More than half of all US equities are in a bear market. Many of them probably wrongly so. Could ZScaler be one of them?
It's bubbling under the surface
The S&P 500 is just a stone's throw away from its all-time high. At the same time, more than half of all US equities are trading below the SMA 200. In the S&P 500, this would correspond to a price below 5,100.
There is therefore no shortage of Aktienthat have recently crashed massively. Many are increasingly asking themselves whether this is justified.
There has been more than enough discussion about possible disruption by KI has been discussed more than enough. But what if it turns out that many supposed AI losers are not?
At the Börse It always happens in the same way. A spectre goes around and share prices plummet. It then turns out that everything was half as bad.
Every experienced investor knows enough examples to prove this.
As recently as 2022, we experienced a broad-based slump in technology shares, only to see the sector soar to new heights afterwards.
It's no different for individual stocks. When Amazon entered the freight business and acquired transport aircraft itself, the price of FedEx. Today, the share is at an all-time high.
Why fundamentals always win in the end
In the end, such spectres are confirmed or dispelled by one thing: Fundamental data.
The more often a company presents convincing quarterly figures after a crash, the more the fear dissipates.
Often one Quartalsbericht is often not enough, but the second, third or perhaps even the fifth, brings the turnaround. In the long term, share prices follow fundamental reality.
And so far, the fundamental reality at ZScaler does not point to any problems. The current quarterly figures certainly speak for themselves.
At USD 1.01 per share, earnings in the last quarter were well above expectations of USD 0.90. With sales of USD 816 million, analysts' estimates of USD 798 million were also exceeded.
For the year as a whole, this corresponds to a 26% increase in sales and a 30% jump in profits.
Free cash flow increased by 18% to USD 169.1 million. Annualized sales climbed by 25 % to USD 3.36 billion.
Outlook and valuation
This is likely to continue in a similar vein. ZScaler has therefore raised its forecast for sales growth in the current financial year from 23% to 24%. In terms of earnings, the company is forecasting an increase of 22-23%, up from 15-16% previously.
This is therefore a substantial increase in the forecast.
Earnings should rise to around USD 4.00 per share in this financial year, which runs until the end of July.
This gives ZScaler a forward P/E of 38.7, and since free cash flow is substantially higher than reported earnings, this results in a P/FCF of 27.7.
This is not an excessively high valuation, especially considering the high growth rates, the increasing demand for cybersecurity and the characteristics of the business model - which can be described as highly scalable and potentially highly profitable. On top of that, it is characterized by recurring revenues
Zscaler share: Chart from 04.03.2026, price: 154.67 USD - symbol: ZS | source: TWS
Perhaps ZScaler is in a similar situation today as it was in 2022/2023. The valuation today is even lower than at the absolute low of that time, even though the share price is almost twice as high.
This in itself shows the operational progress the company has made.
The business with zero confidence
ZScaler offers cloud-based cybersecurity solutions and focuses on "zero trust".
The platform enables direct and secure connections based on the principle of minimal rights assignment. This means that no user or application is automatically trusted.
Instead, trust is based on the identity of the user and context data (location of the user, security posture of the device, content exchanged and applications requested).
The Zero Trust Exchange connects the right user to the right application based on company-specific policies.
On top of this, ZScaler acts as an intermediary. This means that the data does not go directly from a potential source of danger to the user, but first passes through ZScaler's systems
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