Israel's Check Point says cyberattacks rising, sees higher profit

Israel has seen a jump in cyberattacks since the Oct. 7 raids by Hamas, but Check Point Software Technologies has continued to operate as planned despite the ensuing war and expects higher annual profits than previously thought, it said on Monday. Gil Shwed, CEO of the Israeli-based company, said 98% of its customers were outside Israel and it had successfully launched new technologies and completed acquisitions.

"Over the past three weeks our employees proved that despite sirens, reserve military draft of a few - around 5% of the entire headcount - we can continue and operate as planned, uninterrupted," Shwed told analysts on a conference call. Shwed said Check Point's data showed that since the Oct. 7 attacks there had been an 18% rise in cyberattacks in Israel, with 52% against the government sector.

Check Point earlier beat third-quarter profit forecasts, boosted by double-digit revenue growth in subscriptions for its platform that prevents attacks across networks, mobile and the cloud. The company earned $2.07 per diluted share (EPS) excluding one-off items in July-September, up 17% from $1.77 a year earlier. Revenue grew 3% to $596 million.

It was forecast to earn $2.02 per share on revenue of $591.5 million, according to LSEG data. Shwed said a year ago companies were keeping their existing firewalls for longer rather than updating them. But now, that has changed.

"The last quarter clearly shows that we are in a very good trend of a positive change. I'm actually quite positive about the business trend that we're seeing," he told a news conference. As a result, Check Point raised its 2023 adjusted EPS estimate to $8.20-$8.40 from $7.70-$8.30 and tweaked its revenue estimate to $2.387-$2.437 billion from $2.340-$2.510 billon. Analysts had expected EPS of $8.16 on revenue of $2.41 billion.

For the fourth quarter, it sees revenue of $636-$686 million and adjusted EPS of $2.35-$2.55, above analyst estimates. Check Point said it bought back 2.48 million shares in the quarter, worth $325 million, as part of its ongoing $2 billion share buyback programme. During the quarter it paid $490 million for cyber firm Perimeter 81.