F5 Inc at Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference Transcript

The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : So to start things out, Francois, I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about some of the issues that customers are facing with multi-cloud environments and how F5's portfolio of application delivery and security solutions, were able to help your customers?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : Great that's a fantastic overview and to really solidify it for the audience. I was wondering if you could kind of walk through some of the product areas that you address and maybe talk about the competitive set, right? Like what does it look like for traditional ADCs are sometimes multi-cloud networking versus linking app performance management CDN. And just to put into context who are some of the peers and competitors that you work with and how you're differentiated relative to?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : That's great. I wanted to get a sense check on what customer demand looks like. During the most recent quarter, F5 talked about improving demand after this period, inventory digestion and customer caution and budget scrutiny. And first could you talk a little bit about what gives you confidence to you continue to have this outlook for demand recovery? And are you seeing any specific verticals or customer types for regions that tend to be doing better than others?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : That's right. And I want to come back to some of that renewal strength and software strengthen a little bit. And but before we do, could you just talk about who the typical F5 customer is right. I tend to think of F5 serving a lot of large enterprises service providers. Is that generally how you characterize it and do see different demand trends as you look at each of these?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : And I wanted to follow up on what you said about service providers BEING historically effective around sweating assets. And I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about that concept. What drives the ultimate for lack of better words, like breaking point where service provider says, hey, I can't sweat this asset anymore. Is it the absence of like new features that you're delivering and a desire to you get those new features and that innovation? Is that something?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : That really will first one prioritizing and maybe just translating some of that into the financials from last quarter of five raised its fiscal '24 revenue guidance to flat, flat to down 2% prior. Can you just talk about some of the key drivers impacting that outlook? What gave you the confidence to raise the revenue guidance? And how does the growing pipeline of deals impacted if at all?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : And then as you think to next year, there's an expectation of an acceleration in revenue growth. It's encouraging that much of that will come from the software side. And I think you have very good visibility of that just because of the timing of term contracts. Can you just talk a little bit about what we can expect in fiscal '25?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : Could you just frame like within software, how you think of the different business models. What gives you confidence that we'll see that uplift in term based on what you've seen in prior renewals? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. SEPTEMBER 11, 2024 / 5:50PM, FFIV.OQ - F5 Inc at Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : And if we could move back and talk to some of the products, I'm going to start with ADCs where and that includes traditional ADC but also the cloud-based one with acquisition of engineers. And my understanding is that F5 is the leader in ADCs and the innovation is what really drove that market leadership. But could you just elaborate a little bit more on what you had mentioned earlier on competition in ADCs and what drove the position?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : So if you're hybrid multi-cloud in most enterprises, if not all, enterprises are at this point, but you just can't rely on the it's native solution that's provided by the cloud provider, right? Because you have to worry about all the traffic elsewhere credit.

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : And it was always logical to me that an ADC company, our product that is responsible for load balancing traditionally should have a right to participate. Other areas such as security, given that you're looking at these packets and redirect demand anyway, I'm sure you could put that in a much more articulate way, but like why it is and a company that has historically been very good at agencies naturally can extend into security.

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : And just to really kind of solidify this understanding with an example, like when we talk about like apps and API.s, like what are some like obvious examples are like categories of examples where, yes, F5's product has really had help to establish like application performance and security management. Is it like a mobile app is it our website? Is it like some sort of productivity software that an enterprise is using.

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : Okay. REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. SEPTEMBER 11, 2024 / 5:50PM, FFIV.OQ - F5 Inc at Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : And we talk about AI applications or the like the applications, the inferencing that's being done or are you kind of like a chat bot or are you talking about something else?

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : That's incredibly helpful. Thank you for sharing that. We have five minutes left, let me go to some audience questions, if I could use my waiting for the mike. Unidentified Participant Hi, thanks for taking my question. I wonder if you could give a sense of how that pipeline is building relative to prior since you've been around for Internet numbers, corporate workloads, you're talking about basic consumer Internet applications. How does how pipeline build relative to the product? REFINITIV STREETEVENTS | www.refinitiv.com | Contact Us consent of Refinitiv. 'Refinitiv' and the Refinitiv logo are registered trademarks of Refinitiv and its affiliated companies. SEPTEMBER 11, 2024 / 5:50PM, FFIV.OQ - F5 Inc at Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Technology Conference

Question: Mike Ng - Goldman Sachs - Analyst : Well, we're over time, so we'll just cap it there. But Francois, Cooper, it's been a privilege to have you on stage. Thank you so much.