Check Point Software Technologies Ltd

NASDAQ:CHKP

Earnings Call Analysis

Strong Q3 Results with Optimistic Guidance for Q4

In the third quarter, Check Point reported a 7% revenue growth to $635 million and a non-GAAP EPS increase of 9% to $2.25. Subscription revenue surged 12%, driven by strong demand for their Infinity platform. Despite some deals shifting from Q3 to Q4, a 3-point boost in billings is anticipated. Looking ahead, the company maintained its full-year revenue guidance between $2,475 million and $2,625 million and expects Q4 revenues of $675 million to $715 million, with EPS between $2.60 and $2.70. Additionally, the firm highlighted a growing pipeline of customer acquisitions across multiple sectors, especially in the Americas and APAC.

Resilient Revenue Growth

In the third quarter, the company reported a solid revenue growth of 7%, reaching $635 million, surpassing their projections by $3 million. The growth was driven primarily by its strong subscription services, which alone grew by 12%, contributing $277 million to total revenues. Calculated billings experienced a year-over-year growth of 6%, reinforcing the company's sustainable revenue model.

Strength in Key Offerings

A significant highlight was the Infinity platform, which showed continued strength with double-digit growth year-over-year, now constituting about 15% of total revenues. Additionally, the Harmony e-mail service reached over $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). The performance in these segments suggests a compelling demand and penetration in the cybersecurity market.

Mixed Geographic Performance

Performance varied across geographies, with the Americas generating 41% of total revenue but growing only 3%. In contrast, EMEA saw revenue growth of 7%, while APAC posted a strong 17% increase. Although the Americas showed good new business bookings, overall growth figures reveal potential softness in certain areas, possibly due to seasonal factors.

Healthy Financial Metrics

The gross profit margin sustained at 89% despite a 9% rise in operating expenses driven by investments in workforce and recent acquisitions. Non-GAAP operating income reached $274 million, and net income grew by 5% year-over-year, showcasing robust financial health across the quarter.

Guidance and Expectations for Q4

For the upcoming quarter, the company has provided optimistic guidance with expectations of revenues between $675 million and $715 million, and earnings per share (EPS) projected to range from $2.60 to $2.70. The anticipated acceleration in performance is partly attributed to deals that were deferred from Q3 and are expected to materialize in Q4, potentially benefiting billings by approximately 3 percentage points.

Investment and Strategic Acquisitions

The acquisition of Perimeter 81 was finalized at the end of Q3 to bolster offerings. This marked the tenth acquisition in five years, highlighting the company’s strategy of expanding capabilities and entering new markets, specifically in security operations. Executive leadership emphasizes that innovations and integrations will pave the way for future growth.

Challenges and Competitive Landscape

Despite strong overall performance, Europe faced challenges reminiscent of seasonality and competitive pressures. There were concerns regarding slower decision-making processes this summer, impacting revenue recognition. The competitive environment remains dynamic, with competitors displaying mixed results, yet Check Point continues to gain market share in key areas.

Long-Term Growth Potential

Looking ahead, Check Point's move towards SaaS and ongoing revenue from Infinity establishes a critical thrust for sustained growth. The management expressed confidence in the potential of Infinity to enhance growth trajectories, with notable customers increasingly adopting this platform, potentially leading to a 20% faster growth rate compared to non-Infinity clients.

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q3

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

I'm Kip Meintzer Global Head of Investor Relations, and joining me today are Founder and CEO, Gil Shwed; and Chief Financial Officer, Roei Golan. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the conference is being recorded and will be available for replay on our website at checkpoint.com. [Operator Instructions] During the presentation, Check Point's representatives may make forward-looking statements -- forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial or operating performance. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

Any forward-looking statements made speak only as of the date hereof, and Checkpoint undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements. In our press release, which has been posted on our website, we present GAAP and non-GAAP results, along with a reconciliation of such results as well as reasons for our presentation of non-GAAP information. If you have any questions after the call, please feel free to contact Investor Relations by e-mail at [e-mail]. Now I'd like to turn the call over to Roei Golan.

[Roei Golan, executive]

Thank you, Kip, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call. One moment, I'll open presentation -- can you see my on slide under. Yes. So can you see now.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

Yes.

[Roei Golan, executive]

Okay. Great. Thank you. Thank you. So we had a very good quarter. We'll start with the revenues and EPS. In the third quarter, our revenues grew by 7% to $635 million. $3 million above the midpoint of our projections. Our non-GAAP EPS grew by 9% to $2.25, $0.01 above the midpoint of our projections. So overall, very good results. Going into further into our revenues and our business. So as I mentioned, the revenues grew by 7%. Our subscription revenue grew by 12% to $277 million. The calculated billing reached $562 million, which represents 6% growth year-over-year, while our current calculated billings grew by 5% to $563 million.

The calculated billings this quarter was affected by several deals that were pushed from Q3 to Q4 that we expected them to close by September 30. I will push to Q4 and mainly in Europe and we do expect that this will provide us a benefit of approximately 3 points to the billing in Q4 as some of them were already closed in October, and the majority will be closed before end of the year. So that's, I think, important to mention regarding our billings.

As for the revenues, so revenues, as I mentioned, grew by 7%, that was driven mainly by product and subscription revenues that grew to $396 million. That's mainly driven from strong demand for our Infinity consolidated platform [indiscernible] that kept have this strong demand. And we did see also demand and we see the product revenue grew by 4%. So we see increase also in the demand for our appliances.

I mentioned the Infinity. Infinity had another great quarter. It continued to flow in accelerated way to the revenues. Another quarter with strong double-digit growth year-over-year, becoming more and more significant to our total revenues which now is approximately 15% of our total revenues. And we see more and more customers, existing customers and new logos that adopting our platform, answering their needs under one [indiscernible] products and services.

Now let's look at the revenue by GEOs. So America had -- in terms of revenues, America, consists 41% of our revenue then grew 3%. It is important to note that in terms of new business bookings, actually, America had a very good quarter, continued the first 2 quarters in 2024 with a double-digit growth in new business. EMEA revenues were up 46% of our total revenues and they grew by 7% year-over-year.

I mentioned already about the billing effect in EMEA. So it's also -- again, we did see some deals that were pushed from Q3 and Q4 in Europe. But again, and we expect that, that will be closed by the end of the year. And in APAC, we did see a 17% growth in revenues. Also in terms of new business, APAC had a very good quarter. So I think -- yes, so that's the revenues by geographies.

Moving into our P&L. So our gross profit was increased by 5% to $563 million representing 89% gross margin. Our operating expenses increased by 9% to $289 million. This is mainly as a result of our continued investment in our workforce organically and also the additional expenses related to -- with the acquisition of Perimeter 81 that we closed in the end of Q3 last year.

Our non-GAAP operating income was $274 million, while our net income grew by 5% to $255 million and the EPS was -- the non-GAAP EPS was $2.25, grew by 9% year-over-year. Our GAAP EPS was $1.83.

As for the cash flow and our cash position, so we had a very good -- we had a very strong operating cash flow. We closed the quarter with $249 million operating cash flow growth compared to last year. Our cash balances amounted to $2.9 billion, while also this quarter, we closed the acquisition of [indiscernible] and the net cash paid for this acquisition $186 million. Gil will have more about this acquisition in his slides. And we continue to do our buyback with -- we purchased through the quarter of $325 million of shares at an average price of $182 per share.

To summarize our financials. So again, revenues and EPS, both above the midpoint of our projections. Our revenues accelerated to 7%, mainly driven by strong Infinity and Harmony emails performance and another quarter with strong profitability, strong operating cash flow. So in general, again, a good quarter for us in Q3 and looking at for Q4. Gil?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Thank you very much, Roei. And I'm very excited to be here and share some of the insight on Q3, which actually was a very good quarter. So I think you already heard from Roei. Revenues, EPS, we were above the midpoint of our projections. I've looked at almost every financial metrics, and they all look pretty good. think we've mentioned the Infinity platform continued strong demand. The Harmony e-mail, which reached over $100 million in ARR, maybe speak more about that, which I think is something very good.

And I think what's more important is that we've continued to grow and continue to invest in additional area. So I think one area that's very important and a focus of this quarter is expanding our Infinity global services. That's a very important unit that we have over 3,400 customers, which is pretty big on that. And the main one and the main step that we did here was to get into the SOC market, the security operation with the [indiscernible] acquisition, which is all about freight intelligence and I'll expand what it means. It does show you that we are pretty consistent about making acquisition, expanding, trying out new things.

And I think actually you'll see even some examples actually, most of them actually work pretty well. So this is our tenth acquisition in just 5 years. Looking a little bit on customers. You can see that we continue to win deals. This is a combination of new customers, existing customers, but you see the names. These are impressive names of customers that allowed us to share their names, and you can see it from all over from the Deutsche Borse in Germany to Mayo Clinic in the U.S. to U.S. Department of State, which chose us to protect some of your most important assets of the United States, [ Porshe Infromatik ] in Germany, automotive Siemens, actually, this is Siemens America.

So you see customers embrace checkpoint customers like what we do. And this is reflected both in growing existing customers, winning new customers and winning in many different categories. In the last few quarters, we spoke a little bit about wins in the public sector, and that continues to be important. And you see here, over 40 countries, 65 new government agencies in the public sector, that's just from the third quarter, but it's not just public sectors, financial services, 40 new customers in 23 countries, health care, 28 new customers in 17 countries. And I think the list goes on in all in additional sectors just to demonstrate the positive success that I think we have and the potential that we have because I think these numbers can be much, much higher in the future.

I've talked a little bit about e-mail. And e-mail has been one of the most critical entry points for malware into organization. We protect the network, and I think -- and that's the most important element. But e-mail continue to be a vector, which is connected to the network, where malware getting to the organization. And we've realized a few years ago that it's experiencing quite interesting transition in the marketplace from on-prem e-mail to cloud-based e-mail and that's a big opportunity for us.

And that's where we acquired Avanan -- that's why we acquired Avanan to get into that space. And through that space, we became one of the fastest growing and providing the best security for e-mail. And you can see we've -- in 3 years, we've quadrupled this business. Our ARR now is way over $100 million. We are getting more and more large enterprise customers to buy into this platform and the pipeline is good and the field is very, very positive about that.

You can see high double-digit growth year-over-year, well over 50% growth in the amount of business that we do so this is something quite positive and quite good to see in our business, where actually our strategy works, the platform works and our acquisition work. So thanks for everybody that made that happen.

And this may be the next one, which I hope is going to be another example like that. And that's expanding our portfolio into the SOC into the security operations center. For us, I think it's very important strategically to get -- to be not just on the network, not just on the cloud, but also to be in the center with the SOC. And we found a very unique opportunity here, and that's the external threat management, external exposure platform.

So we acquire Cyberint in the mean to expand what we do. We have over 180 employees that just joined Check Point with Cyberint way over 200 enterprise customers with some very big names, Fortune 500, even Fortune 100 and I think even Fortune 50 names amongst the customer list, a fast-growing company, still relatively small, but I think very promising.

So what we actually do [indiscernible] scans the organization assets. It can be web servers that are all over the Internet, not just the main network. It can be the main network from the company. And it's mainly many, many other assets that we don't see. Like what people write about us in the dark web. What people write us on the -- not dark web, the open web. And there, there are amazing things you can find. For example, employees that lost their credentials.

So somebody has an information on how to get into our company because some employees forgotten user name and password. There can be many, many different resources like that hidden certificates, cloud keys. A lot of things that get kind of, I would call them lost, they're not all lost, sometimes they are being stolen, sometimes they are being manipulated because they were stolen from third parties, not from our employees, but from third parties and they find themselves into the dark web, and people can use them to attack us.

So what Cyberint does is content constantly scan our assets, our open web and the dark web. Find these kinds of vulnerabilities, checks them out and gives us the real time report of this is the things you need to close. Now all of that is an interesting market sector. That's what Check Point does because we always say that we are about the best security and we are prevention, not about reports. And that's what we want to create together with the Cyberint acquisition, turning it into actual prevention. So when we see that an employee credentials were compromised, if it's really were compromised credentials, we can lock down the accounts.

If we see maybe a server on the Internet, but actually imitating our company, that's, by the way, another asset that's [indiscernible] Companies that copy a company website and use that to treat their employees we have the ways to do takedowns. That's a very impressive operation that sometimes within minutes can do a takedown of malicious asset like that or impersonating asset like that.

We can -- in the future, we want to be able to turn on network security capabilities and many other capabilities to move that from here is a report, and here is more work for you, Mr. CSO to actually the opposite. Here is a report, and here is the 50 things we did for you in the last day in the last week in the last month, to close vulnerabilities, real vulnerabilities, not just potential vulnerabilities.

And I believe that's a play on triple different things. It's a play on managed services. It's a play on the SOC. It's a play working with the Czone.It's a play mainly for the platform and the collaborative security, how we demonstrate how we take different elements of the cybersecurity space and show that they can actually work together and generate more value.

So I'm very excited about that acquisition. We completed it, I think, on the last few days of the quarter, so we didn't have much financial impact on last quarter. But hopefully, in the next few years, it will have a bigger and bigger impact. And hopefully, we'll be here couple of years from now, and we'll be able to show similar results to the ones that we had with e-mail and the ones that we'll have on [ SaaS ] and a few other areas that I believe presents great addition to our platform and great growth potential for Check Point. So that's the Cyberint in acquisition.

And if I need to summarize, I think overall, we had very solid quarter, very good quarter. Revenues and EPS above the midpoint of our projection. Roei also mentioned that in the last few quarters, we are seeing -- this is the internal indicators that I'm seeing not just the revenues that you see outside very positive indicators in the Americas, in the U.S., which is the most important market.

So we are seeing some good signs there. Infinity delivers continued strength Harmony made exceeded the $100 million ARR, and we expanded our SOC offering and transforming security operation and threat intelligence through the Cyberint acquisition. So overall, I think that we had -- very good quarter, very proud of what our team did and even more excited about what the team can achieve moving forward.

So thank you very much. And I think before we open the call for questions, maybe a little bit about projections for the fourth quarter and for the full year. So for the full year, we are actually not changing our guidance within -- we're well within the range that we published before. Maybe I'll start with the full year. That's a little bit more complicated, but let's start with the complicated.

You see obviously that the range for the year has narrowed. The range for the year has went up. I mean, if we started the year from $2,475 million to $2,625 million in revenues. It's now on the right side of the center and the midpoint is rightsized on where we started the year. So I'm very proud that this year with all the things that we've done with all the changes, with all the challenges that some of the markets faced we sp far haven't faced too much of that.

We are not going to just finish at the midpoint, but finish above the midpoint, and that's true to our revenues, and that's true also to our EPS. We started the year with a broad range for EPS from $8.70 to $9.30, and we are going to finish it between $9.05 to $9.15, well over the midpoint that we started the year. And that actually you can calculate from that what's the range for the quarter.

But the range for the quarter is going to be very consistent with our original plans revenues $675 million to $715 million, earnings per share between $2.60 to $2.70 and GAAP EPS is expected to be approximately $0.45 less. You know my regular caveat, that projecting the future is always very challenging. High-level of uncertainty, results can be better, results can be worse.

But I do feel that we are getting into the fourth quarter with healthy pipeline, energetic workforce, a lot to offer, a lot of things coming not just in the sales pipeline, but in the product pipeline, new innovation, new acquisitions, and Q4 is going to be a very interesting and exciting quarter for us, and I'm looking forward to that. So thank you very much, and I think we can open the call for your questions. Thank you.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

As always, please keep your questions to one, if possible. And first up, we'll have Shaul Eyal, followed by Adam Tindle. Shaul?

[Shaul Eyal, analyst]

Gil, on the billings miss, I get the regional softness in EMEA given a typical sleepy quarter. Did you have any 8-digit contracts? Was it several 7-digit related transactions and maybe I can squeeze another one. Since you've announced that Doug replacing you, I don't know if you start in December, one of the prevailing views on the Street, at least that we've been getting, is that given the Doug's from VC background, Kaplan is likely to embark on an M&A spree, accelerating growth, mid-teens, lowering operating margins, mid-high 30s -- you've got to see the numbers out there. Interested in hearing your views along these lines.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

So it's 2 separate subjects. I would try to answer the billing thing. We are, by the way, not managing too much of the billings. We are becoming more and more sensitive of that because U.S. analysts watching that, we are trying to build a healthy pipeline of good deals. If we can give customers immediate billing, it's good if we can actually let them use the fact that we are not short on cash and give them a long-term billing, which lower billings.

It's also good for us as long as we get good healthy business, and I think that's what we are doing. We are more and more sensitive to that. I think Roei did mention that we had a couple of deals that slipped from Q3 to Q4, no impact on the financial results. This is deals that didn't impact the revenues or didn't impact -- didn't have much impact on the immediate results. It's actually should have come forward. And some of them already arrived in the beginning of October.

So I won't look at it as anything -- I hope it's not anything that indicating for something we should be aware of. And I think, overall, I'm happy with the results. About the transition, over the past few months, I'm working on a transition plan with Cyberint. It's working extremely well. I'm very happy about everything we're doing. I'm very happy about the potential.

I think we are going to embark on new expansion, new strategies, new things. But for the immediate term, I'm not expecting any major changes. I think we've done 10 acquisitions over the last 5 years. We're going to do some acquisitions. I don't think that our strategy now to be a mega acquisition that we wouldn't have done otherwise I think we want to keep our operational discipline.

And again, my focus was never on margin. My focus was always about how we generate good security, best security, healthy growth, profitable growth. I don't think that agenda is changing. And I think over time, Check Point will see changes, and I think that we're going to see very positive changes in Check Point because the Cyberint brings amazing energy and amazing skills that Check Point needs.

So I'm super excited about that, and I'm not -- and I don't think that at least in the short term, you're going to see any big changes. Long term, I think we want to -- we always want to build a better future and a better strategy.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

Next up is Adam Tindle, followed by Tal Liani.

[Adam Tindle, analyst]

All right. Gil, at the end there, you talked about how you're seeing internal indicators that we may not see as much from a reporting standpoint, but those internal indicators that you see are very positive. Wonder if you could expand on that. I know it's probably a little too early to talk about fiscal '25. But based on your guidance here, you're going to finish this year at about 6% growth, which is a tougher comparison -- but it sounds like those internal indicators are very positive. I wonder if that's a level that you might be able to hold in terms of growth on a future basis.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

So most of the -- first, I think if we look at the industry, we read that we all know that cyber -- need that we all know that network security remains the centerpiece of security. We all see the level of attacks rising. I don't think we mentioned it here, but on the last year, there's been like 57% growth in cyber attacks in the U.S. and almost all over the world.

And the attacks are becoming more sophisticated. So yes, we will need more cybersecurity. That's a macro. We've also been reading some reports about potential refresh in network security and the reinforcement of the importance of network security, but that's a little bit about macro. Within Check Point, I don't have any strong indications for 2025. For Q4, First, I'm always careful. And this quarter, in particular, there are so many moving parts in Check point.

So I would be a little bit careful. But we started the quarter with healthy pipeline. Pipeline that justifies the projections that we give. And so I'm -- what I'm saying, I'm seeing some good positive energy. I think that the U.S. market is always the best indicator and the most important market.

The last few quarters have been quite positive on the deal flow that we see in the Americas, and that's great. I don't know if you remember, but we've also had management changes in the leadership of our Americas organization and so on. It's not coming in a vacuum. And it's too early to say if that organization is going to rise next year to its full potential, which is much higher but at least seeing 2 or 3 quarters that the U.S. performs well, it's actually a very good indicator that shows that I hope that we are taking market share, gaining customers and fighting where we need to fight.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

Next up is Tal Liani followed by Joseph Gallo.

[Tal Liani, analyst]

Sorry, I need to whisper it because I'm in a public space. First question is what's your position on vendor financing. We've seen other companies in the space being more aggressive on vendor financing and providing financing to customers. The second one is more strategic. Roei, you spoke about double-digit growth for a while and the ability to get to double-digit growth. But the beat, you're beating the numbers, but the beat is very dismal. It's very minimal.

And the question is, what needs to happen. You have so many products and so many acquisitions and so many refreshes. And what needs to happen for you to break this mid-single-digit growth kind of rate and get to sustainable double-digit growth.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Okay. Do you want to start, Roei?

[Roei Golan, executive]

You'll start.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

So I'll start to now with the double digit, the second question that you had around the double digits. So -- when I was asking, I mean, been asked about it -- we've been asked about it for a few quarters. I think that what we've thought that in order to be in double digit, I think we are positioning today much better to accelerate our growth than what we've been in the past. And because we -- first of all, we did some very significant investments. The last 1 that we did, not the last 1 because the last mine cyber, but we did a significant acquisition of Perimeter -- we expanded also. We have a totally new SAS offering. We invest a lot, both on R&D side, on the go-to-market side. We told -- we said that it's going to take a bit time that we're going to see to have a significant effect on our business.

But definitely, -- that's one of the main agents that should be -- should drive us to accelerated growth and more than what the mid-single digit that you mentioned. And, Infinity, Infinity, we are seeing that through Infinity, we see more and more customers that are taking not only the firewall, not only the network security Quantum, they are buying more of our products.

They are using, first of all, the e-mail security. Many of these customers are taking in the Infinity, the Harmony e-mail. We are starting to see in the last few quarters also customers that are taking the [indiscernible] So I think, again, it's something that that's the -- that's how we should -- I mean that's the main driver that should bring us to accelerated growth.

The second question, again, what was the -- the first one that you asked?

[Tal Liani, analyst]

Vendor financing.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Financing. So actually, again, it's -- we are -- I mean, we're talking a lot about Infinity. The thing with Infinity is the flexibility also that - that we are providing to our customer, the flexibility, it's not only about when they are using their allowances and when they are taking -- when they're using it lasts also around the billing terms. So we have -- we've seen more and more Infinity agreement that there are some flexibility. There are some bidding terms that are more flexible.

I don't want to call it financing, but they are much more flexible than a standard deal. So we don't -- we don't see, we don't do any financing. But again, we are providing, I think that with our cash position today and the strength of our balance sheet, we definitely can be more flexible in terms of billing terms, and that's what we are doing today, mainly with Infinity. So -- so that's -- that -- that's my answer for that.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

Next up is Joseph Gallo, followed by Brad Zelnick.

[Joseph Gallo, analyst]

Maybe a follow-up on the Perimeter 81 comment. How are you tracking towards having that fully integrated in 4Q. How is the pipeline building there? And then when you talk to customers, what is the willingness, particularly in the high-end enterprise, what is the willingness to eventually adopt that [ SASE ] solution? And when can we expect that to happen?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

We're actually seeing some positive traction in Perimeter 81. If you remember, we started a year ago. I think it's a very important element for our network security platform to have a SaaS cloud-delivered security as part of the platform. We started and we are selling it for the last year. Sales are going fine, and we started by integrating. So first, I think we are doing fine on the integration time line. Second, I think last quarter, we've seen some Q3, we've seen some nice jump in the amount of quarterly sales, and that's a very positive indicator.

It's still small, so I'm not pointing it as you know the big thing or the big achievement. But when you have sales growing in a few percent every quarter and then double-digit growth, I'm talking sequentially, it's a very positive change trend, which means that it's picking up. And for Q4, we have a few 7 deal digits on that SaaS platform and other way to connect to us.

So overall, there is all the reasons to be optimistic about that. And hopefully, we'll be able to even accelerate some of the things we are doing. But that's my job as CEO is to ask everybody to accelerate their job is to do the best possible that we can and I think we're doing a good job there.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next up is Brad Zelnick, followed by Rob Owens.

[Brad Zelnick, analyst]

Maybe just to start with you, Gil. It's good to hear that you expect next quarter to see 3 points of benefit to billings growth, which comes from deals that slipped out of the quarter. I think it's more like 5 points of growth if they hadn't slipped from Q3. But naturally, deal slip every quarter.

Is there anything specific to checkpoint, the environment or competitively that explains for these deals slipping when you think about and do your root cause analysis. And maybe for Roei, we continue to hear the success that you're having with Infinity contracts and recurring revenue products like Harmony and CloudGuard, as these continue to contribute more to the mix and what sounds like even exceeding your own internal expectations, what impact is that having on the model? And how should we think about that going forward?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

So I think overall, we had a pretty positive quarter. I've looked very in-depth to analyze the quarter. And we had many regions in the world where we had some very good results. And we have a few regions in the world where we had some softness. Again, I'm talking about 2 and 3 levels beyond the big geos, even within geographies.

In Americas, there as some areas -- they did extremely well, but we are in some areas that will be soft overall, Americas, U.S. was excellent for us last quarter. For example again, I'm talking about the internal indicators. So it's a similar case in other territories. I think Europe in Q3 is always a challenge. On one hand, we do get business continued. But on the other hand, it's very hard to change things install bottlenecks in Europe in the summertime when many people are on vacation.

So I think in Europe, we've seen some of that softness. Overall, as I said, I think we had a pretty decent result. When I look competitively, I think we're doing fine. We're -- I think we are winning. We are seeing more. If I looked at the last few quarters, our growth in key indicators like product and billings were very good.

So clearly, by the way, I'm talking all the time about cyber and cyber growth. And I think cyber is one of the healthiest sectors that we have. But we've clearly seen in the last 2 or 3 quarters, weakness of some of our competitors. I hope that it's not a long-term reflection. I hope it's maybe a result of other things. But I think that compared to that, we are actually gaining share in the core markets and that's a positive thing.

Obviously, like every time, I would like to see more growth in the market overall and more growth for Check Point.

[Roei Golan, executive]

And then for your question, Brad, around the mix. So we definitely see that the [indiscernible] then e-mail which getting them in growing very significant. We just disclosed that we exceeded the $100 million ARR higher than $100 million ARR and definitely, it's becoming more and more significant of subscription revenues. So this, together with the SaaS that we expect that will be more significant to us mainly from 2025 after we're going to complete the integration. I think that's definitely to drive our growth and should drive the subscription revenues grow.

And I think that's what we see, and we have to see the momentum with the e-mail continues and with the other products, SaaS accelarating.

[Brad Zelnick, analyst]

Roei, I think you also was trying to acquire about timing with hardware around Infinity contracts and things along that line.

[Roei Golan, executive]

Okay. So Also, it's something that is reflected in our guidance. I have to say, what's going on with Infinity today that Infinity is becoming, I mentioned 15% of our total revenues. In some quarters, even in the product, it can be even higher in the product revenue with the product revenues related to Infinity, that in standard deal when we were selling appliances, so usually, it's -- we're getting the order and it's being delivered, the revenues recognized close to the -- when the deal -- when the order is received.

In Infinity, they have the flexibility they are buying allowance -- they are not buying it kind of -- we're building them for allowance for example, for one year, and they have the flexibility whenever they want, we you to pull that out to utilize the allowance. And then only we can recognize revenues. So because the Infinity is becoming more and more significant to the product revenues, we have less in terms of -- when we are having orders that are being recognized immediately, so that's it's easier to predict.

But when we have orders that are full that in the control of the customer want to utilize it. So there is some kind of volatility that can have around the product revenue and when it will be recognized because we cannot recognize revenues on product when they are buying allowance, on the allowance. We can recognize only when we deliver the product.

[Brad Zelnick, analyst]

Great to see you.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next up is Rob Owens, followed by Roger Boy.

[Robbie Owens, analyst]

Gil, in your prepared remarks, you did talk about new customer acquisition across different verticals and geos. And I guess the question is, are you seeing an inflection relative to new customer acquisition. It's not something you guys have called out recently. And with those new customers, where are you landing with wet products? And who are you displacing?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

It's a good question. I think it's across the board. Obviously, most of the new customers are still network security customers, which is good because that's the core market and that -- where we have the highest potential to gain share. We do have e-mail as a great entry point to win some new customers, and in many cases, we want to grow it into other products as well. There's a few other examples, I think, well, on the SaaS side, there's also some area that we are winning some customers. So I think all of them exist.

But having said all of that and even looking at the model and saying, we got this e-mail business, it's great to acquire a new customer and then we can cross-sell it and upsell to it, that's great. Still, the vast majority even of new customers is our core network security customers, and that's, I think, a very positive thing

[Robbie Owens, analyst]

Great. I guess the spirit of the question then, so where are you seeing displacement? Who do you think you're taking share from in the core network security?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Let's -- I think we're taking share from all our competitors, but it's still, I think, in very small numbers that I don't think I don't want to brag about that. I think we can do in the future. I think, by the way, I'll give you an example. Some of the largest customers, they adopted policies that says we're working with dual vendors.

And for both security reasons, business reasons and many other reasons, adopted the strategy when they are buying from 2 different vendors. I think we're seeing in some of them that new orders are coming to us. After a few years, they try to balance it and maybe give some more orders to competitors to kind of balance the account and have a competitor with a presence in the account.

Now if they get to choose who gives them the best value, who gives the best security, we are buying more and more Check point. So I've seen a few examples of customers that are good loyal long-term customers that haven't purchased new products from us for 2 or 3 years and suddenly buying again more from us and growing with us. So that's a positive thing. I'm trying to think about more examples, I think we're seeing it all over. It's not the usual names.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next up is Roger Boyd followed by Hamza Fodderwala.

[Roger Boyd, analyst]

You continue to talk about the importance of building around the SOC and IGS with XDR and MDR continues to sound like it's doing well. You've now added cyber into the platform. some of your key competitors have been a little more aggressive in their push into the SIEM and security analytics market. So just wondering your perspective on that and given all the disruption in the SIM market, why not go after that a little more directly.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

To be very honest, I think first something we're looking at. We are trying to see what can be done and so on. I'm not sure that at this point, we have a real good opportunity to be a leader in SIM based on the technology that we have based on the players that exist based on the technologies based on the cost structure, yes, there are some maybe inflection points in that market and changes and AI can change things but it's not a simple entry point. So we are there.

We are playing a little bit with that with XDR and a few other technologies but I'm not sure that that's the market we should grab right away. Of course, if we will find some breakthrough internally or externally that can change. But at this point, I don't think that's our major growth. But again, I think the cyber into can be a very brilliant entry to the SOC with kind of something that I think has a unique value proposition and can prove to be valuable in a very short period of time.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

Was there more to your question? Okay. Next up is Hamza Fodderwala, followed by [indiscernible]

[Hamza Fodderwala, analyst]

Great. Gil, I had a question for you regarding just network security architectures in general. So network traffic has gone up by some measures, 20% plus since COVID. You launched new appliances earlier this year. We're seeing healthy growth again in the product revenue. I'm curious as enterprises are considering refreshing some of that hardware -- how long do you think this refresh can last, especially as some organizations are looking to remain hybrid and maybe on-premise for longer than we thought a couple of years ago.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Obviously, it's taking longer than I want it to happen. I think we are seeing a healthy refresh cycles. We are getting them. We are winning them. I would have liked to see more of that coming in faster. And I think our new product line is definitely something that can show that.

I mean we have more bandwidth, more capabilities everything to accommodate that growth in network traffic. We have our clustering technologies and our Maestro hyperscaling technology. So I think we are very well positioned to win a bigger share of it and to do it faster. I think, as I mentioned before, as much as I'm optimistic about our result -- positive about our results optimistic about the future.

I think we had a year that the year wasn't all green for everyone. Let's put it in a careful way. this year so far. So the fact that we have growth in products and so on is actually a good indicator in the ideal here, I would like to see much higher growth based on where we are.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next up is Shyam Patil, followed by Gabriela Borges.

[Shyam Patil, analyst]

I had a question just on the go-to-market and, I guess, specifically the channel partner program that you guys launched at the beginning of the year. Just curious kind of how that's going, how that compares to kind of what you expected? And just kind of any feedback so far on that.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

I think we're getting very good feedback from everything I hear from our channel organization. We just completed a few channel conferences in different parts of the world. And I got only positive feedback. I don't know that it has any material big impact on the results so far. But I think the sentiment from the channel is definitely becoming better and better, and the feedback is all positive.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next up is Gabriela Borges, followed by Saket Kalia.

[Gabriela Borges, analyst]

I want to follow up on some of the opportunity that you might have with the embedded DPU chips with NVIDIA as we get closer to some of the as we get closer to the shipment date. How are you thinking about some of the business models that you could be deploying to be able to monetize that opportunity?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Think it's something we talked about. I don't remember it was in Q1 or Q2 or the beginning of Q2, I think. That's a huge opportunity to go and secure the hyperscalers of AI and to be on the AI hardware infrastructure. It's in the very beginning of things. We're just starting to build some senior sales leadership to focus on that. We are working with NVIDIA and our AI hyperscalers to get that out. It's too early to say what impact will it have and how big is the potential, but I think it's a very unique value proposition that we have and something that the world will definitely need.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next, Saket Kalia, followed by Joel P. Fishbein Jr.

[Saket Kalia, analyst]

Okay. Great. Roei, maybe for you, I think we talked about Infinity being about 15% of total revenue, and that's clearly growing a lot faster than the overall. But I guess I'd love to talk about the other 85% a little bit. And maybe longer term, as you think about this model in the future, Infinity is clearly going to become a bigger mix.

But the question is, is that going to come at the expense of the other 85%? Meaning, can the 15% and 85% both grow together? Or can -- or does the 15% -- does -- from in an absolute dollar terms, does that 85% need to go down over time? Does that make sense?

[Roei Golan, executive]

Yes. So it's a good question. So I think definitely, it can go together. It definitely can grow together. I can tell you that what we see with Infinity that Infinity is driving the growth. I mean it's driving growth. So we see that more customers that are adopting Infinity, we see more greater than what we see that customers are not adopting thing. It doesn't say that the customers that are in the other 85%, we don't see any growth.

For example, we just mentioned Harmony e-mail. Harmony e-mail. Of course, there is a portion that is part of Infinity, but there is a portion that it's just sold stand-alone and it's growing very fast. Same thing with other products. So it's -- so again, it can definitely grow along. I think that our future will be Infinity. I mean we we're seeing -- we think that in the end, this 15% will grow every quarter that you're going to see more and more, you're going to see that more significant -- that Infinity would be more significant to our business every quarter.

And -- and I think that's the future of -- and again, that's the platform. That's the future of Check Point. That's what will drive the growth that we are looking.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

I will maybe jump in and saying that when I measure the success of Infinity, there's 2 things. First, how many people move to the platform and deploy more technologies and get to commit to us for longer term. And then are they actually growing because converting an existing contract with an Infinity to an Infinity contract, when you get no growth is not -- it's good from a commitment to technology, but it's not driving that.

And overall, our infinity customers are driving high growth. I think on the average, last time I've checked, it's not in the last quarter. Infinity customers, we're growing 20% faster than non-Infinity customers. So -- if I took a group of customers, day 1 and then 2 years later with Infinity, with existing contracts, they were kind of stable with Infinity, we grew by 20%. And that's why we still think that moving customers to Infinity is good, not just from a technology standpoint, but also from the value that we provide and the value that we get.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right up is Joel P. Fishbein Jr. followed by John DiFucci.

[Joel Fishbein, analyst]

Just a quick question. At CPX '24, you really spoke a lot about the SNAP market. how integral is [indiscernible] to gain traction in this move to double-digit growth? And can you elaborate on where you think you are in that market?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

I think we started the year with challenging conditions in the cloud market. I think we've -- the last 2 or 3 quarters actually have been far more positive in terms of growing the overall cloud business. Still, I think the judgment is still out. What's the potential that we have, which areas will we win? Will it will be more cloud network security or more SNAP on that. I think we did a very good job in modernizing our [indiscernible] product I've looked -- I did a deep dive into the product a few weeks ago, and I was very impressed with what we got.

I compared it to competitive product. And I thought that we should be very proud of what we have -- still having said all of that, there is a big long road to get the maximum potential for us at [indiscernible]. And there is a good question, which I don't know the answer, whether we should focus more on SNAP or more on other cloud technologies to win and provide value in the cloud space.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next up is John DiFucci followed by Ben Bollin.

[John DiFucci, analyst]

Gil, questions for you. You said yourself that Europe is always soft in the quarter. Was this more than usual? And if so, what caused that? You mentioned some struggles of some of your competitors. Are you implying softer demand for network security in general? Or is it more incremental macro softness than you expected in Europe? Or is this simply an execution issue for those deals that slipped on the part of Check Point?

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Frankly, I don't have the full answer. I don't want to mislead. Last quarter, for example, even though Europe is usually weak in Q3, we won some giant deal in Europe, which made this a tough compare. I'm not using that as an excuse and I didn't open with that because I think -- the fact that we have a large deal last year means that we should have had 2 this year and not just repeat the same thing, but that's made it a little bit tougher compare for Europe, for a specific country from last year when we won giant deal in the third quarter.

I don't have any strong attribution. I do see some weakness with the competitive market and some competitors that are struggling, that were struggling, again, I don't know about this quarter, I know about previous quarters. So I don't have all the good answer. At the end of the day, I think we finished the quarter in a very positive way. Healthy numbers, all the financial numbers are right. We are tracking with orders that we think we're slipping or are being won in the fourth quarter.

And so far, it's going well. We even had some large quarters from Q4 that arrived earlier in the quarter, which is always a good indication because -- now usually, you always expect a deal is always arrived in the last minute. So we've just seen a couple of deals that arrived ahead of time, which is a positive indicator. Overall, I think we gave our projection for fourth quarter, taking all the different elements into consideration.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Next up is Ben Bollin followed by Andrew Nowinski.

[Benjamin Bollin, analyst]

I'm interested in how the current guidance the framework thinks about budget flush opportunity in 4Q of this year versus prior years? And then an additional item. Just any thoughts on how competitive landscape might be influencing the duration of sales cycles or close rates?

[Roei Golan, executive]

So as for the , the guidance -- the midpoint of the guidance didn't take into account any significant budget flush that will be in this year. I remind you that 2 years ago, I think it was -- we didn't see any budget factor something that we didn't see in the past year ago, we did see a bit more budget flush than 2 years ago. This quarter, again, we do expect some budget flush, but not significant. It didn't take into account.

We didn't take into account significant budget bashing in our guidance. And the other question was around the sales cycle and duration Ben?

[Benjamin Bollin, analyst]

Yes. How competition bundling, discounting might be influencing the length of the sales cycle and your thoughts on close rates?

[Roei Golan, executive]

So we did -- when I'm looking on and something that we are monitoring all the time, the close rates, where we are looking on the close, we didn't see any significant change in the close rates. I mean, in the end, the closed rate. I mean, I'm not talking about the specific these that were [indiscernible] from pushed from Q3 and part of them already closed in Q4.

We're talking about in the close rate in the quarter, we didn't see any significant change. The sale cycle, again, nothing special that we've seen this quarter that it's longer than in previous quarters. Again, it really depends on the deal on the customer. Of course, Infinity is something -- usually, it's -- it's a multimillion dollar deal, so it involved more [indiscernible] can take longer, but nothing that is unique that we've seen this quarter.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

Next up is Andrew Nowinski followed by Patrick Colville.

[Andrew Nowinski, analyst]

So I want to ask about billings again. So in Q2, you had a few large deals, I think, pay upfront, which boosted your billings growth by 1.5 points. And then if you normalize this quarter, if you normalize the deals that pushed out, our growth actually would have accelerated, I think, from 8.5% to 11%. And -- so I'm wondering, how do you think about the growth rate in Q4, the normalized growth rate given the positive trends we've seen from Q1 now to Q2 to Q3, a continued acceleration in your billings growth.

[Roei Golan, executive]

So we don't provide any you know that we don't provide any guidance around billing. I can do -- I can say that based on what we're looking on the funnel, based on our what we see also on the expectation around the billing. Again, the billing should expect it because of the benefit, first of all, we do see strong pipeline not related even to the slip deals.

We are seeing strong pipeline for Q4. Second, we do going to have -- expect to have a benefit that what I mentioned about the slip deals from Q3 so I think we're going to -- again, we don't provide any guidance, but we definitely expect and anticipate based on the funnel that we see today. And again, we need to be cautious because it's funnel. We do expect to have a strong quarter in Q4.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Our next step is Patrick Colville followed by Gregg Moskowitz who will probably be our last question of the day.

[Patrick Edwin Colville, analyst]

All right. Roei, I guess I want to ask about the guidance. So nice to see the guidance raise at the midpoint. I know your checkpoint don't guide line by line. but should we expect, if everything goes to plan in 4Q a sustained re-acceleration in the product line and then I guess just as a tactical question in terms of the inorganic contribution from [indiscernible] in 4Q, can you just give us some kind of guidepost on that one?

[Roei Golan, executive]

Yes. So -- right now, as I mentioned, the product -- I mean, again, we don't disclose the separation between the product and the other line items in the revenues, but we do expect another good quarter on the product. We see a very good pipeline for the appliances for demand in appliances. I have to say that a significant portion of this pipeline for the product is coming from Infinity deals. So there is some kind of -- I don't want to call it a risk, but there is some kind of a situation that it won't be recognized this quarter.

It will be recognized in 2025. So there is -- so therefore, we are providing a guide. So I think that the guidance is wider in Q4 because it's significant -- we have a significant product revenues usually in Q4. And with Infinity, that's the main risk that we see today.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Patrick we need the deals but recognizing the revenues like for an annuity business model, growth business model is good. But for the short term, we are transitioning more and more on the business model to deferring the revenues on that.

[Roei Golan, executive]

And Patrick, the second question that you had, again?

[Patrick Edwin Colville, analyst]

Congrats on the [indiscernible] acquisition, a nice to post of the portfolio. Can you give some guide rails around if there's going to be any inorganic contribution.

[Roei Golan, executive]

Yes. So [indiscernible], we bought [indiscernible], they had already nice ARR that we acquired them. Again, we don't expect it to have a significant effect on Q4. I would say less than one point less than 1% of our total revenues in Q4.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Our last question of the day is going to come from Greg Moskowitz.

[Gregg Moskowitz, analyst]

Two quick ones. First, I apologize if I missed it, but Roei, RPO, I know it grew 10% last quarter, in Q2, obviously, this quarter, you had some slip deals, so I'm sure that had an impact. But what was the RPO growth in Q3? And then secondly, a follow-up on [indiscernible] since it did actually closed just before the end of the Q3. Are you able to clarify what that added to deferred revenue?

[Roei Golan, executive]

Yes. So first, around the RPO, RPO actually grew by 8% in Q3. And on the [indiscernible] yes, there is -- there was no effect on the P&L side on [indiscernible] because it was closed in the last few days of the quarter. it is, I think, less than 1% of -- I think in total, it has approximately 1.5 points on the calculated billings that you are seeing.

[Kip Meintzer, executive]

All right. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us today. I'm sure we'll be talking to you throughout the day and throughout the quarter. We look forward to seeing you guys at the year-end in January. Have a great day.

[Gil Shwed, executive]

Thank you very much, everyone.