阿卡邁科技 (AKAM) 2026 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good afternoon and welcome to the Q3 2026 Akamai Technologies earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) Please note this event is being recorded.

下午好，歡迎參加 Akamai Technologies 2026 年第三季（Q3）財報電話會議。（接線員指示）請注意，本活動將被錄音。

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mark Stoutenberg, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

現在我想把會議交給投資人關係主管 Mark Stoutenberg。請開始。

Good afternoon everyone and thank you for joinincag Akamai’s third quarter 2026 earnings call. Speaking today will be Tom Leighton, Akamai’s Chief Executive Officer; and Ed McGowan, Akamai’s Chief Financial Officer.

各位下午好，感謝各位參加 Akamai 2026 年第三季財報電話會議。今天的發言人包括 Akamai 執行長 Tom Leighton，以及 Akamai 財務長 Ed McGowan。

Please note that today’s comments include forward-looking statements that include revenue and earnings guidance. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to certain risks and uncertainties and involve a number of factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. The factors include, but are not limited to, any impact from macroeconomic trends, the integration of any acquisition, geopolitical developments, and other risk factors identified in our filings with the SEC.

請注意，今天的評論包含前瞻性陳述，其中包括營收與獲利指引。這些前瞻性陳述係基於目前的預期與假設，並受若干風險與不確定性影響，且涉及多項因素，可能導致實際結果與所表達或暗示者有重大差異。相關因素包括但不限於：總體經濟趨勢的任何影響、任何併購案的整合、地緣政治發展，以及我們向美國證券交易委員會（SEC）提交之文件中所識別的其他風險因素。

The statements included on today’s call represent the company’s views on November 5, 2026, and we assume no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. As a reminder, we will be referring to certain non-GAAP financial metrics during today’s call. A detailed GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation is available in the Investor Relations section of akamai.com under financials.

今天電話會議中的陳述代表公司於 2026 年 11 月 5 日的觀點，我們不承擔更新任何前瞻性陳述的義務。提醒各位，我們在今天的電話會議中將提及若干非 GAAP 財務衡量指標。GAAP 與非 GAAP 的詳細調節表可於 akamai.com 的投資人關係（Investor Relations）專區之財務（financials）頁面取得。

With that, I’ll now hand the call off to our CEO, Dr. Tom Leighton.

接下來，我把電話交給我們的執行長 Tom Leighton 博士。

Thanks Mark. Akamai continued to make outstanding progress in the development of our Cloud Infrastructure Services, or CIS, in the third quarter. Most notably, we signed an $11.6 billion commitment over seven years with Anthropic to support their CPU workloads with our distributed infrastructure and software. This brings the total of multi-year commits for CIS signed this year to more than $14 billion. The total includes an earlier large contract with Anthropic, two large deals with leading AI companies and numerous multimillion-dollar deals with major enterprises around the world.

謝謝 Mark。第三季我們在雲端基礎設施服務（Cloud Infrastructure Services，簡稱 CIS）的發展上持續取得卓越進展。最值得一提的是，我們與 Anthropic 簽署了一份為期七年、總額 116 億美元的承諾合約，透過我們的分散式基礎設施與軟體來支援其 CPU 工作負載。這使得我們今年已簽署的 CIS 多年期承諾總額超過 140 億美元。該總額包含先前與 Anthropic 簽署的一筆大型合約、與領先 AI 公司的兩筆大型交易，以及與全球主要企業簽署的多筆數百萬美元等級交易。

I’m pleased to report that we’re making good progress in delivering on these contracts. Two of the first three large deals are now generating revenue and we anticipate that the third will begin generating revenue later this quarter. We did encounter some modest supply chain and third-party data center delays with two of the deals and so our revenue outlook for Q4 will be less than expected. These issues have since been resolved, and they won’t impact our outlook for 2027.

我很高興報告，我們在履行這些合約的交付方面進展良好。前三筆大型交易中的前兩筆目前已開始產生營收，我們預期第三筆將於本季稍晚開始產生營收。我們確實在其中兩筆交易上遇到一些輕微的供應鏈與第三方資料中心延遲，因此我們對第四季（Q4）的營收展望將低於原先預期。這些問題目前已解決，且不會影響我們對 2027 年的展望。

In fact, we now anticipate that our CIS revenue will more than double in 2027 to $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion, and that Akamai’s overall revenue growth rate will dramatically accelerate as a result, with total 2027 revenue growing 17% to 22% in constant currency over 2026 levels, and we expect further acceleration in 2028, with our overall revenue growing beyond $7 billion. As CIS becomes a larger portion of our revenue, we expect it to have a strong positive impact on our margins and EPS growth.

事實上，我們現在預期 2027 年 CIS 營收將較 2026 年增加一倍以上，達到 11 億至 13 億美元；並且 Akamai 的整體營收成長率將因此大幅加速——以固定匯率計算，2027 年總營收將較 2026 年成長 17% 至 22%。我們也預期 2028 年將進一步加速，整體營收將成長至超過 70 億美元。隨著 CIS 在我們營收中的占比提高，我們預期其將對毛利率與每股盈餘（EPS）成長帶來強勁的正面影響。

In particular, we believe that the large deals we’ve signed this year will contribute at an aggregate adjusted EBITDA margin of about 75% and a non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 30% when they’re fully ramped. There are several reasons why we think we can operate our CIS business with strong margins at scale.

具體而言，我們相信今年簽署的大型交易在完全放量後，合計可貢獻約 75% 的調整後 EBITDA 利潤率，以及約 30% 的非 GAAP 營業利益率。我們之所以認為 CIS 業務在規模化後仍能維持強勁利潤率，原因有幾點。

First, it’s important to understand that we’re not talking about bare metal here. In fact, we don’t even offer bare metal as a service. We sell compute capacity through our infrastructure-as-a-service platform, which consists of virtual machines, managed Kubernetes, storage and networking. This keeps our capacity elastic across customers and generates substantially more revenue per megawatt or dollar of CapEx than a bare metal contract.

首先，重要的是要理解，我們談的不是裸機（bare metal）。事實上，我們甚至不提供裸機即服務。我們透過自身的基礎設施即服務（IaaS）平台銷售運算容量，該平台包含虛擬機、託管 Kubernetes、儲存與網路。這使我們能在不同客戶之間維持彈性容量，並且相較於裸機合約，每兆瓦或每一美元資本支出（CapEx）可產生顯著更高的營收。

In particular, we expect to generate about $22 million of revenue per megawatt of contracted power for the large deals we signed this year. Moreover, we’re seeing that as we’ve grown our presence in the market, the pricing we can command has improved. In fact, the unit pricing in recent deals is much higher than in comparable deals we signed earlier in the year. We also have several cost advantages because of our expertise and the unique nature of our cloud platform.

特別是，對於今年簽署的大型交易，我們預期每兆瓦的已簽約電力可帶來約 2,200 萬美元營收。此外，我們也看到，隨著我們在市場上的能見度與規模提升，我們能夠取得的定價有所改善。事實上，近期交易的單位定價明顯高於我們在年初簽署的可比交易。同時，憑藉我們的專業能力與雲端平台的獨特性，我們也具備多項成本優勢。

For example, we operate one of the world’s largest backbones, larger even than many Tier 1 carriers, which reduces our networking costs and allows us to leverage scarce data center space that may not be accessible to others. Our globally distributed platform enables us to deploy compute into a multitude of smaller locations instead of just a few large data centers.

例如，我們營運著全球最大的骨幹網路之一，規模甚至大於許多一級（Tier 1）電信業者，這降低了我們的網路成本，並使我們能夠利用其他人可能無法取得的稀缺資料中心空間。我們全球分散式的平台讓我們能將運算部署到眾多較小的據點，而非僅集中在少數大型資料中心。

This is another factor in helping us get the power and color we need to grow, and at a lower cost than using very large footprints in expensive core data centers. We’ve spent many years optimizing our software and operations so that we can more efficiently handle large volumes of customer data. We’re one of the largest when it comes to moving data on the Internet, since most of the world’s largest brands, including several hyperscalers, use Akamai to secure and deliver their content.

這也是幫助我們以更低成本取得成長所需電力與機櫃（colocation）資源的另一項因素，相較於在昂貴的核心資料中心採用非常大的占地規模。我們多年來持續優化軟體與營運，使我們能更有效率地處理大量客戶資料。就網際網路資料傳輸而言，我們是規模最大的業者之一，因為全球多數最大品牌（包括數家超大規模雲端業者）都使用 Akamai 來保護並傳遞其內容。

An even more important reason that we can sustain good margins at scale is the types of servers we use in our cloud. While we support a variety of GPUs for our customers, the vast majority of servers that we’re deploying, well over 90%, are CPUs in fact, mostly the same type of CPU that we use for our security and delivery services. This is important because CPUs are becoming much more widely used for AI. That’s because they tend to be more versatile, more cost effective and longer lasting than GPUs.

我們之所以能在規模化後仍維持良好利潤率，更重要的原因在於我們雲端所使用的伺服器類型。雖然我們為客戶支援多種 GPU，但我們部署的伺服器絕大多數——超過 90%——其實是 CPU，而且多半與我們用於資安與內容傳遞服務的 CPU 類型相同。這點很重要，因為 CPU 正在被更廣泛地用於 AI；原因是相較於 GPU，CPU 往往更具通用性、更具成本效益，且使用壽命更長。

The CPUs we’ve deployed in the past are continuing to provide value across our platform even 7 to 10 years later. Indeed, the largest cloud contracts we signed this year guarantee revenue for these CPUs for seven years. Being able to use the same servers for compute, security and delivery further increases their useful lifespan and makes our platform more efficient. At the same time, CPUs generally require much less power than GPUs, and so the number of megawatts we need to power our cloud is much less than providers like the who rely more heavily on GPUs.

我們過去部署的 CPU 即使在 7 到 10 年後，仍持續在整個平台上創造價值。確實，我們今年簽署的最大雲端合約，對這些 CPU 提供了七年的營收保證。能夠將相同伺服器同時用於運算、資安與內容傳遞，進一步延長其有效使用年限，並提升平台效率。同時，CPU 一般所需電力遠低於 GPU，因此我們為雲端供電所需的兆瓦數，遠少於那些更依賴 GPU 的供應商。

This means that we spend more CapEx per megawatt than the , and that’s a good thing for Akamai shareholders. Power is scarce and expensive, and we need less of it in relation to our CapEx spend than others need for their infrastructure. There are many reasons why we think our rapidly growing CIS business will be very profitable for Akamai, but probably the most important reason is that we have a compelling and highly competitive solution in the cloud marketplace. Not only does this help with profitability, but it helps ensure that Akamai will have enduring growth even if resources that are in short supply today, like power equipment and data center space, become more plentiful in the future.

這意味著我們每兆瓦投入的資本支出（CapEx）高於那些供應商，而這對 Akamai 股東而言是好事。電力稀缺且昂貴，相較於其他業者為其基礎設施所需的電力，我們在相同 CapEx 支出下所需的電力更少。我們之所以認為快速成長的 CIS 業務將為 Akamai 帶來極高獲利性，原因很多，但最重要的原因可能是：我們在雲端市場擁有具吸引力且高度具競爭力的解決方案。這不僅有助於提升獲利能力，也有助於確保即使目前供給短缺的資源（如電力設備與資料中心空間）在未來變得更充裕，Akamai 仍能維持長期且持續的成長。

There are many reasons why the world’s most important companies are choosing Akamai for their AI and cloud computing needs. One of the most important is that with more than 4,000 points of presence in 130 countries, we can get our customers’ compute workloads closer to users and devices wherever they are in the world. And being closer means that we can provide lower latency and higher throughput, which is important for a wide range of use cases such as interactive video, avatar rendering, conversational voice agents for customer service, speech recognition, translation, robotics, video processing, and real-time alerting.

全球最重要的企業之所以選擇 Akamai 來滿足其 AI 與雲端運算需求，原因有很多。其中最重要的一點是：我們在 130 個國家擁有超過 4,000 個據點（points of presence），能將客戶的運算工作負載更貼近全球各地的使用者與裝置。而更貼近就意味著我們能提供更低延遲與更高吞吐量，這對於互動式影片、虛擬人像渲染、用於客服的對話式語音代理、語音辨識、翻譯、機器人、影片處理與即時告警等各式使用情境都非常重要。

This is a key reason why even the hyperscalers use Akamai cloud for some of their latency-sensitive applications. Another big advantage for Akamai is that we can package our compute solutions together with our market-leading solutions for security and delivery. So, enterprises can use one platform to power, protect and deliver their most important applications with great performance and vast global scale. This also helps with cross-sell. We can sell compute into our large base of security and delivery customers and, vice versa, we can sell our security and delivery solutions to new cloud customers.

這也是為什麼即使是超大規模雲端業者（hyperscalers），也會在其部分對延遲高度敏感的應用上使用 Akamai 雲端的關鍵原因。Akamai 的另一項重大優勢在於，我們能將運算解決方案與我們在安全與交付（delivery）領域的市場領先解決方案打包整合。因此，企業可以透過單一平台，以卓越效能與龐大全球規模，為其最重要的應用提供運行、保護與交付。這也有助於交叉銷售。我們可以向龐大的安全與交付客戶基礎銷售運算服務；反之，我們也能向新的雲端客戶銷售我們的安全與交付解決方案。

Being able to secure our customers’ workloads is especially important in the age of AI. Not only can we help protect our customers from AI-enabled attacks, but we can also help keep our customers’ agents from going rogue and causing unintended harm. Reliability is another key advantage for Akamai when enterprises are choosing a cloud provider. As a great proof point, we help the world’s largest financial institutions achieve five nines of uptime, which means less than 10 minutes of downtime in a span of two years.

在 AI 時代，能夠保護客戶的工作負載尤其重要。我們不僅能協助保護客戶免受 AI 強化攻擊，也能協助防止客戶的代理（agents）失控（going rogue）並造成非預期的傷害。當企業選擇雲端供應商時，可靠性也是 Akamai 的另一項關鍵優勢。作為一個有力的佐證，我們協助全球最大的金融機構達成「五個九」的可用性（five nines uptime），也就是在兩年期間停機時間少於 10 分鐘。

This is not easy to do -- in fact, it’s very hard and takes extraordinary expertise, dedication and experience to achieve. Akamai also provides world-leading professional services and customer care with thousands of incredibly knowledgeable and experienced technical experts to help our customers solve their most difficult challenges. The support we offer customers is a key reason why we win business from customers who leave competitors.

這並不容易——事實上非常困難，需要非凡的專業能力、投入與經驗才能達成。Akamai 也提供世界領先的專業服務與客戶關懷，擁有數千名知識淵博且經驗豐富的技術專家，協助客戶解決最棘手的挑戰。我們提供的支援是我們能從離開競爭對手的客戶手中贏得業務的關鍵原因之一。

And finally, Akamai has built a very strong reputation over 25 years as being an innovative and trustworthy company to work with. We’re not a newcomer. We have decades of experience in helping the world’s largest and most demanding companies navigate the rapidly changing technology landscape.

最後，Akamai 在 25 年來建立了非常強的聲譽，被視為一家具創新力且值得信賴的合作夥伴。我們不是新進者。我們擁有數十年的經驗，協助全球最大且要求最嚴苛的企業在快速變動的科技環境中前行。

Speaking of innovation, just last week we expanded our cloud portfolio with the launch of Akamai Inference and Akamai Agent Sandbox. These new services enable enterprises to build and tune open-weight models based on their proprietary data and run agents within strictly enforced boundaries, all secured and powered on Akamai’s AI-optimized cloud platform. They add the inference and execution layers that turn our AI infrastructure into a full AI stack to support training, real-time inference and agentic workloads across the world. Akamai Inference and Agent Sandbox are also integrated with our Firewall for AI and new agent security services to make sure that our customers’ AI stays safe.

談到創新，就在上週我們推出 Akamai Inference 與 Akamai Agent Sandbox，擴充了我們的雲端產品組合。這些新服務讓企業能基於其專有資料建置並微調開放權重（open-weight）模型，並在嚴格強制的邊界內運行代理（agents）；所有內容皆在 Akamai 的 AI 最佳化雲端平台上完成並受到保護。它們新增了推論與執行層，使我們的 AI 基礎設施成為完整的 AI 技術堆疊（full AI stack），以支援全球範圍內的訓練、即時推論與代理式（agentic）工作負載。Akamai Inference 與 Agent Sandbox 也與我們的 Firewall for AI 以及新的代理安全服務整合，以確保客戶的 AI 維持安全。

Turning now to security, I’m pleased to report that security revenue in Q3 grew 9% year-over-year as reported and 10% in constant currency. Growth was led once again by strong demand for our market-leading web app firewall, API security and Guardicore Segmentation solutions. We were especially pleased to see Akamai recognized as a leader in each of these three product areas in reports last quarter from industry analysts at IDC and Forrester.

接著談安全業務，我很高興報告：第三季（Q3）安全營收按年成長 9%（依報告口徑），以固定匯率計算成長 10%。成長再次由我們市場領先的 Web 應用程式防火牆（WAF）、API 安全與 Guardicore Segmentation 解決方案的強勁需求所帶動。我們也特別高興看到 Akamai 在上季 IDC 與 Forrester 等產業分析師報告中，於這三個產品領域皆被評為領導者。

AI continues to be a tailwind for our security solutions as more AI agents act on behalf of users and enterprises, as more employees put sensitive data into AI tools, as more attacks use AI to grow in scale and sophistication, and as more AI agents and bots get better at appearing to be human. Akamai security solutions help companies protect their applications, infrastructure and workforce from AI-related vulnerabilities and attacks. For example, our web app firewall stops malicious traffic before it can reach an application and it patches exposure points automatically.

隨著更多 AI 代理代表使用者與企業採取行動、更多員工將敏感資料輸入 AI 工具、更多攻擊利用 AI 擴大規模並提升複雜度，以及更多 AI 代理與機器人更擅長偽裝成人類，AI 持續成為我們安全解決方案的順風因素（tailwind）。Akamai 安全解決方案協助企業保護其應用、基礎設施與員工隊伍，防範與 AI 相關的弱點與攻擊。例如，我們的 Web 應用程式防火牆會在惡意流量到達應用之前加以阻擋，並自動修補暴露點。

Our bot and agent control solution unmasks agents to discover their true origin and intent and then takes the appropriate action on behalf of our customers. Our API security solution finds and defends Shadow AI and APIs before sensitive data can be stolen, and our Guardicore Segmentation solution contains the damage if and when something bad does get in.

我們的機器人與代理控管解決方案可揭露代理的真實來源與意圖，並代表客戶採取適當行動。我們的 API 安全解決方案可在敏感資料遭竊之前，找出並防禦影子 AI（Shadow AI）與 API；而我們的 Guardicore Segmentation 解決方案則能在不良事件真的入侵時（或一旦入侵時）將損害控制在可控範圍內。

In summary, we believe that Akamai has a unique offering in the cloud marketplace with superior performance and security, global scale and strong financials. Our unique cloud platform enables enterprises to build and scale the next generation of AI applications from model training in the core to fast inference at the edge, all protected by Akamai’s world-leading security solutions and scaled with Akamai’s world-leading delivery services. As a result, we believe that we’re ideally positioned to benefit as businesses adopt AI at scale.

總結而言，我們相信 Akamai 在雲端市場擁有獨特的產品組合，具備更優異的效能與安全性、全球規模以及強健的財務狀況。我們獨特的雲端平台讓企業能從核心端的模型訓練到邊緣端的快速推論，建置並擴展下一代 AI 應用；全程由 Akamai 世界領先的安全解決方案保護，並透過 Akamai 世界領先的交付服務進行擴展。因此，我們相信，隨著企業大規模採用 AI，我們處於理想位置以從中受益。

Already this year we’ve closed deals to power and protect mission-critical applications for the world’s leading frontier model companies, leading AI equipment companies, major open-source model companies, companies building the next generation of AI applications and the world’s leading enterprises.

僅在今年，我們就已完成多筆交易，為全球領先的前沿模型公司、領先的 AI 設備公司、主要的開源模型公司、打造下一代 AI 應用的公司，以及全球領先企業的關鍵任務應用提供運行與保護。

Regardless of who ultimately become the dominant AI players and how the AI landscape evolves, we believe that the breadth of our AI customer base combined with our very strong enterprise relationships and our unique cloud platform will drive substantial growth for Akamai well into the future. I’ve never been more confident in Akamai’s ability to power and protect an AI-driven world.

無論最終由誰成為主導的 AI 參與者，以及 AI 版圖如何演進，我們相信：我們廣泛的 AI 客戶基礎、非常強大的企業關係，以及我們獨特的雲端平台相結合，將在未來很長一段時間推動 Akamai 的可觀成長。我從未像現在這樣對 Akamai 為 AI 驅動的世界提供運行與保護的能力充滿信心。

Now I’ll turn the call over to Ed, who will go through our financial model and outlook.

接下來我把電話會議交給 Ed，由他說明我們的財務模型與展望。

Thanks, Tom. Before I begin reviewing Q3 results and covering Q4 guidance, I want to add to some of Tom’s commentary regarding Cloud Infrastructure Services, and more specifically the $14 billion of multi-year CIS commitments signed and announced this year.

謝謝你，Tom。在我開始回顧第三季（Q3）業績並說明第四季（Q4）指引之前，我想補充 Tom 對雲端基礎設施服務（Cloud Infrastructure Services，CIS）的一些評論，尤其是今年簽署並公布的 140 億美元多年期 CIS 承諾。

First, I’ll start by addressing some questions we have heard from investors regarding the profitability and return on investment related to these customer wins.

首先，我將先回應我們從投資人那裡聽到的一些問題，關於這些客戶勝利所帶來的獲利能力與投資報酬（ROI）。

Today we posted a slide on the quarterly results section of our investor relations website that illustrates the expected aggregate returns when the full $2.2 billion of annual revenue from these $14 billion of signed contracts is fully ramped and being recorded in our results. In addition, the slide shows our calculations for the expected after-tax internal rate of return of approximately 13% and expected non-GAAP average annual adjusted return on invested capital of approximately 15% from these deals.

今天我們在投資人關係網站的季度業績專區發布了一張投影片，說明當這些已簽署合約的 140 億美元在我們的業績中完全爬坡並開始認列後，預期可帶來的整體（aggregate）報酬。此外，該投影片也展示了我們的計算：這些交易的預期稅後內部報酬率（IRR）約為 13%，以及預期非 GAAP 的平均年度投入資本調整後報酬率（adjusted ROIC）約為 15%。

As you can see from the slide, we expect the aggregate total revenue once fully ramped to be approximately $2.2 billion a year and to deliver an aggregate of approximately 75% adjusted EBITDA margin and approximately 30% non-GAAP operating margin. As stated previously, we expect this revenue to begin ramping in Q4 2026 and to be fully ramped by the end of 2028.

如投影片所示，我們預期在完全爬坡後的整體總營收約為每年 22 億美元，並可帶來整體約 75% 的調整後 EBITDA 利潤率，以及約 30% 的非 GAAP 營業利潤率。如先前所述，我們預期這些營收將於 2026 年第四季（Q4 2026）開始爬坡，並在 2028 年底前完成全面爬坡。

Second, as Tom mentioned, we have begun recognizing revenue from two of the first three major CIS contracts representing $2.8 billion in total contract value. We are in the final testing phase on the third contract, and we expect it to start generating revenue soon. As Tom mentioned, revenue for two of these deals has been delayed due to some supply chain and third-party data center delays. I’m happy to report these issues have been resolved. As a result of these delays, we expect approximately $30 million of revenue will shift from Q4 into 2027.

第二，如 Tom 所提到，我們已開始就前三大 CIS 合約中的其中兩份認列營收，這三份合約合計合約總價值（TCV）為 28 億美元。第三份合約目前正處於最終測試階段，我們預期很快就會開始產生營收。如 Tom 所提到，其中兩筆交易的營收因部分供應鏈與第三方資料中心延遲而有所延後。我很高興報告，這些問題已經解決。由於這些延遲，我們預期約 3,000 萬美元的營收將從第四季移轉至 2027 年。

I want to be very clear; any timing delays do not impact the total revenue over the contract period or result in any penalties. They simply adjust the revenue recognition timing across periods.

我想非常清楚地說明；任何時程延遲都不會影響合約期間的總營收，也不會導致任何罰則。它們僅會調整各期間之間的營收認列時點。

Next, regarding the recent $11.6 billion deal announced a few weeks ago, we are pleased to confirm that we have secured and contracted for all the necessary space and power, or [colo], required to deliver the full contract value, with these sites expected to be available to us throughout the revenue ramp period previously outlined. In addition, we’ve secured approximately 70% of all the necessary hardware, memory, and other components needed to deliver on this contract, including $1.7 billion of memory and other critical items in Q4 2026.

接下來，關於幾週前宣布的近期 116 億美元交易，我們很高興確認，我們已取得並簽約所有交付完整合約價值所需的空間與電力（或稱 [colo]），且預期這些站點在先前所說明的營收爬坡期間都可供我們使用。此外，我們已確保約 70% 交付此合約所需的硬體、記憶體及其他元件，包括在 2026 年第四季取得 17 億美元的記憶體及其他關鍵項目。

As a reminder, this $11.6 billion contract has a pricing adjustment mechanism that is designed to address any possible price changes in the hardware, memory, and other components not ordered. Therefore, our margin is protected if prices happen to rise between now and when we place the orders for the remaining hardware and other components.

提醒一下，這份 116 億美元合約包含價格調整機制，旨在因應尚未下單之硬體、記憶體及其他元件可能出現的任何價格變動。因此，若從現在到我們為剩餘硬體與其他元件下單之間價格上漲，我們的毛利率仍可受到保護。

Finally, looking ahead, we expect CIS revenue of $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion in 2027, which will help drive total company revenue growth in the range of 17% to 22% in constant currency year-over-year, and we expect total company revenue growth to further accelerate the following year, surpassing $7 billion in 2028. It’s important to point out the $7 billion expectation in total company revenue in 2028 assumes no additional orders from Anthropic beyond the $11.6 billion we announced in late September, meaning we do not assume any revenue from the $9 billion option related to the Anthropic relationship.

最後，展望未來，我們預期 2027 年 CIS 營收為 11 億至 13 億美元，這將有助於推動公司整體營收以固定匯率計年增 17% 至 22%，並且我們預期隔年公司整體營收成長將進一步加速，於 2028 年突破 70 億美元。需要特別指出的是，2028 年公司整體營收達 70 億美元的預期，假設 Anthropic 除了我們在 9 月下旬宣布的 116 億美元之外不再追加任何訂單，也就是說，我們不假設來自與 Anthropic 關係相關之 90 億美元選擇權的任何營收。

In conclusion, we are very confident in our ability to deliver on the revenue we outlined today. While quarterly revenue may fluctuate slightly against the initial schedule for some of these large contracts, any shifts in timing will have no impact on the total revenue or profitability over the life of these agreements.

總結而言，我們對於達成今天所概述的營收交付能力非常有信心。雖然部分大型合約的季度營收可能相較於初始時程略有波動，但任何時點上的移動都不會影響這些協議存續期間的總營收或獲利能力。

Now, moving on to Q3. Total revenue in the third quarter was $1.122 billion, up 6% year-over-year as reported and up 7% in constant currency. Cloud Infrastructure Services, or CIS, revenue was $109 million, representing 34% year-over-year growth as reported and 35% in constant currency. Security revenue maintained strong momentum with revenue of $622 million, up 9% year-over-year as reported and 10% in constant currency. The strength in the third quarter continued to be driven by our fast-growing API Security and Guardicore Segmentation solutions.

現在，轉到第三季。第三季總營收為 11.22 億美元，按報告口徑年增 6%，以固定匯率計年增 7%。雲端基礎設施服務（CIS）營收為 1.09 億美元，按報告口徑年增 34%，以固定匯率計年增 35%。資安營收維持強勁動能，營收為 6.22 億美元，按報告口徑年增 9%，以固定匯率計年增 10%。第三季的強勁表現持續由我們快速成長的 API Security 與 Guardicore Segmentation 解決方案所帶動。

Moving to Delivery and Other Cloud Applications, revenue was $391 million, down 3% year-over-year as reported, and in constant currency. International revenue was $563 million, up 7% year-over-year, or up 9% in constant currency, representing approximately 50% of total revenue in Q3. Foreign exchange fluctuations had a negative impact on revenue of $1 million on a sequential basis and negative $7 million on a year-over-year basis.

再看交付與其他雲端應用，營收為 3.91 億美元，按報告口徑年減 3%，以固定匯率計亦年減 3%。國際營收為 5.63 億美元，年增 7%，以固定匯率計年增 9%，約占第三季總營收的 50%。匯率波動對營收的影響為：按季減少 100 萬美元，按年減少 700 萬美元。

Moving to profitability, in Q3 we generated non-GAAP net income of $262 million for $1.77 of earnings per diluted share, down 5% year-over-year as reported and down 2% in constant currency. Non-GAAP operating margin for Q3 was 25%, in line with our expectations, and Q3 CapEx was $464 million, or 41% of revenue. Third quarter CapEx came in slightly below guidance, primarily due to the timing of equipment deliveries shifting into the fourth quarter.

再看獲利能力，第三季我們產生非 GAAP 淨利 2.62 億美元，稀釋後每股盈餘為 1.77 美元，按報告口徑年減 5%，以固定匯率計年減 2%。第三季非 GAAP 營業利益率為 25%，符合我們的預期；第三季資本支出（CapEx）為 4.64 億美元，約占營收的 41%。第三季資本支出略低於指引，主要是因設備交付時點延後至第四季。

Moving to cash and our capital allocation strategy, in Q3 we did not repurchase any stock. Year-to-date, we have repurchased roughly 5 million shares for a total of approximately $616 million. We ended the third quarter with approximately $565 million remaining on our current repurchase authorization. As of September 30, we had approximately $4.2 billion of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. I’d like to touch on our current capital plan and funding outlook.

再看現金與我們的資本配置策略，第三季我們未回購任何股票。年初至今，我們已回購約 500 萬股，總金額約 6.16 億美元。第三季結束時，我們在現行回購授權下尚餘約 5.65 億美元。截至 9 月 30 日，我們持有約 42 億美元的現金、約當現金與有價證券。我想談一下我們目前的資本計畫與資金展望。

Based on our current plan, we currently expect to fund our CIS expansion and broader growth investments through 2028, as well as address our 2027 convertible note maturity primarily through our existing cash balance and expected operating cash flows, which may be supplemented by measured incremental financing activities as appropriate. We remain highly disciplined in our approach to capital allocation. To the extent we access external capital, we will evaluate flexible, cost-effective structures with a clear focus on preserving shareholder value.

依據我們目前的計畫，我們預期透過 2028 年為止的 CIS 擴張與更廣泛的成長投資，以及 2027 年可轉換公司債到期的因應，主要將由現有現金餘額與預期的營運現金流支應，並視需要以審慎、漸進的融資活動作為補充。我們在資本配置上仍維持高度紀律。若我們動用外部資本，我們將評估具彈性且具成本效益的架構，並明確聚焦於維護股東價值。

As our CIS customer commitments ramp, we expect a meaningful increase in our operating cash flow beginning in 2028, which we expect will enhance our ability to fund our operations and investments from internally generated cash and reduce leverage over time. Before providing our fourth quarter and full-year 2026 guidance, I’d like to touch on a few housekeeping items.

隨著 CIS 客戶承諾逐步放量，我們預期自 2028 年起營運現金流將顯著增加，這將提升我們以內部產生現金為營運與投資提供資金的能力，並隨時間降低槓桿。在提供第四季與 2026 全年指引之前，我想先說明幾項例行事項。

First, as a reminder, our Q4 2025 results included an unusually high $18 million contribution from Security license revenue. We expect this year will return to a normal level of $4 million to $5 million of license revenue in the fourth quarter.

第一，提醒一下，我們 2025 年第四季的結果包含一筆異常偏高的 1,800 萬美元資安授權（license）營收貢獻。我們預期今年第四季將回到正常水準，授權營收約為 400 萬至 500 萬美元。

Second, regarding Q4 operating expenses, as is typical for our business, we expect them to be higher than in Q3.The main driver is the seasonal jump in sales commissions as most of our successful reps achieve their annual quota accelerators. In addition, in Q4 this year, we expect additional margin pressure this quarter driven by the ramping of CIS expense, mainly colocation costs ahead of revenue.

第二，關於第四季營業費用，如同我們業務的典型情況，我們預期其將高於第三季。主要驅動因素是季節性銷售佣金跳升，因為多數表現優異的業務代表會達成其年度配額加速器。此外，今年第四季我們預期本季將面臨額外的毛利率壓力，原因在於 CIS 費用的爬坡，主要是營收尚未認列前的機房代管（colocation）成本。

Third, we remain on track to spend approximately $1.7 billion in Q4 2026 to secure and pre-purchase critical supply chain components, notably memory, to support our large Anthropic contract we announced a few weeks ago. This will substantially increase our CapEx spend in Q4 and lower our interest income for the quarter. As a reminder, depreciation of this equipment will begin when we start to recognize revenue throughout 2027 and in 2028.

第三，我們仍按計畫在 2026 年第四季支出約 17 億美元，以確保並預先採購關鍵供應鏈元件（尤其是記憶體），以支援我們幾週前宣布的大型 Anthropic 合約。這將大幅提高我們第四季的資本支出，並降低本季的利息收入。提醒一下，這些設備的折舊將在我們於 2027 年及 2028 年開始認列營收時啟動。

And finally, going forward, we do not plan on announcing every large CIS transaction unless mandated by SEC disclosure rules. We will continue to highlight notable commercial wins as part of our regular quarterly narrative, and we will keep investors updated as our capital deployment priorities and revenue dynamics continue to evolve.

最後，展望未來，除非受 SEC 揭露規則要求，否則我們不打算宣布每一筆大型 CIS 交易。我們將持續在例行的季度敘事中強調重要的商業勝利，並在我們的資本部署優先順序與營收動態持續演進之際，持續向投資人更新。

Moving now to guidance for the fourth quarter, we are projecting revenue in the range of $1.145 billion to $1.170 billion, up 5% to 7% as reported, and in constant currency over Q4 2025. At current spot rates, foreign exchange fluctuations are expected to have a negative $4 million impact on Q4 revenue compared to Q3 levels and a negative $5 million impact year-over-year. At these revenue levels, we expect cash gross margin of approximately 70%. Q4 non-GAAP operating expenses are projected to be $368 million to $378 million.

現在轉到第四季指引，我們預估營收介於 11.45 億至 11.70 億美元，較 2025 年第四季按報告口徑年增 5% 至 7%，以固定匯率計亦同。以目前即期匯率計，預期匯率波動相較第三季水準將對第四季營收造成 400 萬美元的負面影響，按年則為 500 萬美元的負面影響。在此營收水準下，我們預期現金毛利率約為 70%。第四季非 GAAP 營業費用預估為 3.68 億至 3.78 億美元。

We anticipate Q4 adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 38%. We expect non-GAAP depreciation expense of $165 million to $167 million. We expect non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 24%. With the overall revenue and spend configuration I just outlined, we expect Q4 non-GAAP EPS in the range of $1.5 to $1.7. The EPS guidance assumes taxes of $48 million to $54 million based on an estimated quarterly non-GAAP tax rate of approximately 18%. It also reflects a fully diluted share count of approximately 149 million shares.

我們預期第四季調整後 EBITDA 利潤率約為 38%。我們預期非 GAAP 折舊費用為 1.65 億至 1.67 億美元。我們預期非 GAAP 營業利益率約為 24%。依據我剛才概述的整體營收與支出配置，我們預期第四季非 GAAP 每股盈餘（EPS）介於 1.5 至 1.7 美元。EPS 指引假設稅額為 4,800 萬至 5,400 萬美元，係基於估計的季度非 GAAP 稅率約 18%。此外亦反映完全稀釋後股數約為 1.49 億股。

Moving to CapEx, for the reasons I highlighted earlier, we expect to spend approximately $2.445 billion to $2.645 billion in the fourth quarter. Looking ahead to the full year 2026, we expect revenue of $4.44 billion to $4.465 billion, which is up 6% as reported and up 5% to 6% in constant currency.

談到資本支出（CapEx），基於我先前強調的原因，我們預期第四季將支出約 24.45 億美元至 26.45 億美元。展望 2026 全年，我們預期營收為 44.40 億美元至 44.65 億美元，按報告口徑成長 6%，按固定匯率口徑成長 5% 至 6%。

For Cloud Infrastructure Services, we are now expecting revenue growth of 40% to 42% year-over-year in constant currency. We continue to expect Security revenue growth in the high single digits on a constant currency basis in 2026. And for Delivery and Other Cloud Apps, we continue to expect a decline in the mid-single digits year-over-year on a constant currency basis.

就雲端基礎設施服務（Cloud Infrastructure Services）而言，我們目前預期按固定匯率口徑的年增營收成長為 40% 至 42%。我們仍預期 2026 年安全（Security）營收按固定匯率口徑將以高個位數成長。至於交付（Delivery）及其他雲端應用（Other Cloud Apps），我們仍預期按固定匯率口徑的年增將下滑中個位數。

At current spot rates, our guidance assumes foreign exchange will have a positive $5 million impact to revenue in 2026 on a year-over-year basis. Moving to operating margins for 2026, we are estimating a non-GAAP operating margin of approximately 25% as measured in today’s FX rates.

以目前即期匯率計算，我們的指引假設外匯在 2026 年相較去年將對營收帶來正向 500 萬美元的影響。談到 2026 年的營業利潤率，我們估計以今日匯率衡量的非 GAAP 營業利潤率約為 25%。

Turning to CapEx, at this time, we anticipate that our full-year capital expenditures will be in the range of $3.462 billion to $3.662 billion. Moving to EPS for the full year 2026, we expect non-GAAP earnings per diluted share in the range of $6.47 to $6.68. This non-GAAP earnings guidance is based on a non-GAAP effective tax rate of 18.5% and a fully diluted share count of 148 million shares.

回到資本支出（CapEx），目前我們預期全年資本支出將落在 34.62 億美元至 36.62 億美元之間。至於 2026 全年 EPS，我們預期非 GAAP 稀釋後每股盈餘介於 6.47 美元至 6.68 美元。此非 GAAP 獲利指引係以 18.5% 的非 GAAP 有效稅率，以及 1.48 億股的完全稀釋後股數為基礎。

With that, I’ll wrap things up, and Tom and I are happy to take your questions. Operator.

以上我就先做個總結，Tom 和我很樂意回答各位的問題。主持人。

(Operator Instructions) John DiFucci, Guggenheim.

(主持人指示) John DiFucci，Guggenheim。

Thank you. So thanks for all the information, Ed and Tom. This is great. It’s really helpful.

謝謝。所以謝謝你們提供所有資訊，Ed 和 Tom。這很棒。真的很有幫助。

I think you made it clear last quarter not to expect acceleration of CIS in 3Q, and it was nice of you to see, not to rub it in our faces, but somehow the consensus was above, did show acceleration. But you pretty much did what you said you were going to do this quarter. But now you lowered ’26 revenue, which you talked about due to the supply chain issues.

我想你們在上季已經講得很清楚，不要期待 CIS 在第三季加速；而你們也很貼心地——不是要把我們的臉按在地上摩擦——但不知怎地市場共識卻高於你們的說法，顯示出加速。不過你們這一季基本上就是照你們說的去做。但你們現在下調了 2026 年營收，並表示是因為供應鏈問題。

Can you give more detail on the near-term bottlenecks here? And related, we appreciate the long-term outlook, but how confident are you in that 2027 CIS revenue, and can you help a little on how that ramps through the year? Assuming we all listen to what you’re telling us. Thanks.

你們能否更詳細說明短期的瓶頸是什麼？另外，我們很感謝你們提供長期展望，但你們對 2027 年 CIS 營收有多大把握？也能否稍微說明一下它在一年當中是如何逐步爬升的？前提是我們都會照你們告訴我們的去聽。謝謝。

Yeah, good question. These were minor kinds of things with the data centers. You can think of it like a punch list on a construction project. Not uncommon. And we normally plan for some delays.

是的，問得好。這些是資料中心方面一些比較小的事項。你可以把它想成建築工程的收尾清單（punch list）。這並不罕見。而且我們通常也會為一些延遲做規劃。

They were worse in this case than we planned for. Not a big deal, couple months of delay, no loss of revenue. It just pushes to next year. We are very confident in, in our estimates next year. And you can see from the ranges that we’ve accounted for pretty substantial delays if they were to take place.

但這次的情況比我們原先規劃的更嚴重一些。不算什麼大事，延遲幾個月，不會造成營收流失。只是把它推到明年。我們對明年的預估非常有信心。而且你可以從我們給的區間看出來，如果真的發生，我們已經把相當程度的延遲納入考量。

And there’s upside, if that doesn’t happen, but very confident next year. And ramping, you want to think about it ramping, heavily through the year. And Ed, do you want to talk a little bit more about that?

如果沒有發生那些延遲，還有上行空間，但我們對明年非常有信心。至於爬升節奏，你可以把它想成在一年當中會明顯地逐步加速。Ed，你要不要再多談一點？

Yeah. Hey, John, thanks for the questions. Yeah. The way to think about it, I’ll break it in half for you because again, quarters, you may have a little shift from quarter to quarter but think about 25% to 30% in the first half, 70% to 75% in the back half. As you’re thinking about sort of the ramping, you know, take the total amount and just sort of spread it out that way. But I think it’s important you asked the question about how confident we are.

好。John，謝謝你的提問。思考方式是這樣：我把它拆成上下半年來看，因為季度之間可能會有些微移動，但你可以把上半年想成約 25% 到 30%，下半年約 70% 到 75%。在思考爬升時，把總量用這個方式大致分配即可。但我覺得你問到我們有多有信心這點很重要。

We made some commentary here. A, we’re starting to recognize revenue already. That’s a big step. Number two, we have all of the colo that’s needed for the large transaction we announced a couple of weeks ago. That’s pretty significant because as you know, colo is a tight market, but we’ve got it all signed up and ready to go. We’re just waiting for it to be delivered to us over the ramp period.

我們在這裡做了一些說明。第一，我們已經開始認列營收了。這是一大步。第二，針對我們幾週前宣布的那筆大型交易，我們已經具備所需的全部共置（colo）資源。這點相當重要，因為如你所知，共置市場供給吃緊，但我們已經全部簽妥並準備就緒。我們只是在等待於爬升期間逐步交付給我們。

Also, we have all the approvals needed, so we don't get caught up in some of the issues people are worried about with the politics, that's not an issue for us.

另外，我們也已取得所有必要的核准，因此不會被人們擔心的政治因素所牽制，這對我們不是問題。

And Tom, that was going to be my second question. There’s obviously right now a lot of fear in the market, especially when it comes to the build out of AI infrastructure. So, thanks for that ROIC slide. That’s really helpful. But math aside, and to be clear, you’re pretty much doing inference only at colo facilities. I say only, you’re not building these huge data centers out in the world. So, this can be done a lot more quickly than the large data centers used for training.

Tom，那本來就是我的第二個問題。目前市場上顯然有很多恐懼，尤其是談到 AI 基礎設施的建置。所以謝謝你們那張 ROIC 投影片。真的很有幫助。但先不談數學，講清楚一點，你們基本上是在共置機房做推論（inference）而已。我說「而已」，是指你們不是在全球各地興建那些超大型資料中心。因此，這件事可以比用於訓練的大型資料中心更快完成。

So, I guess, I think, anyway, tell me what’s right or wrong. It seems that the risk would be lower. There’s still risk in execution, but risk you can’t control is lower. Like you’re talking. Tom, the permitting, can you talk a little bit more about any risk outside your control, including power, real estate and permitting, and how that comes into your business versus others doing mainly training and building out large data centers?

所以我想——至少我是這麼認為——你告訴我哪些對、哪些不對。看起來風險應該會比較低。執行上仍有風險，但你們無法控制的風險比較低。就像你們在說的。Tom，關於你們控制範圍外的風險（包括電力、不動產與許可），你能否多談一些？以及相較於主要做訓練、並建置大型資料中心的業者，這些因素在你們的業務中如何體現？

It’s a great point. And they’re very, very different businesses with very, very different risk profiles. We have secured the power and space. It is already permitted. Not only that, we’re not talking about one or two locations, so that if something unexpected did happen, you got a big hit. With Akamai’s approach and architecture, we’re in a lot of spaces that are much smaller. And so, if, yes, some location has some small delay, not going to impact us in the big picture.

這點說得很好。而且它們是非常、非常不同的業務，風險輪廓也非常、非常不同。我們已經確保了電力與空間。而且都已經取得許可。不僅如此，我們談的也不是一兩個據點，否則一旦發生意外就會受到很大衝擊。以 Akamai 的方法與架構來看，我們分布在許多規模更小的空間。因此，即便某個據點有些小延遲，從整體來看也不會對我們造成影響。

Also makes it a lot easier for us to get the space because it’s small chunks. It’s not caught up in some permit for a nuclear power plant next door. And you’re right, we are not in the business of training the big frontier models. We don’t buy that kind of equipment. It’s a totally different approach. As I said, we’re doing mostly CPUs. We do training for enterprise-size models and post-training and inference. And, you know, as much, most of the time you’re not even using GPUs for that.

這也讓我們更容易取得空間，因為我們需要的是小區塊。不會被隔壁要蓋核電廠之類的許可問題牽連。而且你說得對，我們不做訓練那些大型前沿模型（frontier models）的生意。我們不買那種設備。這是完全不同的做法。如我所說，我們主要使用 CPU。我們會為企業規模模型做訓練，以及後訓練（post-training）與推論。而且你知道，多數時候做這些甚至不需要用到 GPU。

And this is where I think a lot of the future market is going to be, which is why we’re focusing on it. So, it’s much more profitable for us. Much lower risk profile and I really don’t see a lot of execution risk in what we’re projecting for next year. This is stuff that, that we know how to do. And yeah, we had a couple months, okay. You know, of a push, not really a big deal. And I don’t think that’s any impact on next year.

而這正是我認為未來市場很大一部分將會走向的方向，這也是我們為什麼聚焦於此。因此，對我們而言獲利能力高得多。風險輪廓低得多，而且我確實看不出我們對明年的預測在執行上有太多風險。這些都是我們知道怎麼做的事情。而且是的，我們有幾個月的時間，好吧。你知道的，就是稍微推進一下，並不是什麼大事。我也不認為那會對明年造成任何影響。

Samik Chatterjee, JPMorgan.

Samik Chatterjee，摩根大通。

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I know you said you won’t announce sort of the incremental maybe deals or wins going forward for the CIS business, but maybe if you can comment on the pipeline of demand that you’re seeing right now and when you sort of tie that together with your comments about capital raise.

嗨，感謝回答我的問題。我知道你說過，對於 CIS 業務，未來不會再宣布一些新增的、可能的交易或得標，但或許你可以評論一下你們目前看到的需求管線狀況，以及把這點和你們提到的募資（capital raise）評論連結起來。

Should we expect a capital raise only if that’s associated with more incremental wins, or maybe if you can clarify sort of how to think about pipeline conversion vis-à-vis capital raise, that will be helpful and have a follow up.

我們是否應該預期只有在與更多新增得標相關時才會進行募資，或者你能否釐清一下，該如何看待管線轉換（pipeline conversion）相對於募資之間的關係，這會很有幫助；我還有一個追問。

Yeah, we have a very strong pipeline, you know, with hundreds of customers, including, you know, some pretty substantial accounts. And we’re very optimistic about being able to close that business. And we have contracted for the power and data center space to accommodate that.

是的，我們有非常強勁的管線，你知道的，有數百家客戶，其中也包括一些相當大型的帳戶。我們對於能夠成交這些業務非常樂觀。而且我們已經就電力與資料中心空間簽約，以容納這些需求。

And I think we are in a very good position, as Ed said, with our capital, our ability to raise a modest amount of capital if we find that we need that and to do that, in a way as we’ve always done, that is very cognizant of shareholder interest.

我認為我們處於非常有利的位置，正如 Ed 所說，就資本面而言，我們有能力在需要時募集一筆適度的資金，並且一如既往，以非常顧及股東利益的方式來進行。

And I think in the prepared remarks you did mention you’re seeing the recent deals at a much stronger premium than the $22 million per megawatt that you had signed some of the earlier recent deals on.

而且我想在事先準備的講稿中你確實提到，你們看到近期交易的溢價明顯更強，較你們先前一些近期交易所簽的每兆瓦 2,200 萬美元更高。

Can you just help us think about sort of the magnitude of the premium we are seeing and how does that sort of change the returns that you are putting sort of showing us in the slides today? What are the sort of magnitude or difference that you’re seeing in the market? How does that change the difference between the IRR to the cost of capital that investors should expect? Thank you.

你能否協助我們理解目前看到的溢價幅度大概是多少，以及這會如何改變你們今天投影片中向我們展示的報酬？你們在市場上看到的幅度或差異大概是什麼？這會如何改變投資人應該預期的 IRR 相對於資本成本之間的差距？謝謝。

Yes, I’ll start and then Ed will get into the details on this. But yeah, apples to apples, we are seeing improved pricing and I think part of that is because we’re getting a lot better known in the marketplace, which is very helpful. And Ed, do you want to talk about the details on the IRR and the economics?

好的，我先開始，然後 Ed 會進一步說明細節。不過是的，在可比基礎上（apples to apples），我們確實看到定價改善；我認為其中一部分原因是我們在市場上變得更為人所知，這非常有幫助。Ed，你要談談 IRR 與經濟性（economics）的細節嗎？

Yeah, sure. I mean, we gave you those numbers just because I know there’s been a lot of debate on terms of how you would calculate it. So, we provided more information so you can calculate it and, you know, those are good returns for us, obviously.

好的，當然。我的意思是，我們提供那些數字，是因為我知道大家一直在爭論應該如何計算。所以我們提供更多資訊，讓你們可以自行計算；而且你知道的，對我們而言那顯然是很好的報酬。

Now I want you guys to keep in mind these are for the largest volume and the longest term. And the standard in the industry today is if you were to go buy something uncommitted, you’re going to pay the highest rate. So the no commitment, low volume, you have the highest rate. So these are the lowest prices you’re going to see on a unit economic basis. So, look at that as sort of your floor as far as what pricing is.

現在我希望各位記住，這些是針對最大量、最長期的情境。而目前業界的標準是，如果你去買一個沒有承諾（uncommitted）的方案，你會付出最高的費率。所以沒有承諾、低量的情況，費率最高。因此，從單位經濟（unit economic）的角度來看，這些是你會看到的最低價格。所以，把那個視為定價的底部（floor）。

So, if somebody’s going to commit to half the amount or a third of the amount and a tenth of the volume, they’re not going to get anywhere near those prices. So that’s pretty good to see. Like for the largest possible deal to lock in that kind of return for seven years is a very, very good business for us and for our shareholders. And the deals that are coming in are coming in higher.

所以，如果有人只願意承諾一半、三分之一的量，或只有十分之一的用量，他們不可能拿到接近那些價格。因此看到這點相當不錯。像是以最大的可能交易規模，鎖定七年期的那種報酬，對我們以及我們的股東而言都是非常、非常好的生意。而且目前進來的交易價格更高。

Now keep in mind this business, a lot of what drives the unit pricing at the other side, like on the sort of buy side, is based on the component cost. So as component costs are going up, the market accepts higher prices. So the margins are insulated in the fact that if we see colocation costs go up or if we see component costs go up, we can raise our pricing for the next deals we lock in. As we talked about these long-term deals, we’ve got mechanisms in place to deal with any pricing, but usually what happens is we’ve got the colo locked up for a long period of time and we’ve got the equipment purchased.

另外請記住，這個業務在另一端（例如買方端）驅動單位定價的因素，很大一部分取決於零組件成本。因此當零組件成本上升時，市場會接受更高的價格。所以我們的利潤率具有一定的緩衝：如果我們看到機房代管（colocation）成本上升，或看到零組件成本上升，我們就能提高下一批鎖定交易的定價。如同我們談到的這些長期合約，我們有機制來處理任何定價變動；但通常發生的情況是，我們把 colo 以很長的期間鎖定下來，同時也把設備採購完成。

So we’re doing a really good job of securing margins and what you see there on those big deals is the lowest you’re going to typically see.

因此我們在確保利潤率方面做得非常好，而你在那些大型交易上看到的，通常就是你會看到的最低水準。

Jackson Ader, KeyBanc.

Jackson Ader，KeyBanc。

Great. Thanks for taking our questions, guys. Ed, if I can follow up just on the margin, you know, I appreciate the first half, second half look for revenue build next year. But what is, you know, is the margin going to lag like it is here in the fourth quarter? Before that revenue really takes a step up, any direction would be helpful.

很好。感謝各位回答我們的問題。Ed，如果我可以就利潤率追問一下，我很感謝你對明年營收在上半年、下半年的成長節奏所做的說明。但利潤率會不會像第四季這樣落後？在營收真正大幅躍升之前，任何指引都會很有幫助。

Yeah, sure. So just to give you a little bit more picture, generally when you do these big build-outs, you’re going to have your colocation cost come in ahead of revenue. And the other issue is when you’re doing the long-term colo commitments, they do come with price escalators. So you do have to put, you know, the straight-line effect of that. So what ends up happening is you end up taking a non-cash charge because you’re actually booking a cost higher than what you’re paying for with colocation.

好的，當然。為了讓你更清楚，一般來說，當你做這些大型建置（build-outs）時，你的機房代管成本（colocation cost）會先於營收發生。另一個問題是，當你做長期的 colo 承諾時，合約會包含價格調升條款（price escalators）。因此你必須把它做直線法（straight-line）的影響。所以最後會發生的是，你會認列一筆非現金費用，因為你帳上入帳的成本其實高於你實際支付的 colo 費用。

We estimate that’ll put about a point or two of pressure on margins next year. That said, I think we’ll bottom out probably in the first half in terms of margins, maybe a point or so lower from where we are now. And we should be operating in the mid-20s, keeping in mind that you’ve got this one to two point non-cash pressure on the margin that sort of works itself out over time.

我們估計這會在明年對利潤率造成大約 1 到 2 個百分點的壓力。即便如此，我認為就利潤率而言，我們大概會在上半年觸底，可能比目前水準再低大約 1 個百分點左右。而我們應該會在 20% 中段（mid-20s）運行；請記住，這其中包含那 1 到 2 個百分點的非現金壓力，會隨時間逐步消化。

The other thing is just some of these buinld-outs, there are other costs, what we call network build and support. We have some one-time costs for things like freight, small equipment, consulting contractors that go and build and stuff like that. So that can also put some near-term pressure. But as you can see with the slide we provide you, what you’re going to see happen here is margins sort of bottom out in the first half of next year, start to improve, and we’re going to really see a ton of leverage on the EBITDA margin that should expand pretty significantly through ’28.

另外，有些建置還會有其他成本，我們稱之為網路建置與支援（network build and support）。我們會有一些一次性成本，例如運費、小型設備、顧問承包商去現場建置等等。因此這也可能在短期內造成一些壓力。但如你從我們提供的投影片所見，接下來你會看到利潤率在明年上半年左右觸底，之後開始改善，而我們將在 EBITDA 利潤率上看到大量的營運槓桿，並且應該會一路到 2028 年顯著擴張。

Got it. Okay, great. That is really helpful. And then Dr. Tom, the CapEx per megawatt being higher than the NeoClouds, but that’s a good thing. I just need a quick explanation of that. Thank you.

了解。好的，很好。這真的很有幫助。另外，Tom 博士，每兆瓦的資本支出（CapEx）高於 NeoClouds，但那其實是好事。我只需要一個簡短的解釋。謝謝。

That is a great question. You know, and CapEx per megawatt is higher at Akamai because we use less megawatts for our CapEx. And so if your denominator gets smaller because you’re using less power, the ratio of CapEx to megawatt gets bigger. So the less power we use and the more efficient we are, the higher our CapEx per megawatt is. In fact, say we could power our servers with no power, we would have infinite CapEx per megawatt. And so the trouble people get into when they model based on per megawatt is that your CapEx per megawatt, you think, oh, that should be small.

這是個很好的問題。你知道，Akamai 的每兆瓦資本支出（CapEx）會比較高，因為我們用在 CapEx 上的兆瓦數比較少。因此，如果你的分母因為用電更少而變小，CapEx 對兆瓦的比率就會變大。所以我們用電越少、效率越高，每兆瓦 CapEx 就越高。事實上，假設我們可以讓伺服器在不耗電的情況下運作，那每兆瓦 CapEx 會是無限大。所以人們在用「每兆瓦」來建模時容易遇到的問題是：你會以為每兆瓦 CapEx 應該要很小。

In fact, you want it to be large because that means you’re using less power for your infrastructure. So it is a big advantage for us. Now, revenue per megawatt matters, CapEx matters and we have very good revenue per megawatt. Does that help?

其實你會希望它很大，因為那代表你用更少的電力來支撐你的基礎設施。所以這對我們來說是很大的優勢。現在，每兆瓦營收很重要、CapEx 也很重要，而我們的每兆瓦營收非常好。這樣有幫助嗎？

Another thing I'll just add is you tend to see higher revenue per megawatt in CPU deals than you do in GPU deals. So you could have two identical deals. One that’s, say, $15 million a megawatt with, say, 1 megawatt is going to cost you about $4 million in colocation. So you have $4 million in depreciation, a million of other costs that get you to a 40% margin. Well, you could be getting $25 million per megawatt on a CPU deal with, again, $4 million of colo costs, $10 million in depreciation, a million of other costs and that’s 40% margin.

另外我再補充一點：你通常會看到 CPU 交易的每兆瓦營收高於 GPU 交易。所以你可能會有兩筆完全相同的交易。其中一筆例如每兆瓦 1,500 萬美元，而假設 1 兆瓦的機房代管（colocation）成本大約是 400 萬美元。那你會有 400 萬美元的折舊，再加上 100 萬美元的其他成本，讓你達到 40% 的毛利率。但在 CPU 交易上，你可能每兆瓦可以拿到 2,500 萬美元的收入，同樣是 400 萬美元的代管成本、1,000 萬美元的折舊、100 萬美元的其他成本，毛利率同樣是 40%。

So you got to keep in mind that you do get higher revenue per megawatt out of your CPUs than GPUs.

所以你必須記住，CPU 帶來的每兆瓦營收確實會比 GPU 更高。

The CPUs are more power efficient, so you're in a better position.

CPU 的用電效率更高，所以你的處境會更有利。

Jeff Van Rhee, Craig-Hallum.

Jeff Van Rhee，Craig-Hallum。

Hey guys, this is Vijay Homan on for Jeff. First one for me, it just looks like the decline in delivery and other cloud apps kind of moderated a little bit this quarter. Just any update on delivery, pricing or bit growth and then expectations for those two factors, how they’ll evolve over the next 6 to 12 months.

各位好，我是代替 Jeff 的 Vijay Homan。我第一個問題是，看起來本季 Delivery 與其他雲端應用的下滑似乎稍微趨緩了一些。想請問對於 Delivery、定價或位元（bit）成長有沒有任何更新，以及對這兩個因素在未來 6 到 12 個月如何演變的預期。

Yeah, good question. Really nothing on pricing? I’d say we’re probably holding pricing better now than we have for a long period of time. And actually, if you look at the last four quarters, you see kind of the delivery in cloud apps is sort of stable, right? It’s within plus or minus a $1 million or $2 million every quarter. And that’s usually, you know, seasonality. There’s some, you know, seasonality in there. Maybe there’s a big renewal in there, but generally speaking it’s kind of flattish.

是的，好問題。定價方面真的沒有什麼特別的變化。我會說，我們現在對價格的維持能力，可能比過去很長一段時間都來得好。而且其實如果你看過去四個季度，你會看到雲端應用中的 Delivery 大致上是穩定的，對吧？每一季大概就在正負 100 萬到 200 萬美元的範圍內。而那通常就是，你知道，季節性因素。裡面有一些季節性。也許其中有一筆大型續約，但整體而言就是有點持平。

And I’d say going forward I think we’re sort of in that stable period, you know, down a point or two or three or whatever, but it’s, you know, it’s stabilizing. Pricing’s getting a little bit better, and we are being very selective as we move forward here with our, especially in our big media business.

我會說往前看，我認為我們大概處在那個穩定期，你知道，可能下滑一個點、兩個點、三個點之類的，但它正在穩定下來。定價也在變得稍微好一些，而且我們在往前推進時會非常有選擇性，特別是在我們的大型媒體業務上。

Got it. Got it. That's helpful. And then just one follow-up on the LayerX acquisition. Just now it's been closed for a couple of months. If you could just talk a little bit about how that integration is going and then any commentary on the revenue potential maybe over the next, I don't know, couple of years would be great. Thanks.

了解。了解。這很有幫助。接著追問一個關於收購 LayerX 的問題。現在交易完成也有幾個月了。如果你能談談整合進展如何，以及對未來一兩年左右的營收潛力有任何評論就太好了。謝謝。

Integration is going great and already a lot of sales, including with some big-name enterprises, including a leading satellite and streaming TV company in the US is using it. And I think there’s a very strong potential for growth there. And what LayerX does is it makes sure that your employee workforce is not uploading company secrets and data into prompts when they’re using AI, among other things. So it makes sure your workforce stays safe as they’re using AI.

整合進行得非常順利，而且已經有很多銷售進展，包括一些知名的大型企業；其中美國一家領先的衛星與串流電視公司正在使用。我認為那裡有非常強的成長潛力。LayerX 的作用之一，是在員工使用 AI 時，確保他們不會把公司的機密與資料上傳到提示詞（prompts）裡，等等。所以它能確保員工在使用 AI 時保持安全。

And the feedback in the analyst community, very strong. And the customer feedback there. Recent report we came out very well with a score of 4.8 out of 5 in terms of customer satisfaction. So, you know, early days of course, but good integration and strong results so far.

而且分析師社群的回饋非常強。客戶回饋也是如此。我們最近發布的一份報告中，在客戶滿意度方面拿到 4.8（滿分 5 分）的高分。所以你知道，當然還在早期，但整合良好、目前成果也很強。

Sanjit Singh, Morgan Stanley.

Sanjit Singh，Morgan Stanley。

Hi, this is Abhishek Murley on for Sanjit Singh. Thanks for taking the question.

嗨，我是代替 Sanjit Singh 的 Abhishek Murley。謝謝讓我提問。

Maybe one for Ed. Previously you’ve spoken to a willingness to drop below investment grade, and I understand some of that is kind of a mechanical thing as these deals ramp and the EBITDA disclosure is helpful for that. Curious how you’re thinking about that dynamic going forward, just given the recent uptick in scrutiny around financing and anything you can share around cost of debt or cost of equity.

可能有一題給 Ed。你之前談到過願意讓信用評等降到投資級以下；我理解其中一部分在這些交易爬坡時算是機械性的影響，而 EBITDA 的揭露對理解這點也有幫助。想請教你對未來這種動態的看法，尤其考量近期市場對融資的審視有所升溫；以及你是否能分享任何關於債務成本或股權成本的資訊。

Yeah, sure. You broke up there a little bit. I didn’t quite hear exactly what you said. You said we made a comment about investment grade. Can you just repeat that part?

好的，當然。你剛剛訊號有點斷斷續續。我沒有完全聽清楚你說的內容。你是說我們曾經評論過投資級的事情。你可以把那一段再重複一次嗎？

Yeah, sure. Previously you’ve mentioned a willingness to potentially not or to drop below investment grade. So I’m just curious how you’re thinking about that around the broader scrutiny around financing and whether you guys are still open to that possibility.

好的，當然。你之前提到過可能願意不維持、或是讓評等降到投資級以下。所以我想了解，在外界對融資的整體審視加強之下，你們現在怎麼看這件事，以及你們是否仍然對這種可能性持開放態度。

Yeah, I mean, just to be clear, I mean our goal would be to maintain investment grade as long as we certainly can. You know, if there is a time that you had to raise additional capital to go below investment grade, which we don’t think we’re in that position. But maintaining investment grade is helpful. It’s actually for our colo investments that we make with our colo providers. Having that is helpful for us to be able to get space and power. We’re more attractive as a customer to those customers.

是的，我的意思是，先講清楚，我們的目標是只要可以，就盡可能維持投資級。你知道，如果有某個時點你必須為了籌措額外資本而讓評等降到投資級以下——我們不認為我們目前處在那種狀況。但維持投資級是有幫助的。實際上，對於我們與機房代管（colo）供應商一起做的代管投資而言，擁有投資級評等對我們取得機櫃空間與電力是有幫助的。有了這個，我們更容易取得空間與電力。對那些供應商來說，我們作為客戶也更具吸引力。

So obviously we’ve been investment grade for a very long time. We’re going to try to keep it that way. If there was a reason and you were to go and raise capital, then you happen to get a notch down or something like that, we would work as quickly as possible to get back to investment grade.

所以很明顯，我們維持投資級已經很長一段時間了。我們會努力讓它保持如此。如果真的有原因需要去籌資，而因此評等剛好被降一級之類的，我們會盡快努力回到投資級。

And you bring up a good point. The expansion of EBITDA is interesting because that’s the primary metric. And if you look at what our leverage ratio is now, just the EBITDA that we’re going to be adding in the next two years is going to substantially increase our ability to buy and remain in investment grade territory, so we get an enormous amount of flexibility. So, I think we’re in great shape.

而你提到一個很好的點。EBITDA 的擴張很有意思，因為那是主要的衡量指標。如果你看我們現在的槓桿比率，僅僅是我們在未來兩年將新增的 EBITDA，就會大幅提升我們的承擔能力，並讓我們能維持在投資級區間，因此我們會獲得非常大的彈性。所以，我認為我們的狀況非常好。

James Fish, Piper Sandler.

James Fish，Piper Sandler。

Hey, guys, I did want to go back to Mr. DiFucci’s earlier question around confidence here, just because, look, I get this is a new business for you guys, but you guys did talk about a deceleration on the last print for compute. But let’s face it, we’ve kind of missed compute or only been in line on virtually every quarter that you’ve had this business, and now you’re putting out a target that’s well above what we were all expecting.

各位好，我確實想回到 DiFucci 先生先前關於這裡信心的問題，因為，坦白說，我理解這對你們來說是個新業務，但你們也確實談到上一次公布的 compute 有所放緩。但說實話，在你們經營這項業務的幾乎每一季，我們不是錯過 compute，就是僅僅符合預期，而現在你們提出的目標明顯高於我們所有人的預期。

So, what’s giving the confidence or why do you feel the need at this stage to put this out when, frankly, we haven’t seen you guys hit your corporate or your compute numbers really yet? Maybe, Ed, walk us through why, what has to happen to hit the $1.1 billion versus the $1.3 billion next year and why and just help us help you?

所以，是什麼帶來這份信心？或者說，為什麼你們在這個階段覺得有必要提出這個目標？畢竟，老實說，我們還沒真正看到你們達成公司的整體目標或 compute 的數字。也許 Ed，你可以帶我們梳理一下：要達到明年 11 億美元相較於 13 億美元分別需要發生什麼、原因是什麼，也請幫我們理解你們的邏輯？

Yeah, sure. I mean, I’m not going to go litigate the past, so let’s just focus on going forward. If I look at the range that we’ve given you, obviously you have to look at a few things.

好的，當然。我的意思是，我不打算去爭論過去，所以我們就專注在未來。如果我看我們給出的區間，顯然你得看幾個因素。

One, do we have the contracts signed to be able to hit those numbers? The answer there is yes. Number two, do you have all the power that you need? The answer is yes. Do we have all the equipment that we need? We have the majority of it. And the remainder of it’s really more just a timing issue that we don’t want to be sitting on that for too long and carrying all that cost for everything.

第一，我們是否已簽署合約，足以達到那些數字？答案是有。答案在這裡是肯定的。第二，你是否擁有所需的全部電力？答案是有。答案是肯定的。我們是否擁有所需的全部設備？我們已經有大部分了。我們已經有大部分。剩下的其實更多是時程問題；我們不希望太早把那些設備都放著，然後為所有東西承擔全部成本太久。

So, we can get all that, and we have a pricing mechanism to adjust for it. All that remains at this point, we’ll have three of these deals ramped up and generating revenue. And there’s a schedule of when equipment comes in and we put it into the data center, and once it’s made available, after it’s been tested and it’s up and running, the customer can start using it and we start billing. So, there’s very little risk in terms of the big picture of what’s left to do.

所以，我們可以把那些都到位，而且我們有一套定價機制可以據此調整。到目前為止，剩下的就是：我們會有其中三筆交易完成爬坡並開始產生營收。設備進場有一個時程表：設備到貨後我們把它放進資料中心，等它可用、完成測試並上線運轉後，客戶就能開始使用，我們也就開始計費。因此，從整體來看，剩下要做的事情風險非常小。

Is there timing potential of having something be off our schedule? And that’s essentially what happened where we assumed we would be in the data center at a particular date and that we’d have all of our equipment at a particular date, and things slipped a couple weeks. That happens, right. So, what we’ve done now is we’ve given you a wide range to show that, look, if we were to experience some delays from what we have as a fairly conservative view of the world, yeah, we’d be down close to the lower end.

會不會有時程上的可能性，讓某些事情偏離我們的排程？而那基本上就是之前發生的情況：我們原本假設會在某個日期進入資料中心，也會在某個日期拿到所有設備，但事情延後了幾週。這種事會發生，對吧。所以我們現在做的是給你們一個較寬的區間，來表明：你看，如果我們在一個相當保守的世界觀下仍遇到一些延遲，那麼我們的結果就可能接近區間下緣。

If we do better in terms of getting things on time or even slightly better, we could do that higher end of the range. And also we’re not assuming a lot of incremental productivity in there in terms of giving out that range because that adds a lot more risk, right. If I were to put big deals in there that I haven’t signed, well, that’s something that I can’t control, the day I’m going to sign that. That’s more risky. So this is based on signed deals where we have the space already locked up and lined up and we’ve got the supply chain primed and ready to go.

如果我們在準時交付方面做得更好，甚至稍微更好一些，我們就可能做到區間上緣。而且我們在給出這個區間時，也沒有假設很多額外的生產力提升，因為那會增加更多風險，對吧。如果我把一些尚未簽署的大案子放進去，那是我無法控制的——我哪一天能簽下來——那就更有風險。那樣更冒險。所以這是基於已簽署的交易：我們已經把空間鎖定並安排好，供應鏈也已經準備就緒、隨時可以啟動。

And so, then the question we always get is, you know, obviously we have these large contracts in place now, over $14 billion. So, congrats on that number. In terms of what you guys got to go execute on, what’s the willingness given the environment to do another large deal before executing on these at this stage?

那麼，接著我們總會被問到的問題是：你知道的，顯然我們現在已經有這些大型合約在手，總額超過 140 億美元。所以，恭喜你們達到這個數字。就你們接下來需要落地執行的部分而言，在目前的環境下，在這個階段、在把這些合約執行到位之前，你們對於再做一筆大型交易的意願如何？

Yeah, you know, I’m glad you mentioned that, Jim, because in my prepared remarks I did say for that $7 billion number that we’re talking about, when we said we believe we’ll surpass that in 2028, I made the comment that we don’t anticipate us taking on any of those additional tranches from the Anthropic relationship. Not saying that we don’t want to or anything of that. We just think that way. We’ve got to execute on what we have in front of us and, B, there’s an incentive for them as our stock goes higher with the warrants that are attached.

是的，你提到這點很好，Jim，因為在我事先準備的發言中，我確實提到我們談到的那個 70 億美元數字——當我們說我們相信會在 2028 年超過它時——我也補充說，我們不預期會承接與 Anthropic 關係中的任何額外分期（tranches）。並不是說我們不想或怎麼樣。我們只是這麼判斷。我們必須把眼前的事情執行好；另外，隨著我們股價上升，附帶的認股權證（warrants）也會讓他們有誘因。

So, we just don’t assume they’ll be really pushing for those orders yet. But I think once we execute through that, our willingness to go and grow faster is there. We do plan to have capacity, both capital as well as data center space to do larger deals in terms of something in those several hundred millions and that sort of thing. But in terms of the multibillion-dollar deals, we don’t have that in our forecast or our plans. Let’s get through the execution here on next year and then we’ll talk more about it then.

所以，我們不會假設他們現在就會非常積極地推動那些訂單。但我認為，一旦我們把這些執行完成，我們願意去更快成長的意願是存在的。我們確實計畫保有產能——包括資本以及資料中心空間——以便承接更大的交易，例如數億美元等級的案子之類。但就數十億美元等級的交易而言，我們的預測或計畫中並沒有納入。先把明年的執行做好，之後我們再多談。

Param Singh, Oppenheimer.

Param Singh，Oppenheimer。

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my question. Firstly, I wanted to get a sense of the growth in security. It seemed a little bit light this quarter. How do you think that should translate over the next year or two as you talk more about this cross-sell with API security and other modules that you mentioned earlier in the call? And then I had a follow-up question. Thank you.

是的，你好。謝謝讓我提問。首先，我想了解一下資安（security）的成長情況。這一季看起來有點偏弱。當你們談到與 API 安全以及你們在電話會議前面提到的其他模組進行交叉銷售時，你們認為未來一到兩年應該如何反映在成長上？然後我還有一個追問。謝謝。

Yeah, so if we’re talking about the quarter we just delivered, I think we came in slightly ahead of where you guys were, or are you talking more about the guide?

好的，如果我們談的是剛交出的這一季，我認為我們的表現略高於你們的預期；還是你指的是指引（guide）？

So I guess I was a little bit ahead of the street then for the security portfolio for this quarter. But I really want to think about the next two years and how that embeds into your $7 billion guide because we know the 2.2 that’s coming from CIS, so some color there would be helpful.

所以我想，這一季資安產品組合我確實是略高於市場一致預期。但我真正想思考的是未來兩年，以及這如何嵌入你們的 70 億美元指引中，因為我們知道其中有 22 億美元來自 CIS，所以如果能提供一些說明會很有幫助。

Yeah, sure. So we’re not going to give guidance on every different component. Certainly for '27 we’ll do that in the February call and then certainly for '28 we’ll give you the call guidance on that. But I think you can assume sort of normal business as usual. We’ve been pretty consistent. If I look at the sequential growth and I adjust for some of those anomalous licenses from last year, we’ve been adding, you know, 12% to 13%-ish, maybe a little bit more every quarter of sequential additional security growth.

好的，當然。我們不會針對每一個不同的組成部分都提供指引。當然，對於 2027 年我們會在 2 月的電話會議提供；而對於 2028 年，我們也會在電話會議中給出相應的指引。但我認為你可以假設大致就是正常營運、照常推進。我們一直相當一致。如果我看環比成長，並且把去年一些異常的授權（licenses）因素調整掉，我們每一季在資安的環比新增成長大約是 12% 到 13% 左右，可能還會略高一些。

So it’s continuing to grow at a very healthy clip. We have, you know, a long way to go with our API security and obviously LayerX is brand new. Guardicore is still, you know, growing at a very healthy clip and has relatively low percentage penetration in the base compared to some of our other products. We’re adding new customers at a faster clip. We’ve made an investment in adding customers. So, we feel pretty good that security is going to continue to grow and we’ll give you more guidance on that in February in terms of exactly how fast next year.

所以它仍在以非常健康的速度持續成長。我們在 API 安全方面還有很長的路要走，而顯然 LayerX 是全新的。Guardicore 仍然以非常健康的速度成長，且相較於我們其他一些產品，在既有客戶基礎中的滲透率仍然相對偏低。我們新增客戶的速度更快。我們已投入資源來增加客戶。因此，我們對安全業務將持續成長感到相當有信心，並且我們會在 2 月就明年確切成長速度提供更多指引。

Understood. And as my follow-up, now, I hate to beat a dead horse, but, you know, I understand your argument of why CapEx per megawatt is higher, and at the same time you’re talking about higher revenue. But let’s just take the middle part out. If you do revenue per CapEx, because you’re adjusting for the megawattage efficiency in that scenario, it’s still pretty light on the revenue per megawatt. It seems lower than a lot of the other Tier 2 hyperscalers and definitely in line with some of the older contracts of the NEO cloud.

了解。作為我的追問，我不想老調重彈，但我理解你們為何每兆瓦的資本支出（CapEx）較高的論點，同時你們也在談更高的營收。但我們先把中間那段拿掉。如果用「營收/CapEx」來看，因為在那種情境下你已經對兆瓦效率做了調整，但每兆瓦的營收看起來仍然偏弱。它似乎低於許多其他第二梯隊（Tier 2）的超大規模雲服務商（hyperscalers），而且確實與 NEO cloud 一些較舊合約的水準相當。

So I’m having a very difficult time understanding the dynamics behind this deal. And if you just kind of delineate from a revenue per CapEx perspective that would help me understand this better. Thank you.

所以我很難理解這筆交易背後的動態。如果你能從「營收/CapEx」的角度把界線說清楚一些，會幫助我更好理解。謝謝。

Yeah, so you’ve got to make sure you’re comparing like for like. If you’re comparing, say, the rental business for GPUs and what people are getting for short-term contracts and the dynamics of CapEx relative to a megawatt of power for GPU in that environment versus a seven-year commit for CPU, you can’t compare the two. They’re very, very different. I believe what I heard you say is that our revenue per megawatt is similar to what you see with hyperscalers. I think that’s what you said.

是的，所以你必須確保是在做同類比較。如果你拿 GPU 的租賃業務、以及人們在短期合約下拿到的價格，去對比那種環境下 GPU 每兆瓦電力所對應的 CapEx 動態，然後再拿來跟一個七年期、針對 CPU 的承諾合約相比，你不能把兩者放在一起比較。它們非常、非常不同。我理解你剛才說的是，我們的每兆瓦營收與你在 hyperscalers 那裡看到的相近。我想你是這麼說的。

They’re a mix there, mostly primarily of CPU. I don’t know off the top of my head what their CapEx is from that perspective, but again, we’re showing you what the economics look like for the absolute best pricing you can get for significant volume for significant term. If I go to the big three hyperscalers today and I want to sign a one-year deal, no commit, versus a three- or five-year deal with a big commit, I’m going to get dramatically better pricing for the long-term, higher commit.

他們那邊是混合的，但主要以 CPU 為主。我一時不清楚他們從那個角度看的 CapEx 是多少，但再說一次，我們向你們展示的是：在顯著的用量與顯著的合約期限下，你能拿到的絕對最佳價格所對應的經濟性。如果我今天去找三大 hyperscalers，想簽一個一年期、沒有承諾（no commit）的合約，對比一個三年或五年、且有很大承諾的合約，我在長期、高承諾的情況下會拿到顯著更好的價格。

So it’s hard for me to answer comparing to these other guys because I’m not sure what you guys are looking at in terms of what the dynamics are you’re talking about: a short-term contract, long-term contract, et cetera. And I just don’t know their numbers off the top of my head. But, you know, we’re very pleased with the returns we’re getting on this business, and you can see we’re in for a period of significant revenue growth and significant profit growth.

所以要我拿來跟其他人比較其實很難回答，因為我不確定你們看的數據是在什麼動態下：你們談的是短期合約、長期合約等等。而且我也不清楚他們的數字。但你知道的，我們對這項業務所獲得的回報非常滿意，而且你也看得到，我們正處於一段顯著的營收成長期與顯著的獲利成長期。

Rishi Jaluria, RBC.

Rishi Jaluria，RBC。

Wonderful. Thanks so much for taking my question. You know, look, maybe I want to ask kind of a more technological infrastructure question.

太好了。非常感謝讓我提問。你知道，或許我想問一個比較偏技術基礎設施的問題。

So as you’re continuing to build out this fleet, right, not just for these CIS deals that you’re signing, but I think for future contemplated demand Tom, in your prepared remarks, you did hit on this a little bit but, you know, there’s clearly a lot of other potential use cases that you can be going after, things like physical AI, presumably sovereignty, especially with the kind of growth in capabilities around open-weight models.

所以當你們持續擴建這個機群（fleet）時，對吧，不只是為了你們正在簽的這些 CIS 交易，我想也包括未來預期的需求；Tom，你在事先準備的發言中確實稍微提到了一點，但你知道，很明顯還有很多其他潛在的使用情境你們可以去爭取，例如實體 AI（physical AI），推測也包括主權（sovereignty），特別是在開放權重模型（open-weight models）能力成長的背景下。

And can you maybe walk us through what are you doing to ensure that the fleet you’re building is fully fungible, that you can pivot in real time to kind of how adoption trends and intent shape, especially just given leadership in models tends to change? And maybe your thoughts on why you feel Akamai is uniquely positioned to benefit from both of those trends. Thank you.

你能否帶我們了解一下，你們正在做什麼來確保你們建置的機群是完全可互換（fully fungible）的，讓你們能即時因應採用趨勢與意向的變化來調整，尤其是考量到模型領先地位往往會改變？也請談談你們為何認為 Akamai 在這兩個趨勢上具備獨特優勢、能從中受益。謝謝。

Yeah. In fact, we’ve signed some very large physical AI deals, many physical AI contracts so far. Sovereign AI also makes a lot of sense for us with our distributed platform. We do have diversity in the hardware in our platform, in the servers. But as we talked about, we emphasize the CPUs they’re very flexible and increasingly, for the kinds of enterprise applications that our customer base is doing, CPUs work very well for that.

是的。事實上，我們已簽下一些非常大型的實體 AI 交易，到目前為止也有許多實體 AI 合約。主權 AI 對我們而言也非常合理，因為我們有分散式平台。我們的平台在硬體、伺服器方面確實具備多樣性。但如同我們所談到的，我們強調 CPU，因為它們非常彈性，而且對於我們客戶群正在做的各類企業應用而言，CPU 越來越能很好地勝任。

Again, we are not going after training the next frontier model. We are interested in post-training of, say, open-source models on our platform now with our inference Akamai Inference capability and having agents on our platform with Agent Sandbox. And we will assign that to the hardware that is most efficient and capable of doing the particular workload, and we take that responsibility off our customers’ hands.

再說一次，我們不是要去訓練下一個前沿模型（frontier model）。我們感興趣的是在我們的平台上做例如開源模型的後訓練（post-training），並透過我們的推論能力 Akamai Inference，以及在我們平台上用 Agent Sandbox 部署代理（agents）。我們會把這些工作負載分配到最有效率、最能勝任該特定工作負載的硬體上，並把這個責任從客戶手上接過來。

So, I think we’re really ideally positioned with our distributed platform that we can get these workloads on the right kind of server that makes it be efficient. We can get it close to the robot, if that’s what it’s being used for, the sensor or the alert sensor if it’s what it’s being used for, or the user if you’re trying to maintain some kind of dialogue or chat with the user, or some video with the user. And their proximity matters for latency and scale.

所以我認為，憑藉我們的分散式平台，我們確實處於非常理想的位置，能把這些工作負載放到合適的伺服器類型上，讓它更有效率。如果用途是機器人，我們可以把它部署在靠近機器人的地方；如果用途是感測器或警報感測器，我們也能把它部署在靠近感測器的地方；或者如果你想維持與使用者的某種對話或聊天，或與使用者進行某種影片互動，我們也能把它部署在靠近使用者的地方。而這種近距離對延遲與規模化很重要。

And we’re really unique at that. And that’s why even the hyperscalers use our compute platform today for the latency-sensitive applications. So, I think, yeah, and you compare it to the NeoClouds, it’s an entirely different capability. And then, of course, with Akamai packaged also with the security you need especially important for AI and the delivery for a lot of these applications. If you’re doing some kind of, you know, video with a user or video with a robot or a car, you need that kind of scalability that you get from our Edge platform.

而我們在這方面真的很獨特。這也是為什麼即便是 hyperscalers，今天也會使用我們的運算平台來支援對延遲敏感的應用。所以我認為，是的，若拿來跟 NeoClouds 比，那是完全不同的能力。當然，Akamai 也能把所需的安全能力一起打包提供——這對 AI 特別重要——以及為許多這類應用提供交付（delivery）。如果你在做某種與使用者的影片互動，或與機器人或汽車的影片互動，你就需要我們 Edge 平台所提供的那種可擴展性。

Very helpful. Thank you.

非常有幫助。謝謝。

Peter Levine, Evercore ISI.

Peter Levine，Evercore ISI。

Great, thanks for taking my questions here. Maybe just two quick follow-ups. The 13% IRR, I’m assuming that represents a blended, obviously, from your slide deck. But given the scale of Anthropic, is it fair to assume Anthropic received favorable pricing terms versus your other customers? So therefore, we generate some lower returns. Just kind of help us walk us through how we should think about the dispersion between some of your returns versus some of these larger customers.

很好，謝謝讓我在這裡提問。我可能有兩個快速追問。13% 的 IRR，我假設那是你們投影片中所呈現的加權（blended）數字。但考量到 Anthropic 的規模，是否可以合理假設 Anthropic 相較於你們其他客戶拿到了較優惠的定價條款？因此，我們產生的回報會比較低。請協助我們理解：我們應該如何看待你們不同回報率之間的分散程度，以及在這些大型客戶之間的差異。

Yeah, no, I think you just summed it up well that they’re going to get a better return from a pricing perspective because they’re, A, willing to commit for seven years and, B, they’re committing a lot more volume. So that would be the lowest type of return you would get. So other customers that are not committing to that term or not committing that volume are going to have higher IRRs.

是的，不，我想你總結得很好：從定價角度來看，他們會拿到更好的條件，因為 A，他們願意承諾七年，B，他們承諾的用量大得多。所以那會是你能拿到的最低類型回報。因此，其他沒有承諾那麼長期限或沒有承諾那麼大用量的客戶，IRR 會更高。

Let me just a follow-up to John Difucci’s question, I guess more on the political side: do you view this as a tailwind, I guess, to your CIS business, assuming that you can accommodate incremental AI workloads within your existing colocation footprint? Just kind of walk us through what you saw post midterms. Is that a tailwind, is that a headwind, or is it just kind of -- it doesn’t really change your outlook on this business?

我想就 John Difucci 的問題再追問一下，可能更偏政治面：在假設你們能在既有的機房託管（colocation）佈局內承接新增的 AI 工作負載的前提下，你是否把這視為對你們 CIS 業務的利多（tailwind）？能否帶我們回顧一下期中選舉之後你們觀察到的情況。這是利多、利空（headwind），還是說——其實並不會真正改變你對這項業務的展望？

In terms of the business, we’re not negatively impacted by it. And so, in a way, we’re relatively advantaged compared to the competition, who do have serious challenges, I think.

就業務而言，我們並沒有受到負面影響。因此在某種程度上，相較於競爭對手——我認為他們確實面臨嚴峻挑戰——我們反而相對更有優勢。

Now, of course, the market got pretty well spooked, as you know, and we got dragged down with the market, I think unfairly so, because the issues that spooked the market really aren’t relevant to Akamai. You know, as I talked about, we’re in a unique and great position to be able to go get the kind of colo and power that we need, which is in many locations with much smaller footprints.

當然，如你所知，市場確實被嚇到了，而我們也被市場拖累下跌；我認為這是不公平的，因為讓市場受驚的那些問題其實與 Akamai 並不相關。你知道，正如我談到的，我們處在一個獨特且非常有利的位置，能夠取得我們所需的機房託管與電力資源——而且是在許多地點、以更小的占地規模來取得。

And as Ed talked about, we already are permitted for everything we need, you know, through 2028, for all the deals we’ve talked about and more. So it’s not an issue. Now, to the extent that it causes prices to go up, costs to go up -- well, again, we’re contracted, so that won’t hit us. It will potentially enable us to raise prices, and that may be a relative advantage because the other guys are going to have potentially challenges with these issues. And we are really in a great position with our distributed platform to not have those kind of problems.

而且如 Ed 所說，我們已經取得我們所需的一切許可——你知道，直到 2028 年——涵蓋我們談過的所有交易以及更多。所以這不是問題。另外，若它導致價格上升、成本上升——同樣地，我們是簽有合約的，所以不會衝擊到我們。它反而可能讓我們有機會提高價格，這可能成為相對優勢，因為其他業者可能會在這些問題上遇到挑戰。而我們憑藉分散式平台，確實處在非常有利的位置，不會有那類問題。

Roger Boyd, UBS.

Roger Boyd，瑞銀（UBS）。

Awesome. Thanks for taking the question. Dr. Tom, you made an important point about the CIS business being 90% compute-driven, and you’re not selling bare metal -- that a lot of that compute is fungible across the rest of the platform. When you think about capacity investment needed to scale the security and delivery businesses over the next couple years, do you anticipate a point where you might be less willing to take on new delivery and security business, just given the opportunity and the margin uplift you see on the compute side?

太棒了。謝謝讓我提問。Tom 博士，你提到一個重點：CIS 業務有 90% 是由運算（compute）驅動，而且你們不是在賣裸機（bare metal）——也就是說，這些運算資源有很大一部分可在平台其他部分之間互通、可替換（fungible）。當你思考未來幾年為了擴大資安與傳遞（delivery）業務所需的容量投資時，你是否預期會出現某個時間點：基於你在運算端看到的機會與毛利提升，你可能會比較不願意再承接新的傳遞與資安業務？

Yeah. Well, obviously security very good business for us, you know, about $2.5 billion, just grew 10% in constant currency. We’re continuing to invest and grow that business. Delivery, as we talked about, we’re not investing in the same way there. Obviously, we want to keep the platform, so it does all the new protocols, is very reliable, and has great performance. But we’re not going to the very low-end deals in terms of pricing or the deals with these huge spikes where it just doesn’t make economic sense.

是的。嗯，顯然資安對我們來說是非常好的業務，你知道，大約 25 億美元，按固定匯率計算剛成長了 10%。我們會持續投資並擴大那項業務。至於傳遞，如我們所談到的，我們不會以同樣的方式在那裡投資。當然，我們希望維持平台，讓它支援所有新協定、非常可靠，並且具備很好的效能。但在定價非常低端的案子，或是那些有巨大尖峰（spikes）需求、在經濟上不合理的案子上，我們不會去做。

We’re much better off investing that CapEx, into our CIS business. Much better returns. But I wouldn’t equate security with the delivery business. Security very strong business and doesn’t take a huge amount of CapEx.

我們把那筆資本支出（CapEx）投到 CIS 業務會更划算。報酬率高得多。但我不會把資安和傳遞業務畫上等號。資安是非常強勁的業務，而且不需要投入大量 CapEx。

Great color. And then, Ed, just to tie a bow on the $7 billion target, if you assume kind of security and delivery follow a consistent trend over the next few years, it looks like that target is achievable just by executing on that $2.2 billion Runway backlog you have in compute today.

很有幫助。然後 Ed，回到 70 億美元目標這件事，如果你假設未來幾年資安與傳遞維持一致的趨勢，看起來只要把你們目前在運算端握有的 22 億美元 Runway 待履約/積壓（backlog）執行到位，就能達成那個目標。

Is that the right way to think about it, and is the implication around the other segments directionally correct? And any color you can give on the assumptions for delivery and security in that guide would be helpful, thanks.

這樣理解對嗎？而且對其他部門的含意在方向上是否正確？另外，如果你能就該指引中對傳遞與資安的假設提供一些說明，會很有幫助，謝謝。

Yeah, no, I think you’re right to think about it that way. That is very achievable based on what we have signed today. And there’s upside to that. Now keep in mind ’28 is going to be a ramp year, so it’s not all of the $2.2 billion is in for the full year, obviously. But yes, you’re thinking about it the right way that it’s a very achievable number based on what we’ve signed.

是的，我認為你這樣想是對的。以我們今天已簽下的合約來看，這是非常可達成的。而且還有上行空間。不過請記得，2028 年會是爬坡（ramp）的一年，所以那 22 億美元不會全部在全年完整貢獻，這點很明顯。但沒錯，你的理解方向正確：以我們已簽署的內容為基礎，這個數字非常可達成。

We’re not expecting massive, big deals. That’s why I made that comment about not assuming there’s any additional Anthropic revenue in there, which obviously would change the trajectory quite a bit. So, you’re interpreting it the correct way.

我們並不預期會有非常龐大的大單。這也是我提到不要假設其中包含任何額外的 Anthropic 營收的原因；若有的話，走勢顯然會改變很多。所以，你的解讀是正確的。

Rudy Kessinger, DA Davidson.

Rudy Kessinger，DA Davidson。

Hey guys, great, thanks for taking my question and appreciate all the additional details here. I guess just going forward, as you look at the large deals in your pipeline understanding Anthropic got more favorable pricing and is probably weighing down that 13% after-tax IRR a bit, but if you look at your pipeline and the large deals you’re in negotiations with, is that IRR on those deals on average at a similar level? Is it a couple points higher?

各位好，太好了，謝謝讓我提問，也感謝你們提供這麼多額外細節。我想往前看，當你們看待管線中的大型交易時，理解 Anthropic 拿到較有利的定價，可能讓稅後 13% 的 IRR（內部報酬率）稍微被拉低；但如果看你們的管線以及正在談判的大型交易，那些交易的 IRR 平均而言是否大致在相近水準？會高個幾個百分點嗎？

Is it meaningfully higher? I’m just trying to get a sense of what future deals might look like from that standpoint. Thank you.

還是會顯著更高？我只是想了解一下，從這個角度看，未來的交易可能會是什麼樣子。謝謝。

Yeah, it depends. I mean, the nice thing is we’re able to pick and choose, too. So we are walking away from deals that we don’t believe meet our profit threshold or return on capital. But I would say in a lot of cases, they are significantly higher than what we’re seeing here today. But again, no one’s at the scale of committing $11 billion. So that’s very anomalous. Someone in a couple hundred million would have a much higher IRR. Thanks.

是的，這要看情況。我的意思是，好的一點是我們也能挑選取捨。所以，對於我們認為無法達到獲利門檻或資本報酬率要求的交易，我們會選擇退出不做。但我會說，在很多情況下，它們會顯著高於我們目前在這裡看到的水準。不過再說一次，沒有人會到承諾 110 億美元的規模。所以那是非常異常的案例。如果是幾億美元規模的案子，IRR 會高得多。謝謝。

This concludes our question-and-answer session as well as today’s conference call. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.

以上為我們的問答環節以及今天的電話會議結束。感謝各位參與今天的簡報。各位現在可以掛線。