft |

Mark McLaughlin, CEO of Palo Alto, said it added about 3,000 new customers for a quarter. The company updated a bevy of products including a security service called GlobalProtect, a logging service and application framework.

In addition, CFO Steffan Tomlinson will retire.

For fiscal 2017, Palo Alto reported a net loss of $216.6 million, or $2.39 a share, on revenue of $1.8 billion, up 28 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP annual earnings were $2.71 a share.

As for the outlook, Palo Alto projected first quarter revenue between $482 million to $492 million with non-GAAP earnings of 67 cents a share to 69 cents a share. For fiscal 2018, Palo Alto projected revenue between $2.12 billion and $2.16 billion, up 21 percent to 23 percent from 2017. Non-GAAP annual earnings will be about $3.24 a share to $3.34 a share.

The guidance was roughly in line with Wall Street expectations.