Santa Clara cybersecurity company Palo Alto Networks ($PANW) posted a big beat, and closed a key deal. Shares rose about 7% Thursday morning September 5 as analysts took in the news, and the alternative data is cause for further optimism.
Palo Alto stock is soaring, up nearly 20% this year. Over the last three years, the total number of employees has gone up 124%, so that's a good trend.
Zingbox
Palo Alto also purchased Zingbox yesterday for a cool $75 million. Zingbox is an Internet of Things security company that should make it a great complimentary piece to Palo Alto's cloud services. All in all, this was a good opportunity to look into how things were going before this purchase, and as it turns out, pretty darn well.
The Zingbox purchase shouldn't really affect the trajectory of hiring and growth overall, which is a great sign. The more the merrier! So hope on the bandwagon now while you can before there isn't any room left.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- Knotel, on WeWork's heels, might be an even more promising workplace IPO
- Hiring at Slack has slowed 33% since DPO, but it's not all bad
- WeWork is not on a pre-IPO "hiring spree", despite reports
