CrowdStrike (CRWD) will release its first earnings report since the massive software update triggered global IT outages in July. Citi US software equity research co-head Fatima Boolani joins Catalysts to discuss what investors can expect from the report as the company seeks to rebuild investor confidence following the outage.

"This management team... has the unenviable task of assuaging a lot of nerves about the extent of new business impact, expansionary impact within their installed base in the near term, but then also re-helping rebuild investor confidence that this truly was a black swan error and it is not going to impair the medium-term prospects and trajectory of the business. So a lot of threading of the needle here is what we're going to be expecting from this management team," Boolani tells Yahoo Finance.

She notes that investors will be specifically looking at guidance as they look to rebuild their confidence in the company. "There is absolutely an appetite for this company to frankly just throw the book at guidance, just every possible parameter or permutation that they can throw into guidance and frankly, de-risk the numbers is exactly what investors are looking for," she explains.

As the AI race heats up, Boolani argues, "It's no surprise that within cybersecurity, there is actually a dearth of talent. You can't hire qualified information security folks fast enough because there aren't enough qualified individuals. I think some market estimates have about a three- to four-million-person headcount deficit. So that is a tremendous place of value that generative AI can deliver very strong value proposition. And CrowdStrike is absolutely in the crosshairs of that in a very positive way."

She expects generative AI, in this sense, to be a longer-term initiative for the company. However, she believes that it most likely won't be the focus in CrowdStrike's upcoming earnings report: "It's going to have more focus around what are they doing to keep customers happy, maintaining gross churn, doing right by customers with discounts, and you know, having the correct and appropriate customer satisfaction posture."

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This post was written by Melanie Riehl