Israeli cybersecurity company Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP) has outstripped the forecasts in its results for the fourth quarter of 2018, with 3.3% growth in revenue and a 2.6% increase in net profit per share. Check Point's 2018 revenue totaled $1.916 billion, including $526 million in the fourth quarter, while the analysts predicted $517 million.
GAAP net profit reached $821 million, up from $803 million in 2017, and non-GAAP net profit (excluding various accounting expense items) was $911 million, including $264 million in the fourth quarter of 2018. Net profit per share was $1.68 in the fourth quarter, $0.08 per share more than the analysts' forecasts, and $5.71 for the year.
Check Point generated over $1.1 billion in cash from current activity in 2018, including $249 million in the fourth quarter. The company finished 2018 with over $4 billion in cash. Check Point recently announced two acquisitions of Israeli startups: Dome9 for $175 million and ForceNock for a few million dollars, announced after the end of the fourth quarter. Check Point also spent $305 million in the fourth quarter on buying back its own shares at an average share price of $109, compared with its current share price of $111, reflecting a $17.3 billion market cap.
"We finished the year with record results. Our revenue was close to the upper limit of our guidance, and net profit per share was higher than our guidance," Check Point cofounder and CEO Gil Shwed said. He added that sales of security licenses continued to grow as a result of cloud, mobile communications, and threat prevention technologies. "We expanded the supply of our products to cloud computing with the Dome9 and ForceNock acquisitions and the ClouldGuard solution. We started 2019 with a burst of innovation," Shwed summed up.
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on January 30, 2019
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