James Benson
Analyst · Raymond James
Thank you, Paul. As I walk you through our very strong Q1 financial results in detail, I'll provide you with the consolidated numbers that include roughly one month of the Cotendo acquisition, which closed in early March. And where appropriate, I'll also provide you with Akamai's results from Q1 excluding Cotendo. Revenue came in above our guidance range at $319 million, up 16% year-over-year, with solid growth across the business. Cotendo accounted for less than $2 million in revenue for the quarter. Excluding the impact of Cotendo, revenue was up 50% year-over-year and down just 2% sequentially. In Media & Entertainment, we saw strong traffic growth year-over-year, building off of the acceleration we saw in Q4 and exceeding our expectations. As a result, Media & Entertainment revenue grew by 14% over Q1 of last year and was down 2% sequentially. Commerce was our fastest growing vertical in Q1, increasing 21% over the first quarter of last year. As expected, revenue declined 7% sequentially due to normal seasonality. Revenue from our enterprise vertical grew 17% year-over-year and 3% sequentially, as applications continue to shift to the cloud and we saw increased demand for optimization, performance and security solutions. We also saw revenue growth accelerate again in the high-tech vertical, which grew 15% year-over-year and 3% sequentially. This acceleration was due to the timing of several large software download releases and continued traction among Software-as-a-Service, or SaaS customers, who continue to migrate to our cloud infrastructure solutions. Finally, Public Sector revenue grew 9% year-over-year and 7% sequentially. Across all of our verticals, cloud infrastructure solutions made up 57% of our total revenue. During the first quarter, international sales represented 28% of total revenue, consistent with the prior quarter. International revenue grew 10% year-over-year and was flat sequentially in Q1. Foreign exchange had a negative impact on revenue of about $1 million on both a year-over-year and a sequential basis. Excluding the impact of currency, international revenue grew 11% year-over-year and 1% sequentially. All geographies outside of North America, with the exception of Japan, saw a very strong growth. Revenue from North America grew 18% year-over-year and was down 2% sequentially, driven by normal seasonality. Resellers represented 21% of total revenue, up one point from the prior quarter. Our cash gross margin for the quarter was 79%, flat with the prior quarter and down one point from the same period last year. GAAP gross margin, which includes both depreciation and stock-based compensation, was 68% for the quarter, consistent with both Q4 and the first quarter of last year. This is a little bit better than our GAAP gross margin guidance for the quarter, primarily due to lower depreciation expense from network buildout that moved from Q1 to Q2. GAAP operating expenses were $145 million in the first quarter. These GAAP numbers include depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, stock-based compensation and acquisition-related charges. Excluding these charges, our operating expenses for the quarter were $111 million, up $2 million from Q4, slightly above our guidance range due exclusively to expenses associated with our acquisitions of Cotendo and Blaze. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $143 million. That's up 10% from the same period last year and down 3% from Q4 levels. Our adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 45%, down 2 points from the same period last year and 1 point from the prior quarter. For the first quarter, total depreciation and amortization was $46 million. These charges include $36 million of network-related depreciation, $5 million of G&A depreciation and $5 million of amortization of intangible assets. Net interest income for the quarter was about $2 million. Moving on to earnings. GAAP net income for the quarter was $43 million or $0.24 of earnings per diluted share. As a reminder, our GAAP net income includes several noncash or nonrecurring items, including $23 million of stock-based compensation, including amortization of capitalized equity-based compensation, $5 million from amortization of acquired intangible assets and $4 million of acquisition-related costs. We are including GAAP taxes in our normalized earnings and the GAAP tax charge was $30 million based on an estimated full year GAAP tax rate of about 41%. This tax rate is slightly higher for the year than the 38% to 39% we estimated at the start of the year due primarily to the tax impact associated with the Cotendo and Blaze acquisitions. Based on this full year tax rate, our normalized net income for the first quarter was $75 million. That translates to $0.41 per diluted share on a normalized basis, up $0.03 from Q1 of last year and down $0.04 from Q4 levels. This was above our guidance range coming into the quarter, as the increased revenue growth and higher margins drove a strong bottom line result. Our weighted average diluted share count for the first quarter was 182 million shares. Now let me review some balance sheet items. Cash generation continued to be strong. Cash from operations for the quarter was $93 million. At the end of Q1, we had just under $1 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities on the balance sheet, net of recent acquisitions. Capital expenditures, excluding equity compensation, were $43 million, below our forecast at the beginning of the year due to the timing of investments that have shifted out of the first quarter. This number includes both investments in the network, as well as capitalized software development. During the quarter, we spent about $8 million in share repurchases, buying back 223,000 shares at an average price of $35.45. As Paul mentioned, our board has authorized a $150 million extension of our share repurchase program beginning in May and extending over the following 12 months. As with our existing program, we intend to fund it out of our strong cash generation with a primary goal of offsetting dilution from ongoing equity grants. Finally, days sales outstanding for the quarter was 61 days. Q1 was a great start to the year. We saw an acceleration of traffic volumes for the second straight quarter in Media, and as a result, we've seen solid revenue growth in our Media business. We also continued to record healthy signings for our cloud infrastructure solutions as customers have moved more of their business transactions online and adopted cloud computing models. Looking forward, we see significant opportunities across all of our verticals, and we are making important investments to capture these opportunities. Our recent acquisitions are great examples of how we've used the strength of our balance sheet to invest for future growth. We expect these acquisitions to be roughly neutral to our earnings over the next 4 quarters, but near term, our expenses will slightly exceed revenues from the acquired companies until we absorb and scale these acquisitions within Akamai. We will be integrating these acquisitions into our core businesses, and going forward, we will not be reporting them separately. Looking forward to Q2, we expect revenue in the range of $322 million to $330 million. This guidance includes a full quarter of Cotendo revenue. As a reminder, Cotendo's revenue run rate exiting Q1 was a little under $2 million per month. The midpoint of our revenue guidance translates into 18% year-over-year revenue growth, accelerating again from Q1 levels. At current spot rates, foreign exchange should be roughly neutral on a sequential basis and a $4 million negative impact on a year-to-year basis. We expect gross margins to come down about 1 to 2 points sequentially, supporting the increase in traffic levels and given that some planned investments in the network moved into Q2. We expect Q2 operating expenses to increase by about $11 million from the prior quarter, as we absorb the Cotendo and Blaze acquisitions and as we continue to invest organically in go-to-market and R&D staffing. As a result, we expect adjusted EBITDA margins to be about 41% to 42%. This is below our long-term model due to investments we're making now that we expect will drive significant growth going forward. At this level of revenue, we expect to see fully taxed normalized EPS of $0.36 to $0.38 for the quarter. At the midpoint of this range, this represents 7% year-over-year growth. This EPS guidance includes a tax charge of $22 million to $27 million based on a full year GAAP tax rate in the range of 40% to 41% and also reflects a fully diluted share count of 184 million shares. On CapEx, we expect to spend around $65 million to $70 million in the quarter, excluding equity compensation. This reflects our desire to stay ahead of the growth that we expect on the network and the impact of some investments that moved from Q1 to Q2. For the full year, we expect CapEx will be at the high end of our model of 13% to 16% of revenue. Overall, we are extremely pleased with the performance of the business in Q1 and the momentum we have coming into Q2. Now let me turn the call back over to Paul. Paul?