Scotiabank Lowers CrowdStrike Price Target to $265, Cites Potential Legal and Financial Risks After Global Outage

Scotiabank analysts reduced their price target for CrowdStrike Holdings (NASDAQ:CRWD) to $265 from $300 while maintaining a Sector Perform rating on the stock. The adjustment follows extensive fieldwork, including discussions with four large CrowdStrike customers, three seasoned lawyers, and a cybersecurity insurance expert, to assess the implications of the recent CrowdStrike/Windows global outage.

The findings suggest that most customers with minimal or moderate impact are unlikely to seek concessions from CrowdStrike, while those facing serious financial impacts may turn to cybersecurity insurance and negotiate directly with CrowdStrike for service credits or additional offerings. Legal action appears to be a last resort. Given these insights, the analysts see increased risk to CrowdStrike's ARR estimates for 2025-26, but less concern about legal costs affecting FCF targets for the same period. Despite acknowledging CrowdStrike as one of the leading software companies, the analysts expect the shares to face challenges in 2024, thus maintaining the Sector Perform rating.