CrowdStrike has been on a tear this year — and still has room to run
CrowdStrike , already one of our best stocks this year, has more room to run, according to Jim Cramer and a major Wall Street firm. Wells Fargo on Wednesday added CrowdStrike to its “tactical ideas list” and raised its price target to $600 a share from $550, implying more than 22% upside from the stock’s previous close. “CrowdStrike’s momentum continues to build, as the company is finally back on offense,” analysts wrote in a note to clients on the first day of the fourth quarter. The firm also reaffirmed its longtime buy rating on CrowdStrike stock. In particular, analysts said CrowdStrike’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth rate is finally going to accelerate again. While it has declined for eight straight quarters, the slowdown became especially acute over the past year in the wake of the July 2024 global IT outage caused by a faulty CrowdStrike software update. In its fiscal 2026 second quarter, which ended in July, CrowdStrike’s ARR grew more than 20% year over year to $4.66 billion. In the same quarter a year ago, ARR grew 31.9% to $3.87 billion. “The era of slowing ARR growth related to the 2024 IT outage has ended,” Wells Fargo declared in its Wednesday note. ARR measures the health of a subscription-based company, and CrowdStrike management says it’s the best leading indicator of the business. In response to last summer’s outage, CrowdStrike offered incentives to clients — dubbed customer commitment packages — to encourage them to stick around. While offering “freebies” resulted in short-term pressure on its financials, we predicted it would be temporary. In fact, as the incident moves further into the rearview, the incentive headwinds will turn into a tailwind because those customers will resume paying full freight, boosting CrowdStrike’s ARR growth rate. Jim Cramer said that moment is upon us now, in a testament to CEO George Kurtz’s deft handling of the IT crisis. “All the people whom he gave freebies to and got them enticed are now going to buy,” Jim said on Wednesday’s Morning Meeting. “And you’re going to see a very big run. You might as well get in if you haven’t gotten in. I think [the stock] goes higher,” Jim said, even after a more than 40% rally already in 2025. Only GE Vernova has a better year-to-date performance among Club stocks. Shares of CrowdStrike were little changed on Wednesday at roughly $490 apiece. However, since reporting its July quarter on Aug. 27, CrowdStrike’s stock has gained more than 16%, far outpacing the roughly 3% advance for the Amplify Cybersecurity ETF in the same period. Fellow Club cyber stock Palo Alto Networks is up about 8% over that stretch. An additional ingredient in CrowdStrike’s recipe for success is its Falcon Flex licensing model. As the name suggests, Falcon Flex gives customers flexibility in accessing CrowdStrike’s security tools depending on their needs, compared with the traditional approach involving multiyear contracts. CrowdStrike crossed the 1,000 Falcon Flex customer milestone in its July quarter, where the average Flex customer represents more than $1 million of ending ARR. Wells Fargo is upbeat on Falcon Flex’s ability to lift customer spending. “At the Fal.Con Analyst Day event, management highlighted a customer that started with $26 million ARR on the standard pricing model but switched to Flex, increasing their spend to $43 million,” analysts wrote. The aforementioned analyst day, which also included some bullish long-term financial forecasts, sent the stock up almost 13% in a single session. Additionally, Wells Fargo said that demand from organizations looking to “secure their AI agents but also defend against highly sophisticated AI-based attacks” should continue to fuel long-term growth — a dynamic the Club also highlighted last month . Looking ahead, analysts said CrowdStrike’s upcoming third-quarter results in December could be a meaningful catalyst for the stock if ARR growth picks up into the low-20% range, above the pace seen last quarter. Bottom line We agree with Wells Fargo that CrowdStrike has momentum on its side as the Falcon Flex subscription model is helping drive platform adoption. That strength translates to higher revenue results in the second half of this year. More broadly, CrowdStrike remains one of the best ways to gain exposure to secular tailwinds in cybersecurity and AI. The company’s role in helping organizations secure AI agents while defending against AI-driven threats is a long-term growth driver. Today, companies must ensure that they have every part of their systems protected, but all it takes for a breach is the hacker getting it right once. Shares could make another leg higher if execution and demand remain strong. We maintain our buy-equivalent 1 rating and a price target of $520 on the stock. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long CRWD, PANW. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . 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