SentinelOne, a cybersecurity firm that went public in 2021 and has yet to witness its stock price surpass the year's highs, is not up for sale, according to Tomer Weingarten, the company co-founder and CEO. In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, Weingarten addressed reports suggesting a potential sale of the company.
One such report from Reuters cited sources, while another from Bloomberg referenced comments made by a spokesperson from security startup Wiz regarding a possible acquisition of SentinelOne. Following the release of the expected fiscal second-quarter results, SentinelOnes shares experienced a more than 10% increase during after-hours trading on Thursday.
The company's revenue saw growth of 46% year over year; however, this was lower than the 70% growth witnessed in the first quarter. Looking ahead to the third quarter, SentinelOne projects $156 million in revenue—exceeding Refinitiv's consensus estimate of $154.2 million.
Weingarten acknowledged that there had been rumors and speculations circulating in the market but emphasized their focus as a high-growth and high-performance organization dedicated to pursuing their unique path.
We have shown improvements in our profit margin while experiencing impressive growth. We focus on driving innovation and protecting our customers to the best of our abilities.
According to Weingarten, the effective way to achieve this is by remaining an independent publicly traded company.
In June, SentinelOne decided to reduce its workforce by 100 employees, representing 5% of its total employees.
The company offers products, including software for endpoint security, which puts it in direct competition with CrowdStrike and VMware. It also faces pressure from Microsoft.
"As time passes, we are gaining market share each quarter," added Weingarten. "Among all the players in this field, incumbents are the weakest."
While SentinelOne still maintains a partnership with Wiz, Weingarten did mention that they terminated a reseller agreement with the startup.
SentinelOnes shares have risen 14% this year, excluding after-hours trading movements. However, this performance falls behind that of the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF, which has seen around a 22% increase during the period. CrowdStrike, one of the holdings within this exchange-traded fund, has experienced a rise of 55% this year.