Internet bandwidth pioneer Akamai Technologies this afternoon reported Q4 revenue and profit that topped analysts’ expectations.
Revenue in the quarter rose 7%, year-over-year, to $905 million, yielding a net profit of $1.49 a share, excluding some costs.
Analysts had been modeling $896.3 million and $1.42 per share.
Akamai’s revenue in its Security Technology Group rose 23%, year-over-year, to $365 million. But revenue in its Edge Technology Group was down 2% compared to the prior-year period at $541 million.
“Akamai’s outstanding fourth quarter performance capped off an excellent year on both the top and bottom lines,” said Dr. Tom Leighton, CEO of Akamai.
“We believe our planned acquisition of Linode in cloud computing, and our recent acquisition of Guardicore in enterprise security, combined with our robust product portfolios, enterprise-focused go-to-market capabilities and widely distributed edge platform, will uniquely position us for success in these two large and fast growing markets.”
The report initially sent Akamai shares down 1% in late trading.
For the full fiscal year, the company reported a revenue of $3.5 billion, up 8% year-over-year, and a non-GAAP EPS of $5.74, up 10% year-over-year.
Security Technology Group revenue for 2021 was $1.335 billion, while Edge Technology Group revenue was $2.126 billion. Security Technology Group revenue grew 26% year-over-year in 2021 and Edge Technology Group revenue stayed flat compared to 2020.
US revenue for Q4 reached $476 million, up 2% year-over-year, while revenue for the year in the US was $1.838 billion, up 3% year-over-year.
International revenue for the fourth quarter was $429 million, up 13% year-over-year and was $1.624 billion for all of 2021, up 14% year-over-year.
For the current quarter, Wall Street is projecting $910 million in revenue and a $1.42 profit per share.
Akamai noted that it spent $271 million in the fourth quarter to repurchase 2.4 million shares of its common stock at an average price of $111.05 per share.
“For the full-year, the Company spent $522 million to repurchase 4.7 million shares of its common stock at an average price of $109.97 per share. The Company had 161 million shares of common stock outstanding as of December 31, 2021,” Akamai said.
