Analysts at Piper Sandler reiterated an Overweight rating and $465 price target on Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) in a note Monday, telling investors that the company's security segment remains a "key growth vector with healthy secular tailwinds."
The firm estimates that Security has crossed over ~10% of sales with broad reach into approximately 1 million customers globally. They also note that Security has been further elevated into a top priority following two recent cyberattacks on Microsoft. The company has launched the Secure Future Initiative (SFI) and CEO Satya Nadella emphasized "prioritizing security above all else" in an internal memo to employees in early May.
Furthermore, after analysts at Piper Sandler met with Vasu Jakkal (CVP of Microsoft Security) and Jonathan Neilson (GM and CFO of Microsoft Security) at RSA last week, they came away with a greater appreciation for the Microsoft Security business.
"With the breadth of security portfolio across six unified families and vendor consolidation adoption drivers with up to 60% cost-savings vs. point solutions, MSFT appears well positioned to sustain growth in security," said Piper Sandler.
"Microsoft Sentinel alone has quickly scaled revenue to $1B+ since launching in 2019. The expanding scale of Azure, new Copilot offerings, and the 78 trillion security signals that it collects daily (vs. 8 trillion in 2021) could help further broaden security monetization longer-term."