By Angela Palumbo

CrowdStrike Holdings stock was dropping on Thursday after a Mizuho Securities analyst downgraded shares of the cybersecurity company.

Gregg Moskowitz took his rating on CrowdStrike to Neutral from Outperform and maintained a $425 price target on Thursday. Shares of the cybersecurity company were down 1.2% to $430.61 in afternoon trading.

"We believe CRWD remains very well positioned for future growth," Moskowitz wrote. "Having said that, our recent CRWD checks have moderated while some potential risk factors have emerged, and yet the shares have been remarkably robust and now trade above our $425 price target."

CrowdStrike stock tumbled in July 2024 after a software update caused massive outages, leading to the disruption of multiple industries, including airlines and banks. Shares have since bounced back, with the stock now up 26% this year. That is far better than the S&P 500's 0.6% increase.

There have been some analysts who have recently said they believe investors have moved on from the incident that happened about 10 months ago.

"Not many cybersecurity vendors could've bounced back from the unimaginable July 2024 IT outage as well as CRWD has, and we attribute much of this to a highly differentiated and comprehensive product portfolio, a very talented and capable leadership team, and an impressive GTM [go-to-market] and execution engine," Moskowitz wrote.

However, CrowdStrike announced earlier this month that it would be cutting about 5% of its workforce, which Moskowitz said "was surprising and somewhat curious to us."

With economic uncertainty, competition, and a stock that is already greatly outperformed the broader market this year, this analyst believes now is the time to step to the sidelines.

Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com

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May 15, 2025 14:27 ET (18:27 GMT)

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