F5(US:FFIV)2025-10-27 21:30Financial Data and Key Metrics Changes - F5 reported exceptional fiscal year 2025 results, exceeding $3 billion in revenue and $1 billion in operating profit, with revenue growth of 10% and earnings per share growth of 18% [4] - Gross margins improved to 83.6%, up 80 basis points from FY24, and operating margins increased to 35.2%, up 160 basis points from FY24 [4] - Free cash flow reached a record $906 million, up 19% compared to FY24, resulting in a free cash flow margin of 29% [13] Business Line Data and Key Metrics Changes - Q4 revenue grew 8% to $810 million, with global services revenue at $396 million (up 2% year-over-year) and product revenue at $414 million (up 16% year-over-year) [10] - Systems revenue totaled $186 million, up 42% year-over-year, driven by tech refresh and data center modernization [10] - Software revenue was $229 million, slightly up against a strong Q4 of FY24, with perpetual license software up 25% year-over-year [11] Market Data and Key Metrics Changes - Revenue from the Americas grew 7% year-over-year, representing 57% of total revenue, while EMEA and APAC grew 7% and 19%, representing 26% and 17% of revenue, respectively [11] - Enterprise customers accounted for 73% of Q4 product bookings, with government customers at 19% and service providers at 8% [11] Company Strategy and Development Direction - F5's immediate focus is on incident response and enhancing security posture following a security incident, with significant investments in cybersecurity planned for the future [5][7] - The company aims to leverage hybrid multi-cloud adoption and AI-driven infrastructure demand as key growth drivers, with a commitment to innovation in its Application Delivery and Security Platform [21][22] - F5 is transitioning legacy offerings to F5 Distributed Cloud Services, expecting to complete this transition in the first half of FY26 [15] Management's Comments on Operating Environment and Future Outlook - Management anticipates some near-term disruption to sales cycles due to the security incident, with guidance for FY26 revenue growth in the range of 0 to 4% [18] - The company expects to see a return to growth in revenue from SaaS and managed services, driven by the completion of legacy transitions and ongoing demand for hybrid multi-cloud solutions [17] - Management expressed confidence in the long-term growth potential, citing strong demand drivers and a robust pipeline [17] Other Important Information - F5's total security revenue grew 6% to approximately $1.2 billion, representing 39% of total revenue [16] - The company has seen significant growth in AI-related use cases, securing wins with over 30 customers for AI data delivery, runtime security, and factory load balancing [26][27] Q&A Session Summary Question: What form of conservatism has been put into estimates? - Management indicated that customer conservatism may manifest as delays in purchasing decisions and resource allocation towards upgrading environments due to the security incident [36][38] Question: How much of fiscal 2025 growth was due to the product upgrade cycle? - Approximately two-thirds of the systems business growth in FY2025 was attributed to tech refresh, with the remainder from data center capacity expansion [40] Question: How is the potential impact from the security breach sized? - Management took a granular approach to profile revenue streams, identifying which could be more impacted and which would be resilient, with a focus on recurring revenue streams [44][46] Question: What percentage of revenue comes from F5 BIG-IP? - While specific revenue breakdowns are not provided, F5 BIG-IP is noted as the highest revenue product [54] Question: What are the implications of the government shutdown on U.S. Federal business? - Guidance assumes some level of disruption in the federal segment, particularly in Q1, due to project delays related to the government shutdown [78]