TLDR
- Zscaler (ZS) rose as much as 6.99% on May 1, lifted by strong earnings and raised forecasts from SaaS peers including Atlassian and Twilio.
- Citizens cut its price target on ZS from $290 to $210 but kept an Outperform rating.
- ZS is trading at $139.58, down 36.7% year-to-date and 58.5% below its 52-week high of $336.27.
- A KeyBanc CIO survey flagged rising cyber budgets tied to AI adoption as a positive catalyst for cybersecurity platforms.
- The stock has made 18 moves greater than 5% over the past year, reflecting ongoing volatility.
Zscaler (ZS) climbed as much as 6.99% on May 1, riding a wave of positive sentiment that swept through the software sector after several key peers delivered strong results.
The stock was trading at $139.58 heading into the session — a price that sits 58.5% below its 52-week high of $336.27, hit back in November 2025.
The immediate catalyst wasn’t Zscaler-specific. Atlassian lifted its annual forecast, sending its own stock higher and pulling up names like Salesforce and ServiceNow in the process.
Twilio added to the mood after reporting first-quarter revenue that beat estimates and raised its own outlook, with its CEO pointing to AI as a key driver.
That kind of peer momentum tends to lift the whole sector, and ZS was no exception.
Citizens Cuts Target But Stays Bullish
Not everything on May 1 was positive for Zscaler. Citizens lowered its price target on the stock to $210 from $290.
The cut reflected concerns that frontier AI could intensify cyber threats and force a reset in how cybersecurity valuations are priced across the sector.
Despite that, Citizens kept its Outperform rating — a signal the firm still sees upside from current levels, even as the valuation picture gets more complicated.
Demand for zero-trust and SASE solutions, which sit at the core of Zscaler’s business, remains solid according to the firm.
AI and Cyber Budgets in Focus
About ten days before the May 1 move, ZS gained 4.1% after a KeyBanc survey of CIOs pointed to growing cybersecurity budgets linked to AI adoption.
The survey highlighted Anthropic’s Mythos AI model as a factor likely to drive increased enterprise spending on security over the next year.
The thinking is straightforward: more AI means more attack surface, and companies are expected to spend more to protect it.
That tailwind has helped offset some of the pressure Zscaler has faced in 2026.
ZS has been one of the harder-hit names in the cybersecurity space this year, down 36.7% since January 1.
The stock has had 18 moves greater than 5% in the past year, which speaks to just how reactive it has been to both sector news and broader market swings.
An investor who put $1,000 into Zscaler five years ago would be sitting on roughly $772.93 today.
The stock’s average daily trading volume stands at just over 3 million, and its current market cap is $21.01 billion.
Citizens’ revised price target of $210 still implies meaningful upside from the $139.58 level where ZS was trading on May 1.
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