Earnings Labs

CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. (CRWD)

Q1 2024 Earnings Call· Wed, May 31, 2023

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CrowdStrike Fiscal First Quarter 2024 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Maria Riley, Vice-President of Investor Relations.

Maria Riley

Analyst

Good afternoon and thank you for your participation today. With me on the call are George Kurtz, President and Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of CrowdStrike, and Burt Podbere, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get started, I would like to note that certain statements made during this conference call that are not historical facts, including those regarding our future plans, objectives, growth, and expected performance, including our outlook for the second quarter of fiscal year 2024 and any assumptions for fiscal periods beyond that are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as of the date of this call. While we believe any forward-looking statements we make are reasonable, actual results could differ materially because the statements are based on current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties. We do not undertake and expressly disclaim any obligation to update or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Further information on these and other factors that could affect the company's financial results is included in the filings we make with the SEC from time to time, including the section titled Risk Factors in the company's quarterly and annual report. Additionally, unless otherwise stated, excluding revenue, all financial measures disclosed on this call will be non-GAAP. The discussion of why we use non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation schedule showing GAAP versus non-GAAP results is currently available in our earnings press release, which may be found on our Investor Relations website at ir.crowdstrike.com or on our Form 8-K filed with the SEC today. I would like to note that we are conducting today's call from one of our European offices and ask for your patience in any event of technical difficulties. With that, I will now turn the call over to George.

George Kurtz

Analyst

Thank you, Maria, and thank you all for joining us. Our continued execution despite a challenging macro-environment translated to strong growth and exceptional margins, which drove record non-GAAP profitability, record free cash flow, and GAAP profitability for the first time in company history. We exceeded our guidance across both top and bottom-line metrics, increased gross margin, cost discipline, and moderated headcount growth contributed to our strong bottom-line results. Reaching GAAP profitability so early in our life as a public company provides insight into the strength of the model we have built and what we can achieve over time. Burt will cover the financial results in more detail. I will focus my comments on why we believe CrowdStrike has a clear and sustainable advantage as three mega-trends continue to unfold, AI, consolidation and cloud. Let's start with AI. Since inception, CrowdStrike has been and will continue to be at the forefront of leveraging AI to drive better customer outcomes and efficiencies within our own business. In addition to industry-leading detection and rapid remediation for customers, utilizing AI has benefited our business by lowering costs and yielding higher margins. One example of AI benefiting our financial model is Falcon Complete. For years, our use of AI has enabled us to rapidly scale that business to a leadership position with an exceptional product margin that exceeds our overall company gross margin. The margin profile and scale we have achieved for our managed offering would not have been possible without our innovation in AI. While others are just now jumping on the AI bandwagon, we have transformed cyber security with an AI-powered cloud business from inception. Generative AI is transforming the world and security is no exception. Large language models or LLMs are only as good as the data on which they are trained…

Burt Podbere

Analyst

Thank you, George, and good afternoon, everyone. As a quick reminder, unless otherwise noted, all numbers except revenue mentioned during my remarks today are non-GAAP. We delivered a strong first quarter even with the continued challenging macro-environment with revenue, subscription gross margin, operating income, net income, and free cash flow, all exceeding our guidance and reaching new records. We believe our financial performance speaks to the strength of our business model on the operational excellence ingrained in the fabric of CrowdStrike's culture, which includes diligence and discipline when balancing growth and profitability. The demand environment remained resilient, although we continued to see increased deal scrutiny and longer than typical sales cycles, especially for larger consolidation deals with our relentless focus on sales execution, we achieved Q1 net-new ARR of $174.2 million, which was above stated assumptions. We ended the quarter with ending ARR reaching $2.73 billion, up 42% over last year. The quarter was well-balanced with the mix between new logos and expansion cross-sells, net-new ARR similar to Q4. We continue to be very pleased with the success of our land and expand strategy with our dollar-based net retention rate once again above the 120% benchmark in Q1. Subscription customers with five or more, six or more, and seven or more modules now represent 60 to 40 and 23% of subscription customers, respectively. Moving to the P&L, total revenue grew 42% over Q1 of last year to reach $692.6 million. Subscription revenue grew 42% over Q1 of last year to reach $651.2 million. Professional services revenue was $41.4 million setting a new record for the 11th consecutive quarter and representing 48% year-over-year growth. During the quarter, we also saw strength in Europe, the Middle East, and Japan. International revenue grew 53% year-over-year. Our first-quarter non-GAAP gross margin performance was outstanding…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Saket Kalia with Barclays. You may proceed.

Saket Kalia

Analyst

Okay, great. Hey guys, thanks for taking my question here. And congrats on the DoD authorization.

George Kurtz

Analyst

Thanks, Saket.

Saket Kalia

Analyst

George -- Hey, Burt, hey George, thanks for taking my question here. George, maybe for you, and I'll just stick to one here. Can we just talk a little bit about what you're seeing in legacy endpoint share gains? I mean clearly, CrowdStrike has a broader platform beyond just endpoint, but I'm curious, just given the macro and everything happening, curious how you feel about that opportunity for continued share gain in endpoint specifically.

George Kurtz

Analyst

Well, I feel good about that opportunity. And if you look at our current market leadership and -- market-leading leadership at 17.8% for modern endpoint security. It's still a very fragmented market and we continue to take share from the legacy players that are in the market. Again, when you look at different geographies, obviously, we've got heavier penetration in North America, but there's many geographies in the rest of the world that still have to be penetrated deeper, particularly in converting those legacy players. So I feel really good about it. It's a fragmented market. If you just look at the numbers and the ongoing conversion of legacy technologies into next-gen players like CrowdStrike will continue for the foreseeable future.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Sterling Auty with SVB MoffettNathanson. You may proceed.

Sterling Auty

Analyst · SVB MoffettNathanson. You may proceed.

Yes, thanks. Hi, guys. I wonder if you could give us a sense of what kind of impact you saw in the business from the disruption from the banking crisis in March, both on kind of ARR linearity, and maybe even billings in the quarter.

George Kurtz

Analyst · SVB MoffettNathanson. You may proceed.

Hey, Sterling. How are you? So number one, let's talk about the impacts -- number one, let's talk about the impacts of the banking crisis. So for us, there was not a material impact on ARR from the banks. I think the impact of churn from the banking industry was really de-minimis. And we continue to close deals with regional banks in the quarter. Banks in particular need robust cyber defenses. Overall gross retention remained high and best-in-class. So we felt pretty good in terms of that particular piece of the segment. In terms of overall billings, billings is, of course, for us quite cyclical and it is driven primarily through seasonality. So Q4 has our largest deals and the renewals that came up have an impact and then the impact falls into Q1, which we would see overall decrease. So that's how we think about it. And as you know, the business is focused on ARR, as opposed to billings, which can be -- which can have whipsaw effects and the focus on ARR, just gives you an idea about the overall health of the business.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Joel Fishbein with Truist Securities. You may proceed.

Joel Fishbein

Analyst · Truist Securities. You may proceed.

Thanks for taking the question. Hey, George, one for you. Thanks for the update on AI. I'm just curious. As it increases the attack surface, just curious if you've seen any threats recently that may have been exploited new threats as a result of the proliferation of some of these new models that are out there and I have a quick follow-up.

George Kurtz

Analyst · Truist Securities. You may proceed.

Well, we continue to see and we have seen for some period of time adversarial AI. So the use of AI, specifically by the adversary to try to deceive security systems. So that's been going on for some time. I think what we're seeing now with generative AI and LLMs is the fact that it becomes very easy for even a novice adversary to be able to have the same capabilities as a nation-state to create new exploits, new vulnerabilities to be able to deliver phished emails, et cetera. So that will be an ongoing effort. And again, we're really excited about Charlotte AI, which we announced this week. I think it's an absolute game changer for us and the company and what we're able to do to really compress the workloads for analysts and provide a lot of the intelligence that we have and our analysts have right through the Falcon platform. So we'll continue to monitor that, but that's been an ongoing activity that we've seen for some time.

Joel Fishbein

Analyst · Truist Securities. You may proceed.

Great. And just as a follow-up on this CrowdStrike Falcon Complete XDR, can you just talk about how the new release may increase your competitive advantage in that space? I think there's a lot of noise out there.

George Kurtz

Analyst · Truist Securities. You may proceed.

Well, there is a lot of noise and when you look at XDR and what we've talked about with our use of AI in terms of really driving additional leverage in the business, it does help to automate a lot of what we do and we can now provide that level of automation in a complete offering, because XDR is still -- as an industry it is still an immature technology. I think wrapping it with a complete service really allows customers to have peace of mind, they can allow us to take in that third-party data, leverage the models that we've already built to get better outcomes, faster response, and drive down their overall operational costs.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Hamza Fodderwala with Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.

Hamza Fodderwala

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.

Hey guys, good evening, and thank you for taking my question. George, I have a question for you as well. So I'm curious how you're thinking about monetizing some of the new AI services that you've released? I mean, is this something that going to drive more sort of top-of-the-funnel conversion? Do you think it's going to drive more demand for LogScale? Is there like explicit SKUs that you're offering? Just curious how you're thinking about that. I know it's pretty early days.

George Kurtz

Analyst · Morgan Stanley. You may proceed.

Well, it's something that's really foundationally built into the platform and we believe it's going to drive a lot of additional adoption of modules and platform usage throughout the customer base. So we'll start there. As it evolves over time, we'll look to see if we will monetize it with specific SKUs, but I think first and foremost let's get into the customer base, let's iterate it, let's leverage the data advantage that we have because as I've talked about in the earnings call, we've got 10 years of being able to train these algorithms and I think as most know, it really is the human interaction that allows those LLMs to shine and we've got I think a real advantage because we've got 10 years of attack paring, if you will, with data and how the attacks work that can be used for training. So we're going to get it out in the customer base, continue to iterate it. And then I believe it will drive more adoption of the platform modules and then we'll see how we'll monetize it after that from a separate SKU perspective.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Matt Hedberg with RBC. You may proceed.

Matt Hedberg

Analyst · RBC. You may proceed.

Great guys. Thanks for taking my question. You're talking about a lot of confidence in the second half net-new ARR acceleration, when you sit back and you look at it, there's a lot of things to be excited about, what do you think are the biggest drivers of that growth? And maybe I missed it, but are you still targeting low 30% ARR growth for fiscal 2024?

Burt Podbere

Analyst · RBC. You may proceed.

Yes. Hey, great question. So first, let's talk a little bit about the second half, obviously, the easier comps in the back half, right? So that's number one. And then, what really gives us confidence going into the second half is three things. One is pipeline. We see momentum and deal activity rapidly building for the second half. It really started in the middle of Q1 and we saw that momentum to be able to build the pipe from the second half. So that is number one. Number two, products, we were excited about LogScale, George talked about it a lot, we've given some examples. So we think that there is a great opportunity with LogScale, we're also seeing momentum in cloud. I think that's something that we're really excited about and AR power XDR now with Charlotte and George has already talked about that. And then third, our partnerships. Whether it's Dell or Pax8 or others that are coming online, we think that can be something that will move the needle for us in the second half. So the key here is cyber security remains mission critical. And I think customers want to consolidate and drive down TCO, more than ever and Falcon is designed to do exactly that. So I think that when you look at the overall module adoption and we talk about -- we closed over 50% more deals involving eight or more modules this quarter compared to a year ago, that gives -- that speaks to the power of our platform. And so all those things give us confidence about what we talked about in -- for the second half and stated assumptions remain same.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Andrew Nowinski with Wells Fargo. You may proceed.

Andrew Nowinski

Analyst · Wells Fargo. You may proceed.

Great, thank you. Thanks for taking the question, so I was wondering if you could just expand on your partnerships with Dell that you talked about last quarter, just wondering how much it contributed into the quarter, whether you have enough visibility from that partnership yet to factor that into your new guide -- your new revenue guidance for the year and if that's actually driving any traction at SMB sector? Thanks.

Burt Podbere

Analyst · Wells Fargo. You may proceed.

Yes. Good question. So one, we're tracking plan, we're still early days obviously with Dell. We called out a one-seven-figure deal with a regional healthcare company that was brought to through our partnership with Dell in the quarter. And obviously, with any new alliance, it does take time to gain traction. So the numbers that are coming from that Dell partnership, we anticipate to grow over time. But in terms of a big piece of the quarter, not yet, right, we have great expectations. But like anything else, those things do take time and -- but we are still affected about it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Tal Liani with Bank of America. You may proceed.

Tal Liani

Analyst · Bank of America. You may proceed.

Hi, guys. Can you give us an update on -- two questions. Can you give us an update on going down market and your traction with Falcon Go, the SMB focus area? So what's the -- how -- what kind of competition do you see there given that Microsoft is stronger in the down market? And second question, we have seen many companies in this space having sales to existing customers, much stronger than sales to new customers, there is slowdown in sales to new customers. Can you give us kind of the data on where do you see the growth coming from and existing versus new customers? Thanks.

George Kurtz

Analyst · Bank of America. You may proceed.

Sure, I'll start out and then Burt can add anything if he needs to. So Falcon Go has been a success for us. We continued to target the SMB market. I think I called out in one of the prior earnings calls, how we organized ourselves internally. We've got a specific focus and a leader on that. We've seen a lot of success there and we'll also -- I need to call out the pairing to our success in the MSP market and partnership like Pax8 which really allows us to get those lower-cost offerings out to customers through managed service providers. So, it's a big market for us in SMB, it's a very highly fragmented market. You have some players there, but we've been successful because customers are looking for outcomes. You talked about Microsoft. Customers routinely come to us after they get hit with ransomware, after they have an issue and looking for next gen solution, it doesn't depend on signatures. So we see success there, we've got to ramp our channels up. We're working with Dell and others and managed service providers. But I feel really good about that opportunity and that will continue to grow over time.

Burt Podbere

Analyst · Bank of America. You may proceed.

I'll take the second part of the question, Tal. So we really haven't seen a material difference in terms of the mix between [indiscernible] install base and net-new logos versus last quarter. We do think that we will see over time as our installed base gets larger, they have more opportunities to sell to our installed base. Having said that, we still think we have a lot of headroom in terms of net-new logos. We have a long way to go and we talked about that on earlier calls. So overall, we're really pleased with our opportunity in both net-new logos from a new logo standpoint and from a cross-sell upsell opportunity.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Shaul Eyal with TD Cowen. You may proceed.

Shaul Eyal

Analyst · TD Cowen. You may proceed.

Thank you. Hi, good afternoon, guys. George, last quarter I believe while maybe during the update you talked a lot about some of the Microsoft displacements, and I know you've actually just kind of mentioned that. And in that context, maybe shifting to -- from a model perspective, any specific trend that you can talk to us about this quarter versus prior quarters with respect to the leading modules, the identity, some of the emerging ones versus everything that you're seeing from Microsoft in that respect. Thank you.

George Kurtz

Analyst · TD Cowen. You may proceed.

Sure. I think I'll start with consolidation and I'll reference back to what I spoke about in the prepared remarks. Every customer that we spoke to and I spoke to many, many customers at RSA. And even throughout the quarter, it was really about consolidation. I think we've done a good job of showing a very cost-compelling model for them where they're actually paying less than [indiscernible] for the security pieces particularly CrowdStrike and they are getting better outcomes. So there are many customers that have said, we want to consolidate on CrowdStrike. We want to buy more. Obviously, these take -- these sort of bigger deals take time. They have more deal scrutiny those sort of things, but that's what we're seeing and that's I think reflected in what we saw this quarter and certainly what we've seen growing in the pipeline as customers want to do more with CrowdStrike.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from John DiFucci with Guggenheim Securities. You may proceed.

John DiFucci

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. You may proceed.

Thank you. My questions for George. So this is the first quarter ever that new ARR declined for you guys whereas most other's decline started quarters ago, like several quarters ago. Tal asked about competition in the SMB market, but what about demand, we started to hear some weakness in the SMB in the mid-market and we realize that that's largely a greenfield for you. So it might be harder for you to tell, but are you seeing any changes in that market demand this quarter versus previously?

George Kurtz

Analyst · Guggenheim Securities. You may proceed.

No, we actually saw strong demand and results in SMB. I think we've got a great model, we've got the right technology for it and we're solving outcomes, right? When you look at not only the technology itself, obviously, you can buy Falcon Go as a customer, but you can also buy Falcon Complete, we have many SMB customers, many, many that are Falcon Complete customers. Why? Because it's a very compelling proposition from a price perspective, they couldn't even fill one head for the cost of what we're charging them and they're getting the best in the world in terms of security. So, we have not seen a slowdown in SMB. We've got, I think really good traction there. And at the end of the day, as you pointed out, it's still a fragmented market and it's a smaller part of our overall revenue. So we see great future opportunity with it and didn't see any impact of last quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Brian Essex with JP Morgan. You may proceed.

Brian Essex

Analyst · JP Morgan. You may proceed.

Hi, good afternoon, and thank you for taking the question. I guess maybe for Burt. Nice milestone of hitting GAAP profitability. I guess that we would love a little bit more color around your commitment to maintaining GAAP profitability, what should we expect? And you also had a really I think for the first time, stock-based comp decline sequentially, what is kind of the outlook there? And how should we kind of frame out your view and your plans to drive GAAP profitability and balanced growth and profitability going forward? Thank you.

George Kurtz

Analyst · JP Morgan. You may proceed.

Thanks, Brian. Great question. So one, overall, we've had a very methodical approach in how we look at the various aspects of the model. So first, we focused on gross margin. And you can see the progress that we've made there. Second piece was focusing on non-GAAP profitability and free cash flow, free cash flow, as you know, which is 30%. And that is something that's ongoing. Third evolution is GAAP profit which we will continue to focus on and drive towards achieving sustainability. Of course, SBC is the biggest piece of that. We continued to manage SBC and we are going to be mindful balanced with retaining the best and the brightest talent that's paramount for us. We also look to dilution. Our dilution, we feel is in a good place, less than 2% this year, strive to keep it under 3% in the year that are coming. So overall, we are very pleased with hitting the GAAP profitability and believe it demonstrates the power of model and that we are disciplined in our growth and we are disciplined in how we see the market today. Everything we do is by the time, it's not a fluke. We think about it. In terms of where we can extend and how we can extend, but for us with the SBC, we really focus on making sure we are able to get the best talent and retain the best talent and attract the best talent. That's how we really think about it. And for us, we're going to look forward to when we reach sustainability, but we have other things we're going after right now including that retention and attraction.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Ho with William Blair. You may proceed.

Jonathan Ho

Analyst · William Blair. You may proceed.

Hi there, good afternoon. I just wanted to maybe ask a little bit about sort of the success that you've seen with these additional add-on modules. Can you help us understand maybe where that success is coming from, whether it's some of your newer products in areas like cloud or EASM? Or is this an instead of multi-product sales from your more existing endpoint capabilities? Thank you.

George Kurtz

Analyst · William Blair. You may proceed.

Sure. While we've seen strength in many different areas, we had some incredible wins with LogScale. I'm really seeing the momentum on that, there's a real need in the industry for faster, better, cheaper logging and customers are looking for a solution, so that was great to see. I think when you look at identity, this is one of those areas where just like EDR in the early days, it wasn't necessarily budgeted and what we're starting to see now is that companies are actually budgeting in current and future budgets for identity, just like XDR -- sorry, EDR as an emerging product. And the third area is cloud. We had some incredible cloud wins. We've packaged up our offering to include both agent and agentless on the cloud as basically one SKU, customers can use it, they love the fact that they're getting results from both agent and agentless technologies. And that is a true differentiator in the environment -- the competitive environment. So overall, when you look at a lot of these areas that I have called out in the past, it's full-speed ahead on them and we continue to add more capabilities and I'm really excited about the product lineup that we have for this fiscal year.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Gregg Moskowitz with Mizuho. You may proceed.

Gregg Moskowitz

Analyst · Mizuho. You may proceed.

Okay. Thank you for taking the question. First, a quick clarification from Burt, if you could just comment on average duration this quarter and if there was any change. And for George, so I know you've been incorporating AI into Threat Graph and the broader platform for years, but on Charlotte, you alluded to commoditizing LLM but might you leverage open-source and develop your own LLM space under a dataset to provide additional value there. Just curious to hear a little more on how you may augment existing LLM to potentially drive a greater wedge, so to speak, based on your inherent [indiscernible]. Thanks.

Burt Podbere

Analyst · Mizuho. You may proceed.

Hi, Greg. I'll take the first part of that question. So as you know, we called out that we expect to see in the long-term, the shift from multi-year deals to one-year deals. I think that's traditional in software. But we do not see a material shift in the trend this quarter when compared to the last quarter. So just be very, very clear on that point. Deal durations are getting shorter, but are expected and it remains within the parameters of how we've modeled out our overall business.

George Kurtz

Analyst · Mizuho. You may proceed.

Yes, Greg, on the question regarding LLMs, obviously there is some great technology that's already out there. And I think our view is to leverage LLMs. It's a very similar concept to be able to leverage different cloud providers, leverage the LLMs that to you for a particular purpose. It doesn't mean we couldn't build our own, but I think what's important and I called this out in the prepared remarks is the fact that the training is one of the areas that really makes an LLM shine and I think many people have seen that just with their understanding of ChatGPT, these things have to be trained or you get hallucinations in terms of the results -- spurious results if you will. So from our standpoint, we believe the pairing of the Threat Graph with annotated threat data over the last 10 years is and will continue to be a sustainable advantage of barrier entry because we've already done a lot of that kind of human training and we can take advantage and interchange LLMs within our own dataset to provide the best outcome depending on what we're looking for. So we'll leverage what's out there, we may build some of our own, but I think more importantly, we've got the right dataset to get the training, the way we need it.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Alex Henderson with Needham. You may proceed.

Alex Henderson

Analyst · Needham. You may proceed.

All right, thank you so much. I was hoping you could talk a little bit about what your assumptions are in terms of your pipeline, in terms of deal sizes, duration, closure rates and price relative to the conditions. Are you baking in a little bit more conservatism in Tier assumptions on some of those parameters? Are you expecting the deal sizes to continue to go up, but then push out in the time to close deals? And what are you assuming around closure rates in this environment? And if you could feather in a little bit on the federal, I would love it. Thanks.

Burt Podbere

Analyst · Needham. You may proceed.

Thanks, Alex. Few things to unpack there, so let's start with in terms of larger deals, again we closed over 50% more deals involving more modules this quarter, compared to a year ago. I think this really speaks to the fact that customers really want to do the consolidation play, they want to continue to leverage Falcon platform as a means to get the right outcomes at the right price. In terms of the overall environment, so first big picture in the macro, we don't see the macro improving now and for the rest of the year. So with that as a backdrop, when we think about deal durations, yeah, sure we think deal durations are going to be shorter. I think people are going to -- in terms of their size, they are going to be longer to be able to consummate. And that goes to the additional scrutiny that we're continuing to see from companies looking to do bigger deals takes more time. And so, when we think about that all perspective, we know that there's going to be deals that are going to be more difficult to close within a particular quarter. And so, we've modeled that in. I think that overall with respect to some of the other metrics that you had mentioned, I think that for one, I think that for our net-new ARR, we are going to maintain the assumptions that we stated previously. I think that's the right thing to do. With that, I'll pass it over to George to talk about that.

George Kurtz

Analyst · Needham. You may proceed.

Sure, as I mentioned in prior comments, we're excited about IL5, it does open up, I think a much bigger federal opportunity. We had some really nice wins in the quarter. And that's one, again it's slow and steady, you've just got to get in. It may take a while to get deals done, but they last a long time and they are big and medium, so we continued to drive forward on that and I think this IL5 certification opens up more doors for us.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Ittai Kidron with Oppenheimer. You may proceed.

Ittai Kidron

Analyst · Oppenheimer. You may proceed.

Hi, thanks. George, thanks for the great review on AI. I guess the question is for Burt. With the benefits of AI, as George described them, how soon can you raise your long-term margin targets?

Burt Podbere

Analyst · Oppenheimer. You may proceed.

Well. For us, we're really pleased with where we're going with our margins, across the gross margin, you saw the progress that we've made there. We've talked about the continued developments for optimization, in our -- certainly in our data centers, as well as our cloud workloads. And then the progress that we're making in AI, we built into everything we do and we've been doing it for 10 years. We do anticipate to continue to see those improvements. And just out of memory -- just as to remind you Ittai, we've been doing AI from the beginning, just as we did cloud from beginning, it was -- those two were hand-in-hand and the good news there is we've got, as George had mentioned, over 10 years, all of that AI and the training on the AI and that's a massive head-start over any one of our other competitors.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Patrick Colville with Scotiabank. You may proceed.

Patrick Colville

Analyst · Scotiabank. You may proceed.

Hey, thank you so much for squeezing me in. In the prepared remarks, you mentioned that in the quarter, you saw increased deal scrutiny and longer sales cycles. Can't you just double-click on that comment? I mean was that increased deal scrutiny and longer sales cycles, was that like late in the quarter in the kind of in March-April? Or is that towards the beginning? And I guess, any more color or clarity you gave on those comments would be fascinating. Thank you.

Burt Podbere

Analyst · Scotiabank. You may proceed.

Sure, so the comment was meant to be throughout the quarter. As we go into deals, we're seeing customers want to consolidate more and that takes more time because they're adding more modules with us. So they're looking to spend more with us, but then reduce other spends from other competitors, and in a sense, they're actually thinking about better outcomes overall in the security space and beyond, and how to get it at a cheaper price. And that's again, things that we've talked about from day one. And we're seeing that happen today. So, throughout the quarter that we're seeing both additional deal scrutiny what I just mentioned, but also they do take longer and that's throughout the entire quarter.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jonathan Ruykhaver with Cantor Fitzgerald. You may proceed.

Jonathan Ruykhaver

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. You may proceed.

Yes. Hi guys. So I'm curious, when you look at data retention requirements, particularly XDR for threat hunting, but I guess increasingly going forward for these large language models, can you just talk about the issue the industry is facing around the increase in data retention requirements and pre-associated cost? And I know you've already talked positively on LogScale adoption, but those costs with LogScale versus other solutions, is there any way for you to quantify what that looks like the advantage you have?

Burt Podbere

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald. You may proceed.

Well, specifically around LogScale, you see a massive increase in terms of our compression algorithms and our ability to store data and I think one of the areas where you look at LogScale and just a simple view of it is better, faster, cheaper and that's what we've seen, we've had some big customers that are using that really as their, call it, their data like if you will. They can store lots of data on-prem or many of them in the cloud for a very cost-efficient -- in a very cost efficient manner and they still get the performance. So I think the architecture, which is a modern architecture around LogScale really does give us an advantage there. And that's been borne out by customers in their own testing.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And our last question comes from Catharine Trebnick with Rosenblatt. You may proceed.

Catharine Trebnick

Analyst

Hi, thank you for the question. Last -- at the last Analyst Day or the one before you talked about your coalition partnership, and can you talk to cyber insurance as a -- is that still a tailwind -- this tailwind -- biggest tailwind than that was last year? Is that dissipated? Thank you.

Burt Podbere

Analyst

Yes. I think Cyber insurance for a lot of customers is very difficult to get and it's actually gone up in cost. So we have many customers that as part of CrowdStrike acquisition are baking in their ability; A, get cyber insurance; and B, in many cases, being able to reduce the overall cost because many of the cyber insurance providers recognize with CrowdStrike in place overall risk is dramatically going to be reduced. So that's what we've seen. I don't know that there is any anomalies one way or another, but it's continued problem in the industry to actually get cyber insurance and it is part of our overall value proposition to a customer to be able to; A, help them get it; and B, reduce their overall cyber insurance costs.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. And this concludes the Q&A session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to George Kurtz for any closing remarks.

George Kurtz

Analyst

Well, I just wanted to thank everyone for their time and attention, and we appreciate the questions and we look forward to seeing you next quarter. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.