June 28, 2026
Palo Alto Networks Is Now the AI Security Company
Featured: Palo Alto Networks Is Now the AI Security Company
Dear Reader,
Before Charlie Munger became Buffett’s right-hand man, he stumbled across an investment idea that changed his life.
According to the story I share in my new presentation, he put just $1,000 into it.
60 years later, that same investment was still sending him $70,000 a year in income.
That’s the kind of setup I pay attention to.
Especially now.
Because the resource behind that old Munger story is suddenly becoming far more valuable in today’s AI race.
As data centers multiply and electricity demand surges, I believe this overlooked corner of the market could become one of the smartest ways to play AI from here.
Not with a tech stock. Not with an ETF. And not with some complicated private deal.
I explain the entire setup here:
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If you want to see why I believe this could be one of the most compelling monthly-income ideas in America right now, start there.
Good investing,
Marc Lichtenfeld
Chief Income Strategist, The Oxford Club
FEATURED
Palo Alto Networks Is Now the AI Security Company
There’s a version of the cybersecurity story most investors still believe. That story goes: threats go up, security budgets go up, firewall companies win. It’s not wrong. It’s just incomplete.
What’s actually happening right now is different. And Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) is right in the middle of it.
The Quarter That Changed the Framing
The cybersecurity giant just posted fiscal Q3 2026 results that made most tech earnings look modest by comparison, pulling in $3.0 billion in total revenue for the quarter, a 31% jump from the same period last year. That’s not firewall growth. That’s platform growth. There’s a difference.
Next-Generation Security annual recurring revenue surged 60% year-over-year to $8.13 billion. Worth noting: CyberArk and Chronosphere contributed $1.63 billion of that total. Exclude the acquisitions and organic NGS ARR still grew 28% to $6.5 billion, which is a strong standalone number. Remaining performance obligations climbed 36% to $18.4 billion. That last figure matters more than most people give it credit for. $18.4 billion in contracted future revenue is not a company scrambling to grow. It’s a company collecting on work already done.
The stock has followed. Shares have climbed roughly 62% year-to-date, outpacing broader cybersecurity benchmarks by a comfortable margin. PANW hit an all-time high of $306.24 on June 26, 2026.
This Stock has So Much Potential… it’s MYTHICAL
It’s not dainty… or girly… or colorful.
And it doesn’t smell nice.
But this stock has such one-of-a-kind profit potential…
It’s so key to our economy, Trump once publicly went to bat for it.
What Actually Drove It
Slight tangent, but it matters. The AI deployment wave didn’t just create new products to protect. It created a new attack surface that didn’t exist two years ago. Autonomous agents running 24/7. Machine-to-machine traffic nobody designed security around. Identity credentials being minted at scale for systems, not people.
Performance was driven by a fundamental shift: as AI transitions from experimental stages to enterprise-wide production, cybersecurity has become a mission-critical priority. The emergence of AI-capable frontier models has compressed attack timelines from months to minutes, making legacy human-led response times unsustainable.
Palo Alto Networks completed its $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk on February 11, 2026, establishing identity security as a core pillar of its platformization strategy. The addition of the CyberArk Identity Security Platform enables Palo Alto Networks to secure every identity across the enterprise, human, machine, and agentic.
That last word, agentic, is where this gets interesting. AI agents need identity credentials. Those credentials are now the primary attack path. Palo Alto just bought the company that owns that category.
Management points to the flywheel effect of platformization, where 125 million sensors provide the high-fidelity data required to train effective defensive AI. More sensors mean better models. Better models mean better detection. Better detection means customers consolidate further onto the platform. It compounds. And Prisma AIRS, the company’s dedicated AI security platform, tripled its customer count in a single quarter to over 300 customers.
The Platform Bet and the Risk
Customers are increasingly consolidating their spending on integrated platforms rather than stitching together point solutions from multiple vendors. That trend plays directly to Palo Alto Networks’ portfolio strategy.
The company currently has roughly 2,280 platformized customers and expects to reach 4,000 by fiscal 2030, with that expansion serving as the primary driver toward a $20 billion NGS ARR target. That’s a long runway if the consolidation trend holds.
The risk is real though. For the full fiscal year 2026, Palo Alto raised its guidance and now expects revenue of $11.415 billion to $11.425 billion, up 24%, with non-GAAP diluted EPS of $3.77 to $3.79. Impressive numbers. But the stock is priced for continued perfection, and any misstep in CyberArk integration or margin execution could reset expectations quickly. Free cash flow surged 57% year-over-year to $910 million in Q3, which helps the bull case. The company remains confident in reaching a 40% adjusted free cash flow margin by fiscal 2028.
If You Think Oil Is Headed to $150… You Need to See This
Iran just shut down 20% of the world’s oil supply.
Prices are surging. And they may not stop anytime soon.
But while Wall Street panics, one analyst found an investment that could turn this crisis into a consistent income stream.
It’s been paying out for 137 years. Through every war. Every embargo. Every shock.
And it’s never been better positioned than right now.
There’s also the broader question of whether this is still an early-innings story or a mature one. The stock’s run this year suggests the market has noticed. Whether the next leg comes from earnings growth or multiple expansion is the real debate.
What isn’t debatable: the AI era created a security problem that didn’t exist before. And Palo Alto Networks is, right now, the most comprehensive platform built to solve it.
