ZS Q2 2020 CC notes

Hi all,

Have tried a slightly new format to force me to get into a “so what?” discussion on these CC summaries. Not sure ZS was the best choice however!

ZS is a 3.5% position for me, and a confusing one. It appeared like a pretty good quarter to me (and appeared to others as “a mess” and “a disaster” :smiley: ), revenue growing (less strongly but still up a bunch), expenses flat as % revenue, and raising full year guidance (by a few million). It was a beat and raise quarter, but as we know the stock got pummelled.

I get both the Bear and Bull arguments, and I feel theres a lot of nuance to each of them. However, it is unavoidable that revenue growth is slowing, but I feel any comparison to Nutanix (NTNX) is unfair. NTNX managed to avoid growing at all in a rapidly growing market, whereas ZS is still growing strongly, despite go-to-market execution issues.

The tech is “inevitable” for big business, lots of competition, enterprise sales cycles, “improving pipeline” … clear as mud! ZS is still reasonably expensive from EV/S.

So what? Need to think about this some more. I think ultimately it comes down to timeframes, and whether you believe the CEO or not (re: improving go to market, pipeline).

I’ll post Berts take in this thread once it becomes a bit more public.

cheers
Greg

Q2 2020

My thoughts

This was IMO a pretty good quarter. They increased FY revenue guidance marginally from the previous quarter (from [$405m - $413m] in Q1 to [$414m - $417m] in Q2), expenses are under control as percent of sales despite big sales and marketing spend over the last few quarters. Revenue growth slowed which was probably the big drag on stock price. Or maybe it was bookings, only up

The biggest issue IMO is the revenue slowdown and the extended sales cycles. But this is an enterprise sales company, selling complete security overhauls to big companies, so whaddaya expect? I guess the issue is “they knew that, so why didn’t they sort their go-to-market previously?” which I guess reflects the difficulty of actually scaling enterprise sales.

Sauls board

main thread

Sauls Jan summary

“But now that the legacy security companies are aware of the threat to their very existence, they will fight tooth and nail…It will be a long struggle (for ZS).”

“Zscaler…tailwind of inevitability… But asking huge enterprises to revamp their entire security systems (=difficult)… I have other companies, growing like mad, without these execution problems (Crowdstrike, Coupa and Datadog).”

Berts take

To be added

Checklist


Q: What is revenue doing yoy?
A: 49.16m, 56.17m, 63.30m, 74.30m, 79.13m, 86.11m, 93.59m, 101.30m {49.1%, 53.7%, 58.8%, 65.2%, 61.0%, 53.3%, 47.9%, 36.3%}
Maybe a bit of seasonality with trailing 12 month growth figures hovering mid-high +50%s?

Q: What are customers doing q-1?
A: According to IR, they only release annually. Thats annoying.


|               | Customers |      | G2000 |
|:--------------|:----------|:-----|:------|
| July 21, 2019 | 3900      | +20% | 400   |
| July 21, 2018 | 3250      |      |       |

Q: DBNER?
A: 116% ZS is a bit weird. They’re not really land+expand. It’s more of a big-bang, top-down approach. Theoretically their NER should approach the rate of headcount growth in their customers, unless there’s upsell for new products.

Q: Revenue per customer up or down (either revenue/customers or ARR)?
A: ?? hard to tell until Fiscal 2020 figures released (Q2 21)

Q: Expenses as percent of revenue going up or down (ie, any sign of leverage)?
A: Expenses as percent of revenue:


|         | Q3 18  | Q4 18  | Q1 19  | Q2 19  | Q3 19  | Q4 19  | Q1 20  | Q2 20   |
|:--------|:-------|:-------|:-------|:-------|:-------|:-------|:-------|:--------|
| Revenue | 49,163 | 56,174 | 63,298 | 74,302 | 79,128 | 86,108 | 93,590 | 101,268 |
| yoy %   |        |        |        |        | 61%    | 53%    | 48%    | 36%     |
| R&D     | 9,907  | 11,480 | 13,186 | 15,071 | 16,499 | 17,213 | 20,271 | 20,706  |
|         | 20%    | 20%    | 21%    | 20%    | 21%    | 20%    | 22%    | 20%     |
| S&M     | 29,892 | 32,479 | 36,545 | 38,756 | 45,295 | 49,317 | 59,411 | 61,621  |
|         | 61%    | 58%    | 58%    | 52%    | 57%    | 57%    | 63%    | 61%     |
| G&A     | 8,964  | 8,638  | 10,131 | 10,386 | 15,911 | 10,170 | 12,625 | 28,983  |
|         | 18%    | 15%    | 16%    | 14%    | 20%    | 12%    | 13%    | 29%     |

The Q2 20 G&A figure includes a $16.3m one-off ($15m to Symantec) for lawsuits. Adjusting for this: $13,983 (14% revenue)
No real evidence of leverage, everything is pretty flat, but not increasing as % of revenue.

Valuation

EV/SALES TTM

EV/Sales currently at 18.3 since data is end of day

Goal price

3/7 approaching 4/7 with todays (25 Feb) drop.

Historical range

mean 23.319721
min 14.560155
25% 18.386159
50% 21.894606
75% 27.990035
max 35.398673

Last 1000 days data


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Definition: CASB - Cloud Access Security Broker. ZScaler provides CASB for inline content. Offline control is provided by partners (MCAS, McAfee etc). ZS internet gateway - blocking Restricted apps. Permitted apps (users allowed, but need more control - not sanctioned apps) - need more control.

eg 1: Permitted apps - Github repositories

  1. If you want to see changes, need MCAS.
  2. Block upload of sensitive data - ZS.
  3. Allow upload to permitted Github repositories, eg: developer network only, need ZS + MCAS.
  4. Github visibility for mobile users - ZS
  5. Malware - ZS

eg 2: Sanctioned apps
MCAS actually talks to the cloud app, eg O365, ServiceNow, SalesForce, Box, Dropbox etc., so gets fine-grained information out of that app. ZS sits between your users and the cloud app. So ZS sits closer to the user, MCAS sits closer to the cloud application.

CASB to see what users are doing on the apps themselves. ZS can tell that a user downloaded a 100mb file from SalesForce, but can’t tell you what exactly the user was doing on SalesForce.


CC Summary

Solid Q2 results - tremendous progress in areas… particularly go-to-market.

Revenue: +36% +41% adj - difficult comp due to non-recurring private cloud sale.
Billings: +18% +30% adj

Go-to-market seems to be focus

11% Operating Margins (non-GAAP)

$15m one-time cash payment to settle lawsuits

  • adj. FCF = $13m

Anecdotes

European national transportation provider - “scalability and elasticity of cloud critical enabler”

  • ZS - only solution capable of scaling from 2gb/s to 100gb/s
  • Used Global SI

F500 material sciences ZIA for 57k users. “On-premise security gateway became irrelevant”

F100 healthcare - started with large paid pilot for 10k users 9 months ago. Purchased additional seats + CASB product [GD: whats this? Cloud Access Security Broker, see definition at start] to cover 65k users. First CASB win. [GD: Not quite clear on this. ZS have some CASB functionality, but partner with CASB providers Microsoft MCAS, McAfee, Bitglass, and Proofpoint]

ZPA “fastest growing product line”

G10 oil and gas - 2 years ago ZIA transformation bundle for 145k employees. 200% growth in traffic over 2 years, customer purchase ZPA for >100k users to “replace legacy VPN and secure access to applications in the public cloud”.
Spend increase 700% over 4 years.

Multinational industrial - ZIA business bundle + Cloud firewall for 60k users and ZPA for 40k users. Driven by 1. pursuing local breakout (750 locations) instead of 3 data centers (O365 “overwhelmed” existing security infrastructure), & 2. execute faster M&A and divestitures.

F500 medical testing company - ZIA business bundle and Cloud Firewall for 25k users, local breakouts for 3600! locations. Also purchased ZPA for 8k users to replace legacy VPN.

SASE, Gartner, Zero-trust

Think ZS “most comprehensively meets core architecture of SASE”. SASE since 2008.
ZTNA - renders firewalls etc irrelevant. Well-positioned.

New products

  1. ZS B2B
  2. ZS Digital Experience (ZDX)
  3. CASB [GD: whats this again?]

Go-to-market

“Focussed on improving sales execution”
“remarkable progress in short period of time”
“rolled out a refined, repeatable and scalable sales process”

Key initiatives

  1. Sales enablement program - consistency and quality of execution
  2. AI-based tools and systems to provide visibility into sales activities, key go-to-market metrics [GD: ai, schmay-eye].
  3. Deepened sales leadership

Two major mid-year sales kick offs, 1 Europe, 1 US.
Customer engagements up “significantly”, “more CXO meetings”
“Quality and volume of pipeline is growing”

“we have been integrating our solution with technology leaders and creating go-to-market leverage with deeper field engagements with their sales organizations.”

eg: Integrated with CrowdStrike, selling to respective customer bases.

Microsoft Partnership “growing stronger”. Training MSFT security professionals on integrated solution. ZS Microsoft Security 2020 partner finalist.
Working closely with VMWare and SilverPeak to secure SD band deployments.

Finances


| -               |             |                                                                                        |
|:----------------|:------------|:---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| Revenue         | $101.3m     | +8% qoq 36%yoy. $2.3m non-recurring last Q2, excl this:+41%                            |
| --- US          | 51%         |                                                                                        |
| --- EMEA        | 40%         |                                                                                        |
| --- APJ         | 9%          |                                                                                        |
| Billings        | $135.4m     | +18% yoy. "large upfront billing of $11 million in Q2 of 2019." **Adj. billings +30%** |
| RPO             | $609m       | +32% yoy                                                                               |
| Contract terms  | 1-3 years   | billed 1 year in advance                                                               |
| DBNRR           | 116%        | vs 120% qoq, so drop. Issue? They say due to bigger upfront deals                      |
| GM              | 82%         | +2% yoy +1% qoq. Think 80% good target                                                 |
| Opex            | $71.9m      | +44% yoy  +17% qoq  R+D & S+M                                                          |
|                 | 71% revenue | vs 67% yoy                                                                             |
| Headcount       |         |                                                                        |
| S&M             | $49.4m      | +49% yoy, +1% qoq  - higher compensation, building teams, new sales guy                |
| R&D             | $14.8m      | +33% yoy, -4% qoq. Decrease due to higher capitalisation of software dev costs.        |
| G&A             | $8.1m       | -5% qoq, +36% yoy. Excludes. **$16.3m in litigation ($15m to settle symantec)**        |
| OpMargin:       | 11%         | vs 13% yoy                                                                             |
| NetIncome        | $12m       |                                                                                        |
| EPS             | $0.09       |                                                                                        |
| Cash and equivs | $385m       |                                                                                        |
| FCF             | $2m      |  Nb: $15m symantec payment - one off| 

Guidance


| Guidance   |                |                                                            |
|:-----------|:---------------|:-----------------------------------------------------------|
| Q1 revenue | $105-107m      | 33-35% yoy                                                 |
| Op Profit  | $1m-$3m        | Increasing sales investments in Q3                         |
| EPS        | $0.01 to $0.03 |                                                            |
| Shares     | 139m           |                                                            |
| FY2020     | $414m - $417m  | +37-38% yoy                                                |
| Billings   | $512m-$517m    | +31-33%                                                    |
| OpProfit   | $16-$18m       | Note: Zenith Live conferences in EMEA and US ($5-$6m cost) |
| EPS        | $0.14-0.16     |                                                            |
| Shares     | 139m           |                                                            |

“We are stepping up our sales and marketing investments in order to build the foundation for long-term growth. In addition, we’ll increase investments in our technology platform and cloud infrastructure.”

“As you model billings, I want to remind you that historically, Q2 and Q4 have been our strongest billing quarters with the sequential declines in Q1 and Q3 quarters respectively. For the year, excluding the $11 million of upfront billings in Q2 of 2019, our updated billings guidance for the fiscal year implies 35% to 37% growth.”

Free cash flow

Extraordinary items

  1. Symantec payment
  2. Additional spend for tenant improvements re: shifting hq

Total: ~$22-$25m payments.
Therefore: FCF margin down 1 point vs operating margin. Longer-term, FCF should be higher.

Jays 4 key points

  1. architecture matters for a cloud security platform that must sit in line to inspect all traffic for policy enforcement. We believe we’re the best architecture with over 10 years of operational experience to run a massive cloud, which is an enormous barrier to entry.
  2. Two, with multiple tailwinds such as Office 365, SaaS adoption, SD WAN and app migration to public clouds, we believe the market is coming to us.
  3. Three, we are in early innings of the cloud journey. We’re disrupting a $20 billion TAM with ZI and ZPA. With recently announced Zscaler B2B and ZDX we believe we will expand our addressable market significantly.
  4. with expanded go-to-market leadership in place, we are building a sales machine that can deliver world-class execution and sustainable long-term growth.

Question-and-Answer Session

  1. Business decelerating, needs to accelerate to meet guidance. Enabling, improving go-to-market. We’re confident because 1. we can measure sales engagement, seeing far better than we used to have. 2. Volume/quality of pipeline going up.
  2. Average duration (as impacts billings) came down a bit (because of big public sector payment), but is around 12 months, hasn’t changed much yoy or qoq.
  3. SD-WAN partners, mainly VMWare Velocloud, Cisco Viptela, Silver Peak. In those deals we’re the preferred security choice. They don’t try to build security in the box.
  4. Beat on operating margin was related to beat on revenue, and lower operating expenses related to headcount. Expect to step up go-to-market investments. Got some big expenses, user conferences and Sales conferences. Expect 60% RSM head count growth yoy (Regional Sales Manager?).
  5. Accelerate RSM growth in back half, today behind on sales plan, but leaders trained in hiring and training, so confident of getting to 60%. Added Regional VPs. RVPs, Area VPs and GOVPs +80% of expanded target. Need that leadership before RSMs. Attrition was also high, but feel that is behind us.
  6. Competitive landscape, haven’t seen much impact. Churn down yoy. Discount “pretty stable”, Average ARR of >3k users ~400k. Want to stay focussed on sales execution.
  7. Net retention rates - ZIA customers buy for entire user base [GD: so net retention tends to zero for ZIA if they buy again within the year]. We don’t put a lot of importance in it.

“Also basically the mix between new and upsell. In the quarter, we saw in the mid-range of what we’ve seen in prior quarters. It’s 60% or 50% new in the quarter is basically in the mid-range of that. Prior quarter our net retention rate was 120% and we called out that that was basically 50% new. So it’s going to vary and we’ve talked about, it’s a metric you should look at, but it’s not one that we put a whole lot of importance to.” [GD: didn’t quite get this… neither did the next analyst :smiley: ] → “around 55% of NER was new customers and last quarter around 50% was new customers”

  1. NetScope → see them in CASB, but we have integrated platform, don’t really see them in our markets.
  2. Symantec announcements, any increase in displacements of Symantec Blue Coat? “lot of additional interest” [GD: so no…]. Good opportunity for us.
  3. ZDX, ZB2B, general availability pushed out a quarter? No, said before beta testing for Q4 rollout. On target. Early engagement B2B is really good. “Ideal opportunity for us”. But… need “demand creation because people don’t even know this kind of thing exists”. ZDX “tons of interest”. Don’t expect a lot of contribution in Q4 but expect to help in Fiscal 21+. Good plans in place to sell, incubation process for sales to learn/rollout proper training.
  4. 60% growth in RSMs, on full quota after 12 months (not 100% capacity). Expect positive impact in Fiscal 21 [GD: thats at least a year away, perhaps the source of worry?]. Expect increased sales productivity as they get ramped. Bulk of margin impact this year, better margins in Fiscal '21.
  5. Whats Dali bring (to larger deals)? Didn’t have process and disciple to take it to large scale. Spending time to make people get up to speed. Better selling methodology [GD: doesn’t sound like the market is coming to them…? I guess what this means is that the move to cloud means the market needs their kind of solution, not that the market is beating down their door specifically]
  6. Mentioned pipeline quality improvement - quality = understand stakeholders, architectural workshops on networking side.
  7. Geographical US outperformed - EMEA leadership transition “outstanding”, APJ +56% yoy. EMEA +39% yoy. Americas +40 yoy adjusted for the non-recurring purchase last year.
  8. SDWAN - Fortinet, coexisting or competitive. Engagement security conscious large companies, dont see a lot of SDWAN. Cisco, VMWare, Silverpeak? Some overlap, see as complementary.
  9. Sales cycles changes - expect shortening of sales cycles over time, but at the moment 3-4 months for smaller accounts, 6-12 months for larger deals.
  10. Large deal execution improving? We do very well. Evangelism - becoming less, execution “Getting good”(sic). Lots of stakeholders, complex sales process. Enablement process is helping, feel “more confident” in handling larger deals.
  11. Large deal sales - sales force ok? Hiring across the board. Big market opportunity.
32 Likes

Whoops, hit submit too early. My bookings was meant to be billings:

"Or maybe it was ~bookings~ BILLINGS, only up … "Turning to calculated billings which we define as the change in deferred revenue for the quarter plus total revenue recognized in that quarter. Billings grew 18% year-over-year to $135.4 million against a difficult comparison. Recall, we had a large upfront billing of $11 million in Q2 of 2019.

From the large public sector customer excluding this deal, our billings grew 30% year-over-year."

cheers
Greg

2 Likes

I also have a 3.5% position. To add to your observations:

They said they plan to add 60% more regional sales managers RSMs over the next few 2Qs. Over the last 3 months they have created a new sales leadership layer, sales VPs. They have gotten to 80% of their ultimate goal in sales leadership. Jay said 3 months ago they had just 2 sales leaders with him now they have 15! So, it looks like they have identified their problem (lack of sales leaders and staff) and are addressing them in a planned manner. Selling top down needs a lot of sales leaders. They are penetrated only with 20% of the Fortune 500. So, they need more sales leaders.

If they beat the next 2Qs by small amounts they should do 37% growth just slightly better than this Qs growth. From FY 2021 (this starts on 7/2020) they should see the higher sales headcount start contributing. Their 2 new products will also start contributing. Their sales cycles have not lengthened - still 3-6 m for small and 6-12 m for large customers. So, clearly not a Nutanix type situation. Company seems to be in a trough now but it seems to have stopped its downward spiral. But FY 21 is still the unknown. I feel the stock has dropped sufficiently at this point to provide decent returns provided FY 21 turns out to be in the 35-40% rev growth range. With today’s drop the volume was not substantially higher than normal compared to say AYX. Company surely believes the higher # of sales and new products should have an impact, no one doubts their product superiority. But this is still hope/belief in the company’s vision as Tinker says. Given that Jay got it so wrong how can one be so sure now. Interesting conundrum - This is what investing is all about I suppose. So, I am still unsure of what I will do. Of course why not sell and just invest in other companies that are executing? Already have too much AYX. DDOG seems expensive still with lock up looming. Already have enough CRWD - really doubt it’s potential 5 years down. ZM is way pricey bubble territory. I know others have already deployed and reaped gains! Maybe I will follow suit…

After the CC most of the analysts raised price targets slightly and maintained ratings.
BofA Securities Lifts Price Target on Zscaler to $73 From $70, Maintains Buy
Baird Lifts Price Target on Zscaler to $70 From $65, Maintains Outperform
UBS Lifts Price Target on Zscaler to $60 From $55, Maintains Neutral
Goldman (Neutral) raises its ZS target from $53 to $60,
Wedbush lower their price target to $80 from $90, kept its outperform rating

19 Likes

Yes, it certainly is not obvious what to do, at least not to me. I think its a mistake to characterise it as a failing company, but I’m learning here.

The company appears to have a identified problem, an identified solution thats underway, technological leadership (as per Gartner) and a “tailwind of inevitability” market. Theres some concern that the identified problem is actually a symptom of a much bigger problem (not actually able to sell the product), but that seems less likely to me.

Decision making under uncertainty!

On the plus side, “too much AYX” is not the worst problem in the world to have :wink:

cheers
Greg

2 Likes

Yes, it certainly is not obvious what to do, at least not to me. I think its a mistake to characterise it as a failing company, but I’m learning here.

I preface my following comment by saying that I deeply respect this message board and its mission as well as the numerous contributors to this board that bring educated analysis and well structured commentary.

You state in your board post that it is “not obvious what to do”. I completely understand that and in those times, I often feel that the best thing to do is nothing, absolutely nothing.

If you are anything like me, then sometimes you must be overwhelmed with the level of highly sophisticated analysis and commentary on this board. I find the discourse on the board to be highly educational and enlightening, but simultaneously intimidating and at times welcomely frustrating.

Having a much larger portfolio than most contributing members of this board, I have to remind myself that many of those that post on a regular basis, with amazing content, are doing so from the perspective of a highly concentrated portfolio. As such, there appears at times to be a very high level of scrutiny and a very low level of tolerance for those companies that trip, dip or blip and may require some runway (time = reporting quarters)to work things out.

Perhaps Zscaler fits into this discussion. It has demonstrated slowing revenue growth the past few quarters, which has been reflected in its share price appreciation/depreciation and therefore many with highly concentrated portfolios would rightfully argue that there are other, faster growing and well-performing “horses” to bet on in the race; so put the non-performer out to pasture and saddle up the next winner.

An analyst that is very well respected in this board’s community recently said about Zscaler: “Sometimes being a longer-term investor is a lonely and frustrating process.

I take comfort in being periodically reminded of that sentiment, but I also dig deeper into and pull from the simple reference to “longer-term”; to me, this means exactly that…“longer-term” and not “long-term”. Longer-term to have the patience to allow a company the necessary runway to work through a trip, dip or blip, but not blind loyalty to the long term.

Harley

39 Likes

I often feel that the best thing to do is nothing, absolutely nothing.

Foolishly sound advice, hmc. Zscaler is not in trouble long-term, they are a next-gen platform, remain extremely sticky, and will only continue to grow. But I don’t feel it will be hypergrowth. It was clear from the words right out of the CEO’s mouth about a sales stumble, coupled with the abrupt halt to their growth. But after that, I personally still had patience to hold as I felt the negative sentiment got ahead of itself.

Unfortunately, that gave time for a few other concerns to catch up, which all combined into persuading me to sell a majority of my ZS position right after earnings.

I sold for more than a few reasons.

  1. The sales stumble combined with growth falling NEARLY IN HALF – from 65% to 36% in 5Qs.

  2. Those sales issues are amplified by their go-to-market approach favoring big complicated “all-or-nothing” deals that require a C-suite decision. [I’ve criticized this before.]

  3. New sales are also likely affected the difficulty in implementing their solution, which requires those big deals to utilize System Integration partners to get Zscaler platform hooked up. [I should have paid attention to this more.]

  4. Right before earnings, I identified a competitor who released a carbon-copy of ZS’s entire platform, reducing their moat to a dry creek bed. See my Cloudflare writeup. https://discussion.fool.com/cloudflare-net-deep-dive-34417701.as….

  5. Further research showed that that new competitor has an easy-to-install cloud platform, that are typically self on-boarded (only 15% of their enterprise integrations come from SI partners).

  6. This all combines to make me feel that if direct competition from a seasoned edge network provider is here already, that those “hard to sell” and “hard to integrate” issues are going to exacerbate things further, all while the sales team is getting a revamp. Hypergrowth is not likely to return unless Zscaler’s platform really shines above the competition.

I have to remind myself that many of those that post on a regular basis, with amazing content, are doing so from the perspective of a highly concentrated portfolio. As such, there appears at times to be a very high level of scrutiny and a very low level of tolerance for those companies that trip, dip or blip and may require some runway (time = reporting quarters) to work things out.

DING DING DING.

Concentrating was one of the best lessons I gleaned from Saul’s Knowledge Base here. The fact I now have a lower number of companies in my port means I can truly follow those companies more closely. Combine that with how then 20+ other sets of eyes and viewpoints come out on this board, and I think we all end up with a great view into current state of their execution and market positioning.

That said, in my past days of 30+ and even 60+ stocks in my portfolio, I would completely agree with you on holding and seeing through what is sure to be a short-term issue. And even if ZS remains at high 30s to low 40s range of growth, they will do well as a stock once they focus on turning the profit dial. But now that I do have a concentrated portfolio, I find that I am watching all my companies (and a very short watch list) a lot more closely now. There isn’t a reason to hold what I’ll call LAGGARDS IN EXECUTION when so many others are executing to perfection or very near it. I heard excuses from the CEO a bit on the call.

In the financials, we have a pretty clear view of it going from hypergrowth (>50%) to second tier (30-50% range). The opportunity cost is too great to hold and wait. At least, that is what I now tell myself - I am still a touch slow to act. And now I find it costing me more and more.

So good luck holding ZS. It’s still a great company and a high grower, and it may even return quickly back to hypergrowth with the new B2B product line – especially if they turn around sales plus focus on the different go-to- market they can take with B2B. I think, however, solving their “hard to integrate” issue is going to be difficult and take some time - and now with fresh competition that take a completely different tack in go-to-market. I bet Fastly and Akamai are taking notes too (other global edge networks). I don’t like the way this is adding up for ZS.

Don’t feel intimidated about holding it from here or having a different opinion on it, and PLEASE don’t stop following it and reporting on it! Folks will continue to follow stocks Saul no longer holds, and posters still talk SHOP (ha!)… as well as SQ, VEEV, NTNX and others… even when it’s not in the majority of reported ports here. We are all interested in following those high-growth companies too, and good reports/posts here make that way easier.

-muji

54 Likes

“Foolishly sound advice, hmc. Zscaler is not in trouble long-term, they are a next-gen platform, remain extremely sticky, and will only continue to grow.”

@Muji

Thanks for the response. I have been following your posts since joining TMF and always find them insightful and the arguments you present are very well constructed. So, I was glad to see your response to my post.

Having read your post on Cloudflare (NET); I took a starter position and while NET is taking a bit of a hit as I type, it has been a very solid performer this month.