Palo Alto Networks Should See ‘Continued Solid Demand’ For Hardware Firewalls: Analyst

Tariffs and government efficiency measures appear to have had ‘no impact whatsoever’ on major cybersecurity vendors, according to TD Cowen’s Shaul Eyal.

Palo Alto Networks is expected to maintain robust demand for its next-generation firewalls as it discloses its latest financial results next week, in what’s likely to be another indicator that White House trade policies and government efficiency measures are not hurting major cybersecurity vendors, according to TD Cowen analyst Shaul Eyal.

Cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks reports its fiscal third-quarter results on Tuesday, May 20, and “we expect to see continued solid demand for PANW's [hardware] firewall offering,” wrote Eyal, a managing director and senior analyst at TD Cowen, in a note to investors Friday.

[Related: Cybersecurity Vendors Expected To Be Resilient Amid Tariffs: Analyst]

Strong financial reports from firewall makers Check Point Software Technologies and Fortinet over the past month “further support our view that the market is in the middle of a firewall refresh cycle,” he wrote in the note.

This is noteworthy in part because of the Trump administration’s tariff policies and their potential to affect sales of hardware manufactured overseas, such as on-premises firewalls.

In an email to CRN Friday, Eyal said that increased tariffs and the federal Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative do not appear to be impacting firewall makers or other major cybersecurity vendors. In addition to Check Point and Fortinet, other security vendors that have specifically echoed the sentiment recently are CyberArk, Cloudflare and Varonis, he noted.

“Tariffs as well as DOGE have had no impact whatsoever [on the vendors],” Eyal wrote in the email to CRN. “It would seem that cybersecurity remains highly insulated given its mission-criticality.”

Likewise, Cisco Sytems’ latest quarterly results released this week point to the continuance of healthy security spending, he added.

Eyal also pointed to recent financial results from Flex, which is a major contract manufacturer for Palo Alto Networks hardware firewalls. Flex surpassed its guidance while reporting that its data center business had grown by 50 percent from a year ago, even amid a difficult year-over-year comparison and the tariff uncertainty, according to Eyal.

Meanwhile, during Fortinet’s May 7 quarterly call, executives said that geopolitical and economic uncertainties have not weakened customer demand, and that the vendor continues to expect a substantial revenue boost ahead from firewall device refreshes.