F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV) today announced revenue of $254.3 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2010, up 10 percent from $230.5 million in the prior quarter and 45 percent from $175.1 million in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2009. For fiscal year 2010, revenue was $882.0 million, up 35 percent from $653.1 million in fiscal year 2009.
GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $48.2 million ($0.59 per diluted share) compared to $40.5 million ($0.50 per diluted share) in the third quarter of 2010 and $28.4 million ($0.36 per diluted share) in the fourth quarter a year ago. GAAP net income for the year was $151.2 million ($1.86 per diluted share) versus $91.5 million ($1.14 per diluted share) in fiscal year 2009.
Excluding the impact of stock-based compensation and a one-time charge related to a legal settlement, non-GAAP net income for the fourth quarter was $63.9 million ($0.79 per diluted share), compared to $53.3 million ($0.66 per diluted share) in the prior quarter and $40.0 million ($0.50 per diluted share) in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. For fiscal year 2010, non-GAAP net income was $203.8 million ($2.51 per diluted share) versus $134.6 million ($1.68 per diluted share) in fiscal year 2009.
A reconciliation of GAAP net income to non-GAAP net income is included on the attached Consolidated Statements of Operations.
F5 president and chief executive officer John McAdam said that during the fourth quarter the company continued to benefit from several key trends that drove demand for its products throughout fiscal 2010. “As enterprises and other large organizations confront the new realities of today-s global economy, they are turning increasingly to technologies that enable them to operate more efficiently and compete more successfully by giving them flexible, on-demand access to more resources while reducing overall costs. This shift is reflected broadly in the trend towards data center consolidation and the widespread adoption of server virtualization and new infrastructure models such as cloud computing.
“Within the past year, these trends have accelerated, and our products have been increasingly deployed as strategic points of control in new data center architectures, integrating disparate resources and managing the flow of traffic within and between data centers. In addition, we have continued to see growing demand for our products among service providers grappling with the proliferation of mobile devices, the explosion of mobile applications and the corresponding increase in mobile data traffic. As a result, our product revenues grew 12 percent sequentially in Q4 and 38 percent during fiscal 2010,” said McAdam.
During the fourth quarter, further improvement in gross margins combined with strong revenue growth to drive the company-s GAAP operating margin to 30 percent and the non-GAAP operating margin to just under 38 percent.
On the company-s balance sheet, deferred revenue grew 8 percent sequentially to $259.4 million, up nearly 42 percent from the fourth quarter of fiscal 2009. Cash flow from operations was $86 million in the fourth quarter and $314 million for the full year. After repurchasing $75 million of F5 common stock in fiscal 2010, the company ended the year with $862 million in cash and investments.
“In general, Q4 was a strong finish to a strong year,” McAdam said. “Barring another broad economic setback, the strength of our current business and our growing pipeline are encouraging signs that the positive trends that drove our business in fiscal 2010 will continue through fiscal 2011.”
For the first quarter of fiscal 2011, ending December 31, the company has set a revenue target of $265 million to $270 million and a GAAP earnings target of $0.62 to $0.64 per diluted share. Excluding stock-based compensation expense, our non-GAAP earnings target is $0.80 to $0.82 per diluted share.
Share Repurchase Program
The company also announced today that its board of directors approved a new program to repurchase up to $200 million of the company-s outstanding common stock.
Acquisitions for the share repurchase program will be made from time to time in private transactions or open market purchases as permitted by securities laws and other legal requirements. The program may be modified or discontinued at any time.
Analyst/Investor Meeting
F5 will hold a meeting for analysts and investors at the Sofitel Hotel in New York City, from 8:00 a.m. to noon Eastern Time on Tuesday, November 16, 2010.
To register online, please visit: http://www.f5.com/about/investor-relations/analyst-meeting/
For more information contact Darlene Henderson (206.272.6170) or email 2010AIM@f5.com.
The meeting will also be webcast live and an archived version will be available through January 21, 2011. The link for the live webcast and the archived version is http://www.f5.com/about/investor-relations/events-calendar.html
GAAP to non-GAAP Reconciliation F5-s management evaluates and makes operating decisions using various operating measures. These measures are generally based on the revenues of its products, services operations and certain costs of those operations, such as cost of revenues, research and development, sales and marketing and general and administrative expenses. One such measure is net income excluding stock-based compensation, which is a non-GAAP financial measure under Section 101 of Regulation G under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. This measure consists of GAAP net income excluding, as applicable, stock-based compensation. Net income excluding stock-based compensation (non-GAAP) is adjusted by the amount of additional taxes or tax benefit that the company would accrue if it used non-GAAP results instead of GAAP results to calculate the company-s tax liability. Stock-based compensation is a non-cash expense that F5 has accounted for since July 1, 2005 in accordance with the fair value recognition provisions of Financial Accounting Standards Board (“FASB”) Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) Topic 718 Compensation – Stock Compensation (“FASB ASC Topic 718”).
Management believes that net income excluding stock-based compensation (non-GAAP) provides useful supplemental information to management and investors regarding the performance of the company-s business operations and facilitates comparisons to the company-s historical operating results. Although F5-s management finds this non-GAAP measure to be useful in evaluating the performance of the business, management-s reliance on this measure is limited because items excluded from such measures could have a material effect on F5-s earnings and earnings per share calculated in accordance with GAAP. Therefore, F5-s management will use its non-GAAP earnings and earnings per share measures, in conjunction with GAAP earnings and earnings per share measures, to address these limitations when evaluating the performance of the company-s business. Investors should consider these non-GAAP measures in addition to, and not as a substitute for, financial performance measures in accordance with GAAP.
The reconciliation of the company-s GAAP and non-GAAP earnings for the three months and twelve months ended September 30, 2010 also excludes a legal settlement charge.
F5 believes that presenting its non-GAAP measure of earnings and earnings per share provides investors with an additional tool for evaluating the performance of the company-s business and which management uses in its own evaluation of the company-s performance. Investors are encouraged to look at GAAP results as the best measure of financial performance. For example, stock-based compensation is an obligation of the company that should be considered and each line item is important to financial performance generally. However, while the GAAP results are more complete, the company provides investors this supplemental measure since, with reconciliation to GAAP, it may provide additional insight into its operational performance and financial results
F5 Networks is the global leader in Application Delivery Networking (ADN), focused on ensuring the secure, reliable, and fast delivery of applications. F5-s flexible architectural framework enables community-driven innovation that helps organizations enhance IT agility and dynamically deliver services that generate true business value. F5-s vision of unified application and data delivery offers customers an unprecedented level of choice in how they deploy ADN solutions. It redefines the management of application, server, storage, and network resources, streamlining application delivery and reducing costs. Global enterprise organizations, service and cloud providers, and Web 2.0 content providers trust F5 to keep their business moving forward. For more information, go to www.f5.com.
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