Shares of cybersecurity-software companies have been on a roll this week, with investors reacting to the heightened threat of digital warfare as the Iran conflict escalates.
Below is a list of this week’s best performers in this industry group that also includes projected sales growth and valuation measures.
Unit 42 — Palo Alto Networks’ consulting team focused on security threats — published on Monday a threat assessment indicating that there has been “an escalation in cyberattacks” from Iran-affiliated activists outside of the country.
Attacks by state-sponsored actors within Iran are less likely, as the U.S. and Israel’s attacks have likely hindered the ability of “state-aligned threat actors to coordinate and execute sophisticated cyberattacks in the near term,” the Unit 42 report said. Since the conflict began, internet connectivity in the country has dropped significantly, to between 1% and 4% of prior connectivity, the report stated.
But the analysts also expect “low- to medium-sophistication disruptions (for example, distributed denial of service and hack and leak campaigns)” by geographically disbursed “operators and affiliated cyber proxies” allied with Iran’s government.
And as the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency noted, the Iranian government has routinely sponsored attacks on U.S. networks and internet-connected devices, particularly those that have been poorly secured. So investors have good reason to lean into companies that can help reduce that threat.
Since the Iran conflict started last weekend, the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF has climbed 2.8% this week, while the S&P 500 Index is little changed. So far this year, the ETF is still down 9.5% amid worries about the business threat from artificial intelligence, while the S&P 500 has gained 0.4%.
The CIBR ETF holds shares in 32 companies, as it tracks the Nasdaq CTA Cybersecurity Index. This global index includes companies in the technology and industrial sectors that are “primarily involved in the building, implementation and management of security protocols applied to private and public networks, computers and mobile devices in order to provide protection of the integrity of data and network operations,” according to Nasdaq.
So here is a list of the 10 holdings of CIBR that were up the most this week through midday trading on Wednesday. The table also includes projected compound annual growth rates (CAGR) for sales from 2025 through 2027; these projections are based on consensus estimates among analysts working for brokerage and research firms polled by LSEG. The projections are based on calendar-year revenue estimates, as adjusted by LSEG for companies whose fiscal years don’t match the calendar. In comparison, companies in the S&P 500 as a weighted group are expected to show a revenue CAGR of 4.8% over the next two years.
Company | Price change from Feb. 27 through midday March 4 | 2026 price change | 2-year projected sales CAGR through 2027 | Forward P/E |
7.9% | -5.7% | 28.3% | 146.3 | |
7.4% | -56.1% | -0.8% | 4.2 | |
7.0% | 16.4% | 10.5% | 19.5 | |
6.9% | -13.6% | 20.8% | 40.3 | |
6.8% | -15.3% | 22.2% | 77.0 | |
6.6% | -30.3% | 20.4% | 34.9 | |
6.4% | -26.0% | 7.5% | 12.9 | |
5.7% | -13.6% | 7.1% | 10.3 | |
5.3% | 4.8% | 11.1% | 26.3 | |
4.6% | 0.5% | 8.5% | 20.9 | |
Source: FactSet | ||||
CrowdStrike’s stock also got a boost this week, after the company on Tuesday reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue that rose above expectations and provided an upbeat full-year outlook.
All of these companies are based in the U.S. except for Radware, which is based in Israel.
The table includes forward price-to-earnings ratios, which are prices divided by consensus earnings-per-share estimates among analysts polled by LSEG. They compare to weighted forward P/E ratios of 21.8 for the S&P 500, 24.2 for the index’s information-technology sector and 26.3 for its industrials sector.
Some of the P/E ratios are very high, underscoring how revenue growth has been the driver for many of these stocks over the long term.
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