Check Point® Software Technologies Ltd. (NASDAQ: CHKP), today announced financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2020.

Third Quarter 2020:                                                         

• Total Revenue: $509 million, 4 percent increase year over year
• Deferred Revenues: $1,302 million, 5 percent increase year over year
• GAAP Operating Income: $231 million, representing 45 percent of revenues
• Non-GAAP Operating Income: $265 million, representing 52 percent of revenues
• GAAP EPS: $1.42, a 14% increase year over year
• Non-GAAP EPS: $1.64, a 14% increase year over year

“We executed well in the third quarter and delivered another successful virtual quarter. Revenues grew in all key areas with security subscriptions growing by 10 % and EPS grew by 14 % year over year. We saw expanded customer adoption of Quantum Network Gateways, CloudGuard, Infinity Total Protection and Beyond the Perimeter (BTP) – endpoint and mobile security solutions,” said Gil Shwed, Founder and CEO of Check Point Software Technologies. “We expanded our Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) offering during the quarter with the acquisition of Odo Security, a new cloud-based technology that delivers the next generation of secure remote access to enterprises. I would like to thank our customers, partners and employees for their commitment and contributions during these times.”

Financial Highlights for the Third Quarter of 2020:

• Total Revenue: $509 million compared to $491 million in the third quarter of 2019, a 4 percent increase year over year.
• GAAP Operating Income: $231 million compared to $214 million in the third quarter of 2019, representing 45 percent and 44 percent of revenues in the third quarter of 2020 and 2019, respectively.
• Non-GAAP Operating Income: $265 million compared to $246 million in the third quarter of 2019, representing 52 percent and 50 percent of revenues in the third quarter of 2020 and 2019, respectively.
• GAAP Taxes on Income: $45 million compared to $47 million in the third quarter of 2019.
• GAAP Net Income: GAAP net income was $201 million compared to $188 million in the third quarter of 2019.
• Non-GAAP Net Income: Non-GAAP net income was $231 million compared to $217 million in the third quarter of 2019.
• GAAP Earnings per Diluted share: $1.42 compared to $1.25 in the third quarter of 2019, a 14 percent increase year over year.
• Non-GAAP Earnings per Diluted share: $1.64 compared to $1.44 in the third quarter of 2019, a 14 percent increase year over year.
• Deferred Revenues: As of September 30, 2020, deferred revenues were $1,302 million compared to $1,242 million as of September 30, 2019, a 5 percent increase year over year.
• Cash Balances, Marketable Securities & Short Term Deposits: $3,896 million as of September 30, 2020, compared to $4,055 million as of September 30, 2019. During this twelve months ended September 30, 2020, we generated net cash of $1,141 million and repurchased shares in the amount of $1,300 million.
• Cash Flow: Cash flow from operations of $248 million compared to $244 million in the third quarter of 2019.
• Share Repurchase Program: During the third quarter of 2020, the company repurchased approximately 2.7 million shares at a total cost of approximately $325 million.

For information regarding the non-GAAP financial measures discussed in this release, as well as a reconciliation of such non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures, please see “Use of Non-GAAP Financial Information” and “Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Financial Information.”

Key Business Highlights

Our product announcements in the third quarter focused on addressing organizations’ most imminent cyber security challenges, magnified by COVID-19

We announced the acquisition of Odo Security, a new cloud-based SASE technology that delivers secure remote access for Enterprises. Odo provides simple, unified and easy to setup connectivity to datacenter applications, web applications, cloud services and remote desktops. It will integrate with Check Point’s Infinity architecture threat prevention capabilities and provide an easy and secure solution to address the growing needs that enterprises have to enable secure remote access for their employees to any application.

With the increase in cyber-attacks volume and sophistication, Security Operations Centre (SOC) teams struggle to identify and mitigate malicious activity on their complex network estates. We launched Infinity SOC to help security teams cut through the daily overload of alerts, and reduce network blind spots to expose, and shut down cyber-attacks with exceptional speed and precision. Infinity SOC is used daily by the Check Point research cyber analysts, to expose and investigate the world’s most dangerous and sophisticated cyber-attacks.

In addition, we introduced the new 28600 Quantum Hyperscale Security Gateway with 30 Gbps of Threat Prevention performance, making it the world’s fastest 1U gateway. The 28600 and all Quantum Security Gateways are Hyperscale ready, capable of handling the most rapid growth in network traffic, recently driven by work-from-home needs related to COVID-19. Quantum is highly scalable with up to 1.5 Tera-bps of threat prevention performance using the HyperScale technology, high port density and half the energy consumption of rival high-end appliances.

Check Point Software announced the new IoT Protect solution to secure IoT devices and networks against the most advanced cyber-attacks. With the outbreak of COVID-19 we saw a surge in cyber-attacks targeting IOT networks at manufacturing plants, utilities and other mission critical environments. The solution delivers threat prevention and security management capabilities to block cyber-attacks at both IoT network and IoT device level, using threat intelligence and innovative IoT-specific security services.

In August, we launched the Distribution Marketplace Program, joining with Arrow Electronics and Ingram Micro Inc., to help partners reach new customers and sectors with Check Point’s advanced cloud security solutions. This new program delivers enablement, marketing support, flexible financing and consumption models to partners. Building on the Partner Growth Program launched in January, the Distribution Marketplace program accelerates and grows channel success by enable Check Point’s channel to offer customers’ best-in-class cloud security with fast, easy and flexible deployments, backed by a complete range of expert resources.

As organizations absorb the “new normal” cyber criminals continue to launch sophisticated, malicious attacks.

Earlier in the quarter, we released our ’Cyber Attack Trends: 2020 Mid-Year Report’, which shows how criminal, political and nation-state threat actors exploited the COVID-19 pandemic and related themes to target organizations across all sectors, including governments, industry, healthcare, service providers, critical infrastructure and consumers. Check Point Research found that COVID-19 related phishing and malware attacks increased dramatically from under 5,000 thousand per week in February, to over 200,000 per week in late April.

In August, researchers at Check Point observed a new trend of hacks operating under the guise of coronavirus vaccines. Taking advantage of the new normal, hackers sent emails with subject lines related to the coronavirus vaccine, in order to trick recipients into downloading malicious files designed to extract a person’s usernames and passwords directly from their computers. Consequently, the number of new vaccine-related coronavirus domains doubled in June and July 2020.

With many schools conducting classes remotely, Check Point Research uncovered malicious “back-to-school” themed campaigns. Beginning in May, over 35,149 new domains were registered around the back-to-school theme, 512 of them were found to be malicious, with another 3,401 suspicious

Our researchers also examined cyber-attacks against education and research institutions in the United States, Europe and Asia. They observed a double-digit increases in cyber-attacks on the global education sector, with the United States being the most targeted region. Between July and August 2020, the average number of weekly attacks per organization in the U.S. education sector increased by 30%, from 468 cyber-attacks to 608, when compared to the previous two months.

Vulnerabilities in Applications & Infrastructure:

Fixing the Zoom ‘Vanity Clause’ – Check Point and Zoom collaborate to fix Vanity URL issue: Check Point and Zoom identified a security issue in Zoom’s customizable URL feature. If exploited, a hacker would have been able to manipulate ID meeting links by posing as an employee of a potential victim organization via Zoom, giving the hacker a vector for stealing credentials or sensitive information.

SIGRed – this is not just another vulnerability: Check Point Researcher identified a security flaw in Windows DNS, the DNS services provided by Microsoft for every Windows operating system. Hackers could exploit vulnerability to gain Domain Administrator rights over servers to seize complete control over a corporation’s IT.

Significant Security Flaws Found in OKCupid: Check Point researchers raise serious security questions on dating apps after proving that potential threat actors could have had access to sensitive, private data, full profile details, private messages and email addresses on OKCupid, the free online dating app with over 50 million registered users and used in 110 countries.

ACHILLES: Android Phones Everywhere can Spy on Users: Check Point Research found over 400 vulnerabilities in the Qualcomm chip embedded into over 40% of the world’s phones. Through the vulnerabilities, attackers can command an Android phone to spy, go unresponsive, and conceal malicious activity.

Vulnerabilities in Certain Amazon Alexa Subdomains: Check Point researchers identified security vulnerabilities in certain Amazon/Alexa subdomains that could have allowed a hacker to remove and install skills on the targeted victim’s Alexa account, access their voice history and personal data. The attack required a single click by the user on a malicious link crafted by the hacker and voice interaction by the victim. 

#InstaHack: how researchers were able to take over the Instagram App using a malicious image: Check Point discovered a critical vulnerability in Instagram’s image processing which would have enabled hackers to use a single image to take over Instagram accounts, and turn a victim’s phone into a spying tool to access GPS location, phone contacts and camera.

Malware and Campaigns Research:

How scammers are hiding their phishing trips in public clouds: Check Point researchers warn and cite an example of a fast-growing trend in which hackers are concealing phishing attacks on Google Cloud Services, making it far more difficult for people to identify a phishing attack. By using advanced features in a well-known cloud storage service, hackers can better disguise their malicious intentions, and not get caught by more traditional red flags that people look for such as suspicious-looking domains or websites without a HTTPS certificate.

RampantKitten: An Iranian Surveillance Operation unraveled: Check Point Research unravels a 6 year, ongoing surveillance operation administered by Iranian entities against regime dissidents. Attackers used multiple attack methods to spy on victims, including hijacking Telegram accounts, recording a phone’s audio surroundings and extracting two-factor authentication codes, and more.

Exploring Qbot’s Latest Attack Methods: Check Point Research detected an evolved and more dangerous form of a notorious information-stealing Trojan. First identified in 2008, the Qbot trojan harvests browsing data and financial information, including online banking details. With over 100,000 current victims estimated globally, Qbot is currently the most widespread malware.

We continued our focus on security through innovation, industry research and recognition including:

Check Point’s 2020 Cloud Security Report: Check Point released the results of the global 2020 Cloud Security Report, highlighting the challenges faced by enterprise security teams in protecting data and workloads in their public cloud deployments. The report showed that public cloud security continues to be a major challenge: 75% of respondents stated they were ‘very concerned’ or ‘extremely concerned’ about it.

Check Point is the Microsoft US Partner Award Winner for Azure Commercial Marketplace: Check Point is honored to have received Microsoft’s US Partner Award for Commercial Marketplace. This achievement reflects the business impact of the partnership as well as the strategic technology, product, marketing and sales alignment between Microsoft and Check Point.

Check Point Software Partners with Harvard and MIT-founded edX to Deliver Free Online Courses, to Help Close Cyber-security Skills Gap: Check Point announced a new partnership with edX, a trusted Harvard and MIT-founded online learning platform used by 30 million learners as well as the world’s top-ranking universities and industry-leading companies globally. The partnership will offer a growing series of Check Point cyber-security courses and content to security and network professionals.

Check Point Software Technologies has been Named a Leader in IDC’s MarketScape Report for Mobile Threat Management: Check Point was named as a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Mobile Threat Management Software 2020 Vendor Assessment (doc #US46092220, September 2020). For the third-consecutive year, Check Point was named a leader based on strategy and capabilities.

Video Conference Information
Check Point will host a video conference call with the investment community on October 22, 2020, at 8:30 AM ET/5:30 AM PT. To listen to the live video cast or replay, please visit the website: www.checkpoint.com/ir.

Third Quarter Investor Conference Participation Schedule:

• RBC 2020 Virtual Technology, Internet, Media & Telecommunications Conference
  November 17-18, 2020 – Virtual 1×1’s
• Credit Suisse 2020 Virtual Technology Summit
  November 30 – December 1, 2020 – Virtual Fireside Chat & 1×1’s
• Wells Fargo 2020 Virtual Technology Conference
  December 2, 2020 – Virtual Fireside Chat & 1×1’s
• NASDAQ 2020 Technology Conference
  December 3-4, 2020 – Virtual Fireside Chat & 1×1’s
• Raymond James 2020 Technology Conference
  December 7, 2020 – Virtual 1×1’s
• UBS 2020 Technology Conference
  December 8-9, 2020 – Virtual 1×1’s
• Barclays 2020 Technology Conference
  December 10, 2020 – Virtual 1×1’s

Members of Check Point’s management team are expected to present at these conferences and discuss the latest company strategies and initiatives. Check Point’s conference presentations are expected to be available via webcast on the company’s web site. To access these presentations and the most updated information please visit the company’s web site at www.checkpoint.com/ir. The schedule is subject to change.