Needham repeats analyst Alex Henderson SentinelOne Inc S with a Buy and a price target of $19.

Guardian released strong Q4 resultswith revenue up 92% Y/Y to $126.1 million while ARR was up 88% Y/Y to $548.7 million, both ahead of consensus.

Guidance was mixed with Q1 revenue ahead of the road while full year revenue, operating margin and ARR missed expectations.

FY24 revenue guidance for 50.5% growth at median to $635.5 million was below consensus, while ARR growth of 47% represented a decline from the previous guidance of 50% plus.

While providing a conservative guidance, Sentinel noted no deterioration from Q3 to Q4, more robust win rates, a pipeline that has doubled year-on-year to record levels, a slight increase in gross subscribers and strong net subscriber retention >130%.

SentinelOne still believes that ARR growth in excess of 50% is achievable.

Guggenheim Analyst Raymond McDonough reiterates a buy on SentinelOne with a price target of $18.

Entering SentinelOne’s fourth quarter, the analyst saw little risk and consensus estimates for Q1 pointed to an implied decline in new business similar to that seen in Q3 (down about 65%) where rumors of execution issues emerged and the weak macro environment began to impact most, if not all, of security.

While Q4 didn’t prove to be a significant improvement over Q3, there was enough improvement in revenue and ARR to exceed Street’s expectations.

The analyst reserves concerns about the preliminary FY2024 ARR forecast of at least 50% Y/Y growth, believing that it implies an outsized recovery in new business growth in F2H24.

Despite a pipeline that has nearly doubled year over year, win rates and gross retention improving sequentially, and protection of cloud workloads gaining momentum, management lowered ARR growth expectations for FY24 to 47% year over year.

Its FY24 revenue guidance was also 170 basis points below Street’s expectations, with management emphasizing on multiple occasions that the guidance prudently accounts for a continued challenging macro environment.

Ultimately, the…