Akamai reports quarterly revenue increase but guidance misses forecast – News

Shares in Akamai Technologies Inc. fell more than 7% in late trading today after the content delivery network provider fell short on its outlook despite reporting beats in its fiscal 2024 fourth quarter.

For the quarter that ended on Dec. 31, Akamai reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.66, down from $1.69 per share in the same quarter of 2023, on revenue of $1.02 billion, up 3% year-over-year. Both figures came in ahead of the $1.52 per share and revenue of $1.01 billion expected by analysts.

Akamai saw security revenue in the quarter of $535 million, up 14% year-over-year. Delivery revenue, which covers Akamai’s content delivery network, dropped 18%, to $318 million. Compute revenue rose 24%, to $167 million.

Business highlights in the quarter included the Oct. 16 introduction by Akami of major updates for its security portfolio, which enhance protection against sophisticated threats and streamline security operations through advanced machine learning and AI-driven insights. The updates included Behavioral DDoS Engine, which uses machine learning to provide automatic, proactive protection against application-layer distributed denial-of-service attacks. There’s also a new artificial intelligence assistant that allows users to quickly filter through vast amounts of data, such as attack types, IP addresses and threat scores.

Later the same month, Akamai announced new capabilities for its Account Protector security solution designed to power the fight against fraud and abuse. The enhancements offer enhanced safeguards for user accounts against abuse throughout their entire lifecycle and provide advanced protection against account opening abuse, account takeover attacks and other attack schemes.

Forward to November and Akamai announced the Akamai Application Platform, a packaged platform for deploying, managing and scaling highly distributed applications on Nov. 12 and expanded Guardicore Segmentation to Amazon Web Services Inc. and an enhanced zero-trust network access solution on Nov. 19.

For the full fiscal year 2024, Akamai reported adjusted earnings per share of $6.48, up from $6.20 in 2023, on revenue of $3.991 billion, up 5% year-over-year.

“As we head into 2025, our focus on delivering sustainable profitability across all areas of our business, coupled with our ongoing transformation into a leading cybersecurity and cloud solutions provider, positions us for long-term success,” Chief Executive Tom Leighton said in the company’s earnings release.

For its fiscal 2025 first quarter, Akamai expects to see adjusted earnings per share of $1.54 to $1.59 on revenue of $1 billion to $1.02 billion. Both were misses, as analysts were expecting $1.61 per share on revenue of $1.04 billion.

Akamai’s forecast for the full year was lower than expectations as well, with the company forecasting adjusted earnings of $6 to $6.40 per share on revenue of $4 billion to $4.2 billion versus the $6.82 per share and revenue of $4.25 billion expected by analysts.

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