James Benson
Analyst · Michael Turits with Raymond James
Thank you, Tom. As we discussed in our last earnings call, there are 3 discrete items that will affect our 2013 reported results and growth rates: the ADS divestiture, which occurred in late January; the depreciation methodology change for our network assets; and a lower Q1 tax rate from the retroactive reinstatement of the 2012 federal R&D tax credit. As I walk you through the details of our very strong Q1 financial results, where appropriate, I will also provide you with Akamai's results for Q1 adjusted for these 3 items so you can better understand the operational performance in the quarter. Revenue came in above our guidance range at $368 million, up 15% year-over-year, with solid growth across the business, but most notably within our media delivery solutions. ADS accounted for less than $3 million of revenue in the first quarter. Adjusting for the impact of ADS and $3 million of currency headwinds, revenue grew 19% on a year-over-year basis. As a reminder, at last month's Investor Summit, we discussed 3 new solution categories: media delivery, performance and security; and service and support. We will no longer discuss revenue by industry vertical during the call, but we will continue to provide a breakout of revenue for each vertical on the Investor Relations section of our website. To ease in the transition of our new reporting, we plan to continue providing this vertical reporting breakout through the end of the 2013 fiscal year. Turning now to our new solution categories. Media delivery revenue was $181 million in the quarter, up 17% over Q1 of last year and up 4% sequentially, and was the primary driver of our revenue overachievement in the quarter. We saw strong traffic and revenue growth, notably near the end of the quarter. This result more than offset the impact of winding down some contracts with a few media accounts as we discussed in our call last January. Revenue from our performance and security solutions was $157 million in the quarter, also up 17% over Q1 of last year. As expected, revenue declined 4% sequentially due to normal holiday seasonality. Within our performance and security category, we continue to see strong demand for both our web experience and security solutions. We saw signings for our new Aqua Ion Solution released in Q4 of last year across all our key geographies. As we have discussed on our last couple of calls, our goal is to meet the market demand and reaccelerate growth in this key solution category by continuing to increase our go-to-market investments. Lastly, our service and support revenue was $27 million in the quarter, up 35% over Q1 of last year and up 3% sequentially. We continue to see strong traction in service attachment rates to our core media, performance and security offerings. Switching now to our geographies. Sales outside North America represented 30% of total revenue in Q1, up 1 point from the prior quarter and up 2 points from the prior year. Q1 international revenue grew 22% year-over-year and 1% sequentially. The stronger dollar had a negative impact on revenue of about $3 million on both a sequential and a year-over-year basis. Excluding the impact of currency movements, revenue growth outside North America grew 26% year-over-year and 3% sequentially, with particularly strong growth in our Asia Pacific geography, offsetting macroeconomic headwinds in some of our European markets. Revenue from North America grew 12% year-over-year in the quarter and declined 4% sequentially. Excluding the ADS divestiture, revenue from North America was up 16% year-over-year and flat sequentially. Resellers represented 20% of total revenue in Q1. Moving on to costs. We were extremely pleased with our continued execution on managing cost of goods sold, which resulted in our fourth consecutive quarter of expanding gross margins. Our cash gross margin was 76%, up 1 point from the prior quarter and up 3 points from the same period last year. This result was also 1 point better than the guidance we provided for the quarter, driven by our revenue overachievement and by cost efficiencies in the network. GAAP gross margin, which includes both depreciation and stock-based compensation, was 67% for the quarter, up 4 points sequentially and up 6 points from the same period last year. GAAP gross margin included a favorable impact of roughly 4 points due to the depreciation methodology change we discussed on our last earnings call. GAAP operating expenses were $146 million in the quarter. Cash operating expenses for the quarter were $115 million, up $3 million from Q4, up 26% on a year-over-year basis and slightly below our guidance range, as some planned hiring activity shifted into the second quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the first quarter was $166 million. That's up 16% from the same period last year and up 4% from Q4 levels. Our adjusted EBITDA margin came in at 45%, down 1 point from Q4 levels and flat with Q1 of last year. This was above our guidance range for the quarter as we drove better-than-expected revenue performance and network cost management. Our gross margin expansion more than offset the continued investment in operating expenses. For the first quarter, total depreciation and amortization was $42 million. These charges include $31 million of network-related depreciation, $5 million of G&A depreciation and $6 million of amortization of intangible assets. Net interest income for the first quarter was $1.6 million, flat with Q4 levels. Moving on to earnings. GAAP net income for the quarter was $71 million or $0.39 per diluted share. As a reminder, we introduced non-GAAP net income and EPS using the new tax effective methodology at our Investor Summit in March. Details of that methodology change and a recent update to the 2012 non-GAAP tax quarterization can be found on the Investor Relations section of our website. This update has no impact on full year 2012 non-GAAP net income or EPS. Our non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was $93 million or $0.51 per diluted share, $0.04 above the high end of our guidance range, driven by strong operational execution. This result was up $0.01 from Q4 levels and up $0.15 from Q1 of last year. Our Q1 GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates were 30%, both benefiting from the retroactive reinstatement of the 2012 R&D tax credit. For the quarter, taxes included in our GAAP earnings were $31 million, and taxes included in our non-GAAP earnings were $40 million. $0.08 of our Q1 EPS results can be attributed to the 2012 retroactive reinstatement of the federal R&D tax credit and the depreciation methodology change discussed previously, both of which were reflected in our Q1 guidance. Our weighted average diluted share count for the first quarter was 181.6 million shares. Now let me review some balance sheet items. Cash generation continue to be strong. Cash from operations for the first quarter was $103 million. At the end of Q1, we had over $1 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities on the balance sheet. Capital expenditures in Q1, excluding equity compensation, were $63 million and in line with our guidance range. This number includes both investments in the network, capitalized software development, as well as facilities and IT-related expenditures. During the quarter, we spent $40 million on share repurchases, buying back 1.1 million shares at an average price of just under $37. Finally, days sales outstanding for the quarter was 57 days. With a strong start to the year and continued progress on planned investments in strategic areas, we are optimistic about our long-term growth potential. For Q2, we are expecting another strong quarter, with revenue in the range of $368 million to $378 million. This range represents 15% to 18% year-over-year growth when you exclude the ADS divestment from our 2012 results. At the end -- at the high end of our guidance range, this growth rate is consistent with our Q1 growth rates, even after the impact of the Q1 media contract wind downs and the wraparound effect of the Cotendo acquisition on reported growth rates. Included in this guidance is an expectation that foreign exchange will have a negative impact of approximately $2 million compared to Q1 and a $4 million impact compared to Q2 of last year. We expect cash gross margins to remain stable at about 76% and GAAP gross margins to come in at 66%, down 1 point from Q1 levels due to depreciation increasing as we continue to build out the network. In Q2, we plan to continue to increase our investment levels in the business. On the operating expense side, we expect to grow cash OpEx by $9 million to $11 million on a sequential basis as we further invest in go-to-market and R&D initiatives that we believe will yield important long-term benefits. With these increased expenditures, we expect an EBITDA margin range of 42% to 43% for the quarter, and that it will remain in the low 40s for the remainder of the year. At this level of revenue, we expect to see non-GAAP EPS in the range of $0.44 to $0.46 for the quarter. This EPS guidance includes taxes of $40 million to $43 million based on an estimated Q2 non-GAAP tax rate of 34%. We expect non-GAAP tax rates for Q3 and Q4 to be consistent with Q2 at roughly 34% and a full year tax rate projection of approximately 33%. This guidance also reflects a fully diluted share count of roughly 180 million shares. On CapEx, we expect to spend $75 million to $80 million in the quarter, excluding equity compensation. This is higher than what we've been spending in recent quarters, primarily from the timing of facility-related build-outs to support the planned headcount growth in the business and partly due to our desire to stay ahead of the traffic growth we expect to see on the network. For the full year, we are expecting to be slightly above the high end of our long-term model for CapEx as a percent of revenue due to more significant facility-related investments that we anticipate will continue through the year. Overall, we are very 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 Tom. Tom?