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Investing.com - Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) downgraded CrowdStrike Holdings (NASDAQ:CRWD) from Overweight to Equalweight while slightly raising its price target to $495.00 from $490.00. According to InvestingPro data, the stock appears fairly valued at current levels, with analyst targets ranging from $330 to $610.
The downgrade comes despite Morgan Stanley’s confidence in CrowdStrike’s long-term growth potential, with the firm citing three key factors that balance the risk/reward profile in the near term. The company maintains strong fundamentals with a healthy current ratio of 1.85 and operates with moderate debt levels.
Morgan Stanley points to CrowdStrike’s current valuation of 21x EV/2026E Sales as presenting a "sizable premium" to the large-cap software peer average of 12x, a premium that persists even when adjusted for growth rates.
The research firm also noted high investor expectations following CrowdStrike’s Q1 results, which beat consensus net new annual recurring revenue expectations by 11%, yet saw the stock decline after hours despite approximately 50% share price growth over the past three months.
Morgan Stanley further identified a lack of near-term catalysts, suggesting the upcoming Q2 earnings report is "unlikely to be a thesis-changing event" while expressing limited visibility into Customer Commitment Package renewals and Falcon Flex (NASDAQ:FLEX) contract impacts on revenue recognition and margins.
In other recent news, CrowdStrike has been the subject of several notable developments. BMO Capital raised its price target for CrowdStrike to $500, citing strong quarterly performance and confidence in the company’s ability to sustain 20% top-line growth into fiscal year 2027. On the other hand, Piper Sandler downgraded CrowdStrike from Overweight to Neutral, pointing to the stock’s significant appreciation and suggesting limited short- to medium-term upside. Similarly, Bernstein SocGen Group also downgraded the stock to Market Perform due to high valuation concerns, although they acknowledged CrowdStrike’s strong position in the cybersecurity sector.
Additionally, CrowdStrike introduced Falcon for AWS Security Incident Response, enhancing its collaboration with AWS to address complex cyber threats in cloud environments. This new program offers AWS customers access to CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform at preferred rates, aiming to improve threat detection and response times. Further expanding its capabilities, CrowdStrike integrated its Falcon Cloud Security with NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)’s LLM services to protect AI workloads across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. This integration is designed to safeguard AI models from risks such as data poisoning and tampering, extending CrowdStrike’s security coverage for NVIDIA’s AI Factories.
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