CrowdStrike closed at $213.90 on Monday August 17, which is below its $214.42 close on Friday August 7, before a bid across cybersecurity names carried it to a three-month-high close of $225.53 on Thursday August 13. The whole advance round-tripped in two sessions. The company reports fiscal second-quarter results after the US market close on Wednesday August 26, and for anyone sizing a position into that date the question is what management guides to, not what the finished quarter did.
One wrinkle has tripped almost every preview page written on this print, and it traces back to the four-for-one split that took effect on July 2.
What CrowdStrike Actually Reports on Wednesday August 26
The release covers fiscal Q2 2027, the quarter that ended July 31, 2026. It lands after the US close on Wednesday August 26, with the conference call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time, which is 5:00 p.m. Eastern. That schedule comes from CrowdStrike's own investor relations announcement, issued August 4, and it has not moved.
Management's own guide for the quarter, set out in the first-quarter fiscal 2027 release on June 3, calls for revenue of $1,436.0 million to $1,442.0 million. The full-year fiscal 2027 range is $5,914.7 million to $5,958.7 million in revenue and $4.88 to $4.96 in non-GAAP diluted earnings per share. Street consensus for the quarter sits at roughly $1.44 billion in revenue and $0.29 per share, which puts the market almost exactly on top of the company's own numbers rather than above them.
That alignment is not a compliment. It is the residue of what happened in June.
The July Split Rewrote Every Per-Share Number in the Guidance
Read the June 3 guidance literally and it says $1.16 to $1.17 of non-GAAP earnings per share for the quarter, while consensus for that same quarter says $0.29. Those are the same number carried on two different share counts.
The split took effect on July 2, a month after that guidance was published, so every per-share figure in the release is a pre-split figure. Divide $1.16 by four and you get $0.29, and the $4.88 to $4.96 full-year range becomes $1.22 to $1.24. Our earlier piece on the four-for-one split that landed July 2 made the point that a split changes the share count and the per-share price without changing what the business is worth, and this is the practical cost of that arithmetic. Aggregator pages that reprinted the June guidance unadjusted are holding a $1.16 earnings figure against a $213.90 stock, which produces a valuation wrong by a factor of four.
Revenue, annual recurring revenue and free cash flow are company-level totals, so no split touches them. That is one reason the numbers worth watching on August 26 are the ARR lines rather than the headline EPS.
Why the Guide Matters More Than the Beat
The June 3 print is the template for the August 26 setup, and the lesson buried in it runs against instinct.
Fiscal Q1 2027 revenue came in at $1.39 billion, up 26% year over year, with subscription revenue at $1.32 billion. Ending ARR reached a record $5.51 billion, up 24%, on record net new ARR of $255.8 million, up 32%. Free cash flow was $468.5 million against $279.4 million a year earlier. Non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $1.10 pre-split, or $0.275 on the current share count, beat consensus. Both headline lines beat.
The stock fell double digits in after-hours trading anyway.
The reason was the guide. The $1,436.0 million to $1,442.0 million second-quarter revenue range came in under the roughly $1.463 billion analysts were carrying at the time, and the full-year range of $5,914.7 million to $5,958.7 million landed under a consensus near $6.008 billion. Billings grew 18% to $1.35 billion, also short of expectations. A company can beat the quarter it already finished and still lose the tape by telling you the next two will be smaller than you modeled.
So when a preview says the August 26 consensus is "in line with guidance," the street moved down to the company rather than the other way around. Clearing $1.44 billion in revenue clears a bar that was already lowered in June, which is why net new ARR and any revision to the full-year range will do more to the share price than the size of the revenue beat.
What the Tape Has Already Priced In
Every session below is a completed close, dated, on the split-adjusted series.
|
Session
|
Close
|
Session move
|
|
Friday August 7
|
$214.42
|
+3.39%
|
|
Monday August 10
|
$225.16
|
+5.01%
|
|
Tuesday August 11
|
$221.90
|
-1.45%
|
|
Wednesday August 12
|
$221.78
|
-0.05%
|
|
Thursday August 13
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$225.53
|
+1.69%
|
|
Friday August 14
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$216.95
|
-3.80%
|
|
Monday August 17
|
$213.90
|
-1.41%
|
The Monday August 10 pop of 5.01% came with a sector-wide bid as sell-side notes rolled out of the Black Hat security conference, and our August 11 piece on cyber price targets going stale within hours of that event covered how quickly those revisions aged. From the Thursday August 13 close to the Monday August 17 close, CRWD gave back 5.16%, erasing the entire post-conference advance and a little of what came before it.
Two things about $225.53 deserve care. It is a three-month-high close and not a record, since the 52-week high is $227.50 against a 52-week low of $85.68. And the giveback was not a broad Monday selloff in software, because the break in cyber names came on Friday August 14 and Monday August 17 was a milder second leg. Anyone framing this as one bad session is reading a two-session move as a one-session move.
Zoom out and the picture inverts. From the June 5 close of $167.76, which is the post-earnings base, to Monday August 17's $213.90, CRWD is up 27.5%. The round trip cost the stock its August highs. It did not cost it the summer.
The Valuation Is the Bear Case
CrowdStrike carried a market capitalization of about $217.81 billion at the Monday August 17 close. Take that $213.90 close against the midpoint of the company's own full-year non-GAAP guidance of $1.23 on the current share count and the multiple is roughly 174 times forward earnings, a price that requires the ARR reacceleration to keep arriving on schedule with no room for a soft quarter.
The sell side knows it. Across 53 analysts tracked on stockanalysis.com's CRWD forecast page, the consensus rating is Buy while the average twelve-month target sits at $198.35, below the Monday August 17 close, with a high of $256 and a low of $103.25. A Buy consensus carrying an average target under the market price is the sell side saying it likes the company and thinks the stock has run ahead of it.
The fresher targets skew higher, which is the honest counterweight. Wells Fargo moved to $230 from $181.25 and TD Cowen to $235 from $175, with Citizens and Stifel both at $230 during the pre-earnings advance. Those revisions are what the August 10 to August 13 rally was made of, and the August 14 and August 17 sessions are what happened when the tape declined to pay for them ahead of the print.
Sector context cuts both ways. Enterprise security spending has held through the AI capital cycle, which is the thesis behind the run in software and cybersecurity stocks through 2026, and the same August 26 evening also brings Nvidia's results. If you trade the AI complex, Nvidia's 2026 setup and the way the AI chip names trade against one another will move cyber sentiment on the same tape, in the same hours, for reasons that have nothing to do with CrowdStrike's ARR.
Frequently Asked Questions
What time does CrowdStrike report earnings on August 26, 2026?
The results release goes out after the US market close on Wednesday August 26, with the conference call at 2:00 p.m. Pacific time, or 5:00 p.m. Eastern. The quarter being reported is fiscal Q2 2027, which ended July 31, 2026.
Why did CrowdStrike stock fall in June after beating estimates?
Both headline lines beat, but forward guidance came in under what analysts were modeling on revenue for the quarter and the full year, and billings growth of 18% was light. Guidance sets the next two quarters of expectations, so a beat on a finished quarter carries less weight than a soft outlook on the ones ahead.
Does the four-for-one stock split change CrowdStrike's valuation?
No. The split multiplied the share count by four and divided the price by four on July 2, leaving market capitalization untouched. The practical risk is comparison error, since any earnings figure quoted from before July 2 has to be divided by four before you hold it against the current share price.
Can you get CRWD exposure without a US brokerage account?
CRWD trades as a USDT-settled perpetual contract, so the position is margined in stablecoins rather than dollars and runs outside US market hours. Traders who came to it from Bitcoin should note that the underlying equity only prices during the US session, so weekend and overnight moves in the perp reflect positioning rather than a live cash market.
Bottom Line
Net new ARR decides the August 26 reaction, not revenue and not the split-adjusted $0.29 consensus. The street is looking for organic net new ARR growth near 29% year over year against the 32% record posted in fiscal Q1 2027, and any revision to the $5,914.7 million to $5,958.7 million full-year revenue range will matter more than the size of the quarterly beat, because a lowered full-year guide is what took the stock down in June. The levels drawn by completed sessions are $216.95 and $225.53 overhead and the $213.90 Monday August 17 close as the pivot, with the June base near $167.76 marking the room a repeat of that reaction would open. Position sizing matters more than direction into a print that has moved this stock double digits after hours, and the setup rewards traders who fix their risk before Wednesday evening rather than during it.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always conduct your own research before making trading decisions.
