CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:CRWD)

The financial data reveals significant shifts in key metrics across the analyzed periods. The net operating profit after taxes (NOPAT) demonstrates a robust upward trend from 2020 to 2024, increasing from approximately $139 million to nearly $691 million. However, a notable decline is observed in 2025, with NOPAT falling to about $516 million. This pattern suggests strong operational improvements through 2024, followed by a setback or adjustment in the most recent period.

Invested capital exhibits a substantial growth trajectory throughout the period, scaling from around $669 million in 2020 to over $7.6 billion by 2025. This indicates aggressive capital deployment or expansion activities, with more than an elevenfold increase over six years, reflecting considerable resource commitment to business growth or asset acquisition.

The cost of capital remains relatively stable, fluctuating narrowly between approximately 15.9% and 16.2% over the six years. Such stability indicates consistent market or internal assessments of risk and capital structure, with no major changes in financing costs.

Despite the increasing NOPAT and invested capital, economic profit reveals a concerning downward trend. Starting at around $31 million in 2020, economic profit turns negative from 2021 onward and deteriorates further each year, reaching a negative value exceeding $710 million by 2025. This suggests that the returns generated have not sufficiently covered the cost of capital on the invested funds, signaling value destruction or inefficient capital utilization during this timeframe.

The divergence between the strong NOPAT growth and the sharply worsening economic profit underscores a critical issue: while operational earnings have improved, the substantial increase in invested capital combined with cost of capital charges results in a net economic loss. This pattern indicates that expansion efforts may not yet be yielding adequate returns to justify the investments made, raising concerns about overall financial efficiency and long-term value creation.

Net Operating Profit After Taxes (NOPAT)

Strong growth from 2020 to 2024, followed by a decline in 2025.

Invested Capital

Rapid and substantial increase over the entire period, signaling major capital investment activities.

Cost of Capital

Relatively stable around 16%, indicating consistent financing costs.

Economic Profit

Transition from positive in 2020 to increasingly negative values thereafter, with significant economic losses by 2025.

Net Income (Loss) Attributable to CrowdStrike

The net income figures demonstrate significant variability over the periods. Starting with a net loss of approximately $141.8 million in the year ending January 2020, the loss decreased to about $92.6 million in January 2021. However, this was followed by an increased loss to roughly $234.8 million in January 2022. Thereafter, the loss narrowed to $183.2 million in 2023. Notably, in 2024, there was a reversal to a positive net income of $89.3 million, indicating a substantial recovery. In the following year, 2025, the figure returned to a loss, though much smaller than previous years, at approximately $19.3 million.

Net Operating Profit After Taxes (NOPAT)

The NOPAT values exhibit a consistent and strong upward trend over the years observed. Starting at $139.1 million in 2020, there was a steep increase to $246.0 million in 2021. The upward momentum continued in 2022 with $389.9 million, then sharply increased to $625.9 million in 2023. In 2024, NOPAT further grew to $690.7 million before experiencing a decline to $516.4 million in 2025. Despite the decrease in the final year, the overall trend across the period indicates strong growth in operational profitability after taxes.

Summary of Trends and Insights

The financial data reveals a divergence between net income and NOPAT trends. While net income shows volatility with alternating losses and positive results, NOPAT consistently increased until 2024 before slightly declining in 2025. This suggests that operational efficiency and profitability improvements were achieved, but other factors such as non-operating expenses, taxes, or one-time items might have adversely impacted the net income figures. The significant positive net income in 2024 stands out as an anomaly compared to other years with net losses. The decreasing net loss in 2025 alongside a decline in NOPAT might indicate emerging challenges or increased costs affecting overall profitability despite strong operational earnings.

Provision for Income Taxes

The provision for income taxes shows significant fluctuation over the observed periods. From 2020 to 2021, there is a noticeable increase from approximately 2 million to nearly 4.8 million US dollars. This upward trend continues sharply into 2022, reaching over 72 million US dollars. However, in 2023, the provision declines substantially to around 22 million US dollars before increasing again in the subsequent years, rising to about 32 million and then further to approximately 71 million US dollars by 2025. This pattern indicates periods of considerable variability in tax provisioning, suggesting changes in taxable income or adjustments in tax strategy during these years.

Cash Operating Taxes

Cash operating taxes follow a somewhat similar but less volatile pattern compared to the provision for income taxes. Starting at close to 2.8 million US dollars in 2020, the cash taxes increase to around 6 million US dollars in 2021. There is a significant spike in 2022 reaching over 91 million US dollars, which is a marked increase from previous years. Following this peak, the cash tax payments decrease sharply to approximately 15.8 million US dollars in 2023, then decline further to just over 10 million in 2024, before increasing again to about 45.9 million US dollars in 2025. The fluctuations in cash taxes suggest variability in actual tax payments that may reflect changes in cash flows or timing differences relative to the provision for income taxes.

Comparison and Insights

Both provision for income taxes and cash operating taxes exhibit significant fluctuations, with peaks around 2022, followed by declines and then increases toward 2025. The provision generally exceeds the cash taxes in some years, particularly noticeable in 2022, indicating potential deferred tax liabilities or adjustments in tax accounting treatments. The volatile nature of both metrics implies an underlying variability in taxable income or strategic tax management, possibly linked to changes in operating performance or tax regulations during the analyzed periods.

The financial data indicates significant changes in the capital structure and equity position over the observed periods.

Total Reported Debt & Leases

The reported debt and leases showed a substantial increase from approximately $50.7 million in early 2020 to around $779.0 million in early 2021. From 2021 through 2025, the value of reported debt and leases remained relatively stable, fluctuating slightly around the $780 million mark. This suggests that after a sharp rise in debt, the company maintained a consistent level of liabilities related to debt and leases.

Total Stockholders’ Equity

Stockholders’ equity consistently increased throughout the period, starting from approximately $742.1 million at the beginning of 2020 and rising to nearly $3.28 billion by January 2025. The growth trend appears to accelerate over time, with a remarkable increase especially after 2022, indicating a significant strengthening of the company's equity base and potentially reflecting retained earnings growth, capital raises, or other equity improvements.

Invested Capital

Invested capital experienced a dramatic increase, jumping from about $669.5 million in 2020 to roughly $2.52 billion in 2021. This upward trend continued steadily, reaching over $7.61 billion by early 2025. The data reflects substantial investments and growth in company assets financed by both debt and equity over these years, underscoring rapid expansion or capital deployment activities.

Overall, the data reveals a period of rapid growth in invested capital accompanied by a stable level of debt and a strong expansion of stockholders’ equity. The company's capital structure appears to have shifted towards greater equity financing while maintaining a steady debt position. This trend suggests increased financial strength and capacity to support ongoing operations and growth initiatives.

The analysis of the financial data reveals significant trends and fluctuations over the observed periods. The economic profit exhibits considerable volatility, with a notable initial positive figure followed by a sequence of negative values. This progression indicates challenges in generating consistent economic profit, culminating in an increasingly larger deficit by the latest period.

Economic Profit

The economic profit started at a positive 30,852 thousand US dollars but shifted markedly into negative territory from the following year onward. The negative trend intensified over time, reaching a substantial loss of 710,317 thousand US dollars by the final period. This pattern suggests deteriorating profitability from an economic value-added perspective.

Invested Capital

Despite the negative economic profit results, invested capital demonstrated consistent and significant growth throughout the periods. Starting from 669,497 thousand US dollars, invested capital expanded steadily to 7,614,215 thousand US dollars by the end of the data set. This increasing investment indicates ongoing capital deployment, likely aimed at supporting future growth or expansion.

Economic Spread Ratio

The economic spread ratio, which measures the differential between return on invested capital and cost of capital, displays a declining trajectory. Beginning with a positive 4.61%, it quickly fell into negative values the next period and continued to worsen, reaching -9.33% at the end. The negative spread ratios across most periods reflect that the returns generated from the invested capital did not cover the cost of that capital, which aligns with the trend of negative economic profit.

Overall, the data shows that while the company continued to increase its invested capital aggressively, it struggled to achieve returns sufficient to generate positive economic profits or achieve a favorable economic spread. This may point to operational inefficiencies, market challenges, or investment decisions that did not yield the expected returns over the analyzed time frame. The persistent negative economic spread and increasing economic losses indicate a need to reassess strategic initiatives to improve capital efficiency and profitability.

The financial data reveals several notable trends across the analyzed periods. There is a clear and consistent increase in adjusted revenue, illustrating strong top-line growth. This growth accelerates considerably from 2020 through 2025, with revenue rising from approximately 762 million USD to over 4.6 billion USD.

Despite this robust revenue expansion, economic profit figures show a contrasting trajectory. Beginning with positive economic profit in 2020, the company experiences increasingly negative economic profit over subsequent years, reaching a substantial deficit by 2025. This indicates that while the company is generating more revenue, it is not translating into economic profit, suggesting increasing costs or inefficiencies relative to the economic returns.

Economic profit margin mirrors these trends, starting from a positive margin in 2020, followed by negative margins throughout the rest of the periods. The margin declines steadily, becoming significantly negative by 2025. This reinforces the observation that economic profitability is deteriorating even as revenue grows.

Adjusted Revenue

Increases sharply year-over-year from 762 million USD in 2020 to approximately 4.63 billion USD in 2025, indicating strong revenue growth and market expansion.

Economic Profit

Transitions from a positive 30.9 million USD in 2020 to negative figures thereafter, culminating in a large loss of 710 million USD by 2025, reflecting operational or capital cost challenges impacting profitability.

Economic Profit Margin

Declines from a positive 4.05% in 2020 to a negative 15.35% in 2025, signaling diminishing efficiency in converting revenues to profit and potentially indicating rising expenses outpacing revenue growth.