Not every occasion requires fireworks.
That may be hard to believe, given how people set off rockets, Roman candles, firecrackers, and sparklers for July Fourth, New Year’s Eve, birthdays, weddings, festivals, sporting events, religious holidays, military victories–and don’t even get us started on gender reveal parties.
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People have been setting off fireworks since the Second Century B.C. when bamboo stalks were tossed into a fire so that the resulting explosion would ward off evil spirits.
Americans spent about $2.3 billion on fireworks in 2023, reflecting a significant increase in spending during the pandemic due to limited public displays.
The Church of Christ in the Philippines reportedly set the world record for the largest fireworks display in 2016, where 810,940 fireworks were launched over a period of 1 hour, one minute, and 32.35 seconds.
So, yes, people do like to blow stuff up. But sometimes you can mark an event without the rockets’ red glare or bombs bursting in air.
Take Palo Alto Networks (PANW) , for example.
The Santa Clara, Calif-based cybersecurity company is scheduled to report second-quarter results on Feb. 13. One analyst expects to hear good things, but he’s not breaking out the pattern shells and the smoke grenades.
Analyst says Palo Alto Networks seeing momentum
Palo Alto Networks’ shares are up about 4% from a year ago, and the stock has climbed nearly 8% since the start of 2025.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and his team raised their price target for Palo Alto shares to $225 from $200, adjusting for the company’s 2-for-1 stock split in December.
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The analysts said they believe the company is seeing increased momentum in the field around its cybersecurity platformization strategy, which involves bundling the company’s products and services.
Palo Alto Networks announced the shift to platformization in 2023 as the company moved away from focusing on individual security products and towards a more integrated approach.
“We have seen stronger deal flow in the field over the past few months and believe PANW is generating solid momentum for cybersecurity customer deployments on its platform now front and center,” Wedbush said.
During the company’s first-quarter earnings call in November, CEO and Chairman Nikesh Arora said, “our industry peers have been evangelizing the virtues of platformization, and industry experts have begun to weigh in.”
“I had our teams go back and compare the growth and the mentions of the word ‘platform’ on cybersecurity earnings calls this year versus last year,” he said. “We found an overall 50% increase among our peers. As they say, imitation is the highest form of flattery.”
While Wedbush is not expecting major fireworks with second-quarter earnings, “the seeds of growth are now in place for a very important 2H25 with the cyber threat landscape seeing elevated activity and sophistication.”
The threat landscape is important, given that the cost of global cybercrime is expected to reach an eye-popping $10.5 trillion annually this year, up from $3 trillion a decade ago, according to the research firm Cybersecurity Ventures.
And companies seem to be getting the message.
A study released in October by the business software review platform GetApp found that 64 percent of IT and security professionals see AI as a vital defense against the growing sophistication of cyberattacks.
Investment firm sees strong quarter for company
The survey of 4,000 IT professionals globally found that 45% of U.S. respondents have identified AI solutions for network and cloud security as their top investment priorities for 2025.
In response to the rising complexity of threats, 80% of them anticipate increasing their cybersecurity budgets in 2025.
Related: Analyst adjusts Palo Alto Networks stock price target ahead of earnings
“We believe while it will take time to see the fruits of its labor, PANW is in the drivers seat to gain market and mind share in the cyber security landscape especially as more companies head down the AI path over the coming year,” Wedbush said.
The firm sees cyber security as a third derivative of the AI Revolution, “and PANW is well positioned to see incremental deal flow as more strategic enterprise AI projects take hold over the coming year.”
Wedbush said it also expects to see further strength of the company’s AI products with the recent launch of its AI suite, including Access, security posture management (SPM), and runtime, which continues to generate greater scale for its platformization approach throughout FY25.
Other investment firms issued research reports ahead of the company’s earnings.
Rosenblatt raised the firm’s price target on Palo Alto Networks to $235 from $212.50 and kept a buy rating on the shares ahead of the fiscal Q2 report.
The firm said its conversations with industry contacts point to a strong quarter for Palo Alto, driven by a firewall refresh cycle, continued traction with Cortex, the company’s AI-driven cybersecurity platform, and solid customer retention for Prisma Cloud, the group’s cloud-native security solution.
The positive feedback suggests that the company will likely outperform analyst estimates for revenue and earnings, the firm said.
KeyBanc analyst Eric Heath boosted the firm’s price target on Palo Alto Networks to $240 from $217 while maintaining an overweight rating on the shares.
Heath said his checks with company partners were positive and better than in the past several quarters. All partners KeyBanc spoke to were in line with or above plan.
The analyst said it sees potential upside to its Q2 billings estimate and says it was encouraged by an improving firewall cycle following positive results from competitors Check Point Software Technologies (CHKP) and Fortinet (FTNT) .
Given its checks, Heath said that he sees the company achieving second-quarter consensus Remaining Performance Obligation (RPO), product revenue, and Next-Generation Security Annualized Recurring Revenue. This shows how well the company is meeting customer demand for cybersecurity services.
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