Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ:PANW) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

So across all of these people, we’re having a lot more engagement across customers. And these are long-term plays, but the good news is we show you that a few of these always land in the quarter, so we get a large 8-figure deals in a quarter. These are a consequence of these large transformation conversations would take between 3 to 10 months to germinate into real big deals. So I think the activity is still high. As I said on the margin, there’s scrutiny because people are saying, wait, this is a big deal, can we parse it out and adapt it to our budget. But we’re not seeing a reduction in conversation or activity.

Clay Bilby: Next is Fatima Boolani from Citigroup, with Mike Turits next.

Fatima Boolani: Happy birthday, Lee. My gift to you is I won’t be asking you a question. Nikesh and Dipak for you, is a commentary on the payment concessions and flexibility in light of a more challenged macro. I want to get a better sense of how pervasive these conversations have been for you in the installed base and maybe more directly what are some of the impacts debut at maybe you’re seeing from a deferred revenue mix standpoint and how we should think about invoicing duration and billings duration when we think about our cash flow trajectory in the context of some of those comments.

Nikesh Arora: So Fatima, let me give you context. I want to make sure I’m clear. So far, these are on the margin, okay? This is not mainstream. We do expect the activity to get more in that direction because you can see the Fed continuing to be on this mission to go steam growth, and we expect that’s going to cause more customers to pay attention. But let’s not — now as I said in my remarks, there are some industries which are making money hand over fist, talk to oil and gas. They’ve never made so much money. So the public sector continues to spend with all the geopolitical issues that are out there. And financials, they’re making more money, believe it or not. They’re fine. So there are certain segments of the market where these conversations are happening.

It’s not across the board. We don’t expect. I think 50% market is not feeling any pain with the interest rate increases. So take that aside, we take the rest of it — some of our budgets in place. They have transformation plans in place. So on the margin, yes, those conversations will increase. As you know, in anticipation of this, we built PANFS, we have a very good motion around providing financing. We’re sitting at $5.9 billion of cash. So we are able to finance our customers if they so need to be able to facilitate their transformation project. So the conversation happens between us or our third-party vendors, they’re able to go make this happen. I don’t know, Dipak, if you want to comment on the deferred billing and deferred revenue comment.

Dipak Golechha: I would say, Fatima, I think Nikesh explained it excellently. And I would just say everything is included in our guidance, like in terms of what we think.

Nikesh Arora: Couple of the flip side, as we’ve said, we have $5.9 billion in cash. Our entire interest income last year was $19 million. I think our Q1 interest income was twice that. So there’s the flip side of that.

Clay Bilby: Okay. Next is Michael Turits of KeyBanc and followed by Jonathan Ho.