Andrew Del Matto
Analyst · JPMorgan. Sterling, please go ahead
Thank you, Ken. In all respect, Fortinet delivered a fantastic first quarter. We exceeded our guidance and showed strength across all key operating metrics, further validating that our investment strategy is working. As Ken mentioned, we achieved our strongest year-over-year billings growth in more than five years as a public company. I'm pleased to share that during the first quarter, Fortinet's billings increased 36% year-over-year to $254 million, significantly exceeding our guided range of $226 million to $230 million. Total revenue of $230 million was up 26% year-over-year, also well above the high end of our guided range of $200 million to $205 million. And our deferred revenue balance increased to $600 million up 33% year-over-year. From a profitability perspective, non-GAAP operating margin was 9% also above our guidance. We were able to deliver margin upside primarily as a result of topline over performance as well as a positive impact from foreign exchange. Non-GAAP EPS of $0.08 was also above the high end of our guidance of approximately $0.06 and also benefited from the positive foreign exchange impact. And finally our cash generation remains strong as evidenced by the $60 million of free cash flow generated during the quarter. This was a 100% increase year-over-year when excluding the $20 million settlement we received from Palo Alto Networks in Q1 of 2014. Important to note, is that our billings, deferred revenue and adjusted free cash flow is outpacing our overall revenue growth year-over-year, which is a positive indicator for our future revenue growth. Our strong top line performance during the first quarter was a result of a healthy security market driven by factors Ken just discussed, a strong competitive position and an ongoing return from our sales and marketing investments. We continue to grow and strengthen our enterprise sales force including building out our key vertical teams, while still early our marketing investments are also beginning to yield returns with lead quality and conversion rates improving nicely and contributing to continued improvement in sales productivity. All of this is enabling us to gain market share. When new customers and expand within existing customer accounts especially in the enterprise. Evidence of this success could be seen in our large deal activity. During the first quarter, our number of larger deals once again grew nicely. Deals over $100,000 grew 36%. Deals over $250,000 grew 51%. Deals over $500,000 grew 28%. And finally deals over $1million experienced highest year-over-year return growth of all categories. In addition, the U.S. enterprise remain the fastest growing segment of our business growing 70% year-over-year as we continue to win deals with premier Fortune 100, Fortune 50, and even Fortune 5 companies. Like service providers, enterprises are very sticky due to regulatory and compliance requirements and are also a more frequent target of security breaches. Once we acquire an enterprise customer, we retain them for years and are able to upsell them more products over time resulting in very attractive lifetime value economics. Our best-of-breed integrated platform is very appealing to our customers and a differentiator for Fortinet. The enrichment of our end-to-end platform is a key element of our expansion strategy. Consistent with what we shared last quarter, our analysis of the top 100 customers in each of our three geographic regions over a five year period shows that for every $1, the customer initially spent, they spend an additional $5 over a five year period. They cost more to acquire than retain a customer and these customers represents rich opportunities to upsell, cross-sell and renew over time. So, it’s easier to see how the investments we're making today can help us in the future on both the top and bottom lines. We believe this will be a driver for margin leverage for us over time as our base of enterprise customers continues to grow and mature. Representative of the success we’re seeing with the strategy during the first quarter, we acquired several new large enterprise customers that chose Fortinet's FortiGate next-generation firewall appliance and FortiGuard subscription services over competitive solutions for Palo Alto Networks, CheckPoint, Cisco, and Juniper. Some of these customers included a Fortune 15 technology company and the Fortune 50 automaker with two of the most well-known brands in the world along with a large U.S. government agency and a leading South American financial services company. Additionally, we won a seven figure firewall expansion deal with one of the largest non-profit health systems in the United States. This customer chose an integrated security platform from Fortinet and replaced various point solutions from CheckPoint, Cisco, Sourcefire and BlueCoat. This was one of Fortinet's largest healthcare transaction ever and a clear endorsement of our integrated platform and the value of our vertical sales strategy. In addition to acquiring new customers during Q1, we also had success expanding business with existing customers by up selling more FortiGate appliances across selling non-FortiGate products to our large existing customer base. One of these large upsell deals was a seven figure win with one of the worlds largest telecommunication providers that is a long time Fortinet customer and has spent more than $15 million globally since it’s initial purchase. Additionally, we closed seven figure upsell deals with a Fortune 50 technology company and with another large U.S. federal agency. We also had several key cross-sell deals where we sold non-FortiGate products such as our FortiSandbox ATP, and FortiMail messaging appliances and FortiGuard subscription services to existing Fortinet customers. These deals included a large U.S. retailer, a European telecommunications company and a European government agency which Ken mentioned earlier. We won these deals over FireEye, Cisco and Palo Alto Networks due to our superior performance and our infrastructure integration abilities with FortiSandbox for ATP and FortiMail for email security. And finally, we had many large subscription and support renewal deals with existing Fortinet customers. Our renewal rates, which attract by appliance is not customers remain in the mid-70% range and do not account for product refresh purchases. However, our customer retention rate is above 90% which is demonstrative of overall customer satisfaction as well as the stickiness of our solutions. Our high renewal and retention rates also show that we’re not only winning numerous customers from exposed incumbents but we are keeping them. Our breakdown of billings across our top five verticals remained relatively consistent with service provider at 23%, government at 11%, financial services at 8%, education at 8% and retail at 8%. Now turning to some additional Q1 details. Geographically, year-over-year billings growth was again strong across all regions. The America's grew 33%, EMEA billings grew 47% and APAC grew 23%. As noted earlier in the America's we saw continued strength in the U.S. enterprise segment which grew 70% year-over-year driven by many large deals with leading enterprise brands. In EMEA, our growth rate was the highest we’ve achieved in seven years despite the foreign exchange headwind from the weaker currency and difficult comparison to last Q1. However performance was the result of exceptional execution across the region especially in the U.K., Germany and Northern Europe. APAC also saw good performance and meet a challenging regional economic environment with particularly strong results from Southeast Asia, Korea and India. Turning to billings by product segment on Slide 6, we continue to see diversity of product billings across all segments. Our high end FortiGate products accounted for 37% of billings driven by continued enterprise adoption of our high end appliances such as the FortiGate 1500D and 3700D. Our midrange enterprise products accounted for 26% of total product billings and our entry-level products accounted for 37%. As a reminder, our product billings mix varies quarter-to-quarter based on the models of products to makeup all size deals. As I mentioned earlier, total revenue was $213 million up 26% year-over-year and significantly above our guided range of $200 million to $205. On a geographic basis you can see on slide seven and eight; the revenues continue to be diversified globally, which remains a key strength of our business. In the Americas revenues grew 26% to $91.6 million in price, 43% of total revenues. EMEA revenues were $75.7 million up 34% and APAC revenues increased 15% to $45.7 million. Moving to non-GAAP expenses and profitability, during the first quarter, consolidated total non-GAAAP gross profit margins were 71% which was at the high end of our guided range. Non-GAAP product gross margins were 58% relatively consistent with last quarter as we remained focused on acquiring new customers for long term value. Non-GAAP service gross margins were 82% highlighting recurring nature in margin expansion value of FortiGuard and our FortiCare subscription offerings. Total non-GAAP operating expenses were $131.2 million during the first quarter, resulting in non-GAAP operating income of $20.1 million or 9% of total revenue and well above our guidance. This included a positive impact from foreign exchange of approximately $2.5 million or 1% of total revenue. Non-GAAP net income for the first quarter was $14 million or $0.08 per share based on $174 million diluted shares outstanding and above our guidance range. The non-GAAP tax rate for the first quarter was 35%. A reconsolidation of non-GAAP and GAAP financials can be seen on Slide 14 and 15. As seen on Slide 12, we ended Q1 with a strong balance sheet including $1.70 million in cash and investments, up from $992 million at the end of Q4. The increase was primarily driven by the $65 million in cash generated from operations. As previously mentioned, free cash flow was $60 million in the first quarter, a 100% increase year-over-year when excluding the $20 million settlement we received from Palo Alto networks in Q1 of ‘14. Our continued strong cash flow reflects our ability to both reinvest in the company to support growth and also generate cash that will benefit future growth. Annualized inventory turns for Q1 were $1.9 slightly below our annualized goal of to are better. As we mentioned in our January earnings call, we made conscious decision to take prevented steps to increase inventory to mitigate potential issues from the West Coast port labor disputes. Our deferred revenue balance increased $600 million up $149 million or 33% year-over-year and $41 million sequentially. The sequential increase was primarily due to consistent renewals and services attached sales to new or existing customers. Now let me finish with some commentary on our guidance. Starting with the second quarter 2015 which can be seen on slide 13, as a reminder all forward-looking statements including all of the guidance statements provided are subject to Michelle's cautions at the start of this call. We expect billings to be in the range of $263 million to $268 million up approximately 25% year-over-year at the midpoint. Total revenue is expected to be in the range of $224 million to $228 million up 23% year-over-year at the mid point. Non-GAAP gross margin is expected to be approximately 70% to 71%. Non-GAAP operating margin is expected to be approximately 9% to 10% this reflects our continued investments to drive growth as well as the ongoing absorption cost of new hires made in 2014 and during the first part of 2015. And finally, we expect non-GAAP earnings per share to be approximately $0.08 to $0.09 based on an expected diluted share account in the range of $174 million to $176 million fully diluted shares. Turning to guidance for the full year 2015, we are increasing billings and revenue expectations even above the first quarter over performance due to ongoing demand we are seeing globally for our solutions. Billings are now expected to be in the range of $1.105 billion to $1.120 billion up 24% year-over-year at the mid point and an increase form the $1.65 billion to $1.80 billion we previously estimated. This increase guidance reflects our overall performance during the first quarter as well as our ongoing confidence for a strong year. While also taking into a account the high growth rates delivered throughout 2014. We expect total revenue to be in the range of $935 million to $940 million up 22% year-over-year at the mid point and an increase from the prior guidance of $915 million to $925 million. Non-GAAP gross margin is still expected to be in the range of 70% to 71% and we’re maintaining our non-GAAP operating margin guidance of approximately 14% which showed leverage in our operating model and then our growth strategy is working. We believe our investments will benefit us long term from a customer lifetime value perspective. Our original 2015 guidance anticipated operating margin improvements throughout the year and we are still comfortable with this. We are not changing our full year operating margin guidance at this point as it is still early in the year, we still have lot of new people ramping and we want room to continue to invest appropriately for growth. And finally we expect non-GAAP earning per share to be in the range of approximately $0.51 per share to $0.52 per share based on an expected diluted share count in the range of $175 million to $177 million fully diluted shares. This is up from our previous guidance of $0.49 per share to $0.50 per share. In closing, I’d like to thank Fortinet employees, partners, customers and shareholders for their continued confidence and support. With that, Ken, Michelle and I will now take your questions. Operator, you may start the Q&A.