What Happened?

A number of stocks fell in the afternoon session after Anthropic unveiled Claude Code Security, a tool designed to autonomously scan codebases for vulnerabilities and suggest targeted software patches. 

Historically, cybersecurity value was tied to human-intensive monitoring and proprietary software moats. However, Claude Code's ability to autonomously write, test, and refactor production-grade code, as well as its documented role in the first large-scale, AI-orchestrated cyberattack shifted market sentiment. The market's reaction was further driven by fear that AI is shifting from a supportive "copilot" to a direct substitute for high-margin, specialized security software. 

As a result, investors are increasingly skeptical of the long-term pricing power of legacy firms if "good enough" security remediation can be embedded directly into the development workflow by an AI agent.

The stock market overreacts to news, and big price drops can present good opportunities to buy high-quality stocks.

Among others, the following stocks were impacted:

• Vulnerability Management company Rapid7 (NASDAQ: RPD) fell 4.2%. Is now the time to buy Rapid7? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Vulnerability Management company Tenable (NASDAQ: TENB) fell 5.9%. Is now the time to buy Tenable? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Endpoint Security company SentinelOne (NYSE: S) fell 4.5%. Is now the time to buy SentinelOne? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Network Security company Zscaler (NASDAQ: ZS) fell 3.8%. Is now the time to buy Zscaler? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.
• Vulnerability Management company Qualys (NASDAQ: QLYS) fell 8%. Is now the time to buy Qualys? Access our full analysis report here, it’s free.

Zooming In On Qualys (QLYS)

Qualys’s shares are not very volatile and have only had 5 moves greater than 5% over the last year. In that context, today’s move indicates the market considers this news meaningful, although it might not be something that would fundamentally change its perception of the business.

The previous big move we wrote about was 14 days ago when the stock dropped 13.4% on the news that the company issued a weak financial forecast for the full year 2026, signaling slowing growth. 

The company's adjusted earnings per share (EPS) guidance for the upcoming year, with a midpoint of $7.31, missed analyst estimates. This was compounded by revenue guidance that pointed to a slowdown. For the upcoming first quarter, management guided for an 8.5% year-on-year sales increase, a deceleration from the 10.1% growth reported in the most recent quarter. Analysts also expect revenue growth to slow over the next twelve months. The combination of a weaker-than-expected earnings outlook and decelerating revenue growth appeared to disappoint investors.

Qualys is down 29.6% since the beginning of the year, and at $92.18 per share, it is trading 40.1% below its 52-week high of $153.80 from November 2025. Investors who bought $1,000 worth of Qualys’s shares 5 years ago would now be looking at an investment worth $924.03.

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