Application security pioneer F5 Networks this afternoon reported fiscal Q1 revenue and profit that topped analysts’ expectations, and forecast this quarter’s revenue higher, but profit a bit below, sending its shares sharply lower in late trading.
Revenue in the three months ended in December rose to $625 million, yielding EPS of $2.59.
Analysts had been modeling $623 million and $2.45 per share.
The results compare to a raised forecast for $623 million to $626 million in revenue offered two weeks ago, when the company announced it would acquire privately held, Volterra of Santa Clara, California, a maker of distributed multi-cloud application security and load-balancing software.
For the current quarter, the company sees revenue in a range of $625 million to $645 million, higher than the consensus for $621 million; and EPS in a range of $2.32 to $2.44, slightly below consensus for $2.41.
F5 shares are down about 3% at $203 in after-hours trading and had initially dropped as much as 6%.
