All right. Good afternoon, everybody, for joining us here. We have the pleasure of hosting Kip Meintzer, the Global Head of IR at Check Point. I'll let Kip kick off with what Check Point's all about, what's their role in the overall security landscape, and then just we can kick off from there.
First off, we'll start with the obligatory Safe Harbor. Obviously, during the course of the presentation, there may be forward-looking statements. As with any forward-looking statement, there's risks and uncertainties that could cause the material results or results to differ materially. If you'd like some good reading material, in other words, go to sleep real quickly, pull down our latest 20-F and go through all the risk factors. They're comprehensive but not exhaustive. As with all forward-looking statements, we reserve the right to update as required by law. With that, I'll jump in. For those of you that don't know about Check Point, we're a 32+-year-old company. Our founder created what's known as the modern-day firewall. Obviously, over that 32-year period of time, we've evolved significantly from a firewall company to a platform company.
We have four pillars which we approach the market with, which is our first one is our Hybrid Mesh, which is basically firewall and connectivity. The second one is Workspace, which is user-based technologies, email, endpoint, SASE, et cetera. We have our CTEM, our Continuous Threat Exposure Management solution, which does virtual patching, does exposure management, our fastest-growing pillar at this moment. Our fourth one is an up-and-coming and a wonderful word you've all heard on a million times over, which is our AI pillar. That focuses on AI factory protection, as well as LLM and LLM runtime and app protection. With that, I'll throw it back to Shrenik and we can get into the nitty-gritty of whatever he wants.
No, thanks a lot for setting the stage here. Just to level set, we can take questions as we go, so feel free to shoot it over to me via email. I just wanted to start at the foundation, as you said, right? You were the pioneers of firewall. It's still a major part of the company, of course, as you said. There are a lot of exciting new levels, which are lining up and teeing up nicely. If I have to maybe start off at the firewall opportunity and then we get into a broader platform. Just to level set everybody here, how much of that product overall is right now driven by refreshes and upgrades because you have a pretty sticky install base?
How much trying to kind of maybe take some kind of share gains and then as AI, and I'm going to try to deep dive there, but as AI becomes important, this broader AI era sort of security modernization, what does the opportunity look like for you guys?
I think if you look at this point, the majority of our revenue on the product line comes from refresh. We do see incremental adds, and we do see new logo, but not at the levels we'd like to. In fact, the go-to-market changes that we made at the beginning of the year were specifically designed to facilitate a greater portion of our revenue in the future coming from new logo opportunities, expansion within our install base, cross-selling, upselling, et cetera. I think there has been a myopic focus on that going forward. We also believe that's going to be much better served in the AI world as efficacy, which is a hallmark of our company, becomes much, much more important than just detection and remediation, which our competitors seem to live and die on.
As far as that goes, as this happens and becomes more important, the need to have connectivity or a firewall, especially in the AI factory, where poisoning of LLMs and stuff can be very costly and also very damaging. Efficacy is going to be very important going forward, and so it's right in our wheelhouse. It's something we've been known for the whole length of the time as a company.
Very helpful, as I said, it frames you guys just beyond just refresh cycle discussion. Since you brought up the efficacy, right, and post the [Claude Mythos this announcement. OpenAI [Daybreak], which is the topic du jour. The vulnerability discovery as it accelerates, feels like, as you said about efficacy, the prevention first sort of routes that you have, that could matter much more than other legacy firewall players or other competitors. Can you talk a little bit about, in your current conversations with customers, how are they valuing the prevention efficacy, especially in this AI era that we are getting in?
I think if you look at our existing customers, I think that's why they are our existing customers. They recognize the quality of our product, and many of them have been there since the beginning. I think when you look at the AI opportunity and what AI, especially Glasswing, et cetera, bring to the marketplace, it's going to separate, to use an old farming thought, is the wheat from the chaff. When you look at Check Point, we've had this ethos of efficacy since day one. The number of CVEs, or known exploited vulnerabilities, that we've had throughout the history of our company has been two in 32 years. If you go out and you look at our competitors, I don't even want to tell you, or even guess how many they've had in any given year, or even the lifetime of their company.
This is pretty important because an ethos is something that you live and die by, and our competitors live and die by detection remediation. You don't all of a sudden, overnight, become a protection and prevention company. It's innate to who you are. I think the evolution of the industry to focus more on efficacy is going to fall right in our wheelhouse, and I think it's something we're prepared for and something that's going to allow us to hopefully take advantage in the marketplace.
Very helpful. Would like to, of course, dive into the broader opportunity, but just take a moment from product differentiation to the current financial realities of delivering on the supply side, and it's been a big topic with investors as well. Wanted to understand, of course, firewall decisions still are coming down to pricing and availability and supply side, and especially in light of the memory and component supply dynamics right now, spiking the cost. Can you comment a little bit about what the supply side looks like? Are you seeing customers being more cognizant of how much budgets they're allocating to hardware and firewalls, or potentially maybe elongating some of these refreshers? Is it also coming down to your point, moving towards more AI architecture evaluations and eventually helps you?
I think for us, when you look at our performance at the first half of the year, or the first quarter of the year, obviously, we were going through the go-to-market changes, so I don't think it's reflective of the market in general. I think this is on us. We decided to do these changes at this time, and we didn't execute them as smoothly as we'd like to, but we believe the disruption is pretty much behind us, and now it's about executing going forward. As far as the marketplace and firewalls and the decision-making process, I think this is an evolutionary aspect.
I think as people recognize the need for more efficacy, it's not something that happens overnight, but as people start spending money on AI, and we already have people doing that, but as they look to deploy it, they're also going to look to deploy the best security they can. It's going to be up to us to execute and obviously establish the differentiation between us and our competitors. That was a whole and part of why we did these changes, was to create opportunities for new logos and expanding our presence out in the marketplace, and obviously, ultimately grow at a higher rate than we currently do today.
Great. Since you brought up the go-to-market and the execution aspect, on those changes specifically, and clearly you did mention it created some disruption. We did already frame it in the Q1 product weakness, and a lot of accounting, or managers changing growth strategies. In terms of Q2 and second half, in terms of tying it to the product revenue and the services attachment, how should we separate out mechanical disruption from the go-to-market, versus potentially other factors, which you might or might not have seen so far, like supplier competition?
Yeah. I think when you look at the shortfall, it was actually the product side, and that's the execution, getting people into the roles, getting them familiar with their accounts, also getting the hunters that we brought on out there chasing after new logos. The subscription aspect of our revenues was tight. We didn't change the guidance on it. The real shortfall came on the product side. The hope is, we talked about this earlier in the month when I had the CRO and the CFO out, is where we were this time last year, our pipeline is actually ahead.
Now it's really about execution. In the second quarter, we said it was the most challenging of the three quarters of the year. We're cautiously optimistic at any opportunity for outperformance that we could have. Definitely, this is going to be the more challenging quarter, and the pipe continues to build for the second half of the year and believe that that opportunity is there for us to execute on. There again, it's going to be all about the execution.
Got it. Just to double-click into, you guys have implemented a 5% price increase, which is to offset some of the surcharges and the memory cost increases. You're not assuming much of that benefit in your guidance as of now, right? Is that all, again, tied to how you plan to straighten out the go-to-market execution, or in terms of how then sort of seasonality-wise changes from first half to second half?
Well, I think if you look, we had the 5% price increase at the beginning of the year on everything. April 1, we did a 5% increase on just the hardware only. We think that's sufficient for what we've seen as far as pricing pressure from memory and other parts of the BOM, whether it be storage or chassis, et cetera. We think we've covered that enough. It's really about execution and obviously with having the decreased guidance for the year, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. Right? As we said, we have a challenge in Q2, et cetera. It would be great if we are able to capture benefit out of any of the price increases that we've had. Again, it's all about execution. We'll take it one quarter at a time and go from there.
Got it. In terms of the execution, as you said, it's appropriately baked in and the way you framed the second half prudently and, as we think about the growth algorithm broadly, right? As you really layer in the go-to-market and the execution, and you guys, as you said, you have an enviable install base, which has been very sticky. Historically you have been under-penetrated new logos. Right? You did mention there's going to be this whole go-to-market is aligned towards that. Can you just give us some update because it's been a while in terms of how that's progressing or are you already seeing your install base starting to build a pipeline in terms of expansion motion and anything around new logos?
I think the key thing is what we've seen so far on the pipe building. We're very happy with that. We've seen some nice win backs and we've also seen some nice data center opportunities on the AI factory side. I would say, look, we're still cautiously optimistic going forward, but a quarter at a time. The way we implemented the go-to-market changes, we'll have more concentration on existing customers, fewer accounts per account manager. Their responsibilities will be solely around those accounts. They won't be chasing new logos, et cetera. That's what we have the hunters for. It's really a hunter-farmer mentality. I think the upselling and cross-selling with our specialist sales teams from the Workspace pillar, the CTEM pillar, and the AI pillar, that underscores that building pipeline that we have.
Hopefully with solid execution through the rest of the year, we'll be able to achieve the metrics we've stuck out there so far.
Got it. Very helpful. Shifting gears from execution into AI, as you brought up, it's exciting, and this is where your strategic story, as I said, can potentially change your growth profile, right? I mean, that's the main target. You've described AI as a watershed moment, right? Especially frontier models lowering the barrier for attacks and industrializing these attack pipelines. Can you give us some sense of how that has changed conversations with CIOs and CISOs, especially as it relates to, as you mentioned, CTEM, which looks like it's the most budget additive in light of that. Also other areas around AI.
It's definitely the highest growth pillar. I think you're right. AI and the implications around what the attacks can result in has really driven the CTEM pillar. If we go back to last quarter, we talked about year-over-year growth for it was 96% in ARR. It's significantly growing and achieving as we would've expected. It's a hot area in the market, and we don't expect it to cool off anytime soon. In fact, it will probably facilitate more of the AI pillar in making it into organizations. Definitely an exciting aspect of our sales approach. I would say when you look at the overall AI story, I think everybody's just scratching the surface. I think corporations are trying to figure out what they're going to do and how they're going to approach it. I think there's lots of opportunity that's out there.
What we've done with our go-to-market should actually facilitate much, much more success for us going forward than if we'd have left things stagnant like they were.
Got it. As I said, CTEM has definitely been top of mind for investors in our discussions as well, and just wanted to understand that mechanics a little better and, we've got a question coming in as well. Is it already unlocking new budgets on top of the existing security budgets, just given it's coming top down from board and CEOs, and how large can that opportunity be? I mean, in the past you've had email and we've had a couple other examples which are growing at scale, but CTEM seems uniquely positioned. Can you just explain a little bit?
I think I can't speak to whether it's unlocking new budget or taking budget, or absorbing budget from other areas. What I can say is that it sells itself. When they come in and they demonstrate what the report does and shows them the exposure they have, it pretty much sells itself. It's pretty amazing. I've sat down with our head of exposure management. You may recall him being at the Analyst Day last year.
Yeah.
Coming out and speaking about it just in this way. Now that we have other elements as part of it, the virtual patch aspects of the CTEM offering, it's made it even more compelling. I t's exciting, but I can't really speak to the budget because I don't know if it's taking, expanding, or what have you. But it's not like a deployment of firewalls. It's not that costly, and it's a subscription. It's something that I think they can find the budget for if they need to, is the type of sale it is.
Got it. Very helpful. Just switching gears to the AI defense plane, which is something that's been in the works for a while and spans the AI usage, AI applications, and now agents. Can you help us understand where is the revenue showing up already? Where is more earlier monetization happening? Yeah, clearly it seems like runtime protection, agent controls are moving up the priority list, but just curious what you're seeing.
I would say the revenues from AI factory or even the AI pillar from the LLM protections, et cetera, I would say at this stage, they're not visible in the revenues. When you look at the pipeline that we have for the second half of the year, there's definitely fuel for the fire there. As we execute and as we deliver the opportunity to see AI grow at the levels of a CTEM, and remember, we're growing off small numbers from CTEM from where it used to be. It's actually getting to be a more material number, whereas when you look at AI, it's still a very small number, but should be growing at an extremely high pace. That would be our expectation with the pipeline that we see for these products. It's early days, it's a great opportunity.
If you look at the revenue contributors in the unattached subscription, you obviously have the number one there, which is our email security, which we've been talking about. Email CTEM and SASE are growing north of 40%, and they make up a big portion of that unattached revenue. The contribution right now from AI is minuscule, but it has the opportunity to contribute at the levels that the others do, which is at a very high level at a very high pace.
Got it. One area within that AI, which was part of the Lakera acquisition, right? We've heard from as well, Lakera being one of the frontier AI security player. How has that integration progressed? When should we expect Lakera to start becoming more meaningful in terms of direct attribution of either bookings or revenue?
Remember that we have the AI pillar, which has those Lakera attributes, right? The LLM, the red teaming, everything along that lines. We have the aspect of AI that's been infused through the rest of the platform. Obviously, monetizing it through the rest of the platform comes in each one of those categories. The AI pillar itself is where you would start to see that revenue. Right now, small numbers, but with a pipeline that's building and continues to build. We think we have a real differentiation there, especially with the work they did early, which was building the Gandalf community, which really provides us a threat intelligence level that no other vendor has the capability of delivering, which is dealing with the runtime, the adverse prompts, et cetera, and being able to put those guardrails in.
We think we have a significant advantage or defensible position there, and we'll see where it goes. It was actually the most popular part of the booth when we were at RSA this year. People challenging the Gandalf game, trying to make it through the levels. It's pretty amazing and at the same time being a great game, it's contributing so much. We have over 1.3 million users to date, and it's been going on for over four years. It's not something that anybody else can replicate. I think it's a very nice opportunity for us going forward.
Great. Since you mentioned AI factory, it's relatively recent. You talked about the blueprint integrating with NVIDIA GPU servers, which is interesting adjacency to the core network positioning you have. How should investor really think about the AI data center opportunity? It looks like some of the other peers are starting to see much bigger size deals and closing and you know who I'm talking about. It seems like a rising tide, right? Across, you guys are great positioning globally, internationally. Can you talk a little bit about what's incremental there?
I would say, a couple of years ago when we first did the integration with the Bluetooth, the DPU with NVIDIA, people used to ask me, "When's it going to become revenue?" I used to say it could be a zero or it could be a hero. Well, today it's not a zero, but it's not a hero yet. I think we're in the early days when it comes to the AI factory deployments. We're the only ones that have that complete defense plane that spans from the DPU, providing surveillance with a NGFW. That's part of that, all the way out to runtime and app. We also don't instill any latency, which when you're looking at the GPUs, the last thing you want to do is create any latency in any security solution.
When we're doing it on the DPU in the way we are, and it's not detectable, the surveillance. It's unique in that way. It doesn't mean anybody else couldn't do it, but nobody else has yet. It's a unique position for us at this point. I think where we are in the AI factory discussion, as I said, we've had a number of wins. I think it's early days. I think it's early days for everybody. I think as we move forward, hopefully with the new sales force and the new go-to-market motion, we're going to see that be a highlight of our earnings calls in the future.
Just to tie in all the pieces that you described, and as you said. The subscription revenue guidance was unchanged, even despite taking down the total revenue, because that's where, let's say, investors are focused for evidence of re-acceleration. To bring all those pieces together, of course, there's refresh, there's the subscription service and attach. How would you characterize and frame the medium-term growth algorithm for you guys? It looks like everything is lining up well in terms of once you're past these execution challenges. Anything you can help us frame the growth algorithm.
I think the simplest way to say it is now that we have the go-to-market retooled in a way that can facilitate higher levels of revenue growth, because obviously key there is acquisition of new logos. That's something that's really escaped us. We've had them here and there, but to actually get them at a rate that's going to contribute to that top-line growth needs to increase over where it has been. We think our efficacy being a very big differentiation from our competitors and also the breadth and depth of our solution. We're not trying to be everything to everybody, but we are trying to be the best at wherever we do play. I think it's something we've always been recognized for is having the best products, the highest efficacy products. What we were always being criticized of is terrible sales and marketing.
I think it's something that we did demonstrate in the past, and I think under Nadav and the changes that have been made over the last 18 months, I think have been designed to alleviate that burden we've had from the past and change our focus going forward. Our goal is obviously sustainable double-digit growth and keep going from there. We need to take it a step at a time, and what we've done from a go-to-market standpoint is exactly what needed to be done for us to have that growth algorithm to get us to that next level. I think our pillars and all of our approach from an AI transformation standpoint for our customers, I think puts us in a unique position going forward. Hopefully we'll see data points in the coming quarters that show we're going in the right direction.
Great. I know we have just a minute left, but I wanted to sort of good segue into the broader margin philosophy. You guys historically have run one of the most profitable models in cyber. Now you're investing more aggressively. Of course, there's a big opportunity to go after AI security in the SASE CTEM. Just if you can help us understand what are willing to let margins sort of flex around, where you're not willing to compromise, just how to think about the margins framework.
First, I'd say the investments that we've made so far has brought us down to the level we're at, and it's not necessarily that we need to make any further investments. Hopefully, we'll see some benefit over time. However, when you look at margins, what are the biggest impacts today? The biggest impacts are FX, a weakening dollar against a strong shekel. The other aspect would be any M&A that we decide to do. If you look at the incremental decline in margin that we've had in the last couple of years, it's been primarily due to M&A that we've been doing, taking on more headcount, et cetera. Some of those investments, like the AI investment, are now positioned to start delivering revenue, where up until this point, it was primarily cost.
We have some legs for growth in the future, but our goal is not to expand our margin. Our goal is to grow our revenue. If margin comes with that growth and margin comes, that's fine. I would assume we'd reinvest it and for further growth. Our plan isn't to take margin down any significant portion or what have you. FX can have some impacts, et cetera, as I said. Other than that, we're focused on growth, and hopefully our go-to-market changes are going to take us there.
Great. Unfortunately, we're out of time, but I need to wrap. We are heading to the breakout session, so whoever have many questions to ask Kip, so feel free to join. Thanks.
Thank you.