Cybersecurity: Results from our partner survey ahead of 1Q off-cycle earnings

Research evidence excerpt

Cybersecurity: Results from our partner survey ahead of 1Q off-cycle earnings

Deutsche Bank

Research

North America Industry Date

Software Cybersecurity 13 May 2026

Results from our partner survey ahead of 1Q

Brad Zelnick off-cycle earnings

Research Analyst

+1-212-250-8563

Results from our channel partner survey, in collaboration with dbDIG, suggest a

broadly healthy new business quarter for the off-cycle cyber companies within Nasr Islam

our coverage. All vendors saw q/q improvement in net partner outperformance Research Associate

+1-212-250-6174 and OKTA, RBRK, and ZS posted their strongest scores since the inception of this

survey. We also note that NTM optimism ticked higher for most vendors, perhaps

reflecting the crucial role of cybersecurity in enabling safe adoption of enterprise

AI.

As PANW's first quarter since closing the CYBR acquisition, we expect there to

be some uncertainty as investors attempt to decipher inorganic contribution to

overall performance. In this vein, we suspect progress in the quarter will be

measured against headline results, where we look for 50-100bps upside to NGS

ARR and RPO guidance, respectively, and ~150bps outperformance on Revenue.

That said, investors will also likely home in on the trajectory of the organic

business, where our survey results were broadly constructive as net partner

outperformance remained consistent q/q and momentum appeared encouraging

across Prisma SASE, XSIAM, and Prisma Cloud. We balance this with a q/q

increase in sales incentives reported in the quarter and the scale of the NGS

business (>$6bn ARR ex. Chronosphere and CYBR), and we therefore expect

similar organic outperformance as in the prior quarter.

Net partner outperformance for CRWD was likewise similar compared with the