Cyber defender SentinelOne’s chief executive Tomer Weingarten, in an interview with CNBC, refuted multiple reports that the company was huddling with startup Wiz over a possible acquisition deal.
Indeed, SentinelOne announced on Thursday, August 31, 2023 that it has terminated a six-month long resale partnership with Wiz, claiming that the deal did not add to its cloud security business. Officials stressed that it was not terminating a relationship with Wiz but rather ending a resale agreement.
“We terminated our re-sell agreement with Wiz as a result of their continued lack of execution against their commitments,” a SentinelOne spokesperson said. “The Wiz partnership has not been material to our business."
Both Bloomberg and Reuters had previously reported acquisition talks between SentinelOne and Wiz.
SentinelOne and Wiz?
On a fiscal Q2 earnings call on August 31, 2023, Weingarten said: “On the Wiz thing, if you kind of bundle it on the acquisition rumors and all that stuff, I mean, again, I'm not going to comment on that, but it's all pure speculation on their part and far from fact. So it's, again, a head scratcher to me."
In the CNBC interview, Weingarten said that there is an “unbelievable amount of rumors and speculation” in the market. “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.”
Weingarten specifically pointed to strength in the company’s managed security service provider ecosystem on the earnings call. “Our large partners continue to expand their business with SentinelOne through additional licenses and modules. In a multimillion dollar deal from the quarter, we quadrupled our business with a fast-growing MSSP partner compared to just a year ago…We’re still in the early innings of a massive business expansion opportunity with our MSSP partners,” Weingarten said.
The company’s shares rose more than 10% after it reported stronger than expected fiscal second quarter results. Revenue grew 46% year over year, down from the 70% in the prior quarter. On the earnings call, SentinelOne projected $156 million in sales for fiscal Q3, above the consensus of $154.2 million.
