SentinelOne, a cybersecurity company that went public in 2021 and has yet to see its stock price exceed highs from that year, is not for sale, Tomer Weingarten, its co-founder and CEO, told CNBC in an interview Thursday.
The comments follow a Reuters report earlier this month, citing unnamed sources, that said the company was looking at a possible sale. Bloomberg reported security startup Wiz was considering an acquisition of SentinelOne, pointing to comments from a Wiz spokesperson.
SentinelOne shares rose more than 10% in extended trading Thursday after the company reported stronger-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results. Revenue grew 46% year over year, down from 70% in the fiscal first quarter. The company called for $156 million in fiscal third-quarter revenue, above the Refinitiv consensus of $154.2 million.
“Obviously, there is an unbelievable amount of rumors and speculation in the market,” Weingarten said. “I think what you can easily see from our numbers is that we’re a high-growth company, a high-performance company. We’re solely focused on our individual path. We have demonstrated unbelievable margin improvement alongside incredible growth, so all in all right now, for us it’s just doing the best that we can to drive our innovation, protect our customers.”
The best way to do that is to remain a publicly traded independent company, Weingarten said.
In June, SentinelOne announced it was cutting 100 employees, which is about 5% of its workforce.
The company sells several products, including endpoint security software, putting it in competition with CrowdStrike and VMware. It also faces pressure from Microsoft.
“We’re taking share with every quarter that passes,” Weingarten said. “Incumbents are obviously the weakest in that entire picture.”
SentinelOne still has a partnership with Wiz but it did end a reseller agreement with the startup, Weingarten said.
Excluding the after-hours move, SentinelOne shares have risen about 14% so far this year, trailing the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF, which is up about 22% during the same period. CrowdStrike, one of the exchange-traded fund’s holdings, is up about 55% this year.