Management attributed the company's performance to robust adoption of its agentic AI-powered risk management offerings. CEO Sumedh Thakar highlighted that customers are increasingly seeking unified solutions for pre-breach risk management, emphasizing the operational efficiencies and risk reduction achieved through Qualys' Enterprise Threat Management (ETM) platform and the Risk Operations Center (ROC) model. The company is prioritizing investments in its partner ecosystem, aiming to certify more mROC partners and enable them to deliver higher-value, business-focused risk services, expected to drive both upsell opportunities and new customer acquisition, especially in underpenetrated regions.
Cyborg Score Rationale
Qualys came out with fourth-quarter 2025 earnings of $1.87 per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $1.78 by 5.35%. Quarterly earnings also came above management's guidance range of $1.73-$1.80 and increased 16.9% from the year-ago quarter's earnings of $1.60. Qualys' earnings beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate in each of the trailing four quarters, the average surprise being 13.31%. Non-GAAP gross profit increased 12% year over year to $149 million, with the non-GAAP gross margin expanding to 85% compared with 84% in the year-ago quarter. Non-GAAP operating income rose 13% to $80.1 million, representing a margin of 46%, up from 44% a year earlier. The margin improvement highlights Qualys' strong operating leverage despite higher investments in sales and marketing, which grew 16.7%.
Top Insights
Annual recurring revenue was $697 million, growing 9.5% year-on-year and essentially matching analyst forecasts
Management views broader deployment of the ETM platform and agentic AI features as the primary lever for accelerating growth and boosting customer retention. However, adoption remains in the early stages, and future performance will depend on how quickly customers transition from legacy vulnerability management to the new ROC model
Qualys repurchased 328,000 shares worth $44.7 million during the fourth quarter and has repurchased a cumulative 10.7 million shares valued at $1.2 billion since the program's inception in February 2018. The company revealed that its board of directors has authorized another $200 million for the share repurchase program. This brought the total available authorization amount to $360.5 million
Qualys faces a changing competitive environment, with large players like ServiceNow acquiring exposure management vendors. Management believes its integrated approach—combining risk quantification, validation, and automated remediation—will remain a key differentiator, but the company must continue to innovate to defend and grow its market share
Named Competitors
ServiceNow — Enterprise cloud platform with security and IT risk capabilities
Tenable One — Vulnerability management and exposure analytics
Rapid7 — Vulnerability and incident detection and response
Qualys Cloud Agent — Lightweight cloud agent for continuous monitoring
Recent Developments
(February 2026) Q4 2025 earnings surpassed analyst expectations with EPS of $1.87 beating consensus of $1.78 and revenue of $175.28 million surpassing estimate of $173.18 million
(February 2026) Qualys announced an additional $200 million for its share repurchase program, raising the total to $360.5 million
(November 2025) Canaccord Genuity Group raised their price objective on Qualys from $158.00 to $160.00 and gave the company a "buy" rating
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