Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (CHKP)
NASDAQ: CHKP · Real-Time Price · USD
134.40
-0.27 (-0.20%)
Apr 27, 2026, 9:34 AM EDT - Market open
← View all transcripts

Earnings Call: Q2 2022

Aug 1, 2022

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

I'd like to welcome everyone to our second quarter 2022 financial results video conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode during the formal presentation, which will be followed by a question- and- answer session. Joining me remotely today are Gil Shwed, Founder and CEO, along with our CFO and COO, Tal Payne. As a reminder, the video conference is live on our website and is recorded for replay. To access the live conference and replay information, please visit the company's website at checkpoint.com. For your convenience, the replay will be available on our website. If you'd like to reach us after the call, please contact Investor Relations by email at kip@checkpoint.com. During this presentation, Check Point's representatives may make certain forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 include, but are not limited to, statements related to Check Point's expectations regarding our products and solutions, expectations regarding customer adoption of our products and solutions, expectations related to cybersecurity and other threats, expectations regarding our Q3 2022 projections, our 2022 initiatives, the market for IT security, competition from other products and services, supply chain, general market, political, economic, and business conditions, including the impact of COVID-19 pandemic. These forward-looking statements are also subject to other risks and uncertainties, including those more fully described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our annual report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC.

The forward-looking statements in the presentation are based on information available to Check Point as of the date hereof, and Check Point disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by law. In our recent press release, which has been posted on our website, we present GAAP and non-GAAP results, along with a reconciliation of such results, as well as the reasons for our presentation of non-GAAP information. Now, I'd like to turn the call over to Tal Payne for a review of our financial results.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Thank you, Kip. Good morning and good afternoon to everyone joining us on the call. I will start with a review of the second quarter, right off the bat you can see that we had an excellent quarter. Both revenues and earnings per share were at the high end of our projections, $571 million revenues, which is $11 million above the midpoint of our projections. Earnings per share, $1.64, which is also at the high end of our guidance, and $0.04 above the midpoint of our projections. Before I proceed further into the numbers, let me remind you that our GAAP financial results include stock-based compensation charges, amortization of acquired intangible assets and acquisition related expenses, as well as the related tax effects. Keep in mind, as applicable, non-GAAP information is presented excluding these items.

Now, let's take a dive into the numbers, and I will start first with the revenues, which were quite nice this quarter. I will start from the total revenues. Revenues for the quarter accelerated, reaching $571 million, which is 9% increase, an increase from the $526 million. It's basically more than double the growth rate comparing to last year Q2, which was around 4%. I know you will ask me about the billing, so let's hit it as we start. Billing in the quarter reached $571 million, which is a 6% increase. I want to remind you that the billing for us is affected significantly by the deal timing, duration, and the payment terms, hence it can fluctuate between quarter to quarter, specifically when we have a mega deals.

Mega deals is $20 million, $30 million, $40 million deals. In Q2 last year, if you recall and go through the script back then, we said specifically we had quite a few multi-year mega deals which were billed in advance. Mega deal can happen, but can be billed over time, or once a year in a split payment. Last year, we had a few large deals which were billed actually in advance, which created the dip in the billing right now, but no effect on the run rate and on the growth rate in general, which you can see very clearly in the P&L. Deferred revenues is somewhat including that, because if you compare the deferred revenues, if deals came instead of in Q2, in Q4, or got advanced a bit, then it will be part of the deferred revenues.

You can see deferred revenues is healthy at $1,666 million, which is an increase of $194 million or 13% growth year-over-year. That's to cover the subject of the revenues. If you go to the split in the revenues, first let's start with the two line items that together are called product and subscription revenues. Together it's a double-digit growth, 13% growth year-over-year, reaching $343 million. It's a double-digit growth in these, two lines together for two quarters in a row. It's nice to see it stabilizing on a double-digit, and hopefully it's planned to continue. It's a great milestone for us.

Even more than that, for the first time in many, many quarters, probably maybe 10 years, we had a really strong product and license revenues. I remind you that last quarter when you asked me about the billing, I told you that some of it is product that had a delayed delivery, Infinity, where we wait for customers to pull or just delivery of two to three weeks after the order. It can happen every quarter. It also happened this quarter. We have quite a lot of that as well in this quarter, so that's also slightly affecting the billing. You can start seeing it already translating into the P&L, and we see 12% growth in our appliances. It came from, like last quarter when we talked about it, also from SMB, mid, large appliances.

Maestro was very strong, which is the switches that enable our hyperscale network. We see Infinity customers also starting to use their product allowances. They implement the security solution in their organization. It's very nice quarter for the product reaching double digit for the first time in a long time. If you look at the subscription, it was double digit for a while, and it continues to be nice. We have 14% growth in the subscription, reaching $210 million. It was an increase from the 12% last year of the $184 million last year. The growth continues to be driven by all the items growing, Quantum, CloudGuard, Harmony. The double digit is driven by CloudGuard and Harmony, both of them considered new pillars for us from the last year or two.

Our Harmony email security continues to deliver great results. I'm reminding you that some of the email came from an acquisition in September last year, which will be annualized in September. We see nice growth in both of them, both Cloud and in Harmony. All in all, it's about 37% of our revenue is the subscription now, so it's becoming quite a large engine for us in the revenue, growth and creation. If I go to revenues by geographies, what you can see here, the percentages are the same like last year. You see 44% in EMEA, 44% of our revenues coming from Americas, and 12% from APAC. If you calculate year-over-year, you will see the revenues grew across all geographies in quite a similar rate.

Quite healthy business all across our regions, so that's also pretty nice and stable. I'll move to the profitability. Of course, you hear it from many, many companies, us included, revenues we discussed. Gross profits moved up from $470 million- $501 million. Strong gross margins, so we continue to have strong with 88%. It's a tick down. We actually pay a significant fee, and we talked about it the last two quarters in a row. I actually expect it to continue for the rest of the year, which is part of the pressure on the margin, but it's okay.

It's the temporary increase in the cost relating to either putting our hands on raw material on the open market or expediting shipment because you need to get it early to the production line. These are strong margin taking into account these higher material costs and also shipping costs. Hopefully this temporary phenomena will go back to normal towards in 2023. It's too early to say, but it looks like for the second half of the year, it's still here. We see the raw material coming in. This raw material that we produce now gonna be part of the cost in the next two quarters. Great results taking into account the massive pressures that all the companies are seeing in the raw material market. Operating expenses, very similar to last quarter.

We see operating expenses increasing faster than the revenues in 18%. This is in line with our plan from the beginning of the year. I'll just remind you, our plan was we're gonna continue to increase our workforce mainly in sales and R&D. We continue the elevated investment in our rockets, which is mainly CloudGuard and Harmony. In line with the plan, we increased our workforce year-over-year in a double-digit, both in sales and in R&D. In sales, we still have some recruiting to continue. The year-over-year operating expenses increased mainly as a result of that fact, the compensation. Of course, return to travel and face-to-face interaction, some cloud expenses, and the acquisition that we had last year of Avanan and Spectral this year, so that's also part of those expenses.

That was not part of the original guidance, therefore us meeting the EPS after these acquisitions as well, it just shows the strength of the results. If I'm moving to below the operating income, what we can see here, operating margin is higher than we planned. It's actually 44%. We planned it slightly below because we're still in the recruiting process. We still haven't finished. Financial income, you don't see it here because Q2 versus Q2 is $10 million, but if you compare it to Q1, the sequential quarter, you will see it's an increase. As our portfolio is being released, we invested in higher interest rate, and we start to see an increase there. On the other hand, on the taxes, tax provision are getting indexed.

Since as you know, the index is quite high, the inflation, which is the indexation, is quite higher than nobody planned for it. It's part of our tax expenses, that's why you see it moving up to 19%. They deducted each other, therefore the net effect was minimal this quarter, and the total net income is $209 million, earning per share $1.64, which is $0.04 Above the midpoint of our guidance, so quite good earning per share and operating income. If I'm moving to our cash position and cash flow, I will start with the cash balances. Our cash balances as of the end of the quarter was $3.7 billion. Our operating cash flow this quarter was $212 million.

I'm reminding you that we hedge our balance sheet against currency fluctuation in order to minimize the effect on the P&L. So as you do balance sheet hedge, it minimize an effect on the P&L and protects our P&L, and also this quarter it happened. But the fluctuations you see in the cash flow. This quarter, the fluctuation in the cash flow was significant. It was about $47 million, the hedge cash expense, versus $6 million income in Q2 last year. Net, operating cash flow, excluding the effect of the hedge and taxes, is an increase of 2%, so quite a healthy cash flow with continued strong collection from our customers and expenses in line with the growth of our head count and expenses in the P&L. During the quarter, we also continue our buyback. You can see here $325 million share repurchase continue.

We purchased 2.6 million shares for $325 million, an average price of $123-$127 per share. That's the cash position. If I summarize, we had strong results, revenues and EPS in the high end of our projection, with accelerated revenue growth, double-digit growth in product, double-digit growth in subscription, and we continue to be focused on the top line while maintaining a very strong profitability. Now I will turn over the call to Gil for his insightful comments.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Thank you everyone, and glad to have you all join us. I will jump right in to give a little bit more color to the business and the environment, and mainly about some customer wins. Before that, I want to congratulate our Kip for his birthday. You see that Kip picked a very special day for his birthday and the best group of people that he wanted to celebrate with. Happy birthday, Kip.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Happy birthday, Kip.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Now let's talk a little bit about the threat landscape, which, as you can see, continues to intensify. I mean, we are seeing it for a very long time, and it's actually quite rare that for so many years we are seeing such a, I would s ay tense market, but we're seeing 32% increase in overall cyberattack we see per organization on a global basis. A 59% in sophisticated attacks like ransomware. You can see the statistics. Last quarter, one out of every 40 organizations was impacted by ransomware. Even more so, these attacks are now going beyond just small scale attacks or just hacking groups to a much bigger impact.

We've seen country extortion, we've seen a nation state organization using Gen V attack tools, and we've even seen a lot of geopolitical attacks happening in many parts of the world when one country is either spying or actually even attacking and using cyber warfare as a way to disrupt life in another country. This is something that's now part of our real life. With that, we anticipate, and I think almost everyone around us, that the strong demand for cybersecurity will continue with that continuous wave of fifth generation cyberattacks. I believe, and I think we are seeing, that customers of course will need the best security, which is what we stand for and what we aim to provide.

I'm pretty sure that customers will understand and will prefer solutions that are focusing on prevention and not just on detection of cyberattacks. I think at the end, consolidation will also take a bigger pace, both because it delivers better security, and also because most organizations cannot manage the complexity of using tens or even more of different cyber solutions, which is happening in many, many cases. That's kind of the big threat landscape. How do we address that? Just to remind you, we have in Check Point what we call the Infinity Architecture. I think it's by far the most integrated, the most comprehensive cybersecurity architecture in the market, built on three pillars or three product families, Quantum, most of our business network security, CloudGuard for the cloud, and Harmony to secure users' access, and now even email.

It's built upon a common management layer and on ThreatCloud, which actually makes sure that all that information is being shared, integrated, and proliferated in real time from one vector to another, and we achieve the highest level of security. How did we do on all these three pillars in the last quarter? I think the good news is that we've seen accelerated growth in every product pillar. In Quantum, we've seen a nice growth from the low end, from the branches and SMBs, all the way to the large installations. We've seen I mean, you've heard about the product numbers, the product double-digit growth, but even more so the unit growth was also very good, and again, all the way from the very small to the very large. CloudGuard, same thing, continues double-digit growth.

With Harmony that we've extended with big investment in email security last year. We've seen over 50% growth in the email security part, which is great. I think you've already seen this slide from Tal, so I'll just repeat that shortly. We've seen 9% revenue growth, highest growth in years, more than double than the rate that we've seen in the last couple of years, and that's really fueled by the double-digit growth in products and subscription. You see the green line here, and you see the correlation between the lines when the green line actually takes up eventually the blue line, the total revenue growth. I mean, we are very happy about that. A trend we've been investing in that for a long time. In the last two, three quarters, we're glad that this trend intensified.

How does it go with the different pillars? I think the story here is kind of repetitive. Quantum, we've seen strong product demand from the SMB to the large enterprises. Double-digit growth on the gateways, and let's look at few wins. I'll actually start from the small gateways here, and these are both branch offices and also for small businesses. Here are a few examples. Utility companies in Europe, more than 6,500 ruggedized gateways for the different power stations that are stationed all over the country. Another example is a European telco that's using our product to secure shops across the country, zero touch deployment, very very nice type of deployment. A little bit less usual, in Europe, another humanitarian organization that's actually using our gateways for refugee housing project. This is actually.

First, it's so nice to see that our products are used for such purposes, and it's also nice to see that in 2022, one of the first things that refugees get is actually internet access and even secure internet access. That's so important. That's another project that we just won. Last but not least is 2,500 gateways in APAC, a big telco that's using that to manage service for, again, 2,500 small businesses across the nation. This somewhat represents some of the wins that we have in the lower part of the market. If you look at the upper end of the market, I picked here two examples. Both of them are new customers. Both of them are competitive replacements. You can see on the right, a healthcare provider in Asia.

Support high capacity to get to 20 sites. They liked our management. We replaced their Fortinet and won against Palo Alto. On the left side, a very similar story, slightly different product set, super high performance with our Maestro scalable performance. The reason they picked us, this wasn't just for the performance, even though we took Maestro, is simply because our solution was the only one that actually blocked the malicious file that we're getting. They were getting malicious files. All the other solution that they tested merely detected these files, but let them through, so people can open the attachment and still be infected, even though the system, in some cases, could recognize them, Check Point. Again, that's consistent with our architecture. We were the only solution that actually blocked the malicious files and didn't let them through.

Of course, that's by no coincidence should be a winning factor to get such an installation. This is for Quantum. Let's look at one or two examples around CloudGuard. Again, here also continued the growth, and let's look at these two examples. In Europe, an important financial institution had a business transaction with a business acquisition. As a result of that, they were looking for a way to control their more sophisticated cloud environment that spans between AWS, Azure, and the Google Cloud. They wanted a better compliance, better visibility, even though, by the way, in this case, many organizations are deploying a solution for the first time. Here we did replace another solution and won this account.

Another organization in Europe, a leading retailer, part of a cloud transformation, they wanted to get better manageability. They liked our roadmap of how we provide more and more security to the cloud. Another winning factor was the fact that they can connect and control both their on-premise environment and their public cloud solution using the same unified experience, using similar tools and connect them in a better way. Another nice win on the cloud front. Last and not least is the Harmony sector, securing users. Again, we've augmented the Harmony with the email security towards the end of last year, and you see the numbers have really accelerated there. They were good before, but they were even better after the consolidation. Three quarters later, the numbers are still growing very, very nicely with over 50% growth.

Here you can see two examples. In the U.S., one is a holding company. Their challenge, by the way, similar to what we've seen with Quantum before, and that's the nice thing in Check Point, we apply the same principles, the same technology to different attack vectors, to different entrance vectors to the organization. Here it's with the Harmony Email. Their old security solution didn't stop the ransomware attempts. Harmony Email identified over 2,800 attacks on their inboxes, and not only identified them, but actually blocked them. They found the highest effectiveness of email security packages from everything they've seen. To the right, another major company in the U.S. in the safety and regulatory compliance industry, Harmony was the only solution that was able to deliver to them unified experience across email, endpoint, and mobile.

Both cases, by the way, it's both new customers and a competitive replacement, which is in many cases, the best cases. As you can see, we have this winning streak across all product pillars, across all geographies, and across many customer segments. To summarize the quarter, what we had, I think you see the main theme here was the double digit the fact that we doubled the revenue growth, the fact that we had a double digit growth on our products and subscription that drives the new business and drive the business growth. We've got to the upper end of our projection on both revenues and EPS, and we've continued to see healthy demand both from Quantum, from the small to the large, and for Harmony and CloudGuard.

I think overall I'm very pleased with the results this quarter, and I hope that we'll keep seeing a good market in the quarters to come. Now before we open it for the question and answer, let me touch a little bit on the guidance and the projections for the next quarter. Let's speak about the projections. Our projections for the third quarter are, as you can see on the slide, revenues in the range of $555 million-$585 million. Non-GAAP earnings per share between $1.60-$1.72. GAAP EPS is expected to be approximately $0.32 less. I always say this caveat, projecting the future is nothing that was given to humankind. I mean, it can be better than what we anticipate. It can be worse.

I think overall we are seeing on one hand good execution on the Check Point field side, good enthusiasm for us and our team, and the healthy demand on the marketplace. On the other hand, I think you all know that the economy is showing some signs of softness, and there is a lot of uncertainties around all that. Some things we see and we know it will affect us, like the increasing cost, the fact that the supply chain remains challenging. In our regional model, for example, we were predicting that the supply chain issues will kind of get solved in the second half of this year, and costs will return to the original cost. Right now we don't think it will happen in the next half of the year. That has an impact on the expenses side.

The revenues and the business growth side, that's something that's even less in our control and less in our ability to project. Again, I think we remain quite positive, and we'd actually a little bit up the range for the revenue. I mean, you can see that for projection for our third quarter, we're actually better than our original plan and better than what many of you expect based on your current models. Let's, for the forecast, Tal, do you want to add something on the projection before we open it for questions? You're on mute, Tal.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

No, let's leave it because probably they're gonna ask questions about it, so let's open the floor for the questions.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Good. I'll stop the presentation, and we'll open it to your questions.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right, gang. As always, please limit your questions to one so we can get through as many as we can. Today we're gonna start out with Gregg Moskowitz from Mizuho, followed by Tal Liani of BofA.

Gregg Moskowitz
Managing Director and Senior Enterprise Software Equity Research Analyst, Mizuho

All right. Thanks, Kip, and a happy twenty-eighth birthday to you.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Thank you.

Gregg Moskowitz
Managing Director and Senior Enterprise Software Equity Research Analyst, Mizuho

Question for Gil or Tal, or perhaps both of you. Regardless of the macro environment, Gil, if I'm understanding your tone correctly, sounds like the demand drivers for Check Point are still healthy and intact. You know, similar to last quarter, your billings were a little below consensus. In the Q1 period, you had called out that bookings grew strong double digits year-over-year, and that RPO grew over 20%. Wondering if you're able to share with us, what the bookings growth and/or, the RPO growth was this quarter. Thanks.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

I will let Tal talk about it, but before that I'll just say that I think the main reason for that is that a year ago we had some mega deals, and these mega deals, again, we have, like, a group of, like, a dozen customers worldwide. Not even a dozen, less than a dozen customers. I think a year ago, we had three of these customers that signed the three-year contract prepaid in advance, and I'm talking contracts for tens of millions of dollars, that had a very positive impact on the billing last year. That's the main reason. This year, since they were a three-year deals, they are not even a renewal or anything like that in this year.

I think overall for the quarter and for the first half, I think we finished it in line with or not in line, slightly better than what I would anticipate for what I wanted. Again, Tal, you can speak more about the numbers.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Yeah, maybe I'll just add another word because it's important. I know we're gonna be asked about it every quarter. You know, Greg, because you're following us for so many years, I always said billing is not a relevant indicator, but I will provide it to you because you're asking. The reason I said it is always because of that. The mega deals change dramatically that number and the timing of the payment as well. If a deal is being pulled one quarter forward, then you have, and it's a big one, then you will see an effect on the billing with absolutely no effect on the real run rate and vice versa. A deal can come one week later, it can affect your billing, and then a week later it comes and suddenly it's very high.

It is an indicator, but I would look at it as part of the bigger picture, and that's why I'm trying to give you more color. Last quarter it was not about the comparable. Last quarter was about, we talked about that we had a booking that came that was not even invoiced yet, and we talked about that at length last time. This quarter, you had both. You had invoices, billing or booking that came and was not invoiced, and they're part of the booking, and I can tell you that the new business grew in double digit this quarter as well, okay?

The biggest effect was really relating to the last year comparable that had a few really large deals that, I think, if a customer had a large deal last year, it will create a big increase in the billing, hence translate over time, deferred revenues and so on. In this quarter you won't have it, so it will actually create a flat or even a reduction, although the business is very healthy with that customer. I'll say, be careful of just concluding from billing. That's why I always tell you, look at the deferred revenues, look at the revenues over time, look over four quarters and so on. I keep saying the same thing.

This quarter was mainly about the fact that there was quite a lot of deals last year that not only was booked in advance, but also billed in advance.

Gregg Moskowitz
Managing Director and Senior Enterprise Software Equity Research Analyst, Mizuho

Helpful. Thank you both.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

You're welcome.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Our next up is Tal Liani of BofA, followed by Adam Tindle of Raymond James.

Tal Liani
Managing Director of Equity Research, BofA

Hey, guys. Good morning. I wanna talk about demand and ask Gil, can you talk about your expectations for demand cyclicality? Meaning in past years, we had better years of higher growth and lower growth, and we're coming here after three years of very strong growth of demand for core products and beyond just the new products, can you talk about your expectations for any demand cyclicality, any reasons for demand to slow down or accelerate for core products? Second, on the same topic, you have new sales management in certain regions and you have new products. Can you talk about the breakdown of new customers and old customers, meaning are the new efforts do they help you to bring in new customers that you didn't have before? Thanks.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

First, I don't see many patterns right now in the cyclicality. There's of course many factors. Some people anticipate that, you know, the network security business will slow down because there is a shift to the cloud. So far, we haven't seen that. Actually, there's a mistake that we made in the past is maybe under-investing in the network security and over-investing in the cloud. At the same time, again, the cloud will become and is becoming a very important factor, so I think the investment that we have there is well justified. I think the network security so far remains a strong element. From the cyclicality, again, we have customers all sizes all around the world, so I think a lot of it is our execution, but again, we may see bigger factors than just that.

In terms of sales management, I think you are hitting on a good point. We do have a relatively new sales management re-energized leading our field. Rupal Hollenbeck, who's running our global commercial organization, sales, marketing, and all these functions, joined us about a quarter ago. This was her first quarter in Check Point. Before that, she was a board member in Check Point, so she knows us quite well and was very enthusiastic about the opportunity. It's great to see that refreshed energy. Her team is also relatively new. Our head of Americas has been with us for just over a year, and our head of Europe has been with us for a little bit more than a year and a half. I think overall it's a very, very good thing.

By the way, interestingly enough, when you look at this new world, this week we are meeting here in Tel Aviv for the first time in person. It's kind of interesting to see that we have a global management team from, I don't know, five countries, maybe more, that's been working together for anything from a year to three years and are meeting, seeing each other for the first time in person just this week. You know, we started the week by asking everybody to stand up and saying, "Wow, you got legs," because for the first time we've met the entire team. We're also very tall, so it's a challenge. We are here in Tel Aviv this week.

In terms of new customers, existing customers, I do put a strong emphasis on new customers. We are seeing that success, especially in Europe and Asia. We also got some nice wins, I think I showed them, in the Americas, but I think in America, in the U.S. especially, we have plenty of potential to add more new customers that will join the Check Point family. A lot of our growth also comes from existing customers that expand. We're actually seeing that, in many cases, we win new customers with our network security, and with the existing customers, we've actually expanded and add the things like the CloudGuard.

I think the pattern in many cases is that they like Check Point because of the network security, and then we expand to the cloud. With Harmony, I've seen both cases, some new customers that start with Harmony and some existing customers that expand to Harmony.

Tal Liani
Managing Director of Equity Research, BofA

Thanks. Thank you.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right. Our next question's gonna come from Adam Tindle from Raymond James, followed by Saket Kalia from Barclays.

Adam Tindle
Managing Director, Raymond James

All right. Thanks, Kip. I just wanted to ask, you've got some company-specific tailwinds to both growth and margins as we look forward, and wanted to double-click on each. On growth, maybe you could recap the pricing actions that you've taken to date. If I've got it right, I think there was maybe another one just about a month ago that you took. Pricing actions to date that should catalyze growth moving forward. On margin, Tal, you mentioned material costs. You also have some currency that I'm not sure immediately reflects. The tailwinds to both growth from ASP increases and margin from material costs and currency moving forward would be helpful. Thank you.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Yeah. Maybe first on the pricing, you're correct. We had a price increase from the beginning, well, July. It's not relevant for this quarter. Theoretically should be relevant for the future, but I would say there's a gap between the theory and the actuality in terms of what you see when the deals are coming in. Hopefully it will help, but I'm not counting on it, let's put it this way. Because there's a lot of pressures also on our customers now, because we're all in this new economic environment. It's a tool to try to help, but I hope it will help, but I'm not sure. That's one. Regarding the cost of-

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Just to capture that, I think so far the price increases that we're doing are trying to kind of pay for the increase in COGS, but at the same time there is a counter-pressure on discounts. I think overall it kind of balances out. It's not. Customers are not paying less. If you look at the average, customers are not paying a higher unit cost to Check Point at the moment.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Yeah. Adam, it is a good result if the discount will not increase, right? I don't plan it to actually increase the ASP. Maybe, who knows? I don't think so, but we will see. When we're looking at the cost, it's definitely increased, you can see. To be honest, I'm not that concerned about it, because I believe at this point of time, I think it's a short-term phenomenon, and much more important is to be able to deliver. I think you can see in many industries there's just no ability to deliver, and that's it kills the entire model, right? It kills your ability to deliver. Our focus is even if we need to pay more, we want to pay more in order to get it and to be able to ship it to our customer and keep them secured.

That's our. The price for it is that we lose a few cents, but I don't think it's a big deal. I was hoping that it will fade away in the second half of 2022, but it doesn't look like it's gonna fade away at this point of time. We will follow up and we will update you as we see some changes. But again, for a company like us, $10 million is not nice, but it's not something that move us to a problem, right? We are, we have profit, it's okay. That's regarding that. Will it stay the same or increase? The gap might even increase, right? Because remember, every time there's something new showing up, some things are moving, like supply problem solved in certain raw material, and some problems are not solved.

If you follow the company or the chip companies that publish, it doesn't look like they're gonna solve the problem in Q3. I hope in the future. Everything that you see in public is affecting companies like us. I think like servers and all the raw material that a server needs, it's quite a lot of effect.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right. Our next up is Saket Kalia, followed by Joel Fishbein.

Saket Kalia
Managing Director, Barclays

Okay. Great. Hey, thanks everyone, and happy birthday, Kip.

Adam Tindle
Managing Director, Raymond James

Thank you.

Saket Kalia
Managing Director, Barclays

Tal, maybe for you just on the mega deals from last year. You know, you talked about a few customers and tens of millions of prepaid. Just to make sure that everyone's on the same page, can you put a finer point on that? Right, just so that we can kinda think about that normalized comparable. Just to make sure we're not maybe necessarily in this position kinda going forward, you know, how do you think about you called out in Q3 Avanan I think is gonna lap. You know, just as we calibrate our Q3 billings, how much should we think about Avanan sort of lapping year-over-year, if you will?

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Sure. Avanan actually joined in September, so that's not a big deal. In general, remember, Avanan is a few low millions, right? It was when we acquired them. It will have some effect maybe on the subscription, right? It's not 10%. It's 1%, maybe 2%, right? It's nothing, dramatic there. That's regarding that. Spectral acquisition, a few million dollars increased expenses, but it was this year. Again, nothing dramatic, but when you accumulate a few acquisitions, it's of course affected. Like when you looked at our expenses, of course it added to our expenses, a few millions of dollars as well, right? That's part of that growth that you see in the year-over-year when you compare Q2 versus Q2.

Remember on the mega deals, I'm going back to the billing, it's also very hard to predict it, right? Because even if you know that you have in a final specific deal, you don't know if it will account for one year or three year and what will be the payment terms, right? So this is something that's hard to predict. That's why I always say billing is a trick. It's okay for you to measure it, but be careful not to give it overweight. That's all I'm saying.

Saket Kalia
Managing Director, Barclays

Mm-hmm.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right.

Saket Kalia
Managing Director, Barclays

Very helpful.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Our next question is coming from Joel Fishbein, followed by Brad Zelnick of Deutsche Bank.

Joel Fishbein
Managing Director of Software and Cloud Technology, Truist Securities

Happy birthday, Kip.

Adam Tindle
Managing Director, Raymond James

Thank you.

Joel Fishbein
Managing Director of Software and Cloud Technology, Truist Securities

Gil, for you. You helped us with the customer wins around Quantum, but I was hoping that you would help give us a little color around some of the customer wins with regard to CloudGuard and Harmony and what the competitive dynamics look like in those two areas.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

I think I gave the examples on all fronts. I gave a few examples with Harmony and with one of them, Harmony email we won because we were blocking files that others weren't blocking. And again, that's ransomware that was impacting the customers. Another one, it was that plus the fact that they got a more consolidated view. In both cases of Harmony and CloudGuard, the markets are a little bit more fragmented. We actually compete against many different vendors, cloud, for example, there is probably a suite of, I don't know, at least half a dozen if not more different, even major sub-segments of the market. With Harmony, even more, it's from endpoint, mobile, email, disk, and data security. Many categories. .

I think the value proposition which we provide is not to compete necessarily against each one of the vendors, especially on the cloud side, but also on the endpoint, but more providing the overall architecture, providing an end-to-end cybersecurity solution. I think that completeness of the solution, the architecture and the vision is something that's very, very unique to us, especially because these are all integrated. Because when we see a malicious file coming from your email, this file will also get blocked when you try to download it on the network. I don't think any other solution does that. Actually, even worse, many of these other solutions will see the malicious file, will let it through, and 20 minutes later will send some alert that says, "Hey, you've been infected," and that's too late.

Again, I don't think that we get the full credit from customers that understand that. I think we need to do a better job demonstrating, showing and winning that. This is a fact, and this is something that makes the Check Point security so much better than anyone else.

Joel Fishbein
Managing Director of Software and Cloud Technology, Truist Securities

Thank you so much.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right, our next call, our next question will come from Brad Zelnick of Deutsche Bank, followed by Shaul Eyal from TD Cowen.

Brad Zelnick
Managing Director and Software Equity Research Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Excellent. Thanks so much, and happy birthday, Kip.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Thank you.

Brad Zelnick
Managing Director and Software Equity Research Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Gil, congrats on the accelerating top line results, which seem to demonstrate strong resiliency in the business. You overachieved first half expectations, you've guided stronger for Q3, but you also gave some caveats when you guided about the environment, and you didn't update your full-year guidance. Is there something you're seeing in real time that gives you hesitation, or is not raising the full-year just your typical conservatism? But regardless, Check Point has weathered many cycles and people seem to expect spending on security to be resilient during a downturn. What is your experience from prior downturns, and what are you seeing today, Gil?

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Okay, that's a very multiple parts, and I think they all relate to the same subject, but it's excellent because I think your question is something that many people here probably worry about. First, I don't see anything that you don't see. I mean, my concern about the global economy is what we all see. In terms of the Check Point sales force, the Check Point customers, I don't see any changes. I mean, our forecast, our pipeline, the feedback, as I mentioned, we are just seeing here for the first time our sales leader in person. I haven't sensed from them that they sense anything different about the third quarter or about the rest of the year, but we also see the economy, and we know that things can happen.

In terms of the full-year guidance, we didn't want to open the full-year guidance. We are still within the range that we've provided at the beginning of the year. We've actually looked into that, and it's likely that we'll be slightly to the right there. I mean, we probably won't get to the lower part of it, because we've already got some, I don't know, over $10 million in additional revenues from the first two quarters. I don't know, Tal, if you want to discuss it a little bit more detailed, but yes, the guidance for the year. We can calculate a narrower range, a little bit more to the right, more to the upper end of the guidance that we provided at the beginning of the year. Tal, you want to-

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Yeah

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

... add another-

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

I'll just say, Brad, it's like, I know you know us, but it's not only about knowing us. It's about we gave a guidance in the beginning of the year. We are in a very, I would call it, bizarre macroeconomic environment, many different metrics showing up from different direction. Unemployment on the one hand, inflation on the other hand, interest rate, mortgage. Many moving parts. Ukraine, Russia, there's m any things happening, and you should be cautious. On the one hand, we don't see anything to worry about except for everything that we see around us, right? We never, if you look at our history, we, I don't think we ever updated our guidance, because this is not, we don't think you should update your guidance through the year. Some companies provide a guidance only for one quarter.

We provide a year in the beginning of the year, and then each quarter going forward. In the short term, looking into Q3, you see quite a good guidance. That means we don't see anything dramatic. Q4, it looks like beyond the mountains right now. We need to wait to see what's happening in general in the markets. Q3 is ahead of us, and it looks like we gave a very good guidance there. That's, there's not too much details into that logic.

Brad Zelnick
Managing Director and Software Equity Research Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Okay. Thank you.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right, our next question's coming from Shaul Eyal, followed by Matthew Hedberg of RBC.

Shaul Eyal
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, TD Cowen

Thank you for that. Good afternoon, everybody. Maybe let me try and continue on Brad's prior question on narrowing this, the annual range. You know, Tal, I understand that, you know, maybe you haven't done it in the past, but in the past you haven't even like, you know, had a powerful presentation that you've started, like, you know, two, three quarters ago, which is a great thing, by the way.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

That's true.

Shaul Eyal
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, TD Cowen

So-

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

That's true.

Shaul Eyal
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, TD Cowen

maybe that, you know, it's a good point to reconsider that. Maybe in other-

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Okay, I'll tell you what I'll do.

Shaul Eyal
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, TD Cowen

In other words.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Shaul

Shaul Eyal
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, TD Cowen

Any reason to think that you wouldn't be growing at least the midpoint or above your former wide range guidance?

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

I was gonna say, you know what? I'll take your advice, and next quarter I will update the annual guidance.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

No, Tal, don't kill me, but I think we'll probably be roughly at least $10 million more than the new midpoint should be probably at least $10 million more than the previous midpoint. On the revenue side and I think we're very happy about that.

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

Shaul Eyal, I will just say if you look at Q4, which is the biggest quarter, the biggest risk always relating to the product line, right? It's a huge product quarter. To product, the very low visibility by the nature of the beast, right? Taking into account the general situation, it's like six months away because all the booking coming in December. It's just a bit too early to be brave about December. That's my opinion.

Shaul Eyal
Managing Director and Senior Analyst, TD Cowen

No argument.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

All right.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right, our next, question's gonna come from Matthew Hedberg followed by Gray Powell of BTIG.

Matthew Hedberg
Senior Software Analyst, RBC

Great. Thanks. Happy birthday too, Kip.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Thanks.

Matthew Hedberg
Senior Software Analyst, RBC

Gil, you know, you've been around security for a long time, and you know, in prior downturns you were primarily a firewall appliance vendor. Obviously now it's a much more diversified platform. How do you think some of the newer lines like CloudGuard and Harmony will do versus Quantum? I guess specifically, is there a higher ROI aspect to some of the newer products, maybe quicker implementation versus maybe some historical, maybe more transformational type sales?

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

First, you're right, I mean, if you implement the full Infinity Architecture, you can get an amazing ROI and you can get much better security in much shorter time, and we've seen it. We've seen it in some installation. I think I gave the example in Q1 about one major Infinity deal that we have, that we got in, installed through Harmony agent immediately, saw a malware. We didn't stop there, and saw that this organization was infected with some really serious spying from probably another country. Within two weeks we completed the full transformation for that organization security architecture with the full Infinity Architecture. This process usually takes between six to 18 months in most organizations.

I think the potential if you jump into the Infinity Architecture and adopt both Quantum, CloudGuard and Harmony is huge to elevate the level of security in a short time. Are most organizations doing that? I think unfortunately there's still a lot of work to develop the work methodologies, to convince the customer to jump into this deep water and do the transformation. By the way, once people do the transformation, the ROI is amazing. You got one console, one set of product. You're seeing, you're preventing. Again, everybody speaks about visibility. You get much better visibility, but more important, you simply block the attacks that other people don't.

I think just some of the win cases that we've seen is, it's actually so ridiculous to see that another solution will take a file, will let the file in, and 20 minutes later will tell you you've been infected. We know how to stop the file from getting in if it's infected. Or another solution, you'll see a malicious email coming to your organization. You will identify it. An hour later, the same file can come from the network because somebody will download it and it won't be stopped. These are all the things that are unique about the Check Point Architecture. We know how to block all these cases, and I think if customers would implement our CloudGuard, our Harmony and our Quantum solution as part of the Infinity Architecture, we'll get huge return on investment and much, much better security.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right. Our next question and last question will be coming from Gray Powell, BTIG.

Gray Powell
Managing Director and Security and Infrastructure Software Analyst, BTIG

Okay. Great. Thank you very much for working me in, really appreciate it. Yeah, just to follow up on sort of the macro line of questioning, was hoping we could drill in on Europe a little bit. How have customer conversations been in Europe, like the last three months? Are you seeing any changes in sales cycles there or any additional scrutiny on deals? Just any additional color you can give us on Europe would be great.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

I don't know. I haven't noticed any change in Europe. I mean, it's the markets are open. It looks like I mean, our discussion around in Europe is the fact that we're seeing that everything is being opened up, people behave like there's no Corona, and yet the Corona increases. It's not in terms of cyber spending, I don't think that I've seen much discussion, maybe with the exception of Russia that's partly in Europe, that has impacted our revenues.

Gray Powell
Managing Director and Security and Infrastructure Software Analyst, BTIG

Okay.

Yeah. I would say actually the results in Q2 were very good, so we didn't see like some issues there.

Okay. Just in terms of the 12% product revenue growth, was that pretty evenly split across geographies or anything stand out Europe or elsewhere?

Tal Payne
CFO and COO, Check Point

I don't remember anything specific.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Yeah. You can see, I think Tal had the slide that shows the sales by geography, and they were the same this quarter and a year ago. 44% in Europe and in America, and 12% in APAC, both Q2 last year and Q2 this year in terms of revenues.

Gray Powell
Managing Director and Security and Infrastructure Software Analyst, BTIG

All right. Fair enough. All right. Thank you very much.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

All right, guys. Thank you, guys and gals, thank you for attending today, and thank you for all the birthday wishes. I look forward to seeing you during the quarter, and I will be speaking to you after the call obviously.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Wonderful

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Take care and have a great day. Bye-bye.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Thank you, Kip, for sharing your birthday with us.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Thank you.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Appreciate it.

Kip Meintzer
Global Head of Investor Relations, Check Point

Have a great day, guys. Bye-bye.

Gil Shwed
Founder and CEO, Check Point

Bye-bye.

Powered by