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What this page is: Delvantic's full research page for Qualys, Inc. (QLYS) — AI-driven forensic equity research: mechanical valuation models (DCF, EPV, anchored-PE, scenario) plus three independent AI lenses (Quality / Value / Sentiment). Everything below is rendered server-side; you are not missing content that requires JavaScript. All scores are predictions and research opinions, not financial advice.
Our current read (analysis of 2026-10-07): Designation Watch · Gem Score +13 (−100…+100 Quality+Value blend) · Quality 80 · Value -31 · Sentiment -4 (timing only, not weighted) · Composite fair value $156.12 vs $141.71 at analysis
Page map (sections in order; each card carries a stable
reference-name attribute you can cite):
profile-header/price-overview— company profile, live quote, market capextended-analysis— the core: three AI lens reads with findings, scores, and the analyst memofuture-predictions— our forward price-band predictionsmarket-narrative/ai-findings/gpt-critique— narrative context, cross-model findings, and an adversarial critique of our own analysis (near the end of the document)- Members-only sections (render as login gates for anonymous readers):
price-history,income-trend,key-metrics,financials(statement tables),insider-trading. The analysis above is public; the raw data tables require a free account.
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any ticker resolves at delvantic.com/stock/TICKER ·
raw inputs are public-company filings and market data (via licensed data feeds);
every model, score, lens read, and prediction on this page is Delvantic's own analysis.
Qualys, Inc.
QLYS NASDAQQualys, Inc. is a cybersecurity and information technology solutions provider specializing in cloud-based security and compliance platforms for enterprises worldwide. Its core offering, the Qualys Enterprise TruRisk Platform, delivers integrated tools to identify and manage IT and operational technology assets, discover and prioritize vulnerabilities, quantify cyber risk exposure, and support remediation and verification across diverse environments. These environments include on-premises infrastructure, endpoints, servers, public and private clouds, containers, and mobile devices, enabling organizations to centralize visibility and control of their security posture. Qualys focuses on areas such as vulnerability management, continuous security monitoring, policy and regulatory compliance, web application security, patch management, and cloud and container security. Operating primarily as a software-as-a-service provider, Qualys serves customers across sectors including retail, technology, telecom, healthcare, and financial services. Founded in 1999 and headquartered in Foster City, California, Qualys plays a significant role in helping organizations operationalize cyber risk management through automated detection, measurement, communication, and remediation of security threats.
Price Overview
Price History (1 Year)
Revenue & Net Income Trend
| Period | Revenue | Net Income | Net Margin | YoY/QoQ |
|---|
Key Metrics
EPS (Diluted): 5.44
Total Equity: $561.15M
Shares: 36,453,000
Total Debt: $0.00
Cash: $250.26M
EBITDA: $236.44M
Total Debt: $0.00
Cash: $250.26M
Revenue: $669.13M
Revenue: $669.13M
Revenue: $669.13M
Total Equity: $561.15M
Tax Rate: 19.7%
Equity: $561.15M
Total Debt: $0.00
Cash: $250.26M
Current Liabilities: $467.34M
Long-Term Debt: $0.00
Total Debt: $0.00
Total Equity: $561.15M
Shares: 36,453,000
Shares: 36,453,000
CapEx: -$4.99M
Shares: 36,453,000
Stock Price: $141.71
Net Income: $198.32M
Industry Benchmarks
Income Statement (Annual)
Last updated: Jul 30, 2026 9:07pm (69d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $411.2M | $489.7M | $554.5M | $607.6M | $669.1M |
| Cost of Revenue | $89.4M | $102.8M | $107.5M | $111.5M | $114.8M |
| Gross Profit | $321.7M | $386.9M | $447.0M | $496.1M | $554.4M |
| Operating Expenses | $234.1M | $256.4M | $283.9M | $308.9M | $332.4M |
| Operating Income | $87.7M | $130.5M | $163.1M | $187.2M | $222.0M |
| Net Income | $71.0M | $108.0M | $151.6M | $173.7M | $198.3M |
| EBITDA | $123.6M | $165.2M | $190.1M | $205.7M | $236.4M |
| EPS | $1.82 | $2.81 | $4.11 | $4.72 | $5.49 |
| EPS (Diluted) | $1.77 | $2.74 | $4.03 | $4.65 | $5.44 |
Balance Sheet (Annual)
Last updated: Jul 30, 2026 7:36pm (69d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cash & Equivalents | $137.3M | $173.7M | $203.7M | $232.2M | $250.3M |
| Total Current Assets | $546.4M | $473.3M | $600.0M | $585.7M | $657.6M |
| Total Assets | $814.6M | $700.9M | $812.6M | $973.5M | $1.1B |
| Current Liabilities | $304.3M | $352.2M | $389.2M | $428.4M | $467.3M |
| Long-Term Debt | — | — | — | — | — |
| Total Liabilities | $377.8M | $411.8M | $444.4M | $496.4M | $533.9M |
| Total Equity | $436.7M | $289.1M | $368.2M | $477.1M | $561.2M |
| Retained Earnings | -$41.7M | -$221.4M | -$228.1M | -$189.2M | -$166.7M |
Cash Flow (Annual)
Last updated: Jul 30, 2026 9:07pm (69d ago)| Metric | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Operating Cash Flow | $200.6M | $198.9M | $244.6M | $244.1M | $309.4M |
| Capital Expenditure | -$24.4M | -$15.4M | -$8.8M | -$12.3M | -$5.0M |
| Free Cash Flow | $176.2M | $183.5M | $235.8M | $231.8M | $304.4M |
| Acquisitions (net) | — | — | — | — | — |
| Net Debt Issued / (Repaid) | — | — | — | — | — |
| Dividends Paid | — | — | — | — | — |
| Stock Buybacks | -$130.0M | -$317.3M | -$170.8M | -$139.9M | -$183.4M |
| Net Change in Cash | $63.2M | $37.9M | $29.9M | $27.0M | $18.1M |
Growth Trends (YoY %)
Last updated: Jul 30, 2026 9:07pm (69d ago)| Metric | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Revenue Growth | +19.1% | +13.2% | +9.6% | +10.1% |
| Gross Profit Growth | +20.3% | +15.5% | +11.0% | +11.7% |
| Operating Income Growth | +48.9% | +24.9% | +14.8% | +18.6% |
| Net Income Growth | +52.2% | +40.4% | +14.6% | +14.2% |
| EBITDA Growth | +33.7% | +15.1% | +8.2% | +14.9% |
Deep Analysis
Risk : Reward — upside vs downside from this company's own quarters
Not computed yetNarrative Economics
market-narrative step).
Claude Reading
Looking at the raw numbers first: revenue trajectory is Q1'25 $159.9M → Q2 $164.1M → Q3 $169.9M → Q4 $175.3M → Q1'26 $175.6M. That last print is the tell — sequential growth collapsed to +0.2% QoQ after four quarters of 2-4% sequentials. YoY growth in Q1'26 is 9.8% vs 10.1% prior quarter, decelerating. Net income margin is oscillating around 29-30% with no visible expansion in the last four quarters (28.8% most recent, same as Q2'25). Full-year 2025 revenue growth of 10.1% is a step down from 9.6%... actually it's flat with 2024's 9.6% — but the 2021→2022 print was 19% and 2022→2023 was 13%. So the deceleration curve is real and steady: 19% → 13% → 10% → 10% → guiding to ~high-single-digits if Q1'26 is a signal. FCF of $304M on a $5B market cap is a 6.1% FCF yield with zero debt and $250M cash — that's a legitimate quality anchor.
Where I break with the models: the synthesis calling this "+0.7% to fair value" and the narrative layer saying "fundamentals doing all the work" both dodge the deceleration question. If Q1'26 sequential is the new run-rate, 2026 revenue lands around $710-720M (6-7% growth), not the ~10% the trailing CAGR implies. Re-run a DCF at 6% growth fading to 4% instead of 10% fading to 4%, and fair value drops meaningfully — probably to the $115-125 range. The Market Forces model calling this a "value trap" is closer to the truth than the synthesis's benign read, but overstates the competitive apocalypse — Qualys still prints 33% operating margins and 57% ROIC, which is not the fingerprint of a company being dismantled by CRWD. It's the fingerprint of a company harvesting an installed base while growth quietly bleeds out. Both framings can't be right; the deceleration is real but the cash machine is intact.
The contrarian case that no model made: at 20x EV/EBITDA and 26x P/E for a business growing high-single-digits with no debt, $304M FCF, and 57% ROIC, Qualys is priced roughly in line with what a mature compounder should trade at — but the buyback optionality is underappreciated. With $250M cash, zero debt, $300M+ annual FCF and a $5B market cap, management could retire 6%+ of shares annually without leveraging. Combined with 8-10% revenue growth and stable margins, that's a 14-16% total shareholder yield algorithm even without multiple expansion. The insider selling is small-ticket (mostly under 2,000 shares, likely 10b5-1 or RSU-related) and shouldn't be over-read as a "warning." Also worth flagging: the data shows quarters through March 2026 and insider sales in July 2026 — this dataset is forward of typical reporting, so treat the deceleration read as still evolving.
GPT Reading
What stands out is how clean the business is financially and how unexciting it is becoming operationally. Qualys has compounded revenue from $411.2M in 2021 to $669.1M in 2025, a 13% CAGR, while net income rose from $71.0M to $198.3M, nearly tripling. Gross margin remains exceptional at 82.9%, operating margin reached 33.2%, and free cash flow was $304.4M in 2025 on just $5.0M of capex. That is an astonishing 45.5% FCF margin on revenue. The balance sheet is equally strong: no debt and $250.3M of cash. On quality alone, this is one of the better software businesses in the market. The issue is that the quarterly revenue line now looks like a company gliding into low-teens growth with little evidence of reacceleration: $148.7M, $153.9M, $159.2M, $159.9M, $164.1M, $169.9M, $175.3M, $175.6M. The latest quarter’s year-over-year growth was 9.8%, down from roughly 18% a year earlier, and sequential growth was just 0.2%. That flattening matters more than the headline profitability.
At $141.71 and a $4.99B market cap, the stock trades around 7.7x sales, 26.0x earnings, and 20.0x EV/EBITDA. For a business with 30% net margins, no leverage, and elite cash conversion, those multiples are not demanding in absolute terms. But they are not obviously cheap for a company whose recent quarterly run rate implies annualized revenue around $702M and whose growth has slowed from 20%+ territory to about 10%. If I normalize the business as a durable but maturing infrastructure software asset that can grow revenue 8-10% and earnings low double digits, then 26x trailing earnings is roughly fair, maybe a touch generous given the lack of visible operating leverage expansion lately. Net margin has been remarkably steady around 29-30%; that consistency is admirable, but it also means the easy margin story is probably already harvested. This does not look like a mispriced compounder hiding in plain sight; it looks like a very good company already valued like a very good company.
The strongest argument against that skepticism is that I may be over-penalizing a rare software model that throws off real cash instead of adjusted cash. Qualys generated $309.4M of operating cash flow against $198.3M of net income, and because capex is negligible, shareholders are effectively buying a business at roughly 16x free cash flow using the 2025 figure. That is much cheaper than the P/E or EV/revenue framing suggests. ROIC of 57.4% and ROE of 35.3% are elite, and unlike many cybersecurity names, this company does not need external capital or generous stock-based economics to sustain itself. A smart bull would say that comparing Qualys to faster growers misses the point: if growth stabilizes even at 10-12%, a debt-free cybersecurity platform with 83% gross margins and 45%+ FCF margins deserves to hold 7x revenue and perhaps rerate higher if peers stumble. On that view, the market is paying for certainty and underpaying for resilience.
I still weigh the deceleration more heavily because software multiples are set at the margin by forward growth, not by retrospective quality. The latest two quarters were $175.3M and $175.6M, which is the kind of plateau that makes investors question pipeline velocity and product breadth in a crowded cybersecurity market. If revenue settles into high-single-digit growth while margins stay flat, there is limited room for multiple expansion from 26x earnings; more likely, returns rely on EPS growth alone. Insider activity is also one-way selling, and while the transaction sizes are small enough not to be dispositive, they do nothing to counter the impression that this is a stable monetization story rather than an inflecting one. I can like the business and still conclude the stock is not materially mispriced.
What would change my mind is simple. If the next two quarters show growth reaccelerating back above 12% year over year with sequential revenue increases more like $5-6M than $0.3M, I would be willing to pay up because it would suggest the current plateau is timing noise, not maturity. Alternatively, if the shares fell into the $115-125 range without a deterioration in margins or cash flow, the valuation would better compensate for the slower growth profile; that would put the P/E closer to 21-23x and the FCF yield into much more compelling territory for a debt-free asset of this quality. Absent one of those two developments, this looks priced about right.
Grok Reading
Qualys prints cash with almost mechanical consistency. Annual revenue climbed from $411M in 2021 to $669M in 2025, a multi-year compound near 13%, but the trajectory has clearly settled: the last four quarters are growing 9.8–10.4% year-over-year and the just-reported $175.6M quarter was essentially flat sequentially versus $175.3M. What the top-line deceleration obscures is the quality of the earnings power underneath. Gross margin sits at 82.9%, operating margin at 33.2%, and net margin at 29.6%; free cash flow of $304.4M on that same $669M revenue base produces a 45.5% FCF margin and a conversion rate well above net income ($198M). Capex is a rounding error at $5M. With zero debt, $250M cash, ROIC of 57%, and ROE of 35%, this is a mature-earner balance sheet and cash-flow profile of the first order, not a growth story that failed.
At $141.71 and a $4.99B market cap the stock screens at 26x trailing earnings, 7.7x sales, and roughly 16.4x trailing FCF—an FCF yield near 6.1%. Those multiples are not demanding for a capital-light cybersecurity franchise that still delivers low-double-digit revenue growth and mid-teens earnings growth while expanding margins. The market is clearly applying the “mature SaaS, not a platform winner” discount versus high-growth peers; the pre-flight note’s observation of a roughly 50% multiple gap to names like CRWD is directionally correct. Yet the absolute cash yield and the absence of leverage mean the valuation already embeds a fair amount of skepticism about competitive durability and growth re-acceleration. Insider activity is uniformly sell-side but in small lots consistent with routine 10b5-1 programs rather than a signal of distress.
The strongest counter-argument is straightforward: growth is decelerating into a zone where 26x earnings stops being cheap. If the next several quarters settle at 7–8% revenue growth instead of 10%, and if vulnerability management continues to be absorbed into broader cloud-security platforms, the multiple has room to compress toward 18–20x and the stock can easily trade into the low $110s. Macro headwinds flagged in the secondary signals and the explicit “decelerating” revenue-confidence tag reinforce that risk. I weigh this less heavily than a pure growth investor would because the FCF engine and fortress balance sheet provide a valuation floor that most decelerating SaaS names lack; even at 8% growth the business would still throw off >$300M of cash with no refinancing risk. Still, the bear case is real and priced only partially, not fully, out of the stock.
I would reverse to a fair-or-overvalued stance if two consecutive quarters print revenue growth below 8% accompanied by any operating-margin compression below 30%, or if management signals a sustained step-down in net-new logo or upsell productivity. Conversely, a re-acceleration above 13–14% organic growth or clear evidence of share gains against platform competitors would justify a higher multiple and push me more aggressively bullish. Until then the setup is a high-quality compounder available at a cash-flow yield that compensates for the slower top line.
Qwen Reading local experiment · off-panel
The number that keeps pulling my eye back is the free cash flow. Qualys generated $304.4M in FCF on $669.1M of revenue in 2025, a 45.5% FCF margin, with capex of a trivial $5M and zero debt on the balance sheet. Against a $4.99B market cap, that's a 6.1% FCF yield on a company with 57% ROIC and a $250M cash pile. The 26x P/E the market is quoting looks expensive for a ~10% revenue grower, but it's a misleading denominator: the company's FCF runs 1.53x its net income, meaning the accounting earnings understate the cash-generating power by roughly a third. On an FCF basis, you're paying 16.4x, which for a zero-debt, 83% gross-margin software business with expanding operating leverage (operating margin up from 21.3% in 2021 to 33.2% in 2025) is not a stretch. The prior model's "mature earner" label at 0.83 confidence is directionally right but undersells what's happening on the P&L: net margin has climbed from 17.3% to 29.6% in four years, and the quarterly data through Q1 2026 shows no sign of that expansion stalling — margins held at 28.8-30.3% across the last four quarters even as revenue growth moderated.
What genuinely concerns me is the top-line trajectory. Revenue growth has compressed from 19.1% (2022) to 13.2% (2023) to 9.6% (2024) to 10.1% (2025), and the most recent quarter — Q1 2026 at $175.6M — was essentially flat quarter-over-quarter versus Q4 2025's $175.3M. That's a 0.2% QoQ print. Year-over-year it's still ~9.8%, which is fine, but the QoQ stagnation in a company that was growing 3-3.5% QoQ through the prior three quarters is the kind of inflection that, if it persists, would push the 26x multiple into genuinely expensive territory for a single-product vulnerability management vendor. The "decelerating" revenue confidence flag in the secondary signals is not a bug; it's the data. And the competitive set is not static: CrowdStrike and SentinelOne are both expanding into adjacent security surfaces, and Tenable remains a direct head-to-head competitor in vulnerability management. Qualys is not a platform company in the way CRWD is; it's a very well-run, very profitable niche player, and the market's 50% discount to those peers may be the correct pricing of that distinction rather than a mispricing to be arbitraged.
The insider sales — 5,082 shares across ten transactions in July 2026, roughly $720K at the current price — are noise. That's well under 0.02% of shares outstanding and almost certainly 10b5-1 plan executions. I give them zero weight in either direction. What I do weight heavily is the balance sheet: zero debt, $250M cash, 1.41 current ratio, and a capital structure that lets the company fund M&A or buybacks without dilution or interest expense. In a "macro headwinds" environment, that optionality has real value that a pure P/E multiple doesn't capture.
The strongest case against my read is straightforward: you're paying 7.7x sales and 20x EBITDA for a company growing revenue at 10% with a flat QoQ print in the latest quarter, in a category where the two largest competitors are bundling adjacent capabilities and where the TAM for pure vulnerability management is arguably capped. A 10% grower at 26x earnings is a 2.6x PEG, which is not cheap by any framework I've used. If the QoQ flatness in Q1 2026 is the start of a growth plateau rather than a seasonal blip, the multiple has to compress, and the 6.1% FCF yield becomes the only thing keeping the stock from a 15-20% drawdown. I weigh this risk seriously, but I offset it with the margin expansion still in progress and the fact that at 16.4x FCF with zero debt, the downside is more cushioned than the P/E multiple implies.
What would flip me: a Q2 2026 print showing revenue growth reaccelerating above 12% YoY with NRR holding above 110% would confirm the Q1 flatness was seasonal and push me firmly undervalued. Conversely, if Q2 shows revenue growth below 8% or any sign of NRR slipping below 100%, the "mature earner" label becomes a death sentence for the multiple and I'd be at conviction 4 overvalued. A major platform announcement — AI-driven continuous compliance, for instance, or a meaningful expansion into cloud security posture management — would reframe the TAM and justify the 26x. Absent any of those, this is a quality compounder at a fair price, not a mispriced gem.
Big-3 Panel — where each AI stands
Advanced Analysis Forensic deep-dive · separate lenses
Qualys presents as a high-quality mature software earner. Revenue has compounded from $411M (2021) to $669M (2025), a ~13% CAGR, while gross margin has widened from 78.2% to 82.8% and operating margin has expanded meaningfully from 21.3% to 33.2%. Net income has nearly tripled ($71M to $198M) and FCF hit $304M in the latest year — a ~45% FCF margin, which is elite for infrastructure software. OCF/NI of 1.85x, accruals of -11.5% of assets, Beneish M of -2.89, and Altman Z of 6.88 all corroborate that reported earnings are real cash, not accounting constructs. The balance sheet carries $250M net cash with zero debt drag, so survival math is a non-issue and the business is entirely self-funding. Capital allocation is shareholder-friendly: diluted shares have declined at -2.4% CAGR (40.1M to 36.5M) with buybacks running 273% of SBC, meaning per-share value is being concentrated rather than eroded despite SBC at 11.5% of revenue. Insider activity is entirely sales (41 sells, 0 buys, $7.5M), which is a mild governance yellow flag but the dollar amounts per transaction are modest and consistent with routine executive liquidity rather than a rush for the exits.
Verify before trusting this (5)
- Customer concentration and net revenue retention disclosed in 10-K/investor materials
- Competitive positioning vs Tenable, Rapid7, and platform vendors (CrowdStrike, Wiz) in vulnerability/exposure management
- Whether insider sales are under 10b5-1 plans or discretionary
- Segment mix and growth of newer products (CyberSecurity Asset Management, VMDR with TruRisk) vs legacy VM
- SBC grant trajectory and dilution offset sustainability at current buyback pace
The e2e synthesis lands at $140.76 composite and $142.66 signal-adjusted, essentially on top of the $141.71 price. The DCF stretches to $180 and the EPV floor sits at $61 — a wide spread that reflects the classic tension for a slowing compounder: pay for continued mid-teens FCF growth and you get ~25% upside; pay only for steady-state earnings and the stock is worth less than half of today. The composite splits the difference and calls it fair, which matches what the market is doing. High earnings quality means no haircut is warranted, but it also means the print is trustworthy — this is not a hidden-cash-flow situation the market has missed.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- Next quarter's ARR/revenue growth trajectory — is it stabilizing in low double digits or decaying toward high single digits?
- FCF margin sustainability given rising R&D and cloud-native competitive pressure
- Buyback pace vs SBC dilution — is the net share count reduction accelerating or fading?
- Any large-customer churn or federal budget exposure that would validate the bear TAM view
Sentiment pressure on QLYS is genuinely muted. The market regime is neutral, VIX is middling, and QLYS carries a low 0.61 beta in a defensive-ish security software niche - the macro tape barely lands on this name either way. The active narrative is a steady-compounder with minimal intensity and low cult coefficient, and price sits within 1% of DCF fair value, meaning there is no story premium to unwind and no story discount to close. The market is not telling a loud tale about QLYS right now, which itself is the read. The mild crosswinds: a -7.3% drop on July 21 into the August 4 print signals pre-earnings jitters and profit-taking, so there is a short-term event overhang. Offsetting that, the July 29 TotalAI/AI-governance announcement plugs QLYS into the one narrative the market still pays for (AI security), even if intensity is low. Cyber peers Rapid7/Tenable have been out of favor as a cohort, a soft sector headwind, but QLYS's own cash generation and momentum (9.9% CAGR, positive trajectory) blunt it. Net: forces roughly cancel. No dominant push, slight event risk into earnings, faint AI-security tailwind, mild sector drag.
Verify before trusting this (4)
- August 4 earnings reaction - guide tone and any billings/NRR deceleration would shift narrative from durable-compounder to fading
- Whether sell-side revises targets post-print (analyst tone is currently quiet - a downgrade wave would matter more than the number itself)
- Rapid7 and Tenable prints and commentary as sector tells for vuln-management demand
- Traction of TotalAI messaging - does the AI-security hook actually stick or fade back into background
This lens hasn't been run for this ticker yet.
When we made this prediction on Jul 31, 2026, QLYS was $141.71. We expect it to be $158.00 by Jan 2027, and we consider it great value under $115.00. This is an early model (v0.6.0) — the direction is more reliable than the exact price. Made Jul 31, 2026.
Blue is our prediction, starting the day we made it. Grey is a slower route to the same place — the same destination, taking longer. Black is the actual price, so you can see how we are doing.
Post-Report Due Diligence NOTES
Evidence for a closer look, not a verdict — no score or designation on this page has been changed by it. Items marked material are ones where a conclusion above moves to the other side of the price.