Palo Alto Networks Inc (PANW) 2024 Q3 法說會逐字稿

(presentation)

（推介會）

Good day, everyone, and welcome to Palo Alto Networks Fiscal Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Walter Pritchard, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Development. Please note that this call is being recorded today, Monday, May 20, 2024, at 1:30 p.m. Pacific Time.

大家好，歡迎參加 Palo Alto Networks 2024 年第三季財報電話會議。我是沃爾特‧普里查德 (Walter Pritchard)，投資者關係與企業發展資深副總裁。請注意，本次通話將於今天（2024 年 5 月 20 日星期一）下午 1:30 進行錄音。太平洋時間。

With me on today's call to discuss second (sic) [third] quarter results are Nikesh Arora, our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Dipak Golechha, our Chief Financial Officer. Following our prepared remarks, Lee Klarich, our Chief Product Officer, will join us for the question-and-answer portion. You can find the press release and other information to supplement today's discussion on our website at investors.paloaltonetworks.com. While there, please click on the link for quarterly results to find the Q3 '24 supplemental information and Q3 '24 earnings presentation.

今天與我一起討論第二（原文如此）[第三]季度業績的電話會議是我們的董事長兼首席執行官 Nikesh Arora；以及我們的財務長 Dipak Golechha。在我們準備好的發言之後，我們的首席產品長 Lee Klarich 將加入我們的問答部分。您可以在我們的網站 Investors.paloaltonetworks.com 上找到新聞稿和其他資訊來補充今天的討論。在此期間，請點擊季度業績鏈接，查找 24 年第 3 季補充資訊和 24 年第 3 季收益演示。

During the course of today's call, we may make forward-looking statements and projections regarding the company's business operations and financial performance. These statements are made today, are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ from those forward-looking statements. Please review our press release and recent SEC filings for a description of these risks and uncertainties. We assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements made in the presentations today.

在今天的電話會議中，我們可能會對公司的業務營運和財務表現做出前瞻性陳述和預測。今天所做的這些陳述受到許多風險和不確定性的影響，可能導致我們的實際結果與這些前瞻性陳述有所不同。請查看我們的新聞稿和最近向 SEC 提交的文件，以了解這些風險和不確定性的描述。我們不承擔更新今天簡報中任何前瞻性陳述的義務。

We will also refer to non-GAAP financial measures. These measures should not be considered as a substitute for financial measures prepared in accordance with GAAP. The most directly comparable GAAP financial metrics and reconciliations are in the press release and the appendix to the investor presentation. Unless otherwise noted specifically, all results and comparisons are on a fiscal year-over-year basis.

我們也將參考非公認會計準則財務指標。這些措施不應被視為替代根據公認會計準則制定的財務措施。最直接可比較的 GAAP 財務指標和調節表位於新聞稿和投資者簡報的附錄。除非另有特別說明，所有結果和比較均以財政年度為基礎。

We also note that management is scheduled to participate in the Bank of America Global Technology Conference in June.

我們也注意到，管理層計劃參加 6 月的美國銀行全球技術會議。

I will now turn the call over to Nikesh.

我現在將把電話轉給尼科甚。

Thank you, Walter. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today for our earnings call. I hope everybody enjoyed our new marketing campaign teaser featuring Keanu Reeves that goes live on national media.

謝謝你，沃特。大家下午好，感謝您今天參加我們的財報電話會議。我希望每個人都喜歡我們由基努李維主演的新行銷活動預告片，該預告片在國家媒體上直播。

Let's start at the beginning. I'll update you on what we have experienced in Q3. First and foremost, cyberattacks continue unabated. We're seeing a consistent stream of nation-state activity that is systematically looking for software supply chain and hardware zero day vulnerabilities and attempting to exploit them at scale. Additionally, there continues to be a robust stream of attack activity targeted at large enterprises and pieces of critical infrastructure.

讓我們從頭開始。我將向您介紹我們在第三季經歷的最新情況。首先，網路攻擊有增無減。我們看到持續不斷的民族國家活動正在系統地尋找軟體供應鏈和硬體零日漏洞並嘗試大規模利用它們。此外，針對大型企業和關鍵基礎設施的攻擊活動仍然存在。

We continue to see high-profile breaches, some of which were widely reported in the press again this quarter. Most organizations faced the challenge of an ever shrinking time window for a bad actor to enter their environments, find valuable data and exfiltrate it. The window is now measured in hours. In comparison, the time it takes for an organization to discover a breach and stop the malicious activity continues to be measured in days and weeks. While not a new phenomena, with new disclosure mandates, this challenge is now clearly out in the open. With AI, we expect the attacks to come at an even faster pace.

我們繼續看到引人注目的違規行為，其中一些違規行為在本季再次被媒體廣泛報道。大多數組織面臨的挑戰是，不良行為者進入其環境、找到有價值的資料並竊取資料的時間窗口不斷縮短。該視窗現在以小時為單位。相較之下，組織發現漏洞並阻止惡意活動所需的時間仍然以天或週為單位。雖然這不是一個新現象，但隨著新的揭露規定的出台，這項挑戰現在已經明顯公開。有了人工智慧，我們預期攻擊的速度會更快。

I don't need to elaborate on the current enthusiasm around AI. Almost every one of our customers is either experimenting with AI or plans to deploy some use cases in the near future. As usual, their employees are way ahead. Almost 50% of employees of most companies are using some sort of AI application, LLM or copilot to explore, learn and make themselves more productive.

我不需要詳細闡述當前圍繞人工智慧的熱情。幾乎我們的每位客戶都在嘗試人工智慧或計劃在不久的將來部署一些用例。和往常一樣，他們的員工遙遙領先。大多數公司近 50% 的員工正在使用某種人工智慧應用程式、法學碩士或副駕駛來探索、學習並提高自己的工作效率。

Whilst this is great for the evolution and adoption of AI, this is introducing a whole new set of threats. As some of you are aware, we have recently announced a suite of products, which are aimed to secure this AI usage by design. More about this later, but I expect this to continue to provide a tailwind to the cybersecurity industry.

雖然這對人工智慧的發展和採用非常有利，但這也帶來了一系列全新的威脅。正如你們中的一些人所知，我們最近發布了一套產品，旨在透過設計確保人工智慧的使用。稍後會詳細介紹，但我預計這將繼續為網路安全產業提供動力。

On spending for cybersecurity, we see no changes, pace or trajectory. Most customers have a series of projects they want to get done, and the only limiting factor seems to be their execution capability. Customers continue to focus on Zero Trust transformations, coupled with the need for new network architectures to adapt to a more hybrid infrastructure.

在網路安全支出方面，我們沒有看到任何變化、速度或軌跡。大多數客戶都有一系列想要完成的項目，唯一的限制似乎是他們的執行能力。客戶持續專注於零信任轉型，以及對新網路架構的需求，以適應更混合的基礎設施。

The insurgence of cloud migrations is being driven by the need to get their data in the cloud to be AI ready causing discussions around the cloud security platform. And as you may all have noticed with all the M&A activity, the security operations space is getting rejuvenated, is something we've been preparing for with XSIAM.

雲端遷移的興起是由於需要將雲端中的資料為人工智慧做好準備，引發了圍繞雲端安全平台的討論。正如你們可能都已經注意到的那樣，在所有併購活動中，安全營運領域正在煥發活力，這是我們一直在透過 XSIAM 做準備的事情。

The accelerated pace of change in cyber, even with healthy increase in cybersecurity funding, many organizations aim to simply keep pace with the volume of threat activity they see. Most cannot do this and are increasingly receptive to a better way of tracking their security challenges -- tackling their security challenges, [windless sprawl] and architectural complexity. We firmly believe that answer is platformization of cybersecurity over time.

儘管網路安全資金健康成長，但網路變革的步伐不斷加快，許多組織的目標只是跟上他們所看到的威脅活動的數量。大多數人無法做到這一點，並且越來越接受更好的方式來追蹤他們的安全挑戰——解決他們的安全挑戰、[無風蔓延]和架構複雜性。我們堅信，答案是隨著時間的推移網路安全的平台化。

I'm delighted to report, despite the concerns around our platformization approach after our last quarter, the customer feedback has been nothing but encouraging. We have initiated way more conversations in our platformization than we expected. If meetings were a measure of outcome, they have gone up 30%, and a majority of them have been centered on platform opportunities. In short, demand is robust, and my expectation is that we will continue to see it be that way for the next many quarters. With this backdrop, we are pleased with our strong Q3 results.

我很高興地向大家報告，儘管上個季度之後我們對平台化方法感到擔憂，但客戶的回饋仍然令人鼓舞。我們在平台化方面發起的對話比我們預期的要多得多。如果會議是衡量成果的標準，那麼會議次數增加了 30%，而且其中大部分都以平台機會為中心。簡而言之，需求強勁，我的預期是，在接下來的多個季度中，我們將繼續看到這種情況。在此背景下，我們對第三季的強勁業績感到滿意。

As you can see, we delivered top line growth ahead of the market and continue to drive growth while improving profitability. Our performance was highlighted by 47% growth in our next-generation security ARR. As we continue to transform our business to a security software business, and we saw a 23% growth in RPO, an uptick from last quarter, this translated into 15% revenue growth and 3% growth in our billings.

正如您所看到的，我們實現了領先於市場的營收成長，並在提高獲利能力的同時繼續推動成長。我們的下一代安全 ARR 成長了 47%，凸顯了我們的表現。隨著我們繼續將業務轉型為安全軟體業務，我們看到 RPO 成長了 23%，較上季有所上升，這轉化為我們的營收成長 15% 和帳單成長 3%。

As we have articulated earlier, we don't see the billing metric as a true indicator of business trend. It continues to be impacted by payment terms where more and more customers prefer annual billing plans. However, if you implied bookings, you will note that we saw an uptick over that in the last -- over the last 2 quarters. We actually ended up billing -- booking backlog -- billing backlog this quarter.

正如我們之前所闡明的，我們並不認為計費指標是業務趨勢的真正指標。它繼續受到付款條件的影響，越來越多的客戶更喜歡按年計費計劃。然而，如果您暗示預訂量，您會注意到我們在過去兩個季度中看到了預訂量的上升。實際上，我們本季最終完成了計費 - 預訂積壓 - 計費積壓。

We continue to operate our business efficiently. Our operating margins expanded by 200 basis points year-over-year, driving 25% growth in operating income and 20% in our EPS to $1.32. Our cash generation was strong, and again, our GAAP net income grew substantially year-over-year.

我們繼續有效率地經營我們的業務。我們的營業利潤率年增 200 個基點，帶動營業收入成長 25%，每股收益成長 20%，達到 1.32 美元。我們的現金產生能力強勁，而且我們的 GAAP 淨利潤較去年同期大幅成長。

Before I continue with highlights from Q3, I'm aware that our accelerated consolidation and platformization strategy created significant conversation last quarter. We also had questions from analysts and investors on this topic since we reported our Q2 results in February. I thought I'd share more background on how we got here to provide context and also offer a platformization framework for you to help understand why we are convinced that we can build a much larger business over the next several years and platformization is key to achieving that.

在繼續介紹第三季的亮點之前，我知道我們的加速整合和平台化策略在上個季度引發了重要的討論。自從我們在二月報告第二季度業績以來，我們也收到了分析師和投資者關於這個​​主題的提問。我想我應該分享更多關於我們如何來到這裡提供背景的背景知識，並為您提供一個平台化框架，以幫助您理解為什麼我們相信我們可以在未來幾年內建立一個更大的業務，而平台化是實現這目標的關鍵那。

When we embarked on our journey to transform our company, we were keen to create interest and convince our customers that if we solve their problems, not just with our next-generation firewalls and the associated subscriptions but also with a set of best-of-breed products across 20-plus categories organized across 3 platforms. That strategy was hugely successful and saw us achieving nearly $4 billion in NGS ARR. The majority of focus of our teams was landing multiple products across our [3] platforms and our customers. Whether we were able to land at a brand-new customer for Palo Alto Networks or we added products from new platforms to our existing customers, we were happy. Landing could range from a single product use in part of the organization to broader usage across the organization.

當我們開始公司轉型之旅時，我們熱衷於引起客戶的興趣並說服我們的客戶，如果我們解決他們的問題，不僅可以使用我們的下一代防火牆和相關訂閱，還可以使用一系列最佳的-跨3 個平台組織的20 多個類別的品種產品。該策略取得了巨大成功，我們的 NGS ARR 實現了近 40 億美元的收入。我們團隊的主要關注點是在我們的 [3] 平台和客戶上推出多種產品。無論我們能夠為 Palo Alto Networks 找到一個全新的客戶，還是為現有客戶添加新平台的產品，我們都很高興。落地範圍可以從在組織的一部分使用單一產品到在整個組織內更廣泛的使用。

From that lens, if you look at our top 5,000 customers, we have landed 2 or more of our platforms at about half these customers, and these customers contribute just over 80% of NGS ARR. If you look at it by -- this by platform, we have landed 97% of these top 5,000 network security, over 20% of them in Prisma Cloud and over 40% with Cortex. By all means, our land the platform strategy was extremely successful.

從這個角度來看，如果你看看我們的前 5,000 家客戶，我們已經在其中大約一半的客戶中部署了 2 個或更多平台，而這些客戶貢獻了 NGS ARR 的 80% 以上。如果你按平台來看，我們已經掌握了 5,000 強網路安全的 97%，其中超過 20% 在 Prisma Cloud 中，超過 40% 在 Cortex 中。無論如何，我們的平台策略非常成功。

In landing with multiple platforms, many of our customers have leveraged our capabilities across key cybersecurity buying centers such as network security, cloud security and security ops. Most of this cross-platform adoption has happened more organically with customers adopting incremental products on Palo Alto Networks on their own pace. Governed by the complexity of their environment and the friction of dealing with contracts and multiple vendors, not many of our landed customers are fully platformized; and the ones that are fully platformized, we saw encouraging results.

在登陸多個平台時，我們的許多客戶利用了我們在網路安全、雲端安全和安全營運等關鍵網路安全採購中心的能力。大多數跨平台採用都是更有機地發生，客戶按照自己的步調在 Palo Alto Networks 上採用增量產品。由於環境的複雜性以及與合約和多個供應商打交道的摩擦，我們的落地客戶中沒有多少是完全平台化的；在那些完全平台化的專案中，我們看到了令人鼓舞的結果。

We realized that for fully platformized customers, while they saw better security outcomes, our ARR profile was also very different. While our average next-generation security ARR for our landed customers ranges from $200,000 to $300,000 for our land strategy, we discovered that our ARR for fully platformized customers ranges from $2 million to $14 million, depending on how many platforms the customers are standardizing on. This drove us to accelerate the rollout of our platformization strategy at the end of the last quarter, following successful pilots earlier in the year. We've created interest in the market, started conversation with customers looking to begin their platformization journey and spurring existing sales cycles toward a more strategic outcome.

我們意識到，對於完全平台化的客戶，雖然他們看到了更好的安全結果，但我們的 ARR 設定檔也非常不同。雖然我們的落地客戶的平均下一代安全ARR 為我們的落地策略的200,000 美元到300,000 美元，但我們發現我們為完全平台化客戶的ARR 範圍為200 萬美元到1400 萬美元，具體取決於客戶標準化的平台數量。繼今年稍早成功試點之後，這促使我們在上季末加速推出平台化策略。我們引起了市場的興趣，開始與希望開始平台化之旅的客戶進行對話，並刺激現有的銷售週期取得更具策略性的成果。

Having personally reviewed over 500 of our top customers in detail this past quarter, having had a few hundred conversations with CISOs, CIOs and CEOs, I continue to be convinced of our opportunity to deliver full platformization to our strong -- to our top customers. We're still early in the results from full platformization. Across these top 5,000 customers, we have completed about 900 through Q3 2024. Our Q3 efforts resulted in approximately 65 incremental platformization sales in Q3, just up 40% since Q2.

上個季度，我親自詳細審查了我們500 多家頂級客戶，並與CISO、CIO 和CEO 進行了數百次對話，我仍然堅信我們有機會為我們的強大客戶——我們的頂級客戶提供全面的平台化。我們仍處於全面平台化成果的早期階段。截至2024 年第三季度，我們已在這5,000 名前5,000 家客戶中完成了約900 個客戶。了40%。

It was this framework that was a foundation for our goal of $15 billion in next-generation security ARR by fiscal year 2030 that we first discussed last quarter. With our incremental momentum in platformization, we see a runway to delivering approximately 2,500 plus platformization sales, up from the current 900 while continuing to land our multiple platforms in our customer base and adding new customers.

正是這個框架為我們上季度首次討論的 2030 財年下一代安全 ARR 達到 150 億美元的目標奠定了基礎。隨著我們在平台化方面的不斷增長勢頭，我們預計平台化銷售額將從目前的 900 家增加到大約 2,500 家，同時繼續在我們的客戶群中登陸我們的多個平台並增加新客戶。

I showed you the benefits we see in our ARR from our success driving platformization. Our customers also see significant benefits as they adopt our full platforms. We have talked to you in the past about reduction in median time to resolution with XSIAM, which takes less than 1/10 of the time it took before XSIAM was deployed as customers platformize on Cortex.

我向您展示了我們在 ARR 中從我們成功推動平台化中看到的好處。我們的客戶在採用我們的完整平台時也看到了顯著的好處。我們過去曾與您討論過使用 XSIAM 縮短解決問題的中位數時間，這比客戶在 Cortex 上平台化之前部署 XSIAM 所需的時間還不到 1/10。

IDC recently validated the benefits platform customers see in a study published earlier this year, independently proving much of what we have talked about. Customers saw productivity benefits as much as 30% to 40% efficiency improvements and significant improvements in security outcomes.

IDC 最近驗證了客戶在今年稍早發布的一項研究中看到的平台優勢，獨立證明了我們所討論的大部分內容。客戶看到生產力提高了 30% 到 40%，安全結果也顯著改善。

I could talk further about the benefits, but what really brings us to the forefront is some examples of our significant transactions in Q3. A U.S. county agency signed a 7-figure transaction landing our firewall subscriptions as well as Cortex XDR and becoming a Palo Alto customer for the first time. We displaced a competitor that has sold both of these capabilities to the customer and competed against us on an appliance vendor that could not offer best-of-breed capabilities across these 2 categories.

我可以進一步談論好處，但真正讓我們走在最前沿的是我們在第三季度進行的重大交易的一些例子。一家美國縣機構簽署了一筆 7 位數的交易，獲得了我們的防火牆訂閱以及 Cortex XDR，並首次成為帕洛阿爾托客戶。我們取代了一個向客戶出售這兩種功能的競爭對手，並與我們競爭的是一家無法在這兩個類別中提供同類最佳功能的設備供應商。

A large U.S. financial services company that was an existing platform customer faced significant challenges in their SOC. Despite a staff of 40 in the SOC, they were not achieving their goals and start a transformation plan. We signed an 8-figure deal, including XSIAM, our ITDR or identity threat detection and response offering, and our managed detection and response service.

一家美國大型金融服務公司是現有平台客戶，其 SOC 面臨重大挑戰。儘管 SOC 擁有 40 名員工，但他們並未實現目標並啟動轉型計劃。我們簽署了一份價值 8 位數的協議，其中包括 XSIAM、我們的 ITDR 或身分威脅偵測和回應產品，以及我們的託管偵測和回應服務。

A global data services provider was unhappy with this incumbent SASE provider facing outages that created lost productivity. He was also never able to integrate his VPN and URL filtering capabilities fully. The customer selected our SASE capability for approximately 65,000 mobile and branch office users, including CASB, DLP, enterprise browser and ADEM capabilities for many of them. This was a highly competitive situation, but our ability to deliver consolidated capabilities through a platform across a half a dozen areas as well as our superior security versus incumbent won us a business.

一家全球數據服務供應商對該現有 SASE 供應商面臨中斷導致生產力損失感到不滿。他也從未能夠完全整合他的 VPN 和 URL 過濾功能。該客戶為大約 65,000 名行動和分公司用戶選擇了我們的 SASE 功能，其中包括為其中許多用戶提供的 CASB、DLP、企業瀏覽器和 ADEM 功能。這是一個競爭激烈的情況，但我們透過跨六個領域的平台提供整合功能的能力以及我們相對於現有企業的卓越安全性為我們贏得了業務。

Finally, a large health care company experienced a breach and engaged our Unit 42 incident response services. After we helped the customer remediate and get back online, we were able to educate the customer on the benefits of platformization. The customer fully platformized with us, standardizing our network security, Prisma Cloud and Cortex. This transaction was the largest in the history of Palo Alto Networks at nearly $150 million of TCV. Beyond these showcase deals, our overall large deal activity was healthy in Q3, as shown by significant increase in our accounts and transactions over $1 million, $5 million and $10 million in the quarter.

最後，一家大型醫療保健公司遭遇了資料洩露，並聘請了我們的 Unit 42 事件回應服務。在我們幫助客戶修復並重新上線後，我們能夠向客戶介紹平台化的好處。客戶與我們完全平台化，標準化我們的網路安全、Prisma Cloud 和 Cortex。這筆交易是 Palo Alto Networks 史上規模最大的交易，TCV 近 1.5 億美元。除了這些展示交易之外，我們第三季的整體大宗交易活動也很健康，本季我們的帳戶和交易量顯著增加，超過 100 萬美元、500 萬美元和 1000 萬美元。

We also recently announced our partnership with IBM. IBM and Palo Alto Networks have done what in my mind is a one-of-a-kind partnership. This partnership involves migrating the QRadar customers of IBM to XSIAM, where IBM will be able to deliver industry-specific capabilities on XSIAM using watsonx. Given their leadership position in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, now we can collectively deliver an even better solution to both their existing and new customers.

我們最近也宣布了與 IBM 的合作夥伴關係。在我看來，IBM 和 Palo Alto Networks 是獨一無二的合作關係。此次合作涉及將 IBM 的 QRadar 客戶遷移到 XSIAM，其中 IBM 將能夠使用 watsonx 在 XSIAM 上提供業界特定的功能。鑑於他們在 Gartner 魔力像限中的領導地位，現在我們可以共同為他們的現有客戶和新客戶提供更好的解決方案。

Enabling over 1,000 IBM security consultants on the entire Palo Alto Networks portfolio will allow us to drive platformization in an accelerated fashion. We will be IBM's preferred cybersecurity partner across network, cloud and SOC while driving a significant book of business for IBM. Additionally, IBM will platformize on Palo Alto products. We will extensively leverage watsonx across both our operations and products. And lastly, but not the least, we will work on co-developing solutions for cloud security.

讓超過 1,000 名 IBM 安全顧問參與整個 Palo Alto Networks 產品組合將使我們能夠加速推動平台化。我們將成為 IBM 在網路、雲端和 SOC 領域的首選網路安全合作夥伴，同時為 IBM 帶來重要的業務。此外，IBM 將在 Palo Alto 產品上進行平台化。我們將在我們的營運和產品中廣泛利用 watsonx。最後但並非最不重要的一點是，我們將致力於共同開發雲端安全解決方案。

Last quarter, when we rolled out our accelerated consolidation and platformization strategy, we also activated our AI leadership strategy. Leading up to this over the last year, we've oriented an increasing portion of our R&D investments towards AI. We have seen growth in customer interest and adopting AI to drive business value and bad actors using AI as I discussed earlier.

上季度，當我們推出加速整合和平台化策略時，我們也啟動了人工智慧領導策略。去年，我們將越來越多的研發投資轉向人工智慧。正如我之前所討論的，我們看到客戶興趣不斷增長，採用人工智慧來推動業務價值，也看到不良行為者使用人工智慧。

In early May, we announced our comprehensive suite of AI security offerings and believe we will be first to market with capabilities to protect the range of our customers' AI security needs. We rolled out 3 products to safely enable the use of AI from employees using AI to enterprises building into their applications. AI Access Security, AI-SPM and AI Runtime Security put us at the forefront of securing AI adoption.

5 月初，我們發布了全面的 AI 安全產品套件，並相信我們將率先向市場推出能夠保護客戶各種 AI 安全需求的功能。我們推出了 3 款產品，以確保從使用 AI 的員工到建立其應用程式的企業都能安全地使用 AI。 AI 存取安全、AI-SPM 和 AI 運行時安全性使我們處於確保 AI 採用安全的最前沿。

We also believe our co-pilots across our 3 platforms, which are context-aware, can perform and automate user action, surface alerts and best practices, and provide in-product support, all with near perfect accuracy. Furthermore, we announced our Precision AI security bundle to leverage in-line AI to counter AI attacks with AI defense. We have had strong early customer engagement with these offerings, which we expect to be made generally available beginning of July. As you heard from our teaser trailer with Keanu, this isn't Sci-Fi. This is Precision AI.

我們還相信，我們的 3 個平台上的副駕駛具有上下文感知能力，可以執行和自動化用戶操作、顯示警報和最佳實踐，並提供產品內支持，所有這些都具有近乎完美的準確性。此外，我們還發布了 Precision AI 安全捆綁包，利用內嵌 AI 來透過 AI 防禦來應對 AI 攻擊。這些產品的早期客戶參與度很高，我們預計這些產品將於 7 月初全面上市。正如您從基努的預告片中聽到的那樣，這不是科幻小說。這就是精準人工智慧。

More broadly than AI, it has been a busy last 3 months from an innovation perspective. Our SASE 3.0 launch, which we rolled out early this month, debuted with several unique industry defining capabilities. We announced industry's only secure enterprise browser integrated into SASE; and as end user engagement with AI applications grow, the browser becomes an important defense layer against the AI threats. Additionally, it is becoming clear that the browser offers a better way to secure contractors, mobile devices and managed devices with SASE integration providing a simpler and more secure approach to adoption.

比人工智慧更廣泛的是，從創新的角度來看，過去三個月是忙碌的。我們於本月初推出的 SASE 3.0 首次推出，具有多項獨特的行業定義功能。我們宣布推出業界唯一整合到 SASE 的安全企業瀏覽器；隨著最終用戶與人工智慧應用程式的互動不斷增長，瀏覽器成為抵禦人工智慧威脅的重要防禦層。此外，越來越明顯的是，瀏覽器提供了一種更好的方法來保護承包商、行動裝置和託管裝置的安全，SASE 整合提供了更簡單、更安全的採用方法。

We launched AI powered data security integrated into SASE, leveraging industry's first LLM powered data classification. This new classification engine combines the strength of context-aware machine learning model, the power of LLMs, understanding how to increase classification accuracy. Lastly, as part of our SASE 3.0, we launched application acceleration, which understands each user's journey within enterprise SaaS and cloud applications and optimize its performance for these applications. Customers see performance up to 5x faster than the user experience in general Internet.

我們推出了整合到 SASE 中的人工智慧驅動的資料安全，利用業界首個法學碩士驅動的資料分類。這種新的分類引擎結合了上下文感知機器學習模型的優勢和法學碩士的力量，了解如何提高分類準確性。最後，作為 SASE 3.0 的一部分，我們推出了應用程式加速，它可以了解每個用戶在企業 SaaS 和雲端應用程式中的旅程，並優化這些應用程式的效能。客戶看到的效能比一般網路的使用者體驗快 5 倍。

This rapid cadence of innovation in SASE has enabled us to maintain SASE ARR growth above 50% for the sixth quarter in a row. In Prisma Cloud, we have completed the first phase of rollout of data security posture management, which came from the Dig Security acquisition. We also added support for more than 100 new APIs across the major hyperscalers to stay ahead of our customers by securing the cloud services [iota]. Based on our Cortex Xpanse technology, we did launch cloud discovery and exposure management, leveraging our Xpanse data natively in Prisma Cloud. Over 100 customers now use this capability to evaluate Internet exposure risks and discover unknown Internet-exposed cloud assets.

SASE 的快速創新節奏使我們能夠連續第六個季度將 SASE ARR 成長保持在 50% 以上。在 Prisma Cloud 中，我們已經完成了資料安全態勢管理的第一階段推出，該管理來自 Dig Security 收購。我們還增加了對主要超大規模供應商的 100 多個新 API 的支持，透過保護雲端服務 [iota] 來保持領先於客戶。基於我們的 Cortex Xpanse 技術，我們確實啟動了雲端發現和曝光管理，利用 Prisma Cloud 中原生的 Xpanse 資料。現在有超過 100 家客戶使用此功能來評估網路暴露風險並發現未知的網路暴露雲資產。

Also during Q3, we launched CDR, cloud detection and response, which extends our XDR capability into the cloud and give customers unified view of their entire environment from cloud to end point to network. CDEM and CDR show the power of having both Cortex and Prisma Cloud platforms as we can leverage these sophisticated capabilities to benefit cloud customers.

同樣在第三季度，我們推出了 CDR、雲端偵測和回應，它將我們的 XDR 功能擴展到雲端中，並為客戶提供了從雲端到端點到網路的整個環境的統一視圖。 CDEM 和 CDR 展示了同時擁有 Cortex 和 Prisma 雲端平台的強大功能，因為我們可以利用這些複雜的功能來使雲端客戶受益。

Last but not least, on Cortex, we launched XSIAM about 18 months ago, and this offering has already elevated the profile of Cortex in the market. We see steady demand for XDR as a foundation of Cortex, where we are landing many new customers, and now we have north of 5,800 customers on XDR. With $400 million in cumulative XSIAM bookings coming out of Q3, this offering is really going mainstream with customers understanding the value proposition versus the traditional SIEM. XSIAM has accelerated our Cortex ARR growth, and we continue to see a strong pipeline of opportunities.

最後但並非最不重要的一點是，在 Cortex 上，我們大約 18 個月前推出了 XSIAM，這款產品已經提升了 Cortex 在市場上的形象。我們認為對 XDR 的穩定需求是 Cortex 的基礎，我們正在 Cortex 上吸引許多新客戶，現在我們在 XDR 上擁有超過 5,800 個客戶。第三季 XSIAM 累積預訂量達到 4 億美元，隨著客戶了解其相對於傳統 SIEM 的價值主張，該產品真正成為主流。 XSIAM 加速了我們的 Cortex ARR 成長，並且我們繼續看到大量的機會。

We are converting our innovation recognized leadership, adding 2 new positions this quarter: one was in managed detection and response; the other in data security posture management, leveraging our Dig acquisition and demonstrating our ability to acquire technology and rapidly integrate into our platforms.

我們正在轉變我們的創新公認領導地位，本季度增加了 2 個新職位：一個是管理檢測和回應；另一個是管理檢測和回應。另一個是資料安全態勢管理，利用我們收購的 Dig 並展示我們獲取技術並快速整合到我們平台的能力。

As many of you have undoubtedly seen, our rollout of platformization has stoked a long-standing debate within the cybersecurity industry about whether customers desire a platform or best-of-breed cybersecurity. From the Palo Alto Networks perspective, we've proven it is possible to deliver best of platform. This is why we have invested in building leading products, and we have now recognition for product leadership in 23 categories while also delivering on the benefits of integration across our 3 platforms.

正如你們中的許多人無疑已經看到的那樣，我們平台化的推出在網路安全行業內引發了一場長期的爭論，即客戶是否需要平台或最佳的網路安全。從 Palo Alto Networks 的角度來看，我們已經證明可以提供最好的平台。這就是我們投資打造領先產品的原因，現在我們在 23 個類別中的產品領先地位得到了認可，同時還提供了跨 3 個平台整合的優勢。

To summarize, before I pass off to Dipak, please take away a few conclusions from my prepared remarks. One, we put our strong Q3 results in a positive spending environment where cybersecurity priorities are well funded. Beyond the continuation of a challenging threat environment, new threat vectors from AI are starting to surface as the usage of AI grows. We've been pleased with the initial traction of our accelerated consolidation platform strategy. This drove an increase in bookings with deferred payments and impacted our billings, something we expect will continue. We had a big quarter of innovation, especially as it relates to AI, where we strive to lead the industry in securing this powerful productivity medium while also doing so comprehensively.

總而言之，在我向迪帕克提問之前，請先從我準備好的發言中得出一些結論。第一，我們將第三季的強勁業績歸功於積極的支出環境，網路安全優先事項得到了充足的資金支持。除了充滿挑戰的威脅環境持續存在之外，隨著人工智慧使用的成長，來自人工智慧的新威脅向量也開始浮現。我們對加速整合平台策略的初步吸引力感到滿意。這推動了延期付款預訂的增加，並影響了我們的帳單，我們預計這種情況將持續下去。我們有一個很大的季度創新，特別是與人工智慧相關的創新，我們努力在確保這一強大的生產力媒介方面引領產業，同時也全面做到這一點。

As we look forward, we have significant pipeline heading into our largest quarter of the year. We're just beginning to see the benefits of platformization accrue to our business. We will continue to make further investments here while balancing delivering profitable growth and have chartered a path with conviction towards being a $15 billion NGS ARR company.

展望未來，我們有大量的管道進入今年最大的季度。我們剛開始看到平台化為我們的業務帶來的好處。我們將繼續在這裡進行進一步投資，同時平衡實現獲利成長，並堅定地開闢一條成為價值 150 億美元的 NGS ARR 公司的道路。

With that, let me pass you on to Dipak.

接下來，讓我將您轉交給 Dipak。

Thank you, Nikesh, and good afternoon, everyone. To maximize our time spent on Q&A, I will provide highlights and you can review results available in our press release and the supplemental financial information on our website. Within our revenue of $1.98 billion, product revenue grew 1%, while total service revenue grew 20%. Within services revenue, subscription revenue grew 25% and support revenue grew 11%.

謝謝你，Nikesh，大家下午好。為了最大限度地提高我們花在問答上的時間，我將提供重點內容，您可以查看我們的新聞稿中提供的結果以及我們網站上的補充財務資訊。在我們 19.8 億美元的收入中，產品收入成長了 1%，而總服務收入成長了 20%。在服務收入中，訂閱收入成長了 25%，支援收入成長了 11%。

Moving on to geographies. We saw revenue growth across all theaters with the Americas growing 15%, EMEA up 20% and JAPAC growing 8%. This quarter, our lower JAPAC revenue growth was driven by lower product bookings in the region, offset by higher subscription bookings, which benefit revenue over time.

繼續討論地理。我們看到所有影院的收入都在成長，其中美洲成長了 15%，歐洲、中東和非洲成長了 20%，日本成長了 8%。本季度，我們在日本亞太地區的收入成長較低，這是由於該地區的產品預訂量減少，但被訂閱預訂量增加所抵消，隨著時間的推移，這有利於收入。

We reported Q3 billings within the range we guided, although as Nikesh and I have noted several times in the past few quarters, we continue to focus less on this metric. We saw an increase quarter-over-quarter in business transacted with deferred billings, which was also higher than we forecasted. The impact on our financials from platformization this quarter was in line with what we expected 90 days ago, and our expectations around the impact in Q4 and beyond is unchanged from what we talked about in February.

我們在我們指導的範圍內報告了第三季的帳單，儘管正如我和 Nikesh 在過去幾季多次指出的那樣，我們仍然較少關注這一指標。我們看到延期帳單交易的業務量較上季成長，也高於我們的預期。本季平台化對我們財務的影響與我們 90 天前的預期一致，我們對第四季度及以後影響的預期與我們 2 月份討論的沒有變化。

First, we saw a greater volume of large deals with some of these customers opting for deferred payments over the term of their purchase instead of paying upfront as they grapple with the higher cost of money. This drove the quarter-to-quarter increase in periodic billing plans that I noted. Also, this level of periodic billings was higher than we forecasted 90 days ago. We also saw an uptick in the array of our platformization programs we launched early in the quarter. These programs continue to ramp up as we roll them out broadly.

首先，我們看到越來越多的大額交易，其中一些客戶選擇在購買期限內延期付款，而不是預先付款，因為他們面臨更高的資金成本。我注意到，這推動了定期計費計畫的季度成長。此外，這一定期帳單水準高於我們 90 天前的預測。我們也看到本季初推出的一系列平台化計畫有所增加。隨著我們廣泛推廣這些計劃，這些計劃將繼續增加。

Within our RPO of $11.3 billion, our current RPO was $5.4 billion. Our average duration of new contracts increased slightly year-over-year but remained at approximately 3 years. On our balance sheet, you will see that our debt balance came down by $659 million. The driver for this was early conversion, which occurred at the option of the debt holders and were settled by us in cash. Our remaining debt matures in June 2025 although we may continue to see early conversions.

在我們 113 億美元的 RPO 中，我們目前的 RPO 為 54 億美元。我們新合約的平均期限同比略有增長，但仍保持在 3 年左右。在我們的資產負債表上，您會看到我們的債務餘額減少了 6.59 億美元。造成這種情況的原因是提前轉換，這是由債務持有人選擇進行的，並由我們以現金結算。我們的剩餘債務將於 2025 年 6 月到期，儘管我們可能會繼續看到提前轉換。

During Q3, we spent $500 million to repurchase 1.7 million shares of our common stock. Our buyback strategy remains opportunistic.

第三季度，我們花了 5 億美元回購了 170 萬股普通股。我們的回購策略仍然是機會主義的。

I know that billings has been a significant focus for investors. As you're all aware, remaining performance obligation or RPO captures the full value of our contracts independent of customer billing terms. As we have explained to you over the last year, with an increase in factors impacting payment terms on a quarterly basis, there's been significant volatility in our billings. With this volatility in mind, we've been increasingly focused on driving high-quality bookings, which add to RPO and maximize our NGS ARR in contracts. Focuses on these metrics provides a more relevant view of the business.

我知道比林斯一直是投資者關注的焦點。如您所知，剩餘履約義務或 RPO 體現了我們合約的全部價值，與客戶計費條款無關。正如我們去年向您解釋的那樣，隨著影響付款條件的因素逐季度增加，我們的帳單出現了顯著的波動。考慮到這種波動性，我們越來越注重推動高品質預訂，這會增加 RPO 並最大限度地提高合約中的 NGS ARR。關注這些指標可以提供更相關的業務視圖。

If we look at the history of these metrics for our company, you see that NGS ARR has consistently grown ahead of our other metrics and as it continues to contribute a higher proportion of our revenue. You also see the correlation between RPO and total services revenue growth is high. Our RPO is mainly comprised of contracts for offerings that carry ratable revenue, which are recognized through our total services revenue. Billings, on the other hand, is significantly influenced by the invoicing terms on contract signed, which adds significant volatility. In Q3, we saw RPO growth tick up along with strength in NGS ARR, including us raising our guidance here. This is in contrast to billing trends, which went the other direction, thereby showing the divergent trends and actions -- in action, our Q3 results.

如果我們查看公司這些指標的歷史記錄，您會發現 NGS ARR 的成長一直領先於我們的其他指標，並且它繼續在我們的收入中貢獻更高的比例。您也可以看到 RPO 與總服務收入成長之間的相關性很高。我們的 RPO 主要由可帶來應納稅收入的產品合約組成，這些收入透過我們的總服務收入予以確認。另一方面，比林斯受到所簽署合約的發票條款的顯著影響，這增加了顯著的波動性。在第三季度，我們看到 RPO 成長以及 NGS ARR 的強勁成長，包括我們在此提高了我們的指導。這與計費趨勢形成鮮明對比，計費趨勢走向另一個方向，從而顯示出不同的趨勢和行動——實際上是我們第三季的結果。

Nikesh talked briefly about our first-of-a-kind IBM partnership that has multiple facets that touch each of our platforms and include significant devotion of resources from both companies. I'd like to provide more details on the financial impact we expect to see. As part of the partnership, we have agreed to acquire IBM's QRadar SaaS assets, certain QRadar intellectual property and IBM's on-premise QRadar customer list. The total consideration is $500 million plus earn-out consideration based on successfully migrating QRadar on-premise customers to our XSIAM offering over the next several years. We anticipate closing the transaction by the end of September 2024, subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. The calendar year 2023 QRadar SaaS revenue was on the order of $100 million. However, as we work through details of the customer contracts we are acquiring and the deferred revenue associated with this business, we expect our recognized revenue could be much lower than this in our fiscal year 2025.

Nikesh 簡要介紹了我們與 IBM 的首個合作夥伴關係，該合作夥伴關係涉及我們每個平台的多個方面，並且包括兩家公司投入的大量資源。我想提供有關我們預期看到的財務影響的更多詳細資訊。作為合作關係的一部分，我們同意收購 IBM 的 QRadar SaaS 資產、某些 QRadar 智慧財產權以及 IBM 的本地 QRadar 客戶名單。總代價為 5 億美元，加上基於未來幾年內將 QRadar 本地客戶成功遷移到我們的 XSIAM 產品而獲得的收益代價。我們預計在 2024 年 9 月底前完成交易，但須獲得監管機構批准並滿足其他慣例成交條件。 2023 年 QRadar SaaS 營收約 1 億美元。然而，當我們研究我們正在收購的客戶合約以及與該業務相關的遞延收入的詳細資訊時，我們預計 2025 財年的確認收入可能會遠低於這一水平。

We will provide more information on the financial impact closer to the close of the transaction. We will invest to fuel this partnership and ensure a seamless experience to curate our customers purchasing and migrating to XSIAM. As part of the partnership, we have entered into an agreement with IBM, whereby they will operate parts of the business on our behalf on a medium-term basis. We expect we can make these investments within the profitability framework we spoke of previously. Specifically, we continue to expect 28% to 29% non-GAAP operating margin in fiscal year 2026 and 37% or greater free cash flow margin through fiscal year 2026.

我們將在交易接近結束時提供有關財務影響的更多資訊。我們將投資推動這項合作關係，並確保為客戶購買和遷移到 XSIAM 提供無縫體驗。作為合作夥伴關係的一部分，我們與 IBM 簽訂了一項協議，他們將在中期代表我們經營部分業務。我們預計我們可以在我們之前談到的獲利框架內進行這些投資。具體來說，我們繼續預期 2026 財年的非 GAAP 營業利潤率將達到 28% 至 29%，而到 2026 財年的自由現金流利潤率將達到 37% 或更高。

Before I provide Q4 guidance, I wanted to remind you of what we talked last quarter when we introduced platformization and discussed the top line headwinds we expected it would have. We continue to expect platformization-related drivers, both larger deals with associated cost of money impacts and acceleration in platformization programs will impact our billings over a total of a 12- to 18-month period.

在提供第四季度指導之前，我想提醒您上個季度我們在引入平台化時所討論的內容，並討論了我們預計它將帶來的頂線阻力。我們仍然預計平台化相關的驅動因素、相關資金成本影響的較大交易以及平台化計劃的加速將在 12 至 18 個月的時間內影響我們的帳單。

Consistent with what we noted in February, we expect that this will persist through fiscal year '25 as we anniversary the rollout of these programs and resulting in lower billings and to a lesser degree, revenue. Beyond this period, we expect to grow faster than we discussed in August and sustain this growth for longer.

與我們在 2 月指出的一致，我們預計這種情況將持續到 25 財年，即我們推出這些計劃週年紀念日，並導致帳單和收入下降。在此期間之後，我們預計成長速度將比我們在 8 月討論的要快，並且保持這種成長的時間更長。

Now moving on to our guidance for Q4 and the year. For the fourth quarter of 2024, we expect billings to be in the range of $3.43 billion to $3.48 billion, an increase of 9% to 10%. We expect revenue to be in the range of $2.15 billion to $2.17 billion, an increase of 10% to 11%. We expect non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of $1.40 to $1.42 a share, a decrease of 1% to 3%.

現在轉向我們對第四季和今年的指導。 2024 年第四季度，我們預計營收將在 34.3 億美元至 34.8 億美元之間，成長 9% 至 10%。我們預計營收將在 21.5 億美元至 21.7 億美元之間，成長 10% 至 11%。我們預計非 GAAP 每股盈餘將在 1.40 美元至 1.42 美元之間，下降 1% 至 3%。

For the fiscal year '24, we expect billings to be in the range of $10.13 billion to $1.18 billion, an increase of 10% to 11%. We expect NGS ARR to be in the range of $4.05 billion to $4.10 billion, an increase of 37% to 39%. We expect revenue to be in the range of $7.99 billion to $8.01 billion, an increase of 16%. For fiscal '24, we expect operating margins to be in the range of 26.8% to 27.0%, an increase of 270 to 290 basis points year-over-year. We expect our non-GAAP EPS to be in the range of $5.56 to $5.58 per share, an increase of 25% to 26%. And we expect adjusted free cash flow margin to be 38.5% to 39%.

對於 24 財年，我們預計帳單將在 101.3 億美元至 11.8 億美元之間，成長 10% 至 11%。我們預計 NGS ARR 將在 40.5 億美元至 41 億美元之間，成長 37% 至 39%。我們預計營收將在 79.9 億美元至 80.1 億美元之間，成長 16%。對於 24 財年，我們預計營業利潤率將在 26.8% 至 27.0% 之間，年增 270 至 290 個基點。我們預計非 GAAP 每股盈餘將在 5.56 美元至 5.58 美元之間，成長 25% 至 26%。我們預計調整後的自由現金流利潤率為 38.5% 至 39%。

In the interest of time and to get as many of your questions as possible, we've included the modeling points in the appendix of our earnings presentation. With that, I will turn the call back over to Walter for the Q&A portion.

為了節省時間並盡可能回答您的問題，我們在收益演示的附錄中包含了建模點。這樣，我會將電話轉回沃特以進行問答部分。

(Operator Instructions) The first question will be from Brian Essex at JPMorgan, followed by Brad Zelnick at Deutsche Bank. Go ahead, Brian. Brian, looks like you're on mute.

（操作員說明）第一個問題將由摩根大通的 Brian Essex 提出，隨後由德意志銀行的 Brad Zelnick 提出。繼續吧，布萊恩。布萊恩，看起來你處於靜音狀態。

There we go. Yes, it wasn't letting me unmute myself. Yes, I guess for Dipak, as we look at your efforts of incentivizing platform consolidation or platformization, I mean, obviously, you've talked about the pressure on the last 2 quarters of this year, can you maybe help me understand the duration that you anticipate pursuing these efforts? Is this going to be a more temporary type of effort where it kind of just lasts through this fiscal year? Or do you expect it to stretch into next year?

我們開始吧。是的，它不允許我取消靜音。是的，我想對於迪帕克來說，當我們看到你激勵平台整合或平台化的努力時，我的意思是，顯然，你已經談到了今年最後兩個季度的壓力，你能幫我了解一下這種情況的持續時間嗎？這是否會是一種臨時性的努力，只會持續到本財年？或者你預計它會延續到明年嗎？

Yes. So thanks for the question, Brian. Look, I think we will -- I mean platformization is something that is now our strategy, so I think in that sense, it will continue for a while. But at some point, it just becomes a normal motion, and then we're lapping a period where we've been doing platformization already. So really, what you're seeing in the financial metrics is the difference when it wasn't the normal motion and then it becomes the motion, and then in the future, it will just become lapping what is a consistent motion.

是的。謝謝你的提問，布萊恩。聽著，我認為我們會——我的意思是平台化現在是我們的策略，所以我認為從這個意義上說，它會持續一段時間。但到了某個時候，它變成了一種正常的運動，然後我們就進入了一個已經進行平台化的時期。所以實際上，你在財務指標中看到的是當它不是正常運動時的差異，然後它變成了運動，然後在未來，它只會成為一致運動的重疊。

I think in that context, we said last quarter that this should persist still the end of Q2 next year. We kind of started Q2 this year.

我認為在這種情況下，我們上季表示，這種情況應該持續到明年第二季末。我們今年第二季開始了。

Next question is from Brad Zelnick, followed by Hamza Fodderwala from Morgan Stanley. Go ahead Brad.

下一個問題是 Brad Zelnick 提出的，接下來是摩根士丹利的 Hamza Fodderwala。繼續吧，布拉德。

Nikesh, I was hoping you can give us an update on the state of the channel. There's a lot of noise from the traditional VAR channel. Wanted to get your sense on how they're acclimating to platformization. But you're also doubling down with the GSIs. You announced this super special deal with IBM. You also signed a deal with Accenture, too. Would just love to hear your latest thinking, in particular, more on the GSI strategy. I mean how many more can you add that are up at that level of an Accenture and an IBM?

Nikesh，我希望您能為我們提供有關頻道狀態的最新資訊。傳統的VAR通路有很多噪音。希望了解他們如何適應平台化。但您也在 GSI 上加倍投入。您宣布了與 IBM 的超級特別交易。您還與埃森哲簽署了一項協議。我很想聽聽您的最新想法，特別是更多關於 GSI 策略的想法。我的意思是，您還能增加多少家達到埃森哲和 IBM 等級的公司？

Well, first of all, thanks for the question. Look, I don't think there is contention between the 2 channels. We still do IBM deals with a traditional VAR involved. Very often, the VAR has -- represents the customer, helps to clear the deals, helps them work through all the financing, et cetera. So there is a role for both. What we are discovering is, in platformization deals, customers require consulting effort to re-architect the entire security stack. And typically, they engage with the SI community or GSI community first to try and do that transformation. And partnering with them hand in glove allows us to be part of that story.

嗯，首先，謝謝你的提問。看，我不認為這兩個頻道之間有爭用。我們仍然與傳統的 VAR 進行 IBM 交易。很多時候，VAR 代表客戶，幫忙完成交易，幫助他們完成所有融資等等。所以兩者都有作用。我們發現，在平台化交易中，客戶需要諮詢工作來重新建構整個安全堆疊。通常，他們會先與 SI 社群或 GSI 社群接觸，嘗試進行這種轉變。與他們密切合作使我們能夠成為這個故事的一部分。

And I gave the example when we did the most recent, let's just say, re-architecture, which we had to do in a hurry in the case of the recent hack, we were working with SI partners as well as other incident response teams to make sure that we build an architecture that's consistent with what the end state needs to be. And that's where partnerships like Accenture and IBM become really worthy and important because the customer is relying on them to do the heavy lift in doing the onetime transformation.

我舉了一個例子，當我們最近進行重新架構時，我們必須在最近的黑客攻擊的情況下匆忙進行，我們正在與 SI 合作夥伴以及其他事件響應團隊合作，以確保我們構建的架構與最終狀態所需的一致。這就是像埃森哲和 IBM 這樣的合作夥伴變得真正有價值和重要的地方，因為客戶依靠他們來完成一次性轉型的繁重工作。

So I think both these strategies will coexist. As you know, we still have a substantive hardware business, which we also work through the traditional channel. We also have -- actually, to be fair, many of the VARs have transferred or translated their businesses into a part consulting model, where they also work with customers on transformations. So I don't think they're intentional. I think it becomes harder for the analyst community to be able to track what the channel status of a company is because the SIs are not as sharing as the traditional VAR channel is.

所以我認為這兩種策略將會共存。如您所知，我們仍然有實質的硬體業務，我們也是透過傳統管道開展業務。事實上，公平地說，許多加值經銷商已經將他們的業務轉移或轉化為部分諮詢模式，他們也與客戶一起轉型。所以我不認為他們是故意的。我認為分析師群體追蹤公司的通路狀態變得更加困難，因為 SI 不像傳統的 VAR 管道那樣共享。

Next, we'll go to Hamza Fodderwala from Morgan Stanley, followed by Matt Hedberg from RBC.

接下來，我們將邀請摩根士丹利的 Hamza Fodderwala，然後是加拿大皇家銀行的 Matt Hedberg。

Nikesh, in the earnings presentation, you mentioned you see significant pipeline heading into your fiscal Q4. I was wondering if you could give us a little bit more color into that pipeline because the Q4 billings guide does suggest a big sequential uptick as is usual, but I think this year, a little bit higher than normal. But any color you can give would be helpful.

Nikesh，在收益報告中，您提到您看到第四財季有大量管道進入。我想知道您是否可以給我們更多關於該管道的信息，因為第四季度的賬單指南確實表明像往常一樣大幅連續上升，但我認為今年比正常情況要高一些。但你可以提供的任何顏色都會有幫助。

Yes. Hamza, look, first, thanks for the question. As I mentioned in our prepared remarks, we have been reviewing all of our customers. We have been through 500 of them with the accountant teams. And every customer, there is an opportunity. There's an opportunity to deliver a platform. There's an opportunity to consolidate. And just that gives us hope and sort of some degree of conviction that there's a lot of business to be converted out there. It's really limited by the customer speed and desire to execute or their resources to execute. So we have a robust pipeline across most of our platforms to see questions, can we go out and convert as quickly as we need to, and that's what we're guiding to.

是的。哈姆扎，首先，謝謝你的提問。正如我在準備好的演講中提到的，我們一直在審查所有客戶。我們和會計團隊已經完成了 500 次這樣的工作。每位客戶都有機會。有機會提供一個平台。有一個整合的機會。正是這一點給了我們希望，並在某種程度上相信有很多業務需要轉換。它實際上受到客戶速度和執行意願或其執行資源的限制。因此，我們在大多數平台上都有強大的管道來解決問題，我們是否可以根據需要盡快進行轉換，這就是我們的指導目標。

Next question is from Matt Hedberg followed by Tal Liani from Bank of America.

下一個問題由馬特·赫德伯格 (Matt Hedberg) 提出，隨後是美國銀行的塔爾·利亞尼 (Tal Liani)。

I wanted to ask about the federal side. Last quarter, you mentioned Thunderdome. Any update on that transaction and just kind of how we're thinking about federal into 3Q -- or excuse me, your 4Q?

我想問一下聯邦方面的情況。上個季度，您提到了 Thunderdome。有關該交易的任何更新以及我們如何考慮聯邦進入第三季度 - 或者請問您的第四季度？

Yes, that's a good question. Look, the Thunderdome contract got activated last quarter because of the sort of the zero-day vulnerability we found in certain VPNs out in the market. So they wanted to quickly replace some of the VPNs because they're required to replace them in the classified agencies and nonclassified agencies. So we saw some activity around Thunderdome. That contract was activated where people use that contract that we have with DISA to be able to execute some transactions, but we still maintain these are going to get one at a time. Each of these missions are going to execute one at a time. So we haven't changed our expectations in terms of how Thunderdome will evolve vis-a-vis how we will see it in our financials.

是的，這是一個好問題。看，Thunderdome 合約在上個季度被激活，因為我們在市場上的某些 VPN 中發現了零日漏洞。因此他們希望快速更換一些VPN，因為他們需要在機密機構和非機密機構中更換它們。所以我們看到 Thunderdome 周圍有一些活動。該合約被激活，人們使用我們與 DISA 簽訂的合約來執行一些交易，但我們仍然堅持這些交易一次只能獲得一個。這些任務中的每一個都將一次執行一個。因此，我們對 Thunderdome 將如何發展以及我們在財務方面的看法並沒有改變我們的期望。

Next question from Tal Liani at Bank of America followed by Saket Kalia at Barclays.

下一個問題由美國銀行的 Tal Liani 提問，隨後由巴克萊銀行的 Saket Kalia 提問。

I know we don't focus on billings, but I have a question. Just first, to clarify -- just to clarify, you -- if you won -- you said in the prepared remarks, you won a $150 million deal. Does it include -- does it go through billing? And should we exclude it from billing on a normalized level, just to understand the impact on billings this quarter? And then billing is -- it's going to recover because I -- or I'm going to ask it, not say it. But how -- what's the path for recovery for billing? If investors are looking at it and you look out into the next year or 2 years, what's the path to recovery of billings growth?

我知道我們不關注帳單，但我有一個問題。首先，澄清一下——只是澄清一下，如果你贏了——你在準備好的發言中說過，你贏得了一筆 1.5 億美元的交易。它是否包括－是否透過計費？我們是否應該將其排除在正常水平的帳單之外，只是為了了解本季帳單的影響？然後計費將會恢復，因為我或我會問它，而不是說出來。但是，恢復計費的途徑是什麼？如果投資者正在關注它，而你展望未來一年或兩年，比林斯成長恢復的路徑是什麼？

Tal, I think if you listen carefully to what I said, we actually built backlog this quarter, which means we booked a lot more business than we build, which is a difference between contracts where we chose not to take their payment terms and just do annual billing. So we're signing big deals. We have a lot of business that we're signing, and the way it gets reflected is in RPO.

塔爾，我想如果你仔細聽我說的話，我們實際上在本季度積壓了訂單，這意味著我們預定的業務比我們建立的業務多得多，這是我們選擇不接受付款條件而只是這樣做的合約之間的區別按年計費。所以我們正在簽署大交易。我們正在簽署許多業務，這些業務的體現方式就是 RPO。

It depends on what we choose to either take as annual billings or to take through PANFS, right, which shows up in billings. What we choose not to take ends up in future or deferred payment plans or deferred billing. So I think if you look at the implied bookings, you'll see there's a double-digit number in there in the quarter.

這取決於我們選擇將什麼作為年度帳單或透過 PANFS 獲取，對吧，這會顯示在帳單中。我們選擇不採取的最終會出現在未來或延期付款計劃或延期計費中。因此，我認為如果您查看隱含預訂量，您會發現該季度有兩位數的數字。

I just think billing is an artificial metric. I think -- I understand you guys like it because it's been around for a long time. I think the cost of money has changed the quality of that metric. To me, a quality metric is implied bookings or RPO. And in both those, as I mentioned, we saw an uptick this quarter. So we actually believe we saw a recovery faster than we expected this quarter. That's why we're surprised at the reaction of the market.

我只是認為計費是一個人為的指標。我想——我理解你們喜歡它，因為它已經存在很久了。我認為資金成本改變了該指標的品質。對我來說，品質指標是隱含的預訂量或 RPO。正如我所提到的，這兩個方面我們都在本季度看到了上升。因此，我們實際上相信本季的復甦速度比我們預期的要快。這就是為什麼我們對市場的反應感到驚訝。

Next up is Saket Kalia from Barclays followed by Gabriela Borges from Goldman Sachs.

接下來是巴克萊銀行的薩凱特·卡利亞（Saket Kalia），其次是高盛銀行的加布里埃拉·博爾赫斯（Gabriela Borges）。

Nikesh, maybe the follow-up is on that point. So just to that point, it was great to see RPO bookings, I think, actually accelerated year-over-year in this quarter, right? So last quarter, I think we talked about more flexibility for customers with platformization, right, just consolidating and creating some of those ramp contracts. How much of that -- how much did that sort of play into the difference between bookings and billings.

Nikesh，也許後續就是關於這一點的。因此，就這一點而言，我認為很高興看到本季的 RPO 預訂實際上同比加速，對嗎？因此，上個季度，我認為我們討論了透過平台化為客戶提供更大的靈活性，對吧，只是整合和創建其中一些斜坡合約。其中有多少——這對預訂和帳單之間的差異有多大影響。

Well, remember, the acceleration -- the ramp contracts really impact us in the way that we have higher exit ARRs in many of our newer contracts, right? So the year 1 ARR may be lower than the year 3 ARR for a contract. But that is not visible to you yet in the numbers because there's no way to represent that, right? The only way you'll see it, you'll see it in a consolidated TCV deal, which is going to show up in RPO. So the ramp contracts show was a total whole sum in the RPO number and you'll see an uptick in the ARPU number, which tells you that business is stronger this quarter than we expected it to be.

好吧，請記住，加速 - 斜坡合約確實對我們產生了影響，因為我們在許多新合約中擁有更高的退出 ARR，對嗎？因此，合約的第 1 年 ARR 可能低於第 3 年 ARR。但你在數字中還看不到這一點，因為沒有辦法表示它，對嗎？您看到它的唯一方法是在合併的 TCV 交易中看到它，該交易將顯示在 RPO 中。因此，斜坡合約顯示的是 RPO 數字的總和，您會看到 ARPU 數字上升，這告訴您本季的業務比我們預期的要強勁。

I think the only difference is we chose not to take -- remember, when a customer says I don't want to pay you up front, you have 2 choices. You can take annual billings or you can get them financing through PANFS, right, where it takes away from revenue and becomes interest income. And then we decided we didn't want to take so many of these deals, so our quantum of deferred billing went up compared to last quarter.

我認為唯一的區別是我們選擇不接受——記住，當顧客說我不想預付款給你時，你有兩個選擇。你可以收取年度帳單，也可以透過 PANFS 為他們提供融資，沒錯，這會從收入中扣除並變成利息收入。然後我們決定不想接受這麼多交易，因此與上季度相比，我們的延期計費數量有所增加。

Next question, Gabriela Borges from Goldman Sachs, followed by Gray Powell from BTIG. Go ahead, Gabriela.

下一個問題是來自高盛的 Gabriela Borges，隨後是來自 BTIG 的 Gray Powell。繼續吧，加布里埃拉。

I want to ask on the $15 billion NGS target for fiscal year '30. Either for Nikesh and Dipak, a little bit of color on how you arrived at that number. There's an interesting footnote here on assuming 5% annual growth per customer. And then within that target, how do you think about cyclicality? Any comments on the cyclicality of firewall or the cyclicality of platformization impacting the linearity of getting to that target.

我想問 30 財年 150 億美元 NGS 的目標。對於 Nikesh 和 Dipak 來說，請稍微說明如何得出這個數字。這裡有一個有趣的腳註，假設每個客戶的年增長率為 5%。然後在這個目標內，您如何看待週期性？關於防火牆週期性或平台化週期性的任何評論都會影響實現該目標的線性。

Yes, 2 things. One, the firewall is not in there. That's hardware. That's not next-generation security. The services that work on top of firewalls are obviously in there because they're all now AI enabled and next generation. Cyclicality is consistent with our cyclicality of our quarters, right? We see more business in Q4. You should expect more platformization deals in Q4, hopefully, higher growth in NGS ARR, which you are used to. I think the cyclicality of that slide is no different than the cyclicality you've seen in the growth of NGS ARR over the last 3 years. We have been sharing that number with you.

是的，有兩件事。第一，防火牆不在那裡。那是硬體。這不是下一代安全。在防火牆之上運行的服務顯然就在那裡，因為它們現在都支援人工智慧並且是下一代的。週期性與我們季度的周期性一致，對嗎？我們在第四季看到更多業務。您應該預期第四季度有更多的平台化交易，希望 NGS ARR 能夠實現更高的成長，這是您已經習慣的。我認為這張投影片的周期性與您在過去 3 年中看到的 NGS ARR 成長的周期性沒有什麼不同。我們一直與您分享這個數字。

Yes. Sorry, was there another part to that?

是的。抱歉，還有其他部分嗎？

Yes. Just on the footnote here on the 5% within -- yes, benchmark that for us.

是的。就在腳註中的 5% 之內——是的，為我們進行基準測試。

Well, what we discovered is as platformization grows for a customer, as renewals come up, we're able to upsell them more capability. For example, in SASE, now we can sell them ADEM and AIOps. For example, on our firewalls, we can send them 10 subscriptions. For example, in Cortex now with XDR, ITDR, we can sell them CDR. In access, we will be able to sell the AI Access. So every time these deals will come up for renewals, we will have the opportunity to present more services and capability onto the platform with a customer driving NRR for us, so we've made a simplistic assumption that the combined effect of NRR is approximately a 5% increase in ARR over the course of those years.

嗯，我們發現，隨著客戶平台化的發展，隨著續訂的出現，我們能夠向他們推銷更多的功能。例如，在SASE中，現在我們可以向它們出售ADEM和AIOps。例如，在我們的防火牆上，我們可以向他們發送 10 個訂閱。例如Cortex現在有XDR、ITDR，我們可以賣給他們CDR。在訪問方面，我們將能夠出售AI Access。因此，每次這些交易需要續約時，我們將有機會在平台上提供更多服務和功能，並為我們推動 NRR 的客戶，因此我們做了一個簡單的假設，即 NRR 的綜合效應約為這些年來，ARR 增加了5%。

Next question, Gray Powell from BTIG, followed by Gregg Moskowitz from Mizuho.

下一個問題是來自 BTIG 的 Gray Powell，隨後是來自 Mizuho 的 Gregg Moskowitz。

It was good to hear the 50% growth on Prisma SASE this quarter. So a question on secure service edge. If I look at industry analysts' estimates there, I think secure service edge is probably about 25% of the network security market today give or take. That's rough. I'm just kind of curious like where do you think that penetration goes in maybe 3 or 4 years. Or maybe said differently, how should we think about the growth profile of that market going forward and your ability to grow at or above that?

很高興聽到 Prisma SASE 本季實現了 50% 的成長。關於安全服務邊緣的問題。如果我看一下產業分析師的估計，我認為安全服務優勢可能佔當今網路安全市場的 25% 左右。這很粗糙。我只是有點好奇，你認為 3 到 4 年後滲透率會達到什麼程度。或者換句話說，我們應該如何考慮該市場未來的成長狀況以及您在該市場或之上成長的能力？

Yes. Look, I think it's important to start with a view on this, that the market will be hybrid for a very long time, meaning customers will need a combination of hardware form factors, software form factors and SASE. And the reason for that is campuses still exist and hardware is still the fastest approach to this. And public and private cloud, software-based approaches are the best. SASE comes in with all of the remote users and branch offices. And so the -- that hybrid nature, from our perspective, means that the customers will increasingly choose to go with a platform-based approach where they can shift traffic across those different form factors as is optimized for that form factor.

是的。看，我認為首先要考慮到這一點，即市場將在很長一段時間內是混合的，這意味著客戶將需要硬體外形因素、軟體外形因素和 SASE 的組合。原因是校園仍然存在，而硬體仍然是實現這一目標的最快方法。公有雲和私有雲、基於軟體的方法是最好的。 SASE 與所有遠端使用者和分公司一起出現。因此，從我們的角度來看，這種混合性質意味著客戶將越來越多地選擇採用基於平台的方法，他們可以在這些不同的外形尺寸之間轉移流量，並針對該外形尺寸進行最佳化。

And so some of the SASE growth that you've seen and you've seen it with us, we're 50% growth with SASE over the last several quarters, is showing that, that portion of the architecture is going to grow faster for some time and then ultimately, see this come into the total growth of the platform being what really matters. And then on top of that, we can deliver the security services, such as the newly announced AI Access Security across all of those form factors.

因此，您和我們一起看到了 SASE 的一些增長，過去幾個季度我們的 SASE 增長了 50%，這表明，架構的這一部分將增長得更快一段時間後，最終，看到這成為平台的總體成長才是真正重要的。除此之外，我們還可以提供安全服務，例如新發布的跨所有這些外形尺寸的人工智慧存取安全。

Next up, Gregg Moskowitz from Mizuho, followed by Fatima Boolani from Citi.

接下來是來自瑞穗銀行的格雷格·莫斯科維茨 (Gregg Moskowitz)，接著是來自花旗銀行的法蒂瑪·布爾尼 (Fatima Boolani)。

Nikesh, in order to reach your fiscal '30 goals, it looks like you'll need to sign an average, give or take, of around 75 new platformization deals per quarter, a little higher than what you did -- just did in Q3. But if we're in the early days of this strategy and if you're just now building your go-to-market muscle around this, why shouldn't new platformization customers be a lot higher than that on a multiyear basis?

Nikesh，為了實現你的 30 財年目標，看起來你需要平均每季簽署約 75 項新平台化交易，比你剛剛在第三季所做的要高一些。但是，如果我們正處於該策略的早期階段，並且如果您現在剛剛圍繞此建立進入市場的實力，為什麼新的平台化客戶不應該比多年的基礎上高很多呢？

Look, we told you last quarter we're going to do platformization. I have to say, I have to commend our team. We spent a lot of time over the last 90 days working hard on analyzing all this data to make sure we could give you a framework, so you can look at it and measure us over the next few quarters as we show you the benefits of platformization. So that's one part.

看，我們上個季度告訴你我們將進行平台化。不得不說，我不得不表揚一下我們的團隊。在過去的90 天裡，我們花了很多時間努力分析所有這些數據，以確保我們可以為您提供一個框架，以便您可以在接下來的幾個季度中查看它並衡量我們，同時我們向您展示平台化的好處。這就是一部分。

The other part is, look, it's positively surprise, a good thing that we've got 60-plus deals done in this quarter. We'll see what happens in Q4. We've just started going down this journey, and of course, if prospects get better, we will be happy to update our targets in the future. But for now, that seems like a robust goal that will still make us the first company in the history of cybersecurity to ever get ever close to that kind of aspirational number.

另一部分是，看，這真是令人驚訝，這是一件好事，我們在本季完成了 60 多筆交易。我們將看看第四季度會發生什麼。我們剛開始踏上這段旅程，當然，如果前景變得更好，我們將很樂意在未來更新我們的目標。但就目前而言，這似乎是一個堅定的目標，它仍然將使我們成為網路安全史上第一家接近這一理想數字的公司。

Next up, Fatima Boolani from Citi, followed by Shaul Eyal from Cowen.

接下來是來自花旗銀行的法蒂瑪·布爾尼 (Fatima Boolani)，隨後是來自考恩 (Cowen) 的沙烏爾·埃亞爾 (Shaul Eyal)。

Nikesh, you talked a lot about the multiplicative impact and the monetization acceleration you can get from platformization. I'm curious if we can put a profitability lens on this because you are driving between $2 million and $14 million of ARR, you mentioned, from a platformized customer. But from a contribution margin perspective, can you share with us what that incremental profitability impact would be like? And why should we sitting here not think that structurally your business, as it moves towards being increasingly consolidated, can see 30%, 35%, maybe even 40% operating margins?

Nikesh，您多次談到了平台化帶來的倍增影響和貨幣化加速。我很好奇我們是否可以從獲利角度來看待這個問題，因為您提到，您從平台化客戶那裡獲得了 200 萬至 1400 萬美元的 ARR。但從邊際貢獻的角度來看，您能否與我們分享一下增量獲利能力的影響會是什麼樣子？為什麼我們坐在這裡不應該認為，從結構上看，隨著您的業務日益整合，可以看到 30%、35%、甚至 40% 的營業利潤率？

Yes. Look, Fatima, I -- in concept, principally, I have no argument against what you're saying because, remember, if you look at an average enterprise company's P&L, the largest cost is sales and marketing, right? Gross margins are, give or take, 75% to 80%. Take your favorite enterprise company. That leaves you most of your costs are -- majority of the costs are sales and marketing. If you can consolidate and concentrate your sales and marketing costs to very large deals and be able to generate large amounts of ARR or ACV/TCV from those customers, the cost of sales as a proportion of your revenue goes down. As you are constantly upselling it to the same customer base, it also makes it a little easier.

是的。聽著，法蒂瑪，我－在概念上，主要是，我對你所說的話沒有異議，因為，記住，如果你看一下普通企業公司的損益表，最大的成本是銷售和行銷，對吧？毛利率是 75% 到 80%。以您最喜歡的企業公司為例。這使得你的大部分成本是——大部分成本是銷售和行銷。如果您能夠將銷售和行銷成本整合並集中到非常大的交易中，並能夠從這些客戶那裡產生大量的 ARR 或 ACV/TCV，那麼銷售成本佔您收入的比例就會下降。由於您不斷向同一客戶群追加銷售，這也讓事情變得更容易。

So I think we -- our opportunity is to, first, create enough breadth in our sort of coverage to make sure that we can actually go address all these landed customers. We've only done 900. We said we got to get north of 2,500, which means we have to go address a lot more customers on our existing landed base. We don't have to go make new friends. We just have to go work with our existing friends. But yes, in the long term, I have no argument against your thesis that this should allow us to continue to aspire to higher profitability, not counting the impact of AI, which should get us to be a much more productive organization over the medium term.

因此，我認為我們的機會是，首先，在我們的覆蓋範圍中創造足夠的廣度，以確保我們能夠真正滿足所有這些落地客戶的需求。我們只完成了 900 個。我們不必去結交新朋友。我們只需要和我們現有的朋友一起工作。但是，是的，從長遠來看，我沒有反對你的論點，即這應該讓我們繼續追求更高的盈利能力，而不考慮人工智慧的影響，這應該讓我們在中期成為一個更有生產力的組織。

Next question Shaul Eyal from Cowen, followed by Andy Nowinski from Wells Fargo.

下一個問題是來自 Cowen 的 Shaul Eyal，接下來是來自 Wells Fargo 的 Andy Nowinski。

Question for Dipak or Nikesh on finance receivables. So finance receivables, up 34% sequentially. I know you don't guide, cannot guide this metric. If we look into next quarter and take into account your commentary about the strong pipeline, will we be seeing the finance receivables still expanding? Or maybe asked differently, will there be a point where would you like to see like this metric actually decelerating to a degree? What's the thinking along these lines?

向 Dipak 或 Nikesh 詢問有關應收帳款財務的問題。因此，財務應收帳款比上一季成長了 34%。我知道你不指導、無法指導這個指標。如果我們展望下個季度並考慮到您對強勁管道的評論，我們會看到財務應收帳款仍在擴大嗎？或者也許換個角度問，您是否希望看到這個指標實際上在一定程度上減速？這方面的想法是什麼？

Yes. So I think -- thanks for the question, Shaul. I think as the business grows, like having tools like PANFS can only help you. And if that's what the customer is looking for in terms of deferred payment plans, I think I don't have a problem if it goes up because it just ends up giving you even more like knowledge of what your cash flow will be in the future, like -- so all of that receivable, we collect it eventually.

是的。所以我想——謝謝你的提問，Shaul。我認為隨著業務的成長，擁有像 PANFS 這樣的工具只會對你有幫助。如果這就是客戶在延期付款計劃方面所尋求的，我認為如果它上升，我不會有問題，因為它最終會讓您更多地了解未來的現金流量，就像——所以所有的應收賬款，我們最終都會收回。

Honestly, I think more of it is related to the cost of money than anything else. So I think this becomes a larger issue in the current environment where interest rates are higher. I think if we're in an environment where the interest rates will go down, that's when I would expect this to potentially ratchet down.

老實說，我認為這與金錢成本有關。所以我認為在當前利率較高的環境下，這變成一個更大的問題。我認為，如果我們處於利率下降的環境中，那麼我預計利率可能會下降。

Next up is Andy Nowinski from Wells Fargo, followed by Joe Gallo from Jefferies.

接下來是富國銀行的安迪·諾文斯基（Andy Nowinski），其次是傑富瑞集團（Jefferies）的喬·加洛（Joe Gallo）。

So I wanted to ask you about the IBM deal. What was the impetus for acquiring those assets? Because it looks like their SaaS revenue is pretty small at $100 million. And given how well XSIAM is doing, couldn't you just capture those on-prem customers for free over time?

所以我想向您詢問有關 IBM 交易的情況。收購這些資產的動力是什麼？因為看起來他們的 SaaS 收入很小，只有 1 億美元。鑑於 XSIAM 的表現如何，您難道不能隨著時間的推移免費捕獲這些本地客戶嗎？

I think, Andrew, there's more than that. Remember, we explained to you that part of platformization is going to be able to transition customers off their existing contracts. Now the good news is we can transition these customers irrespective of term when they expire. That's great option value, right? I don't have to wait for 3 years to migrate them. I don't have to wait for an RFP. I can just walk up to them saying, "Listen, you're already my customer now because I've acquired the contract. Why don't you come? We work on transitioning you to XSIAM." Not only that, it also allows the opportunity not just to go after the SaaS customer base but also allows us to transition the on-prem customer base, which is a much larger prize, where IBM has economics from us where they're able to -- they will get earn-out based on how many of those customers transition to us.

我想，安德魯，事情還不只這些。請記住，我們曾向您解釋過，平台化的一部分將能夠使客戶擺脫現有合約。現在的好消息是，無論這些客戶到期時的期限如何，我們都可以對其進行轉換。這是很大的選擇價值，對吧？我不必等待 3 年才能遷移它們。我不必等待 RFP。我可以走到他們面前說：“聽著，你現在已經是我的客戶了，因為我已經獲得了合約。為什麼不來？我們正在努力將你過渡到 XSIAM。”不僅如此，它還讓我們不僅有機會追逐 SaaS 客戶群，還讓我們能夠轉變本地客戶群，這是一個更大的獎勵，IBM 可以從我們這裡獲得經濟利益，他們能夠——他們將根據有多少客戶轉向我們獲得收益。

So I mean, honestly, it's -- I think it's an amazing deal for us. I'm just delighted that IBM agreed to do this deal with us and partner with us and also gives me access to -- look, in the history of IBM, they have not sold anybody else's cybersecurity portfolio with the enthusiasm we hope we can generate together with 1,000 cybersecurity sellers. Until now, they would sell one portfolio that was IBM. And today, we -- this deal allows us to train all of them, all 1,000 of them, work with them on XSIAM and get it out to customers.

所以我的意思是，老實說，我認為這對我們來說是一筆了不起的交易。我很高興IBM 同意與我們達成這項交易並與我們合作，並且還讓我能夠接觸到——看，在IBM 的歷史上，他們還沒有以我們希望我們能夠產生的熱情出售任何其他人的網絡安全產品組合。到目前為止，他們只會出售 IBM 的一個投資組合。今天，這筆交易使我們能夠培訓他們所有人，全部 1,000 人，與他們在 XSIAM 上合作並將其提供給客戶。

Just I think it's -- hopefully cements our place in the SIEM/SOC category at a pace that nobody would have anticipated, right? Until yesterday, there were 3 players in the Magic Quadrant, which was not us. This allows us to participate with one of the biggest players in the space and migrate as many of these customers based on merit and based on great proposition as quickly as we can. That [$5] million, I didn't have to spend -- what's the number? Never mind, I won't quote a large number. I didn't have to sell many, many, many billions of dollars and transition the customers then.

我只是認為，希望能夠以無人預料到的速度鞏固我們在 SIEM/SOC 類別中的地位，對嗎？直到昨天，魔力像限裡還有 3 位選手，其中不是我們。這使我們能夠與該領域最大的參與者之一合作，並根據優點和偉大的主張盡快遷移盡可能多的客戶。那 [5] 百萬美元，我不用花——數字是多少？沒關係，我不會引用大量的數字。那時我不必出售數十億美元並轉移客戶。

Next up, Joe Gallo from Jefferies, followed by Ben Bollin from Cleveland Research.

接下來是來自 Jefferies 的 Joe Gallo，隨後是來自 Cleveland Research 的 Ben Bollin。

I want to follow up on Fatima's question. I don't think many disagree with the strategic long-term potential of the platform or the ensuing financial strength. But when you look at fiscal '25 specifically and free cash flow being 37% plus margin there, how should we think about the visibility or durability of that free cash flow margin given what's impacting you now with deferred payment terms, discounting, fatigue, hardware digestion should in theory impact you for a couple of quarters next year?

我想跟進法蒂瑪的問題。我認為很多人不同意該平台的策略性長期潛力或隨之而來的財務實力。但是，當您具體考慮25 財年時，自由現金流為37% 加利潤，考慮到現在延期付款條件、折扣、疲勞、硬體等因素對您的影響，我們應該如何考慮自由現金流利潤的可見性或持久性理論上來說，消化問題會在明年的幾個季度內影響您嗎？

First of all, do not introduce the word fatigue in our conference call. Secondly, yes, as it relates to the free cash flow margins, I'll let Dipak jump in, in a minute. But look, it's the fine balance of making sure that we can let our annual billings continue to grow as a proportion because we think this interest rate environment is here to stay, and we can manage our free cash flow margins in the same time frame.

首先，不要在我們的電話會議中引入疲勞這個詞。其次，是的，因為它與自由現金流利潤率有關，我稍後會讓 Dipak 介入。但是看，這是確保我們可以讓我們的年度帳單繼續按一定比例增長的良好平衡，因為我們認為這種利率環境將持續下去，並且我們可以在同一時間範圍內管理我們的自由現金流利潤率。

But the good news is because of a nicely increasing profitability, that allows us to have the capability to let our annual billings continue to get bigger and bigger because, eventually, that's what gets you. Take the extreme example on the other side. The other side extreme example is a SaaS company with annual billings, which can go back to the same degree of free cash flow margins that they have. So our opportunity is to see if we can migrate our customers to more to more, more annualized billings and continue to maintain the margins without creating a kink in there. That's what Dipak is very focused on. I don't know if you have something you want to add to that, Dipak.

但好消息是，獲利能力大幅提高，這使我們有能力讓我們的年度帳單繼續變得越來越大，因為最終，這就是你的目標。舉個極端的例子。另一個極端的例子是一家擁有年度帳單的 SaaS 公司，它可以恢復到與他們擁有的相同程度的自由現金流利潤率。因此，我們的機會是看看我們是否可以將我們的客戶遷移到更多、更多、更多的年化帳單，並繼續保持利潤率，而不會造成問題。這就是迪帕克非常關注的事情。我不知道你是否有什麼想要補充的，迪帕克。

No, the only thing that I would add is like, look, the more that you do deferred payments now, the more you actually understand your waterfall of what will come afterwards. So as long as the shift doesn't happen all at once and it's a gradual shift that you're managing, it actually gives you even more certainty than less certainty in your ability to deliver. So happy to talk offline about how we see that and why we believe that, but I think the data doesn't lie there.

不，我唯一要補充的是，你看，你現在延期付款的次數越多，你就越能真正了解之後會發生什麼。因此，只要這種轉變不是一下子發生的，而是你正在管理的一個漸進的轉變，它實際上會給你帶來更多的確定性，而不是你的交付能力的不確定性。很高興在線下談論我們如何看待這一點以及為什麼我們相信這一點，但我認為數據並不在那裡。

Next, Ben Bollin from Cleveland Research, followed by Jonathan Ho from William Blair.

接下來是克利夫蘭研究中心的本·博林 (Ben Bollin)，隨後是威廉·布萊爾 (William Blair) 的喬納森·何 (Jonathan Ho)。

Nikesh, one of the initial attributes around platform seems to be the potential for use periods and as companies displace other vendors. Could you talk about what you've seen from the use -- [potential] for use periods in those first 60-plus deals? And then maybe, Dipak, could you talk through a little bit about what it means for revenue, RPO, ARR billings and like how that waterfalls over time?

Nikesh，平台的最初屬性之一似乎是使用期限和公司取代其他供應商的潛力。您能否談談您從前 60 多筆交易的使用期限中看到的情況？然後，Dipak，您能否稍微談談這對收入、RPO、ARR 帳單意味著什麼，以及隨著時間的推移，它們是如何瀑布式下降的？

Yes. So in the first 50 or 60 deals, I think we've got a little sort of portfolio, all kinds of stuff that's happened. There are some customers we've had to basically wait for 6 months to be able to charge for our services because they have an existing contract, and we start implementation. So we wait that period out. Typically, those deals where we end up waiting out end up with longer duration because we don't want to give away that period over a shorter period of time, so you'll see that those deals are north of 3 years. In the case, we end up giving some sort of free use period. In smaller situations, sometimes we'll provide migration services, which allows them to get off an existing solution and move to Palo Alto as quickly as possible.

是的。因此，在前 50 或 60 筆交易中，我認為我們已經有了一些投資組合，發生了各種各樣的事情。有一些客戶基本上需要等待 6 個月才能對我們的服務收費，因為他們有現有合同，然後我們開始實施。所以我們等待那段時間過去。通常，我們最終等待的那些交易最終會持續較長的期限，因為我們不想在較短的時間內放棄該期限，因此您會看到這些交易的期限超過 3 年。在這種情況下，我們最終會給予某種免費使用期。在較小的情況下，有時我們會提供遷移服務，這使他們能夠擺脫現有的解決方案並儘快遷移到帕洛阿爾托。

And remember, because most of these implementations have some sort of ramp element, nobody goes and deploys 65,000 end points and turns them on in 1 day. Typically, it takes them 3 to 4 months internally to deploy those. So that actually doesn't impact us from a COGS perspective as much and allows them to have that execution flexibility, which we've always talked about as part of platformization.

請記住，由於這些實施中的大多數都具有某種斜坡元素，因此沒有人會去部署 65,000 個端點並在 1 天內將它們打開。通常，他們需要 3 到 4 個月的時間在內部部署這些內容。因此，從銷售成本的角度來看，這實際上並沒有對我們產生太大影響，並且允許他們擁有執行靈活性，這是我們一直在談論的平台化的一部分。

So I think we've seen all variants, and I'll say, right now, the -- we're seeing more of an impact on our business from deferred payment than we are from the free periods, to be honest, right? In every case, we want to make sure the exit ARR is what we want from that customer. So our ARR, we expect it to ramp in some of these deals, which are 3- to 5-year duration where we provided free periods. But we're still -- as I said, more impact is from the billings, deferral in annual billings than it is from free periods right now. And we'll know better after Q4 because you'd expect the volume of Q4 business given the expectations and numbers should be substantially more than Q3.

所以我認為我們已經看到了所有的變體，我會說，現在，我們看到延期付款對我們業務的影響比免費期更大，說實話，對吧？在每種情況下，我們都希望確保退出 ARR 是我們想要從該客戶那裡得到的。因此，我們預計其中一些交易的 ARR 會增加，這些交易的期限為 3 至 5 年，我們提供免費期限。但正如我所說，我們仍然 - 正如我所說，更多的影響來自賬單和年度賬單延期，而不是現在的免費期。我們會在第四季之後知道更多，因為考慮到預期和數字，您預計第四季度的業務量應該會大大超過第三季。

Next question, Jonathan Ho from William Blair followed by Joel Fishbein from Truist.

下一個問題是來自 William Blair 的 Jonathan Ho，接著是來自 Truist 的 Joel Fishbein。

As you add more AI capabilities to your platforms, what are customers looking to benefit from? And how do we think about the monetization opportunity here?

當您為平台添加更多人工智慧功能時，客戶希望從哪些方面受益？我們如何看待這裡的貨幣化機會？

So I think if you look at some of our products, as we articulated, there are 3 specific products we announced at RSA and then we said all of our co-pilots will be available and already are available to customers for beta reasons. And then we have underlying capabilities in our products, which are AI-enabled.

因此，我認為如果你看看我們的一些產品，正如我們所闡述的那樣，我們在RSA 上宣布了3 種特定產品，然後我們說我們所有的副駕駛都將可用，並且已經因測試原因向客戶提供。然後我們的產品具有支援人工智慧的基礎功能。

Now in most of our advanced services and firewalls, and I'm making a broad statement here, so -- we've increased prices from 20% of the cost of firewalls as a sub to 30%. So we have had an uptick in AI delivered services on the firewall. The customers see the value, and majority of customers have opted into that capability, which we've had for the last 2 or 3 years. And today, we've just launched the most recent one, which is Advanced DNS, which will also be uptick to a 30% instead of 20% subscription.

現在，在我們大多數的高級服務和防火牆中，我在這裡做了一個廣泛的聲明，所以——我們已經將價格從防火牆成本的 20% 提高到了 30%。因此，我們在防火牆上提供的人工智慧服務增加。客戶看到了價值，大多數客戶都選擇了這種功能，我們在過去的兩三年中一直擁有這種功能。今天，我們剛剛推出了最新的一項，即高級 DNS，訂閱費也將上漲至 30%，而不是 20%。

AI Access will be sold as an incremental capability and incremental subscription for all of our VPN and for our SASE customers. So you will have monetization capability there. AI firewall would be, again, an uptick on our virtual firewalls where you have AI capability, so you'll pay a premium to protect AI installations over a traditional VM.

AI Access 將作為增量功能和增量訂閱的形式出售給我們所有的 VPN 和 SASE 客戶。所以你在那裡將擁有貨幣化能力。人工智慧防火牆將再次成為我們具有人工智慧功能的虛擬防火牆的升級版，因此與傳統虛擬機器相比，您將支付額外費用來保護人工智慧安裝。

We're still debating whether we provide AI SPM to the market, which is effective security posture management capability as part of our firewall optionality or we charge for it separately. We will do that closer to when we launch the actual product towards July.

我們仍在爭論是否向市場提供 AI SPM，這是一種有效的安全態勢管理功能，作為我們防火牆選項的一部分，還是單獨收費。我們將在 7 月推出實際產品時這樣做。

Our co-pilots are, for the most part, available to our customers as a productivity tool, as an enhancement tool. In certain cases where we require them to ingest data to get advanced telemetry, they would have to buy the advanced telemetry modules to make the copilot even more useful for them. So that's roughly the lay of the land.

我們的副駕駛在很大程度上可以作為生產力工具、增強工具提供給我們的客戶。在某些情況下，我們要求他們獲取數據以獲得高級遙測，他們將必須購買高級遙測模組，以使副駕駛對他們更加有用。這就是大致的情況。

But one should expect that there should be 3 capabilities: one, better productivity for our customers, so they don't have to understand more complex UI; two, they will have to pay certain more -- somewhat more in certain use cases where they are getting incremental value and we're making incremental effort from them; then three, they might require to upgrade their underlying capabilities from base to advanced because we need the telemetry to make AI useful.

但人們應該期望它應該具有 3 種能力：一是為我們的客戶提供更好的生產力，這樣他們就不必了解更複雜的 UI；二是為我們的客戶提供更好的生產力。第二，他們將不得不付出更多的代價——在某些用例中，他們獲得增量價值，而我們正在從他們身上付出增量努力；第三，他們可能需要將其底層功能從基礎升級到高級，因為我們需要遙測技術來使人工智慧變得有用。

We'll take our last question from Joel Fishbein from Truist.

我們將回答 Truist 的 Joel Fishbein 提出的最後一個問題。

I have an AI question, too, Nikesh, just to follow up on that. In terms of -- can you talk about the customer appetite for AI security and maybe a couple of comments about the competitive landscape around companies that are delivering products around AI security as well?

我也有一個人工智慧問題，Nikesh，只是為了跟進這個問題。您能否談談客戶對人工智慧安全的需求，或許還可以談談圍繞人工智慧安全提供產品的公司的競爭格局？

Yes. Look, so we had an amazing reception to our AI -- Precision AI sort of preview at RSA. We have north of a few hundred customers who signed up to have discussions with us and engage in the beta of these products. That's very good, a. B, as you'll appreciate, AI Access is an overlay product on all of our access customers. So it's a good thing because our customers say, "I don't have to go somewhere else and get something add on and go make that happen because I expect Palo Alto will have it in 6 weeks' time. So I'm just going to wait for Palo Alto." And those who are keen to deploy sooner, we are able to discuss with them, show them the beta and continue to have design discussions with them.

是的。瞧，我們的 AI——Precision AI 在 RSA 上的預覽受到了驚人的歡迎。我們有數百位客戶註冊與我們討論並參與這些產品的測試版。這非常好，a. B，如您所知，AI Access 是我們所有接取客戶的覆蓋產品。所以這是一件好事，因為我們的客戶說，「我不必去其他地方添加一些東西，然後就可以實現這一點，因為我預計帕洛阿爾托將在 6 週內完成。所以我就去等待帕洛阿爾托。對於那些渴望盡快部署的人，我們可以與他們討論，向他們展示測試版並繼續與他們進行設計討論。

So it sort of reduces any risk of competitive activity into our customer base where somebody else is providing AI Access Security in our own cases, one. Two, in the case of AI firewalls, I think what is unique is we are possibly the only security vendor, which has a native integration. I say native, not on top but native integration with AWS, Azure, GCP and Oracle in their public clouds, which means our firewall sits in their cloud. You can activate it from their UI, not just from our UI, and you can launch it natively in all those cloud providers. AI firewalls will be built into that capability so that you get a native capability in most large cloud service providers or a VM that you can deploy in your data center.

因此，這在某種程度上降低了我們客戶群的競爭活動風險，在我們自己的案例中，其他人正在提供人工智慧存取安全。第二，就人工智慧防火牆而言，我認為獨特之處在於我們可能是唯一具有本機整合的安全供應商。我說的是原生，不是在頂層，而是與 AWS、Azure、GCP 和 Oracle 在其公有雲中的原生集成，這意味著我們的防火牆位於他們的雲端。您可以從他們的 UI 啟動它，而不僅僅是從我們的 UI 啟動它，並且您可以在所有這些雲端提供者中本機啟動它。人工智慧防火牆將內建在該功能中，以便您獲得大多數大型雲端服務供應商的本機功能或可以在資料中心部署的虛擬機器。

So again, for somebody to compete with us, they would have to have that native capability first than build it. So do we expect that Google will have it? Possibly. Microsoft? Possibly. AWS? Possibly. So the cloud providers might have that capability because they had native firewalls, but again, if you had a multi-cloud infrastructure with an LLM running in one cloud, another one running in the other cloud and some running in data center, we hopefully are the only option that allows that capability to happen. So we're trying to make sure that we do the early innovation in this space, so our customers don't have to or we don't create more fragmentation with other people having to deploy point products in that [outcome].

再說一遍，如果有人想與我們競爭，他們必須先擁有這種本地能力，而不是建造它。那麼我們期望谷歌會擁有它嗎？可能吧。微軟？可能吧。亞馬遜AWS？可能吧。因此，雲端提供者可能擁有這種能力，因為他們有本機防火牆，但同樣，如果您有一個多雲基礎設施，其中一個LLM 在一個雲端中運行，另一個在另一個雲端中運行，還有一些在資料中心運行，我們希望允許這種能力發生的唯一選擇。因此，我們試圖確保我們在這個領域進行早期創新，這樣我們的客戶就不必這樣做，或者我們不會造成更多的碎片化，而其他人必須在該[結果]中部署點產品。

With that, we'll conclude the Q&A portion of the call. I'd like to turn it back over to Nikesh for his closing remarks.

至此，我們將結束電話會議的問答部分。我想把它轉回給尼可什，讓他作結語。

Well, I just want to thank all of you for joining our earnings call. I appreciate your attention. I also want to thank all of our employees for all the hard work that goes into delivering great quarters and all the innovation that they've delivered. And last but not the least, thank you for all of our customers for their trust in us. See you guys next quarter.

好吧，我只想感謝大家參加我們的財報電話會議。感謝您的關注。我還要感謝我們所有的員工為實現出色的業績而付出的辛勤工作以及他們所帶來的所有創新。最後但並非最不重要的一點是，感謝所有客戶對我們的信任。大家下季見。