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F5, Inc. (FFIV)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 24, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the F5 Networks' fourth quarter and fiscal 2018 financial results conference call. At this time all parties will be able to listen-only until the question-and-answer portion. Also today's conference is being recorded if anyone has any objections please disconnect at this time. I'd now like to turn the call over to Ms. Suzanne DuLong. You may proceed.

Suzanne DuLong - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Hello, and welcome. I'm Suzanne DuLong, F5's Vice President of Investor Relations. François Locoh-Donou, F5's President and CEO; and Frank Pelzer, F5's Executive Vice President and CFO, will be making prepared remarks on today's call. Other members of the F5 executive team are also on hand to answer questions during the Q&A portion of the call. A copy of today's press release is available on our website at www.F5.com where an archived version of today's call also will be available through January 23, 2019. The telephonic replay of today's discussion will be available through midnight Pacific Time on October 25 and can be accessed by dialing 866-397-1432 or 203-369-0539. For additional information or follow-up questions, please reach out to me directly, at sdulong@F5.com. Our discussion today will contain forward-looking statements which includes words such as believe, anticipate, expect and target. These forward-looking statements involve uncertainties and risks that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by these statements. Factors that may affect our results are summarized in the press release announcing our financial results and described in detail in our SEC filings. Please note that F5 has no duty to update any information presented in this call. With that, I'll turn the call over to François. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Thank you, Suzanne, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Overall, we executed and overachieved our 2018 plan and continued to align to our Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 goals, driving growth and strong operational results across the business during the fourth quarter. We're seeing significant traction for the long-term vision we outlined in our March 2018 Analyst and Investor Day and furthering momentum in software and security sales. Customers continue to view our solutions as mission-critical in hybrid…

Francis J. Pelzer - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Thank you, François. As François noted, we drove strong financial and operating results in Q4 and for the year. Fourth quarter revenue of $563 million, was up approximately 5% year-over-year, above the midpoint of our guided range of $555 million to $565 million. GAAP EPS of $2.18 per share was well above our guidance of $1.77 to $1.80 per share. Non-GAAP EPS of $2.90 per share was also well above our guidance of $2.61 to $2.64 per share. The beats for GAAP and non-GAAP EPS were driven largely by strength in revenue, expense discipline and lower-than-expected effective tax rates. Q4 product revenue of $256 million was up 3% year-over-year and accounted for approximately 46% of total revenue. Software was approximately 17% of product revenue and grew more than 19% year-over-year. Systems revenue made up approximately 83% of product revenue and grew 18 basis points year-over-year. Services revenue of $306 million grew 6% year-over-year and represented approximately 54% of total revenue. On a regional basis in Q4, Americas grew 1% year-over-year and represented 55% of total revenue. EMEA revenue grew 8% year-over-year and accounted for 25% of overall revenue. APAC revenue grew 11% year-over-year and accounted for 15% of total revenue, while Japan grew 15% year-over-year and accounted for 5% of total revenue. Sales to enterprise customers represented 66% of total sales during the quarter. Service providers accounted for 18% and government sales were 16%, including 7% from U.S. federal. In Q4, we had four greater than 10% distributors, Ingram Micro which accounted for 18% of total revenue, Tech Data which accounted for 11%, and Westcon and Arrow each at 10%. Let's now turn to operating results. GAAP gross margin in Q4 was 83.4%. Non-GAAP gross margin was 84.7%. Both GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins were slightly better than our expectations,…

Suzanne DuLong - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Hello and welcome. I'm Suzanne DuLong, F5's Vice President. Madeline, could you open the call for Q&A please?

Operator

Operator

Thank you, we'll now begin the question-answer session. And our first question comes from the line of Rod Hall of Goldman Sachs. You may proceed. Rod Hall - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for the question. I just have a couple. I wanted to I guess first ask about software sales growth and I needed healthy sequential growth there, but it's kind of decelerating a little bit and not sure what we should be reading into that. We only have a couple quarters here but we calculate year-on-year growth at 19% down from 24% last quarter so just trying to figure out what do you guys think the right growth trajectory for software is, is the first question. And then the second thing that I wanted to ask about is just tariffs and really, production. Where are you producing product and how much of it is in China? And if there is any in China, what your plans maybe to move out of China would be? So if you could address that, it would be great. Thank you. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Hi, Rod. Thanks for the questions. I'll take your question on software and Frank will take your question on manufacturing in China. So the first thing, Rod, on software, I'll tell you, no, you should not read anything into the 19%. I am very excited about where we're at on software generally and where we're going into 2019, but the context for the Q4 19% is first of all our software as a percentage of overall revenue is still relatively small, so as I shared last quarter it can be lumpy from quarter-to-quarter but the general trends are going to be what we said. We specifically, for this quarter, we had a…

Francis J. Pelzer - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Sure. So Rod, in relation to your question on tariffs, unrelated to any sort of trade war escalation, we actually had a plan to move our production manufacturing from China to Mexico which we completed that transfer in FY 2018 and so we're all done and complete with that. We've actually taken a look at where the tariffs are today, and the impact that would have on our FY 2019 operating plan. It's approximately $1 million of additional cost based off the tariffs, but then we've already baked into our operating plan and the guidance we've given you. Rod Hall - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Can you just follow that one up because this may be instructed for other companies as well. You guys have already made that move. Did you find it – I mean we didn't really see it in the numbers so it seems to have gone pretty smoothly. Did you find it had any impact on your inventories or anything else in the business or did you find it pretty easy to do? I guess I'm just curious about that. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Look, Rod we started this move last year, in the early part of last year. I think the team just – kudos to our, both our supply chain and manufacturing team, they executed very well on the move and no we did not have any impact on inventories. Frankly we made the move while staying with the same contract manufacturer and so it was the same CM that was supporting us in China, that is supporting us in Mexico and I think that made things smoother and so generally there's been no impact and we have – continue to have very high-quality of the outputs that are coming both out of the China manufacturing environment and the Mexico manufacturing environment. Rod Hall - Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC: Appreciate that. Thanks, François. Thanks for the answers on software too. It was very helpful. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Thank you, Rod.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James Fish of Piper Jaffray. Your line is now open. James E. Fish - Piper Jaffray & Co.: Hey guys. Good quarter and thanks for the questions here. I would say, I would like to start off on sort of the billings here and the deferred revenue. Billings were down about 1.5% year-over-year, it was actually down sequentially in a seasonally strong quarter. The implication would be that it was on the maintenance side, given the upside on the product here. I know, François, you talked about the strength of renewals and attach, but I guess were you having to discount more on the maintenance? And then just along with that, as we're thinking about 2019, what's the impact of adopting ASC-606 with guidance here?

Francis J. Pelzer - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Sure. So Jim, it's Frank. I'm going to take both of those. Let me start first with the deferred question. On the deferred revenue, we actually have a very simple explanation on that. We saw at the end of the quarter, a few customers with some larger renewals that just were trying to manage their own cash and so you're going to see that reverse itself in Q1. And then on the ASC-606, we have a very, very small deminimus impact, frankly, from the change to – ASC-605 to ASC-606 that we've discussed in our financial statements for the past couple of years and so the guidance that we've given reflects the ASC-606 impact but it is very minimal, and we see the same attach rates and do not see any unusual discounting in the maintenance. James E. Fish - Piper Jaffray & Co.: Okay. Great. And then just one more for me. Any sense to how pricing changes or any more color you can give? I know we talked about it a little bit at the Analyst Day but any color between the appliance version, compared to the BIG-IP Cloud version that's coming? I get that gross margins improve as it is software but are we talking about a 20% to 30% price reduction? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: No. So James, let me make sure we're aligned here. So generally, you'll see that our average deal size hasn't changed. It's still in the 120k range and it has been for the last several quarters. What you're talking about is a sort of unit price of a Virtual Edition, a classic Virtual Edition of F5 versus the new Cloud Edition. The new Cloud Edition on a per unit basis is a fraction of a price of the Virtual Edition, but remember that a Virtual Edition typically support anywhere between five and 10 applications and a Cloud Edition is bought on a per-application basis. And so what we're seeing in the initial deals that we've done on Cloud Edition is that the number of apps that are supported is significant and so overall, there's no impact on the deal size. It's about the same deal size as what it's been on Virtual Edition. It's just a different consumption model that allows more flexibility for the user to manage their infrastructure on a per-app basis. James E. Fish - Piper Jaffray & Co.: Great. Thanks, guys. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Thank you, James.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Sami Badri of Credit Suisse. Your line is now open. Sami Badri - Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC: Hi. Thank you for the question. I wanted to get a better idea on the multi-cloud deployments. I just wanted to get an understanding of some of your customers and their behavior. When they decide to come back to you for more product and they decided to move into a multi-cloud architecture, on a net-net basis, are they actually buying more physical ADCs or more ADCs in general to deploy a multi-cloud architecture or is it about the same number of units when they conduct that kind of deployment? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: All right. So Sami, let's just say that in general, I would say there are a couple of scenarios in those deployments. We have a lot of customers that are buying a traditional hardware motion and are adding to that Virtual Editions on-prem. That's kind of our classic deployment model. What we're seeing is more and more, these customers also want to deploy their infrastructure in multiple public clouds and their desire is to manage all these instances of ADCs as part of a single portfolio and ideally through a single pane of glass. Our ELAs enable them to do that and give them the flexibility to consume as many licenses as they want, of software and whether they put these licenses on-prem or in the public cloud. The initial – and I'm talking about software purely right now, the initial view we're seeing from the consumption of these ELAs is very strong, i.e., they signed up for a minimum amount of consumption and we're seeing in the early months of consumption that they're well on track…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tim Long from BMO capital. Your line is now open.

Timothy Patrick Long - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Thank you. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Tim, are you still there?

Operator

Operator

One moment please.

Timothy Patrick Long - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Hello?

Operator

Operator

Tim, your line is now open.

Timothy Patrick Long - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Okay. Can you hear me? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: We can, Tim. Sorry.

Timothy Patrick Long - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Sorry about that. I guess they had me muted but anyway back to the software line. François, you talked about Cloud Edition and it sounds like it's off to a pretty good start. The sequential jump in software, it's kind of the first quarter of Cloud Edition, so can you give us a sense as to how much of the contribution was from just better virtual sales in security and did that Cloud Edition start to at least make an impact on that software line? And then related to that, we've yet to see kind of the last few quarters with software moving a little higher particularly this quarter, haven't seen much in the product gross margin. Is that something that you would expect to start to move a little bit higher as that ramps as a percentage of sales? Thanks. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Tim, thank you. So on the first one, we said at the time we released our Cloud Edition that we did not expect material revenue contribution from Cloud Edition in FY 2018, and that is the case. I would say the contributions to Q4 was very minimal, because there is – the time it takes to get through – go through the sales cycle, the proof-of-concepts, et cetera, and then a lot of the initial deals are initial sales, which will expand over time. So minimal contribution in 2018, but we do expect – given the traction that we've seen so far, we do expect meaningful contribution in our fiscal 2019. And in terms of the gross margin, yes, the answer is no different than what we've said at AIM that over time, we do expect as the software contribution grows to have some impact on our – positive impact on our gross margin. If you'll recall at the end of our Horizon 2, which is 2022, we expect that our software to be about 40% of total product revenues and I think by then we would see a meaningful impact. That being said, our margins are roughly 85% right now and so the room for expansion isn't significant. What we said is that in Horizon 2, our margins would be in the 85% to 87% range. So...

Timothy Patrick Long - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Okay. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: ...it's incremental but small in the big scheme of things.

Francis J. Pelzer - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

We're tracking, Tim, to the Horizon 1 and Horizon 2 guidance in that regard.

Timothy Patrick Long - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Okay. And then just a quick follow-up on the Cloud Edition. Could you just talk a little bit about are you seeing kind of new customers added to F5 by these new offerings and do you expect that with the next software offerings in the first half of next year? And then I'm done. Thank you. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Yes. Thank you, Tim. So I would say we continue – as a company, we continue to win new logos every quarter and that's not really driven just by Cloud Edition. We're winning new use cases in security, in public cloud, and even I mentioned last quarter a number of new customers coming in for hardware. So new customer, new mobile position is going to continue. What we're seeing with Cloud Edition is within our existing customers, we are unlocking new footprint that we didn't have before. There are a couple of use cases that we could not address before. One is when customers want to really deploy on a per-app basis we couldn't touch those types of deployments. We now can. Two is the ability to scale rapidly the infrastructure under an application that sort of flexibility is a new use case for us and it's expanding our footprint and touching new applications, specifically applications that are in test and development. We didn't have the opportunity before to intercept these applications at their inception and we now can. And the third aspect of that is we are also now, for the first time, giving application developers direct visibility into their virtual instance of F5 and they're seeing analytics and the performance of their applications and so we're building a relationship with app developers that we didn't have before and that's driving new deployments into new applications. So I would characterize it right now as largely addressing the long tail of applications you've heard us talk about, inside of existing customers, more than focusing on going and looking out for new customers. I do think though we will address new customer segments as we introduce in the first half of 2019 F5-as-a-Service and our Cloud-Native App Services platform.

Timothy Patrick Long - BMO Capital Markets

United States

Okay. Thank you. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Thanks Tim.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jason Ader from William Blair. Your line is now open. Jason N. Ader - William Blair & Co. LLC: Yeah. Thank you. Frank, could you talk about linearity in the quarter and just give a sense of how that's similar or different than what you've seen in the past in Q4? And then, François, on the systems side, it looks like that's recovered a bit, flat year-over-year which I think is an improvement of what you've seen over the last several quarters. Can you talk about what's driving that?

Francis J. Pelzer - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Sure. So Jason, thanks for your question. I'll start and turn it over to François. The linearity one is fairly straightforward. It was almost identical to what we seen in the past Q4s and so we were, if anything, saw even a little bit better in month one and month one, but we're talking a percentage point, nothing dramatic. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: And Jason, in terms of the systems, if you'll recall in March, we said that we expected the overall market for hardware ADCs to decline at mid-single-digits going forward, but we also expected that we would do better than that. That we expected to be in the low single-digit decline to flat going forward and I think what we've seen over the last three quarters is we've done exactly that. This quarter, we were flat. We still expect quarterly fluctuations on the hardware number, but overall we're executing for deployment and I think we're getting share and there are a couple of reasons for that. One driver of the stability is security use cases driving spend in ADC for us, but not all ADC vendors have access to it, because they don't have the security capabilities things like SSL orchestration or Web Application Firewall or Access Manager consolidated on ADC. That's driving stability for us in ADC. There are new use cases such as flips in the federal sector or IoT that are driving demand for our hardware products, there are geographies where there's significant demand for new hardware, specifically in emerging markets, places like China and Latin America, and so all of these factors are driving stability in the hardware business, along the lines of what we had said would happen at the investor meeting. Jason N. Ader - William Blair & Co. LLC: Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Kurtz of KeyBanc Capital Markets your line is now open.

Alex Kurtz - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Yeah, thanks. Just a couple quick questions here. I just want to follow-up on the new customer question from earlier around, Cloud Edition. I think there's a broader view of a lot of traditional on-premise software companies that they won't be able to capture the Cloud-Native Application or the company that maybe just starts fresh in the cloud and I think there's been some talk of companies like yourself that are building software in the cloud platforms, find the customer, then maybe there is even an opportunity on-prem, down the road, so could you just double-click on that a little bit more? I know you briefly touched on it but I just wanted to have you seen cases like that or it's just too soon to know? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Well, Alex, if that's what you're referring to, we have seen cases and I wouldn't say we're seeing them by the hundreds, but we have seen cases of companies that were born in the cloud. And essentially never bought or owned a piece of infrastructure. And as they grow and start to worry a bit more about their profit, they start worrying about how they control their cost and we have seen some of them, almost graduate from this born-in-the-cloud environment and come back and run co-location capabilities and actually come back to us for hardware ADCs. So we have seen those cases. I don't know if this was a trend that's going to be much stronger in the future than it is today but we are seeing that. But as it relates to acquiring customers directly in the cloud for companies that were historically on-prem like us, we think it's an opportunity that largely for us is on top today because you're right we don't play in that market today, but that's why we're quite excited about F5-as-a-Service coming in the first half of 2019, because that's going to allow us to really intercept these born-in-the-cloud applications in a native cloud consumption experience for those who are building their app in the public cloud's platform environment. And so we're pretty excited about our opportunity to play there and intercept these applications. And then down the road as these applications grow, if they too have multi-cloud requirements, it will make it that much easier for us to contribute to their requirements beyond the single public cloud. And so F5-as-a-Service essentially will be our leading entry into the relationship which we will expand from.

Alex Kurtz - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

That's very helpful. And just back on the current environment with tariffs, higher interest rates. Very strong calendar 2018 for IT spend, I think there's a lot of concern heading into 2019 that things may not be sustainable. I think when you talk to your larger enterprise customers, what's been sort of the initial feedback on how they feel about spend over, say, maybe the next six months or so? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: I would describe it, Alex, as generally the spending environment, you're right, has been healthy in 2018. We continue to think overall that it's healthy, specifically for the enterprise market. In North America, in particular, we've seen some softness in the Tier 1 service providers in the last quarter, and we're cautious about the upcoming quarters with Tier 1 service providers. There hasn't been a sign of significant change in behavior from our enterprise customers, but like everybody else, we are a little cautious going into 2019 given what we've seen over the last three, four weeks.

Alex Kurtz - KeyBanc Capital Markets, Inc.

Management

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Samik Chatterjee of JPMorgan. Your line is now open.

Samik X. Chatterjee - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Hi, François. Hi, Frank. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to start off with the growth that you're seeing in the cloud. You mentioned you're seeing strong growth there. Can you remind us within – amongst kind of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 cloud providers who do you have existing partnerships with and how should we think about kind of have you seen any interest from additional cloud providers and how should we think of that as an enabler of stronger growth in software? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Yeah. Samik, so we have relationship with the major public cloud providers, so AWS obviously is a partner for us, Microsoft Azure is a partner, we have integration going into Google Cloud, and international cloud providers as well. And the relationships aren't just technical integration, certainly in terms of the top 2 or 3, they're significant co-marketing activity between us and them helps customers leverage their clouds and migrate applications over to the cloud. And so in the software, we don't break out, by the way, as you know, Samik, we don't break out our public cloud revenues, but we have said before and I can reiterate this that within software, software in the public cloud is the fastest-growing part of our software business, and that has been the case throughout 2018.

Samik X. Chatterjee - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

All right, all right. And then if I can just maybe this is more for Frank, but if I kind of look at your guidance, I think you mentioned that coming off the 1Q base you expect sequential improvement in the revenues through 2019. That seems like more visibility than you've had typically. And correct me if I'm wrong on that, and seems like more confidence about the pace of improvement there. Is there something more specific that's contributing to that? Is it more about kind of sequential illustration (00:51:12) in the software revenues, anything else that's contributing to that higher visibility even on the quarterly cadence of revenues?

Francis J. Pelzer - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Samik, honestly, I think it's fairly consistent with what we've said in the past in terms of our sequential improvement. It's the cadence in which our quarters generally fall. I think we're obviously happy about the traction that we've seen in software and continue to see in the software and visibility that we've got that actually – that's got nice predictability for us. And so that gives a base in and of itself, but in terms of the specific qualitative guidance for the broader FY 2019, that's fairly consistent to where we've been in the past.

Samik X. Chatterjee - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Management

Got it, got it. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tal Liani of Bank of America. Your line is now open.

Tal Liani - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Hi, guys. I'd like to ask a question on security. First, what's the level of security revenues right now? I know you didn't disclose security as a percentage of sales revenues in the past. Do you have any kind of disclosure? And if not, what needs to happen for you or what level of revenues need to happen or need to materialize for you to disclose security? Second is when you look at 2019, what's the roadmap for addressable markets for security? Meaning, what are you going after and if you can give us also snapshot of the current offerings of security, where do you see success and where do you still need to work on – what do you still need to work on within the security portfolio? And then I have a follow-up question. Thanks. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Hey, Tal. Thank you. That's three question in one. We'll address them in that order, Tal. So in terms of disclosure of security revenues, as you know, we don't break that out. I would say that the percentage of our ADC sales that are driven by security use cases or that include a component of security in the overall bundle has steadily increased, and today it's a meaningful percentage of our ADC sales. We don't break it out. It's not just a question around the size of the revenue, but it has to do with, in a number of cases, it's very subjective to determine whether a sale was driven by security or ADC or both. And so that's the reason that we don't break it out today and there's not a clear trigger of when we will. In terms of your – I'll take the third part of your question then the second one. Where we…

Tal Liani - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

So what are the other things you need to do with your business in order to address the opportunities? Meaning, launching product is great. It's one aspect. How about dedicated sales team need or you don't need dedicated sales engineers. Marketing around security branding, different branding or is it part of the ADC branding? So can you discuss the outer activities outside of product innovation? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Yeah, Tal. It's a great question. So there are other activities but we have been doing them already for several years. So if you look at our sales organization, in a lot of cases, a lot of our accounting, specifically major accounts, are already facing the CECL community and the SecOps buyer. So it's not like our sales team isn't capable today of selling security solutions because they've been selling them in a consolidated ADC fashion. And so they are very conversant in these solutions, but they are addressing new use cases with the SecOps buyer. In terms of marketing and thought leadership, most of our customers see us today as a security company, we have a significant muscle in security and threat research of an organization called F5 Labs that publishes research on security issues on a regular basis and that is very well read within our customer and partner community. So there are tons of things that we don't necessarily talk about because they've been in the go-to-market motion of F5 now for already several years.

Tal Liani - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Management

Great. Thank you. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Thank you, Tal.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Simon Leopold of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Kindly check if you are on mute, Mr. Simon Leopold.

Suzanne DuLong - F5 Networks, Inc.

Management

Madeline, why don't we move on to the next one and maybe go back to Simon?

Operator

Operator

Okay. That will be noted. So our next question comes from the line of Paul Silverstein of Cowen & Company. Your line is now open. Paul Silverstein - Cowen & Co. LLC: Thank you. And I'll ask you the questions that Simon probably should have asked. François, first a clarification, I heard your response on the end demand question with respect to – I think, I heard you say that U.S. service provider weakened in the last three to four weeks. My question on that is within enterprise, what are you seeing from an end demand perspective? And if we look regionally, I think you've now posted high-single-digit growth in the EMEA region for a fifth straight quarter. The Americas were flat and they've been flat to slow single-digit in the region for the last several quarters. Asia Pac was 11% following 8% growth in the preceding quarter and Japan was 11% following 4% in Q3. Some of that may be easy comps in the latter two, but my question to you is looking at the regions, what accounts for the differences? Is that you would think from an economic perspective with the U.S. having perked up and EMEA much less so, it's only counterintuitive but is this a reflection of ongoing service provider weakness? What is that regional information? What should it be telling us in terms of the strength and weaknesses of your business? And then I have a follow-up question. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Hi, Paul. I'll clarify first. I didn't say service provider had weakened in the last three to four weeks, I said we were seeing in the last quarter or so softness in Tier 1s in North America. And as you know, service provider business can be lumpy, but if you look…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Our last question comes from the line of Simon Leopold of Raymond James. Your line is now open. Simon M. Leopold - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Thanks. Can you guys hear me okay this time? François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: Yeah, Simon. How are you? Simon M. Leopold - Raymond James & Associates, Inc.: Great. Yes. Doing well. Paul did ask great questions, but fortunately not the ones I was going to ask. So I wanted to go back to the cloud, guys. Given that AWS and Azure offered load balancing, yet you talk about them as partners. Could you maybe compare and contrast how you might be competing with them at times and using them as a way to go-to-market? Where does it make sense for an enterprise to engage the solution offered by an AWS or an Azure versus engaging F5 for the functionality? Thank you. François Locoh-Donou - F5 Networks, Inc.: All right. Great, Simon. So let's start. So today, there are applications we don't support, there are typically applications that are born-in-the-cloud either in test or development or even production and that, I would say, have relatively simple load balancing requirements. Those applications are largely addressed by the native load balances offered by the large public cloud providers. Now, so that's where they play and today, we largely play in enterprises that have either on-prem requirements or multi-cloud deployment requirements. So if somebody wants to deploy an application or a portfolio of applications in multiple public clouds, typically, we're going to have a play there because we are cloud agnostic. We will, in that scenario, partner with the public cloud providers to help the customers migrate their applications to these environments and when F5 is supporting an application on-prem and it migrates,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you and that concludes today's conference. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.