We recently compiled a list of the 10 Best Cybersecurity Stocks To Buy According To Hedge Funds. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) stands against the other cybersecurity stocks.

The growth in internet use has made connectivity ubiquitous across the daily lives of businesses and individuals. It has also opened up more avenues for nefarious individuals or organizations to run financial heists, steal confidential data, or disrupt critical infrastructure and systems. The scale of these activities is staggering as well, with research outlining that as of 2021, cyber criminals caused a stunning $6 trillion in damages – an impact greater than all but the two largest economies in the world.

These threats have led to the growth of a vibrant cybersecurity industry which came into the spotlight of global media coverage in July 2024 after an outage affected an unbelievable 8.5 million computers worldwide. The outage shed light on the intricate nature of the global computing ecosystem as well as the risks that are present if security infrastructure has a single point of failure. While it’s too early to speculate on the losses, some estimates from insurer Parametrix show that insured losses could touch as much as $1 billion for Fortune 500 companies. As if this weren’t enough, the insurance firm’s CEO believes that the global impact could be several times higher. He estimates that the total financial losses could sit at $15 billion while global insured losses could range between $1.5 billion to $3 billion.

Looking at the scale of these losses, it’s only natural to ask, what caused the global cyber outage? Well, the problem started when a cybersecurity provider that was the third biggest cybersecurity company in the world, rolled out an upgrade for its Falcon security platform. This caused systems that used the Windows operating system to crash since the software upgrade included a corrupted file that works with the deepest level of a computer called a kernel. The OS showed the infamous blue screen of death, which is the software’s response to protect the user from damage to the kernel that can lead to a loss of data. The disruption lasted for quite a while too since all the systems affected by the update have to be manually booted into safe mode to remove the corrupted file before they can normally function.

Coming back to the financial side of the cybersecurity industry, like other sectors, it is also facing disruption through artificial intelligence. Research shows that the AI driven cybersecurity industry was worth $20 billion in 2023. From then until 2027, the sector is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25.3% for a final value of $49.2 billion. In other words, the industry is expected to more than double in four years. As for the costs of cybersecurity breaches, they’re also expected to grow from 2021 levels in the age of AI. These costs are estimated to sit at $8 trillion by 2023 end and jump to $10.5 trillion by 2025 end. The current era in the finance industry is marked by high interest rates, and they’ve made their impact on cybersecurity mergers too. In 2023, 363 M&A deals were announced in the cybersecurity industry, for an 18.8% annual drop.

Within these deals, strategic buyers, i.e. those that buy firms that align with their business strategies, accounted for 57.3% of the deals. Despite the lower number of deals, valuations remained robust. Between Q4 2020 and Q4 2023, average EV/Revenue and EV/EBITDA multiples in the cybersecurity M&A sector were 3.3x and 11.6x, which were higher than the broader averages of 2.1x and 10.4x.

Delving deeper, despite the tough business spending and inflation in 2023, cybersecurity stocks did post some returns. These came at a time when broader software as a service (SaaS) stocks were struggling due to corporate uncertainty about future spending plans. The Houlihan Lokey Cybersecurity Index, which tracks the performance of 28 top cybersecurity stocks, increased by 83% year to date by 2023 end and jumped by 28% during the fourth quarter. These returns were accompanied by a revenue growth of 18% and a stronger earnings growth of 29%, showing the benefits of operating in a high margin software industry which allows cybersecurity stocks to eke out more pennies on the dollar when it comes to profit. While the 83% returns of the index themselves mark a strong lead of 58 percentage points over the flagship S&P, this band widens when we further narrow down the top cybersecurity stocks to only include the high growth firms. Their last twelve month returns as of 2023 end were 101% for an even wider band of 76 percentage points.

Shifting towards valuation, like the broader SaaS industry, cybersecurity stocks are primarily evaluated through their enterprise value to revenue. The high growth cybersecurity stocks had a median EV/2024E Revenue ratio was 9.8x. For the medium and low growth stocks, the median ratios were 5.9x and 3.0x. respectively. Crucially, ratios for high and medium growth cybersecurity stocks were significantly higher than the EV/Revenue ratios of acquisition targets that we’ve shared above. This implies that as far as the current environment for cybersecurity acquisition goes, value seems to be driving at least some deals as businesses find it difficult to raise capital because of high interest rates. As for revenue growth percentage, the median values ranged between 33% for the high growth firms to 4% for the low growth firms.

Our Methodology

To make our list of the best cybersecurity stocks to buy according to hedge funds, we ranked the holdings of multiple cybersecurity ETFs by the number of hedge funds that had bought the shares during Q1 2024 and selected the stocks with the highest number of hedge fund investors.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)

Number of Hedge Fund Investors  in Q1 2024: 58

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is one of. the biggest and oldest networking equipment companies in the world. This has also allowed it to establish a foothold in the cybersecurity industry through providing products such as threat management, AI based security assistant, firewalls, and cloud security. Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)’s scale and its present market share of 41% of the global enterprise network infrastructure means that the stock is somehow defensive in nature in well. This diversity means that Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is able to weather slow enterprise spending in cybersecurity by counting on its hardware customer base to upgrade and maintain its infrastructure. This stability, which also limits the room for growth as Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO)’s trailing twelve month revenue is $55.3 billion, is also evident in a forward P/E ratio of 13.42.

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is also aggressively targeting the cybersecurity industry through its AI powered Hypershield platform and Splunk acquisition. Management shared details about Hypershield and Splunk during the Q3 2024 earnings call where it outlined:

“As I mentioned earlier, last month, we introduced Cisco Hypershield, the first truly distributed AI-native cybersecurity solution, which will be built into our networking fabric. This new innovation leverages the recently closed Isovalent acquisition to facilitate deployment in software and the first shipment is scheduled for August this year. This launch furthers our vision for the Cisco Security Cloud, which is expected to deliver the industry’s most comprehensive unified platform with end-to-end solutions, making it easier for our customers to protect against the threats of today and tomorrow. Our newest available security solutions, XDR and Secure Access continue to ramp quickly with strong customer feedback. Just last week at RSA, we also announced the integration of Cisco XDR with Splunk Enterprise Security, which will give our customers even more value and insights.

The closing of the Splunk acquisition in Q3 will also enable us to begin driving revenue synergies in our security and observability markets. Upon closing the deal, we identified 5,000 existing Cisco customers who have the potential to become meaningful Splunk customers and our sales teams are already making those connections. We also see significant opportunities for revenue synergies by leveraging Cisco’s robust partner and customer ecosystem in markets where Splunk had limited or no presence. Earlier this week, Splunk was ranked as the leader in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for security incident and event management, which is a testament to the strength of the offering and the continued business momentum that Splunk has delivered. We are working on rapid integration, investing in both product integration and go-to-market resources, starting with aligning our Cisco and Splunk sales forces and accelerating channel enablement processes for cross-selling and upselling our combined solutions.”

Overall CSCO ranks 5th on our list of the best cybersecurity stocks to buy. You can visit 10 Best Cybersecurity Stocks To Buy According To Hedge Funds to see the other cybersecurity stocks that are on hedge funds’ radar. While we acknowledge the potential of CSCO as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter timeframe. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than CSCO but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.