Palo Alto stock surges after 'unique' Friday earnings release: 'Clearly, we have enjoyed the attention'

Palo Alto Networks (PANW) stock rose more than 14% early Monday after the company's fourth quarter results topped Wall Street expectations, despite fears the company was planning to bury bad news with a Friday night earnings report.

"Our choice of Friday has definitely made us the topic du jour these past two weeks and has made for some very interesting reading of all the analyst notes," Palo Alto CEO Nikesh Arora told analysts during a conference call on Friday.

"We apologize to people who are inconvenienced, but as we had mentioned in our press release, we wanted to give ample time to analysts to have one-on-one calls with us over the weekend, and we have a sales conference that kicks off on Sunday.

"So again, we apologize for the unique Friday afternoon earnings call, but clearly, we've enjoyed the attention."

In early August, Palo Alto made a rare shift to announce earnings after the bell on a Friday, a move not seen by an S&P 500 company since Nike (NKE) in 2020. The stock had slumped nearly 20% on fears that bad news was coming from the company due to the adjusted earnings announcement date.

Palo Alto delivered fourth quarter revenue of $1.44 billion, above the $1.28 billion analysts had expected while the cybersecurity company projected full-year billings in a range of $10.9 billion-$11 billion. The Street had been expecting $10.77 billion.

These upbeat results may also bolster sentiment around the AI narrative heading into Nvidia's (NVDA) earnings, which are expected on Wednesday after the bell.

In a note titled "Flying over the firewall of worry" — a nod to timing-related concerns around the company's results — Jefferies analyst Joseph Gallo maintained a Buy rating and $285 price target on the stock.

"Results/Guide were much better than feared & PANW remains our fav platform benefitting from cyber consolidation & AI," Gallo wrote.

Several Wall Street analysts had worried bad news may be coming from a Friday announcement.

And the concerns could've been warranted.

As Wall Street Horizon's vice president of research Christine Short highlighted in Yahoo Finance's Chartbook, a late earnings announcement "typically signals negative news on the horizon."

Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives called the move "one of the biggest PR disasters and black eyes we have seen in decades of covering tech."

After the results and call came and went without disappointing news, analysts celebrated the beats and the company's artificial intelligence promise.

Meanwhile, UBS analyst Roger Boyd noted the Friday earnings date had his team fearing results could come in similar to fellow cybersecurity player Fortinet (FTNT), which is down nearly 30% since reporting disappointing results on August 3.

UBS cited industry partners who said Palo Alto had been "chasing deals" to the end the quarter in a fashion similar to Fortinet.

"While this is admittedly a small sample size, and you have to be careful not to extrapolate that comment or Fortinet's underwhelming results too much, we still think it's noteworthy, especially when you consider the unconventional timing of the earnings release on a summer Friday," Boyd wrote in an earnings preview on August 10.

Josh Schafer is a reporter for Yahoo Finance.

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