Analysts at Oppenheimer recently came out with some positive channel checks for companies in the cybersecurity space. Channel checks involve independent research that measures a company’s performance by surveying the businesses it works with, as well as its customers, to try to validate management’s forecasts and claims.
Two cybersecurity companies that stood out after these checks from Oppenheimer analysts were CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) and SentinelOne (NYSE: S). Let’s see what they had to say.
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CrowdStrike has long been the leader in next-generation endpoint security, and that momentum does not appear to have slowed down. The company is now well past the highly publicized IT outage incident that impacted it in summer 2024, and its revenue growth has gradually begun to accelerate throughout its fiscal 2026.
Oppenheimer, meanwhile, said that CrowdStrike had the best sentiment with its January and February channel checks, with the company’s VAR (value-added reseller) partners providing positive revisions to their expectations. It noted that CrowdStrike continues to do a great job of replacing legacy cybersecurity vendors, as well as with cross-selling.
One of the big drivers of CrowdStrike’s success coming out of its IT outage was the introduction of its Falcon Flex licensing model. With Falcon Flex, customers were given access to its complete cybersecurity product portfolio, but they could choose to deploy and pay for modules only when they were needed. It also gave away credits to customers impacted by its outage, which essentially served as a great way to introduce its newest next-gen artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to customers.
The one knock on the stock is valuation, as it trades at a forward price-to-sales (P/S) multiple of about 18 times analysts’ estimates for the next fiscal year (ending January 2027).
When looking at SentinelOne, one thing investors don’t need to worry about is valuation, as it is one of the cheapest endpoint security providers, trading at a forward P/E of below 4 times next fiscal year estimates (ending January 2027). Meanwhile, it’s growing its revenue quickly, with it seeing a 23% jump in both revenue and annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in fiscal Q3.
The cybersecurity company also received positive news with Oppenheimer’s channel checks. It said that its checks showed marked improvements versus earlier in the year, with most SentinelOne VARs ending 2025 above plan after being below plan for most of the year. It added that on average, partners reported high-20% growth for the calendar year and slightly raised their first-half outlooks for 2026. Partners also noted that SentinelOne’s Purple AI was the best autonomous security operations center (SOC) solution on the market, even better than CrowdStrike’s Charlotte AI.
