Crowdstrike price target lowered to $135 from $172 at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley analyst Hamza Fodderwala lowered the firm’s price target on Crowdstrike to $135 from $172 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. While stating that cybersecurity remains a top priority in 2023 and "by far the least likely area of IT spend to be cut relative to other categories," Fodderwala argues that the group is now in the early innings of negative estimate revisions that have lagged broader software by about two quarters. Checks "meaningfully downticked" in October and those checks have largely gotten worse since then, said Fodderwala, who is lowering estimates across the firm’s security coverage and downgraded three names in the space. However, with Crowdstrike having gone from a consensus favorite to a key battleground stock in 2023, Fodderwala is "still buying this dip," the analyst said.