Welcome to the Radware conference call discussing Third Quarter 2023 Results, and thank you all for holding. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded, November 1, 2023. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to turn this call over to Yisca Erez, Director of Investor Relations at Radware. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Avi. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Radware's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Roy Zisapel, President and Chief Executive Officer; and Guy Avidan, Chief Financial Officer. A copy of today's press release and financial statements as well as the investor kit for the third quarter are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. During today's call, we may make projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of the company. These forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties, and actual results could differ materially from Radware's current forecast and estimates. Factors that could cause or contribute to such differences include, but are not limited to impact from changing or severe global economic conditions, the COVID-19 pandemic, general business conditions and our ability to address changes in our industry, changes in demand for products, the timing and the amount of orders and other risks, difference from time to time in Radware's filings. We refer you to the documents that the company files and furnishes from time with the SEC, specifically the company's last annual report on Form 20-F as filed on March 30, 2023. We undertake no commitment to revise or update any forward-looking statements in order to reflect events or circumstances after the date of such statement is made. I will now turn the call to Roy Zisapel.

Thank you, Yisca, and thank you all for joining us today. Before I address our third quarter financial results, I would like to update you on the status of our business operations. As you know, on October 7, the terrorist group, Hamas, attacked the southern border of Israel, resulting in many casualties and kidnappings. Our heart goes to all the people that lost their loved ones, the people who were injured, the hostages, and the people who had gone through this attack. Israel is now fighting to free those who are being held hostage and remove the threat of Hamas. While this is taking place, I want to assure you that Radware's business operations are working without interruption. Our global technical support centers and cloud security services, which span multiple regions with more than 40 points of presence, are all running as planned. As needed, we have reallocated internal resources to cover for a number of employees who have been called for reservists for the Israel defense force. You can be assured that Radware has all the required business continuity plans in place within Israel should they need to be activated. I would like to thank our customers, partners and investors around the world for their support and the kind words during the past three weeks. We truly appreciate you standing with Israel. Additionally, this war has a cyber dimension and Radware is standing at the forefront. We are blocking attacks for some of Israel's critical infrastructure as well as prominent government offices, banking institutes and media organizations. Furthermore, we are using the intelligence we gather to protect our global customers, as the same hackers who are attacking Israel are also targeting Western countries. With that, I'd like to update you on third quarter financial results. We ended the third…

Thank you, Roy, and good day, everyone. I'm pleased to provide the analysis of our financial results and business performance for the third quarter of 2023, as well as our outlook for the fourth quarter of 2023. Before beginning the financial overview, I would like to remind you that unless otherwise indicated, all financial results are non-GAAP. A full reconciliation of our results on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis is available in the earnings press release issued earlier today and on the Investors section of our website. Revenue for the third quarter 2023 was $61.6 million compared to $70.5 million in the same period of last year. The third quarter revenue decline was due to changes in the buying pattern of large enterprise and service providers, which resulted in delaying the closing of large on-prem deals, a pattern that we have been experiencing in the last few quarters. We believe that some of the delays are related to the macro environment and budget scrutiny. However, we do witness early signs of improvement in the business, which are reflected in better bookings in Q3 and quarter-to-date compared to Q2 2023. Despite the challenges in closing large on-prem deals, our cloud business accelerated its growth in the third quarter. Cloud ARR in the third quarter of 2023 grew 25% year-over-year to $62.5 million compared to $50 million at the end of the third quarter of 2022. Cloud ARR accounted for 31% of total ARR compared to 26% last year. The growth of our cloud business is also reflected in our recurring revenue, which accounted for 79% compared to 71% in Q3 2022. Total ARR increased by 5% to $204.5 million. It was impacted by a terminated DDoS agreement with one of our customers that Roy mentioned earlier in his remarks. Excluding the…

[Operator Instructions] And we will take our first question from George Notter with Jefferies. Your line is open.

Hi guys, thanks very much. I guess maybe to start, I wanted to just say to everybody, good luck through this difficult situation in Israel. We're all thinking about you, and we wish you the very best. And please definitely stay safe, and I hope all goes as well as it can. I guess maybe to start out with questions. Your cloud subscription business really seems to be improving here. I guess I'm looking for another kind of layer of detail in terms of what's driving that improvement? I know the attack environment seems to have intensified over the last few weeks and months. But maybe you can talk a little bit about where you think the strength is coming from in that cloud subscription business? Thanks.

Okay. So first, thanks, George, for your opening comments. Regarding the cloud, we're seeing very strong growth from new logos acquisition. And the core of this is our ability to mitigate sophisticated attacks that become very, very common, like the web DDoS scenario that I've mentioned. So we're seeing both, in DDoS, and in application security, new vectors that came following the war of Russia and Ukraine and other activities in the market. And that creates a new level of sophistication and burden on the defense systems. So we see more and more customers that understand the hard way sometimes or by looking at what happens to their peers in their industry that the current security measures they have are insufficient. So that's definitely creating a strong advantage. And second, the more references we have, especially in the high-end, were seen to get more and more customers. And the last point I would mention, Cisco, and to some extent, Check Point, have started to contribute more into our cloud business as well, especially as Cisco now is on the EEA, we are on the enterprise agreement, we're seeing more openness towards our cloud security solutions. So those would be the three factors there.

How about -- I know you guys have put out some new scrubbing services. I know there was a deal in New Zealand. I think there's a deal in India, partnerships with service providers. Can you talk about how those are progressing? Is that contributing to the growth?

Yes. So what we're seeing there is long way comments that current solutions are insufficient. We're seeing carriers and MSSPs around the world understanding that in order to continue to serve their customers, they must increase the level of tools, capabilities, automation they have. And what we were able to do is to sign some of those partnerships agreements around the world. You've mentioned the India one and our press release on the New Zealand one, where basically they are leveraging our cloud security nodes to assist them in their MSSP operation. We're basically becoming their MSSP technology or behind the curtain of the MSSP, the ones that deliver the service. We see that as a very good motion going forward because it allows us to gain significant market share in those markets. So if a carrier in a market is actually using you for DDoS, so for [indiscernible], they will first generally migrate, maybe over time, over a year or so, but they would migrate their existing customer base off the platforms they have towards the MSSP while starting to sell and promote additional services. We're planning to leverage that. We think we are uniquely positioned to support that, as our tools are OEM capable, white label capable. Our operation is very well trained in supporting partners like Cisco, Nokia and Check Point. So to the same extent, it can support those carriers. And we believe, for us, it's an ability to take a lot of share quickly in these markets.

And we will take our next question from Chris Reimer with Barclays. Your line is open.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Can you mention some of the measures that have contributed or will further contribute to the cost management side of things?

We're doing several things. One, we've looked at the sales and marketing organization as a whole. And we looked for places that we thought our investment did not yield the right ROI. And obviously, we either consolidated or changed that level of investment. Second, we took some measures in some of the third-party or overlay investments that we had. And maybe it's more, I would say, quota-carrying direct selling relationship. Third, we've taken some of those costs that we've taken out of the model and actually allocated them towards our cloud security business, to improve cloud success managers and numbers and coverage, to improve the operation, to invest more towards R&D. So all in all, we've done the measured steps on the organization to align the level of business. Starting to see, obviously, as Guy mentioned, in the third quarter, the results in the P&L. And we're going to continue to balance the revenue with expense. And as you see from our guidance, we do expect profitability, because of these steps, to improve.

Great, thank you. That's it for me.

[Operator Instructions] And we will take our next question from Alex Henderson with Needham & Company. Your line is open. And Mr. Henderson, your line is open, please check your mute button.

Let me start off by saying thanks for the print, but I also hope everybody is safe in Israel and that all your families are safe. But with that as a starting point, can you talk a little bit about whether there's -- what percentage of your employees were called up from reserves and if that's a factor in the outlook going forward if the war stays more extended in time, just so that we can talk to that risk.

Yes. So as of today, around 60 employees are in reserve. We don't expect this number to increase. That's 5% of total head count in the company. We've replaced, in terms of functions, all these people. So we don't see any impact on the business.

Perfect. Didn't expect there to be, but I wanted to make sure I had the statistics. The second question, can you talk a little bit about the exchange rate and how your hedging programs or -- what's going on there for the simple reason that the shekel is obviously under a lot of pressure over the last couple of quarters.

Yes. So for the time being, and as we earlier discussed previously, 2023 is hedged already. So the impact of the above four FX will not be seen this year. That being said, we hedged some of 2024. We still have room to hedge, and that will allude to the conclusion that, obviously, we will have a better hedging strategy next year, which means lower OpEx.

And it does seem like the events in Israel have resulted in some pull-in in expectations and spending intentions. So is the macro environment showing any change in conditions from September into October? Or is that relatively stable? Or is it too early to tell? Can you talk to that a little bit?

We mentioned in the prepared commentary that we are seeing some early signs, and we are watching linearity. We also mentioned that in the script that, let's say, the first month of the quarter, this quarter was better than the quarter before. It means that macro-wise, we think we're in a better position versus the last two quarters.

And just to add to that, also from the activity in the threat landscape, actually we're seeing a lot of attacks across in Israel, of course, but more importantly, for the global, across the world, whether it's U.S., Canada, all of Western Europe and so on. So actually, from a demand perspective and the criticality of our solutions, this geopolitical event is actually creating more sense of urgency, we think. So all in all, we are cautiously optimistic that there's actually not going to be a pull down from the war and might be actually a bit acceleration of cycles.

Great. And just want to say thanks for giving me that tour of your cloud war room when I visited you guys in Israel in September. It was pretty impressive. Thanks.

You're always welcome, Alex. Thanks for your comments.

And there are no further questions at this time. So I will now turn the call back to Mr. Roy Zisapel for closing remarks.

Okay. Thank you, everyone, for attending today, and have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call, and we thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.