Check Point Software Technologies Ltd.

Recording in progress.

Greetings and welcome to Check Point Software's 2025 Fourth Quarter and Full Year Financial Results video conference. I'm Kippy Meitzer, Global Head of Investor Relations, and joining me today are Chief Executive Officer Nadav Zafrir and our Chief Financial Officer Roy Galan. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that the conference is being recorded and will be available for replay on our website at Checkpoint.com. During the formal presentation, all participants are in a listen-only mode that will be followed by a Q&A session. During this presentation, Checkpoint's representatives may make forward-looking statements Forward-looking statements generally relate to future events or our future financial and or operating performance, including statements related to the anticipated ratification of the Israeli Government Research and Development Incentive Program and potential impact of these grants on our financial results. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements. Any forward-looking statements made speak only as of the date hereof, and Check Point Software undertakes no obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements. In our press release, which has been posted on our website, we present GAAP and non-GAAP results, along with a reconciliation of such results, as well as the reasons for our presentation of non-GAAP information. If you have any questions after the call, please feel free to contact Investor Relations by email at kip at checkpoint.com. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Nadav for the... Thank you, Kip.

It's great to be with everyone here today. I want to begin with a recap of 2025, followed by our plans for 2026 and beyond. We printed solid 2025 fourth quarter and full year results. During the year, we delivered consistent execution while building a stronger foundation for our long-term sustainable growth. We expanded our platform with two new pillars, security for AI and exposure management. We're building both organically and through targeted acquisitions. We also strengthened our go-to-market engine. We expanded and flattened our C-suite structure and aligned it to our operating model. We're laser focused on strategic customers, new logo acquisition, and partner leverage. And our sales are focused and designed to develop deeper enterprise penetration, a broader portfolio adoption, and increase new logo wins. We also enhance our financial flexibility with a $2 billion zero coupon convertible notes offering, strengthening our balance sheet, and creating the capacity to invest in our highest conviction priorities. Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, we are positioning the company to lead the AI era of cybersecurity. As you're keenly aware, AI is fundamentally changing the threat landscape, And this requires organizations to revisit their core security assumption and revalidate their security foundations. In fact, decades of corporate infrastructure is now vulnerable because the very nature of attacks is changing. And so security leaders must revalidate their existing security foundations. protect new attack surfaces that are driven by the adaption of new capabilities and tools, as well as embrace AI as a force multiplier just to remain competitive. And our mission at Checkpoint is very clear. We secure our customers' AI transformation. That means we continuously update our existing security solutions to defend against evolving threats, We're securing the expanding AI-driven attack surface with purpose-built capabilities and leveraging AI to simplify and automate security management and operations. And we do this by applying a proactive prevention-first approach, which leverages our superior capabilities, and continuously research, discover, and build solutions to anticipate the evolving threats. We secure our customers AI transformation through four strategic solution pillars, each one of them a platform of its own. Hybrid mesh network security, securing the infrastructure, workspace security, securing the employees, exposure management that provides situational awareness, and then finally, AI security across all of these pillars. We secure the hybrid mesh infrastructure across data centers, hybrid cloud, branch, and SASE. And we have a very clear market differentiation for hybrid mesh. And our advantages are we have the superior proactive prevention, second to none, a hybrid architecture that optimizes user experience at the edge, and our parallel ability to scale, and then finally, an AI-powered unified management. As you know, AI is embedded everywhere, and so the attacks can originate from everywhere, from anywhere. And so we're building an integrated and unified workspace platform that's spanning across devices, browser, email, SaaS applications, and remote access. We believe that our recognized leadership position in email security and superior phishing prevention capability is a springboard to lead the way in exporter management. Managed service providers, or MSPs, also represent an important opportunity in the workspace security pillar. We identified Rotate as a provider of a comprehensive platform purpose-built for MSPs. We acquired a team of Rotate to build momentum in the MSP market, leverage our position as a leading MSP email security provider. Next, we establish exposure management as a new strategic pillar, and we believe we're uniquely positioned to expand our market share in the coming few years. Security teams are challenged by the overwhelming volumes of vulnerability, disconnected intelligence, shrinking remediation windows, and in an AI-driven threat landscape, weeks-long resolution cycle for critical vulnerabilities are no longer viable. At Check Point, we deliver real-time situational awareness unified across threat intelligence, attack surface visibility, providing context, and automated remediation. Today, I'm also excited to announce the acquisition of Cyclops, a cyber asset attack surface management company that brings AI-driven asset discovery to enable accurate vulnerability context and risk prioritization. Cyclops strengthens our exposure management platform and delivers robust CTEM offering that includes threat intelligence, vulnerability scanning and prioritization, and at the end of the day, also actionable and safe remediation. And finally, as organizations rush to adopt AI, just to remain relevant, this breakneck pace of AI adoption prevents many new risks to organization. We get data leakage, three-up prompts, the uploading of sensitive data, AI threats like jailbreaking or remodeling version, and lastly, agents with uncontrolled autonomy sometimes acting beyond their scope. AI security is a foundational pillar of our strategy. Our comprehensive AI security stack protects employee usage, enterprise application, agents, and models. Late last year, we made the acquisition of Lakira to deliver runtime protection across AI applications and agents based on an industry-leading foundational model. You know that this is evolving faster than anything we've ever seen and requires design partnerships and open guarder and the ability to track and acquire the innovators. And so today I'm happy to announce the acquisition of Sciata, specializing in discovering and understanding and ultimately governing autonomous AI agents. Sciata extends our platform by protecting the emerging AI workforce, enabling organizations to safely accelerate their AI transformation. In summary, 2025, as you know, my first year as CEO of Check Point. During the year, we strengthened our leadership team. We improved our go-to-market execution and enhanced our financial flexibility, all while delivering solid results. I believe during my first year, we built a foundation that positions us to accelerate our growth over the next few years. And looking ahead, our strategy is focused and aligned. Organizations around the world are accelerating their adoption. And our mission is to secure their AI transformation. Through our four strategic pillars, we are addressing the expanding AI-driven attack surface and bringing critical innovation to customers. The recent acquisition of Cyclops, Cyada, and Rotate's talent further enhance our capabilities in exposure management, AI security, and workspace. And these acquisitions strengthen our competitive position and ultimately support our long-term growth ambitions. We're executing with discipline, investing behind our highest conviction opportunities and driving greater value for customers, partners, and shareholders in 2026 and beyond. And with that, I'll turn to Rodrigo on to address our financials.

Thank you, Nadav. One moment. Can you see my slides? Yes. Great. Thanks.

Okay, so thank you, Nadav, and thank you, everyone, for joining the call. As Nadav said, we had a solid – fourth quarter was a solid quarter with 6% growth in revenues, driven by 11% growth in our subscription revenues. Our revenues reached $745 billion and were $1 million above the midpoint of our projections. Our non-GAAP EPS was $3.40 per diluted share and exceeded our guidance. The figure includes a one-time tax benefit of approximately $0.52 related to a reduction in our corporate tax rate in Israel that impacted prior period income taxes and also updates into our tax reserves. Excluding the one-time benefit, EPA succeeded the top rate of our projection by approximately $0.08. As for the full yield, our revenues reached $2,725,000,000 and were $15,000,000 above the midpoint of our original projections. Our non-GAAP EPS was $11.89 per diluted shell and exceeded our guidance. This figure includes a tax benefit of approximately $1.90 related to a reduction in our corporate tax rate that impacted prior year income taxes and updates in our tax reserves, also due to the tax settlement that we announced last quarter. Excluding one-time benefit, EPS exceeded the midpoint of our projection by approximately $0.09. As mentioned, our revenues grew by 6% year-over-year, while deferred revenues grew by 9% to $2,180,000,000. It is important to note that our product revenues growth was moderated in the quarter mainly as a result of our subscription price increase that we announced in July 2025, which shifted a larger portion of bundled hardware deals toward subscription. This resulted in an adwind of $6 million to our product revenues in this quarter, as we allocated relatively a smaller product component without changing overall deal value. We do expect to see this impact also in Q1 of approximately $4 to $5 million on our product revenues. We expect the benefits of this strategy to increasingly materialize in subscription revenue during Q1 and throughout 2026. while also the product price increases that we have effectively from 1-1-2026 of 5% expect to support our product growth primarily from the second quarter of 2026. When we are looking on our calculated billing, they total to $1,039,000,000, reflecting an 8% year-over-year growth, while our current calculated billing grew by 6%. Our remaining performance obligation, RPO, grew by 8% to $2.7 billion. On an annual perspective, our revenue grew by 6% year-over-year, while our calculated billing grew by 9% to $2.9 billion. Our current calculated billing totaled to $2,784,000, reflecting a 6% growth year-over-year. When we are looking on our recurring calculated billing, which represents the calculated billing from subscription, maintenance, and update, this grew by 10% year-over-year. As we mentioned, our growth this quarter was driven by our subscription revenues. We continue to experience strong demand for our emerging product portfolio, which remains the primary driver for our revenues growth. In this quarter, in Q4, we had a growth across all our pillars, CTEM, Workspace, and Hybrid Mesh, while our emerging product, Email Security, SASE, and ELM, exceeded more than 40% growth in ARR. When I'm looking on the global revenue distribution, so we did see growth in all regions. 48% of our revenues came from EMEA, and that grew by 5% year-over-year. 40% of the revenues came from America, which had 6% growth year-over-year, while the remaining 12% came from Asia Pacific that grew 9% year-over-year. When I'm looking on the full year, 2025, so actually 46% of our revenue came from EMEA and grew by 5%, 42% of the revenues came from America, and that grew 7%, while the remaining 12% came from Asia Pacific, and that grew double-digit, 11% year-over-year. Looking into our P&L in this quarter, so our gross profit increased from $623 million to $660 million, representing a gross margin of 89%. Our operating expenses increased by 13% to $358 million, On constant currency basis, our office increased by 11%. The increase is primarily as a result of increase in our workforce and investment in sales and marketing and channel programs. Our non-GAAP operating income continues to be strong at $302 million, or 41% operating margin. Our non-GAAP net income increased by 21%, mainly as a result of the one-time tax benefit that I mentioned in the beginning of this product deck. In connection with reduction in tax rate and updated tax results, the non-GAAP EPS grew by 26%, while the one-time benefit contributed approximately 52 cents. Our GAAP net income reached $315 million, increase of 18% year-over-year, while our GAAP EPS was $2.81 and grew by 22% year-over-year. When I'm looking on the full year, so our gross profit increased to $2.4 billion, and that represents a gross margin of 88%. When I'm looking ahead into 2026, we all know the recent memory price increase that we have in the market over the past few months, and it is expected to have an impact also on our gross margin in 2026. We estimated this impact to be approximately one point for the full year, one point on our gross margin for the full year, with most of the impact expected in the second half of 2026, as we have enough inventory, sufficient inventory to support the needs for the first half of 2026. We will continue to closely monitor supply and pricing dynamics into the second half of the year and adjust our procurement strategies needed, including potential product price increase. Our operating expenses increased by 10%, mainly as a result of our continued investment in our workforce organically, and also the impact related to Cyberint acquisition that we closed back in September 2024, and the acquisition that we've done during 2025 of Verity and Lakeira. Our non-GAAP operating income was $1,114,000,000 of 41% operating margins. Looking ahead to 2026, we continue to actively edge our foreign exchange exposure. However, not all currencies are fully covered. As we disclosed in the previous earning calls, if current exchanges' levels persist, we anticipate an additional headwind of approximately 1 to 1.5 points on our operating margin for next year. Our financial income increased to $114 million in 2025 as we kept reinvesting our cash in IRAs compared to 2024. In December 2025, as Nadav mentioned, we completed a $2 billion convertible notes offering. As a result, we expect a higher financial income in 2026 that's estimated to be between 40 to 40 million. Our financial income in 2026 is expected to be $40 to $40 million per quarter. In 2025, we had income tax benefit of $79 million, which included the benefit of approximately $209 million, or $1.90 non-GAP EPS, in connection with updating our tax results due to the tax settlement and also the reduction of the tax rate for prior years. As for 2026 taxes, it is important to update that in December 2025, Israel enacted the OECD Pillar 2 Framework, established a 15% global minimum effective tax rate for large multinational groups, effective for taxes beginning in 2026. As a result, we currently estimate that our tax rate for 2026 will be between 16% to 17%. In parallel, a complementary Israeli government R&D incentive program was initially approved in January 2026. The outcome from this program that is expected to be effective from January 2026 can be approximately $50 million benefit into our operating income. This program is expected to be finally approved by the end of Q1 2026. Our outlook reflects this development as part of our forward-looking statements, including the anticipated notification of the R&D incentive program and the potential financial impact of related grants on our future financial results.

One moment.

Moving into our cash flow and our cash position. Our cash balance, as of the end of the quarter, was $4.3 billion. As a reminder, on December 2025, we also announced $2 billion, and we received $1.8 billion net proceeds, net of issuance costs, and the purchase of the capital. Also, during October 2025, we acquired LACERA for approximately $190 million of net cash consideration. Our operating cash flow was very strong this quarter with $310 million, 24% growth year-over-year, and representing 42% of our revenues. In Q4, we also continued our buyback program and purchased 2.2 million shares for $425 million at an average price of $193 per share. On an annual perspective, our operating cash flow grew by 17% to $1,234,000,000, while important to note that this includes $66,000,000 tax payment, one-time tax payment that related to our tax settlement that we signed in Q3, while our balance sheet edge transaction resulted from the other end a benefit of $51,000,000 in 2025. Also, as a reminder, during 2025, we completed the $160 million payment for the land purchase associated with the new checkpoint campus that we are building here in Tel Aviv. We do not expect any significant additional payment in connection with this new campus in 2026. So to summarize, our revenues were above the midpoint of our projection, and the EPA succeeded our projection. We do see continued stock demand for emerging technologies if it's email, if it's CTEM, a SASE and we had another supporter and another strong operating cash flow and stock profitability. Now moving to the business outlook, to our projection for Q1 and for the full year. So for Q1 and the full year, I'll start with the revenues. So first, our revenues is expected to be between, say, $655 million to $685 million in Q1 2026. I'll remind you the short-term add-in that we have only specific in Q1 in terms of product revenues. For the full year, we expect our revenues to be between $2,830,000,000 to $2,950,000,000, between 4% to 8%, while the midpoint is 6%. This time, we're also going to give you the subscription revenue guidance, which is expected to accelerate, to continue to accelerate. As for Q1, we do expect it to be between $318 million to $328 million, while as for the full year, we expect it to be between 10% to 14%, which means that the midpoint is expected to be 12% growth. Our non-GAAP EPS including, it takes into effect the expected grants, the R&D incentive program that needs to be completed by the end of Q1. This take into account that the EPS is between $2.35 to $2.45, while the full-year EPS, non-GAAP EPS, expect to be between $10.05 and $10.85. GAAP EPS for Q1 expect to be $0.64 less, while for the full years expect to be $2.58 less. Also, we're going to share with you guidance projections, sorry, for adjusted free cash flow for Q1 and for the full year. This is the operating cash flow minus CAPEX minus any acquisition-related costs. And we are, in Q1, we expect to have a strong adjusted free cash flow between $420 to $460 million, which represents 66% of our midpoint expected revenues in Q1. While for the full year, we expect it to be 42% of the revenues in the midpoint, which is $1,150,000,000 to $1,250,000,000. That's it. And we are keep. The floor is yours.

All right. So for Q&A today, first up, we're going to have Adam Tindall from Raymond James.

All right. Thanks. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Yes.

And we'll be followed by Shauli Al from TD Cowan.

Thanks, Kip. Good morning. Nadab, I wanted to ask, AI security is obviously a clear focus in your script today, and it sounds like you're investing both organically and inorganically with some of the acquisitions here. I wonder, and this is sort of a high-level strategic question for you, the heart of it is to kind of compare and contrast your view of AI security versus how cloud security played out. And with the context being that you made the very smart decision in cloud security to choose to partner with Wiz, essentially exiting Check Point's efforts organically as the ROI wasn't there. Again, in hindsight, very smart given the cloud security market has been problematic for your competitors, bad pricing, bad profitability there. And I see some similarities in cloud security and AI security. So I guess what's different about AI security that got you more comfortable to invest here versus the decision to invest in cloud? And how big do you think this could be for Check Point over time? Thanks.

Yeah, no, great question. And, you know, The sort of the analogy is in place. However, in my opinion, the AI transformation is both more foundational. It's not shift and lift your activities from on-prem to the cloud, but rather it's a real shift in the way you use technology, do business, employ people, et cetera. And the second change, in my humble opinion, is that we're seeing it already, but I expect this to accelerate. So it's happening much faster. So in my opinion, you know, you can look at the cloud analogy, but you need to have it as a reference for difference. The second thing I'll say is that here are two fundamental issues. Number one, attackers are using AI much faster than defenders. This is just the nature of this asymmetry between offense and defense. And in this learning competition and how, unfortunately, for several reasons, you know, the attackers can adapt faster. And so what we're seeing is larger scale, more precision, and a real change in the nature of attacks, right? And so... That's one angle that we need to look at. The other is, and that's sort of the nature of what we're seeing right now, every organization on the planet is racing to adopt AI to stay relevant. And as they're doing that, they're sort of creating a new attack surface. When you look at these two things separately, in my humble opinion, this is time to revalidate security altogether. We think we're really well positioned to lead the way, to secure our customers' AI transformation based on the four pillars that we were talking about, based on the fact that we truly have the best prevention, proactive prevention security, which has always been important, but it's now becoming critical. And so building, we have decades of data, 100,000 customers, four pillars, a vision that I believe is very specific to secure AI transformation. This is a must for us. We're making acquisitions. We're building organically. And we really believe this is our time and our space to challenge the status quo.

Thank you. Next up is Shaul Leal, followed by Joseph Gallo of Jefferies.

Thank you. Hi, good afternoon, everybody. Apologies for some background noise. Question for Roe. How should we be thinking about ASP hikes from a linearity perspective? Are we seeing them coming in the first half of the year? Are we seeing them coming in the second half of the year? Can you just help us out a little bit? Thank you.

yes so we did a several price increase one of them was um one of them was in july um only for the subscription the firewall subscription and all in all in in in general we've done it for all the firewall which including client hardware subscription and support in general usually it takes to see the asp going up it takes usually it's a quarter i mean if i'm looking at about for example appliances we talked about the appliances so we of course it's effective on january 1 but From revenues perspective, that's something that usually we see the main impact coming from the quarter afterwards because certain revenues that are recognizing in Q1 are coming from bookings that came from prior periods. And also we are expecting quotes that being delivered to our customers before the effective price increase. So most of the effects usually come in, we should expect to see from Q2 this year.

All right, next up is Brian Essex. Or Rob Owens followed by Brian Essex. Pardon me.

Am I in here first, Kip?

You are in first, Joseph. I'm sorry.

I appreciate that. So, hey, guys, thanks for the question. It was great to see the strength in subscription, but I just wanted to ask on product and 4Q. I know there was some mix shift and reallocation in large deals, but is there anything else we should be aware of? And then I believe your product guide for 26 implies approximately flat sales Just any comments on remaining refresh cycle available, or have you seen customers change their buying behaviors ahead of these incoming price increases? Thanks.

Yeah, so I think Q4, where the good quarter for product, again, was less good than what we've seen in the first three quarters, but still we did see a good quarter for the demand for our product. If I'm looking ahead for 2026, 2026, I think we still have, we see good funnel for hardware, specifically in the second half of the year. I do have to say that you are right that when you're taking into consideration what I gave for subscription, so product is around flat to low single digit. In our guidance, we took more prudent approach, mainly because not only don't see the funnel, mainly because we are taking more prudent approach of what's going on on the macro with the memory shortages, that, you know, we see everywhere price increase, not specifically only on memories, by the way, on all raw materials, and that might affect some customer behavior that's postponing some CapEx projects. So we took it into account, but definitely, again, we want to be more than that. We want to be higher than that. I think we continue to see refresh, but, again, we cannot know what's going on in the market with the memory situation. Thank you.

all right next up is todd weller or brian essex followed by todd weller sorry about that brian that's not all right joey wasn't going to let him pass you by so uh thank you appreciate appreciate you taking the question um really another question on guidance we would love to understand maybe the puts and takes embedded in operating margins what If we were to back into operating margins, what are the implicit margins in your guidance, and how do you think about spending? And then maybe one for Nadav, basically back on that, the dynamics around the hardware price increases. Are you hearing any shift in spending intentions from your customers, anticipating maybe firewall and server prices accelerating on the back of the memory price? And so, you know, one for each of you. Thank you.

So the margin that we took into account in our guide, it's between 39% to 40%. So that's the operating margin. We're taking into account all the add-ins that we get from the memories, from the ethics, from the other end, the expected grants from the government. So all of that was taken into account. That puts you in the 39% to 40%.

Yeah, look, with regard to the hardware, as Ray said, we don't see any change as of now. As Ray said, we do need to be prudent looking into what's happening this year. I actually think for us this could be a competitive advantage. You know, we have the supply for the first two quarters. We're going to figure out how to take advantage of the situation. I don't see this as being a huge headwind, except for what Marie said about the one point in the margins that we just spoke about. Obviously very encouraged by the high growth in the subscription rate that we're seeing and projecting.

No shift towards SAS or other types of architecture.

Exactly, exactly. Our SAS products and subscription is becoming a much bigger part of our overall cake, and we intend to continue growing that, again, across the different pillars. So in hybrid mesh, it's SASE. Workspace is completely SASE. It's always exposure management. And this year, for the first time, a true, you know, a North Star around security for AI around the AI security pillar.

Great. Thank you very much.

All right. Next up is Todd Weller, followed by Junaid Siddiqui.

Thanks. Thanks for the question. Nadav, you outlined all the changes that were implemented in 2025. What would be the two or three specific ones you think will most possibly impact the growth trajectory in 26? And when do you expect to see those start kind of showing up in the numbers?

Yeah, look, I think that we laid the foundations, right? Most importantly is the C-suite and the new leadership we had and the way we are reorganizing or refocusing our go-to-market. That's number one. And the second thing that I'm very excited about is going to the market with these four pillars – Each one of them is a platform in itself. Some of our customers are going to choose to use one pillar as their platform, let's say, for workspace. Others are still using the hybrid mesh pillar, and some are using everything, and it's an open garden so we can play with the others. So if you ask me, these are the two main things. Number one is the four-pillar approach. Number two is the leadership and the C-suite change and the refocusing of the go-to-market. And above everything else, I am a true believer that we need to revalidate security. Attackers are moving at an extreme speed. I think we have the foundations. But as you can see, we're also making the acquisitions. We have the right design partnerships. We want to do this as an ecosystem play. So the third thing, of course, is security for AI. The race is on, and we're in it.

Thank you. Thanks, Todd. Next up is Junaid, followed by Keith Bachman from BMO.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. I just wanted to talk about the progress on the SASE front. You know, you mentioned ARR grew around 40%. In the past, you've talked about making it much more enterprise-ready, moving to a unified policy. How is that tracking, and is the focus right now mostly on upselling the existing customers?

Yeah, so great question. As you can see, the SASC now is a part of our hardware mesh pillar. We're maturing the product. We made significant investments organically in 2025, and the product is maturing. and we're integrating it as a part of the hybrid mesh pillar and platform, like you said, with our unified management. Now, in terms of our sales motion, we are integrating what used to be what we used to call a rocket. We're now integrating this into the hybrid mesh pillar. We're also putting together the sales overlay of our of our Cloud Guard network security with SASE to better integrate that into the overall motion. You're right that I would say that two-thirds is upsell to existing customers, but that's not the only one. We're also seeing new customers that are actually buying our SASE, and we hope to actually move them to our firewall business to create the full capability of a hybrid mesh filler.

Thank you. All right. Next up is Keith Bachman, followed by Shrenik Kotharis of Baird.

Thank you very much. And, Dov, I want to put this to you, and it sort of reflects incoming comments already this morning. Investors are looking for an acceleration of growth. You're basically guiding to 6% plus or minus total revenue growth, which is consistent. with what's happened the last two years. So while subscription is improving, which is nice to see, total growth isn't improving, right? So how do you sort of respond to, because you're asking investors to be patient about this notion of acceleration. So how do you respond to that comment? And then consistent with that, Roe, any comments you want us to think about for total billings growth in light of the midpoint of REV growth? Thank you.

Yeah, sure, thanks. Look, we laid the foundations. Now it's all about execution. I think we have the four-pillar approach. We have the foundations. We have the right people in place. We have the financial flexibility to make acquisitions. Now it's all about execution. And you're right that it's not an overnight acceleration, but I think we're on the right trajectory. I think also what we have in terms of product solutions around our superior ability to proactively prevent the acquisitions that we're making and what we're building in the AI security is putting us in the right trajectory. And now it's all about execution.

And as for the total billings, similar to the revenues, growth around high single digits, 6%, 7%. That's expectation in order to achieve the midpoint.

All right. Next up is .

Great. Thanks a lot for taking my question. So, Nadal, you just mentioned financial flexibility ended for a few. $4 billion in cash and you have added $2 billion in convert. Just in terms of so far mentioned about favoring smaller AI-native integrations and the announcements you made, just on the large-scale M&A, right, can you just talk to, as some of the other peers are kind of, going after platform convergence waves, aggressively chasing through things. So what kind of scale IP or adjacency would actually justify more transformative AI doing bad for you guys, if at all? Thanks.

Yeah. So, yeah, we have the flexibility and we have the vision. And now in each one of those pillars, we need to be very disciplined and identify the targets. They could be tuck-ins, they could be larger, but the ones that actually take us to be a podium player in each one of those pillars specifically. So these targets need to have the right technology, the right people, the right culture, and so that we can see that we can integrate it and move fast to create a real platform. In my humble opinion, you know, just buying more and more products and putting sort of a supermarket approach is not what our customers are looking for when they look to consolidation. They look for a real integrated platform. is for us killer and each one of those killer, we're looking at it as its own platform play. So if you take exposure management, we are looking to create the number one exposure management system. So the acquisitions are smaller, we're also looking at larger ones all the time, but we're going to be disciplined about it. And again, through the looking at each pillar separately, we're not stopping, we're moving fast.

Shrenik, it looks like you just stopped playing a game when you came on. Good seeing you, Shrenik. Next up is Joshua Tilton, followed by Roger Boyd from UBF.

Thank you, guys. Maybe, Roy, for you, any way to think about how much the acquisitions that you announced today are contributing to the guidance that you provided for 2026? And maybe outside of pricing, could you just talk to why or what gives you conviction in the belief that guiding to, I think what you said, flat to low single-digit growth for product is prudent from your perspective?

okay so first in terms of the acquisitions women so of course it's part of the guidance and that said it should have an effect of approximately after point in our margin because it's mainly right now in 2026 we expect it to have many many costs many dilutions to our margin that's a approximately after point to the operating margin and As for the pricing and the product, so I think, again, I'm looking – when we are, of course, we are working on the guidance and, of course, working for our plan of 2026. We're looking on the funding. We are looking on the potential. We're looking, of course, on the pricing that we've done in January 1st and – I think that, again, we need to continue the strong demand that we've seen in 2025. We see good final also for hardware, mainly in the second half of the year. Also in the first half, but mainly in the second half of the year. And I think that definitely also the pricing and the fact that we've seen that the discounts this year were actually even improved compared to last year in 2025 compared to 2024. If we manage to continue that and maintain the discounts, we also can benefit from this price increase. I do have to say, it's important to say, we didn't take into account in our guidance any additional price increase. Because of the memory shortages, we might consider additional price increases during the year, but that was not a factor in the guidance right now.

And just to be clear, that half a point is in the 39% to 40% margin? Yes, of course, of course.

It's part of the guidance I provided you, yeah.

And any way to think about the top-line contribution from the acquisitions?

Minimal. Minimal to, I would say, a few millions or even a few millions of dollars, yeah. Super helpful. Thank you, guys.

All right. Next up is Roger Boyd from UBS, followed by Peter Levine from Evercore.

Awesome. Thanks, Kit. Nadav, I wanted to hit on Rotate. They have a lot on their platform. So I guess in addition to the MSP enablement tools that you talked about and some of the exposure management technology, How much interest is there in the rest of their portfolio, which I think includes some native technology for detection across endpoint and some other attack services? And when you think about MSPs in general, can you just talk about what percent of revenue they represent today and how you see that evolving? How important is that in terms of your channel strategy this year? Thanks.

Yeah, thanks. So today I think it's still relatively small, but I think it's high potential growth for us in 2026 and beyond. The MSP, we're going to consolidate everything under a workspace under Gil Friedrich, and the Rote technology and the folks that are coming with it are going to enable us to actually streamline everything to the MSPs, and that's where the opportunity is. And you're right, it's not – It's email, it's endpoint, it's browser, it's SASE, all put together for the smaller customers working with our partners and the MSPs. And so this acquisition will allow us to accelerate, to move faster into a consolidated, unified ability to work with those MSPs.

All right. Thanks, Roger. Next up is Peter Levine with Evercore, followed by Saket Kalia from Barclays.

Thanks, guys. I mean, what's changing customer demand that makes kind of exposure management more of a priority today? You touched upon it on your call and, you know, in your prepared remarks. But, you know, are customers explicitly asking for, like, a united, you know, exposure, visibility across network, cloud, identity, whatever it is? And then maybe just, Rory, help us understand, like, how meaningful could this category be over the next, call it, two or three years in terms of revenue contribution?

Yeah. Yeah. So, first, I can't resist to answer Ruiz's question. It's meaningful. It's not huge right now, but we see great potential in it. When I look at this, you know, I come from the trenches, ultimately. When I look at this as a practitioner, you've got to have this situational awareness. And so, yes, we're seeing more and more demand, and we're seeing it going upstream as our capabilities become more and more mature. And what we're building is the full gamut. So on the one hand, based on an acquisition that we made, you know, year before last around cyber, we have the intelligence. Now with Cyclops, we can see the posture and we can prioritize based on what we're seeing, CVEs, dark web stuff. We're seeing what's coming, and from the inside, we're seeing what's vulnerable. And with the Verity acquisition, we can actually do the automatic remediation. And so what our customers find us once they deploy that is that a lot of the things that are coming at them are no longer in danger because we can block it automatically before it even happens. In my opinion, again, looking at this as a practitioner approach, One of the shifts is that attackers can actually weaponize vulnerabilities much, much faster, and they can also use autonomous agents that are doing their – once there is a breach, they operate much, much faster. And so having that proactive prevention has become more important than ever, and building this triage around these three components I think is unique in the industry – And I think we'll carry more and more traction. For us at CheckPoint, it's also important because it allows us to go outside of our install base right now to new customers and hopefully upsell and cross-sell once we go beyond that. And so, yes, we see this as something which is becoming a core pillar and an important part of the four-pillar strategy that we're going with. The last thing I'll say about it is, is that when we do the remediation, the automatic remediation, we don't do it just for checkpoint products, and that's the beauty of it. This is where an open platform, open garden comes in. When we see a vulnerability, you know, some of our customers are not using checkpoint products to secure their hybrid mesh, but we can go in and fix the other vendors' vulnerabilities after we prioritize them, and at the end of the day, I think it gives our customers better security.

Thanks, Peter. Next up is Saket Kalia, followed by Brad Zelnick from Deutsche Bank.

Okay, great. Hey, guys, thanks for taking my question here. And, by the way, appreciate the additional detail on guidance. Thank you. Maybe a question for both Nadav and Roy. You know, the four pillars are a really helpful framework for thinking about the business. Roy, for you, are there any guardrails that you can give us just on the mixes across those four? High level, of course. And Nadav, what are you changing from either a contracting or sales perspective to drive higher growth across those smaller, maybe faster growing pillars? Does that make sense? Yep.

so i think if you are looking on the four pillars so of course the most significant one is the hybrid mesh which includes also our firewall and which is still a significant part of our business it's growing of course mainly driven by the sassy and our cloud network uh that's mainly driving the growth both of them sassy and cloud network sitting on the subscription line item that's a part of the acceleration that we see in the subscription line item And the others that I think have the highest growth that we see today are Workspace and CTEM. CTEM, we talked a lot about it in this call. We do see very strong demand. Of course, still small numbers from total checkpoint, but very strong demand, which started when we acquired Cyberint, then we added the other acquisitions that we've done and included in the offering. And, again, when we are looking on the final for next year, definitely it's expected to be, even in 2026, a major driver for subscription line item. And also email. Email is going to continue to be very strong. We talked about the numbers, I think. I talked about the numbers, few quarters. For the few quarters, I mean, we already passed the $160 million ARR and continue to grow in very strong double digits. So definitely we're aiming to pass the $200 million this year. And I think that's the main driver that we – that's why you see our subscription revenues continue to accelerate, and we expect it to accelerate every quarter. Of course, with the contribution for – also from firewall, again, contribution that it's a mix of the price increase, but also gaining new logos and expanding our market share in the firewall. So that's in total picture – and how it translates into our revenues. And, Nadav, you want to?

Yeah, the four pillars is strategic, as you said. You know, in the first one, it's the infrastructure and the network. The second one is your employees. The third one is the situational awareness, and then finally security for AI, which is as a standalone but also embedded in the three others, and we have the services that engulf all that. To your question, to grow these pillars faster, we're doing a few things. Number one, in each pillar, we're trying to see what is a differentiated advantage. Like I said, for the hybrid mesh, it's the prevention first, it's the scalability, it's the unified management, and it's the hybrid architecture. But there are other things that we want to improve in. Some of them we're doing organically, some we're looking for acquisitions. We're doing the same thing for each one of those pillars. The second thing is from our go-to-market focus, we are moving to a multi-pillar, multi-platform company so that our front-liner sellers can sell each one of those pillars. And, of course, in each one of them there's also different products, and we're better aligning our account managers with the specialists that can come in and support them. And that's a major change in the way we're going to market as of literally now. The one thing I want to add is that in each one of those pillars, we're also going to challenge. We're going to challenge some of the existing status quo in the market. So, you know, we're challenging status quo around, you know, supermarket approach consolidation to a real platform approach. We're challenging a closed garden to an open garden approach. We're challenging complexity. So in each one of these, we're not just building our own security platform pillar, but also challenging the existing status quo. Again, some of it with existing capabilities that I think are critical in becoming more important than in others by building new stuff and making acquisitions. And at the end of the day, I think we need to realize that especially the world we're going into, Every morning there is a new reality and a new threat, so we need to constantly evolve. We need to constantly see the roadmap of our customers. We need to constantly look around the corner so we can truly be their companion for a secure AI transformation.

Very helpful. Thank you.

All right. Next up is Brad Zelnick, followed by Shyam Patel from Susquehanna.

Thanks, Kev. Nadav, I've heard you loud and clear. The foundation is in place. It now comes down to execution. And I take that to mean more go-to-market than product because checkpoints always had great product, and you're acquiring high-quality tuck-ins that only strengthen your offerings in the position that you're in. But where do we stand from a go-to-market perspective? How much more ramp distribution capacity do you have heading into 2026? And maybe for Roib to chime in, What needs to happen to exit 26, growing double-digit, and to get us to double-digit growth for the full year at 27?

Yeah, thank you for that. So you're right that it's about go-to-market execution. It starts with a louder voice around our marketing efforts. It's about the focus, and as I described, we're going to be focusing on large enterprise. We're going to be focusing on new logos. We're going to be focusing on the multi-pillar, multi-product company approach. We're going to be focusing on hiring the best people in the industry. So it's a plethora of things that we're doing to create a better execution as we go to market. Lastly, it's also about challenging the status quo. I think this is a time where the nature of security is changing. I think the criticality of the basis of what security means has become more critical than ever. And we're going to take advantage of some of the assets that we already have. We're going to take advantage of where we are situated. We're seeing all the innovators, and we're trying them out with our design partners on the customer side. We've got new leaders in marketing. We've got new leaders in sales. And we're going to continue bringing in the best of the best in the industry to join us to do exactly what you said by the end of the year.

As for the double-digit question, so I think, again, I think we need to show, first, we need to continue the strong momentum, the strong demand that we've seen for the, we mentioned the CTEMP, we mentioned the email security, the workspace demand. and SASE, so definitely we need to see here, we need to see specifically in email and CTEM continuous strong demand there, as we see already, we see it in the funnel, we saw it last year, we saw it in the last few years, but email in the last few years, but CTEM specifically in 2025 and also in the funnel for next year. for 2026 but definitely in order to be double digits we need to grow even faster than firewall i mean we are positioned much better today on the firewall uh than what we've been two years ago or three years ago i think we did a significant improvement both on the product side also on the go to market and after on the go to market i think we brought and we had a great we have great leadership in the go to market and and i think we are positioned much better today to accelerate our growth on the firewall definitely meet-wise single digits in the firewall together with the continuous strong momentum that we have in the other pillars, that should bring us to double digits. Thank you very much.

All right, next up is Shyam Patel, followed by Ben Bolin of Cleveland Research.

This is Daniel on Prasham. Thanks so much for taking the question. I guess with the price of memory increasing significantly of late, I know you talked about potentially increasing prices, but what levers do you have to maybe try to get better deals from suppliers? And how are you looking at that as we progress through the year and try to get through sort of these shortages?

So I think we're working 24-7 with suppliers around the world to get better pricing. I think we have a great email that is doing an amazing job in order to get – to get the best pricing, I think. But still, we cannot avoid the situation that there is a price, the price of the memory is increasing significantly. So even if we're getting better pricing, it's still significantly higher than what we used to pay a few months ago before this trend starts. But definitely we are investing a lot on that, on getting the best pricing. And, again, we're doing it. We have teams around the world that are exploring the opportunities in order to get the best pricing in the market. Of course, we always want to do even better, but I think definitely we are doing a great job there.

All right. Our last caller is going to be Patrick Colville. Ben Bolin's not on the call today.

Patrick, nice of you to show up. Thank you, and I'll make it a good one to close. It's actually a clarification question. Can you just, Roy, please just go over again what drove the product revenue to be a little bit softer than we might have hoped in 4Q? And then can you just also just re-clarify why the pricing benefit doesn't really hit in 1Q and then why it builds throughout the year?

So for products, most of our hardware that we are selling today, that is a significant portion of our product revenues, is sold as a bundle together with the software subscriptions, actually, with subscription. And when we announced the subscription pricing back in July, So we announce only pricing for subscription without increasing the appliances price list. From accounting perspective, that's more accounting, we need to allocate because the standalone subscription price was increased without the total price. So the allocation of the revenues are smaller to the product, to the bare hardware. is smaller, and that impacts mainly Q4. Because in Q3, we just announced it, some of the deals were not recognized as revenues, but in Q4, we already saw that. Again, it mainly shows them, Edwin, it's not going to affect our total revenues. It's more kind of headwind on our short-term product revenues, and we're going to see the benefit from the subscription over time. So, again, that's in general. And your question of the price increase, so let's separate between billings and revenues. Billings, most of it you're going to see it in the same quarter that we did the price increase. From revenues perspective, sometime, like in Infinity, some other DLAs that we have, We have deals that have been closed before, I mean in prior quarters, and it's part of our backlog, and we are recognizing the revenues in future periods. So in that factor, you don't see the price increase in the revenues. You're not going to see that. You might see billings for new deals, but you're not going to see the main impact in the same quarter. So as I said, the main impact we start to see is from Q2, which is a quarter after the price increase, on the revenues, not on the billings. All right.

Thank you.

Thank you, everybody, for joining us. We appreciate it. And we'll see you throughout the quarter and then, obviously, next quarter. Have a great day. Bye-bye. Bye.

Thank you.