睿科網路 (ATEN) 2021 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day and welcome to the A10 Networks Q2 2021 Earnings Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) Please note, this event is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Rob Fink of FNK IR. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. This call is being recorded and webcasted live and may be accessed for at least 90 days on the A10 Networks website.

Members of A10 management team joining me today are Dhrupad Trivedi, President and CEO; and CFO, Brian Becker.

Before we begin, I would like to remind you that shortly after the market closed today, A10 Networks issued a press release, announcing its second quarter 2021 financial results. Additionally, A10 published a presentation and supplemental trended financial statements. You may access the press release, the presentation and the trended financial statements on the Investor Relations section of the Company's website.

During the course of today's call, management will make forward-looking statements, including statements regarding projections, future operating results, including as to revenue, our continued efforts to improve operational efficiency and focus on driving growth, business optimization and overall profitability; our belief that we can continue to build upon customer momentum going forward; our expectations regarding future opportunities and our ability to execute on those opportunities; our expectations for future market growth and the general growth of our business, including in Japan; the development and performance of our products and the anticipated customer benefits from the use of our products; our expectations and priorities with respect to 5G. These statements are based on current expectations and beliefs as of today, July 27, 2021.

These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond our control, such as the potential impact of COVID-19 on the business and operations that could cause actual results to differ materially. And you should not rely on them as predictions of future results. A10 does not intend to update information contained in forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For a more detailed description of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to the Company's most recent 10-K.

Please note, with the exception of revenue, financial measures discussed today are on a non-GAAP basis, and have been adjusted to exclude certain charges. The non-GAAP financial measures are not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with GAAP and may be different from non-GAAP financial measures presented by other companies. A reconciliation between GAAP and non-GAAP measures can be found in the press release issued today and on the trended quarterly financial statements posted on the Company's website.

With all that said, I'd like to turn the call over to Dhrupad Trivedi, President and CEO of A10 Networks. Dhrupad?

Thank you, Rob, and thank you all for joining us today. The second quarter was a strong quarter for A10, validating the changes we have made in our strategy, while driving operational improvements. We delivered 12.7% year-over-year growth in the quarter, resulting in 7% growth for the first half of 2021 and reinforcing our confidence for the year. I am encouraged by all of our trends, including our improving revenue mix, our customer diversification and market traction for our strategic product initiatives.

As previously mentioned, we have made changes last year to improve commercial execution in the Americas, which is an important growth opportunity. Those investments are now delivering results, as revenues in the Americas, which includes Latin America, increased 20% year-over-year in Q2. The quality of our sales funnel and customer opportunities, give us confidence that this is not a short-term fluctuation in buying patterns. We are systematically capturing market share in both of our verticals, driving the largest sales with existing customers and building a more diversified customer base.

In the service provider market, which includes telcos, MSOs, cloud, and satellite providers, we continue to expand our customer base and grew our revenue even as our historically largest customer was not the largest contributor for the quarter. Their buying pattern was in line with their spending cycles and our projections.

We were able to grow our customer count and expand our revenue per customer to deliver consistent growth, in line with past projection.

In North America, our average revenue per customer, among our top customers, has increased more than 30% year-over-year, compared to second quarter last year, as our security solutions are helping us expand deals with key customers, validating our opportunity to grow share of wallet with compelling solutions. This also contributes to further revenue diversification, as we align ourselves better to secular tailwinds.

Entering 2021, we stated that our strategic goal was to grow recurring revenue faster than consolidated revenue. Year-to-date, our recurring revenue has outpaced consolidated revenue growth rates and we see that trend continuing. This is due in large part to the growing security needs of our customers and our offerings in this area that are helping us gain market share.

Our solutions are built upon a foundation of high throughput, low latency and ability to scale. These have been further enhanced by natively integrating multiple securities like DDoS, that offer sophisticated zero-day protection and multi-level remediation methodologies that can be fully automated.

These attributes are directly relevant to solving our customers' business problems and help deliver better returns on CapEx and OpEx for our customers, achieve cyber security objectives and assist them in their own technology transitions, while protecting current investments. We continue to invest in our strategic priorities, while maintaining discipline in our resource allocation.

We have taken steps to mitigate COVID-related challenges within the supply chain, with minimal impact to our gross margin, as we focused on ensuring timely delivery to our customers. The net result is that our GAAP net income was $6.6 million in the quarter and we generated $17.2 million in cash flow from operations, enabling us to further strengthen our balance sheet, even while repurchasing more than $11 million of stock in the quarter.

Today, A10 is very well positioned in growing markets with secular tailwinds. Striking events such as the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, continue to drive demand for security-led solutions and we have best-in-class solution to help address those challenges.

The ongoing multi-year 5G rollout and focus on network availability with security is also driving ongoing demand. We remain focused on driving strategic initiatives for sustainable profitable growth, uniquely addressing the opportunities across cyber security, 5G, and digital transformation of businesses.

With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Brian, for a detailed review of the quarter. Brian?

Thank you, Dhrupad. As Dhrupad mentioned, revenue in the second quarter was $59.2 million, up 12.7% year-over-year. Product revenue, which is a lead indicator for future recurring revenue growth, was $34.4 million, representing 58.1% of total revenue, up 17.6% compared to $29.2 million in the second quarter last year.

Services revenue, which includes maintenance and support revenue, was $24.8 million or 41.9% of total revenue, up 6.5% compared to $23.3 million in the second quarter last year.

Moving to our revenue from a geographic standpoint. Revenue from North America, including Latin America, was $28.8 million, up nearly $5 million or 20% year-over-year. Revenue from Japan was $15.6 million, up $2.7 million or 21% year-over-year. Asia-Pacific revenue, excluding Japan, was $7.7 million compared with $8 million in the second quarter last year. EMEA was $7.1 million compared with $7.7 million in the same quarter last year.

As Dhrupad said, revenue from the Americas increased due to stronger commercial execution and improving market conditions. We expect that to continue throughout 2021.

In Japan, we had said that Q1 results were impacted by re-scoping of the Olympics and a strong book-to-bill gave us confidence in normalization. As expected, revenues in Japan did normalize, growing 20% year-over-year, and we believe Japan will deliver results in line with our expectations for the remainder of the year.

As you can see on our balance sheet, our deferred revenue was $116.3 million as of June 30th, 2021, up 10.8% compared to $105 million as of June 30th, 2020. Recurring revenue, defined as support and subscription revenue, grew 6% year-over-year to $27.1 million in the second quarter.

With the exception of revenue, all of the metrics discussed on this call are on a non-GAAP basis, unless otherwise stated. A full reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP results are provided in our press release and on our website.

Gross margin in the second quarter was 77.9% despite industry-wide global supply chain constraints and temporary increases in the logistics costs resulting from the global pandemic. Non-GAAP operating expenses in Q2 were $35 million compared to $34.1 million in the prior year. This reflects an increasing investment in our priorities and some resumption in sales and marketing activities. We reported $11.1 million in non-GAAP operating income compared to $7.2 million in the year-ago quarter.

We also continued to improve our adjusted EBITDA significantly, delivering $13.2 million for the quarter, a $3.4 million improvement year-over-year. Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $10.5 million or $0.13 on a per share basis. Diluted shares used in calculating earnings per share was $79.3 million -- excuse me, 79.3 million shares.

On a GAAP basis, net income for the quarter was $6.6 million or $0.08 per share, compared with net income of $3.8 million or $0.05 per share in the second quarter of last year. For the quarter, we generated $17.2 million of cash from operating activities, due to financial leverage of our business model.

Revenue for the first 6 months of 2021 was $114 million, representing 7% growth compared to the first 6 months of 2020. We reported $21.9 million in non-GAAP operating income compared with $11.4 million in the first 6 months of last year. Year-to-date, adjusted EBITDA was $26.2 million, a $9.2 million improvement year-over-year.

Non-GAAP net income was $20 million or $0.25 per share. On a GAAP basis, year-to-date net income was $9.3 million or $0.12 per share compared with net income of $3.5 million or $0.05 per share last year.

As of June 30th, 2021, we had $166.8 million in total cash and cash equivalents compared with $158.1 million at the end of 2020. We continue to carry no debt.

On September 17th, 2020, the Company announced a share repurchase plan for up to $50 million of our common shares over the next 12 months. During the second quarter, we repurchased 1.2 million shares at an average price of $8.99 per share for a total of $11.1 million. We have approximately $19.6 million remaining in the plan.

Based on improved visibility, we now expect quarter revenue for the third quarter of $60.6 million to $63.4 million, with the bottom line growing faster than top line.

I'll now turn the call back to Dhrupad for closing comments.

Thank you, Brian. In summary, this was a strong quarter for A10. Systemic improvements we have made in our roadmap, organization and commercial execution, continue to drive an improved business model. We have diversified our customer base and we are capturing market share. We are more efficient, growing our profitability faster than our revenue and generating significant free cash flow. We are strategically well-positioned to benefit from significant secular tailwinds and growth catalysts, including cyber security and 5G rollout. We are increasingly viewed as a value-added leader in security solutions with best-in-class offerings.

Operator, you can now open the call up for questions.

(Operator Instructions) The first question comes from Christian Schwab with Craig-Hallum Capital Group.

Great quarter and guidance. As we look to the improved visibility, I'm just wondering if you can give us some directional -- whether it's coming of some of the regular secular tailwinds like security and 5G that's driving that, that you highlighted, or just a normalization of the Japan market, if you could give us any clarity on kind of the mix of those 3 attributes to the improved visibility, please?

Yes. Good question. So I think the first element around improved visibility comes from just a more positive outlook that we see in the market with customers and spending patterns and specifically, it relates to business resumption, where countries are coming out of lockdown, there is optimism around the vaccine, where people can go in and build out data centers and do testing and validation. So I think that is helping create more certainty around, not just the need for our solutions, but the timeline to actually implement them. So that's the first element of it.

Second element, I think you spoke about security and 5G and I think cyber security market in general is driven by 2 factors. One is, as some of the volume and sophistication of new attacks, but second also by public announcements or known breaches that raises awareness and budget for protecting our businesses better.

So that is certainly causing a re-prioritization, where that is an important budget category and high priority for customers to carry out and complete quickly.

And last, as it relates to Japan, in our Q1 conference call, we had spoken about still the impending uncertainty around whether the Olympics would be canceled or resized or moved by a year, et cetera, which had caused local service providers to therefore moderate their investments more in line with data growth, what is the specific events like Olympics with a lot of tourism and so forth. So as we had said, we still expect that on a full year basis, they would spend the same amount, just that they did not have to do it in Q1.

So as it stands now, obviously, I hope everyone is enjoying the Olympics, as they have started already. And as we expected, the spending pattern instead of peaking in Q1 has spread out over the year and so that's -- but I would say that's a small part of our confidence and visibility, which is driven more by what we see as customer traction, engagement and timelines where they need to deploy our solutions.

And I have a question on the security business and in your comments regarding share gains. Can you walk us through, who you believe you're winning against most often in the security market right now as far as a competitor?

Yes, fair question. So that -- obviously, the complexity with security market is highly fragmented. And there are a lot of categories that people need to choose and prioritize around what is most important to their situation, right.

So typically our solutions, which are using technologies like DDoS attack prevention, SSLi and so forth, we would -- we would be competing with a wide variety of companies in the space, including but not limited to, obviously, Juniper, F5, Radware, Citrix and everyone outside.

But more importantly, it's not just about replacing competitor X one-for-one. It's more about helping the customers solve their security problem and prioritizing our solution as being the most relevant thing for them to do.

And just a quick follow-up on that. Just on the competitive front, when you win against any of those wide variety of vendors, that I think everybody is probably aware of. But that being said, what is the #1 or #2 thing that you hear back from the customer of why you won. Can you help us understand that a little bit better?

Of course. Yes, so the number one reason why we win is, when customers carry out technical head-to-head testing of multiple solutions, our solutions are able to deliver higher throughput with lower latency and withstand a higher volume and complexity of cyber-attacks, right. So that's probably the number one reason.

The #2 reason is, our cyber security solutions, because of the legacy of the Company and the great technical foundation, the solutions are fully integrated and have not been built upon a series of acquisitions we made over the years. So from a customer perspective, that directly results in lower CapEx and lower OpEx to operate our solutions.

Congrats on the great results.

The next question comes from Vahid Khorsand with BWS Financial. Please go ahead.

This is Vahid for Hamed. Just a couple of questions for you. The first one on operating margin, could you provide some details on why there was a decline in Q1, not so much in Q2 and so what led to that difference?

Go ahead Brian, you want to take that?

Yes. Q1, in the last earnings call, we announced that there was lower than expected travel and entertainment expense, just related to lockdown. Obviously, we had some challenges with closures at the customer sites and doing proof of concepts and even delivering and installing equipment.

But as the pandemic has been easing and we've seen things opening back up, we're beginning to see things resume to normal. We saw in Q2, travel and entertainment, as well as event expenses pick up. We also were able to reintroduce more installation services and other travel expenses, so that -- that's largely what you're seeing is, because of the pandemic, there was basically a deferral in sales and marketing expenses into the later part of the year.

And do you expect that to continue for the rest of the year?

No, I mean, there will be a little bit of carryover in terms of the lockdown. We won't be able to make up everything that we had planned for the year, but for the full year, we continue to expect to see the same level of expenditure on OpEx. As we begin to grow revenues further than expected, we'll see that grow at a slower rate, but we will see a growth.

Okay. And then just last question on still on costs. Do you -- are there other areas where you see cost cutting opportunities?

Well, I guess the answer to that is, we're not necessarily at a cost-cutting mode at this point. We are redeploying resources and investing in growth for our strategic initiatives. So I wouldn't say that we're looking for cost containment as much as ensuring that we're deploying resources, the most -- the benefit -- for the best return of our investment.

Yes. And I think, Vahid, the way to think about it is, there is 2 parts to it, right? There is structural cost reduction, which we carried out beginning of 2020, which is to resize our cost pool for the business and potential. And then obviously on an ongoing basis, as Brian said, we ensure resource allocation to the best growth opportunities and then continue to drive process improvements, which allow us to grow the top line, but also grow the bottom line faster than that.

So that's more of a evolving quarter-to-quarter change in where you see opportunities to take advantage of the efficiencies.

Yes, it's more in a continuous improvement category than massive structural cost reduction, correct.

The next question comes from Anja Soderstrom with Sidoti.

Congratulations on another great quarter. Also I have some questions about the expenses on the gross margin for the products. It's -- it's been a bit lower this quarter and last quarter. Is that due to the supply chain issues or what's driving that and how do you see that develop over the coming quarters?

Yes. As you said, you're exactly right, we did experience some pressure on margins related to logistics and freight, as well as some of the costs around our inventory as a result of the pandemic and global supply chain challenges. I'd say we've done a pretty good job of mitigating the impact of that and that neutralized most of it, but you do see a little bit of impact. As far as where we think we'll be going with that, I believe we've addressed most of our current risk and expect to continue to improve as we go throughout the year.

And then this global distribution center transition expense, is that related to improving your supply chain organization? Or what is that in regards to…

Yes, Anja, good question. So our global distribution and delivery expense is related partly to that, but is more about the idea of continuing to simplify our footprint and improve efficiencies. So it is actually helping us become more efficient in multiple functional areas, while at the same time of course also helping with supply chain-related simplification, so it's more around our footprint and being proactive like a year ago, to continue to drive and set it up in a way that allows us to continue to drive improvement on an ongoing basis, while simplifying our operating structure, so we can spend more time on growth and strategy.

And then in terms of your strong revenue performance this quarter and then also you are guiding to a pretty strong third quarter, but yes, you are sort of targeting I think around 8% annual revenue growth. How should we think about that, given this near-term strength in the revenue growth?

Yes, no, good question, Anja. And I think for us, the thing we had talked about in Q1 and in Q2 is a little bit of timing shift in some of our regions related to macro conditions, and you are correct, right. As we talk about Q3 guide and that puts us in a position of doing as good as the high end of the range, if not slightly better.

So as we see market conditions improve, our focus of course is to take advantage of it, but our guidance is based on our own initiatives and what we can control. If 5G pickup is factored, then as we have talked about before, we certainly see that as a tailwind to our business and so that's kind of where we see it.

Brian, I don't know if you want to add anything to that.

That's exactly right. Things are improving as we see, as the pandemic is lifting and things are opening up, which just presents opportunities for us and as well as the market conditions. I mean, we're seeing a lot of activity in the market, which is really pushing -- pushing us along from a tailwind perspective.

And then in terms of the Olympics in Japan, how they're running that without the audience and all the live streaming instead, how is that affecting your business on your…?

So the -- so as we had not known but anticipated in Q1, our customers were faced with a situation of, if there were going to be a lot of visitors and they wanted them to have a good experience on 5G and connectivity and so forth, they were going to invest earlier in the year to be ready for that.

As the scope changed, as it relates to visitors from other countries and so forth, as we had expected, their investments are now more in line with growth in data and video and subscribers in the market. So instead of spending it upfront in Q1 and then less in Q2, Q3, Q4, we expected that to be more spread out over the year, and that is consistent with what we see in our funnel and opportunities and kind of customer discussion.

The full-year outlook may not be different, it's just not as front-loaded as if they had to spend it all in Q1 to be ready for the Olympics.

Given that, then is there also then a chance that maybe some of that spills over into next year, or…?

There is a chance that some of it goes over into next year, absolutely correct, yes. Because it will be more driven by growth in data and subscribers versus a specific event. And as Brian said earlier, in Q2 we did see that rebound, where the Q1 investments had been moved forward to Q2 at least. So that's correct, yes. It's possible that it continues to carry over.

And then one last question if I may. You alluded to your portfolio pruning in an earlier call. How is that progressing and how is that affecting your near-term revenue opportunities?

Yes. So for us it's -- I think we had spoken in an earlier call, more related to the concept of portfolio management. So we are not discontinuing any product lines. We have not stopped any customer projects. It was more to do with, how do we align our OpEx, whether it's in sales and marketing or R&D, with the best growth opportunities and the best customer opportunities. And therefore tune those investments from a portfolio perspective to the best opportunities, some of which may be longer term, right.

So I think it was more in the context of, how do we continue to deliver new innovation and products with our current R&D and sales and marketing OpEx and how do we manage that as a portfolio. So that was more of a concept. So there is no revenue impact; if anything, we are hopeful that doing that is going to help us grow faster.

The next question comes from Hendi Susanto from Gabelli Funds.

Hi, Dhrupad, can you share more insight into business dynamic in enterprise? I think earlier, let's say like months ago, we were talking about the COVID impact on the sales activities. How do you characterize the business dynamic in enterprise at the moment?

Good question. So for us, the enterprise market focus heavily is on large enterprise and especially within that, on applications that focus on managing a lot of data, worried about security, et cetera, with critical business and IT applications.

So in that market, right, we have seen two things happen. One is, there is increasing awareness and concern around cyber security, which obviously is favorable to us in terms of engaging those customers in that conversation.

And second is, we certainly see in regions that are seeing high vaccination rates and so forth, there is more optimism and opening around deployments that they can start conducting, right, and with our products as well as testing. So I think we see that as something that continues to open up versus where businesses were let's say a year ago, more concerned about ensuring that people can work from home, right, rather than their IT infrastructure.

And then, Dhrupad and Brian, the recurring revenue target of $120 million exiting year end 2021, can you help us break down between products and services in that $120 million?

Just to level set, so recurring revenue, half our revenue base, portion of that is support and services and a portion of that is security products. Exiting, we expect to have growth of $120 million and I'd say about 10% at least will be attributable to our security products.

And then -- and then, Brian, if I look at the OpEx, I remember that the baseline for this year is $142 million plus or minus $4 million to $5 million of expenses returning post-COVID. If I look at that, that implies a higher OpEx in the second half. Is that a right assumption?

Yes, I think you're exactly right. Our jump off point from last year was about $142 million annually of OpEx. We're expecting about the same level with a return to normal sales and marketing expenditures, around travel and entertainment and as well as marketing events in the range of $4 million to $5 million. I think that's exactly what you're seeing. But then, obviously, as we continue to produce, grow the business and grow revenue, we'll see some sales and marketing expenses climb up accordingly. But as we have said, OpEx will trend at a rate lower than top line.

So as we see, overall revenue growth for the year, our original guidance 6% to 8%, we expect to see OpEx grow at a slower rate, therefore returning faster bottom line results.

Okay. And then, Dhrupad, it's quite interesting to see sequential increase in R&D spending and then assuming that you will spend more on R&D in the second half. Can you give us some insight into where A10 is spending in R&D?

Sure. Yes, good question and I think that's a fair assumption, is that to -- we will grow our cost structure at a slower rate, but certainly we want to make sure we are investing in the right priority.

So for us, from an R&D spending perspective, the most important areas of spending growth will be in security-related products, whether that's DDoS or SSLi or features in our platform, that make it more secure. So that's the most important thing.

The second area where we continue to invest in R&D is on differentiation in our products, that is based on creating higher throughput and lower latency for all applications. And the third area for us is really where we are able to integrate or add more and more features to our common platform, which makes it easier for our customer to consume and use our products. So those are sort of the -- schematically, the most important areas of investment for us.

And then last question for me, if I see the year-over-year decline of 8% in EMEA, besides lock down and then COVID, are there still other reasons?

No, I think that is purely a macro-driven impact. When we look at how our business is evolving in core Europe or emerging parts of Europe, it's all a positive development as it relates to customer than funnel. So that is purely a timing impact about COVID-related shutdowns and slowdowns.

Yes. And I might point out that if you look to 2019 to 2020 to 2021, there was a pretty large growth year-over-year from 2019 to 2020 and then back to more normal levels in 2021.

So I wouldn't see it as much as a -- of a decline year-over-year as much as -- as much as an improvement over the last few years in the theater as a whole.

Great Q2 execution.

This concludes the question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Dhrupad Trivedi for any closing remarks.

Thank you and thank you to all our shareholders for joining us today and for your ongoing support and thanks to all the great A10 employees that made these results possible.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.