Palo Alto Q4 FY7/25 Earnings Review

Last updated on Aug 26, 2025

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Picking up the Pace

By Hermit Warrior, a.k.a. Richard Iacuelli

The word "execute" - or a derivative of it - is used six times by Palo Alto Networks' ($PANW) management team in their Q4 earnings call, compared to five times by Cloudflare's ($NET) and just once by Fortinet's ($FTNT) in their most recent earnings calls.

Now, I won't pretend this is any kind of scientific way of measuring or predicting success, however I do think it speaks to mind-set, and to some extent sets the tone as regards their ambitions for revenue growth. The correlation between this 'marker' and their post earnings stock reactions? Coincidence perhaps.

The upshot is that PANW closed out their 2025 fiscal year with accelerating revenue growth, improving EBIDTA and unlevered free cashflow (UFCF) margins - and Remaining Performance Obligations (RPO) growing at the fastest rate in seven quarters.

Let's take a look at the headlines, then at what may be driving this improved performance.

Year on year revenue growth of 16% handily beat the 14% guide and more importantly continued to accelerate from 15% in Q3 and 12% in the year-ago quarter. Q4 also marked the first time PANW hit a $10 billion revenue run-rate, cementing its lead as the largest dedicated cybersecurity provider.

Management highlighted the highest bookings growth in two and a half years, aligning with the accelerating RPO noted earlier, and adding credence to their FY'30 target of $15 Billion in non-hardware related Next Generation Security (NGS) Annual Recurring Revenue. We'll come back to that target in a sec as it speaks to their revenue growth ambitions.