These Analysts Spent Time With Palo Alto, And Just Issued An Alert

In a report published Monday, Deutsche Bank analysts maintained a Buy rating on

, with a price target of $170, after attending a "bullish" investor session hosted by the company. Palo Alto's shares have declined since early March. Given the company's more than 50% growth rate, margin expansion and checks indicating robust overall security spending, the analysts remain positive about the future performance of Palo Alto's stock. In the report, Deutsche Bank notes, ''One large distributor for which CSCO is their #1 security vendor argued that PANW is now their #2 and would likely surpass CSCO in a few years. We heard that PANW is very good at growing once they get into an account and one customer argued that they should extend at the endpoint into a broader solution that can replace (not just complement) incumbent AV products." Checks further indicated that

was taking appliance sales from the channel partners, while

was taking services and support sales. The analysts added, however, that checks with several channel partners showed no evidence of this. "On CHKP, every partner flagged good growth and one check said they're getting more creative and doing long-term deals," the analysts wrote. "The consensus was that PANW's WildFire service has narrowed the gap with FEYE but that FEYE remains the breach detection leader. On CSCO, checks indicated that they're lagging on functionality and that they're suite isn't integrated, but that they are relevant for customers using other CSCO products," the report added.