Cloudflare Inc (NYSE:NET) stock is trading upwards Thursday after Goldman Sachs analyst Gabriela Borges upgraded the stock from Sell to Buy and raised its price goal from $77 to $140.
Security stock performance in 2024 can almost entirely be explained by the extent to which the market believed each company was a platform quite than some extent product, as per the analyst.
Borges flagged two catalysts for Cloudflare stock in 2025, including an improving sales and marketing productivity cycle after two years of evolution to higher address platform sales within the enterprise and traction with Act III products for developer services as Cloudflare applies its core edge network architecture benefits to recent AI inferencing use cases.
The value goal boost reflects a jump within the multiple from 11x to 20x (Q5-Q8 revenue), raising the analyst’s 2026 revenue estimates by 2%, given his views on sales productivity and Act III.
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Borges modified his 2024, 2025, and 2026 EPS estimates to $0.75, $0.90, and $1.32 from $0.75, $0.86, and $1.12, driven by barely more margin expansion, marking the very best goal multiple in his coverage.
Borges downgraded Check Point Software Technologies (NASDAQ:CHKP) from Buy to Neutral and raised the price goal from $204 to $207.
The analyst highlighted 2025 as a 12 months of incremental investment for Check Point as its recent CEO evaluates growth priorities and the corporate ramps up its recent SASE products. Taken together, the analyst noted that EPS growth might be under pressure in 2025, and the stock typically tracks EPS growth. He noted a chance to grow to be more positive into 2026, because the path to 10%+ revenue growth and 20%+ EPS growth comes back into focus if Check Point successfully converts incremental investments into incremental revenue growth.
Borges compared Check Point to Software corporations with lower than 10% revenue growth and enough EPS to be valued using a P/E methodology. Relative to this peer group (median 2025 P/E of 17x), Check Point offers similar revenue growth (6% on Street estimates versus 6% for peers in 2025) but higher Rule of 40 (~47 versus 35).
The analyst also used the S&P 500 as some extent of comparison: The S&P 500 is trading at 22x 2025 EPS while offering ~10% EPS growth; relative to the S&P 500, Check Point provides similar cross-cycle earnings growth.
Borges revised 2024, 2025, and 2026 EPS from $9.10, $9.75, and $10.95 to $9.10, $9.45, and $10.65 to reflect an operating expenditure trend consistent with recent history and introduced 2027 EPS of $12.25.